Small Business Conversations

Listeners of Small Business Conversations know that Tom Shay loves to stress the importance of understanding financial information and being able to make decisions based on numbers instead of just guessing. Ruth King joins Small Business Conversations to bring additional and unique thoughts on financial understanding. 

During the program, Ruth explained the need to create a budget by starting with an answer to a very difficult question; How much profit do you want to have in your business?

As an author, consultant and lecturer on small business, this is an hour that is packed with financial information that can be of great assistance to any small business. 

Scott Wagman may not be someone you know, but within the community of the west coast of Florida, Scott is known as a brilliant small business owner and a generous contributor to enhancing the quality of life. Scott visits our program to tell the story of a small business his father started and how it was grown to a multi-million dollar operation with 24 locations.

Scott shared what was learned from growing the business and how his experience is relevant to all small businesses whether they are a one location or a multi-location operation. Scott's story is also a wonderful lesson in caring and giving to your community.

Motivation or burnout - What has been the reaction of your business and yourself during the corona pandemic? Dr. Frank Wood visits Small Business Conversations and Tom Shay to share methods of adapting to your individual situation. With the anticipated strong economic recovery, we want everyone and their business to be prepared mentally as physically to take advantage of the upswing.

Dr. Frank shared a story of Zumbach the tailor which tells of a man accepting an ill-fitting suit and the difficulties it imposed on him both physically and mentally. The lesson of the story is a person who decides to avoid conflict by accepting situations that are entirely unnatural. We ask the question of businesses; "Are we not working to return to normal? Or are we accepting the paralysis without asking where and how it is safe to return to the way we previously operated our business?"

America's Small Business Development Centers (SBDC) has many advisors who provide assistance to small business owners in areas of marketing, business strategy, financial service, personnel, social media, Internet presence and from our observation, every component of small business ownership and management.

As an organization funded by the Small Business Administration, there is rarely a charge for anything your business receives. The SBDC provides individualized counseling, webinars and all day classes on various aspects of business management.

This program interviews Laura Fine, the state director of the Arkansas SBDC and Tee Rowe, president and CEO of America's SBDC.

Ken Banks has an extensive background in the area of marketing and advertising. During this visit we asked Ken to dispel some of the common "rules" of advertising. We also reviewed the television commercials from Christmas 2020 and the Super Bowl 2021. We are providing links to the commercials. Links were functional as of February 2021.

Those commercials we looked at were:

Super Bowl 2021:

Toyota (adopted swimmer)

Jeep (Bruce Springsteen)

Samuel Adams (with Clydesdale)

Jimmy John (with Brad Garret as the king)

fiverr creative services

Cheetos (with Ashton Kutcher)

Disney (with Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski)

Christmas 2020:

Coca Cola (Santa Claus letter)

Our favorite accountant, Mike McCormick does an encore performance as he  comes to introduce his latest book, "Why didn't my CPA tell me that? Small Business Write offs conventional tax advisors miss'." 

As always,  Mike provides a lot of ideas that small business owners can use to keep  more of that profit in their checking account while reducing their tax  liabilities.

Phillip M. Perry has written over 3,000 columns for a wide variety of small  business magazines. This conversation had us asking the writing expert  about the experts he quotes in his many columns. We discussed the future  of print magazines as well as what the experts are telling Phil are the  biggest concerns among small business owners.

Karl Stearns is an expert on digital engagement. During our hour, we  discussed Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, email marketing, social media  and how to have all of them work together so that your business can  engage your existing customers to do more business with you. We talked  about how this would also allow your business to gain new customers.

Don Schwerzler, founder of the Family Business Institute, and the  Internet organization, Family Business Experts, joined Tom to  discuss issues with businesses that have multi-generations, siblings,  cousins, partners, or other situations where there is room for  "challenging discussions". We talked about getting out of the business  as well as how to deal with disputes within the business.

Dr. Frank Wood, psychologist, came to the program with  this concept; there is always going to be stress in your life. For some,  the stress can be painful and challenging. Others may be able to have  stress become a tool to help you achieve your goals.

We posed many interesting questions to Dr. Frank as we work to understand how stress is present in our daily lives.