Small Business Naked

Today on the show, we interview a super interesting entrepreneur who got his start by selling Chameleons online.  He sold so many chameleons on Screameleons.com, he was ablet to afford to buy a Lamborghini and a house!  Vincent Wong may have started out with lizards, but soon graduated to a super-successful online software company that he co-founded with a friend called

Vincent Wong may have started out with lizards, but soon graduated to a super-successful online software company that he co-founded with a friend called Mhelpdesk.com . Mhelpdesk is field service software for small to medium size businesses.  Nick has been using Mhelpdesk almost since their inception.

Vincent shared some great nuggets of wisdom in our chat.  Everything from lessons on how to become an entrepreneur to some great advise on how to manage a company and what to look for.  Another amazing entrepreneur.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.  Please give us a review on iTunes and follow us on Facebook.

Today is another What's Up episode with Nick and Johnny.  We thought we would bring on an industry expert to help us sort out some issues with tech, as we are not the small business podcast tech experts.  We asked Ramon Ray to come on to help us, give us some tips and insights, and to help us be more productive with some tech tools.

Ranon Ray is a small business evangelist, works with/for Infusionsoft, runs Smart Hustle Magazine and SmallBizTechnology.com, so we figured he'd have some good stuff for us. The first tips Ramon gave us were:

Back up your data

Download apps on your phone to be more productive

Make sure your data is secure.

Ramon recommended a few apps as we talked:

Asana - a task management app

Concur - a financial tracking app

Evernote - a business diary and filing cabinet for data and notes.

As for choosing an app, Nick suggested that when you are considering a new type of app, download several similar apps, use them all, and see which one you like the best, then delete the ones you don't like.

Turning a corner into marketing (Johnny always wants more customers), Ramon shared with us a system for building your business that everyone show be doing...no matter what technology you are into (or out of):

Attract

Sell

Wow

Super simple, and to get all the details, check out the podcast.

Ramon shared lots of awesome with us, so be sure to listen to the podcast.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.  Please give us a review on iTunes and follow us on Facebook.

This is the shirt design that caught our eye, and the reason for Nick to break into song.  You will have to wait for it though (it is in the outtake real).

Have you heard of Threadless Tees?  It is a hugely popular crowd sourcing website started by our guest today, Jake Nickell.  The most impressive thing is that Jake started this multi-million dollar business by bootstrapping it with only $1000.  Jake is a soft spoken guy that has a crazy successful business Threadless Chicago, and while I am not sure that Jake was all that comfortable with us at first, he sure opened up by the end, and gave us the good stuff.

The most popular shirt on the site was one called The Communist Party seen here.  If you want to see examples of all the shirts over the years, you need to go visit their hidden page.  Threadless Chicago hosts a ton of events for it's designer community.  Their 50,000 sq. ft facility is an amazing space.

They have some cool digs too.

 

Jake had lots of good stuff to share with us, from how he started this as a second or side business, to the fact that they didn't event think it was a great idea to start with.   They tried several different business ideas, until they finally realized, oh, this Threadless tees thing is the ticket.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.  Please give us a review on iTunes and follow us on Facebook.

On today's What's Up episode, we bring in a guest.  Yes we are going to talk taxes and accounting, but don't worry, we keep it brief, and informative.  Did you know that there are special taxes you need to pay if you are doing oversees online transactions?  That is just one of the things we talked about with Dave Heistein from Profitwise Accounting based out of California.  Dave is a CPA and Long-Term Business Advisor that works with small business owners around the country with all sorts of accounting issues from data entry and book keeping, to tax planning, to tax preparation and outsourced CFO duties.

We announce our new Small Business Naked MeetUp group that is actually starting in Denver THIS WEEK.  If you would be interested in starting a Small Business MeetUp in your city, please contact Nick[at]smallbusinessnaked.com for more details.  What could be better than getting 50 to 100 small business owners in a room and a fantastic local business owner talking about his/her fabulous business?

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.

How to Start a Food Truck

Have you ever wondered what it takes to start a food Truck?  Well, one of our listeners asked us to dive into it.  So we reached out to about a dozen food trucks, and were finally able to pin down two different models, food styles, and business owners.  One truck is here locally in Denver, Crock Spot, is a more traditional food truck serving slow cooked food by Stephen and Mandy Daniels (they recently got hitched).  The other model is a food cart in Minneapolis, Minnesota (way up North for our international listeners), that serves high quality gourmet hot dogs, Natedogs.

First we spoke with Stephen and Mandy from right here in Denver, CO. They have a unique take on the food truck called Crock Spot.  I had never heard of a food truck serving slow roasted cuisine, and that is exactly what they do.  When you walk up to the truck, you can pick you carb, your protein, and your sauce.  I'm hungry just thinking about it.   I love that they use a model that I firmly believe in when starting their business:  minimal viable product.  They first tried their concept on friends, then went to a farmers market and got great feedback, then moved into the food truck where they offer traditional side walk service and catering, and they are looking into a brick an mortar spot that they would share with a brew pud.  Fantastic progression.

Their advice to anyone wanting to start a food truck:  focus your food on one thing, and have some capital to start.

Then we spoke with Nathan Beck with a food cart he called Natedogs up in Minneapolis.  Nate is another bootstrapper.  He is fanatical about keeping his costs and overhead low for his small business.  While not a traditional "food truck", Nate runs with the big dogs on a consistent basis, going to a lot of the typical food truck venues and events.  We loved how he has found a niche in the beer festivals.  He goes to them all in the area.  Nate has done a fantastic job creating a brand and an experience for his customers.  While he does serve a super high quality hot dog, he thinks the customer experience is just as important.  With his background in music and theater, that is a piece of cake for Nate. 

Nates best advice:  Build a great brand and bootstrap.  Don't borrow money.

We loved both of these food truck businesses.  They are each on a different and unique path, and have tons of opportunities for the future.  Feel free to reach out to either of them with additional questions on their websites, or ask us below, and we will have them respond.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner, or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.

You have a few employees, but do you have the RIGHT employees?  Do you cringe when it is time to hire?  Johnny and Nick talk today about how they go about hiring s team for the office as well as in the field.  In the conversation we talked about:

Interviewing

Finding the right skill

Marketing for the position

Training

Being brutally honest

We all need a team around us.  We can't do it alone.  A friend just shared this video of a TEDx talk.  It is worth the watch when you have 15 minutes.

To listen to the entire show on finance your business and personal finance, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website at smallbusinessnaked.com 

How Identity theft can turn into a $7 Million Business with Matt Noon

For a small business podcast, it is a good thing that we have the explicit rating, because I will warn you...there is a TON of great stuff in this episode.  You are going to learn what it really takes to kill it, and make a fantastic business.  Matt is not your ordinary small business owner.  He started his business to pay for school by stealing his brother's identity and getting a credit card, he didn't know he actually had to bill clients to get paid,  almost had a nervous breakdown because he was too successful, sold the business, and started  a new one.

Lawn care.  He has a $7 Million dollar lawn care business.  Holy Crap!

We talk a lot about focus on our show, and after building a successful lawn care and landscaping business with the help of his brother, Matt thought that he needed to niche down and focus on a small percentage of their business:  fertilization.  Now, it is mainly what they do.  At Noon Turf Care they fertilize and do pest control.

For more information on Matt and Noon Turf Care, check out their website at NoonTurfCare.com

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website,smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.

Bright Shinny Objects

If you own a business or consider yourself an entrepreneur, than you have no doubt tried to start a 2nd or 3rd business that was not your main business.  If you have had similar experiences to Nick and Johnny, the results were most likely a little lack luster.  On the episode today, we talk about some of the many businesses that we have started over the years.  From t-shirts, to a paint store, to an internet retailing, to house cleaning.  Nick and John have tried many things far removed from their main businesses.  

One of the businesses or 2nd brands that Nick started was One Coat Painting.  It was a low service offering, painting service the incorporated an online estimator.  Best part about it was the mascot, Sammy.  He even had his own Facebook page.

Nick and Johnny each have had their bunny trails, and I am sure they will find others.

If you didn't have to work, whether you won the lottery or got an inheritance, what would you do?  Would you keep doing the business you are in?

New Sponsor:  VA Staffer.  Check them out and let them know you heard about them here.  J and his team do a great job with all sorts of administrative tasks.

Check out a video I found:

Tom Shane, founder of Shane Co.

Most people do not know his face. Many know his name…and legions know his voice.  In the United States, I would bet that there is no other voice as well-known on the radio airwaves. Tom Shane is a legend in radio advertising. But Tom is not just a pitch man; he is the founder and owner of Shane Co., America’s largest independently-owned retail jeweler. What many don’t know about him is how big his family-owned business is.  From the sound of his commercials, you can tell he is “your friend in the diamond business,” and you just imagine him down the street, waiting for you to come into his shop. Shane Co. is a chain of 20 stores in 13 states, plus an online store.

 

Tom shared some great insights into how and why he started his own business, his business philosophy, what his strengths are as a leader, how the company faced adversity and his fantastic response, and how Shane Co. has positioned itself as small and local in each market it serves. It is not too often we get to sit down and have a chat with a man as successful as Tom, but he really didn’t hold anything back and was very transparent.

For more information on Tom Shane and Shane Co., check out their website at ShaneCo.com.

To listen to the entire interview, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website, smallbusinessnaked.com. Small Business Naked is one of the best free small business podcasts to listen to if you are an entrepreneur, a small business owner or you are stuck working for The Man and are looking for small business ideas.

Year End planning for your Small Business

I'll be honest, if you are not in business, or have just started, today's show might not make much sense to you, but it will give you an idea of why tracking performance for lots of different things can be.  This could be marketing activity tracking, it could be employee performance, it could be your sales process.

At the end of the year, it is incredibly important for you, the small business owner, to look back at what you did the year prior, and make adjustments in your planning based on what worked and what didn't.  This can only happen if you do a good job of tracking data, recording sources for new business, and know truly, what worked, and what didn't.  It is okay to make mistakes.  We make lots of them every year.  But the smart small business owner does a good job of learning from those things that did not work and what did.  Do less of what didn't and do more of what did.

But before we jumped into planning, Johnny shared with us what Johnny Battle is all about:  Johnny Battle is about being like a Spartan warrior, but more importantly, we will all be faced with a challenge; a divorce, a bully, a mountain climb, a business challenge, etc. We are forced to fight because we care about something. As business owners we have to wake up daily and look at ourselves in the mirror and know that you are responsible, and that you will always come out on top.

We get a little introspective on today's show.  Looking back on 2014 to see what we did well and what you can do better in 2015.  A few things you need however to be able to do this:  you need data from the the year, you need it organized, and you need to know where you want to go with your business.  Do you need more sales?  Do you need more profit?  Do you need more staff?  Do you need to outsource more?

Things we talked about along the way:  Lifetime Value of a Customer, ROI (Return on Investment). and acquisition cost.

We finished up our conversation talking about cutting things out of our businesses that just don't make sense.  If you decided to cut something out of your business as a result of hearing our show today, we want to hear about it and why.

To listen to the entire show on finance your business and personal finance, please visit us on iTunes or Stitcher or at our website at smallbusinessnaked.com