Market Yourself Back to Work

Published article: texasonthego.com
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In today’s competitive global markets and high tech innovations, being a small business owner continues to have many challenges. Everything from the cell phone to the latest marketing techniques have leapfrogged in innovation two or three generations over in the last several years. Branding and marketing of all products continue to change, be re-invented or repackaged to gain or retain market share.

How has your small business kept up? Do you have an updated website, new compelling product brochures, motivated and empowered employees, an updated physical plant or store front? Do you have a strong brand that represents your business?

As a small business owner, I’d like to share a few suggestions that may stimulate some thoughts and plans of action for your business. Below is a list of things to consider:

1. Plan a 4-5 hour “business re-do retreat” on a Saturday morning with all your employees, not just the senior personal. (IBM’s annual retreat has over 200,000 participants that includes thousands of their employees, customers and vendors…it’s no small wonder IBM is always one of the top 10 sales and profit companies in the world). Hire a professional moderator. Most moderators’ fees are $750 – $1000, a modest investment to make your retreat a success!

2. Improve your most valuable asset, your employees. Work patiently with new employees (train them well before expecting a lot). Give employees responsibility and the freedom to do the job. Lavish praise on successes and minimize criticism on mistakes…instead, use the mistake as a training opportunity. Seek training programs that moves your team from good to best! Again, invest in professional training. Newly inspired and empowered employees will offset the cost.

3. Decide on your Brand… the fastest service, best trained employees, most service trucks, best price, service you can trust or number of years in business… your brand should surface in your retreat.

4. Be prepared to repackage and re-launch your brand. Proctor & Gamble constantly re-launches their products with colorful and up-to-date packages. McDonalds tears down buildings in perfectly good condition every 15 years to build modern and more efficient ones. Sales follow the new or remodeled businesses.

· Put your brand on Business cards, invoices, sales material, website and company vehicles;

· Advertise, advertise, advertise! Advertising is listed as an expense…but it’s really an investment: McDonalds spends 8% in advertising, Gallery Furniture 10%! Find out what the leader in your industry spends as a guide.

5. Remember, increasing your business always begins by expanding the sales of your current customer base. Ask your clients often, how can your company become more valuable to them and then exceed their expectations.

6. As the leader of your team, spend time on strengthening your leadership skills. Invest time and money to become a great leader, shoot for becoming the best in your industry.

7. Last but not least… learn to adapt to change. Seek it… embrace it and teach your employees to accept it, so your company can be ahead of the next new business curve. Be your industry’s leader in creating or adjusting to change. For us as entrepreneurs this may be the hardest task of all as we tend to be an independent lot.

I am sure these are not all the things one must do as a small business to succeed, so send us some good practices that are working for you. As small business owners we need to stick together in a world that continues to be harder to succeed.

Abel R Garcia
Entrepreneur / Author / Business Consultant

Mr. Garcia has started 9 businesses in the last 30 years and recently wrote and self-published an exciting first book, “Market Yourself Back to the Top!” He is also a career coach and an accomplished motivational speaker. www.market2top.com

I recently had a gentleman write me to inquire if I knew of a company in his area that may have a job opportunity. I have taken out his name to protect his confidentiality. But here is my response…..I hope this new point of view stimulates thinking.

Hi XXXXXX,

Thanks for your interest in my profile and the email. I do not know of a company…..but the way we work is ….what company would you like to work for?

In my search work, I have questioned many companies I search for, about those opening that never get posted. I have been told by them that if they had the time & money they would replace at least 10% of the people in their company that :
1. Have no passion for their company culture
2. Miss work on a regular basis and just “show up” when they are there
3. Do most of the complaining and make the least contributions

You are welcome to give me a call (xxx.xxx.xxxx) about how I, knowing what I know as headhunter with a creative bend, would approach this new challenging job market and win most of the time. I work on our candidates standing out to become “one of a kind” and not “one of the masses” that will “knock the socks off” a prospective employer!

In today’s job market…..you must re-create that brand “YOU” in a unique and compelling manner and then with a new empowered attitude say, “by God I know I have something special to offer the companies I want to work for and I am going to take a direct approach to get what I want!” Call me ….no strings attached.

The best is yet to come!

Abel
CEO / Author / Motivational Speaker
Execufirm, Inc
Market2top
www.market2top.com
abel.garcia@execufirm.co

UNEMPLOYED, UNDEREMPLOYED, FRUSTRATED & OUT OF SOLUTIONS?

Come join us October 21st and 22nd for the answers you’ve been looking for!.

The new “FREE Employment Breakfasts & Afternoon Meetings” are conducted by Abel R. Garcia, a ten year veteran executive search “Headhunter” and author of the sensational new book “Downsized….. Market YOURSELF Back to the Top!” (www.market2top.com) (Great HBJ Book Review 2/25/09).

Abel can help you as he helped over 300 candidates realize their potential of finding the job that they have always wanted and deserved. His new “game changing” system puts you at the head of all employment or promotion lines! Don’t miss these FREE weekly career meeting – Bring resume for free update.

The breakfast’s topic will cover a 30 minute employment solutions presentation by Abel with a 30 Q&A session on your personal situations. Below are samples of some of the topics to be covered:

• How to create a makeover of a new and exciting “YOU” that produces results!
• Create your personal “brand” and how to market that “brand…”YOU INC.”
• “Tried and proven” job winning Interview tools that produce job offers!
• Change your dated resume presentation for the new and dynamic
“Execufirm Marketing Portfolio”® that guarantees a “first in line”
employment / promotion opportunity always!

Who should attend?
• Anyone who is currently unemployed and in transition
• Anyone that is unhappy in their current job and wants to make a change
• Anyone that is looking for new creative ways to move “up
the ladder” in their company

2 Denny’s Restaurants locations listed below for each of the Employment Breakfast/Afternoon meetings (Affordable: minimum charge $3 covers coffee or tea/tip)

Wednesday – (2 meetings) 10-11Am & 1-2PM
1. 2120 N 610 Loop @ TC Jester ( Downtown, Memorial, Katy & 290 area)

Thursday -(2 meetings) 10-11Am & 1-2PM
2. I – 10 @ Washington Ave. near Memorial Park ( Downtown, West U.,
Bellaire, Galleria area)

Hurry and RSVP to reserve your space…max 10 per each meeting…www.execufirm1@yahoo.com

The best is yet to come!
Abel R. Garcia –CEO/ MotivationalSpeaker /Author
Execufirm,Inc & Market2top
www.market2top.com/blog “The most powerful job blog on the Net” – (over 40 free articles!)
Join me Abel R. Garcia @ LinkedIn and market2top at Tweeter

New York Post Updated: Sun., Sep. 27, 2009, 4:45 AM home
The dead end kids

By RICHARD WILNER

Last Updated: 4:45 AM, September 27, 2009

Posted: 1:34 AM, September 27, 2009

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults — aged 16 to 24, excluding students — getting a job and moving out of their parents’ houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession — in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.

“It’s an extremely dire situation in the short run,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute. “This group won’t do as well as their parents unless the jobs situation changes.”

Al Angrisani, the former assistant Labor Department secretary under President Reagan, doesn’t see a turnaround in the jobs picture for entry-level workers and places the blame squarely on the Obama administration and the construction of its stimulus bill.
“There is no assistance provided for the development of job growth through small businesses, which create 70 percent of the jobs in the country,” Angrisani said in an interview last week. “All those [unemployed young people] should be getting hired by small businesses.”

There are six million small businesses in the country, those that employ less than 100 people, and a jobs stimulus bill should include tax credits to give incentives to those businesses to hire people, the former Labor official said.

“If each of the businesses hired just one person, we would go a long way in growing ourselves back to where we were before the recession,” Angrisani noted.

During previous recessions, in the early ’80s, early ’90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent. Except after 9/11, jobs growth followed within two years.

A much slower recovery is forecast today. Shierholz believes it could take four or five years to ramp up jobs again.

A study from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a government database, said the damage to a new career by a recession can last 15 years. And if young Americans are not working and becoming productive members of society, they are less likely to make major purchases — from cars to homes — thus putting the US economy further behind the eight ball.

Angrisani said he believes that Obama’s economic team, led by Larry Summers, has a blind spot for small business because no senior member of the team — dominated by academics and veterans of big business — has ever started and grown a business.

“The Reagan administration had people who knew of small business,” he said.

“They should carve out $100 billion right now and create something like $5,000 to $6,000 job credits that would drive the hiring of young, idled workers by small business.”

Angrisani said the stimulus money going to extending unemployment benefits is like a narcotic that is keeping the unemployed content — but doing little to get them jobs.

Labor Dept. statistics also show that the number of chronically unemployed — those without a job for 27 weeks or more — has also hit a post-WWII high.

Personal comments below by the Job GURU Abel R. Garcia

If you are in this age group above here are a few suggestions on how to try to get a job inspite of the facts of the above article
1. Make a list of 25 companies or retail outlets to visit, then redo it again if necessary until you get a job!

2. Dress up and go in person to look for a job and ask for the manager..forget about the employment computer desk in the
dark corner of the place to apply for a job…the computer desk is for the masses not a creative serious job seeker like you

3. Supplement your one page resume with a separate page with 5-8 suggestions of how you can be of value to business

4. Clean-up, Dress up, Comb your hair and Brush your teeth and Speak with conviction the English language to the manager…no mumbling allowed…and no: uh , hmmm, well, ah stammering like our “Hope and Change Guy”

5. Ask for the job with PASSION! ” I have to have a job….just give a try and let me show you what I can do”… ” I will be the
best worker you will have….then step aside as the manager “drop kicks” one of his the scuzzy, always late to work, don’t
care attitude employee out the door to make room for you!!

Does this work you ask??? Take it from a guy that had multi fast food units for over 20 years…. we would kill for candidates that would apply with the suggestions above in spite of the economic times…..

Abel R. Garcia
Author ” Downsized….Market YOURSELF Back to the Top!”
www.market2top.com/blog…”the most Powerful job blog on the Net!” with over 40 career articles!