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Have you ever had a situation where you needed to coordinate with a group of people and something came up at the last minute?

Maybe you were meeting a group somewhere and the plans changed at the last minute.

Maybe you’re the coach for the kids soccer team and the game gets canceled an hour before the game starts – yes the other parents are supposed to check the website or their email, but you know at least 1/2 of them won’t.

Maybe you’ve got a group of employees that are all working on an urgent project and something new comes up and they need to hear about it right away.  Sure you could email, text or IM them, but sometimes they need to hear what you’re saying!

You need to ShoutNow – a new voice messaging application that lets you send a voice message out to a group, quickly, easily and cheaply.

ShoutNow is a service that was launched a few weeks ago by Dan Melton (and others).  Dan is the owner of npTLabs, a technology start-up company that’s doing a lot of cool things.  (He’s also a client of mine that’s a lot of fun to work with!).

However the ShoutNow story is really compelling – Dan went to Indianapolis recently for a Startup Weekend.  The idea is to get a diverse group of people in a room, let them work together and come up with a new business idea…and implement it!  Dan’s team won the competition with ShoutNow and they’re moving forward to launch it beyond it’s current beta phase.

They’ve already had several thousand calls placed through the service (without any issues) and they just got a great write-up in Mashable in a story on Voice Messaging for Groups. 

They’ll be adding more functionality as they go, but the service is up and running now – check it out and give a try at shoutnow.com.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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But beyond the success, Stephen has created something that’s bigger.  He’s created a product that his customers talk about – and go out of their way to tell others about.  He’s created a large number of advocates that are the biggest key to his success.

So what’s his secret – how has he transformed his buyers into advocates that go out and sell on his behalf?

First let’s take a look at some of the struggles:

Shotgun approach to Marketing

Like a lot of small business owners, Stephen struggled to find a formula that really worked for his business.  Although he has a fairly narrow target market in the sense that it’s parents of Juniors in high school, logistically there’s a challenge in the best way to really get in front of that group in the most effective way.

Again, like a lot of small business owners, Stephen tried out many different kinds of marketing – magazines, advanced networking (Stephen joined 11 Chambers at once), direct mail, and various PR ideas.  None of these was necessarily a bad choice and they did have the benefit of getting his name out into the marketplace, but with money and cash flow always an issue it was impossible to be consistent.  Which meant it was difficult to be effective.

Studies show that prospects need to see your message multiple times before they are really going to notice and consider buying.  By jumping across lots of different marketing efforts, a lot of the target market didn’t get a consistent message – largely wasting a lot of that effort (and a lot of money…)!

Being the focal point for the business (working IN the business)

Stephen is a fascinating guy – a former marine that’s currently pursuing an MBA, extremely well read, doesn’t own a television and confident in many strong  opinions on diverse topics like religion, politics, education and business.

However, Stephen made the mistake that a lot of business owners make early on (often because they don’t have a choice) and did everything in the business himself.

Every key decision, every detail and most of the actual work was done by Stephen.  As a small business owner, that’ may be the way you have to start out, but as you grow it’s critical that you build something that’s bigger than you can be by yourself.  Eventually you have to be able to successfully delegate and let go of the reins.  You still need to know what’s going on, but you have to take yourself out of the critical path. 

Your job as the business owner is to look at the strategic picture and work ON your business.

Stephen aggressively started pursuing that idea towards the end of last year and as of last week he believes that he has achieved a situation where the business can run, successfully, without his active presence (if it had to).  (Which is a good thing since he’s going to school almost full time to get his Master’s degree…).

The big reason for his success…!

There are several reasons why Stephen is successful – here are a few of the highlights:

1. Stephen is a first class tutor on his own (formerly freelance) before starting Get Smarter.  He developed the company by leveraging those skills and only working with other instructors that demonstrate the ability to be first class tutors as well.
2. Stephen turned the Test Prep model on it’s side by offering unlimited Friday office hours to the students at no additional cost and using materials directly from the Test Creators instead of developing his own materials and selling them for extra profit – which is what a lot of the other Test Prep companies do.
3. Stephen has committed to a Student to Teacher ratio of 8:1 for his classes – the lowest ratio in the country for Test Prep (or other instruction for that matter).

As you can probably imagine, the decisions above aren’t the low cost approach.  Stephen offers a superior product at a price point that’s higher than most of the industry.  However the results clearly indicate that you do get what you pay for.  When an improved score can generate thousands of dollars in scholarships, that extra investment of a couple hundred dollars is certainly well worth it.

But beyond all of that, what has really made Stephen successful is the relationships that he (and the company overall) have developed with their clients.  Not only does he consistently over deliver (on purpose) but he and his staff go out of their way to develop positive, helpful relationships with the students and the parents.

One example that happened recently is that Stephen had some late sign-ups that inadvertently created the situation of 9 Students in 2 of the classes.  Since the 8 to 1 ratio is really just an internal guideline, Stephen could have easily and justifiably let the situation slip and let it go at that.

Instead he wrote a letter to the parents of all the students in those 2 classes apologizing for going for the 9 students in a class (instead of 8)…and he wrote everyone of those customers a $100 check and an offer to talk with them in further detail if necessary – that’s $1800 that he didn’t need to spend (and couldn’t necessarily afford…) just to make sure he was doing the right thing for his customers.

Is it any wonder that his customers go out of their way to be an advocate for Get Smarter?

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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There’s always something new on the web, so I thought I would share some updates from a couple of clients of mine and a contact I met a few weeks ago.

Math Monkey going Guerrilla (marketing that is…)

Chris Kutenkuler is the owner of the Math Monkey franchise here in Kansas City and he’s been doing a lot of cool stuff lately.

Not only does he have a great summer camp option with Carver Reading and Mad Science and a new Blog, but he was also just featured on Fox 4 – which is a great way to generate some buzz about your product .  Anyway, check out the blog and a link to the Fox 4 video.

Brain Bucket is starting something new

My friend Toby is doing some additional definition on his business.  He’s still helping business owners develop a really cost-effective web presence, but now he’s adding in the option to get the training and coaching you need to really start building that presence into a marketing tool that can drive your business.

You can read more about his approach on his new creation – the Bucket Blog!  I had a chance to go to his introductory workshop last week and really enjoyed the discussion on real, practical enjoyable ways you can develop your web presence (and why you would want to).  He’s going to be doing them every couple of weeks, so check out the next one on May 30th.

Start navigating with Social Radar

I had a chance to meet with Adam Coomes from Infegy a few weeks ago (we met on the KC Online Community site – you should check that out as well).

Anyway, Adam and his business partner have created a really cool product called Social Radar that can let businesses tap into the ‘buzz’ that’s in the blogosphere.  As an example, if you were running the Democratic National Party, you could use the tool to see which candidate is being talked about the most, who’s talking about them, what the related keywords are and how that’s trended over time.  There’s dozens of ways you could use this information to be more strategic, more informed or better equipped to market your product (or candidate…).

Anyway, Adam and Justin have created a new blog that’s going to start featuring ideas from Social Radar that they can share with the world – they’re doing some pretty cool stuff, you should check it out!

Have a great week – let me know what you think of the new blogs!

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

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The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation is a state-owned corporation established to promote advanced technology economic development in Kansas. We strive to meet the technical needs of Kansas companies by providing access to individuals with expertise and state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. We even provide or help secure financing for research and development.

This is a really progressive program that most states don’t have, and it’s right here in our backyard!

One of the newer things that KTEC is doing has been the addition in the last 2 years of the KTEC Pipeline initiative – http://www.ktecpipeline.com/ .  The idea is to select up to 10 ‘innovators’ every year, specifically in the technology or bioscience fields and hook them up with resources (including a $35,000 grant), special training from top of the line entrepreneurial experts and access and introductions to partnerships and capital markets.

Getting selected for the Pipeline is extremely challenging and a very big deal.  This year there were over 400 applications and over 60 in-depth interviews to select the 9 winners.

The reason I’m familiar with all of this is because I’m thrilled to report that one of my clients was accepted into the Pipeline program last week.  (Not because of anything I did, but because he’s a brilliant guy with some really revolutionary ideas…!).

Dan Melton is the President of NonProfit Technologies, which is a “a socially conscious for-profit think-tank that develops web-driven products and solutions to improve the effectiveness, cost-savings or impact of public-sector organizations.”

Essentially what Dan and his team are doing is creating cutting edge Web 2.0 applications that are targeted towards the public sector.  Historically the public sector lags the for profit world when it comes to technology but there is a huge need and viable marketplace for the right ideas.

Luckily Dan is full of great ideas that are not only great business opportunities, but will also drive dramatic benefits to the public sector – a true win-win situation.

Congratulations to Dan and the team at NonProfit Technologies!

Stop by his site and check out some of the cool stuff he’s got going on.  NPT

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