Page 65 - 914INC - Q1 - 2013

CM: And at whatever level you are at, try
to hire the very best people you can get for whatever you can afford. Don’t try to cut cor- ners, because you’ll pay for it in the long run.
RS: What goals should Harry be setting for himself in terms of measuring his success?
RW: You have to have some kind of a con- cept of success: ‘I have to get to this point by this date in order to feel that I am on track.’ A milestone, a test. If I am going to start a marketing program—I am going to advertise in 914INC., for instance—what kind of results am I going to get? This kind of testing has to happen in every aspect of business to see that you are on the right track. [You also have] to know that, if you are not meeting your goals, you have to go look for different paths to take.
CM: I want to just [add]: ‘How long do I advertise in 914INC.?’ The outlet may be the right outlet for you, but the ad you run may be awful, or it may be a great ad in the wrong place.
RS: Sorry, we only run great ads!
CM: There is one very important thing to remember in all marketing, and that is this: It is not about you, even though it is about you. And what I am really saying is: You must use each
of these tools
to reach out to
people and bring
them in, and in order to
bring them in, they need to understand the value-proposition, because what they are thinking is, ‘What is in it for me?’ So [good advertising] is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Mistakes that non-professionals make: They create ads that have too many words and no value-proposition. The other piece of advice that I would give is: We are in the digital age. Some people are very afraid of social media, but social media is very important. It’s really about developing rela- tionships with your customers and having conversations.
RW: Social media is very important today, and it is going to be ten times more impor- tant in a few years. So if you are not there yet, you darn well better get there because that is where the world is going.
CM: Your ads also need to drive your audi- ence to your website. You don’t need a vast website. You can have a micro-site—as long as it is effective, as long as the design is good, the navigation is good, the message is good. And make sure whoever is design- ing your website uses software so it can be converted to a mobile phone or an iPad.
Ben Brody: Carolyn and Michael, you both started your own business. Can you talk about your experience?
MR: When I first started my business, I was twenty-three, and I left a very large broker- age firm, Cushman & Wakefield. Everyone thought it was a big joke when I left. So when I would call a big landlord at such a young age, they would never take me seri- ously. And that was the hardest part—prov- ing myself, that I knew the market, I knew the tenants, I knew the owners, I knew how to make deals. And little by little, the smaller deals led me to the bigger deals. But it took a good two to three years to show people, ‘I am here, I am doing this for life.’
RS: Did you have trouble being taken seri- ously in terms of getting initial financing as well?
MR: When I started my business, obviously, I needed startup money. I took seventeen thousand dollars out of my savings account, and that was the last time I took money out of my personal savings account. [But before that,] I made sure my personal money was secure. I gave myself a two-year bracket not to earn one dollar out of the gate, meaning if I didn’t make a dollar, I would still be okay to pay my bills.
Robert Wyker
JG: That is smart.
MR: When I was twenty-three, I lived at home. I knew I was going to be leaving Cushman, so I went to my parents and I said, ‘I’m starting my own company,’ and they said, ‘Go for it.’ They knew my work ethic. That is all it takes. If you have good work ethic, everything else comes into place.
RW: Mike, I think you’re downplaying yourself. It takes a work ethic for sure, but it takes a lot more than that.
MR: Sure, but I think in order to get where you need to be, you just gotta keep mov- ing. You gotta struggle. One of the hardest things, something that took me a very long time to get accustomed to, is failure. You really have to build a tolerance level for failure, and, the bigger you get, the bigger deals you lose, so your tolerance level has to get that much bigger.
RW: You have to see those things as oppor- tunities rather than problems, what you can learn from that, how can you use that to go forward.
CM: So Michael’s challenge was people tak- ing him seriously because he was twenty-
It’s important that you collect the necessary metrics on your business. That will help you create a dashboard that will
help you to see where you are going, how fast, how much traction you have, how much customer acquisition.
Jeanne Goulet
Every customer that you have is valuable and a lot more valuable than the prospect of one that you might get. It is a lot easier to
keep a customer, generally, than it is to go out and get a new one.
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