What's your Sign say about you?

I really wish I had a picture of this one, really. But I will try to draw you a mental picture of it. I was driving passed a very busy intersection on the weekend when I saw one of those light up changeable sign boards for a nationally recognized tutoring business. It started with 'does your 3-5 year old know how to read?' so it caught my attention as I have a 5 year old. So I continued to read and was totally shocked at the next line - 'bring them in so we can touch them'.

WOW!

I hoping that they either meant touch them as inspire them to read or 'teach them'. Someone really needed to be checking (AND FIXING) that sign on the way in. I can tell you one thing for sure, I'm in no hurry to take my son in to be 'touched'!

"Small Business, Big News" Signs

I was driving on the highway between Vernon and Kelowna, BC last week, and at the roadside I saw a homemade sign congratulating someone on their first hole-in-one. It was a simple, hand-painted piece of wood with the happy message painted on in sloppy but legible letters.

Immediately, my brain flipped to the possibilities of how such a simple means of communication could be used by small business owners to give and receive similar congratulations on their business achievements. It would be easy for a group of business owners (perhaps via a Chamber of Commerce, a trade association, Business Improvement Association, home business association, etc.) to work with municipal authorities to create a "small business, big news" sign somewhere in town, celebrating the successes of its daring and dedicated entrepreneurs of all scales and sizes.

It need not be anything more complicated than your standard message sign with a few lines of space for the interchangable letters, like we see used commonly by businesses to advertise sales, etc.. Build one of those message boards into a sturdy, permanent brace, perhaps "prettied" up a bit with an overhead piece that says something like "Small business success!" (or something less cheesy and more original!), and allow the message below to change regularly to tout the achievements of local business owners - expanding to a new location, growing staff, winning an award, celebrating a "milestone" of length of time in business. The possibilities are countless.

In "Trucker Management", we talk about the need to toot your own horn at times as a small business owner. Maybe here's a way to amplify your horn so more people hear it!!

The silver lining can be golden for you!

As many small businesses have been hit hard by the current economic situation, many towns are having more and more empty storefronts appear as merchants have to close down shop. At an event I was speaking at the other night, the merchants of a small town were talking about the possibilities it presented for their surviving businesses, in perhaps providing some additional space in which they can promote their businesses.

Landlords of vacant spaces will usually want to avoid empty, or brown-papered, windows at all costs. If you were to approach the owners of vacant commercial or retail space with nice big windows in high-traffic areas, you can likely come to an agreement that will allow you to use their windows as another display area for your own business, even if its only for a short while before they rent the space again. In fact, these spaces might allow you to do some really innovative and cool, eye-catching things you can't do in your own window or display space. And, if an entire window is too much space for you, partner with some of the other businesses around yours to create something that makes people stop and notice, and become more aware of all of your businesses.

As tragic as these times can be for the loss of other small businesses, sometimes there can be a silver lining amidst it for your own. Will you take advantage of it, and turn it into gold?

What's wrong with this picture?

I don't think this one needs explanation. What do you see? I think this store owner needed to use one of our circle check sheets!