Thu, 30 August 2007  As they say, a show is made great not by the hosts, but by the guests. This edition of Uniqueness is Power is absolutely no exception to that rule. In fact, it epitomizes that idea. Today we were joined by motivational educator extraordinaire, Carlton Reed, the founders of AdGridWork and ReviewBack, Kyle Johnson and Nick Mazza plus our Unique of the Week – Craig Van Pelt of PlantMakers. Here’s the scoop… Quick, raise your hand as high as you can….now raise it a little higher. Did you? Then how was it as high as it could be the first time? Carlton Reed began our show getting us past can’t, making us realize most can’ts are won’ts. Our Business Booster guests, Kyle Johnson and Nick Mazza are enterprising altruists who wanted to find a way to beat the pay-per-click – and they have with adgridwork.com – which is more like trade-per-click. In this model, registered users submit an ad, and then in return for their ad being posted on other sites, they post ads on their own. The return and reward is easy to understand – scratch back. There is no money or affiliate payout – which makes plenty of sense to us. They have also created reviewback.com – a site to help promote blogs – one blogger reviews and promotes another and after a few times, exposure is greatly increased. Both these ideas can help tap in to tens of thousands of sites and hundreds of thousands of eyeballs each month – what a way to boost your business! Our Unique of the Week is perhaps one of our favorites ever! Wow – what a great idea. Sometimes you just see a need and you fill it. Craig Van Pelt, co-founder of PlantMakers.com found a need to help people who had lost their valuable soil in the area near After obtaining a patent, he saw a way to leverage this and help alleviate other issues. In one of the most environmentally friendly and green moves ever, Millenium Soil helps plants grow in a self contained pouch – eliminating regular soil and reducing watering to about every 2-3 months or perhaps less. When the Millennium Soil® crystals come in contact with water, each crystal acts as a powerful sponge, absorbing hundreds of times it weight in water. As the crystals absorb water, they actually “grow� to about the size of a nickel, and appear like globules of crystal clear white Jell-O. This technology has quickly been spread across many industries – from pet store wheat grass kits, to year-long tomato packages on the consumer side – to where they began – renting live plant centerpieces to restaurants, hotels, country clubs and caterers as a cost efficient alternative to cut flowers. In the hotel sector, customers include virtually every major hotel brand such as Hilton, Sheraton, Ritz Carlton, Marriott, Double Tree, Best Western, Embassy Suites, Ramada, Holiday Inn, etc. In the restaurant sector, service ranges from both chains and independent restaurants ranging from fine food to fast food. Hotels also are now employing Garden Suites – where plants are lavishly added to rooms to give them a real nice at home touch – and bringing plants to the one area of hotels that they never have been practical before. This helps hotels sell more than sleep – not a bad idea…and pretty darn unique. PlantMakers splits the upcharge on the rooms and provides the products at no cost. What a deal! This is the most unique solution for using plants in places and in ways where regular water and soil can’t be used. Amazing potential – and about to franchise, PlantMakers is making a difference! ================== This week's show is brought to you by Carroll/White, with hosts Andy Greider and Lee Kantor. Uniqueness is Power is a marketing and business growth show, broadcast live Thursdays 6-7pm eastern, and downloadable by podcast, or RSS Feed. Please send any questions to andygreider@comcast.net. Want to take your magazine or publication online? Visit www.bluetoad.com and use the coupon code SYBL for a nice .25 per page discount from our sister site, www.saveyourbottomline.com Need to start a national salesforce - want to only pay anything once your new sales people sell things? Call 404 516 4204 to find out more. Also, if you have a product or service or advice that can boost a business or know of a company innovative enough to be an Unique of the Week, drop Andy a line. Comments[24] |
Sat, 25 August 2007  By now, almost everyone has heard of social networking - and with the popularity of sites all the way from Friendster to MySpace and Facebook to YouTube - it is no wonder. There is even a growing awareness of business networking coming into play with Linked In and Ryze plus other sites that paved a path to meeting online and leveraging the reach of your network internationally. In this week's show, we spoke with two pioneers in a new space - that of making social and business networking come together, and creating a new realm (each quite differently from the other) in which networking becomes not only a lead source and business growth tool, but a business in and of itself. Opening the show, we discussed some networking do's and don'ts - some things to be aware of - mainly that this isn't a silver bullet and there is the netWORKing part to it. In order to get back, you need to put in good effort. Remember it is about the other person - they are the ones you need to have concern for - if you worry about you first, you will not network well, and your returns will not come back around. To begin the guest call, we were fortunate enough to be joined by Adam J. Kovitz, of both the National Networker and of the RNIA (Relationship Networking Industry Association.) Kovitz began with explaining the theories behind the RNIA - a new body being created to help bring some order and some standards to the networking space - especially in business. In addition, the site will feature a bevy of educational materials - from a myriad of angles. CBOK's - or Common Bodies of Knowledge - will be soon available for 10 or more different areas that are important in networking and weaving. In addition, the site will feature recruiter resources, investor resources, consultants, education and even governmental aids and advice. Kovitz is also in charge of the National Networker - both a newsletter as well as website portal for all Networking activity throughout the In the second half of the show, we were joined by Bill Jula, CEO of www.fastpitchnetworking.com - a site we've raved about on the show before as we see massive potential for companies to expand reach locally and internationally, in on and offline forums, with many tools to assist many different needs. Check out the site, and listen in to Bill's interview to find out where things are heading - we personally love the PR function (it is how you are reading this post) - and the integration of Web 2.0 (podcasts, video, blogs and more.) Tune in next week as we'll have another awesome show for you to enjoy, with more tips on how to grow your business, save monthly money and even crack a smile or two. ========== This week's show is brought to you by Carroll/White, with hosts Andy Greider and Lee Kantor. Uniqueness is Power is a marketing and business growth show, broadcast live Thursdays 6-7pm eastern, and downloadable by podcast, or RSS Feed. Please send any questions to andygreider@comcast.net. Want to take your magazine or publication online? Visit www.bluetoad.com and use the coupon code SYBL for a nice .25 per page discount from our sister site, www.saveyourbottomline.com Also, if you have a product or service or advice that can boost a business or know of a company innovative enough to be an Unique of the Week, drop Andy a line.
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Thu, 16 August 2007  Young companies often can't take on cost of building sales forces, training and providing tools - we'll show you how on today's Uniqueness is Power. If you already have a sales team and want to clone your top employees - all sales managers have retention and quality of candidate issues - we'll show you how. Not only will you learn how to build an amazing sales team, but you'll also learn how to give them the tools to succeed learn more about tips on training. Plus we'll discuss ways to grow your small business and tap resources most owners don't know about. Andy and Lee begin the show talking about companies, recommendations and tools to use to help grow your small business, keep costs low each month, and maximize each dollar you spend in advertising, marketing, sales and even for things like printing and shipping. With the focus being on finding, hiring, training and then effectively outfitting a sales team with proper tools, Lee and Andy then turned to sales training and came up with some resources for those seeking to help increase effectiveness of the current sales force. Then we turn to the sales guru's - on today's show, we have two of the best. First, John Dynes, a veteran with over 20 years in sales management, talks about his product, Sales Smarts. Driven from a "I saw a need" standpoint, Dynes and his team drew on experience and solved a problem they say each day. "When you have salespeople who are arbitrarily assigned regions, verticals or accounts - it dramatically decreases your effectiveness and your sales numbers," said Dynes. "We decided to help organize the sales effort and distribution of leads and resources more efficiently, so once training ended, there was a next stepping stone towards bigger profits." Dynes also has a tool to assist retail companies in site selection and provides companies critical data to assure them the ability to grow in those tender first months. So, we've covered training and outfitting the team, once together, with the best tools possible. Now, what about finding and placing those top talents in sales? They don't grow on trees, and they aren't always obvious. Jim Aden of Hire Golden asks the question - if you could clone your top sales people or begin a team from the ground up that was high end talent - would you want to? What if that recruiting effort didn't cost ANYTHING until the new people began to sell and produce profits? With a selection process geared towards finding top performers, Aden's company is providing a powerful solution that solves many issues. "Each sales manager we talk to is thrilled - they get to clone their top people, in a 100% pay for performance model," began Aden. "They don't pay for the recruiting, analysis, selection or placement - they only pay when the employee begins to sell." And do most sales managers like the approach? "Oftentimes, we can't begin the process fast enough for them. This is a no risk, easy to implement process - it takes less than 7 days to develop the webinar, find the candidates, show the webinar, do the psychometric analysis and return the results. From there, a hiring manager can have a team selected in days." Wow, what a show! We brought you the best of the best today in building a new sales force, as well as growing your small business. Truly living up to our title as a business growth solutions show. If you know someone in sales, do them the favor of forwarding this show to them and helping them improve their business. Don't miss next week's episode on how networking can improve your business as we bring you three industry leaders who will help you learn the best methods and resources, as well as the most time efficient tools. A quick shout out to Capn John in Crystal River along with his crew for a great time last week snorkeling with the manatees, and to Timothy Ferriss for his inspiration in The 4 Hour Work Week. ====== This week's show is brought to you by Carroll/White, with hosts Andy Greider and Lee Kantor. Uniqueness is Power is a marketing and business growth show, broadcast live Thursdays 6-7pm eastern, and downloadable by podcast, or RSS Feed. Please send any questions to andygreider@comcast.net. Want to take your magazine or publication online? Visit www.bluetoad.com and use the coupon code SYBL for a nice .25 per page discount from our sister site, www.saveyourbottomline.com Also, if you have a product or service or advice that can boost a business or know of a company innovative enough to be an Unique of the Week, drop Andy a line. Comments[18] |
Thu, 2 August 2007  On this episode of Uniqueness is Power, we go over the Free Resource Guide for Growing Your Startup Business to begin the show. Over the past 10 months, we have reviewed and vetted hundreds of candidates for the show, and have assembled a nice array of resources that can be relied on for start up businesses looking to grow. Some save money, some leverage your time or effort and still others increase business. From marketing tools to networking to daily costs, we have you covered. If you don't have time to network and still need to find reliable sources for new business needs, your search is over. We will soon have this guide available for download. As our Author and Blogger, we had on John Jantsch, author of : Duct Tape Marketing - The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, a book that has really boiled down marketing into a system, into something many people can understand. There is no smoke, no mirrors involved in this book - simple, to the point and yet, thorough, Jantsch provides practical "how-to" examples that most other books miss on. This book is targeted to the small-medium business owner who wants to improve their own tactics and procedures in marketing - and comes highly recommended by us here at UiP. Our Business Booster believes it doesn't matter what stage your business is in, you always need something else, something more than you have at your fingertips right now. Whether you are a start up company and it"s your first, second or third round of raising capital, or you just need more clients, it seems hard to find the right resources to launch to the next step quickly. What if you have an idea and feel you can make millions (but you don't know what you need to get it started), and could get the knowledge you need? Want to know more - tune in as Atlanta Club President, George Ishee talks about CEO Space - a place where you can surround yourself with seasoned CEO"s and investors who can accelerate your ability to tap into a large pool of resources to get what you need quickly. We ended the show with another entreprenurial talent as our Unique of the Week. Back just after dot.com went bust, the web was finding a new way of going boom - and Michael Valverde and his team saw a need – and have not only met it, but exceeded it in the past 3-4 years. Chain Reaction Ecommerce has developed CRE Loaded, a unique, complete online store/shopping cart application. CRE Loaded delivers a host of powerful features in one stable Open Source application. Next week, we'll be on vacation, but will be seeking more great guests and ways to grow your business. We'll be back the 16th with more business growth solutions, on Uniqueness is Power. ====== This week's show is brought to you by Carroll/White, with hosts Andy Greider and Lee Kantor. Uniqueness is Power is a marketing and business growth show, broadcast live Thursdays 6-7pm eastern, and downloadable by podcast, or RSS Feed. Please send any questions to andygreider@comcast.net. Want to take your magazine or publication online? Visit www.bluetoad.com and use the coupon code SYBL for a nice .25 per page discount from our sister site, www.saveyourbottomline.com Also, if you have a product or service or advice that can boost a business or know of a company innovative enough to be an Unique of the Week, drop Andy a line. Comments[23] |
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