The South Bend Tribune did a great story on my upcoming workshop in Middlebury, Indiana on August 24 next week.  Rarely does a reporter take the time to actually understand the process of becoming a Destination.  This one did.

You can read the full article here:

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100815/TBW/100819746/-1/googleNews

Now you can see the growth of the Destination University Student Center network by viewing our Google Map application.  Every little dot on the map is a business, a business organization, or an expert/author who is part of DU.

Come back to it often and watch DU grow!

http://destinationublog.com/map/

Part of my job as a consultant is to find resources who can provide guidance to my clients on areas where I am not the expert. When I first met Lynn Robinson years ago at a workshop, I knew I had found a great resource that many of my clients would rely on.

I want you to know about Lynn because her newest book, Listen: Trusting Your Inner Voice in Times of Crisis, can help many owners who are troubled by today’s economic woes.  If you aren’t familiar with Lynn, when you go to her website at www.LynnRobinson.com, you’ll also see some of her other great books, including one of my favorites, Trust Your Gut: How the Power of Intuition Can Grow Your Business.

I have always enjoyed Lynn’s writing style, and I particularly liked Listen because it is divided into bite-size chapters of information that focus on one particular lesson. Sometimes, I don’t have any more time than to read a single chapter, so I like books where I can read one chapter, get something out of it, and I don’t have to read 100 pages before it makes sense.

I think Lynn’s book comes at a perfect time for many business owners who are feeling like this economy has put them into not just a financial crisis, but their own emotional crisis. As Lynn said:

“All of us are born with powerful wisdom within us. It’s there to guide us in good times and bad. We need it most when we feel lost, alone and directionless.

We live in a time of turmoil and upheaval. The stability we’ve counted on, such as steady jobs, long-lived marriages, excellent health and financial security, are a thing of the past for many of us. So where are the directions to find sanity and safety amidst all this loss? They’re within us. They’ve been there all along. We just seem to have forgotten where to look…

This wisdom doesn’t come from your logical mind. It comes from a spiritual source that you may experience as an inner prompting, inspiration, a gut feeling, a quickening, a knowing deep in your heart. It doesn’t speak to you through a megaphone or in a loud voice. It fact, most often it communicates through the proverbial “still, quiet, inner voice… I have long observed that we are on the path to our greatest potential when we’re the most uncomfortable.”

Listen was published by Globe Pequot Press earlier this year. When I bought my copy, my local independent bookstore was good enough to order it for me. Maybe one near you will order yours, too. Be sure to read about all of Lynn’s books at her website, www.LynnRobinson.com.

In this time of economic disharmony, I think Lynn’s powerful books have lessons in them that any person dealing with today’s economic climate can appreciate and find useful.

Did I mention that Lynn’s one of our selected experts in our Destination University Student Center?  If you want to our other experts who are contributing webinars and feedback to our DU online network, click here.

When I work with owners who want to turn their businesses into Destinations, they often ask me if I’m going to help them write a business plan.  And I say “No.” Or, they ask me if I’m going to help them with their business operations.  Again, “No, that’s not what I do.”

So what exactly do I do?  To simplify this, I basically teach a 14-step business differentiation process that pushes your targeted customers’ hot buttons where they feel like they know what they have to do.  Your company becomes the only choice for them!

The process of becoming a Destination to the customers you are targeting isn’t hard.  But it takes work.  Could your competitors do it?  Sure, but most won’t.  They are too busy focusing on running their businesses rather than creating points of difference that cause consumers to purchase.

The good news is that it takes less work to position your business as a Destination than it took to build your business to where it is now.  In fact, everyday owners work extremely hard to do all the things that keep their businesses up and operating, and take very little time to learn what a consumer really requires to say these words: “That’s the only place for me.”

Think of this analogy:  Building a house isn’t hard for a home builder who has a set of blue prints that he or she can follow.  But try to build the house without the plan, and you’re going to make a lot of errors in the process.

Creating a Destination Business takes a 14-step plan.

Remember: Running a business is the hard part.  Creating consumer insistence is the easy part.

With summer in full bloom, not many people are thinking about what’s going to happen to small businesses in the 4th Quarter of this year, on into the 1st Quarter of next year. But I am. And though I am not a fortune teller, I do believe that many businesses, both large and small, are not prepared for the possibility of a second plateau in sales and consumer spending, even though the economy is stronger than it was last year.

Here are some things we do know about today’s economy:

We know for certain that bad news travels fast, and everyone’s a little jumpy about more bad economic news. We’ve seen it several times when a job report, or an earnings report, comes out and if it’s not what the economists are predicting, the media starts focusing on this bad news. Unfortunately, this news might not have anything to do with your business or your community, but it doesn’t matter because people are still a little jumpy these days. Consequently, when good things do happen in your business, you must be prepared to retell the good news to your customers and the media, and to focus on those things that you CAN impact in your business (which I will remind you, is NOT the national news).

We also know for certain that this economic recovery is uneven. It’s not just that different areas of the country are improving or stagnating at different rates. Different businesses in the same marketplace and the same industries are unevenly improving. Go to your local chamber of commerce meeting and you will find business owners talking about how sales are fine or even good, and then, walk across the room and you will find someone saying that their revenue is horribly off. The net result of this uneven recovery is that there is not one thing that can correct everyone’s woes. So if you have grown accustomed to not looking for Big Brother to save your city or town, you will not be disappointed now; Big B is still not coming.

So what do I recommend? Here are a few thoughts:

I think that these summer months give all of us a great opportunity to look at the weaknesses in our businesses, start correcting them, and to start planning a comprehensive, multi-pronged marketing plan for the 4th and 1st Quarters that magnifies our true business differences, as compared to our competitors. Look at your overall business position and assume that consumer spending and customer traffic is going to decline in your marketplace, and decide right now how you’re going to capture those who have money to spend.

For many owners, their first inclination is to focus on tactical marketing steps, like using Facebook and other social networking tools, and to gear up their use. Well, there’s a downside of focusing primarily on business tactics.

Let me explain: During our Destination Business BootCamp, I work with business owners to help them magnify 24 different aspects of their business uniqueness. If owners work through those 24 points and find that their business is average or below average in the majority of the points, no matter how much you Facebook a customer or tweet them to death, if your strategic business differences are not superior in a consumer’s mind, your primary point of business difference will have to come down to price.

Let’s talk about price discounting for a second: I just read an article the other day that suggested that it’s a good idea to give happy hour discounts of 20%. That might sound really inviting to customers and it might even draw customer traffic to your business, but if your business doesn’t operate at a 20%+ profitability level to start with (or if the products you are discounting 20% don’t have an above average profit margin already), you as the owner are just slitting your throat using this tactic. Better to focus on magnifying your uniqueness and use discounts to reward customers who you’ve previously identified as being the most profitable.

With my prediction that the 1st and 4th Quarters could be a little rough, here’s one thing that you should NOT do right now: Now is NOT the time to clam up, quit communicating, go into a shell, get depressed, fear the future, and retreat into your own mind to single-handedly contemplate how to improve your business. Now IS the time to network with others, find out what works with others, learn from others, create strategic alliances, and start making changes to your business that will cause consumers to say: “That’s the place I’m spending money this coming holiday season.” That means, becoming a Destination business (a strategy that’s available to you if you are trying to attract consumers and you are a retail store, a restaurant, a service provider, or a professional practice.)

Just a reminder: one resource that all of you have at your disposal is our new Destination University Student Center. There are some amazing learning opportunities popping up inside those online walls! In the coming weeks and months, through the 4th Quarter of this year, through the 1st Quarter of the next, we’ll continue to fill the DU Student Center with more resources, Experts, and tools to help you get through this sputtering economy. Don’t underestimate what this tool can do for your business, all for the cost of less than one dollar a day.

Click here if you want to learn how to join the DU Student Center.

Facebook announced last week that they have surpassed 500 million users.  Depending on when you read this, that number could be a distant memory.

With that many people using Facebook, you’d think there would be more businesses out there that were actually making their businesses profitable with it, by either driving customer traffic through their doors, or being able to show the sales figures from the actual product they’d sold.

But that’s not the case.  Many owners use Facebook, but the traditional return-on-investment (ROI) is usually not to be seen.

Sure, I’ve spoken with New Media Experts who have said that you can’t measure the ROI with New Media like you could with traditional advertising, but my point is that IF a business can bond customers to them, AND also generate traffic and sales, wouldn’t that be valuable? Isn’t that worth knowing?

Of course, it is!

Recently my clients were asking me to post more information on how to use Facebook’s millions of people to really drive traffic and sales.  For that, I can’t just go read a book. Instead, I found someone who had already built her business using Facebook, and I asked her to share her techniques and secrets with me, and let me share them with others.  And Katie (the owner’s name), said “Sure.”

If you are a Member of our Destination University Student Center, you can now learn how one business owner took her women’s clothing boutique and used Facebook almost exclusively to drive her sales. In fact, this owner had so many followers and fans on Facebook, her totals were equal to 20% of her town’s entire population!

If you’d like to listen to the webinar:  ”How to Use Facebook to Sell Product, Drive Traffic, and Minimize Ad Costs”, you just have to be a Member of our Destination University Student Center network.  You can learn how to join by clicking here.

One of the most valuable aspects of the Destination University Student Center is the willingness of successful, like-minded business owners who are willing to share their ideas and practices with others. No matter how many books I read, I will never catch up with the collective knowledge in this growing network.

Here’s a great story I wanted to share with you, straight from the Omaha World Herald: farmers are now taking to the social networking airways to tell their stories and to combat negative publicity that occasionally pops up in their industry.  This story is a great example of how the new social networking tools can be used by ANY business, and can be a powerful force in telling your story to the world.

If farmers can tweet from their tractors, you’d think it would be even easier for a business owner to tweet from their desk, or a retailer from their front register, wouldn’t you?

To read the full version of the story, click here.

By the way, I am now also tweeting at http://twitter.com/DestinationU.  My promise to those of you who connect:  I will not be tweeting about what I am eating, nor will I be tweeting purposeless drivel, like many other tweeters.

How do you stay smarter than your competition and learn the newest techniques to grow your business, when you barely have time to take your kids to their swim lessons, and you just forgot your spouse’s birthday?

Here are two realizations you must make:

#1:  As an independent business owner, you cannot keep up with the newest tricks, tools, and techniques on your own.  It’s just not going to happen.  In the game of acquiring knowledge, you are on the losing side.  Remember when you used to say: “If it’s going to be done right, I’m going to do it myself?”  Well, that attitude, that maverick go-it-alone determination that got your business to where it is, isn’t going to keep it there.

I hate to break it to you, but it’s time to face facts and recognize that your industry changes daily, your competition changes while you’re sleeping, and your customers are learning new things by the minute that are being adopted by the mainstream, and no one’s calling to tell you ahead of time!  Just watch your customers one day coming in your business.  They are walking in with their Droids and IPhones accessing information about your business, and the products and services they want (often from your competitors), and all of a sudden, you have one of those epiphanies and realize that you just aren’t up-to-speed anymore.  Didn’t running a business used to be simpler? Ahh, yeah, it was.

#2:  So here’s what you have to do:  You must find people to help you sort through the clutter.  You need “summaries” of information you need to know.  Short, mini to-do’s.  That’s the ticket!  No dissertations; you need CliffsNotes.

In your world of people who can cut through the clutter, here’s how I can help.  I look for people who can help my clients grow their sales. For example, this week, I interviewed a retailer who used Facebook to grow her business and ended up capturing almost 20% of her town as a Facebook Fan.  She’s a brilliant owner who used Facebook posts to generate traffic and online sales to her business, and she took time to tell me exactly how she did it. I recorded it, and it’s going to be in our Destination University Student Center. If you’re a member, you can listen to her tell you exactly what to do first, and how to make it work.  Forget trial and error; listen to Katie tell you how she did it, and do what she did.  And do it now!

I find experts all the time who can help.  Just yesterday, I interviewed Jamie Licko for the Destination University Student Center.  You probably don’t know Jamie or her company, Centro, a consulting firm focusing on the future of city centers. I heard Jamie speak at the Downtown Colorado conference last Friday.  She spoke on new social networking tools that consumers are using that are way beyond simply using Facebook.  When I heard Jamie, I thought, “Owners need to know what Jamie knows.”  And so, in 45 minutes, Jamie allowed me to pick her brains, record the conversation, and let everyone in DU’s Student Center listen to it.  Take 45 minutes to listen to Jamie, and you’re off and running on new social networking tools that are free, and finally, you’re ahead of the game.  And your competitors.

Whether you use our Destination University Student Center to find important information that can grow your business or whether you have another network of people you can turn to, it doesn’t matter. Just understand that you can’t do it alone, and falling further behind in your learning curve isn’t the path you should be on.

Recently I spoke in Port Angeles, Washington to help their business community.  Their community was split between whether it was worth it to bring me in to conduct a workshop.  Some thought they could find someone locally to do the same workshop at a cheaper price.  All I can say is:  I love it when I get letters like this after I’ve spoken to a group!

The following is the email that Barbara Frederick, the Executive Director of the Port Angeles Downtown Association in Port Angeles, Washington sent me on June 11, 2010:

“Jon, I just wanted to tell you how much our community enjoyed your workshop. The participants left enthusiastic, and energized. The sparkle and dream was back in their eyes. I haven’t seen that in a long time. There wasn’t one person who left the workshop regretting they had been there, they all got something out of it that will transform the way they do business.

Our city manager and economic development director both had expected to leave at noon to be at other meetings. They cancelled their attendance at those, opting to stay at the workshop because they were so engaged and learning a great deal from it. They have both commented to our board of directors and to the city council that this was well worth the cost and one of the best uses of economic development funds in a long time.

One woman, who was skeptical of the amount we spent to bring you here, and that we could have had any number of local people do the same thing for a lot less, leaned over to a city council member during the workshop and said “This guy’s magic!”

Thank you for taking a group of people who have been beaten down by the economy and giving them back the belief that it is possible to be prosperous again by empowering them to take charge of their own business in ways they never thought of before …  Thanks again.  Barbara Frederick”

It’s all sunny outside now, but the next 6-9 months are going to be make it-or-break it for many small businesses.  Trust me:  there are coming ups and downs no one is anticipating!  Groups can either help businesses learn what they need to know right now to survive in this economy, or they can lament the errors they made later.

Click here to read more about workshops that could help your community, and call me directly if you want to learn what I presented to this Port Angeles group.

Brad Hamlett dismantling his register and freeing up his dominant wall

I enjoy watching business owners depart from our Destination Business BootCamp and return to their businesses with ideas that they immediately put into practice.  That’s just what happened to Brad Hamlett, co-owner of Bradley’s, a great store in Knoxville, Tennessee which carries a full gift assortment and their one-of-a-kind handmade chocolates.

One of the things you learn at the BootCamp is to magnify your product differences in key areas where a consumer is going to look.  One critical area is the dominant wall, which most of the time is the front 12-20 feet a consumer sees when they enter any business.  Most of the time, a consumer looks to the right, which is why many dominant walls are on the right wall.

Brad and his wife, Joy, worked hard to tear out their extra large cash register area that was located in the area where the dominant wall should have been more visible.  Joy then took photos of Brad destroying the Starship Enterprise-sized register area, and the subsequent transformation into both new, productive floorspace and a consumer attention-getting dominant wall.  (Gotta love that Brad’s wearing his BootCamp hamster-escaping-his-wheel t-shirt in the construction.)

You can see the changes here by jumping over to Joy’s blog, ScatteringJoy.com.  You can also see more of this great store by going to their www.shopbradleys.com website.

Our last Destination Business BootCamp of this year happens on September 21-23, if you’d like to learn all the things Brad learned when he was here.