Here’s a letter from a business owner who attended our Destination Business BootCamp seven years ago. That owner was Dan Horwath of Up the Creek Antiques in Centralia, Washington.

Another business owner recently emailed Dan, asking if our BootCamp was really worth attending. When Dan replied to him, he copied us on his email. This is Dan’s letter in its entirety.

We love getting letters like this!

“I’m not good at a time line. Forgive me if I don’t have exact dates.  About 12 years or a little more ago, Jon came to Centralia and talked to local businesses about destination marketing. We attended that event reluctantly, thinking that it would be a waste of time. I have to say that Jon is an engaging speaker. He presented quite a different take on how we had approached our business and marketing.

After that session, Jon walked around the town visiting a few businesses and pointing out things that he thought would change things for the positive. He spent about 10 minutes in our antique store and during that time we took furious notes. Over the course of the next few weeks, we implemented most, if not all his recommendations: things like lighting, placement of product, ways to highlight… As a result, we saw an immediate increase in interest in our customer base. They stayed in the store longer, seemed to engage the sales staff more.

When several years later the City sponsored some businesses to his Boot Camp, we made sure we would take advantage of the opportunity. We were not disappointed. It was fairly intense. The focus is on becoming a destination, set yourself apart, not just an “also ran” in the local economy. The tools were definitely there, the inspiration and continuing help and support were/are also there.

As for results, we turned our antiques business into a contender on a national scale. The greater proportion of our sales are from out of state, with a significant amount from the East coast and Midwest. We are the Antique Destination that includes Oregon, Washington, and Idaho as well. We get visitors from all over the country, as well as sales. That’s an accomplishment that isn’t readily achieved by many antiques businesses. We would not have ever achieved that goal were it not for Jon. In fact, in the present economy, I’m sure we would have closed several years ago. We have remained open and viable, mostly through the level of our destination sales, rather than those in our local limited demographic.

In any of these ventures, you get out what you are willing to learn and put in. For us, we can recommend Jon’s Boot Camp without reservation. It made a world of difference in our approach and bottom line. Jon has offered advice and help over the years, just a phone call away.

If you attend, please give our regards to Jon and enjoy yourself.

If your ever in Centralia, please stop by and see firsthand what we have implemented as a result of attending: 209 N Tower Ave Centralia, Washington.  You may visit our web, which has incorporated many suggestions from Jon and has been a major success. www.upthecreekantiques.com. That site was developed in 1998 and still comes up on the first page, if not the first item of most searches.”

Regards,

Dan Horwath, Owner, Up the Creek Antiques

I conducted a webinar in Destination University (www.DestinationUniversity.com) last month on how to use Pinterest. I decided I better learn what Pinterest was after I was asked multiple times in January what I thought of it, and I had no clue. Back then, I was totally ignorant of Pinterest. Not anymore.

If you’re still not getting what Pinterest is, think of this: In front of me as I type this article on my office wall is a huge bulletin board, filled with magazine articles, photos, 3” x 5” cards with words on them, all pinned to that board. Pinterest is just like that bulletin board, except you are collecting images from the Internet, and grouping them into collections of your choosing. These collections are called “Boards” and when you decide you like a particular image, you “pin” it (again, just like a bulletin board).

If you haven’t played around with Pinterest, my advice is to try it tonight. Right now, you’ll need an invitation to join Pinterest to start dabbling around in it. If you’re in Facebook, just post that you’d like an invitation to Pinterest, and your friends will invite you. You can also sign in using Twitter.

Once you start trying Pinterest, you’ll probably be hooked. You’ll see why consumers are jumping on its bandwagon, and why a whopping 84% are female users. Here’s even more key information about it:

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, and it is the fifth largest social network and the third most popular. It is also the 16th most visited website, ahead of big names like CNN and the Huffington Post. Started in 2009 by Ben Silvermann of Des Moines, Iowa, the earliest people to start using it were females from the Midwest. The explosion of popularity has happened recently: only tens of thousands knew what Pinterest was in 2011, but 4.9 million site visitors used it in November; 11.7 million in January, 2012; and 17.8 million in February, 2012. According to some analysts, it is the fastest independent website to reach 10 million visitors. Best of all, the average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes a month on the site, which is right behind Tumblr and Facebook’s usage numbers, with an average visit lasting 16 minutes.

Pinterest itself is not a large company. They are based in Palo Alto, California (where Facebook is located), with about 20 employees (they hired half their staff in the last 4 months). Obviously, the growth of their company is causing them to scramble, but like most Internet companies, they aren’t worried about generating a profit, given that they are funded by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (founded by Marc Andreessen, who co-created Netscape) and Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp. With the $37 million they raised last year and their estimated current valuation of $200 million, they aren’t going anywhere.

Why is this Pinterest phenomenon important to a small business like yours? Here are my big 6 reasons:

1. Pinterest is all about visuals and scanning the Internet for images that a person likes. Once they find a photo, a cartoon, or an image they like, they can “pin” it and it starts a process where other people who view the image, start spreading it. In the world of the Internet, this spreading is called viral marketing, just like a cold that self-replicates itself in multiple places. Since it’s really a form of online word-of-mouth marketing, it is less time-consuming than friending people on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, and posting your thoughts on a blog. The ease at which someone can engage with Pinterest makes it a social network that is easy to like, with minimal time commitment involved. It also allows people to connect with others that they might not know as friends, but with whom they have similar interests and style preferences.

2. Large companies don’t know exactly what to do with Pinterest. There are no ads on Pinterest, either, so advertising agencies don’t know how to recommend their clients to use it. Consequently, this is a marketing tool that can have a huge competitive advantage for small businesses that get in and play around with this, while big companies stumble trying to figure it out.

3. Now that Facebook is going to a new timeline configuration (I am doing a webinar on this in Destination University in May also), and Facebook has created a new Pinterest app, there are over 870+ million people who will have access to Pinterest through this linking with Facebook.

4. Pinterest, according to National Public Radio, is one of the top five referrers of web traffic to retailers’ websites. Many of you are retailers, and all of you should have websites. Wouldn’t you like more people to come to your websites? Once there, they can learn about your company, call and find out about certain products, or if you have an e-commerce site, buy directly off of it. Put another way, Pinterest is a powerful mechanism to bring more faces to your business.

5. When you start posting product photos in Pinterest, you’ll notice that you can add a price to the product description, simply by typing the price, preceded by the dollar sign ($). I think (and others concur), that this pricing feature in Pinterest might eventually lead to Pinterest being its own e-commerce site, where people will be able to make purchases directly through Pinterest as an online “shopping cart”. If this happens, those of you who sell products will find this could be a huge boom to your business.

6. Every time an image is uploaded to Pinterest, it can lead directly back to your website. This is critically important because if you have an e-commerce site, or if you’d like to sell more online to people you’ve never met, this linking feature of Pinterest’s could yield huge online traffic referrals to your business.

Hopefully, these 6 reasons are enough to convince you to take this social network seriously.

If this post was interesting to you, think about becoming a member of our Destination University business network. For less than a buck a day, you can stay abreast of the newest, most impactful marketing tools, simply by watching the nearly 100 webinars that are in DU (and more are posted monthly). To learn more about joining Destination University, click here.

This week I received a letter from a business owner who had attended my Destination Business BootCamp in 2011.  Normally, I just keep these letters for myself, but this one, I’m going to share.  When you read it, you’ll see why. There are parts of it that hit the emotions that every business owner in the world has ever felt.

By the way, I asked the owner who wrote this letter if sharing it was OK with him. He gave me permission to do so.

Our Destination BootCamp is a two and one-half day workshop. It takes me that long to cover my 14-step strategy for making a business a Consumer Destination. It’s not like when I speak at a conference for an hour. In the days I have with the owners in attendance, I can show them a different way to position their businesses to be successful.

Here’s a photo of the class. The business owner who wrote the letter was Louie Colosimo, owner of  Red Glass Oak in Central Point, Oregon. To see Louie’s amazing business, go to his website here: http://RedOakGlass.com.  His creations are amazing!

Louie had come to our Destination BootCamp with five other business owners from Central Point and with Tom Humphrey, the Director of their city’s Community Development Program. Tom had organized the group and Louie was one of the participants he had asked to make the trip to Colorado, as part of our Community Reinvention Program.

Here’s a photo of the Central Point group:

That’s all I’m going to say. Here’s Louie’s letter to me, in its entirety. I haven’t done any editing.

Thanks, Louie, for letting me share your letter. I hope it helps other owners realize that they can make changes to their businesses and turn a poor situation around.

Here’s Louie’s letter:

Dear Jon,

Short version: I want to thank you for all you’ve taught me.

Longer version: Last year, when Tom Humphrey asked me if I wanted to attend your Businessman’s Boot Camp, I was about a week away from quitting my business and throwing in the towel. Deep in debt, out of energy, and my best sales person was seriously drifting away, the future looked bleak at best. I’d even begun to ask around if anyone knew of a good bankruptcy lawyer. It was either quit or try one more time. Finally, I decided to go see you and give it one more shot. The least that would happen would be that I’d get a free trip to Colorado and escape the shop for a few days. I’m so glad that I did. You absolutely turned my life around. Not just my business life but my regular life (?) too.

But not at first.

On the first day of Boot Camp, or rather in the first two hours of the first day, my ass hurt from sitting. I kept shifting from side to side… left bun, right bun and back again. And you were so indefatigably cherry and positive. I kept thinking, “Christ, I should’a quit. At least with bankruptcy it’d be over and I won’t have to think about it.” But then, you showed “problem/solutions” and order began to creep in. My butt began to hurt less, then I forgot about it.

By the end of the first day, I was mostly a convert. I did my homework that night and woke to face the second day. You got better and so did I. By the end of the last day, I wanted to stay and stay and listen. You never wore down. You kept believing that we all could do it. And finally, so did I.  Not only were you telling me how to market better, but what I finally realized was that you were demonstrating how to do it in real time. I was your customer. You took care to treat me special, give me all the information I needed to understand your product, and see how many others managed marketing. You were able to define your business (on an elevator ride between the 3^rd and 4^th floor); you had your monument-al achievements, and best of all, you were proud of your accomplishments.

I knew that to stay in business, I had to market my product. But knowing that it isn’t the same as knowing how to do it. To me, marketing was like trying to grab a hold of a sand storm. There was no handle. No place to start. What do I do first, second, etc? And what you told us wasn’t the answers I wanted to hear.

Instead, you asked questions. Being asked a good question was so much more valuable than being told a general something, a fortune cookie solution. Right off the bat, you asked the hardest thing of all, for me to define my business in one sentence. I always thought that I had done that, until I really thought about it. Now that I think about it more, what you did wasn’t asking for a definition, but more like you challenged me to look at myself and my business the way the world does, from the outside looking in. I always looked at myself and what I did from the inside out. I was a glass blower! Now, I want the world to see me as a glass artist that creates hand blow art glass pendant lighting and inspiring standing chandeliers. So that’s how I define myself and it fits how I see myself. It was and is such a small shift in perception. Such a big change! I understood what I needed to do to keep on going. I’m still slipping and sliding, but now it’s in the general direction of where I want to go.

One last thought about trying organize a sand storm: I’ll be shoveling with the Taj Mahal in mind and realize that all I’ve got is a mud hut and it’ll come to me again that I can’t do it all at once no matter how I try. But, I can do something every day. And I do. Plus, I could bring some hot dogs, beer, a kite and enjoy the beauty and flow of it all.

The other day, I was talking to Tom Humphrey about you and I said that I’d like to hear Jon talk about stress relief, when business gets scary. Without a blink, he immediately gave me a “Jon” answer. He said, “Market better.”  Dorothy had a yellow bricks to guide her, but we’ve got Jon, which is a different kind of brick. When in doubt of the direction to City of “ahhs”, all I have to do is ask myself (or the Central Point team) what would Jon do to get there? When I left Colorado, I felt like all three of the clunks from the wizard of Oz all rolled into one: I needed to get a brainy plan, the heart to keep on going and the courage to stick it out. And I can. After all, Jon believes I can.

With the utmost sincerity and thanks,

Louis Colosimo
Art glass pendant manufacturer
Red Oak Glass.com
234 N. Front St.
Central Point, Or. 97502
541- 326- 8836

Ever wonder what “reinventing” your business actually looks like?  How does one go about this process?

Have you ever thought about significantly changing the business you’ve created?

If your business makes you feel like you’re the only one doing the work, maybe it’s time to stop being a one-person band and reinvent your business.

Indiana writer Gene Stowe has detailed the process of business reinvention in this article.  I think he did a great job explaining how reinvention works, and how I learned the process of turning a business into a Destination.  He also covers why becoming a Destination is the best choice for most small businesses.

To read the article, click here.

A future-is-now business card replacement and electronic shopping tool will debut at the Summit Business Conference October 18-19 in Boulder, Colorado.

Participants will wear Pokens, whimsical devices that use near field communication (NFC) to retrieve and store information from fellow attendees, and then, electronically network with their connections from their computers.

The conference, organized by The Schallert Group of Longmont, Colorado, brings eight headline speakers to a single stage, providing independent entrepreneurs and small businesses access to insights usually available only to Fortune 500 companies.

Rather than exchanging business cards, Summit attendees can collect contacts by holding the Pokens close, – a “high four” from the four-fingered hand of playful characters such as a kitten or panda.

The green glow signals that the connection has been made.

In a first-in-the-U.S. pilot, conference-goers can visit Boulder businesses equipped with Poken technology and will experience this two-way NFC exchange of information. For example, information and videos about fine wine for sale can be passed to customers, while the store receives information about the prospective purchaser.

“Boulder will be the first city in the country where Poken Sparks and Poken Tags are demonstrated,” says Jon Schallert, president of The Schallert Group and a speaker at the conference. “We’re going to put them in different retail stores and conduct a Downtown Boulder treasure hunt.”

Poken devices, created in Switzerland and just now coming to North America, are popular for social networking – a paperless way to collect more than phone numbers at parties – and are finding application in more fields.

This fall, Indiana State University became the first college to distribute Pokens to all incoming students, easing introductions and potentially boosting retention for the school.

Schallert, arranged to introduce Pokens at the Summit Business Conference after he discovered the technology in an in-flight magazine article.

The cutting-edge application fits the event’s aim to elevate small businesses, he says.

“Our conference is really a way that any size business can play on a level playing field with some big companies that would normally get this expert advice. There’s a synergy that comes from combining new technology and these top business experts together to teach independent entrepreneurs.”

In addition to Schallert, speakers are Michael Kerr, a humor expert; Debra Fine, a business networking expert; Terri Norvell, a leadership development expert; Andy Core, a wellness expert; Marti Barletta, author and worldwide expert on marketing to women; Henriette Klauser, an author and authority on writing productivity; and Shawne Duperon, an Emmy-winning TV producer and publicity strategist.

Once you’ve listed your dreams, the handwriting isn’t just on the wall, says Dr. Henriette Anne Klauser. It’s in the filter at the base of your brain, the reticular activating system (RAS) that helps direct your attention.

That’s why Klauser, author of Write It Down, Make It Happen: Knowing What You Want, And Getting It and four other books, advocates list-making to achieve your goals.

It worked for her 10-year-old son Peter, even though he forgot the list for two years. When he discovered it while cleaning his room, every item, including learning karate, sleeping overnight in a park and getting a pet bird had happened.

It also worked for Lou Holtz when he lost his job at 28 and his wife urged him to record his dreams. At last report, 91 of the 107 goals, including coaching at the University of Notre Dame, winning a national championship, meeting the Pope, dining at the White House, appearing on the Tonight Show and making a hole-in-one have happened.

It can work for anybody, Klauser says.

“When you write up your list, write what you would do if money was not an object and time was not a factor,” she advises, insisting that each record include the date. “Then I tell them money is not an object and time is not a factor.”

Klauser is among nine headline experts appearing at the Summit Business Conference (www.SummitBusinessConference.com) Oct. 18-19 in Boulder, Colorado, a rare gathering that brings Fortune 500-level advice business entrepreneurs and community leaders.

Her focus on writing started when she noticed that some of her university students and some of her fellow Ph.D. candidates suffered writing anxiety. Her first book, Writing on Both Sides of the Brain, is in its 39^th printing.

“I wanted to put in concrete evidence about how the brain is functioning,” she says. “It was a natural thing when I heard about the RAS. I want to change the nature of people’s relationship with writing, to recognize that writing is a tool that can help us.”

Another book, With Pen in Hand, describes how writing can help deal with tragedy and loss, with a chapter about a Vietnam veteran who recorded his experiences because he couldn’t talk about them. Put Your Heart on Paper tells the stories of people who enjoyed improved relationships from sharing written thoughts.

In Write It Down, Make It Happen, Klauser explains that brain-heightened attention triggers “go-incidences” (rather than co-incidences) by gaining a sharper focus on the world.

Examples come easy: your ear catches your spoken name above the chatter across a crowded room; a mother awakes to her baby’s cry and no other sound; after Klauser bought a “eucalyptus” Honda, she began to notice how many other green cars are on the road.

“The world cooperates with the plan,” she says. “It activates part of your brain. You start paying attention. You make a commitment to its possibility and things start happening. Once you write down a goal, your brain is working overtime to see that you get it.”

For more information on Klauser’s presentation and how to register, visit www.SummitBusinessConference.com

The Summit Business Conference Contest

This is Jon Schallert.  Our company loves contests, especially ones that motivate communities to support local businesses. That’s why we’re awarding $22,000 in our company’s consulting services to those communities who send the most people from their city or town to the Summit Business Conference in Boulder, Colorado, October 18-19 (where I’m one of the 9 speakers).

If you are not familiar with the Summit Business Conference, it’s an amazing, one-of-a-kind gathering of nine (9) business experts and authors who typically conduct keynote speeches for major international conferences or consult with Fortune 500 companies. But for the Summit Business Conference, they’ll all be presenting on one stage, over 2 days, united together to help independent business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone who supports local businesses.  You can read more about the Summit Business Conference at their website www.SummitBusinessConference.com

But back to our Summit Contest.  Here are the details:

The top two (2) communities that have the most people attending the Summit Business Conference from their city or town will receive a free Destination Business workshop, presented by me (Jon Schallert) in their area, to be scheduled in 2012. The value for each workshop is over $8,000. Better yet, if you’re one of the winning communities, when I come to speak in your area, charge admission to this event and use my workshop as a fundraiser!

The next three (3) communities with the next highest attendance will receive a free Destination Business Live Webinar, broadcast from our Destination University studio for up to 500 of your members. The value of each Live Webinar is $1,500.

The next five (5) communities having the next highest attendance will receive a free community membership to our online training network, Destination University. This annual membership is valued at $360.

In the event of a tie in any of the above categories, a random drawing will be held to determine the awarding of the prizes.

How to Enter

It’s very simple: Publicize the Summit Business Conference in your city, town,  downtown, or Main Street district and encourage your local business owners to register. Send a representative from your organization too, if you want them to learn the advanced business skills that are going to be discussed at the Summit Conference.  But remember: Since there are a limited number of seats, once the 250 seats are sold, attendance will be closed. Obviously, communities that register the most people earliest will have the best chance to win.

Encourage your community leaders and business owners to learn about the Summit Business Conference by visiting the Conference website, www.SummitBusinessConference.com, and the Summit Conference blog on the website. You can download digital PDF brochures of the conference by clicking here. Once downloaded, you can email them to your community leaders and entrepreneurs. If your group would like hard-copy brochures to distribute to your local businesses, just call our office. We will ship them to you so you can pass them out.

We have structured this contest so both large cities and small towns have an equal chance to win.

Good luck!  We look forward to seeing you in Boulder, Colorado on October 18-19.

Jon Schallert

PS:  Some communities like Phillips County, Kansas have created scholarships for their business owners to help them pay for the costs of attending the Summit Business Conference.  If you want the businesses in your community to improve, you have to be proactive!

I want to share with you Terri Norvell’s article on creating “Breakthrough Success”.  For those who are constantly focusing on the economy as the reason things aren’t better, it’s more complicated than that. I meet business owners every day who are slamming the brakes on their own success.

I especially like this section of her article, where she talks about why we limit our success:

“In my most recent surveys, findings indicated that the fear of failure is one of the most notable obstacles that people feel limit their success. This fear of failure shows up in many forms. It includes lack of self-confidence, holding back rather than speaking up, feeling insecure, and dealing with too much change. Certainly our economic fluctuations are cause for challenges.”

You can read the rest of Terri’s article at our Summit Business Conference blog (www.SummitBusinessConference.com)

Terri will present her Breakthrough Success keynote at our Summit Business Conference, next month in Boulder Colorado on October 18-19. Read about Terri and a full description of her presentation by clicking here.

Mike Kerr is the opening keynote speaker at the Summit Business Conference.

Mike is going to teach all of us how we as leaders of our businesses and organizations can stamp out daily stress, boost the morale of our teams, infuse creativity into our lives, and create an inspiring business and work environment, one that’s loved by our employees and also our customers.

You can read more about Mike at www.MikeKerr.com but you can also see how excited Mike is to begin his Monday workday by clicking on the link below to watch the video on our Summit Business Conference blog.

Mike Kerr is excited to go to work?  Wouldn’t it be great to feel this way?

Henriette Klauser will be one of our 9 featured speakers at our upcoming Summit Business Conference.

Here’s why it’s important that you think about attending the Summit to hear her message:

Click here to read my post on the Summit Business Conference blog.