Growing The Biz

I keep my ears open for ideas and areas that can help increase business and productivity. Last year, I found one such idea from a friend in Madison. The idea is simple too – interns. The idea of interns is simple and you can read how to implement a program of your own here: www.NathanLustig.com.

I set out to implement our own program to help our productivity this summer since the months of April through September are our busiest months. I figured the help around the office while giving the interns learning opportunities in business would be a great combination. I was right, but didn’t realize how effective the program would be on multiple levels.

The interns are doing great and their presence in the office is helping with Blue Apple’s growth. But what I didn’t realize was the interns would directly effect my efficiency as well. Becuase I am now not only managing myself, but 4 other people, I have to plan my days more carefully and be more efficient with my time. The planning of an internship program is extremely important and www.internships.com can help with a lot of it. But there will always be unexpected things that come up and this is where productivity actually increases if you know how to manage your time effectively. Even if you manage time well when you are only managing yourself, there is always time wasted in certain areas of the day. But the addition of others to your management structure helps with this lost time.

If you spend 30 minutes of that wasted time managing 4 interns, they can then take the rest of the day/time and be 4 times as productive as you individually could have been with your most effective time. The math just works.

Plan early and effectively for your intern program for next year – but you will see great success if you put in the right steps and time for your business.

I admire Google.

I know that lots of people don’t like them because they are too big, they are taking over the world, or because they have wiggled their way out of many legal mandates for maintaining personal information.  However, if you look at the company without any bias, you too would agree that it is a truly amazing company. Just to start, look at all that they have built! From Google search engine to Google Maps, Google street, Google Analytics, GMail, GoogleDocs, Google Trends and much, much more that it would take forever to list them all here. Google is probably one of the best known search engines worldwide performing an estimated 1.2 billion queries per day – WOW! Google is huge. They have so many different types of people working for them and are a massive company. Their corporate structure must be unbelievably complicated to keep track of.

However, why I admire Google so much is because of their culture. Even though they are such a large company, they are able to maintain a corporate culture that is fun and enjoyable for their employees which is why people want to work there.  I have heard rumors, and I would believe them due to the  nature of the company, that they offer massages, a fantastic cafeteria, slides to get from one floor to a lower floor, and much more for those that work there.  What a great place!

The thing that I probably love most about Google and what I believe shows that Google will never get too big for their own britches, is April Fool’s Day. I’m not sure when they started it, but for the past two years now, Google has put together a fantastic April Fool’s Joke to play on everyone. Check out this years www.gmail.com/motion. The time it takes for them to put this together is not insignificant, but probably didn’t take a too terrible long for a few people to throw together. Even though Google is billions of searches a day and used by millions, and is a multi-billion dollar company, they still have fun and take part in April Fool’s Day.

A lesson we can all take back with us – Don’t take yourselves or your business too seriously, even if you’re perceived to be the biggest and greatest.

I started this blog toward the end of last year. I have heard about blogging since I was in high school, but never really got into it much. I just thought it was something that writers did to share their work. As I have gotten into starting and building businesses, I realize that blogging is a great way to get feedback and share your ideas. Blogging is a form of social media that can net followers and excite people about business.  It can also give them some insight into who you are and why you run a business the way that you do. If you have investors, blogs are a great way for them to feel and stay connected to you. It allows them to know what is going through your head more often than their yearly update or call.  It provides the confidence they want with the instant information update that our society now craves.

At first, blogging was foreign to me. I did my research and realized it is a great tool for business growth. However, there was another reason I decided to take the leap into the blogosphere: I am an extreme extravert. I have never been good at internalizing ideas and thinking about options, outcomes, positions, etc.  Blogging has provided me the opportunity to do this. It gives me the outlet to sit down and bounce my ideas off of someone else…my computer. I have always done better at decision making with I have someone else to run ideas by.  But now, if someone else isn’t around, I have my computer, my blog to run ideas off of. And feedback can come in the form of other peoples comments occasionally which is great because you can find out what people are passionate about. This plays directly into business growth.

When a post goes up on a blog, it is available to anyone who navigates to your page. Anyone who reads the post now has an opinion about what you just wrote. Depending on the content, some of the readers might just move on. But others will feel passionate about the subject and comment, or send you a message. Based on this response, you are able to determine what people’s hot buttons are. You can determine whether a change you are thinking about making in the business is a good idea, or a bad one. You can figure out what your customers want and tailor your marketing, sales, and services to them.

For example, my reader base is not huge yet. When I publish a new post, I usually get around 15-20 hits (not bad for just starting out, but i’m always looking to grow that. If you like it, pass it on!). I think I have only had two posts have comments posted. However, I recently wrote about etiquette on airplanes in my post I Would Hate to Be a Flight Attendent. This post received 2 comments on the blog, 1 comment on Facebook, and 7 people that liked it. About half of the people that viewed that particular post liked what I had to say and obviously had an opinion about it.  This could potentially be useful information for someone in the correct industry.  Now this is a small scenario, but the same principles apply to a more well-known blog that is written.  If you get comments on your posts all the time, then you have to be able to decipher between a normal day of 50 comments, and a post that people are truly passionate about with 125 comments.

Do you have a blog? Do you get comments? When do you see the spike in comments and how do you try to promote comments to get feedback from people on your ideas? 

I just returned from a four day trip in Orlando, FL for the IAAPA (The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) Expo. The amusement industry is absolutely massive ranging from world class amusement and water parks all the way to back yard party rentals. Being in inflatable rentals, only a small section of the Expo actually pertains to our business at Blue Apple Productions. However we walked the whole show anyway which took almost two full days on the showroom floor.  At the IAAPA Expo, there were 1200+ exhibitors showing off their latest and greatest creations, along with 2500+ individuals shopping for their businesses. I have never been to a conference of this size and it was absolutely facinating to see both sides, exibitors and business owners, at work.

To help give you an idea of just how big the conference was, here is a picture of barely an eighth of the showroom floor:

All sorts of exhibitors were set up; everything from rollercoaster and waterslide design companies all the way down to arcade game and amusement food companies. Even Coca-Cola was there handing out free samples all conference long.

“In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running, if you stand still, they will swallow you.” -William Knudson, Jr

In this day in age, no matter what industry you are in, you have to keep up with the newest and greatest trends. Trade shows, conferences, and expos are a fantastic ways to do this.  Whenever you get large groups of like minded people together, you are sure to pick up tidbits here and there about your industry, competition, and new markets.

I have been to three User Group Meetings (UGMs) at Epic where every hospital that owns Epic’s software comes together to meet each other, learn from one another, and see what is new at Epic. I have also been to multiple large conferences, last and best of which was IAAPA.

When you go to a conference or trade show, there are multiple ways you should be engaged to gather as much information as you can to bring back to your business.  The first thing that every conference I have ever been to has boasted are speakers/sessions by industry leaders and companies. Typically there are many more sessions than anyone has time to go to, but if you have multiple people from your company at the show, consider splitting up to hit as many sessions as possible that pertain to your company.  Don’t expect sessions to revolutionize your business or drastically change what you do.  Just make sure you are listening for those little suggestions that can sometimes make differences in your company.

Epic’s UGM was filled with sessions put on by Epic staff and Epic customers. There was a great balance of work and fun that they put togehter for the customers that attended.  The hundreds of sessions ranged from things as simple as how to file claims effectiently to complicated issues such as medication reconciliation across systems. The great thing about these sessions was that it was peer to peer and everyone was learning from a hospital that had already had success doing what they were speaking about. These type of peer to peer sessions are most commonly what you find at conferences and arguably the most effective since it is providing information from customers that have the same problems, desires and growth potential as you do. Listen, watch and use what you can. You are not the first in your industry to have the problems that are arising. Find how others have fixed them and use the same type of responses and fixes.

My suggestion – go to at least one conference a year for your industry to keep moving ahead in this ever changing world of consumers.

What conference have you been to recently and what was the most useful part of it for you/your business?

I figured I probably owe an explanation of what Growing The Biz is about and why I started this blog as a subject for one of my first posts. This is that post.

I recently moved from Madison, WI back to Rochester, NY where I am originally from. I had moved to Madison for a job after my four years at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. I always wanted to work in medicine, but didn’t want to go to med school. I have always been good with computers as well and enjoyed troubleshooting software issues.  When I found Epic, I learned they were a medical informatics company – perfect! Epic combined both my love of medicine without having to go to med school and my enjoyment of working with computers. I ended up being invited for an on site interview and was WOWed by their campus. It is incredible.  Shortly thereafter, I was hired as a Project Manager in implementation of Inpatient software.

I worked at Epic for over three years and really did enjoy my job.  As with any job, there were times of great stress and periods when I could relax a bit. In implementation, I did a lot of traveling to customer sites and it can definitely wear on you.  However I was able to find friends among the teams I traveled with, and it became less stressful and did not wear quite as quickly.  Epic has a lot of great qualities and it was a great company to work for.

During my time at Epic, I learned about project management each and every day working with customers, putting together project plans, keeping budgets, and meeting deadlines. While managing different projects, I also took some time each week to take note of Epic’s amazing growth. Epic has some great software and did very well in sales.  Because of this, the company grew very quickly, and generally in bursts.  The growth of Epic, even during the three years I was there, was incredible. Employee numbers increased by hundreds, new buildings were built in groups, offices were moved, landscaping was done – and redone, the learning center expanded, and staff meetings became enormous (when I say staff meeting, I mean every person in the 4000+ company). Because of the specific time in the companies growth that I was employed by Epic, I tracked some very interesting examples and facts about company growth.

On September 30, I moved back to Rochester to work with my brother in his business, Blue Apple Productions. The company specializes in special event coordination and has been a one or two man operation for some time now.  The growth of the business has become stagnant and my brother needed someone to help him with getting over the hump.  He offered me the position of Sales and Growth in the company, so I took it.

I have been working at Blue Apple for two months and have barely gotten into my real work here in the company. But I am sure there are going to be many issues and tasks that arise that will be completely new to me. I plan to use my experiences from Blue Apple and Epic to compare, and write about these different topics that come up.

Starting a new business is hard.  Some might say that growing that business is even harder. I’m not sure if it is or not yet, but I do know that this is going to be a difficult road.