Apple's Bite Out of Sustainability

Although this isn't start up related, I found it extremely inspiring in the environmental sector. And even though Apple is far from being a start up, they were a start up at one point and, in some aspects, a good example of something to strive for. 

Apple's new corporate campus will be an environmental marvel of an office building when it is finished. An existing lot covered in buildings and asphalt will be covered in over 7,000 trees when the project is done, be able to collect rainwater for use, and offer many green power alternatives for operation. Its no wonder the plan for this building is many years in the making, and as this article explains, its been worth every minute. 

While this may be a project of extreme scope suited only for a technology giant such as Apple, I like to think of it as something to strive for as I move forward in business. If we start trying to positively affect our environment now, as entrepreneurs and start ups, our impact will only grow with the size of our business. 

The "Right" Customers, Not All the Customers

I am a firm believer that too many business baby each and every customer that comes to them. I'm not sure if this is do to U.S. culture, or if its an international business practice, but I do know that for start-ups and companies with green practices, the wrong customers can be extremely dangerous. For this reason, we as business owners must recognize our "right customers" and treat them as such. 

But how do we know who the "right" customers are? Research often says that middle aged, home owners, who are not too price sensitive are the absolute best customers. Why?
Middle Aged = Mature and Reasonable
Home Owners = Stationary
Not Price Sensitive = They will buy what you sell them
While it may be a stretch to suggest you only market and serve this narrow percentage of the population, there are some things to think about that can widen your audience, but narrow your marketing. 

Be aware of the people who care about your business. When a patron is a repeat customer, you have created an loyal customer. When that loyal customer brings their friends and suggests your services to others, you have created an apostle. This single person has exponentially increased her value and business owners don't recognize this often enough. These customers will treat you business with respect, grow your following organically, forgive mistakes you make, and most of all stand up for you. So recognize them and make them feel special. There's nothing wrong with that.

Forget the detractors. These are the ones who are always complaining about your business or services. I know there's the "the customer is always right" mentality, but it's really out of date. If a customer is always complaining to you, imagine what they are saying about you to the people they know. They get their name because they detract from your brand, so get rid of them. Nicely, of course. Here is a good Forbes article on just this such thing. 

The overall point is that in business where we really rely on that next customer who will put the money in our pockets, we need to focus on the ones that believe what we believe and will bring their friends who also believe the same. This organic form of growth is more powerful that any search engine result or advertisement in the local paper. So put time into you good customers and make sure you recognize what they are so you can market to those particular type of people. 

Restaurants Do It Too

Something I have always been passionate about is food (both cooking it and eating it). I even wanted to be a chef when I was in high school. While I may be glad my ideal profession changed, restaurants still have an important place in my heart and are a huge piece of the picture when it comes to small business. Restaurants, as a whole, make up 4% of our country's GDP according to The National Restaurant Association. Of course, I know a lot of people are concerned with food waste, and for good reason. However restaurants, especially small ones who can't afford the expensive sustainable measures that large ones can, have many other types of waste that can be kept out of our environment.

Bottles and cans are a big piece of the recipe of a restaurant, and also an easy piece to deal with responsibly. Simply recycling is great, but many people don't understand how sensitive our recycling system is - Business Idea Alert: New recycling system. Left over food on the inside  of a container can't be recycled with the container. In fact, pizza boxes can't even be recycled because the grease will ruin the batch of the paper waste and render unusable.

Cooking grease is another great resource that many restaurant owners don't know about. I don't know the science behind it personally, but if you have a fryer full of grease, thees someone with a car that can run off the stuff. The kicker: they will pay for it. 

Sometimes its just as simple as rethinking your model. Some bars would rather increase their tap beers and decrease their impact on the environment by offering less glass bottles. This keeps people interested because you can change kegs when you want and kegs are always reused. 

I got the inspiration for this blog from another blog that I found very heart warming. It goes through a few restaurants that have put these plans into practice and are benefiting from them greatly. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223601

A Great Video on Making a WordPress Website with Hosting

Here is a great video I found for using WordPress to make your new website. It goes through using a good host site called HostGator and the costs of doing everything. The video is a few years old and the responsive template that he uses has spawned many more over time. This video really gives a good start to finish experience for creating your website. There is a 2-4 hour time lapse however for which you have to wait for WordPress Content Management Software to initialize into the website. But other than that, it takes less than an hour. 
Enjoy!

My Advice on a Website for Your Small Business

My current challenge, outside of school life that is, is building a website for my small business that works well and is...well cheap. Sounds easy right? it actually isn't too bad from what I've found so far and a number of services provide an easy way to do this. I'm just going to go ahead and give you my personal spoiler however, and tell you I'm choosing WordPress. We'll talk about why.



I want to be a developer genius. But I'm not, and to be perfectly honest, I don't have the time to learn how to be. It's hard. Lines of code and lots of mess. The point here is Drupal is out. While Drupal is an awesome open source program for developers, it is NOT for someone like me who needs a site now and has no idea about building.



I want a site that doesn't look like everyone else's. I was worried about the fact that I would end up using a template and have a similar site to everyone else. What I've discovered is that finding two sites that look alike are kind of like finding a set of twins: maybe you know one, but they're not that common. Even if you have a very similar site to someone else, there are millions of websites out there and probably no one will ever visit the two sites in the same day. No worries, use a template and make it your own.



SEO: I want it... What is it? The major reason that I chose WordPress is that search engine optimization works well here. Search Engine Optimization "is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results." - WikiPedia
You can change page names, title and thread names, and add tons of plug-ins that will help you with the page. I know this is a bit general, but I'm still learning my self so the best I can do is really just point you to the all knowing YouTube and tell you to search "WordPress SEO." There is a wealth of information there.



Well, you're up to speed with me at least. As I go forward I plan to share more and I will be posting my new site onto my blog for all to see. Happy web developing everyone!

Up-Cycling Your Business, Pt 2: Why Do it?

As I said before, I really enjoy talking on the up-cycling subject a lot. Sometimes, in my daydream head, I start thinking about how many "things" or pieces of "things" are just floating around the world, just filling it up. Of course, matter can neither be created or destroyed, but a an inflated balloon takes up more space than a deflated one, right? If that doesn't make sense just think about it for while.

But what reason do people have to actually participate in up-cycling? It's not surprising to hear that consumer reports show that up-cycled items are being viewed as lower quality by consumers. But how many items really need to be indestructible? Lets replace things once in a while. If we do this we can make products that degrade and sustain our earth, rather than sustaining the product and degrading our earth. So... that my rant on that. 

The true point about up-cycling as a business idea is that most people can have some sort of resource that can be converted into a cash flow and they don't know it. Simply taking out the raw materials costs from your budget greatly increases your profitability. For example, our friends at Butler Built realized that one of their father's warehouses produced an excess of pallets of all shapes and sizes that were otherwise being unused. So maybe you have someone who religiously puts bottle caps in a jar to "recycle" but they never do.
Bottle Cap Tables are in style right now, and they go for a good price:

Or maybe you have some left over wine bottles:

Up-cycling holds a wealth of possibilities to create a small business for yourself, and as you can see, it's profitable. 

Up-Cycling Your Business, Pt. I: Who Does That?

This past Monday I competed in a new venture launch competition at the Four Athens tech incubator facility and got to see some great start-ups come to life in front of the judges. One in particular, named Butler Built, took pallet furniture to the next level. Taking advantage of local business' excess of wooden pallets as well as a family lumber company who had a surplus, this team rented a small workshop and began selling pallet furniture online. This rekindled my love for up-cycling projects and gratitude for reducing the amount of waste we put into our system, and also reminded me its a profitable business. 
So I'll be discussing a few things over the next couple blogs about up-cycling, how it started, what companies are doing it, and why it might be a great opportunity for your small business. 

The man to the left is Tom Szaky. He is one of my personal role models and he is an up-cycling entrepreneur. Simply put: up-cycling is taking any object or material who's normal useful life is over and extending that useful life by re-purposing the object or material. Zsacky decided that he could market his plant fertilizer, made of all natural compost, by bottling it in empty soda bottles. He then asked his customers to send the soda bottles back to him in order to keep the process going. TerraCycle, Szaky's company, went on to up-cycle juice pouches into handbags and other various projects. 

Many companies are picking up on this now. With the growth of social media sites like Pinterest.com and merchant sites like Etsy.com its vastly easier to market your up-cycled products in a place where they are appreciated and valued. Domino's Pizza has a distinctly attractive campaign called "Second Hand Logos." Realizing that in changing their logo they would have to get rid of any material baring the old logo and thus create a lot of trash, they decided to up-cycle it. Everything from old T-shirts to signs have been turned into works of art,, furniture, and other bits and pieces of memorabilia. Domino's commissioned 10 artists to create these pieces, some, like the one pictured below made of pizza boxes and non-toxic glue, selling for as much as $2,500.

 Hipcycle.com is another great example of up-cycling entrepreneurship. At this site you can search the inventory either by product or by the material its made out of. Literally a vast ocean of up-cycled products, you can find any household item made out of any other household item on this site. You will also pay (or charge, depending on the side you're on) a premium for them.