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Get Naked and Grow Your Green Business Today!

Written by: Max Lee

Article Overview: To grow your business today, you need to get naked. Starbucks did it, and you can too. Read on to find out how.

Get Naked and Grow Your Green Business Today!

It was a year ago today, that Starbucks went naked, and created MyStarBucksIdea, a site where customers could go and tell SB how to improve. Uncensored and completely open to all suggestions, this site rocks. Are you willing to get naked, too?

Starbucks Did It, And You Can Too

The site has already propelled two major ideas to come to life, FREE Wi-Fi and FREE Coffee for Frequent Buyers, which are both set to take place in Spring 2008. I personally feel this idea is brilliant, and am really surprised more companies aren’t doing it. The feedback provided would be invaluable to you and the future growth of your enterprise.

How StarBucks Does It

The site created by Starbucks allows for registered users to voice their opinion, while others get to vote on said ideas. So the most popular ideas are the ones SB concentrates on. According to Lorna Li, who writes on green marketing, not surprisingly so, many of the ideas and issues that customers are adding to the SB site are green related.

How could your green business do something like this? What do you think your customers have to tell you?

Are you willing to get naked (as in, be completely vulnerable) and offer up an open forum where your customers could speak freely to you and voice ideas. Like Starbucks.

Related Articles
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  Customers don’t care about you unless you’re naked. They just don’t.
  Going Green = saving money
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  Green Jobs: It's about growing your existing employees too

Article Tags: concentrates, free coffee, free wi fi, frequent buyers, green marketing, lorna, open forum, rocks, spring 2008, starbucks, voice ideas



Related Forum Posts
Re: Are you a Blue, Red, or Green? - Hum... a lot of reds responding... Business owners must be a very aggressive community. Now, I was surprised when I took the course personally to find out I was a Green, secondary Blue. Of course, not believing this, the first thing I did was turn to those around me to get their opinions on my colours (typical Green!). The only thing I can really say about STRUCTOGRAM is that it was fun to explore the depths of my social and physiological make-up... I did this a over a year ago now and still use it in my daily interactions (always be on your toes with Reds).
Re: 10 ideas to make you money in 2010 - I think Education would be hard to break into. Baby Boomers, Life Support and Trading Down, however, seem like good markets. As for Green technology goes, I don't think the business has to be entirely based on Green ideologies, but rather a business that embrace Green philosophies and use that as a marketing tool.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Motivational Books for Entrepreneurs - Searched but did not find a comprehensive list of books for us entrepreneurs: Here are some of my favorites: Napoleon Hill - Think and Grow Rich The greatest secret in the world- Earl Nightingale...listen to it, then listen to it again. Jeffrey Gitomers books- Red book of selling, sales bible, Green book of getting your way. Your Erroneous Zones - Wayne Dyer Thinkertoys - Michael Michalko How To Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie The Magic of Believing - Claude M. Bristol How to Talk to Anyone - Leil Lowndes Get Smarter- Seymour Schulich What are yours?
Re: My 3 best business books - 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey 3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl: [i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom] Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.


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