Growing in a Down Economy
Article Overview: When we deliver unique true compelling value that matches opportunities where buyers will pay for that value, we fuel our growth.
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Free Download - Are you Stuck in Failure? By Rebel Brown
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Growing in a Down Economy
So how do we create high-velocity growth for our business? Especially
in the middle of a turnaround economy. Sounds like the impossible
dream, doesn’t it? Not really. Look at companies like Southwest
Airlines, NuSkin, Green Mountain Coffee and more. If we look around us
we can find many, many examples of companies growing and thriving – even
today.
Achieving sustainable growth isn’t as impossible as
we’re programmed to believe. “Growth is hard,” right? Wrong. That’s an
example of a Gravity belief whose time has come. But we can ditch that
gravity. We can grow – and here’s how.
The two primary
ingredients of business growth are Value and Market Opportunity. You
can’t have one without the other and expect to grow.
First lets
talk about Business Value. Value can be a pretty complex thing,
especially since we get so much Gravity thinking involved in our Value
perceptions. What was really valuable in our market six months ago
probably isn’t as hot today. In a year it will most likely be ‘me
too.’ Either we evolve, or we crash and burn.
Just look at
Blockbuster, who recently filed for bankruptcy. Netflix came along and
changed the way we all thought about movie rental. Then the cable and
satellite companies started offering On Demand movies. Poor
Blockbuster was stuck in the way they’d always done it when it came to
their value. They couldn’t adapt their value to match the dramatic
changes in their market. They tried, but they were just too stuck.
The
same applies to our Market Opportunity. We live in a world of 360
degrees of opportunity. Some are great, some are bad, some are
emerging, some are waning. A great opportunity two years ago may be
foundering now. Our best opportunity may have cropped up in the past 6
months.
We must be focused on seeking the right opportunities
or we’ll end up chasing the wrong opportunity, missing a better
opportunity or limiting our growth by staying focused on a waning
opportunity.
So here’s the simple flight plan for growth.
When
we deliver unique true compelling value that matches opportunities
where buyers will pay for that value, we fuel our growth.
Companies
who fly with the market winds, who are willing to focus forward, spin
on a dime, consciously evolve their value to be in sync with their
market lift - wherever it may be - these companies defy gravity and
grow.
The rest, those who choose to continue with the way
they’ve always done it, staying stuck in Gravity – well, they sink out
and are often never heard from again.
Which are you?
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Article Tags:
belief,
business growth,
business value,
Defy Gravity,
ditch,
down economy,
Find Your Power,
gravity,
green mountain coffee,
How Tos,
impossible dream,
market opportunity,
southwest airlines,
sustainable growth,
Think Again,
turnaround
About the Author: Rebel Brown
RSS for Rebel's articles - Visit Rebel's website
I've been an executive consultant for over 20 years now. I work with boards of directors, executive teams, sales, marketing and product management to create business and go-to-market strategies that drive profitable growth. My clients hire me for my expertise in business strategy, corporate and product market positioning and high momentum market launches. I also assist with fund raising and M&A strategies.
My best selling market strategy book - Defy Gravity - shares the lessons I've learned in my client engagements. I'm thrilled to be able to share these experiences with business leaders in a variety of markets. We all have Gravity - myself included! When we shift from gravity thinking - high velocity growth is ours for the taking!
I'm honored to have been featured in media including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, Business Insider, Startup Nation, First Business TV, ChangeThis.com, 800CEORead, Exceptional People and more. I'm a frequent radio show guest - sharing tips 'n tricks to help all business leaders excel. I'm also an executive speaker for companies, associations, events and audiences who are ready to Shift - from Gravity to High Velocity Growth.
Visit www.RebelBrown.com for Rebel's thought-provoking and informative videos and articles.
Click here to visit Rebel's website

More from Rebel Brown
The Law of Attraction in Business
When the Experts are just Plain Wrong
Smashing Pedestals
Do You Think Like Your Customer
My Own Worst Enemy
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Related Forum Posts
Re: What's 1 word to describe what your business will be in 2012
- Growing.
MichelleJ
God's Diet
- Very interesting, from both a health perspective and a marketing perspective.
Growing up Mormon we were raised on The Word of Wisdom. No coffee, no tea, no junk food, no smoking, no drinking..etc.
All good. But I think its harder and harder to find true, pure food these days.
And lets face it, I'm not likely to start growing my own produce or keeping cattle..
Re: New member from the USA
- [quote="Mal Tindle":rpz5ne6d][quote="Ethical":rpz5ne6d][quote="Mal Tindle":rpz5ne6d]Hi Ethical,
Welcome to the forum, it's good to see new people getting involved in any forum and you have picked one of the very best. I haven't been a member too long but am a regular now because of the support and resources available here which are most impressive.
I see you work in the recycling of ink cartridges and I wish you well with that and attracting traffic to your site.
best wishes,
Mal.[/quote:rpz5ne6d]
Thanks for your welcome,Mr.Mal,are you located in the USA,or the UK o'GB.or some other locale?,and if may I have your permission to ask,What kinda(kind of) entrepreneurship are you involved with?,as anything in life,education,and correct info...is the key to success,and Profesional forum attendance,is enlighting.Thanks again for your welcome.[/quote:rpz5ne6d]
Hi Again Ethical,
Thank you for your reply, I live in the UK and don’t have a product as such to sell like you but I am an Internet Marketer and owner of the ‘Work From Home Gems’ site below.
I specialise in finding and recommending different ways to make money on the internet as an affiliate. I very much enjoy working in this sector and hope to work full time from home in the future.
Don’t forget to set up your signature as recommended by GT above as this is a simple way to ad the URL of your website and this will show on every post you make,
best wishes,
Mal.[/quote:rpz5ne6d]
Howdy (Hi and How do you do,in Texan):
I'm currently working from home,and with My lifelong ltd. business experience(which is not as limited ,As I humbly stated ,I hope to utilize (utilise in British English),some knowledge to help me be somewhat successful.('California is a "brand new game" to many outsiders,inc. a West Texan ,like me,but I somehow managed above expectations).
My ambition at this stage of my life(being formally retired),isn't like when I was younger,and accomplished a lot,'way beyond my ltd. means', as I met with a lot of small and big successes,as I didn't had the luxarious option of losing or failing,in order to survive,I had to'make it'.
In today's USA Economy and it's negative implications on all of retirees(pensioners) and disabled folks,
It became vital to be able to function with some amount of success...or face hunger,if not worse,in the USA we have a 'nation' of homeless folks,that are unaided.most of them are either disabled,or 'senior citizens',or both. so failure is not an option,currently I live in Southern California,which is controlled by an inhumane and dishonest Reublican governor,that cut income from both disabled,and the aged disabled(With false excuses) .while cost of subsisting here is skyrocketing without price controls.so any ltd. additional income is a 'blessings'.Our country economy,as the whole world is already aware is continue to fall,(I was extremely surprised,like many others) that our country borrowed huge amounts not only from its allies(like the UK of GB, UAE,Kuwait etc.) but also from the P.R. of China(ain't it amazing,it's the greatest 'accomplishment' of the previous Bush administtration),It was done prior to our current wonderful president Obama times,But Obama administration was really honest and transparent about these facts,and additionally acted in the best interests of our country,and improved our country situation so dramatically,so at least we're hopefull.The Praises that our current administration deserves are long.Folks like me try to cease any opportunity to survive ,I'm not aiming to'make a killing' but just survive the onslought ,and 'so far so good',I already started on my own to reach to local pro.(professional)folks,that I had the pleasure to know,and there are real hopes,I already sold on my own 1st ltd. batch of 'virgin'(only one time used) 'empties' (Empty ink cartridges),and even earn already a minor sum of 'income',and time'll tell.My honest belief is just as long as one could act rationally there 're hopes for positive results.Thanks for support and advice,I may put the website into my signature a little later,meanwhile ,I'm so busy just 'to keep my head above waters'.Thanks again.
$3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
- $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO
Content and Community Driven Pet Websites
________________________________________
Profile: Two Pet Related Websites
Price: $65,000 OBO
Age of sites: 2 years 4 months
Monthly revenue: $3300 (plus or minus a couple hundred)
Key details:
Growth Year over Year: 641%
Uniques: 200,000 per Month
Page Views: 1 mil + per Month
Referrers: 10,000+ Monthly
Search Engine Traffic: 61%
Members: 7500+/-
Articles: 318
Blog Posts: 189+
Forum Posts: 256,000+
Topics: 19,000+
Adsense Revenue: $1500-$1700 per month
Kontera Revenue: $900+ per month
Direct Advertisers: $90 - $300 per month
Monthly Server Costs: $100
Monthly Advertising Costs: $0
Total Profit Per Month $2500 - $3000
Organic Growth Month over Month: 10% +/- (Zero spent on advertising – all word of mouth and search engine)
Software Licenses: All Open source and thus free: Linux, Apache, MySQL, Zen Cart, PHPLIST, WordPress, SMF, and the rest Custom Programming.
Software Editions: All software running latest releases.
Uniques Last Month: 200,000
Page Views Last Month: *2,000,000+ per month
Referring Sources: 1,000 different referrers
Referring Keywords: 60,000 Search Terms
First Page Results: Thousands of keywords and keyword combinations
Indexed pages (Google): 65,000+
Indexed pages (Yahoo): 26,000+
Google page rank: 5-6 (Lots of 3’s and 4’s throughout the sites)
Pages of Content: 60,000+/-
Alexa site rank: 124,000 (way off the mark due to audience profile)
Compete Site Rank: Much closer but still off.. See image
Brand Value: All Original Creative and Content including Logo, Forum Template, Front-end, CSS, Code, Images etc. Extremely well made to render fast as well as accessible, to both humans and search engines. Search optimized throughout.
Description:
I actually posted this for sale almost 11 months ago but didn’t take any offers. Since then traffic has increased almost 650% and revenue has increase by almost as much, closer to 600%. Revenue comes from direct advertising ($150-$350 per mo) but primarily Google Adsense ($1500 - $1750 per mo) and Kontera Links ($700-$900 per mo).
Letting go as I’m working full time and just started Business School… I just don’t have the time. However, these sites are ripe for one to build a better business direction.
I started these sites as the pet industry happens to be exploding, exponentially and almost parabolically. Google “pet spending” to find a glimpse. Some articles you’ll find:
“The Growing Pet Industry Is One Trend You Can Bank On”
"In the past 10 years, pet spending has more than doubled to an estimated $38.4 billion for 2006."
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pet industry is now the seventh largest retail segment in the country."
“We have only begun to see the tip of the spending iceberg"
“Pet Spending at All Time High”
"Pet ownership is on the increase in the US, and the amount of money spent on pets is dramatically increasing too."
The two sites are content and community driven websites with 350+ health related articles on pets, a pet blog that discusses current issues, and a very active message board and community. They compliment each other perfectly and as such are being sold together as a package. The templates are completely custom designed and CSS powered. They would be XHTML Strict Compliant however we’ve included a couple of things that just wouldn’t let it pass. There are almost 8000 members between the two sites. Several hundred more between the blog subscribers and the email list subscribers. At one time we had a store (its all still there however it’s been shut off) and we had about 200 customers. The store lasted only about a month and a half as our careers just didn’t allow us to provide the customer service this site deserves. We also had a drop ship company that worked out really well, (and we still do if we want them). Much more work than our careers had time for. The logos are custom. I’ve got the logo in vector version for Signs and tee shirts. The Design is custom. All software front-ends are custom and running clean - open source applications. Runs extremely well.
The entire 2 sites run on a dedicated server that runs about $100 a month.. The sites run on a LAMP environment, meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of the software is open source and requires no fees. We run PHPLIST, Zen Cart, and SMF Simple Machines Forum. The blog is Word Press. The article system is completely custom however the back end panel is ran simple from phpMyAdmin – straight to the database.
I think there is enormous potential with the two sites as the brands have a very loyal following and is growing by leaps and bounds. It has been mentioned in 10 or so online and offline newspapers (that I am aware of) as well as a magazine – all of which will be provided. The site was featured as Yahoo’s Site of the Week. The site was forever (and perhaps still is) the number one pet site viewed on StumbleUpon.com. The blog also has 177 links from 56 sites according to Technorati.com and ranks 52,000. The database is huge. It’s full of fully owned content, images, customer data, subscriber data, members etc etc. The brand really sells when it comes to tee shirts and calendars. We have a drop shipper when needed that we buy tee’s at 4 dollars a shirt. Each shirt sold for $20 so there was a great margin.
The two sites have a solid existence and are trenched well into all the major search engines with perhaps thousands of first place results for keywords and keyword combinations. The majority of traffic is all organic from Google, Yahoo and MSN and it will stay that way forever. The site was built solidly by SEO pros with Search Engine Spiders in mind as every part of the site is search friendly. All pages have been correctly and lightly coded. The database powers the meta tags, title tags, h1’s, h2’s, image titles and bold tags. The site has tens of thousands of dollars put into the design and functionality.
petsite4sale@gmail.com
Meet Kim Kleeman - Shakespeare Squared: Named one of Inc.'s
- THIS IS PRETTY INTERESTING. WISH I'D THOUGHT OF IT FIRST!!!!
Meet Kim Kleeman: Shakespeare Squared: Named one of Inc.'s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America.
Recognized as one of Working Mother magazine's 25 Best Small Companies. Awarded the title of Illinois Family Business of the Year. Lofty accomplishments for company founder Kim Kleeman, a woman who just a few short years ago swore she would never own her own business!
Having grown up the child of business-owner parents, Kleeman knew well the stresses and demands that entrepreneurial life can place upon a family. She met her husband, Jay, on the first day of college, and together they earned their teaching degrees and started making plans for a modest but happy life. When Jay's stint as a student teacher strained the family budget, though, they both started doing subcontract work proofing elementary school textbooks. Before long, they were taking on bigger jobs and hiring other teachers to freelance on various projects, and from that point on, they never looked back.
In 2003, the couple founded Shakespeare Squared, an educational development company that employs an army of freelancers to write and edit materials such as textbooks, lesson plans, teacher guides, activity workbooks, and test-preparation materials. Initially a home-based business managed by Kim while Jay continued his work as a high school teacher, the company now has a full-time staff of 20 and is branching out in new directions, publishing its own materials and offering an educational editing certification process. In three years' time, the company has grown by an incredible 815 percent, bringing in $2.3 million in revenue last year.
What we learned from Kim: That the most incredible resource for launching might very well be your own friends and family. Kim started this business with her husband; her best friend since high school is her director of human resources; her sister is a remote project coordinator; her lawyer brother weighs in on various matters; her mom is a managing editor; and her parents are her de facto advisory board, with whom she meets every morning to share a cup of tea and conversation in their backyard.
Words of Wisdom
"Trust your instincts and empower your people."
From Teacher to Tycoon
"I don't know if I had a big 'aha' moment about starting a business; our growth was really organic. After my second child I immediately got pregnant with my third and there was no turning back, because we weren't going to be able to afford day care for two babies on two teachers' salaries. I had been working from home and continuously had one or two projects going, and I set a goal of having 10 projects running simultaneously. So after my son was born, I enacted my own guerilla marketing plan and e-mailed every editorial director at the big publishing companies, looking for projects. We soon landed our first big client, HarperCollins Children's Books."
Not About the Money
"I just wanted to make the best company that I could and be happy doing it. If that included millions of dollars, great, but that wasn't really the goal. I didn't know at first how much work we would end up getting, but I think the extensive classroom experience of our people sets us apart in this field. As teachers ourselves, we understand the needs of our clients and we deliver on that."
It Takes a Village
"We employ over 400 freelance writers. Most are former teachers but we pull from publishing, journalism, and other fields as well. We developed a writing test that covers everything from copyrighting to educational taboos, and prospective freelancers must earn at least a B+. A nice plus with our business is the opportunity we can offer teachers for life beyond teaching. I really promote teachers in the classroom, but if the classroom just isn't your thing and you're still passionate about education, there is a place for you here."
Those Who Can, Teach
"Educators in this country are getting a bad rap. We ask them to perform many roles and yet we're not supporting them as a society. Prospective teachers must student teach to become certified and are expected to not work while doing so, but there are so many people from diverse backgrounds who would love to teach-and who would be great teachers-who can't afford to do that. The Shakespeare Squared Foundation helps pay for prospective teachers to student teach. My passion is to get the right teachers in place, because that makes all the difference for students."
The Best and the Brightest
"It is definitely a challenge to find and retain the best talent, because I am up against large publishers. I have to provide a different culture and be creative in the way I offer benefits. We really believe in the work/life balance and offer such things as flex hours, remote work capabilities, and a working-parents room in the office. We've been recognized for these efforts, and because of them, our turnover is very low."
Networking 101
"You have to go into a networking situation with the idea in mind that there will be one person in the crowd who can make a difference to you, and you have to find that person. You may be talking to someone who makes shoelaces and has nothing in common with your business, but she may know someone in your field or know about an interesting business practice that could translate to your own. But the bottom line is that if it's not the right conversation, you politely cut it short and move on."
Strength in Numbers
"There is so much value in the process of incubating an idea with other women. I am always looking for women who are coming together creatively and collaboratively because things flow from it that you would never dream. When women support other women, we empower each other to take charge of our lives, whether by owning our own businesses or making a career change or making decisions about our families."
Best Advice
"I read in Working Mother magazine that women CEOs need to take the ability that they have in their work life to delegate responsibility and create a management team and apply that to their home life as well. So I really try to think of running my household the same way I run my business; whether it's cleaning ladies or repairmen, I find people I trust and have them take care of tasks that I don't need to spend time on. This has relieved a lot of guilt and allowed me to focus on the things that are really important."
Most Rewarding Moments
"Winning the Working Mother award as one of the 25 Best Small Companies felt pretty great because it showed that having a unique workplace does pay off. But even better is realizing that your message is getting across to your people. I love seeing quotes at my team's desks about goals and achieving your dreams, all of the exact things I say to empower them. It's cool to realize that there isn't a lot of cynicism, and that people are really buying into these ideas and making them their own."
Parting Thoughts ...
"My secret weapon is the news articles that I send to my team."
"I will retire when I have no more dreams to accomplish."
"I will always think of myself as a teacher."
"My greatest strength is my enthusiasm."
This featured lady was profiled by Noelle Pechar Hale, a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.
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