Build Business Profits

The media and government is taking the predictable “finger pointing” route in connection with the BP oil spill.  Screaming someone is surely to blame attracts attention to the publications and politicians screaming the loudest. Fingers point to BP and Obama.

BP accepts responsibility and has allocated $20 billion for the cleanup.  Citizens and politicians say Obama isn’t acting fast enough. Obama apologizes to no one, blames the MMS (Minerals Management Service) and appoints  Michael Bromwich as its new head.

What if this ecological disaster is actually no one’s fault. There is that strong  possibility. Recognize  that in spite of everyone’s best efforts, sometimes things fail.   Consider this excerpt from an article by Carl Hoffman explaining what most likely happened:

“No oil company wants to have a blowout and these companies spend vast sums of money and expertise to ensure that they never happen. But happen they do. If this was a blowout, it’s the first deep-water one in the Gulf of Mexico that I can think of. And for that to happen requires the perfect storm of scenarios.”

I totally support an independent investigation to confirm what really happened. There are two possible outcomes of such an investigation. First, all practical steps were taken to prevent this event and it still happened. Second, preventive measures were known and not implemented.

In the first case, we learn and get better. In the second case, there would be a violation of fiduciary responsibility and appropriate measures taken.

Related to investigations,  I am wondering what information on preventive measures was provided at the Board of Director’s level at BP.  This is a public company and Boards have very clear responsibility for asking the tough questions and getting answers.  At the government level, appointing a new head of the MMS now is interesting. Obama failed  to act following   two scathing reports on the MMS  by the Inspector General in recent years  (See full article by the  The Washington Post ) What if the MMS was operating as intended?  Would the BP Oil Spill have been prevented?

I am a major advocate of a system of accountability in business and government. The media is accountable for accurate reporting. Citizens are accountable for holding  government responsible for upholding the values of our constitution.  All of us are owed accurate information as to what happened and what steps are being taken now to minimize the risk.  The problem with the finger pointing culture is that the truth can be obscured or even ignored. That would be the ultimate disaster.

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

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Facebook

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MySpace

727-587-7871

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About: Steve Pohlit CPA,MBA has been the CFO and COO of  major domestic and international companies.  Steve has extensive business ownership experience having purchased and started off line and on line businesses.  Steve offers his  business building experience to companies and entrepreneurs with business coaching and business consulting.  His  focus is on building business  profits and net asset value at above average rates.   All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

I have been testing a simplified tool for moving business forward fast and it is working very well. I use it and all of my clients are using this. It is easy to describe and free.

This tool is linked to the business evaluation and resulting business planning process that are the front end steps of every coaching and consulting client.  In summary we arrive at a  very clear definition of the client’s business and target market. Now if your reaction to that first step is that everyone in business knows the definition of their business and target market, then next time you have a chance ask them and ask them to explain it in less than 30 seconds.

That one exercise usually takes most people between 2 and 8 hours to master and some actually never get it as they really cannot decide what business they are in. There are clients where I have had to define their business, target market and business goals otherwise we would not have been able to move forward.  Regarding business goals, I am mostly interested in measurable goals starting with financial performance and liquidity optimization.  Once there is agreement on the financial targets then we can move to the next steps which are designed to define the key actions that are needed to achieve the financial goals.

The end game of all this is the tool that is the topic of this article. Using a Google Doc which can be shared, a Top 5 doc  is created. The top part is labeled “Todays Date Top 5″  This list the five most important things that need to be accomplished today in order to achieve the financial target. The profit goals you have set this year are met or not by what you act on today. Those five action steps should be ones directed on completing profitable transactions that will achieve your profit plan.

I have been using the Top 5 System for about 2 months now and having all my clients implement it as the results are so powerful. There are two reasons for these successes:  First the Top 5 System means you are focused on precisely what is most important.  Second I am now implementing an accountability process where each client is required to share their top five with a person they are working with who could be their business partner, spouse or another in the business. They are also required to share their daily Top Five with me while the coaching or consulting engagement is active.

The following video demonstrated the basics of getting started.  The video starts right in at the screed for setting up a Google Gmail account. The start page can be found at mail.google.com

Steve Pohlit

Managing Director
Top 1 Coaching, Consulting
JT Foxx Organization

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

Twitter

Facebook

Linked in

MySpace

727-587-7871

Email

About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is The Managing Director of  Top 1 Coaching/Consulting of  The JT Foxx Organization. He is  an expert business coach and consultant focused on building massive business  profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing.  All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

The Headline Reads: Retailers Report Weak Sales For August (Click For The Story) Then highlight is:

“Industrywide, same-store sales fell for a 12th straight month — highlighting the woes retailers have been under as consumer spending continues to decline.”

Then there is discussion as to what will happen this holiday season as well as the impact of the clunker program. This is followed by reports of what key public companies in the retail industry reported. Remember there is a lot that is not reported. Also remember, economic recovery is driven by consumer spending and there is little evidence that is strengthening.

The point made that I commented on was that going forward the monthly same store comparisons will look better because you are comparing against increasingly weak numbers from last year as retailers tanked in the fall of 2008. Here is what I wrote:

The comparison may show less dramatic declines and even a greater number of positive percentages when current year sales are compared against months last year when retailers began to experience sharp declines. Those may be feel good metrics. However, the key is what are the volumes and margins that are planned in connection with an acceptable profit plan and how are actual revenue and profits doing against that?

Typically that information is a bit more difficult to extract. The well run retailers have a profit plan by location that is based on category proformas. The key is to be profitable at each location and in each category within that location. I still see very little advancement in the use of direct response marketing and social media marketing. Tools and technology that have been readily available and proven to work for quite some time.

There is a lot of the “same ol same ol” and that is not going to work in an economic climate likely to be very soft for quite awhile.

Steve Pohlit
http://newdigitalmediainc.com
http://stevepohlit.com

How To Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

The tools available to market products and services are numberous. Direct response marketing, Internet marketing, brand awareness campaigns and more are all labels for marketing programs. In every case, the goal is the same…increase revenue and profits.

My experience working with companies to grow profits is extensive. (Click Here for my resume)  I have developed my views on marketing from actual experience implementing programs, monitoring the results and continuously testing ideas to improve response rates and profitability. Social media is phrase representing an ever increasing number of places people congregate. Social media marketing is just that..marketing to people using social media sites.

There are a number of credible people holding seminars, selling courses and offering consulting on how to do social media marketing. My recommendation to business is to  focus on your business.  My company will build your social media network and I will work with you to develop and implement your social media marketing program. These are two very distinctly separate tasks.

How we build a social media network  is based on my actual results in developing several of my own business ventures and providing  these services to clients. I have personally done the social media work staring February 2008 .  Since that time I completed the detailed steps. I will highlightsome of them in this article. From this experiience I  recommend what steps you should leverage to others and the tools I feel are a must have for developing your network. This is for people very serious about using social media as a business building tool.

Key Marketing Principle Reviewed

Marketing is primarily about attracting traffic to your offer and converting that traffic to customers. Many know this. Most ignore it. I never ignore it. For clarification it is not just any traffic but relevant traffic. What does relevant traffic mean? It means people already interested in what it is you have to offer.

The late Gary Halbert said if you are selling hamburgers, he would rather have a starving crowd than all the positioning of signs, building, location and all of the other things we normally address in marketing a physical product like hamburgers. It is every marketer’s dream to have a starving crowd. I am no different. The starving crowd is not right outside my door. I need to find them and so do you.

The Cloud

My view of the cloud is simply an image of all the people using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. So when I use the phrase the cloud that is what I mean.

The Goal

Return on investment in time and money is the goal. Sure I work on projects and products where I have expertise and interest. Sure I do things out of curiosity without having any monetization objective, but most of what I do is to drive profitable revenue doing business where I have a high personal interest.  When I do this well, I am compensated by the marketplace for providing value. For me spending time on what I enjoy is not work. However, unless there is income flow, my enjoyment of a an area of personal interest is going to expire. Having said that I wil encourage you to make sure your attention span is long enough to allow your business to develop.

To achieve the monetization goal I am  developing as large a portion of the cloud as possible that I can reach. I then continuously send messages intended to invite people I am reaching to consider my offer. Related to this goal is my objective to at also have as many people as possible give me their contact information. That action  tells me  there is some level of interest in what I am offering. For those experienced marketers reading this I am not sending out selling messages. All of the messages are indirect intended to create an interest in wanting more information. Many flavors of messages are used and I am always developing new ones to test.

The Specifics

The work is done by my company New Digital Media, Inc. I work with all clients directly. When the scope of the work is defined some of the tasks that I previously have done personally are leveraged. The staff working wih me is very experienced and they actually develop their own network which I encourage. We share social media network growth tips.

Our primary focus is on growing Twitter and Facebook accounts. Within Facebook we work with client  to grow freinds and when friends are at a certain level we build a targeted group. As  a  group is being built we implement a messaging strategy to the group. We are gradually expanding our focus into several other social media sites. However, for now Twitter and Facebook is out primary focus.

The goal of the network is to drive interested people to a landing page or a product sales page. As appropriate, we advocate the destination to be a blog article.  As articles are added they serve as desitinations for new messages to the network. In certain cases we will promote a client through our own network which is quite large.

We use a combination of tools to assist us in growing accounts. Most of these tools are used with Twitter. There are no automation tools we use to grow Facebook friends and groups. We use an automation tool to assist us with posting messages to Twitter and Facebook. This tool has the capability to post messages to LinkedIn, MySpace and more.  The primary tools we use and recommend if you are doing this work yourself are:

Hummingbird for growing Twiter followers

Tweet Later – message management

Tweep

Instant Capture Pages

Autoresponder – Aweber

Web Hosting – Host Gator

Each person in the company uses at least two computers. It is not practical to run our automation tools and do our other work on one machine. This can be done but it will affect productivity by at least 50%.

Effectiveness

The following Twitter accounts were developed in six weeks. digialmediabiz 9735 followers. buildprofits 8694 followers So those are a couple examples of  accounts growing.

Size of our total network – very large

On Facebook we grew the group Deliberate Creation to over 2,500 members in three weeks.  This happens to be a very niche market and we were very pleased with how rapidly this developed.

Return on Investment – we have numerous success stories for ourselves and for clients.  However, it has taken quite awhile to systematize what works. Additionally, we are constantly monitoring the rules of the social media sites as they can change and we want to be in compliance.  For these reasons, I highly recommend looking at our company to help you grow your network which allows  you to focus on growing your business.

Based on Twitter’s current algorithms we can build an account to 10,000 followers in about two months. Facebook has a limit of 5000 friends and it can take 6 months or longer to hit that level. Remember once built, these assets are in place for multiple  purposes.

Personally my network is used to market consulting services, New Digital Media  and several other ventures. I noticed the most significant improvement in what we do once I developed  a laser beam focus on our objective and finding the right staff. Both are in place. The difference between my company and most of the people who are experienced, is we do it for you and hand over the results. Along the way we teach  you so you are in a position to continue the process or have us continue. If you are a large company, I will teach your in-house staff how to do this.

Fees and Referrals

Our fees are quoted for each client. I pay referral fees that average 15% of fees collected. This percentage varies depending on the scope of work performed. Currently we have capacity for a limited number of clients.  With the marketing we are now doing to create awareness of our services, the door for new clients may close quickly. If you are thinking about working with us, I suggest you contact me now.

Contact Information

Steve Pohlit, President
New Digital Media, Inc.
727-587-7871
Email

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit

FREE Report:
How To Increase Business Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less

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About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is business owner and an expert business consultant, direct response and social media marketing  and social networking security expert . Steve is  focused on helping companies improve their business performance. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

“MR. PRESIDENT WILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GIVE UP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH CARE PROGRAM AND JOIN THE NEW ‘UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM’ THAT THE REST OF US WILL BE ON ????”….. (BET YOU ALREADY KNOW THE ANSWER)…

THERE WAS A STONEY SILENCE AS OBAMA IGNORED THE QUESTION AND CHOSE NOT TO ANSWER IT !!!…

IN ADDITION, A NUMBER OF SENATORS WERE ASKED T HE SAME QUESTION AND THERE RESPONSE WAS…”WE WILL THINK ABOUT IT.”
AND THEY DID. IT WAS ANNOUNCED TODAY ON THE NEWS THAT THE “KENNEDY HEALTH CARE BILL”WAS WRITTEN INTO THE NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM INITIATIVE ENSURING THAT THAT CONGRESS WILL BE 100% EXEMPT !

SO, THIS GREAT NEW HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND I… IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR OBAMA, HIS FAMILY OR CONGRESS…??
WE (THE AMERICAN PUBLIC) NEED TO STOP THIS PROPOSED DEBACLE ASAP !!!!… THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG !!!!!