One of the funner things about working at PFL is getting to see the creative things people will do to make a living.

This week I spoke with Tracy Travaille in Carmel, CA. (Rough place to have to work…not.) Her company Travaille Transactions helps realtors serve their customers by coordinating the 101 details that must happen before a home sale can close. She orders inspections and appraisals, bird-dogs lenders, and keeps all the paperwork organized. This allows her realtor customers to spend their time getting listings and selling properties, rather than being mired in minutiae. It also assures on-time closings, a lifesaver for all concerned.

Who would have thought you could build a business on such a niche?

If you have a unique or quirky business model, drop us a line. We’d love to hear about it.

This post may be a bit here and there, so please bear with me. At Printingforless.com, we have a lot of dog owners, dog lovers and dogs running around the office. Everything from a Dachshund to a Corgie, a gigantic Malamute and several Labrador Retrievers, an Australian Shepard, Boston Terrier, and small fuzzy dogs, just to name a few.

We also have our very own dog trainer and dog agility course competitor, Maria. She has been with the company for years, and is a great employee. She is also a fantastic dog agility trainer, and has won many awards for her work; the tons of ribbons, trophies, etc attest to that.

But one of the best parts about Maria is her sense of humor–regardless if it is something obviously funny, or even when it is aimed at herself. She was kind enough to show a few of us a recent video of her at a dog agility competition. Needless to say, agility may not have been top of mind that day for her or the dog, but good old fashioned funny sure was. Please enjoy this short video, and have a good laugh today.

Almost every small to medium sized has focused a great deal of energy lately on just staying in business. Recessions, layoffs and health care seem to dominate every discussion. However, things are changing. Smart companies are rebuilding and upgrading their work forces with the wealth of talent that is currently available. So how do you get your share? No matter what the size, every company in America claims that it hires only the best. Unfortunately, most don’t.

Our company has attracted over 140 technology employees to Livingston, Montana by focusing on three key things:

Key 1: Enforce a top down philosophy of recruiting, hiring and retaining only the best. In today’s world most goods and services are viewed as commodities. All levels of your organization must understand that having the best employees is what separates you from your competition. If any manager in your organization thinks that just any warm body will do you have a problem.

Key 2: Create organizational alignment with regard to hiring criteria. If you don’t know what you are looking for, how can you find it? Get your key people together and make sure you all identify and agree upon hiring criteria. You will be amazed what a difference it can make when everyone agrees what qualities make a great employee for your company.

Key 3: Develop and adhere to processes to ensure that only the best are hired. You can’t just hire from the gut – no one is that good. Develop and adhere to a process from the first contact through the offer letter and beyond to make sure you get only the best, every time.

Big or small, three steps are all it takes to get the employees you need to succeed in hiring the best in any economic environment.

When the sun is out, and the rivers are raging, there’s nothing like a white water raft trip on the Yellowstone River in Montana. It’s definitely a faster trip with the volume of water flowing due to spring runoff we are experiencing, and the high-water really adds to the fun.

We just did our 2010 PFL raft trip down the mighty Yellowstone. Thanks to one of our fantastic printing customers – Wild West Whitewater Rafting, in Gardiner, MT, our trips are pretty cost effective too. We do a ‘trade’ every year – we print their brochures and hotel rack cards in exchange for a few guided boats on the river.

Wild West has some wonderful river guides that make the trip even more enjoyable – they’ve got some great personalities that really add to the fun.

If you’re ever in the Yellowstone area, definitely give Wild West a try. The trips are very affordable and they are well worth every penny. I should also mention they do horseback rides too. Maybe PFL will do a company trail ride next year…how many horses would we need…

I had the pleasure recently of participating in the annual retreat for one of Printingforless.com’s customers, the Assisting Hands Franchise system.  Each year franchisees from all over the country come together to discuss their business, share strategies, introduce new initiatives, and enjoy each other’s company. What struck me about this retreat and the organization itself was two things:

First, how incredibly important it is to take time out of the busy life of running a business and spend time focusing on how to make the business better. Throughout the retreat, franchisees came together to discuss important strategies for growing their business and shared best practices to help each other succeed.

The second point was the overwhelming sense of family that was shared among the participants.  Sharing activities from horseback riding to whitewater rafting, they worked together as one big team and treated me, a vendor to their organization, as if I was a part of that team.  I was reminded by their generosity and fun-loving spirit that business doesn’t always have to be about business to be beneficial at an event like this. 

Thanks to Assisting Hands for inviting me to be part of the experience and the reminder of the real meaning of running a business—the people.

I work in a small town in Montana that has struggled for years to solve the problem of “economic development.” It seems like everyone wants to talk about the issue as if it is something you can magically solve with more meetings, focus groups or quasi-governmental agencies. I disagree. It is the jobs, stupid. Create more jobs and the concept of “economic development” goes away. Jobs give people money, money gives people economic freedom. That is what economic development looks like to me.

Throughout the history of the United States job creation in mass has come from a few key areas. One solution has been to go to war. During World War II for example, 17 million jobs were created (it effectively ended the great depression). However, I’m doubtful I can convince our small town to invade the next town over as a job creation tactic.

Another solution has been to spend money on infrastructure. Our federal government is currently spending boatloads of money to stimulate the economy and job growth. I hate to be a downer but the last major study of Federal Highway funding (2004) showed that the equivalent of 34,000 jobs were created by a $9 billion expenditure (about $264,000 per job). Not a great return on an investment in my book and I am doubtful our town wants to borrow $26.4 million to create 100 jobs.

The best solution to job creation has historically been small businesses. Small businesses have created 60 – 80% of all the new jobs in this country over the past 30 years. If that is still the case (I have no evidence to the contrary), why don’t we focus on creating an environment that encourages small business job growth? That environment to me would include lower taxes, less regulation of business and better access to capital for people who want to start or expand businesses. While not revolutionary ideas, they certainly seem out of favor now.

So I think I will stop engaging in the endless loop of discussion about “economic development” and start trying to convince my small corner of the world to create an environment favorable to job creation. To me, it’s the jobs (stupid).

How do you actually get your Web site ranked high in search engines? The answer is quite simple, but getting there requires real work.

With the basics in mind, here are 5 SEO tips that will help you get “found”.

1. Choose the right page titles
Your page title is probably the single most important on-page SEO factor. Page titles should contain your target keywords and be relevant to the content on the page. Also make sure they are as specific as possible.  

2. Be smart about URLs
Avoid long, elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While most search engines can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if possible. Search engines typically reward short, static, clean URLs containing important keywords.

3. Leverage your PR program
If you have a public relations program in place at your company, there are two things you need to do for SEO. First, optimize all of your press releases for SEO by adding links into your releases that lead back to your web site. Secondly, make sure all online media mentions and articles link back to your site. You would be surprised how many journalists do not automatically link to companies they write about, so don’t be afraid to ask!

For bonus points use hyperlinked text with keywords relevant to your business as the link, not just the URL. The search engines target these keywords for added clues about the topic of your web site. Also including your links through services such as PR Web can help you get hundreds of targeted links overnight.

4. Use Social Media
Social media programs like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are excellent platforms for promoting interesting blog articles or other content about your company, because other bloggers and writers might write about your company and link back to your content. They key is to find online communities, groups, blogs, and networks where your audience congregates, start listening and join in the mix.

5. Create Great Content
The quality of content itself is often overlooked, but its’ importance cannot be overstated. The descriptive nature of headlines, the accuracy of information and the value of content all factor highly into a site’s likelihood to retain visitors and gain links.

Why Should a Search Engine Rank Your Site Above all the others in its Field?

If you cannot answer this question clearly, the task of ranking higher will be more difficult; but don’t despair, it is not impossible. Search engines attempt to rank the very best sites with the most relevant content first in their results, and until your site’s content is the best in its field, you will always struggle against the engines rather than bringing them to your doorstep.

It is in content quality that a site’s true potential shines, and although search engines cannot measure the likelihood that users will enjoy a site, the vote via links system operates as an alternative for identifying the best content in a market. Great content generates great links which will ultimately result in high rankings. By taking the time to work through these steps, you will be that much closer to moving your business to the top.

Last week we installed the single biggest and most complex systems change in the history of PrintingForLess.com, revamping some of the very core of our internal systems.  The change represented well over 10,000 hours of work from a number of team members and the change went very smoothly, thankfully.
 
But that success wasn’t luck.  It was thanks to a concerted effort.  One focused on a Deming cycle (www.pfl.com/PDCA) like approach – Plan, Do, Check, Act. 
 
As small business people, we all know that the majority of business fail, with only 66% making it past their two year anniversary.  But do we all know and understand the reasons why small businesses fail?  It is commonly published that there are six core reasons businesses fail and many of these can be linked to two things: planning (e.g. understanding and managing your capital needs) and execution.
 
In this way, small business failure is like project failure, where no matter how hard people work on a project, it is doomed to failure if not adequately planned (e.g. poorly understood user requirements) or poorly executed (e.g. unclear communications). 
 
But why is this?  I’d like to argue that it is because small business is like a project.  Why?  Well, one popular definition of a project is that it is a temporary endeavor to bring about beneficial change for a unique opportunity.  It is contrasted with business operations which are repetitive and permanent processes that deliver a product or service.  See more at www.pfl.com/Project
 
Which of these sounds like your business?  I’m guessing it is the one where things are changing fast and not quite defined.  This is why it is so important to have a plan and execute on it, while maintaining flexibility to react to opportunities (just like a project is forced to react to unforeseen circumstances). 
 
Want your business to get better?  Start focusing on your projects as a mini-version of your business.  As your “little things” start to get better, your “big things” will too.

As a customer-centric company, Printingforless.com is always on the lookout for other businesses that are creating remarkable experiences for their clients. Recently, our Fed Ex rep Mary blew us away by going above and beyond for PFL to make sure we were able to meet a customer’s deadline.
After experiencing an unforeseen software snafu, PFL labeled more than 200 packages incorrectly before sending them off. Mary took the initiative to call in temporary help at 6:00 pm to help re-print and re-label the boxes (twice!). Then she manually looked up each individual order to obtain tracking numbers for every package. Her tenacity and commitment to customer satisfaction allowed us to meet our deadline and better serve our customers. To express our gratitude, we sent Mary a big bouquet of flowers and bought pizza for her entire crew—which they earned many times over.
The lesson: treat the customer right and everybody wins!

Read this article from American Express Open Small Business for 10 other examples of shockingly-excellent customer service. Got one to add to the list? We’d love to hear about it!

Zip Self Storage in Ridgecrest, CA asked us to help them put together a postcard. The subject was everyone’s Spring favorite: getting organized. They faxed us an idea for a single-sided postcard.

We thought that they would get a better response by printing on both sides of the postcard, so we found an eye-catching image and made this:

When we have a customer needing major design work, we refer them to a PFL customer in their area who is a professional graphic designer. But it can be a lot of fun to whip something up on the fly!

Need a referral? Give us a call. We have thousands of graphic designers as customers, in every state in the country.