Tomorrow is Earth Day, a day designed to create awareness for the Earth’s natural environment. So, what are you going to do to “celebrate” it, and do something good for the place you call home? Being in Montana, the environment, nature and wilderness are important parts of my life, as well as many of my co-workers–we hike, ski, fish, hunt, bike, paddle and live outdoors when we can. So, here are a few easy things we can all do (and that I will attempt to do) tomorrow, as well as next week, month and year.

• It is Spring time. The weather is nice. Park your car! Walk to the store, or just walk because it is good for you, and save some gas and wear and tear on your vehicle. Don’t forget about the bike, either.
• Pay your bills, but do it paperless. Go online. Save time, too, and never worry about something getting lost in the mail. Just remember to shut off your computer and monitor when you are done!
• Recycle. We have all heard this before, but just do it. Cut out the majority of your trash by separating the recyclable stuff. Five minutes a week doing this goes a long ways.
• Go local. Find out where your farmer’s market are located, and use them. No really, buy some veggies with a little dirt on them, maybe a big grass fed steak, and get to know the people who are helping you eat better. A few just might be your neighbors.
• Listen to your parents. Growing up, my dad reminded me countless times to “turn off the lights!”. OK, we are all grown-up now. Let’s actually listen to our parents. When you leave a room, or the house, turn off all the lights. ALL OF THEM.
• The Green Wallet. Support eco-friendly companies, products made from minimal or recycled packaging, and make your dollars support the green that does some good.

While there are countless ways to “do some good” on Earth Day, don’t just think about doing them tomorrow, then go right back to the rut of how you always do it. Try to adopt one or two ways you can make a difference, and as my wise father always reminds me, leave it a little better than you found it.

In today’s economy, you have either been directly affected by a Reduction in Force (RIF) or know someone who has been. Leaders of organizations, both large and small, who have had to make those tough decisions (because let’s face it, nobody goes into business in order lay people off) also have to deal with the inevitable feelings of doubt and insecurity from their remaining workforce.

 Doubt and insecurity reduce the effectiveness of your staff at the exact moment you need them to be at their most productive. If not managed well, this can turn into a spiraling vortex of badness that ends up exacerbating the exact thing a RIF was supposed to prevent.

 In my humble opinion, there is no use trying to spin a lay off. It’s a bad thing. It should be treated with the respect it deserves and trying to twist it into something it’s not is, frankly, disingenuous. However, showing your employees exactly what they can do to keep the company moving forward can be powerfully engaging but it requires information.

 The key to managing this change can be summed up in one word: Access. The last thing leaders should do in situations like this is keep the secret sauce to themselves.

 The employees who are still with you will, certainly, feel grateful for still having a job, but, more importantly, will want to know exactly what they need to do to make sure the company meets its short-term and mid-range goals.

 Give your employees a number to strive for – X amount in dollars in revenue everyday, Y amount of widgets produced each week. In whatever way you measure the success of your company, be sure your employees know what they need to do to hit those goals. And then do one more very important thing. Open the books.

 Opening the books is an incredibly powerful engagement technique. Let your people know how things are going – daily. Good or bad. It will instill ownership, buy-in, and leadership among your employees so the effects of a RIF are quickly mitigated and you get the best out of your people when you need them the most.

Today we get to celebrate a big birthday and milestone: Printingforless.com turns 10! (And, for those who know him, our very own Boyd Badten, here from the beginning, celebrates a birthday of his own, and a bit more than 10 years old…)

Here are a few interesting facts about Printingforless.com:

-we went online on March 4, 1999
-our first office was an old creamery
-we were America’s first online printing company
-we use 100% wind energy
-at any given time, there are approximately a dozen dogs roaming the halls of Printingforless.com
-we have 70,000 customers…and counting!
-we have a great onsite daycare for our employees’ kids right upstairs
-antelope are frequent visitors outside our building
-listed as one of Inc. 500s fastest growing companies three years in a row

In this tough economic climate, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the gloom and doom. We have to look for and celebrate the good things that we see and experience in our businesses each and every day. And for Printingforless.com, hitting the ten year mark of helping our customers be more successful as they define it is one of those moments! Cheers.

As markets tumble out of control you may be wondering, what can I do to turn the tide? 

 If my experience in customer service here at PrintingForLess.com has taught me anything it is that referrals are the life-blood of small to medium businesses.  As much as 40% of our own new customers are a product of a referral.  This is the way to success for small to medium businesses and a step toward climbing out of the economic downturn.

 John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, has come up with an immense idea that will allow individuals and small business owners around the country to take the matter of economic stimulus into their own hands.

 The idea is Make a Referral Week: A Small Business Stimulus Program.  It is a simple yet brilliant idea focused on driving referrals to small businesses around the country.  This event will take place March 9-13, 2009 and has a goal of 1000 referred leads to 1000 small businesses.  This virtual event will also feature daily education programs provided by a variety of marketing experts.  Individuals are encouraged to make at least one referral during the week and then record the details of the referral on http://www.makeareferralweek.com/.

 You can click on the image below to find out more about referral week and to make your pledge to participate.

 I am excited to participate in this event and thrilled about a week devoted to supporting the back-bone of the American economy, small-businesses.  We can make a difference.

I’m a big believer in “first who, then what.” (From the wonderful book Good to Great) This means that having great people in place is more important than having a super-duper strategy. Why? If you have a great strategy but you don’t have the people who can execute on that strategy, you’re out of luck. But if you have great people and a lousy strategy, your people will fix the strategy, then execute it superbly!

There are zillions of books and courses on how to hire and keep great people. At PFL, we have our own systems for making sure that we attract, hire, retain, and promote only high performers. But it has taken us many years to develop our people processes.

If you want the short version, check out marketing guru Seth Godin’s post on “Sheepwalking” for the best summary I’ve ever seen on a great people philosophy.

Seth Godin is a brilliant marketing guy who says the best marketing is to deliver a great product/service, then let your happy customers be your marketing force. I generally like his viewpoint. It was Seth’s talk in Dallas that lead us to combine two of his concepts into an important PFL focus: “Create Remarkable Interactions!”

This post is amazing, and it captures PFL’s people philosophy perfectly: Hire great people, and don’t ask them to be sheep! In fact, don’t let them act like sheep!!

Excerpts:
I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a braindead job and enough fear to keep them in line.
………
The biggest step, though, comes from anyone who teaches or hires. And that’s to embrace non-sheep behavior, to reward it and cherish it. As we’ve seen just about everywhere there’s been growth lately, that’s where the good stuff happens.

I’ve been focusing a lot on sales and sales training lately and sales in the 21st Century is full of old school techniques where face-to-face is back and a hand-shake-is-bond mentality is more than just a passing fad. 

In my research for upcoming sales training a quote jumped out at me, “In today’s economy, it’s getting harder to find new clients, but it’s easier than ever to lose the ones you’ve got.” While not necessarily a revelation, I thought it drove home a really great point … establishing solid business relationships and, more importantly, constantly cultivating them, is the key ongoing success. 

I’m not a sales professional. I’ve never aspired to be one. In fact the quote that always comes to mind for me when thinking about sales is from Say Anything. When asked what he wants to do with his life, John Cusack’s character says (paraphrasing) “I know what I don’t want to do, sir. I don’t want to buy anything, sell anything, or process anything. I don’t want to buy anything sold or processed, sell anything processed or bought or process anything bought or sold.” 

While sales has a mixed-bag reputation full of used cars, vacuums, and pressure, the fact of the matter is that the exchange of goods and services for money is what keeps our economy running and sales professionals are a big part of that engine. 

A sales professional, though often measured, in part, by closings knows that the key to success is long-term, repeat business. 21^st Century sales professionals know that the way to get that business is through establishing and maintaining business relationships. Developing a partnering relationship with your clients where the focus becomes each other’s mutual success takes your customer off the market and ensures that you’re selling your products and services at your price.

As you may recall, I recently did several posts on the subject of custom printing techniques.  In those posts I listed several common printing effects that you can use to add something special to your marketing materials.

Recently, PrintingForLess.com unveiled their new Special Printing Effects piece, which provides an excellent example of all of the techniques I discussed earlier.  This piece is beautifully designed and includes everything from die cutting to foil stamping.  My personal favorite is the sculpted embossed butterfly which provides a wonderful example of a highly detailed embossing technique.

The other benefit to this piece is that it provides all of these examples in comparison with the standard 4-color printing process.  This allows you to see the differences you can expect when using custom techniques in place of, or in combination with, standard 4-color process.

Although you can view images of the piece online, the only way to get the full impact of this piece is to see the physical sample.

You can request one here:

http://www.printingforless.com/samplesrequest.html

Once again, these techniques can be invaluable in creating a stand-out piece and this set of examples can be used to get the ideas flowing.

Doug Fletcher found fly fishing, or more appropriately, fly fishing found him. And it changed his life’s direction.

In 1996 he and his wife left Atlanta, a high paying job, security and a safe career path for Montana, blue ribbon trout streams, mountains and a large measure of uncertainty. The momentum behind this big move was a long trip to Montana after grad school two years earlier, backpacking and travelling, and of course fly fishing, thoroughly enjoying all things Montana has to offer.
This exposure to the Big Sky state and the quality of life he witnessed helped him make up his mind. “It was a huge imbalance with life”, Doug recalls, referring to what Atlanta and his current career path did NOT give him. The couple made up their minds. It was time to jump…

In 1996, after grad school and several years in the corporate grind, Doug found himself in Bozeman, Montana, more or less “chronically underemployed” and looking for his niche and direction. One observation he had at the time was the successful people in town were all small business owners-beverage distributors, a high quality shoe and boot maker, some real estate. They were the familiar fixtures in the community, worked hard, and had carved their own place in the area and were flourishing. This was all Doug needed to realize his own direction-his instinct from his early twenties kicked in-being your own boss is the answer. The soon to be entrepreneur had to step up.

Fast forward to today after a decade in business, Doug Fletcher and North Star Consulting Group is recognized as a leader in the field of global, web-based market and organizational research. This includes projects for employee and client satisfaction surveys as well as comprehensive employee performance evaluations.

I sat down with Doug over a burger and beers to pick his brain, and see what an entrepreneurial Montana transplant has to say about success, the prospect of failure, stick-to-itiveness and fly fishing.

Q: What brought you to Montana?

Doug Fletcher:

“Believe it or not, fly fishing. While I had ‘the Life’ in Atlanta, a house, good job, the right choice it appeared on the surface, but it was not what I truly wanted. After grad school during the summer, my wife and I packed up and headed west to travel, explore and fish in Montana, before my job started in Atlanta. And that was it. When I got back I realized that there was a huge imbalance with my life, and I couldn’t do the things I really wanted to do there [Atlanta]. Fly fishing was part of it, sure, but it was just one thing that represented the quality of life I wanted. When we finally decided it was time to quit, pack it up and move, we were bound and determined to make it work-we had to. And, by the way, I did manage to fit in 100 days of fishing that year!”

Q: How did North Star Consulting come about?

DF: “At an early age, maybe in my twenties, I decided that I wanted to pursue an entrepreneurial life-corporate life was not my bag. So, after realizing that the successful people in the area were their own bosses, I collaborated with two friends, kicked in a little money, made some contacts, and the company was born in 1998-with $7500 between the three of us.”

Q: What does North Star Consulting do?

DF: “North Star evolved into a company that helps other companies and corporations do employee surveys, customer surveys, and recently with our release of Rave Review, performance evaluations for professional HR infrastructures. Our clients are small to medium sized businesses, and we are internet based, using proprietary software. With regard to clients, we do not advertise. We built our business in the early days through networking on a national basis and once we got a critical mass of clients, we have grown via repeat business, organic growth with existing customers and word of mouth.”

Q: What in your view are some of the pros and cons of living and working in Montana?

DF: “To a certain degree, starting from scratch in more traditional jobs in Montana can be an uphill battle-prohibitive transportation costs, small, widely dispersed population, difficulty in moving a lot of goods-all make for a complex go of it. Being web-based with a low cost structure has given us the freedom to be national and worldwide. Additionally, Montana has a wealth of talented people, with a very good knowledge base. The ‘white collar’ population is strong here.”

Q: Who is your competition? How do you differentiate?

DF: “We really have two levels of competition. There is the lower end, quick-hit inexpensive DIY sites and the very large, corporate agencies. Both serve a good purpose; the low-end services are great for college students, non-profits, highly bootstrapped start-ups. Then there are the larger ones that we occasionally compete with. But our advantage over them is twofold: one, when you call us, more than likely you are speaking with me or one other person-the level of service is highly personalized and dedicated. Secondly, we are fast. Many times I can be on a call with a client, have a proposal by the afternoon, and be rolling on a project the next day if need be. That is difficult to do with a much larger company, and that is not the business plan or value of lower end sites.”

Q: What are you doing, or will be doing, to weather the current economic climate?

DF: “We are maintaining a low cost structure, we have low overhead, and we are small enough to be nimble-we can change as we need to, so as to ride out anything that comes at us.”

Q: What are some of your personal goals you have set for yourself and your company?
DF: “My short term goals, say in the next 12 months, are growth related. We are not worried about survival of the company; it is in a good place. But, we won’t be able to probably grow it like we did the previous 5 years at a rate of 10-15%. I want to keep it level. From a long term view, the key is diversification. Too much of the company in ‘one big egg and two small eggs’ can be risky; I want to get more of the company in more places.
My personal goal is to train the next generation of senior management. This is two-part: one, to groom good new managers who our clients will see as competent, and really just an extension of me, and the company, and to get someone in place to eventually transition into my role.”

Q: What is your advice to new entrepreneurs looking to strike out on their own?

DF: “My advice to anyone looking to go out on their own and be their own boss is pretty straightforward. First, take a long, hard look your personal strengths and weaknesses. And don’t just trust your own opinion-talk to others, people you respect, who can give it to you straight. Second, be very honest and conservative with your financial resources-we started North Star with $7500, and in the last 10 years, we have done roughly $5 million in revenue, with 2 full time employees and 2 part time. If you drain all your resources to get it going, or go way beyond your means There is no such thing as an overnight success-you hear about the story of Google and the like, but that is not the norm. It takes consistency and that day-to-day presence in the market. Additionally, whether you call it luck, good timing or opportunity, every start-up will get that chance, that time at bat where you will get a shot. The trick is to make it work, recognize the opportunity, and start climbing up.

I think about what it took to get North Star off the ground and start being successful, and really it was like ‘burning the ship’. The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez would literally burn his ships upon entering uncharted territory, thereby making it essentially impossible to just turn back and head to safe ground. They had one direction to go-forward. That is how I viewed it. There was no safety net, no deep pockets-I felt I had to succeed, and I would.”

Doug Fletcher, 42, is the co-founder and CEO of North Star Consulting Group. He is an avid (you guessed it) fly fisher, bowhunter, traveler, runner and trains and competes in triathlons whenever he can. He has completed an Ironman, the Bridger Ridge Run (more than once), and completed a (nearly) cross-country solo bike trip, from southeastern United States to Montana. He and his wife, Brigitte, have two children and make their home in Bozeman, Montana.

I am sure we have all heard that print marketing is going the way of the dinosaur and that email and web marketing is the wave of the future. I recently had an experience that led me to believe that this couldn’t be further from the truth. The impact of print marketing and advertising has the ability to affect the viewer in a more real and tangible way than dancing babies or fancy flash programs ever could.

I, like many moms, receive a varied collection of parenting magazines each month. Each of these magazines has the usual articles mingled lightly among the boundless print ads. As I am sure is the case with many magazine readers, I have become somewhat immune to these ads, and, with few exceptions, my brain passes over them without a thought. But in a recent magazine one marketing insert made a lasting impact on me.

It was for a simple product, tissue. The full four page insert was similar to other magazine inserts at first (although the paper quality was outstanding). But when I opened it up, the ad showed a picture of a full size tissue box with a hole in the top and a sample of the tissue popping out. The sample, also printed, invited me to feel the softness of the product. I was able to pull out the piece and make use of the product immediately. I got to sample their product without even asking. Now, almost a week later, I remember the name of the product. I know what the packaging looks like. I know that the tissue is soft and has a touch of lotion. I know that this is a product I would buy when I need tissue.

This was an effective print ad. A real, tangible, memorable marketing piece that did exactly what print media does best. It drew me in with multiple senses, sight, touch, smell, and made the piece more real and more important to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, email and web marketing are tremendously effective and creating a marketing piece with the kind of impact described above is a challenge. I am not a marketing expert by any means and I may have a greater appreciation for an ad like this because I know what it takes to create it. But I am reminded that with a creative approach the power of print goes unmatched as a marketing tool.

Ok, so I’ll label myself biased right off the bat, but when an idea is great, you just have to get the word out.

The point of the $700 billion dollar bailout was to ease the pressure on the banks and free them up to extend credit to Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) in order to keep our economy moving in the right direction. With all the money being thrown at large corporations with little to no effect, SMBs are feeling the squeeze more than ever. In short, banks still aren’t providing loans and SMBs aren’t getting the credit they need to keep their businesses running.

Andrew Field, CEO and Founder of PrintingForLess.com and contributor to this blog was featured in Forbes.com today outlining his idea for providing loans to SMBs who keep and create jobs.

The essence of the plan is to preserve and increase small-business jobs by letting them be used as the security for low-interest loans. Make available to small businesses $20,000 in unsecured loans for each full-time employee … The proposed plan would immediately halt the loss of jobs in the SMB sector and keep alive many businesses that suffer from the sudden drop in revenues …

Andrew’s article has caught the attention of Montana’s own Max Baucus as well, one of our US Senators and chairman of the Senate Finance committee.

The plan is simple, smart, seems easy to implement and more importantly, is desparately needed to keep the engine of our economy going. If you like what Andrew has to say, particularly if you’re a small to medium business owner, be sure to let your elected officials know.