StartupNation

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• How Customers Can Support Small Businesses This Holiday Shopping Season
• Summon Your Inner Alpha: 7 Ways Business Leaders Can Outwit the Competition
• How to Take the Leap and Change Your Life
• WJR Business Beat: Holiday Sales Expected To Be Up This Year (Episode 313)

How Customers Can Support Small Businesses This Holiday Shopping Season Posted: 01 Nov 2021 09:07 PM PDT Considerable momentum is shaping the 2021 holiday shopping season. The National Retail Federation predicts holiday spending in 2021, excluding automobile dealers, gas stations and restaurants, will shatter previous records. Holiday sales are forecast to grow between 8.5% and 10.5% in November and December 2021. The previous spending high was 8.2% in 2020. Holiday spending has been experiencing an average increase of 4.4% over the past five years. Adobe's "Adobe Holiday Forecast 2021" report shares key findings for the holiday 2021 shopping season. Some of these include demand levels poised to surge for online spending, the growing popularity of buy now, pay later (BNPL) adoption for smaller orders, and rising curbside utilization levels to help combat shipping and logistical issues. Small businesses are also gearing up for a busy holiday shopping season. Local businesses are committing to Shop Small on Small Business Saturday. Beyond participating in this Nov. 27 event, how else can customers show support for local businesses during the holidays? Start shopping early The early bird gets the worm — and beyond the worm, they get to snag existing inventory this year. As noted in the Adobe report, some of the holiday shopping challenges in 2021 include businesses dealing with limited inventory due to supply chain disruptions and seasonal discounts impacted by inflation. One of the best ways to combat these issues, if you haven't already started, is to shop early. Reach out to your favorite small businesses and learn more about discounts they may be offering this season. Sign up for e-newsletters and follow the businesses on social media for more information. Some shopping news that businesses may share in e-newsletters or on social include discounts, notifications for when out-of-stock items are back in stock (and links for purchase), and any changes to their hours of operation. Refer talent for job openings Small businesses may struggle to find and hire employees, even as seasonal staff members. Locals can lend a hand by reaching out to their network. Do you know someone local who is looking for a job? Reach out to the talent you know and refer them to the business and its job listing. If you know the owner of the business, reach out with an e-introduction and loop in the talent to start chatting with the owner. Sign Up: Receive the StartupNation newsletter! Follow COVID-19 guidelines when shopping The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, unfortunately, will still be present during the 2021 holiday shopping season. In addition to risks poised by the Delta variant, it is also flu season. Out shopping? Remember to follow COVID-19 guidelines in your given area. This helps lower the risk of possible infection for other shoppers and staff inside storefront shops. Wear a mask before entering a store and keep it on while shopping. Maintain a distance of six feet from the nearest shopper and frequently sanitize your hands. Stay home if you do not feel well. (You can still shop online if you are at home!) Write positive reviews On a budget this year? Even if you can't spend as much, you can still help create positive word of mouth online to support your favorite small businesses. Leave positive reviews on sites like Yelp and Trustpilot, like and share social media posts, and @ mention the business on your own social media accounts, sharing photos and videos of great shopping experiences at the space with your audience. Buy gift cards Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the best methods for supporting small businesses has been the purchase of gift cards. Gift cards, or gift certificates, may be used throughout the year to support the business. Buy what you love now — or come back for it later! Verizon Small Business Digital Ready: A free resource for basic business skills, the latest digital technology and more. The post How Customers Can Support Small Businesses This Holiday Shopping Season appeared first on StartupNation.

Summon Your Inner Alpha: 7 Ways Business Leaders Can Outwit the Competition Posted: 01 Nov 2021 09:00 PM PDT Alpha traits are key to leadership success. Business leaders can learn from these top predators how to outsmart the competition and never cede ground. In recent years, coyotes have made themselves at home across the United States, Canada and Central America. In the community and neighborhoods near Boston where I live, people see them almost daily. Unlike the classic cartoon character Wile E. Coyote — always outwitted by his crafty nemesis, Road Runner — the real-world coyote has become a paragon of adaptation and resilience. Think about it: They compete with dogs and people whose property they've claimed to raise future generations. So I'm issuing a clarion cry to all leaders, everywhere: Summon your inner alpha and apply these five lessons for dealing with coyotes to handle — and foil — the competition. Tap into your inner alpha Everyone has alpha traits in them, and that's a good thing when facing dominant, powerful competition. The alpha traits most useful for foiling the competition are confidence, dominance, facing conflict head-on, resilience, and being enterprising and bold. Push forward with confidence  When confronting a coyote, you must summon your inner alpha by projecting dominance and strength, puff out your chest to appear larger, make unfamiliar noises, carry a stick and walk toward the animal while looking it straight in the eye. If you back away out of fear or simply because you think the coyote will leave of its own volition, the animal will claim dominance over you, with potentially dangerous consequences. When it comes to your company, project it as large regardless of its actual size, stay strong and push your strategy forward with unbridled confidence. Customers will embrace you. Competitors may not like you but will respect your strength, and may even back off. Although competitors may be larger, they're frequently not as nimble or able to adapt quickly to market conditions. Use a larger competitor's slow pace to your advantage by seizing market and sales opportunities before they get wind of what they're missing. Related: Why Grit is Essential to Your Success as an Entrepreneur Understand your competitors  As coyotes have a keen understanding of the world around them, know your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. Respect their strengths and learn from them if possible; focus on how you can use their weaknesses against them. Apply your strengths with customers and prospects for sales growth and business expansion. Sharpen your senses and fine-tune your competitive intelligence so you're on high alert when a competitor is thinking about making a move that could affect your business in the short or long term. Determine when a pivot is needed to achieve more substantial business growth. Fence them out Coyotes will frequently find a way to get over, under or through the fence around your property if it's not high or buried deep enough into the ground. Knowing this is an external issue that's hard to control, plan to deal with coyotes in your backyard using the alpha dominating tactics I noted earlier. You should be able to surprise the animal, and watch it skulk off into the shadows and other places for comfort. Likewise, focus your company's attention on competitive strategies such as rapid scaling. This will force competitors to seek their comfort zone in other markets. Plug holes in your competitive strategy. Don't inadvertently allow your competition to encroach on your market and customer base. Identify and understand threats to your market share. Be sure to proactively protect your intellectual property, whether trademarks, trade secrets, copyright or patents. Don't encourage competition Mark Twain mentions the coyote in his book, Roughing It, as "a living breathing allegory of want, he is always hungry." To discourage coyotes, don't leave any food out. Not only will food attract them, they'll return to that same feeding spot expecting the food to be there. Discourage the competition from elbowing their way in on your market. Identify untapped markets and rapidly build up market share before your competitors know about the market. Erect barriers to entry, such as unique technology that would take a huge investment to duplicate, endorsements from key industry opinion leaders, exclusive targeted distribution channels and any regulatory approvals to enter the market. Be strategically noisy Practice coyote hazing with noise that catches them off guard. Yell, then suddenly bang something, continue moving toward the animal and puffing out your chest to show dominance, keeping eye contact with it. Eventually, the coyote will retreat. Surprising, unexpected noises in business translates to your company being intentionally visible. Unless you're a startup in stealth mode, silence will render your business invisible. Confound the competition by using targeted media in your market through a variety of platforms — video, e-blasts, social media, your website and trade shows, whether in person or virtual. Garner earned media in market publications to get your message out. Focus on publications that give you maximum visibility. If your business is seasonal, time your media exposure to ensure your message gets in front of your audience precisely when needed. StartupNation exclusive discounts and savings on Dell products and accessories: Learn more here Learn to live with them Business competitors – and coyotes — are here to stay, and we must learn to live with them. If you reframe living with business competition as a potential for innovation, think about ways your competitors could be future allies through new strategic alliances. The two global tech giants Apple and Samsung offer a classic example of "coopetition," in a strategic deal focused on Apple's content and services. If you keep the competition in your sights at all times, you'll also keep your business on its toes, innovating and outmaneuvering companies that will try anything to dominate. The coyote can leap a five-foot fence; what will it take to ensure a competitor doesn't leapfrog over your business, potentially sending you into a defensive posture because, for a fleeting moment, you weren't paying attention? In the same way you summon your inner alpha, project confidence and come to terms with the coyote as a wild animal that uses calculated strategies to outwit you, approach your competition with caution, respect, and an infinite supply of highly calculated cleverness. Sign Up: Receive the StartupNation newsletter! The post Summon Your Inner Alpha: 7 Ways Business Leaders Can Outwit the Competition appeared first on StartupNation.

How to Take the Leap and Change Your Life Posted: 01 Nov 2021 09:00 PM PDT The following is excerpted from "Jump: Dare to Do What Scares You in Business and Life" by Kim Perell, pp. 3-7 (HarperCollins Leadership, November 2021). It's scary looking down. Especially when there's a lot at stake. You know those decisions that make your heart race and your palms sweat? The ones that are so overwhelming you start asking yourself, how in the world did I even get into this position in the first place? I do. I've felt that way many times before. I'm a successful entrepreneur now, but that wasn't always the case. I had to take a lot of risks and leap off a lot of cliffs to get here. Every great story starts with a jump—a risk, leaping into the unknown, not knowing exactly how you will land. Whether you're jumping from a place of greatness, from rock bottom, because you've hit rock bottom, or you're simply stuck, you can absolutely create positive, transformative change in your life. You just have to be willing to trust yourself and take the leap. Three reasons to jump As a seasoned jumper, I've noticed that there are three main reasons people take big leaps. Reason #1: You Have No Other Choice The Survival Jump. You are forced to change. You've been fired, bankrupted, or had a life-changing event, or some other environmental force has you in its clutches. This is less of a choice and more of an emergency exit. Reason #2: You See an Opportunity The Opportunity Jump. You want to change because you have a vision. You see a way to improve your life through bold action. You feel certain you are meant to do something bigger. Reason #3: You're Stuck The Stagnant Jump. You're considering a change because you've stagnated, are bored, or feel unfulfilled. You stay put because that feels easier than jumping into the unknown. Here's a little secret: your reason for jumping doesn't matter; the only thing that matters is that you have the courage to take the leap. Free Content, Coaching & Networking for Your Business: Verizon Small Business Digital Ready Survival jumpers The Survival Jump I was forced to take early in my career felt like the worst thing that had ever happened to me, but it turned out to be the best. Picture this: I'd just landed my dream job at a new tech startup. It was the peak of the internet bubble, when any company with a ".com" was a hot commodity. I was on top of the world. Unfortunately, the fantasy and promise of this new job and incredible company didn't last long. The company was a precursor to Dropbox (just a decade too early). Data storage costs were high, customer adoption was extremely slow, and our expenses outpaced our revenue. I'd worked tirelessly building and running our digital ad sales team, but our success wasn't nearly enough to keep that sinking ship afloat. Suddenly I was unemployed, broke, and devastated. I was convinced I'd reached my lowest point. I went home, turned off the lights, crawled into bed, and cried. I ate more tubs of Ben & Jerry's than I'd like to admit. Every day, I questioned what I was going to do with my life and wondered if I was a complete failure. I'd hit rock bottom. Even in the face of all that bleakness and disappointment, I knew if I stood still—if I let my fear and disappointment consume me—my entire future would be in jeopardy. I needed to get my life back on track and take control of my destiny. Up until this point in my life, every jump I'd taken had been a proactive choice—Opportunity Jump. I was accustomed to taking calculated risks when I saw opportunities or felt ready for a change. But the jump I was about to take was different. It was completely reactive: a Survival Jump. Knowing myself, I recognized that letting this setback derail my life completely would cause me more fear, angst, and misery than gathering my courage and taking a big risk. One late night, eating pizza with my roommates, I made a joke about starting my own business. But my two best friends didn't laugh; they thought it was a great idea. Which made me genuinely ask myself, wait, what if I did? It wasn't an easy journey, nor was it a straight line to success. It was the wild and winding path that shaped me, taught me, and turned me into an entrepreneur—and human being—who embraces opportunity and always chooses to jump rather than stand still. And it all started because I hit rock bottom. That lonely, hopeless place is where so many find themselves at some point in their lives. I'm sure many people around you have felt this way—during the recessions of the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, the 2008 financial crisis, and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic that caused an unprecedented global shutdown. Rock bottom is a place that plenty of people have been before. And if there's just one piece of wisdom I want you to take away from this book, it's this: if you've got to jump, rock bottom is a great place to start. After all, there's nowhere to go but up. The post How to Take the Leap and Change Your Life appeared first on StartupNation.

WJR Business Beat: Holiday Sales Expected To Be Up This Year (Episode 313) Posted: 01 Nov 2021 07:55 AM PDT On today's Business Beat, Jeff shares holiday spending predictions. Tune in to the Business Beat, below, to learn about the Adobe forecast prediction that sales will top $910 billion this year, including $207 billion in the U.S.:   Tune in to News/Talk 760 AM WJR weekday mornings at 7:11 a.m. for the WJR Business Beat. Listeners outside of the Detroit area can listen live HERE. Are you an entrepreneur with a great story to share? If so, contact us at editor@startupnation.com and we'll feature you on an upcoming segment of the WJR Business Beat! WJR Business Beat Transcript Good morning, Paul! Now that Halloween is behind us, the focus turns to shopping, holiday gift shopping to be specific, and a new Adobe forecast portends good news for retailers as this forecast predicts that the global holiday spend will top $910 billion this year. In the U.S., holiday spending is forecast to hit $207 billion this year. Now if sales in the U.S. do hit the $207-billion mark, that would be a welcome 10% increase in spending over last year. The biggest shopping event of the season is expected to be cyber week. That is the period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, during which spending is predicted to reach about $36 billion and make up about 17% of the overall holiday spend here in the U.S. The single biggest shopping day of the year is expected to be Cyber Monday. And on that single day, it’s predicted to bring in about $11 billion in total sales. The next biggest single day? Well, it’s Black Friday with sales expected to ring in at about $9.5 billion. Other interesting findings from the report: Well, discounts will range this year between 5% and 25%. Now last year they raised between 10% and 30%, so a slight decrease in expected discounting. And trends? Well, buy now pay later that usage is expected to increase about 10% this year and buy online pick up in store. That’s a hot one with consumers, opting to buy online and pick up curbside. During the final week of shopping, about 65% of orders are expected to be done just that way. So there you have it, Paul. Things are looking good for this holiday season, in spite of inflation driving rising prices, as well as supply shortages, causing concern about items selling out fast. Well, even in spite of that, shoppers will be enjoying the sounds of the season with those Christmas bells ringing, while retailers large and small should be enjoying the sounds of those cash registers ringing just as it should be. I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of startupnation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR. The post WJR Business Beat: Holiday Sales Expected To Be Up This Year (Episode 313) appeared first on StartupNation.

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