In memory of Kathy

Long time Chamber staff member Kathy Hollins has passed away after a courageous fight with cancer. A memorial service will be held for Kathy this Saturday, December 12, at 11 am at New Hope Full Gospel Church at 3550 East Pike. The service has been moved from the Duncan Falls Methodist Church due to utility work taking place in the area.

Kathy was a true professional who deeply cared about the members of the Chamber and the businesses in this community. She is missed both as a friend and a colleague who made this organization better every day through her hard work and dedication. Kathy worked for the chamber for 29 years in various capacities, most recently as our manager of member services. The Chamber achieved record membership levels due to Kathy's ideas and effectiveness.

We here at the chamber office miss Kathy's upbeat personality, her many talents, and her friendship, and we offer our thoughts and prayers of support to her family.

Getting Better

Here's a great, concise article by Darrell Zahorsky. I found it on About.com. We probably all know these things but this does a really good job of summing up and reminding us to do it right. Thanks to Darrell!

10 Quick Tips to Improve Your Small Business
By Darrell Zahorsky, About.com

Whether you're a one-person operation or 100 employee company, the name of the game is improvement. No business is static. Your business is on an upward track or on its way down. Making improvements to make your business better is a conscious choice. Not only must you balance your time but choose the right area of business that will make the biggest impact. These 10 tips should help you focus on the areas of business offering the biggest gain.

1. Keep Score: It's amazing how few small businesses have any idea of the daily, weekly, and monthly numbers and financial trends in the organization. Spend the necessary time keeping current on cash flow and if you lack the financial skills then hire an accountant.

2. Set Goals: Like keeping score, setting goals and objectives is an essential part of business success.

3. Use High Impact Marketing: It's easy to waste money on ineffective marketing. Learn how to use low budget high impact marketing to improve your small business.

4. Master Business Presentations: A powerful business presentation can help improve your small business by leaps and bounds. Learning the essentials of a knockout business presentation can reap many rewards.

5. Monitor Trends: No business operates in a vacuum. The events and changes in the global landscape have an effect on your business. Stay current on trends and issues.

6. Sharpen Selling Skills: A high return area for business improvement is the sales function. Whether you're selling to big companies or managing a sales team, never forget to focus on sales improvement.

7. Find Best Practices: Every industry has its own best practices or ways of doing things that are tried and true. Avoid wasting money and time reinventing the industry is generally a good approach unless you're set on building the next Google.

8. Motivate Staff: Talented and motivated staff members can bring on big improvements in business. Learn what motivates your employees to higher levels of performance.

9. Know Your Limits: Every successful business owner, even Bill Gates, has a clear idea of their limitations. By knowing your entrepreneurial personality type ,you can manage your resources and find help in areas of weakness.

10. Take a Break: Running a small business is hard work. Sometimes the best way to improve your business and re-ignite your passion is to take a vacation.

Business improvement is a way of life for succeeding. Apply these 10 quick tips to fast track your company.

Golf Anyone?

Please join us for the annual Chamber - Jaycees Golf Outing on Friday, August 21st. It will again be held at Jaycees Golf Club with a shotgun start at 12:30 p.m.

The outing is a four-person scramble format. The $220 per team entry fee includes golf, cart, and the cookout dinner afterward. Prizes will be awarded for1st, 2nd and 3rd place teams and special prizes for our last three place finishers. Prizes will also be awarded for Longest Drive, Closest to the Pin, and more. We have a limit of 32 teams, so register now!

Call 455-8282 to register or email your team and sponsor information to jriddle@zmchamber.com, Deadline is August 7.

Do you Get Gitomer?

Have you read anything from Jeffery Gitomer? In case you don't know, he is a sales expert.

He writes books, does big time public speaking, and has a great website, www.gitomer.com. He also offers a weekly ezine with all kinds of sales and networking tips.

Gitomer is top notch, the gold standard in the field, and if you are in business you need to get familiar with him. He is motivating, knowledgeable and insightful.

Here's a good example in the form of one of his weekly columns: http://www.moveahead1.com/articles/article_details.asp?id=31

Check it out, you will not be disappointed.

Networking Fundamentals

Here's a great article on business networking:

How to Survive Speed Networking by Alan Matthews.
http://www.webtrafficpromotions.com/marketing/6368.php

Matthews reminds us of some of the networking fundamentals we all have been told but maybe don't actually implement. And while they are written to apply to speed networking - a timed exercise - they are also terrific truisms for any form of business networking.

Here's a quick summary:

1. Have one specific goal - decide ahead of time what you are going to promote and how, and keep it to a single purpose or message.
2. Ask them to take the action you want them to take - be specific, be direct, and always ask them to take some action that would help them, and your business.
3. Hand them something to reinforce your message - give them a business card or brochure that repeats in writing numbers 1 and 2.
4. Follow up - make contact after any networking opportunity with those you met. Just send a quick email and reinforce your message.

See, pretty simple. But how often do any of us network in that organized a fashion? Seems to me it would take little effort and make good business sense.

Tom Poorman

Banned in Boston

I read an article today entitled "Banned in Boston" on cnn.money.com. It was about a waterborne sightseeing company that is having trouble getting the permits to do business in Boston.

It reminded me of the recent debate at Zanesville City Council over rezoning the former Y property, which would have allowed an existing Zanesville business to relocate to there and expand and improve a now mostly vacant property that happens to sit in a highly visible location.

Very unfortunate, in my humble personal opinion. It sends the wrong message to expanding businesses, as did the hassle Hannon Electric received when they wanted to add on at their property in Putnam.

I am not saying that development should happen at all costs - obviously it should not. But we have to give businesses the right climate in which to grow...or they simply will not.

Fortunately there are many, many other examples of times this community has gone to bat for businesses and helped them locate here and/or grow here. The list is long.

Undoubtedly there will always be disagreements between those that support business growth and those trying to preserve something else positive about an area. Its universal and not unique to our community. So how do we balance the two important interests? I am not sure, but we had better find a way. Common sense - applied case by case - has to prevail, but we had better never lose sight of the need for a positive business climate. We had better have darn good reasons to not come down on the side of local businesses when we consider such issues.

As Plato said, "What is honored in a country will be cultivated there." And what is not, will not be. Which message do we want to send?

Its the time of year to ride the Lorena Sternwheeler up and down the Muskingum, which is beautiful. Here's a great photo of the Lorena, I think by Joe Clark...sorry if I have the photographer wrong...but in any case it illustrates what a nice time can be had on the river. This is the Lorena's 60th year, so come give it a whirl.

Weeks like this are kind of strange

Have you ever had a week at work where you are jumping back and forth between two totally different types of work? It can be strange and even a little disorienting.

Here's what I mean: This week the chamber staff is helping organize the Zanesville Gus Macker Basketball Tournament. It is an annual project of the ZDA, which is an arm of the Chamber, and it is a major undertaking. So our staff members are running around doing physical set up for the event, alongside dozens and dozens of volunteers. Yesterday, for example, we set up the basket units, which are metal structures that come in pieces on a truck and then are assembled here.

Interspersed with that kind of work, we plop down at our desks every now and then and hurriedly answer phones messages and emails and try to get some essential tasks done, maybe in preparation for an upcoming meeting or something. Then we get back to work out on the street or down the hall.

It is kind of fun and its not hard, although it can be physical. But it sort of throws me off. Switching gears rapidly from physical labor to thinking and concentrating on information and issues is evidently not my forte. All of our staff does it and does it pretty well, however.

This weekend we will all spend two days working various jobs at the tournament. In some ways that is the easiest part since we can just worry about the event coming off okay. There is no administrative work back at the office that can't wait for two days.

Then the event tear down takes place, and as you know the aftermath of a party is always the worst part. For at least few days into next week we wrap things up and put supplies away.

Then its back to our mostly administrative work. And even though we are all very tired by this time, I think all of us kind of miss the nice change of routine we just had and regret now being relatively tied to our meetings, memos and desks.

But its never for long. Some project, meeting or other event will soon drag us out and make us do real work again, before the month is out in fact. And we all look forward to it.

Blue Ocean Strategy

Are you familiar with the book "Blue Ocean Strategy" by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne? They also have a website by the same name: www.blueoceanstrategy.com .

I have not read the book yet but I am going to. I have read summaries of it and talked to others who are pretty knowledgeable about the whole concept, and it sounds like it has real potential to help a lot of business people, especially right now.

The basic premise is that businesses should NOT seek to compete head to head in a crowded marketplace but that they should find the "blue ocean", that great big wide open place where there is little or no competition for what they are trying to do.

How exactly do you do that? I am not sure yet, but I plan to find out. And it sounds like innovation and creativity are required, and that has to be part of what many businesses need right now.

If you want to read some summaries of Blue Ocean Strategy here they are (and these are also provided in our Business Survival Toolkit discussed below).

Blue Ocean Strategy Book Summary: http://www.giantpromotions.com.au/Downloads/Blue_Ocean_Strategy_Book_Summary.pdf

Video summary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJH0g-EPGDs

Nine Key Points of Blue Ocean Strategy: http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/about/whatis.html

Blue Ocean Power Point: http://visipramudia.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/blue-ocean-strategy.pdf

A Conversation with W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, authors of BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY: http://www.insead.edu/alumni/newsletter/February2005/Interview.pdf

2009 Business Survival Toolkit for Chamber Members

The Chamber is offering all members a 2009 Business Survival Toolkit. The Toolkit is a collection of documents on a CD, all of which are geared to helping businesses improve and achieve success in spite of this year's economic conditions.

The Toolkit includes articles, columns and research papers by experts (sources cited in each case) such as:

"Buyer Behavior in a Recession"
"Ten Survival Steps to Take Right Now"
"Nine Key Points of Blue Ocean Strategy"
"Marketing Your Way Through a Recession"
"Financing & Development Incentives Guide" published by the Chamber
"Cash Management Strategies in Hard Times" published by CFO Research Services
Resources from the US Small Business Administration
Local market data from the Census Bureau
A list of books & audio tapes recommended by the Muskingum County Public Library System
A list of links to online videos, guides and handbooks

The Toolkit is FREE to Chamber members and is not available to non-members. To obtain your copy of the Toolkit you can pick one up at the Chamber office in the Welcome Center at 205 N. Fifth St. or email your request to khollins@zmchamber.com to make other arrangements.

Happy National Tourism Week

This is a great week to reflect on the tremendous impact the hospitality industry has on our local economy. Tourists to Muskingum County have a $174.8 million impact on our economy. The wages earned due to the tourism industry in Muskingum County is $46.9 million. $22.9 million in taxes are generated and over 2,500 people are employed because of the toursim industry.

In addition, this week is a great time to promote all the great travel activities that are available for Spring and Summer travel - Staycations as well like to call it. Go to www.visitzanesville.com to make your destination plans.

Our hats go off to all the employees in the hospitality industry and a big thank you to families, friends, businesses, meeting planners, motor coach owners, trip planners and leisure travelers who choose Muskingum County as their destination.

Happy National Tourism Week!

How a chamber membership is like a health club membership (and why you should care)

Ever wonder what you get for your chamber membership? We regularly try to answer that question, as we should. Here’s a new way to look at your membership in the Chamber of Commerce and perhaps come up with the answer to that question: A Chamber membership is much like a health club membership. How so? Well, there are three main ways in which they are similar.

1. THEY BOTH PROVIDE YOU WITH SERVICES IN RETURN FOR YOUR INVESTMENT. When you join a health club you are paying for services, not making a donation. The same is true when you join the Chamber – you are purchasing a set of services for your business, not contributing to a charity. Joining the Chamber may not make you as healthy personally (!), but it should improve the health of your company by providing you with worthwhile services.

2. WHAT YOU GET OUT OF IT IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO WHAT YOU PUT IN TO IT. You get healthier if you actually go use your health club membership. If you just pay your fees and never use the services the club offers you won’t get in shape. The same is true of your Chamber membership. Your business only really benefits if you use the services the Chamber offers its members. With dozens of services provided for businesses of all sizes and kinds there surely are at least a few programs you could use from time to time that will benefit your company.

And if yours is the kind of business that does not need a lot of direct services from the Chamber, maybe because you are a large business or you only manufacture or you sell only outside of the area, let me assure you of something: You need the chamber because your sales grow when the community grows and your customers need jobs in order to BE your customers. And if you exclusively manufacture, you still need to chamber because you depend on the community's ability to attract and keep a quality workforce and meet your other needs, like activism on business issues and development incentives.

3. THEY BOTH DO GOOD THINGS EVEN WHEN YOU ARE NOT THERE. Health clubs promote good health and help individuals who are suffering from various afflictions, even if you are not personally in attendance on a given day. Their valuable services to others do not stop. Likewise, the Chamber is helping companies every day – if not yours, then someone else’s. We are routinely working on positive projects and pursuing the economic development of the community because that is our mission. So even if you don’t use a particular Chamber service or don’t feel the direct effect from some Chamber activity, you can be sure that someone else does. And that is good for YOUR business, undoubtedly. In the long run, that is how a community and an economy thrive and ultimately that does impact your business. And it was your investment in a Chamber membership that helped make that possible.

Tom Poorman

8 Signs of Hope for the Economy

Here is an interesting online piece called "8 Signs of Hope for the Economy" from the Fortune website.

FORTUNE ARTICLE

It's a great summary of what I have been reading about the economic problems abating somewhat.

It says that there are a number of "green shoots" (as in signs of new growth) out there. Although all risk is certainly not over, they point to data on housing starts, the stock market, consumer confidence, single family home prices, business earnings, jobless benefit claims, new orders and exports, and the credit markets and suggest we could be on the brink of recovery.

Let's hope these indicators are right.

Legislation and Governmental Issues

There is a great deal of state and federal legislation pending that would affect businesses. Everything from the Employee Free Choice Act to the state budget. Which bills or laws or regulations concern you the most as a business owner or manager? We plan to soon to poll our members about their legislative or governmental concerns and share the collective results with our representatives in the statehouse and the US capital. But we welcome your help on the front end to identify which issues should be in the poll. Post your concerns here and we will incorporate those into our plans, and watch your email for our issues poll. Thanks.

Tom Poorman

Made in America

I had an interesting call the other day from a local resident about the issue of buying American made goods. He saw our ad campaign on WHIZ TV about buying locally and he asked if we would also encourage buying American made products. I told him I agreed in principle with what he was suggesting but that we would have to both assess the interest in this (the TV campaigns cost money) and think about the implications. Buying American, and even buying locally, are not simple, cut and dried, black and white ideas in this day and age of the global economy and importing and exporting. But again, I truly do like the idea of buying American whenever possible. Any opinions?

Research Triangle

I visited the Research Triangle in North Carolina last week. I must admit I was there for pleasure, not business, but I was able to take some time and look around and talk to people about some professional subjects too. It is a fascinating and impressive area. The presence of several major universities, which we also visited, all very close nearby drove a lot of that development. Still, I saw plenty of vacancies in office parks there - evidently no place is immune from national and world economic conditions.

Tom Poorman

Economy Again

Anyone catch Jim Cramer on MSNBC yesterday morning? He claims that our economic problems have hit bottom and we have no where to go but up from now on. I know all economists and commentators do not agree on such things, but I'll take Cramer's prediction in this case.

Economy

I saw a report today on money.cnn.com that new home sales are up. That surprised me. Although there are still significant problems in the markets and the economy there are also each week more positive reports and predictions. These have to be signs that things are improving. Long way to go but we will get there. What are you hearing and experiencing yourself?

Tom Poorman

Welcome

Welcome to the Member's Blog for the Zanesville-Muskingum County Chamber. Feel free to engage in a discussion with us, promote your business, tell us what's new, whatever you want.