Global Marketing Plus

One of the first things a new SCORE client will ask me is: “What have you done that qualifies you to be a SCORE counselor?”

Fair question.  Let me answer that question before I move on to helping small businesses get more business.

At the age of 10, I became involved in the “Family Business”.  My dad ran a grocery store and we lived in the back.  This was not the first family business my father owned, but the first one I became involved in (other than the family farm).

Through my growing up years, I watched my father run the business.  Even though it was years later before I knew what marketing was, I watched him perform marketing and customer service.  He would do some things in both areas that other grocery stores and other businesses would not do for their customers.  He had a very loyal following of customers.  When the big grocery chains would have big sales and under price my father, those clients still remained faithful.  They knew that a good deal was more that just a cheap price!

By the time I turned 21, I was ready to go out on my own.  I found a small print shop that was for sale and bought it with my savings.  The seller saw me coming!  On paper the company looked fantastic…. in reality it was near bankruptcy! 

The first month after I took it over, it grossed $645.00 in sales for  the whole month!  There was not enough gross profit to even pay the light bill.

I had spent all my money buying the business and had none left for marketing.  So I invented new ways to market that cost nothing or very little.  Within 3 months of very hard work, I had turned the company around and found a new love… making companies successful.

Since then, I have done the same thing to 18 businesses.  Many in different industries. After each was successful, I became bored with the day-to-day running of the business, so I sold them and started over again with a new business.

The fun thing was to find ways to build the business without spending lots of money.  I will show you many of the marketing tricks I have used over the years. 

I hope you come back to find how easy it can be to build your business into a success!