June 2004, Issue No. 2, Page 1 of 2

HOUSTON BUSINESS REVIEW

WHY YOUR SMALL BUSINESS ISN’T GETTING MEDIA ATTENTION, by Kevin J. Price

Kevin J. Price is Host of the Houston Business Show and Editor of the Houston Business Review. He is the author of several books and worked as a policy analyst in Washington, D.C. during many of the Reagan years. Mr. Price is available to speak to your group or organization. Please call him at 713.984.0235 for more information.

One of the objectives I had when I began the Houston Business Show and, later, the Houston Business Review, was to maximize the exposure of small and micro businesses. It seemed the big corporations had plenty of exposure while the smaller companies were largely ignored. My assumption was that the little guy was being ignored. In the eyes of “big media,” small business was simply inconsequential.

When I first began I had accumulated several articles about small businesses that I could focus on in this publication but, over time, finding article about small businesses in the Houston area became more difficult. I discussed the situation with Hank Fasthoff, a regular contributor to the newsletter and the show (and one of the principals of HoustonBusiness.com), and we began searching various websites on a quest to find local businesses that have been ignored by the Houston press. We found that, in general, articles about small and micro businesses are just not to be found.

There is no conspiracy against small business per se, but there is a lack of small businesses doing significant promotion. The roots of this could be years of neglect by big media that made small business owners “give up” and try other means of getting the word out. Or, it could be due to a lack of understanding the media process. Or, it could be they are simply too busy to even bother with advertising. Irrespective of the reasons for past behavior, what is important now is for small business owners to be proactive about getting the media they deserve in the future.

Some advertising and marketing strategies include:

* Articles or stories about a business are typically more effective than other forms of advertising because people are usually more inclined to believe a story or article about a company than paid advertisement.

* Public relations is called “earned media” (not “free” because it takes time and energy). The kind of exposure that good public relations can bring may be far greater than bought advertising. Most companies would not hang their own advertisement on the walls of their offices, but most would be likely to display articles written about them in a news source. Why? Because the former was paid for and the latter was earned. People are impressed by the latter.

So we have determined why small businesses don’t get exposure (it is not, entirely, the fault of the media), and why it's important to be proactive about advertising.

Next week I will examine some of the tools and means available to give your business the exposure it deserves. The following are some of the topics I’ll include:

* The basic elements of a press release.

* Free web services that help you promote your business (How you can find lists? Where can you display your press release?, etc.).

* Quick and easy ways towards credible exposure.

* The best places to get the word out on your business.

* The information you need to know about the local media to help you get exposure.

* Other important elements of developing a successful media presence.

Make sure you make a note to read, what I hope you find, a helpful article and encourage friends of colleagues in business who have struggled with such to spend some time reviewing this information.

DR. IVAN MISNER, AUTHOR AND FOUNDER OF BUSINESS NETWORK INTERNATIONAL, by Kevin J. Price

This week on the Houston Business Show we had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Ivan Misner, President and Founder of Business Network International. and co-author (with Don Morgan) of the The Wall Street Journal bestseller,The Masters of Success. He was in town supporting BNI and promoting his new book. Dr. Misner is a fascinating business leader who understands how to teach business success to the aspiring entrepreneur.

Business Network International

Started by Dr. Misner in order to develop leads for his own business, BNI took a life of its own and has grown at an exponential rate. Its growth has not been by accident but by design. For example, BNI, which is a networking organization, is designed for the purpose of providing contacts and leads for its members. As a result, only one person from each industry is allowed to participate in the group. Because of this, a waiting list will grow as people wait for an opportunity to join a new chapter. One can easily see how this would create an engine of enormous growth. The following are some interesting facts of the organization:

* BNI provided over 2.8 million referrals last year.
* Those two million referrals generated over $1.2 billion dollars in sales.
* The organization was founded in 1985.
* Its philosophy is “Givers Gain.”
* Its mission is “to help people increase their business through a structured, positive, and supportive word of mouth marketing program.”
* As of December of 2003 it had over 3,000 chapters worldwide.
* It has over 60,000 members in those chapters.
* It has over 20 chapters in the greater Houston area and is set to open many more in the very near future.

I think what I like most about this organization is that it is unabashed about its purpose. Not only are these people not ashamed to meet just for the purpose of helping others build their business, it is all this organization is about. I love this because people shouldn’t be ashamed to meet to benefit others and to help others – and themselves - meet their goals.

Masters of Success

What if you had the opportunity to tap the shoulder of a major motivational leader and say “hey, Tony Robbins, how did you get so successful?” Or “hey, Tom Hopkins, what’s your secret?” That is exactly what Dr. Misner and Don Morgan did in their excellent book, The Masters of Success. They allow you to have some of the brightest in business tell you their story, they provide important tidbits from the “sources mouth” on success, and they also provide great profiles of the “masters of success” in several areas.

The book is substantive in information, but concise and readable. If I was visiting was a person who either was new to the world of success (e.g., a college student about to graduate) or a person in career transition, or a person who simply wanted to take their business – and life – to the next level, I would recommend this book. It is a great work and Dr. Misner was a great guest for the Houston Business Show.


TWO TOOLS TO HELP YOU TO FIGHT HIGH GAS PRICES

People are scratching their heads in shock over the massive increase in gasoline prices. Most feel relegated to merely complaining about it, others are calling their member of Congress, and others are considering digging their own wells. However, a rapidly growing segment of the population is using the World Wide Web to find a way to keep their prices under control. One way is through using these two websites: GasPriceWatch.com and GasBuddy.com. For the next few months, these sites might be a consumer’s and business owner’s best friend.

We Houstonians are spoiled. With gas at around $1.75, we feel the Second Coming is upon us. However, according to GasPriceWatch.com, the Houston area enjoys some of the lowest prices in the country, with Katy's prices being around $1.65 a gallon (on the date this was written). Rosemead, California, on the other hand, has the nation's highest prices at (gulp) $3.00 per gallon. The national average is now pushing over $2.00 a gallon.

Both sites have enjoyed a boom of interest in recent months and both of them are helpful. However, my personal preference is GasBuddy. Below is my assessment of the sites.

GasPriceWatch.com. Visually, the site is less than attractive and it requires quite a bit of digging before you get to the information you desire. There is a section where one can put in his zip code and the radius they desire to locate gas stations. I put in mine and asked for it in a 20-mile radius and received almost 2,000 matches. Furthermore, there is a color-coded legend that explains how old the information is, a feature that made me even more confused. I clicked back in put in five miles and got over 300 options. Still too many, back again to one mile and finally I had a number I could work with: 20 stations. But, the question of whether I had the best options hung over my head. This was getting old real quick. Then I noticed that there weren’t any prices for those stations listed on the page. I was ready to check out GasBuddy.

GasBuddy.com. In addition to being more visually attractive than GasPriceWatch.com, GasBuddy.com enables you cut to the chase much quicker. On the home page is a map of the United States (and Canada). Navigate to Texas Texas, then click on your city. In our case, clicking on Houston takes you to HoustonGasPrices.com.There are two tables on this page, one listing the lowest gas prices in the previous 24 hours, and the other listing the highest prices. The site is a little cumbersome to navigate. First you must scroll down to find the option that is closest to you. Stations are broken down into geographical areas (Northwest, West Houston, etc.) and cross streets. The lowest price on the day I visited the site was $1.67 per gallon at Sams Club, 1615 S. Loop West. GasBuddy.com is more user-friendly and contains more information than GasPriceWatch.com.

We will keep links to both of these sites available to you as we weather this current crisis. Hopefully, by bringing this information to you we can help provide a little relief and make driving a little more affordable.

NEED A GREAT SPEAKER?

Don’t look any further than the Houston Business Show Speakers Bureau, sponsored by HoustonBusiness.com™. The Speaker's Bureau features award-winning writers, nationally recognized experts, and entertaining speakers. Perhaps best of all, we provide these speakers free of charge to qualified organizations and speaking engagements receive free publicity for the event in this newsletter, on the HoustonBusiness.com™ Business Calendar, and on the Houston Business Show.

Members of the Houston Business Show Speakers Bureau will be speaking at several events in the next two months. Kevin Price, host of the Houston Business Show, will be speaking at the Services Cooperative Association ("SCA") about the Houston Business Climate for the SCA's 15th Annual Entrepreneurial Workshop. Mr. Price will also be speaking at the Ravenaux Breakfast Club on July 16 on business megatrends. Get more information about this group by calling 281.469.1800 and ask for Arch Payne. Richard Sonnier of Nimble Services will be speaking at another Ravenaux breakfast meeting. Mr. Sonnier is a Houston Business Show Commentator. Details on his presentation will follow. For more information contact Stacy Walston at 713.984.0235.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR by JP Magill

Houston Business Show commentator JP Magill, a principal of the Achilles Group, provides weekly commentary on HR issues for the Houston Business Review. The Achilles Group is a leading HR consulting firm and can be reached at 281.469.1800

Welcome to the employee comment box. You remember...The one that sat on the front desk or in the lunchroom, with the big padlock on it? Where did the comments go, did you ever hear of an improvement made or a policy changed because of it? Maybe, but probably not.

Why is it that, in this era of self-help books and management guides, we ask for feedback because it is the right thing to do, but we don’t really want it. The real challenge to asking for feedback is to actually acknowledge that there might be a need for it in the first place. As managers and company stakeholders, we have a tendency to protect what we have built and fear that changes might undermine our importance or influence on a future positive outcome. Yet we were the ones hatching ideas on how to improve on the rest of the world’s mistakes in the first place in order to build a better mousetrap or prove our success.

So whether we are asking our employees for feedback on our personal or company performance, or our customers on ways that we can improve our products or services, we have to recognize that even if they identify a weakness that keeps us up at night, they may have a good idea. The flip side is that some of those ideas are going to be ridiculous. It may be the employee who wants to bring his dog to work or the customer who would like the carrot cake made without the carrots, but just by asking for the feedback you may realize that your carrot cake recipe is so good, it could be a best seller minus the carrots and marketed as a modern spin on spice cake.

Without asking for those ideas, how are we to continue improving? As we are bogged down with the details of everyday business, the burden of hatching the new ideas that improve our companies, our products, and ourselves doesn’t always have to fall on our shoulders.

WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T AFFORD A BILLBOARD?

Businesses pay thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of dollars to advertise on billboards in Houston. We think these businesses are wasting serious cash. On the other hand, businesses interested in saving money to reach the same-sized, qualified consumer audience rent a billboard from HoustonBusiness.com™. From between $155 to $180 per day, your business can seen by hundreds of thousands of people daily. Learn more by visiting our Outdoor Division. You'll be glad you did.

COST EFFECTIVE IT: IT TRENDS, by Richard Sonnier

Houston Business Show commentator Richard Sonnier, of the Information Technology Services firm Nimble Services, Inc., provides weekly information on our show about information technology issues. Mr. Sonnier can be reached at 281.445.4800 x 250 or rsonnier@nimbleservices.com

CPUs

The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the engine that makes the PC go, so the faster the CPU is the faster the overall PC can be. For our customers, Nimble Services tracks the CPU trends. 2004 marks a watershed in commodity CPUs. American Micro Devices (AMD) and Apple have moved into 64 bit processing in PCs. 64 bit has a number of technical advantages that until this year were only available in very large and expensive computers. In our tests at Nimble, these processors are clearly superior. We expect the 64 bit take over the market as the operating systems and application are retooled to take full advantage of their power. Microsoft is expected to release Windows XP 64 bit in the third quarter.

Faster and Faster

As the 64-bit revolution takes hold, CPUs will be going ever faster. Today, 2.8 billion cycles per second (2.8 gigahertz or "Ghz") are common. You can think of Ghz as engine horsepower in cars. The horsepower does not tell you how fast the car will go but it tells how fast the car is capable of going. 3.2 Ghz CPUs are available today but later this year Intel plans to release 3.7 Ghz CPUs and next year we will see the first 4 Ghz systems. Intel will be adding 64-bit support as well. Rumors are that AMD will introduce a 10 Ghz CPU in 2006.

Two for One

Everyone loves a two-for-one special. Over the next 12 months, the CPU vendors are all planning to introduce "dual core" CPUs. Essentially, these will be two current CPUs combined into a single chip. In the future, these two-for-one chips may become the standard in PCs.

Memory

Today, 512 megabyte memory is common and recommended for all PC's. 1024 megabyte parts are available and within a year we expect to standardize on 1024 megabyte PC's. The performance will be doubling of the next 12 months from 333 megahertz ("Mhz") to 667 Mhz and next year you will be able to buy 2048 megabytes in a single part.

Hard Disk

Today, 250 gigabyte disk drives are common and 400 gigabyte drives are available. Over the next few years we will see 1000 gigabyte drives. 1000 gigabytes is called a terabyte.

The Future PC

We predict the standard desktop PC you might buy 3 years from now will have dual CPUs running 5 to 10 times faster than your CPU today with 4 times the memory and a terabyte disk drive. Whatever are we going to do with all that power? From economics we can cite Say's Law, which roughly states that supply creates its own demand. Therefore, we can rest assured that given all this computing power we will certainly find a profitable use for it.

Next week, I will discuss IT off-shoring.

AFFORDABLE HEALTH INSURANCE?

Who says you can’t afford health insurance? Truth is, you can’t afford to not have health insurance. With measures for cost containment that have been implemented, today health insurance is more affordable than at has been at times in the past. Contact the Benefits Division and ask for information on how to offer health insurance through your business at no cost to the employer, how to reduce your tax burden through your health insurance, or inquire about the most affordable and convenient ways for the unemployed to get coverage (hint: it isn’t through COBRA). Call 713.984.2431 and ask for Stacy to request more information.

NONE OF THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE THOSE OF HOUSTONBUSINESS.COM™, THE HOUSTON BUSINESS SHOW, THE HOUSTON BUSINESS REVIEW, OR ANY OTHER FIRM OR COMPANY REPRESENTED OR REFERENCED HEREIN. FOR ADVICE OR OPINION, WE SUGGEST YOU CONTACT A QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL OF YOUR OWN CHOOSING.