Don't Just Rely on Signages. Use the Power of Word-Of-Mouth

(courtesy of safetysign.com)

Imagine being relocated from a very high-traffic part of the Mall to a virtual DEAD ZONE and you can imagine the anxiety and worry that I went through when that just happened to my Lotto Outlet just last week.

To top it all, there are about 5 or 6 other lotto outlets within spitting distance (5o meters or less) from where I was located. The new site is exactly 80 steps (50 meters) away from my high-traffic site.

I knew my lotto customers will not be able to find me as they got used to just seeing my lotto outlet just upon entering the mall.

I placed a Tarp signage (in Bright Yellow background and Blue "Lotto" word across it) but only a handful saw the sign during our first 7 days and you know what brought my loyal lotto customers back , it was WORD-OF-MOUTH, to wit:

1. I stood on my old site and started giving out PCSO Lotto Playcards for them to place their bets and directed (escorted) them to my site;

2. The sales personnel of former

neighboring tenants who also pointed my lotto customers in the right direction;

3. Security Roving Guards also played a prominent role as many lotto customers asked the guards where my lotto outlet is now located;

4. And like a snowball effect, those lotto customers who were fortunate to find my lotto outlet during the crucial first 5 days also spread the word to their neighbors and friends who were also my lotto customers.

Signages are good but nothing like going out there and talking to your loyal lotto customers.

My Purpose of This Blog Is. . . .

Set-up a Business Network for the purpose of

1. Validate viability of a business concept with the Community of Like-minded would-be entrepreneurs and existing small small business owners

2. Share business ideas with the hope of setting-up joint ventures (especially since franchises are getting unaffordable)

3. Communicate sources of cheap funds and cheaper bank loans or banks that are more kind to small business owners

4. Learn Best Business Practices of fellow small entrepreneurs

5. Sounding Board of Franchises that are good to have and those to best avoid (I have heard comments like "its only the franchisor that is making money)

6. Link-up buyers and sellers

7. Looking For and For Sale Bulletin Board

If you wish to comment on the List or improve on what I have said, please click on the Leave a Comment button just below the title of this Post. Thank you.

Is Earning a Net of P5,000/month Enough to Get A Franchise???

An ex-PAL stewardess but now a small business owner herself who is into making Premium Cakes for Corporate Accounts related this talk with a crewmember of a Native Delicacy franchise in a mall in Manila:

1. Average daily sales is only P3,000/day or P90,000/month

2. Rent is about P35,000/month

3. Assume Food cost is 30% or P27,000/month (which is on the low side of estimates

4. Salary of at least 2 crewmembers

5. Franchise package maybe about P350 to 500,000

6. Net Income is about P5,000/month.

According to the crew, the owner knows the income is low but gets it back by having several outlets.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF THIS APPROACH TO FRANCHISING IS SOUND BUSINESS-WISE?

A Small Business Owner's Nightmare: Yikes!!! My Landlord Did Not Renew My Lease. He Wants My Business!!!!

When my friend decided to set-up his own PCSO Lotto Outlet somewhere East of Manila, he did not think there would be any problems when he rented a space in the house of his landlord.

After all, for the past 2 years relations with his landlord were quiet though the business was not really doing well. Then, business started to pick-up and when the Lotto Jackpot hit P347 Million about a year ago, lines started to form outside his small Lotto outlet. It was a time to rejoice but little did he know this was the start of his problems.

You see, when it came time to renew his lease, he was surprised when his landlord told him he will not be renewind the Lease as he needed the space. Then, my friend discovered that the very same landlord applied with the PCSO for a Lotto outlet at the very spot where he was located and he hit the ceiling!!

The good thing is that my friend holds the Contract of Agency for the Lotto Outlet in that area and nobody can set-up another Lotto Outlet unless he cancels his Contract.

To cut the story short, my friend still has his lotto outlet but now pays a higher rent. A Happy Ending but not exactly.

For all small business owners, how often do we feel that we at the mercy of our landlords???? One Lotto customer told me that the only to do business is to own the land where your business sits on but WHAT IF WE CANNOT AFFORD TO BUY THE LAND?

How Effective Is Importing Small Business Ideas from Abroad???

Tentatively, I am going to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with a friend to look for small business concepts and products to bring to Manila or vice versa.

While the culture maybe different between Vietnam and the Philippines, there are habits of life that are similar such as modes of public transportation and food such as noodle-eating but each may have its own way of going about it.

It has been said that Filipinos are known to adopt easily foreign practices like the eating of hamburger from the Americans. The Philippines is known to be the texting capital of the world while in the US of A, my daughter said that people use the mobile phone more for making calls. Can we convince the Americans to do more texting than calling?

Afternoon Talking with a Franchisee of a Known Food Cart Small Business

While at my regular watering hole (actually a coffee shop), I got a chance to talk to the young owner of a long-established food cart franchise and here are some of his concerns:

1. The franchisees feel that they are not being looked after well enough by the franchisor. Some concerns are late delivery of goods and pricing issues;

2. Franchisees are advised only 2 - 3 days before a price change;

3. SRPs went up but product margin and product size remain the same;

4. When they paid for the franchise which included the food cart, the franchisee still had to purchase some ancillary items such as trays and other containers from the franchisor which tend to increase the capital outlay;

5. He tried to get a second outlet at a well-known grocery chain but quit after a couple of weeks when he felt sales were so low that it was doubtful he would meet his rent;

6. Rent is now at the P30,000 plus level for a food cart and some locations are asking for a percentage of sales just like permanent tenants

Father Wants to Sell Profitable Business Because the Children Do Not Want to Run It Part 2

Here is what the father-founder can do assuming he has 3 kids:

1. Assess the management and talent skill sets of his children i.e. what are they good in;

2. Assign one to be the assistant of his General Manager so he gets an overview of the company & run the Production plant and lastly, do Corporate Planning & determine with his father in what direction to bring his company to;

3. Assign another to assist the Sales manager so he can learn the company's products and sales process, meet the company's Top Customers and lay the groundwork for future working relationship;

4. Assign another to head Quality Assurance and Research & Devt (R & D) and contact the company's top equipment supplier for his son to train with them for a year. The purpose is for the son to know all the products that can be developed using the supplier's machines. When the son has learned of new product lines that can be offered by the company in the short-term future, then the company can buy that equipment from that supplier who helped train his son.


Three sons and he has insured the future of the company.

Father Wants to Sell Profitable Business Because the Children Do Not Want to Run It

A dilemna facing any small business entrepreneur who started the business and has been running it for decades and now he is old, what does he do?

1. The business is profitable, demand is strong as it is a basic commodity and customers are in the Top 10 Supermarket chains in the country;

2. According to him, the Father-founder wants to sell it because his children do not want to run it;

3. According to the children, they are willing to run it but not with their father at the helm;

4. The children are intelligent and come from the country's best schools but their main complaint is that their father do not give them a freehand in running the business;

5. The father takes it that his children do not want to talk to him.

If this sounds familiar, I believe it is happening in many family businesses. Both have to compromise, to wit:

1. Children have to understand that the business is successful because of how their father run it'

2. Children have to accept that they will need to start from the bottom to learn the business;

3. Children have to realize that they have a treasure before them that they will inherit when the time comes;

4. The father has to realize that for the business to move forward and survive, it has to have new blood and learn new ways;

5. The father needs to let the children know that their "following orders" is a prelude to their assuming management of the company

6. The father needs to loosen some of his grip and allow his children to learn from their own mistakes and venture into new ideas

Should I Go for the One-Time Big Bucks Deal or Make a CLIENT FOR LIFE?

I was having a conversation with an IT programmer whose forte is designing Management Information Software with GPS Tracking for the Transport Industry.

Typically, he would charge a big upfront fee for software development and implementation as he is looking at the project as a One-time Engagement i.e Get-As-Much-As-You-Can-Now attitude.

I told him with his pricing in the P250,000 level (US$50,000), he is only going to attract big fleet accounts who will insist on getting the Source Codes (that will allow their In-House Programmers to reverse engineer for their own future enhancements & therefore, no more future business for him) and which will also mean he will be up against the huge software houses.

I was suggesting he does it on a Software Maintenance basis, to wit:

1. Charge Upfront a fee of P30,000 to P50,000 good for the first 5 truck units;

2. Charge a Software Maintenance fee of P5,000/month with a minimum of 1 year coverage;

3. Charge additional Software Maintenance fee of P500/month for every additional truck unit above 5.

4. While the client is under a 1-Year Software Maintenance Contract, the client is entitled to upgrade to the new version of the software for a certain fee (lower than the initial upfront fee)

5. Software Maintenance will include regular back-up of files, system repair, GPS & other special feature enhancements. (The selling point is to let him do the client's Back Office as the client may not have his own IT team for that)

The point I wanted to make is MAKE THE CLIENT STAY WITH YOU FOR AS LONG AS THE BUSINESS IS RUNNING. I do not think the client will migrate to another system if the programmer's software is already handling several years historical data and is doing a good job of it. Every small business entrepreneur fears loss of data, software downtime due to migrating to a new untested computer system and anything IT that he, the client, does not understand.

Play it right, I told the programmer, and he will have CLIENTS FOR LIFE.

The Mother of All ToDo Lists

If you are like me. I keep on making ToDo Lists week-in, week-out and what usually happens on Mondays is that I transfer most of Last week's ToDo list into This Week's ToDo List.

On top of that, I have a Nokia E72 smartphone and a Sony-Ericcson K750i cellphone that have their own versions of ToDo List with different View Modes to look at your ToDo List.

My Moleskin Diary also has a planner (which is another name for a ToDo List). Stop..Stop...Stop


I read in John Maxwell's book "Today Matters" and in it is a ToDo List by a certain Ivy Lee and this is how it works:

1. List the 6 Most Important things you have to do today (not 60, not 600);

2. Number them 1 to 6 with 1 being the most important;

3. Just Do It!

4. It does not matter whether you finish all 6. If you only did 4, it is OK as it would be the 4 most important tasks that got done.


The important thing to remember the 6-Item ToDo List is that you have the discipline TO DO IT!!!

We have a tendency to become experts in making ToDo Lists rather than getting things done.

TODAY is the Only Thing We can Control

I just finished a good book which I bought from Fully Booked Bookstore at the Fort and it is called Today Matters by John Maxwell.


There are so many tips we can learn from the book and I will make mention of them in future posts.

About time, I read that the only thing we have is TODAY and that is the only thing we have control of as to what we want to do with the day. Yesterday's success or failure is past already and it does not mean anything anymore. The future is still not yet here and we also cannot do anything about it.

It does not mean we should not care about the future. On the contrary, TODAY is the time we plan for tomorrow. Sounds common sense buy how many of us really do that?

When Is It Worth the Risk?

We offend ponder this question when faced with a BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY that may never come again, to wit:

1. Should we risk till it hurts? Or, pass on the chance for the Kill?

2. When we take a chance, is that the same as gambling and thus, we must be prepared to lose without regrets?

3. At what point do we stop? Do we touch the kids' savings?

4. Should we borrow from the loan shark or the relative who charges usurious interests (there are!)?

5. There is no such thing as s SURE THING and therefore, there will always be a risk.

6. If you do not risk till it hurts, will you ever improve your situation?


This is a blog post of QUESTIONS. Let me know what you think.

Get Caught on Monday. Shoplift Again on Thursday.

Where is the Justice????

To many a small business entrepreneur working on very limited budget and ever slimmer margins, Shoplifting and Passers of Counterfeit money bills are a daily threat. Read the following notes and IF YOU SEE ANYTHING FAMILIAR, YOU ARE ALREADY LOSING YOUR SHIRT, to wit:

1. One Small business owner of a Grocery told me his Security personnel would catch a shoplifter red-handed bringing out the goods and rather than be repentant, would even challenge Security to bring him to the police station as he will be out on bail immediately. Sure enough, HE WAS CAUGHT AGAIN IN THE SAME STORE AFTER 3 DAYS!!!!

2. Habitual shoplifters do not shoplift at random (i.e. go for the high-value goods). Items that they steal are items that already have been ordered by buyers of stolen goods. IN A SENSE, THESE SHOPLIFTERS ARE SHOPPING!!!!!!

3. Shoplifters "go to a school of SHOPLIFTNG". There, they practice how to carry 2 2kg of Nestle Powdered Milk in between their legs (under their skirt) and still walk normally.

4. Shoplifters would come in wearing a pair of denims but leave the store in a skirt.

5. Shoplifters are very much aware of the Law (without being lawyers) i.e. if no charges are filed by the small business owner, the police has to let them go in a few hours (otherwise, Illegal detention charges can be filed against the police).

6. In the event charges are filed, their handler would immediately post the bail, according to exasperated small business owners. (They know this for a fact as borne by the title of this post -- see above title)

7. Whenever a new grocery opens, all shoplifters would swarm into the store to
a. Test the Security Defenses
b. Being store opening day, Store and Security Personnel will be
overwhelmed by the number of customers and kibitzers.
c. Priority is "Pleasing the Customer". The small business owner
does not want a SCENE AS WHEN 5 BURLY GUARDS ARE
TRYING TO MANHANDLE A KICKING AND SCREAMING FEMALE
SHOPLIFTER, isn't it?
d. A new store will use new, young and probably inexperienced
guards. (Cheap Labor)

8. Most often, shoplifters would enter in a Gang moving in different directions to throw-off uniformed and plainclothes Security. LOOK AT IT AS A NUMBERS GAME.......The poor small business owner can only hire a few guards (3 or 4) watching 3 entrances and only 1 or 2 guard on roving duty versus 6 suspected shoplifters amongst hundreds of in and out legitimate shoppers. Its a NUMBERS GAME AS WELL AS A SHELL GAME. Pretty smart huh?

9. CCTV cameras are of the cheap kind (i.e. lacks high-tech Face Recognition Programming, low-resolution, no adjustment for changing light conditions and images/footages are not interfaced with software that will sound the appropriate alarms/SMS messaging). And to top it all, monitoring of the many CCTV units are left with a poor, lowly and very much bored clerk or staffer. Modern CCTV monitoring is computerized to recognize repeat shoplifters i.e. image of every caught shoplifter is stored in a database and the instant a shoplifter enters the CCTV scan range, the computer searches the database and any match will sound the alarm (without any human intervention 24/7). Price? P3,000 for cheap camera and upwards of P300,000/unit for the face recognition etc version. AND OUR FRIENDLY SHOPLIFTER KNOWS WHICH MODEL THE POOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNER WILL BUY.

IN THE END, THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER WEIGHS HOW MUCH VALUE IS SECURITY TO HIS BUSINESS. A typical small business grocer is working on a 3 - 5% margin. A lost of a can of expensive milk can only be recovered after maybe selling 100s of the same product.

The Cost of NOT PAYING FOR A GOOD LOCATION

Every business startup goes through this, much more so for a small business like our Lotto Outlet. We have all heard the saying LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION. But what if we already have a location and are already operating our small business and then suddenly, A NEW AND BETTER LOCATION COMES UP. What do we do? Read on:

Try to imagine this layout as I don't have a sketch (hay): Between Mall Entrance 1 and 7, there are food restaurants, namely Resto A, Jollibee, Resto B, Resto C and McDonalds. Entrance 1 is the highest pedestrian traffice entrance to the mall while Entrance 7 is the lowest traffic. After sometime, Resto A closed shop as their food fanfare did not suit the mall type of clients.

1. The road fronting the two entrances is a Main Thoroughfare but all public buses and jeepneys stop in front of Entrance 1, hence the reason why Entrance 1 has the highest traffic.

2. Even at great expense, I feel McDo should transfer their operations to the site of Resto A to take advantage of the heavy traffic.

3. They did not. KFC did. And now, KFC is siphoning the eaters from the other restos except Jollibee,

4. Jollibee still kept its traffic despite being beside KFC is that Jollibee is popular to kids and as we know, parents follow whatever their kids want.

5. For adults, KFC tops McDo, I think.

Let me know what you think of my analysis.

To Partner or Not to Partner?

At the start of a business or when a business opportunity presents itself, a small business owner would have pondered over this question.
What if you did your homework and found the business opportunity to be sound but you are short of cash, would this be the best time to seek a partner?
Take for example this situation and tell me what you think?
1. Partner A has close ties with the Purchasing or Procurement dept manager as well as the department end use of a product that you intend to supply and advised Partner B of the business opportunity
2. Partner A is well-versed in the prospect's Bid Process
3. Partner B does most of the grunt work like
a. Search for suppliers & negotiate the best price
b. Handles costs of communication between the suppliers,
company end-user, purchasing dept as well as keeping
Partner A updated in the transaction
c. Transportation and meal expenses are borne by Partner B
as he is the one with his own personal car (though Partner
A agreed to offset the costs against the project's income
d. Prepare the quotations, emails and other Back Office work
4. Profit will be shared equally minus receipted and agreed expenses

Would you consider this a fair and equitable partnership?

My take is that if I need to increase my business income, I would consider this to be FAIR considering that if Partner A did not advice me of the opportunity, I would be earning ZERO PESOS.