Trust Your Gut! Celebrity Apprentice episode 3

Soooooo sorry for being behind on this! In episode 3 of Celebrity Apprentice I am going to have to run down my notes a bit quickly. Here is what I was able to pick up from the show for all of you:

Sharon made a great comment and said to “Trust Your Gut”. I totally believe in this and live by these words myself and moving forward I think people should trust more of themselves when getting those little odd feelings.

Stay Focused and Organized! In these hard times you do not have the money to be wasting your time! Stay on task and if you find yourself on the stray find yourself an advisor or someone you can count on to keep you in check. I personally was able to find one of these people and he never tells me what to do but also reminds me that I need to make money and not waste my time on things that are not part of my main focus and goals.

Lead by example: Be the person you expect from your employees. Simply said!

If you are in a business that depends on presentations, rehearse! Spell Check! Have associates look it over. The more eyes before the “main event” the better. Remember that “first impressions” of your company will always remain just that.

Last but not least. CALL TO ACTION!!!! Duh people!! Tell your customers what you want from them. Be Very Clear, people will appreciate it.

Much Luv…

ChiTown // Jess

Oh where, oh where, has good customer service gone?

Boy oh boy, no wonder business is down. Who wants to buy things from companies who punish you once you purchase from them? I have had the worst experience with The Room Place I think I have ever experienced. About a year ago my boyfriend and I purchased a bedroom set from them and it has been a nightmare ever since. Our TV cabinet broke and had to be replaced by something other then the TV cabinet as it had been discontinued….Ok, so they take the cabinet and we have to go make a new choice. Being that nothing else was going to match our bedroom set we opted to go with a dining set. Well guess what the dining set arrives and it’s BROKEN. So they replace broken with broken… Really? Not to mention the bed has broken 3 times at the legs and its not like my boyfriend and I are 500 pounds. The set is horrible, the people that work for the room place never call you back when you leave messages and I am a very unhappy customer!

Any horror stories out there from other companies with bad customer service??

I vow that today if I ever own a company that requires customer service I not only will have them be local and actually connected to the product but also make sure that they are friendly and inviting on the phone or emails. I give out a huge kudos to Zappos.com. On a recent trip out to Vegas I took the Zappos tour and they have it down to a science. It all starts with their employees and if your employees are happy then they will be happy to treat the customers happily. Just my thoughts.

When was the last time you looked into your customer service procedures? Maybe instead of trying to focus on getting new business we need to focus as business owners on the customers we already have and then get referrals….

// ChiTown Jess

Celebrity Apprentice Episode 2 and You: Money Talks, Bullsh*t Walks…

Kodak was the company that the celebrities were representing this episode. If you are in a current position to rebrand your company this was your episode to watch.

So to sum up episode two for all of you as fellow entrepreneurs as well as business owners I came up with the following:

1. Be ORGANIZED!! Take the time to see what logistics you have running your company. Evaluate if you are running something that does not necessarily need to be run. For instance the men’s team did not use the large printers that Kodak provided at the site. Instead, they gave out a card to people who came into the store for the customer to go to the website to retrieve their photos with the men celebrities. This was a great strategy as not only did people get the experience in the store but now they also had a call to action to view their website. Not only that, but they did not keep loosing power like the girls did, which in the end says to me the men were saving money on their electric bill as well!

Do you have anything running that could be transferred to a more efficient process such as a website?

2. Delegate and Evaluate! Are your employees pulling their weight? Everyone needs tasks and you as the leader need to provide these tasks to make sure your employee’s are using their time wisely. Time that YOU are paying for. Take a moment to sit down and write down who does what. Then ask yourself if what they are doing is A. Their intended job and task and B. are they doing a GREAT job at it? If they are not, then they have to go. There are millions of people out there looking for jobs and if your people are not up to par, the reality is, that there is someone out there who will be able to fill their shoes. The time you spend to train this new employee might just be worth it, rather then the time your current employee is wasting not doing their job efficiently and wasting YOUR money!

3. Does your business have a WOW factor? I know we all don’t have a celebrity to champion our brand so you just have to get creative. Think out of the box; see what you can come up with. Run your list by some people and do the one that they all think is the craziest and is most cost efficient for you to be comfortable with.

4. Hire a secret shopper! These people will provide to you priceless information as to how your staff is doing and working with the customers when you are not around. This will also help you with step two with figuring out who is dead weight in your company.

5. Show your wears! Make sure your products are properly on display at all times. You also need to make sure your staff is fully trained on your products and they are able to answer any questions a customer might have about those products.

So to sum it all up, Organize, Delegate, Evaluate, WOW them, Brand correctly and SELL, SELL, SELL.

If you learned something else from the episode please chime in….

// ChiTown Jess

Are you an Entrepreneur? I am...

My name is Jessica Loren Popov and these are my confessions to you as an Entrepreneur.

I would like to start off by saying thank you to anyone who takes the time to read my blog. By no means am I an expert or for that matter a writer; I will only offer my simple advice and knowledge as a young Entrepreneur here in Chicago. To be honest I have always thought of myself as a ChiPreneur, which I derived from Chicago and Entrepreneur. ChiTown has been a nickname for this great city for as long as most of my family members and I can remember. “”Chi-Town” or “Chitown” Pronunciation of this nickname can vary (from chai-town to shy-town). I would also like to add that spelling and grammar have never been my strengths, so I apologize and feel free to correct me.

A little bit more about myself, first off, I am a growing web enthusiast. I was born in Chicago and as a small child lived in the Elmwood Park area. My family moved on to Florida for a stint and then moved back to the suburban area of Chicagoland. I have always had a passion for the city. I have had many a sales job in the past always toping and exceeding my sales goals. I have worked with large companies such as The Career Education Corporation, Nextel Communication and Cortiva Institute. However, I pride myself with some of my more successful ventures as a child being when I was a only 7 years old selling hot dog at my neighborhoods annual garage sale as well as lemonade stands. Needless to say, my quest for success has grown since my childhood. I use my day-to-day life as a sponge for new ideas in the business of web creation. I am an avid reader of industry related articles, books and magazines such as Entrepreneur Magazine, being one of my favorites.

I am educated from Indiana University Bloomington as well Loyola University Chicago with studies in Advertising and Public Relations. However, as most entrepreneurs I have yet to finish but I do plan to do so in the future. I thrive on new ideas and the ability to make them a reality. I am a superior networker and I’m guaranteed to know exactly what you do and how we can connect or connect with someone you know within the first meeting.

The reason for this blog is to offer a viewpoint to others of being a young entrepreneur here in Chicago and hopefully to offer advice and well as gain some from other ChiPreneurs. Younger or older we can all learn from one another, The young have a viewpoint of the new wave of the social marketing media avenues and well the more experienced, have just that, EXPERIENCE!

I would like to start off the new year of reminding all fellow entrepreneurs of their strengths. Times may be tough right now but we can all get through it. Especially with the help of each other, which I hope, this blog will achieve.

Please remember that an entrepreneur is a person who has possession of a new enterprise, venture or idea, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. Yes, that right as entrepreneurs we take risks, which don’t always turn out the best but we always survive and pull through. He or she is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, is believed to have coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is “one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediately between capital and labour”.

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in many new ventures failing. The word entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently. Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.

Observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity.

Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either “political entrepreneurs” or “market entrepreneurs,” while social entrepreneurs‘ principal objectives include the creation of a social and/or environmental benefit.

I hope this definition gives you the drive to push through this year, as we are all in it together.

This years is for all strong ambitious leaders, we will make this year 2010 strong and prosperous.

References

1. Sullivan, arthur; Steven M. Sheffrin (2003). Economics: Principles in action. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458: Pearson Prentice Hall. pp. 6. ISBN 0-13-063085-3.

2. Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus, Tim Hindle, The Economist, page 77

3. See WILLIAM J. BAUMOL, ROBERT E. LITAN & CARL J. SCHRAMM, GOOD CAPITALISM, BAD CAPITALISM, AND THE ECONOMICS OF GROWTH AND PROSPERITY 3 (2007) (citing generally PETER F. DRUCKER, INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (1985) (attributing coining and defining of “entrepreneur” to JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY, A TREATISE ON POLITICAL ECONOMY (1834)); but see Robert H. Brockhaus, Sr., The Psychology of the Entrepreneur, in ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP 40 (Calvin A. Kent, et al. eds. 1982) (citing J.S. MILL, PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY WITH SOME OF THEIR APPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY (1848). Note th

Celebrity Apprentice: Trump has a new crew, Blagojevich is back!

Ok so we all know Trump is one of the best Entrepreneurs out there. My take on the show this season is going to be how you as the ChiPreneur can take the advice the celebrities are leaning on the show and incorporate that into your business.
The show sum up was the men won the Diner challenge! Carol Leifer was the first woman to go. Brett Michael’s got 100,000 for his diabetes charity.

Based on this first episode I picked up on the following:
Pick a good name for your business. Trump liked Tenacity for the women’s team and did not like the men’s team name of RockSolid. When was the last time you reflected on your business name? How do you feel about it? Send in your names and let’s have other’s comment on them.

Restaurant Owners: My idea might be to pair your menu with a local charity. Say a certain percentage of each plate goes towards that particular charity. If you don’t have one in mind email me jess.popov@gmail.com and I will recommend a great one for children.

Price point on the menu’s seemed to be key. When was the last time you reflected on your pricing on your menu? On Service, are your employees up to par? Or are they leaving burgers for A Lister’s like Joan Rivers for over 8 minutes waiting. Blago, what are you doing man…get the burger to Joan Rivers? You are there to raise money for charity, not talk politics.

The women’s team lost, yet left people on the street in a line waiting to give them money. My idea would have been to take the the one of a kind menu’s and have them all sign them and sell them to the people who were left outside. I think this would have helped their sales efforts. What else do you think would have helped the women’s team? Do you think Carol should have been fired?

// ChiTown Jess

John Klein of CNN says “Competition is Healthy” New York Media Summit

Last week I had the chance to represent ReelChicago.com as Press for the New York Media Summit. I learned a lot, and I thought I would share some of my knowledge with all of you.

John Klein, President of CNN, U.S was the keynote of the first day Wednesday March 10th and he had a lot of great insights to the future of the media world. Klein sated that 2009 was CNN’s most profitable year, which is surprising as most of us Chipreneurs had such a bad year for 2009.

Klein stated that Mobile, Online growth, and HBO documentary “Strong Relationships”, is what helped CNN achieve such growth. Not only having grown in 2009 Klein stated that CNN has doubled their profits over the past four years. Legacy news sources I am sure are seething as they look to find their own ways to do much the same.
Klein said he likes to “focus on putting an emphasis on video for their online platforms as well as to concentrate on multiple revenue streams”.

To my surprise Klein also said that CNN “is afraid of social networking sites” CNN does not want your twitter friends to be your trusted source for news. With CNN having 100 million viewers and Fox having 90 million viewers he said, “I am more afraid of social media then I am of Fox”.

What I think all Chipreneurs and Entrepreneurs in general should take from Klein’s keynote is that “Competition is Healthy”, CNN is making more money because of competition. Also, if you keep your audience happy they will do a great job at spreading the world for you.

How I sum that up for all of you is…Entrepreneurs keep your clients happy and they will spread the word for you! If this principle can work for CNN, I no doubt feel it will work for you.

// ChiTown Jess

Chicago can you hear me?

I'm back ChiTown Jess Chicago’s very own Entrepreneur Blogger. Welcome to my wild and crazy, entrepreneurial world. First of all I believe I am an ever-growing web enthusiast. I grew up with the Internet as a kid, we were the first ones on the block with a Packard bell that had a prodigy internet connection (dial up anyone?), Prodigy was intriguing to me as it opened a new world, one that was mysterious, yet right in your home. Since then back in the early 90’s I have been hooked. There is not a day that goes by that I do not discover something new on the Internet.

To be honest I have always thought of myself as a ChiPreneur, which I derived from Chicago and Entrepreneur. ChiTown has been a nickname for this great city for as long as most of my family members and I can remember. “”Chi-Town” or “Chitown” Pronunciation of this nickname can vary (from chai-town to shy-town). So with ChiPreneur established I thought it was also necessary to add Serial, as I tend to jump from one project to another, which tends to drive my family crazy. I would also like to add that spelling and grammar have never been my strengths, so I apologize and feel free to correct me.

Moving on…I have been a member of Facebook since it was called “The Facebook”, I was so excited to recently find out that my Facebook birthday is October 19th 2004. To say the least I was an early adapter. I believe facebook has changed the world, and it’s so inspiring to know that something that was created in a dorm room, by one college student, could have such power.
I was born in Chicago and as a small child lived in the Elmwood Park area. When I was 5 years old I moved to South Florida for my father’s career at the time, and that’s about when all my entrepreneurial pursuits began.

I want to say my first sign of “the entrepreneurial bug” was lemonade stands when I was 5. Then there was the time when I decided that I no longer wanted to do my house chores. The great thing about this was I had a younger brother and sister. Well, one day I created an entire money system called “Jess Bucks”. I then proceeded to find all of the stuff in my room that I no longer liked/wanted/ was going to throw away anyway, and created a “store” in my closet. I organized the items into price sections based on my perceived value of the items run on the “Jess Bucks” system. After the “store” was put into place and the “currency” was created, I got my brother and sister into my room and told them that if they were to do certain chores for me they would earn these “Jess Bucks” in which they could buy things from my “store” (oh and the “store” also had hours of operation, lol) This system became such a big hit in my house that even my brother and sister’s friends started to want to participate when they would come over to play. From the “Jess Bucks” days the “Serial” side of me spawned into more lemonade stands, chocolate stands, babysitting services with “hired” employees, hot dog stands at my neighborhoods yearly garage sale (of which I would net around $800 yearly which was like a million dollars to me when I was little), Girl Scout Cookies were a big one, basically anything the school gave me to sell I would top everyone because I had to. It was just inside of me… “the bug” that I would have to sell the most and I kept going and going and going and I am still going.

I have always had a passion for the city and the possibilities it could bring to a young entrepreneur. I have had many a sales job in the past after high school, always toping and exceeding my sales goals. I have worked with large companies such as The Career Education Corporation, Nextel Communications and The Cortiva Institute. However, I pride myself with some of my most successful ventures as a child, being when I was selling those hot dogs at 7 and lemonade at 5 on the street corner. Needless to say, my quest for success has grown since my childhood. I use my day-to-day life, the power of asking for things, as well as my dreams, as a sponge for new ideas in the business of visionary creations. I tend to not limit myself, which is why I now have an advisor who was with UPS for 35 years and he now has the task of keeping me grounded.

I am an avid reader of industry related articles, books, and magazines, such as Entrepreneur Magazine and Inc. I fully believe one of my projects will be the main story in a business related magazine one day.

I am educated from Indiana University Bloomington as well as Loyola University Chicago with studies in Advertising and Public Relations. I used to have a full scholarship however, as most entrepreneurs I have yet to finish, but I do plan to do so in the future. Loyola can you hear me…I want back in???

I thrive on new ideas and the ability to make them a reality. I am a young individual who truly believes in my entrepreneurial skill set to make my projects nationally recognized powers of innovative and creative ideas. I am told that I am a superior networker and I’m guaranteed to know exactly what you do and how we can connect or connect with someone you know within the first meeting wherever it may be.

Currently, at the age of 25, I am stepping into the role of Blogger/Consultant/Social Media Speaker as well as helping, You, the business owner figure out the landscape that is now the Internet with Social Media. Blogs, Vlogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and so on and so on.
The reason for this blog is to offer a viewpoint to others of being a young entrepreneur here in Chicago and hopefully to offer advice and well as gain some from other Entrepreneurs. I plan to interview as many Entrepreneurs as I Can in my quest to become a better entrepreneur. I want to find out about their successes, failures, strengths and weaknesses as business owners. Younger or older, we can all learn from one another. The young have a viewpoint of the new wave of the social marketing media avenues, and well…. the more experienced, have just that, EXPERIENCE!
So that’s that. I’m Jess I’ll be here all week. If you have any questions please feel free to reach me on twitter @JessPopov.

// ChiTown Jess