I had the pleasure of attending and exhibiting at the Military Business and Community Expo yesterday in Ventura.  The event had 400+ attendees and offered up some great opportunities to the community as a whole. I also learned that the US Navy is the largest employer in Ventura County and contributes $1.7 billion in annual impact to the county.  The event was designed as sort of a meet, greet, and reach out for the Navy to the community at large, both employed and unemployed. It had a very entrepreneurial spirit to it, and I met some wonderful people. It is amazing to see how resilient the human spirit is when times are tough. I had conversations about new green business models, volunteer veteran support groups, and I even met a newspaper that is expanding into Ventura County. (yes, I did just say a newspaper expanding) I am truly fascinated by the diversity of people that came out and attended this event.
This leads me into the second part of my title, how can you get a free employee for 3 to 6 months? I had this nice woman, by the name of Jenny, come up to my booth and introduce herself. She works for Goodwill of Ventura. My first thought when I heard the name was Goodwill, isn’t that a marketplace for second hand goods? Well it turns out, they have different business units. One of those units carries a contract from the government for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Recovery Act had three immediate goals:
• Create new jobs and save existing ones
• Spur economic activity and invest in long-term growth
• Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending
This has lead Goodwill to reach out to businesses, in 52 of 58 counties in California, to find companies that need employees. These employees are paid by the government for 3 to 6 months, and then it is up to the business to decide if they would like to hire them or not. This is a win-win for both the companies and the individual. The individual gets hands-on work experience, and the company gets another body to help drive the business. I personally could use someone who likes to work with graphics, so I will definitely be contacting Jenny for more information. Please feel free to contact me for more information, however I have added links to their website. Have a great weekend!

This is a great topic to keep track of. Microsoft has announced an innitiative to help train AND certify California residents. Here is a snipit of the page linked to the article for you. California is trending towards the top of all states in unemployment rates, somewhere between 11 and 13%, and residents could use all the added resources they can get. The article has more information, however the vouchers can be found at your local workforce center. Here is a link to the California Employment Development Department for more information.

I love to learn when I make a mistake, because it gives me the opportunity to correct and learn from it! I had an epiphany this morning about a mistake that I made on our website. You see, we have all been trained to look for a “Search Box” in any website. We have AOL (yes they were once a monster), Yahoo, and Google to thank for that.  The point of the search box is to get to your desired destination quickly. This is the reason why Google controls the majority of US search traffic. They produce more relevant results for web searchers quicker and easier than any other search engine. I am an avid Googler, so I find it amazing that I made this mistake. The story started when I received a phone call from someone asking about some of our partnerships, and whether we carried certain products.  The answer was yes, but what I didn’t comprehend, until this morning, was why she asked the question. You see, search algorithms look through text for matching keywords, letters, terms etc. What it will not do is see images as text unless they are tagged with keywords. The mistake that I made was not that I have images or logos on that unique page, but I forgot to insert the meta data (text) in the web page to allow it to be searchable through our website.  I have since corrected the problem, but I am extremely happy that I spoke with that person and learned a bit. So to her, thank you! Remember, tag or insert meta data when using images on your website. Have a great weekend!

I was thinking about my first job out of college the other day. We were a 7 person team that didn’t put too much into marketing. (at least outside of paper print) We were a brick and mortar that had local connections and a number of repeat customers. It was great when we grew organically, but there were severe limitations and risks to that type of business. Large corporations, with buying power, could put the wraps on our profit margins pretty quickly, if they moved into town. Outside of the fact that, we relied heavily on the local economy being robust.  I think there are places for both large and small companies in any economy though. The point is you have to find out where the opportunities lie and figure out how to distinguish yourself!! For instance, how many days a week can you walk into a Wal-Mart and speak to the CEO???? This is not a knock on Wal-Mart, but I believe their headquarters are in Arkansas. Yet, a local reader can catch your blog of the week and actually walk in and talk to you …or email… or call…  
To me that is pretty useful customer service. Our job, as entrepreneurs and employees alike, is to be creative. We need to utilize our resources as much as possible and work lean. The last time I checked, blogs were free, Twitter is free, and Facebook is free. Email can be free,(I suggest against it) and websites can be extremely cheap to put up. Use them, try them, get familiar with them, or just call us. Our team will be happy to talk to you about them and help you get started. I still believe that paper print is useful, (such as OC Business Journal), but newspapers are struggling for readership and direct mail has less than a 1% capture rate. Therefore, you need to diversify and use any and all capable resources. Once you get comfortable with them, I suggest tying them in together and automating wherever possible.  

Also, good luck to the Virginia Cavalier wrestling team this weekend at the ACC’s!