Feed your business mind with knowledge to find business success

This time of the year in most cities and towns is when your local United Way kicks off their campaign to raise money for local charities. The United Way helps support great organizations that do all kinds of wonderful things to make a community all it can be. From helping the local homeless shelter to working with children on a reading program.

I as at a recent United Way kickoff meeting where they were talking about a reading program that they support. The volunteer commented that people are learning to read up until about the third grade. After that point, people read to learn. That statement got me to thinking. 

Too often, once someone gets out of school the reading to learn stops. For the first ten years after I got out of school, I was the same way. I still read, but it was not about building up my knowledge base. That changed when I was selected to be a part of a manager training session and the first thing we had to do before we all got together was read. Tom Peter's Re-imagine! opened up my mind to a new passion of learning and rethinking how to do business.

Since then, I've become a huge fan of Tom Peters. There are several books you can dive into yourself, or perhaps make a part of a group reading assignment for key personnel. If you just need a quick hit of energy during the work day, visit his website http://tompeters.com/. Tom is very open, sharing slides from his presentations along with biting commentary and insight on the world of business and current events.

Archie Griffin was a big name in my childhood. Growing up in a household of Ohio State football fans, Griffin was the icon of icons during the mid 1970's. To this day, Griffin holds the distinction of being the only two time winner of the Heisman Trophy, the highest honor in college football. I recently saw an interview with Archie as he talked about what it meant to win that coveted award as a college junior. Griffin talked about how legendary coach Woody Hayes said that you always had to be improving. In Griffin's case, he became driven to win that second trophy just to stay the same.

At our core, we all want to be better tomorrow than we were today. The difference between those that achieve this and those don't largely falls with their willingness they have to invest time and energy into reading and learning. That is certainly the case in business.

Reading business books isn't for everyone, I understand. While I think everyone can learn a thing or two (or 100) from Jim Collins' Good to Great, maybe it is quick bites of information that works better. That is one of the most wonderful things about the internet.

Leadership and management are entirely different, and both skills need to be sharpened as you grow personally and professionally. Getting quick hits of wisdom from websites like LinkedIN.com will help. Following some of these great business minds would be another opportunity for you to read, learn and grow:

1.       Mark Cuban -- Sure, he can be controversial. But his story is one everyone can learn from, plus he's pretty entertaining if you ask me.

2.       Richard Branson -- Yes,  he is a free spirit but still someone to take very seriously. He started his first business at age 16 and now has over 400 businesses adding to his wealth every day.

3.       Simon Sinek -- While there are tons of great pep talks available online at Ted, Sinek is my favorite. His 15 minute conversation about why people buy what they buy should be mandatory viewing for any sales person.

It doesn't take a lot of time to stay engaged and learning. Those three people I recommended all offer strong commentary via Twitter, which you can roll right into your current social media feeds. This truly is a small investment which can pay off big time on down the road.  

TV's The Profit supports local newspapers as a great source for business information and knowledge

I love reality TV. Since the very first season of Survivor, I've been a huge fan. Watching how the contestants interact and strategize is fun to watch and helpful. You can watch how people react to difficult people and difficult situations, and you can adapt that to your own personal life.

But my favorite reality show is about a different kind of survival. Trying to keep small businesses afloat and in fact prosper is the focus of CNBC's The Profit. Starring Marcus Lemonis, the show is about Lemonis investing in small businesses around the country and helping to guide them into black ink.

The basic belief of Lemonis, who made his biggest mark as the CEO of Camping World, is very simple. Successful businesses focus on their people, the process and their product. Think about it for a moment; that totally makes sense. If you boil things down the basics in your business, any business, it comes down to people, processes and products. I've personally used this approach on many occasions to work on my strategy for business improvement.

I'm such a fan of Lemonis, that I've inquired with him about any books he's written because I want to learn more from him. Turns out, the answer was right under my nose everyday.

In an article on CNBC, Lemonis declared that he didn't read business books. He finds them  to be outdated. But he is a big reader, and uses that gathered intelligence to help him make decisions. But his reference book isn't a book at all. Turns out, Marcus relies on the daily newspaper.

"If you're going to make business decisions and you're going to make them today, you might as well have the most recent information," Lemonis tells CNBC. "Whether that's The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times or your local paper, I think in order to get in touch with real-time information, you've got to study real-time data."

Lemonis learns a lot from the newspaper industry. And I believe the newspaper industry could learn a lot from him too, using his approach to streamline and relaunch the local newspaper.

Major accounts make major mistakes by cutting back or cutting out newspapers from their media buys

If you’ve worked in an advertising department of a newspaper, you’ve either had this phone call or know someone that has. It’s a major account or their agency, and they are calling to discuss their preprint schedule for the coming year. These calls rarely end with a positive outcome.

Major advertisers and their agencies have been on the attack for the better part of the last decade, and the result for newspapers has been bad. Advertisers have dramatically reduced their quantities, frequency and rate.

While the financial impact for the newspaper industry has been well documented, the impact on those advertisers has been largely glossed over and rarely discussed. But not here, and not now.

The comments and the stories are out there, but they don’t gain as much traction as the negative stories. In recent memory, I can think of several major national retailers report that sales lagged at their stores after cutting newspaper insert programs. Those same retailers announce to Wall Street and their stockholders that one of their strategies to improve sales is to increase frequency of inserts in local newspapers.

The latest to make this confession was Stein Mart. Their CEO Dawn Robertson resigned amid less than expected sales results. Stein Mart’s director of investor relations, when asked about what were the missteps made by the company, stated in an article from The Florida Times-Union  “The most impactful was a change in the marketing mix. We shifted spending from newspapers to television, which didn’t have the result we wanted.”

Very bold statement, but that isn’t the first time this has been cited by major accounts in recent memory. Ad Age ran a story in May with similar tones, with major retailer Kohl’s experience some of those same issues.

Facing a nearly 4% decline in same store sales, Kohl’s decided to return to a more aggressive insert program. As many of us know, they cut back that program and their customers responded by not responding! "There are definitely some company-specific issues from a marketing perspective that we're working on rectifying, so we know that affected our first quarter," said Wesley McDonald, chief financial officer.

Long time retailer JC Penney nearly went out of business a few years ago when they ended their newspaper insert program and discounting. Penney’s eliminated newspaper advertising and focused on branding through television and direct mail. The results were horrific! In an Ad Age article after their relaunch of traditional media with about 30 newspaper inserts, they discussed what went wrong. Then CEO Ron Johnson said, "Clearly, our new marketing, our new message is getting through. We have more traffic in our stores. People are buying more, and we're encouraged by that ."

Newspapers should be encouraged by the stories of JC Penney, Kohl’s, Stein Mart and more. A consistent advertising program in newspapers still works, still drives traffic and still provides a good ROI (return on investment) for the advertiser. The beat downs from accounts have made us forget the results provided by our products.

But that next call doesn’t have to leave you on the defensive. Stand firm on the results, and maybe even site the examples discussed here. Stay firm on rate; after all not every paper in the country has the highest rate like they will suggest! And remember the role of newspapers in a media mix.

Using a newspapers as a part of your marketing and media mix triples the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. This is something we’ve all known for years, but have perhaps forgotten after all the negativity we’ve seen regarding our industry.