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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy

Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy Program Transcript

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One of the most important things that a business owner, an entrepreneur, needs to understand is that if you cannot articulate your plan-- if you can't take from your passion to written form to convince others that you have a great plan then you're going to have a lot of difficulty. If you're looking at financial institutions, if you're looking at borrowing money, if you're looking at people investing. And so you have got to understand your passion, and be able to articulate that on paper, and then ultimately convince others that it's important.

One of the keys to my success in starting and operating several businesses is that I put my idea is to paper. I have a white board in my house. I am walking around and every floor in my house I am putting pen to paper. I have a notebook that I carry with me. It's really important that I capture the ideas on paper and then I can also translate that to my team.

And so as a small business my goal is to have the same policies and procedures as a medium to larger business does. And so when I start a business I think about my people first, we have our mission and our vision statements that we put together and every one of my mission statement start with my people. I want to be well-known for my employees and my team. If I can do that first, if that's my goal, the clients are going to come. The profitability will come and I have proven that time and time again.

Be passionate about your concept and your idea. Be passionate about your team members. That's leadership. If you can motivate a team around your passion and get them on board you can do anything. In all our businesses we have meetings weekly with my executive team and we talk about our people. What's happening in their lives, what's happening in our business. How do we minimize problems in the workplace? Because our employees spend so much time with us.

If they can't feel like they're part of the family at work then where can they? So it's ultimately critical that they feel comfortable. That they feel valued and respected. And that's part of leadership. That's leadership 101. You have to be passionate and in my opinion, you need to be known for the people that work with you, just as much as you need to be known for the services you provide.

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When developing the strategy for Business Owners Benefit Association we had to consider, for one, why hasn't it been done before? This is not a complicated

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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy

concept. You take a lot of buyers and you buy products cheaper than you would individually.

Well having said that, small businesses are an underserved population. Because if you're selling a service like insurance, or if you're a fuel company selling fuel, you're really looking at what premium dollars come in, what are the commissions, what are your profitability as a vendor?

Well if you go to the individual small businesses it takes so much time, and almost as much time, in some cases, to really spend evaluating the small business. When you could spend that time on a medium or larger business and get more commissions. And so what we had to do at BOBA is to take the risk that if we can convince enough small business owners to partner with us, to become associate members, that truly together we are, and we do, bring more buying power than any large business in the country.

So the risk of building that strategy was that , are we going to invest the time and energy and the money upfront to make that happen? The answer was a resounding yes. We have spent a lot of money, and research, and time to bring this together. And we are very happy now that as we start to take off in our first year, that we have dozens and dozens of businesses, even larger businesses, realizing that they want to sponsor, they want to be a part of this.

Because again, the idea is not difficult to understand but the reason it hasn't been done before in this manner is because there is a lot of risk up front. And as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, I know and I've been blessed with profitability. But I've left a lot of money on the table because I could not compete with some of these services that BOBA brings. And now we can. We can bring power back to the small business owner.

And so the innovation is not what we're doing but it's how we're doing it. How we're bringing people together. How we are convincing vendors that would never work with a small business, or even a small association like us, if they didn't have the belief in what we were doing, what our management was doing. And that we are able to convince and network through a decade of success in our own small businesses. To bring these owners together. Convince them to be a part of our association.

And so that the large businesses of the world create a win-win scenario. They're going to get our buying power but we're also in a get their reduced prices. And we're going to be able to compete right alongside the large businesses of the world.

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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy

The location of BOBA, Business Owners Benefits Association, initially is located in Knoxville, Tennessee. And Knoxville, Tennessee is where our other businesses are located. And we believe that we have to convince our local business owners and our community neighbors that our association is worth joining and worth becoming a member of.

And so at the Knoxville Chamber, BOBA is the small business advisor to its 2,200 members. We partner with a chamber and equal status with Verizon and Pepsi. We believe that it's important to bring a voice to small business in the chamber. We also sponsored recently the Smoky Mountain Air Show with the Blue Angels. Again, bringing that to our community to celebrate, which is the first time in 16 years that an air show had been in the Smoky Mountains.

And so as we work with our neighbors, as we work with small, medium, and large businesses in Knoxville. And we have successfully had dozens of businesses become members. We then start to look nationally, and ultimately internationally. We know that as business owners that are struggling with the same problems in England, in Bosnia, in places in Africa, that we need to bring them the same solutions that we're bringing to business owners in America.

So BOBA is nationally, but it's also internationally, focused. And we know that the more creative minds, the more that we bring international voices to the membership of BOBA, that we will only become stronger. Because we do focus on, and we live by our motto, the dream of one and the buying power of many. And those many are worldwide.

So we're looking forward to the future. We're looking forward to growing, not only nationally, but internationally. And most importantly, I am very excited to start to hear from business owners and what solutions they need to be provided in their own country.

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So the considerations that BOBA and its executive team need to consider as we move internationally are things like vendor networks, relationships in certain countries. We also have to understand the regulatory and compliance requirements for banking, international banking, and association statuses in different countries.

So as we start to focus overseas in different markets we will then start to partner with and ask other business owners. We will ask governments to help us better understand the marketplace in those countries. Each country has its own set of laws and regulations. And so what we want to do is be the best small business advisors that we can be. And in order to do that, we have to understand strategically, and tactically, at the business owner level what the requirements are.

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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy

What are the real needs from the business owners that are working in the community and in different service industries and manufacturing? But also what do the political-- or what are the political requirements to break into new markets and make sure that we are compliant and doing the right thing with those local businesses?

Were based on a vendor network. That is really the creativity behind BOBA is that we partner with large vendors. And the vendors believe in us to the point that they would give us phenomenal pricing because of where we're going. And that passion that we believe in wholeheartedly, we convince other large businesses and national networks to believe in us as well.

And so as we look to international markets we have to find those same type of relationships and develop those relationships so that we are just as value added to the small business owner in an international market. And so in large part our vendors in America also extend in their multinational corporations but in some cases they're not. And also in some cases there may be a unique, specific, country specific problem, that BOBA May be able to solve or help be a part of the solution. But in order to do that, we have to hear the voices of small business owners and the government officials in the country.

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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy Additional Content Attribution

FOOTAGE: BenEricPromotion Photo used by permission of Dr. Eric Barton.

Eric_in_Dubai Photo used by permission of Dr. Eric Barton. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/ericbarton/4029137825/sizes/l/

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Business Strategy and Innovation: Developing a Business Strategy

BOBA Logo_193 PMI_RGB_300.dpi Photo used by permission of Dr. Eric Barton. Retrieved from www.whyboba.com

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Eric at Vanquish office (2) Photo used by permission of Dr. Eric Barton. Retrieved from www.govanquish.com

Eric at Vanquish office Photo used by permission of Dr. Eric Barton. Retrieved from www.govanquish.com

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