group. yannic silver is the founder of internet lifestyle.com and steven corn sl the owner of brownies hardway store in san francisco who we profiled here on your business back in 2006. nice to see you again. nice to see you, too. back then we were talking about health care and how you provided health care benefits for your employees. what s your outlook right now? are things really hard for you? i don t think they re hard, but they certainly are flat. you have to look a lot more to where i can make some more money. and are you finding new places or is that tricky as well? not so much finding new places but relooking at the places that we ve always done and sort of mining those a little bit more. gene, so in your article, you basically said times like these make you focus on what s important. yeah, they do. nowadays, you talk about the economic strengths that are here. i mention in my new york times column it was actually a blog written by somebody else who
definitely still a business, mike and brad want their customers to know it is more than just about money. it s about an experience, a very personal one, that they want to continue to share with each and every person. it s a lifestyle as much as a business. you can make a life that you can really feel is rewarding. we built this business and continue to build this business around a set of values that we have about how we want to live and how we want to live in the world. we don t want people to build boards that won t surf well and won t look well. it s important to us to keep them happy and keep them psyched. looking to create a custom designed website for your small business in here now are five web services that will help you build a professional website without breaking the bank courtesy of matchables. squarespace is a website building where you can create your website using their available theme or create and customize a site from scrap.
or comments. yourbusiness@msnbc.com. as we have all experienced, small business owners have a problem to deal with. my next guest says that the people who are successful, though, don t necessarily know the answer to all their issues but they know what questions to ask. robert kaplan is the professor of management practice at the harvard business school. he s also author of the new book what to ask of the person in the mirror. great to see you, rob. great to see you, j.j. we were talking about when you are a small business person and i hear this a lot from people i talk to it s lonely. the term it s lonely at the top. but even if you re at the top of four people, it s lonely. i find that small business leaders feel more alone than ceos of big companies. and i ve dealt with both. the reason for that is they often built that business themselves. it may be part of a family where they don t think they can confide in other family members.
question and a tough one, particularly if they re people who have been with you all these years. but you have to help them, coach them or supplement them, but you have to face it or else it s very difficult to drive your business. rob, thank you. i think we get so in the weeds running our own business that we often forget to step back and do these big picture things we need to do to survive. good luck with your book. the book will help people. feedback is crucial for small businesses looking to grow. and if you re looking for a way to get immediate customer responses, our website of the week may come in handy. boxwire.com is an online suggestion box for service-based businesses. the site allows customers to anonymously submit feedback via boxwire.com or a mobile device. it collects these. business owners can analyze the trends. it range from $19 to $29 a
this is what my business does and you don t want to pay attention to the outside factors like the economy. it s uncomfortable. i prefer to be in a rhythm. i like the way things are set up. i don t want to change it. emotionally very difficult to face the fact you got to revisit it. what are your top three priorities to get to that vision? right. so if you got a vision, there are three what are the three most important tasks you must do well? normally when you talk to a small business person, they may have a clear vision, but they haven t actually thought about the three or four tasks that you do well. i m working 80 hours a week. my husband s ready to kill me. what are the three or four most important things you must do, then the third question, do you match your time with those priorities? and often when a business is struggling, they re not clear on their top priorities or they are but they re not matching their time with them. and they ve got to get that discipline.