VIDEO – Small Business Owners Survival Guide For The Recession

I NEED YOUR FEEDBACK

SOOOOO…. This is a PILOT video. I am trying to do a better job in supporting our TPE community. I want to give “scrapper entrepreneurs” a voice, support, and continous fresh ideas.

I need your HELP. This video is far from perfect. I have 100 ideas already how to make it better and way more in tune with the TPE community. But I don’t want to bias you. I need your help… Please view the video and tell me how to make it 100 times better, and more in tune with what we are all about.

Thank you!

- Mike Michalowicz, a proud TPE

Great video! It really puts into perspective how tough it is out there.

It would be nice to hear the expert’s advice of making changes, then see a business owner actually trying to implement some afterward that in the video.

I also think the video was too ambitious. Since it’s a 3-minute feed, I would stick to one point and one point only.

What i mean is that with this video, you have the first interview with the business owner saying that it’s tough and scary, then a few interviews showing some advices. I would just break those two into 2 different videos since 3-minutes is too short to convey too many ideas.

If you’d like to deliver more points, you can do a series of these.

(actually I loved it. Let me know if we can help in anyway as always)

Great video Mike!
Thanks for the advice!

Great start. Awesome idea. Love your stuff. But you asked for feedback, so hope you don’t mind if I throw you a few comments.

1) Love the graphic open

2) The transition from you in your office to you outside the restaurant is awkward. Face time is important, so shoot both your open and closing stand-ups in the field—or, if you want to open each of these from your office for consistency, bring Mike Schmidt (looking good since his days on the Phillies) and his restaurant in from an over-the-shoulder box—as you explain and introduce Mike and his restaurant. “We went to the Mountain Lakes Market (where???) and talked with Mike Schmidt yadda, yadda, yadda…”

3) Reference your video in your track. “Mike’s business is in the soup” (as you show the soup). “Mike’s cutting staff faster than he dices vegetables.” Ok, it doesn’t have to be that hokey, but you get the idea. “He’s had to cut his cooking staff, and now prepares all the meals himself.” Need something that occasionally ties the video to your audio.

4) Nat Sound. Need to hear Mike and restaurant ambient noise under your track.

5) Try not to have Mike’s chyron cover his face. Either introduce him to set up the bite, or shoot your heads a bit wider.

6) Wear a mic if you’re going to ask your experts questions.

7) Put the experts in different chairs with different backgrounds, if you can.
The second expert—the woman—was awesome. Get to her faster. You’re burying your lede—or at least your main points.

9) Summarize her points again in a graphic—with bullet points.

10) Shorter video. 2:30 tops.

But again, the value is the information. The technical stuff comes. You’re off to a great start. Keep these coming!

I’m not a big fan of video presentations and this one is a good example of why. Video is only worth my time if the video adds value, I could have read the transcript in less time and gotten the same content. Watching two people sit at a desk and talk is boring and is only done (it seems to me) cause you can not because you have anything that needs to be seen.

As to content, excellent points and something I teach and write about all the time. Baseball is simple, catch the ball, throw the ball, hit the ball, and run the bases! Far too many people waste their time on finesse when the same time spent on fundamentals will always return a higher result.

The video was great! Your energy was fantastic…you are very succinct in your delivery. The music is great! You should have interviewed your pal in the John? Hahahah…. That would be funny and Lord knows we all need a laugh in this market.

I think that a few ideas for restaurant owners would have been helpful…maybe a suggestion on how to be creative on the cheap to keep customers coming. That would be motivating and make the change more fun. At the end of the video it was not clear if he was going to be in business. I’d love to think he put one of the ideas to use and is having success and repeat business even in hard times.

Fact is everybody eats and even in this economy people like to eat out. Maybe creating a recession menu would be helpful? Maybe doing a special on a day of the week would help. Maybe handing out a card on… say, Monday, to Monday customers for a discount every Monday for a month would bring them in on Monday? Regardless of the gimmick/tactic/draw people will continue to go to the places they love but would feel less guilty about spending in uncertain times if they feel they are getting a deal on something really good.

The restaurant business is a time driven business. Food has an expiration date. People eat lunch between 11-2pm. When lunch is over they start preparing for dinner. The owners are constantly worried about time which takes TIME away from their being able to get creative. Timing takes TIME away from them being able to switch things up and keep people excited about their place, their food and to keep people coming back. Another thought is to offer recession sized portions. People will often leave food on their plate….smaller potions would help. Maybe even a “splitsies” menu so that 2 people get a deal if they share a soup and sandwich to split….I don’t know just thinking? It’s always better to get two people in:)

People want all they used to be able to get….they want to feel like they are being frugal in these times. Trust me, even if I can’t afford it or shouldn’t I love to go out and get that glass of wine and I do…I just pick the place that seems to be a good deal.

Keep the info coming:) I have been suggesting to my pals that they subscribe to your site with all of your good ideas it keeps me moving forward!!

EAT your DRINK and BE MERRY!

I think the video should go into more detail about specifics on how to survive. Neither expert gave much detail but they did each have good points.

You can tie in what both experts said by taking a closer look at your business to find exactly what you need to do to survive.

You mentioned layoffs – Needs more details on survival through layoffs and making the right decisions. From the closer look analysis, who to let go, why you need to let someone go, justifying letting someone go, the thought process behind evaluation of employees, etc.

Feedback – Video was good. Straight and to the point without a lot of fluff. I wouldn’t make the videos any longer than 5 minutes. In our hyperactive world, many people will sit through a 3 minute video but won’t sit through a 6 minute video. Crazy? You bet your ass it is! People waste 2 hours on a stupid movie but won’t spend 6 minutes to improve their life. Ok. I’m getting off of my soap box. You get the point – short, sweet and to the point.

You could also implement a plugin that will take a poll for future videos. You want to serve the people. What better way to engage them and serve them at the same time than to ask them what they want and give it to them.

Some quick thoughts and feedback for you…( you asked for it so here goes)

Sorry Mike but that skull just set an ominous picture for me for entire clip and you kept on going back to that scene throughout it…
Have something else to hang back there?

Hear me out and then review your clip.

Opening scene with the skull hanging on wall over your right shoulder…
kinda ominous sign no matter what you may say in video!

Talk about survivlal mode?
Seems like the patient is long dead already to me.

Focus?
I’m stuck on focusing on that skull!!!
Look at that skull!!!

I’m gettting mixed signals Mike.
Lose the dead animal fast !!

Stop video at 8 sec’s or so and stare at it you’ll get my point!!!
Then check it out at 1:29 and stop it when you get intense and serious with the double whammy of increased costs and reduced sales.
Now look at that skull!!!! Overcome these hurdles? Message I get is it ain’t happening especially if I’m in resaurant biz.

Review the clip and see how each time you cut back to that scene that skull is there!!

Not quiet a subliminal message but some signal is being sent in some way and I’m no rocket scientist.
(I’m sure not intentionally either)

How a bout a lovely green plant or picture of a sunrise?
Or maybe a skyscrapper going up???? Something encouraging?

Or perhaps someone jumping out of a plane without a parachute!! : > )

My 1/2 cent.
There maybe a grain of truth in here somewhere.

All this being said you did get me to watch it and review it a few times.

Ritchie

I like the video. I really like the intro and the branding “on a Roll”. As far as the editing, it seemed like mike and the interviewee were filmed seperate times. The editing seemed forced.

I would like to see specifics for the business. What do the experts see as ways to cut costs for the biz being profiled.

I am a realtor in Denver and this month may be a record revenue month for me and my biz partner. It is coming at the perfect time. We over spent for 2008 because we were focused on long term projects, branding, staff, etc, etc, etc that we didn’t have the money for. We ended up losing about $30,000 last year and I’d say that was the price of education. We are in the process of taking our monthly overhead from over $10,000 per month to just about $2,000. Here are some of our examples and this type of thing would be good for a video, my business wouldn’t apply to everyone but specific examples would help someone understand my business (real estate) and how I made changes:

1) Trying to make every expense tied to revenue – Even our assistant will start to bill us for “projects”. We may have her down to 5 hours per week for general admin. Now she is 30 hours per week. Each project will be tied to a buyer or seller that should have revenue tied to it.

2) Pull back on low-return investments. Right now we have a website that generates about 300+ leads a month. We spend time calling and emailing these folks to convert them to buyers/sellers. We have a company help us call/email the leads that are over 6 months away from doing anything. The conversion rate of the 1-6 month leads may be 2% and the 6+ month leads are worse. For the short term we’ll be stopping the outsourcing and changing our contact to a drip email that provides value for someone looking to buy or sell. We’ll be working on getting other agents to start working those leads and pay us a % of deals closed.

3) Pulling back on Marketing – Time is money. We are spending more of our time keeping in touch with our past clients and sphere of influence. We are dropping the mailings and post cards at least for now. Better contact and less money – Big help!

And one last thing… The woman in the video said something was “Hokie” and in my world, that is a good thing. I went to Virginia Tech with Mike. GO HOKIES!!!!

I like the video – but I want to see more. Specific tips would be great – then seeing the business owner implament the idea and how it actually helps. I would like to see more meat.

Quality: excellent. Great production values, so it was easy and fun to watch.

I waited for the next step and didn’t see it: take that advice to the deli owner, maybe even have a quick bit of where you show the owner the responses from your two experts, and then get the reaction from the owner.

Finally, I felt the advice from the two experts was general (and good, not to be discounted), but if they had offered one or two specific tactics (shorter hours, cut back on low-selling items, etc.) it would have been interesting to hear that!

This is a really good video with 3 great interviews. My only ‘critique’ of the video is this: When Dominick starts talking, I was distracted when you took a drink from your coffee cup. Because it took up most of the frame, I lost about 10 seconds of his short message. It also kind of seemed to throw Dominick off, too.
On the positive side, I really loved seeing the restaurant shots and listening to the owner. He was a very genuine guy and I hope his restaurant does well. If I was in his neck of the woods, I’d go there today for lunch.

Keep up the awesome work!

I viewed the vodeo.As per your request, here is my feedback. Good attempt to help us to address this critical issue. In order to improve the video, I think
* it was too focused on the restaurant industry. (Believe me I know that you are not planning a documentary) but having a few different entrepreneurs would broaden the scope a little bit.
* the pointers are too vague. For example, your first expert did not come across as one. His point about the presentation he attended was not clear. What was he trying to convey. This time would have been best used to give more specific steps to take. For instance, the 2nd expert gave more concrete ideas.
* Also, the audio lowered at one point when you were speaking with the first expert.
* Sorry to harp on the first expert but when you asked him what suggestions would he make to survive in this economy, his first response was ‘Oh Boy’. That made me feel that he was as loss as I am.
* Also, the restaurant owner must be doing something to survive. Spend a little more time with him and explore steps he has taken.

Well as much as I would like to say I loved it, I hated it, thought it was great I was not able to watch any of the videos. It came up on my screen but would not play. Please resend and I will try it again.