Entrepreneurs Conference: No Excuses

More than 1,000 professionals, business owners, and aspiring entrepreneurs ventured to Detroit for the 2009 BLACK ENTERPRISE Entrepreneurs Conference + Expo hosted by General Motors and ExxonMobil. Our editors have culled some of the advice, resources, and highlights provided by experts and veteran entrepreneurs who were all there with one mission in mind: to provide attendees with tactical tools and sound strategies to improve their businesses and navigate the new terrain. There’s something for everyone across these four pages, so gain the competitive advantage and take a lesson from be.

Reinvent Your Business to Thrive in Turbulent Times

I. According to Pamela Mitchell, owner of The Reinvention Institute, this is the best time to start anew. She offers these tips on getting started: Identify your challenges and establish clear goals and objectives. Next, narrow your focus by making adjustments to one product or service; assess the results, moving forward from there. And finally, find a mentor who has also gone through a business reinvention and ask for insights and advice.

1:  Back to the basics. Remember the principles you established when you started your company; rely on the fundamentals.

2: Be open. Consider operating across multiple industries and platforms.

3: Evaluate your team. Do your employees have the talent to attain the goals you’ve set for the organization?

4: Evaluate yourself. Conduct an unbiased assessment of your leadership. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What do you need to do to lead your team to new heights?

Shifting Gears: New Realities, New Rules, New Opportunities

Game Changers: Success Strategies for the 21st Century
Entrepreneurs must take steps so their businesses come through today’s crisis transformed–stronger, more efficient, and better equipped to sustain any and all challenges. That’s the advice of three topflight CEOs: Harold T. Epps, CEO of PRWT Services Inc. (No. 25 on the be industrial/service companies list with $167 million in revenues) and this year’s BE Industrial/Service Company of the Year; Suzanne Shank, president and CEO of Siebert Brandford Shank (No. 1 in tax-exempt securities with $5.4 billion in lead issues on the be investment banks list

); and Ulice Payne Jr., founder and president of Esquire Petroleum, one of ExxonMobil’s leading distributorships. Here are their game-changing approaches:

FIND TOP TALENT IN TOUGH TIMES
The turbulent financial markets affected every aspect of Shank’s business. So what did she do? “We decided to use this as an opportunity to hire talent,” she says. “We increased our staff by about 30% in 2008, because we had the opportunity to hire really great people from all of our competing firms.”
FORGE PARTNERSHIPS THAT WORK
PRWT has grown through strategic alliances with the nation’s largest corporations such as Lockheed Martin and, recently, Merck. “So we now have diversification that allows us to better weather some of the storms that can happen when you have a single-focused company,” says Epps. And he says get to know the people you want in your circle before you need something.
KNOW YOUR BUSINESS
In building Esquire Petroleum, which sells fuel wholesale to gas

stations, Payne learned all aspects of the oil industry–from exploration to retail sales. By doing so, he has been able to determine cost, risk, sales, and margins. And since 2007, his distributorship has grown from 14 million to 35 million gallons in the Chicago market. His philosophy: “Fish where the fish are. Basically, know your business because it’s hard to be successful if you don’t.”

Small Business Success Boot Camps Hosted by Sam’s Club

Cash Flow Management
Robert Wallace, author, and CEO of BithGroup Technologies Inc. insists that healthy cash flow occurs only within companies that manage their partnerships well; companies need to understand how their talents complement their partners’ strengths and weaknesses.

Marketing Magic
Five Dimensions of Customer Value:
1. Simplicity
2. Clarity
3. Quality
4. Access
5. Value

“You need to translate however you’re operating today in

to ways to improve upon these dimensions,” says Aubyn E. Thomas, senior vice president of marketing services and corporate marketing for Macy’s Inc. “It will increase your brand value, because customers want to do business with companies in this way.”

Building a World-Class Workforce
“The way you do business is as important as the business you do,” says executive coach Chris Bryant, founder of Rapport Strategies Group.

• RECRUIT top talent only.
• REWARD what you want repeated
• RENEW your team for long-term performance

Tackle Technology
“What drives people to us on the Web is interesting, fascinating, and captivating content (i.e., a blog post, comment, video, etc.). The goal: Get them to respond to you. So we want to get into good conversations, giving us an opportunity to have meaningful exchanges, sharing of information, building that relationship. And if we have enough of those exchanges, we’ll begin to create business relationships. Maybe it’ll be a customer, maybe it’s a vendor or a partner relationship, but it’s somebody that will add value to the bottom line.  –Brent Leary, co-founder, CRM Essentials L.L.C.

This article originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of Black Enterprise magazine.