Better Business with Steve Cook
By Better Business with Steve Cook
Better Business with Steve CookSep 30, 2022
129. The Secret Ingredient your Marketing Needs
Going into the fourth quarter of the year it's timely to talk about marketing. For many companies this is the time of the year to spend more on marketing than any other quarter. But if you want to spend a lot on marketing, perhaps you need a few things to remember.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
128. Lessons to Learn From Claire's
Claire's was on hard times in 2018 when it declared bankruptcy. Since then, the retail chain has made a comeback! What are some of the key takeaways from their fall, then rise again that we can learn as retailers?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
127. How Many Products Should you Carry?
Inventory is the lifeblood for a retail store. But there's a catch, it can be detrimental if it is not handled carefully. On today's epidode we discuss the question, how much is enough?
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
126. How to Create Content without Being Miserable
Creating content consistently is hard. How can you do it day in and day out as a retail store business owner?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
125. 3 Step Marketing Plan for a Camera Store
Ward from The Camera Company asked 3 questions:
1) What video series should we start?
2) What product should we give away for a promotion?
3) What should we do with our loyalty program?
We used Ward's email exchange with us to answer these questions for him, and the others who listen that inevitibly have the same questions.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
124. How to Make a Retail Business into a Marketing Company
What Barstool sports became famous for is creating content. How can a retail business take what Barstool has done and impliment the practice to help their business?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
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Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
123. Something you Can Learn from Crumbl Cookie Company
Crumbl Cookie is a company that has a changing menu every week. This is genius, but also a major challenge. Outside of the food industry, however, this would be an extreme challenge for stores like hardware, boutiques, and equipment shops- but, is there something to learn from this? Why does this company do this? We explore some benefits in this episode.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
122. 3 Ways to Drive Foot Traffic to Your Store
If you asked 100 retailers if they wanted more foot traffic into their establishments, I would imagine 99 would say yes. Foot traffic is the life blood for a retail store, its how we sell stuff to people! But how do you get that consistent foot traffic without having a 50% off sale every weekend? In this episode we discuss 3 ways to conquer that question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
121. The 3 Top Marketing Tools for Retailers in 2022
There are many ways to market your retail business. In this episode we discuss my favorite three ways to do that. Real advice from the trenches with me and Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
120. What a Business Owner can Learn from the 4 Hour Work Week
Tim Ferris wrote a book called "The 4 Hour Work Week". It took the business world by storm at the beginning of its inception it was the start of the "work life balance" movement and hit a perfect time in the corporate world. This book (though its written to freelancers, and ecommerce business owners) has many takeaways for the retail business owner to help their business.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
119. How to Boost Sales with Product Videos
When was the last time you hosted a classic QVC episode on your retail stores social channels? It's probably been awhile, right? Well in this episode Chris Fox (the retail marketing genius) discusses a few ways he has seen his clients successfully launch product videos and improve customer awareness.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me: 405-326-1111
118. How to Get Employees to Act like Owners
If you want your employees to act like owners, then pay them as such! This episode covers some of the best ways to tie your employees compensation to the profit of your retail store. From a beginning hourly employee to a salaried manager I discuss three different compensation packages we've used in our family owned retail business.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text me! 405-326-1111
117. The 3 Stages of a Retail Business
Every business, like children, go through stages in their life cycle. If you know what to expect and when to expect it- there are easily preventable things that you can beat to the punch. In this episode we discuss the three stages of business growth $0-$1Million, $1-$10Million, and $10-infinity. I hope this episode gives some hope to the small entrepeneur growing, and some insight to others.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show for this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text me: 405-326-1111
116. How to Quickly Find Employees to Hire
Google "how to get applicants" and you will find a host of solutions written by wanna-be entrepeneurs who have never hired or interviewed someone in their life. Ask a buddy what they're doing to get applicants and they might tell you a head hunter or something impractical for your retail business. This is the best tips for hiring that we have come up with in our family owned retail business that is doing a lot of hiring.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
Text Me! 405-326-1111
115. What Retailers can Learn from Jimmy Fallon
On a recent podcast from How I Built This podcast, I heard the story of Jimmy Fallon. It inspired me in many ways, but the main way was his insane focus on one single goal. The ability for a business owner to have a one track minded goal can be powerful for making decisions, overcoming embarrassment, and pushing through difficult times.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
114. How a Business Owner can Overcome Camera Fear
Assuming most business owners believe that being the face of their business could be a profitable business, this episode is to encourage you. Everyone has some fear of the camera and that's natural! Having produced thousands of pieces of video on youtube, facebook, tiktok, and instagram- we have a little experience to draw from on this topic.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show for this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
113. Things to Learn from Krogers Newest Move
Kroger recently launched a warehouse in Central Oklahoma, one of their newest ventures to expand their empire by building hub and spoke delivery warehouses instead of retail locations. We talked about how these moves apply to the family owned retail business owners and what we can learn from it!
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show for this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
112. How to Use Your Marketing to Prepare for a Recession.
Most might incline to pull back their marketing budget on the brink of a recession. In this episode we discuss why it's a good idea to go all in on your marketing during this time. These timeless principles also apply to ever season of business.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
111. How to Pivot your Retail Business
Your retail business must constantly be in a state of evolving to the needs demanded of it. This might come in the form of customers unsatisfaction, government demands, or keeping up with competitors. Whatever the case, you must always evolve to stay ahead. This episode is a few tips on how to do just that.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
110. How Inventory Can Make or Break Your Retail Store
Who else understands the pains of doing a full store inventory more than a family owned retail business owner? In this episode we discuss the importance of inventory practices and some practical tips on how to complete it.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
109. Why Creating a Customer Persona Could Explode Sales
Knowing how to define your ideal customer in very specific detail is paramount to a retail business. The customer persona is useful to marketing, product selection, design of your store, employee selection, and everything to do with your business. After listening to this episode you'll have a better understanding of how to identify the key elements of this process.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
108. How to Drive Traffic to the Rural Retailer
Vice President of Purina Animal Nutrition, Brian Gier, discusses what he see's as the future of the retailer in rural communities. Though Purina is on the manufacturing side, Brian see's the trends for successful retail stores in the feed industry and what their habits are and how there stores operate.
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107. How a "Loss Leader" Could Improve Your Retail Store Sales
How could a loss leader product help my retail store? Large box retailers are infamous for carrying products at unbelievable costs, but why do they do it? They know the power that loss leaders have on driving sales!
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
106. How to Fight Giant Retail Box Stores
Peter Cohen a babson college professor explains the research he has learned from his years looking at successful businesses. His book, Goliath fights back is full of case studied about companies decisions over the years and how the effect their success years later.
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105. Is the Customer Always Right?
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104. The State of Retail in 2022
The flashy thing to talk about in business articles is ecommerce, tech, and the latest and greatest startup. But the tride and true retailers who make up a large majority of the commerce conducted in the United States don't fit that description. Classic retail businesses are still alive and well- and new ones are still opeing everyday. Ron Thurston talks about this amongst other things in his trip across the US, and on this podcast.
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103. Ways to Improve Your Business Website for Free
If you can't justify keeping a full time IT person or a web developer around- but you want to have a decent website for your retail store todays episdoe is for you. We discuss a few practical tips on designing a website to GET SALES.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
102. Are your Customers Buying or Shopping?
What's the difference between a customer who's buying and one who's shopping? The difference is PARAMOUNT to the success of a retailer or any person selling a product. If you haven't identified the difference and struggled with implementing changes to your retail store in the past that customers appreciated, this might be the breakthrough that you need!
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
101. Should a Business Hide Instagram Likes?
Did you know about the Instagram update that allows a page to hide the amount of likes a post has? Can this change negatively or positively change the way people interact with the page's posts?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
100. Top 5 Clips from 100 Episodes
The best advice for retailers is the main theme of topdays topic. A wide range of advice from where retail is going, HR, marketing, and much more! Our clips today include clips from Bob Phibbs, Erin Mies, Mike Michalowitz, Jesse Cole, and Ramon Ray.
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099. 3 Tips for a Boutique... And Every Retailer
There are over 158,000 boutiques in the U.S. they are representative of many different retail businesses. In this episode we cover three ways for them to stand out from the large field of competition. These ways to stand out not only apply to boutiques, but to every retail business.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
098. 3 Trends in Retail
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097. How to Create Endless Amounts of Marketing Content
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
096. How to Create a Retail Experience
Do you think retail will lose market share over the next several years? It will if they don't start behaving differently! Bob Phibbs the Retail Doctor is a retail champion who has been advising some of the largest retail chains since 1994. In this episode we discuss how to have a different retail experience than all the other large chains around you and how to set yourself apart from the world of E-Commerce.
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095. How Polarizing Should your Marketing be?
Have you ever received hateful comments on your social media and thought to yourself, "this marketing is only pushing people away from my business, this is stupid". I certainly have. Today's episode talks about why polarizing content can actually have a positive impact on your business.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
094. How to Not be a Showroom for Amazon
Do you think retail will lose market share over the next several years? It will if they don't start behaving differently! Bob Phibbs the Retail Doctor is a retail champion who has been advising some of the largest retail chains since 1994. In this episode we discuss how to have a different retail experience than all the other large chains around you and how to set yourself apart from the world of E-Commerce.
Here's how to find me:
093. How to Buy a Business From a Family Member
Did you find yourself in a business wondering when (or if) you'll ever be asked to take the business over or buy it? This seems to happen to a lot of second generation entrepenuers that can't bring themselves to ask their parents about purchasing the business. Your guest today, Ricci Victorio, has coached hundreds of business owners through successful transitions. She gives advice in talking, personalities, and even some creative financial ways around this huge challenge for family business owners.
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092. Why You Should Use Video in Marketing
There are many ways to get your business in front of new eyeballs- written pitches, pictures, audio (like a podcast), or video. But do statistics show that video is the king choice amoing all these options? Chris certainly thinks it is. We give some reasons why and how you can use video in your family owned, retail business to advertise.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
091. Which Marketing Platform Gains the Most Foot Traffic?
As a retailer, we must marketing entirely different than the "Digital Marketers" that seem to be so popular in todays society. Banner ads, google pay per click, Tik tok, and a host of other platforms are all known for major ecommerce sales. But do they work for retailers? Obviously some retailers have the ability to sell online or do click and collect platforms, but for the majority of retailers- we must market entirely different than ecommerce brands.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
090. How Business Growth Could Harm your Health
Can a retail store owner's health affect their ability to do business? Certainly! Have you ever considered the important role your health takes in your life as a business owner? This episode is not some “work less and have better work life balance” mantra bologna. This is a plea to have more work life COUNTER balance with Chris Michael Harris.
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089. Does Music Affect Retail Store Sales?
What kind of music should you play in your retail store? Should it be upbeat, slow, or neither? We dive in to the question of retail shopping music and question its importance.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
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088. How to Turn Customers into Fans Like the Savannah Bananas
Jesse Cole is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and owner of the Savannah Bananas Baseball Team.
His teams have welcomed more than one million fans to their ballparks and have been featured on MSNBC, CNN, ESPN and in Entrepreneur Magazine.
The Bananas have been awarded Organization of the Year, Entrepreneur of the Year, Business of the Year and won the CPL Championship in their first year. Fans First Entertainment has been featured on the INC 5000 lists as one of the fastest growing companies in America.
The Savannah Bananas currently have sold out every game since their first season and have a waiting list in the thousands for tickets.
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087. How a Retail Business Could Save Money Using Freelancers
Should your book keeper, marketing help, and general project based helpers be considered a W2 employee, or a 1099? This question seems to come up often for a small family retail business owner. There are many different ways to make use of the flexibility in the tax laws, but what is the best decision for speed of hiring, saving money, and overall happiness for you as a business owner?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
086. How Building a Community Can Help Your Business
Are there benefits to having a business community around you? Will having a coach, group of friends, or someone to give you ideas to solve business problems be something of value? Cody Rich host of The Rich Outdoors and Rich Ideas Lab believes it’s one of the most important things to add to your business.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
085. How to Sell your Small Business
Buying or selling a small business is very challenging, and not many know much about it. Hank Bockus has sold a small business, and is now a leader in oklahoma showing and helping other small business owners how to do the same.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
084. Should Your Business Drop Instagram for Tik Tok?
Tik Tok, the fastest growing social media platform has just released an announcement that they are adding 10 min videos. The major change will cause them to directly compete with not only Instagram, but also Youtube. Interestingly enough this change could be very beneficial to your business. We talk about the capabilities on this episode.
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
083. Is "Shop Local" a Good Marketing Tactic?
Have you seen people say "shop local" before? Many people appeal to friends and family on social media to spend money at their establishments because they say it's better than spending money with large corporations. Is this a good marketing tactic?
Chris Fox from Fox Strategy Marketing co-hosts the show to debate this question.
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
082. How to Start a Podcast for Your Business
Many people are starting up podcasts in hope of using them to advertise for their business. Derrick Michaud is your guest today, where we discuss reasons to start a podcast, common mistakes people make, and some editing tips and advice he has (since he is the founder of Shelby Row Productions).
Starting or growing your family owned retail business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Here's how to find me:
081. How to Make your First Million
JV Crum III is an entrepeneur and podcaster who teaches his students how to create a proper mindset for attaining the first million in your business. He is well equipped to teach on the topic as he has taken his podcast to the top 13 business podcasts in america, and hosted over 3,100 episodes.
Starting or growing your own business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
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080. How to Rebuild a Broken Business
Starting or growing your own business is hard. The Better Business Podcast makes it a little easier by offering real advice from real business owners that will help you grow.
Your guest this week is Stephanie Stuckey, CEO and granddaughter of founder of Stuckey's Corporation. Stuckey's fell out of family hands for decades, and the business suffered. After Stephanie bought it back, she turned it around by rebuilding this classic, nostalgic brand!
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