Red Frog, Inc.

(from "How to Profit in a Down Economy" by Josh Barinstein, Copyright 2004)

Let me go into the final area, which is very quick... quick and dirty. It's last but not least! It's finding the right mix and repeating, as we've been talking about out-of-the-box thinking. At the end of your cycle, when it's six months, a year into your strategy, into your gameplan I should say, you want to have another review meeting with your group, with yourself, whatever the case may be, where you analyze what's happened, what's worked, what hasn't? Very important because it's easy to get into a sort of rut or just assume that what you're doing is the right thing for you. If you go through iterations in a sort of disciplined way, where you plan that at the end of the cycle you review, you're going to discover, inevitably, what works for you, what you want to keep and what you can toss right out the window. And at any time, in the end you will be performing, or thinking, or taking actions as optimally as you can. This down time, as was pointed out before, is a great time to be doing the scrutinizing. Right at this point, what are we doing that's working or not? OK, now let's implement a new strategy. At the end of the year check back with yourself. See if what you're doing is really working.

[Participant]
Yeah.

[Josh Barinstein]
I can't emphasize that enough. Getting customer feedback, if you don't, you can either get it online, on the phone, you can get it through a card. If you can get people on the phone and they don't mind speaking with you, you can get a lot of great customer feedback. And people are going to be happy to share with you. They know you do good business. They'll tell you what they like, and if you open them up, they'll tell you what they don't like! And in the end you can get a wealth of information through this that will allow you to shape things accordingly. And then back to the drawing board. Keep what worked, reflect on what can be tweaked, and definitely just toss out the window whatever is not working.

And this last point, as it's been the theme somewhat through this conversation, is important during the good times and during the bad. And, I said, this would be one of the themes today. So, think carefully now that we're in the conclusion phase here, you want to think carefully about how any of these ideas might work for you, and that you need to implement now, that you need to be thinking about now. You will see changes. I guarantee you will see changes. And you will prosper now and later when things get better as they're starting to, and you'll be glad you did, because when they get better you'll be in great shape!

[...]

I thank everyone very much for joining me today for this event. I hope that you're walking away with some great ideas you can start implementing hopefully this afternoon!

Back to teleconference index

Josh Barinstein is President of Red Frog, Inc., the Southern California ad agency that provides worry-free experiences and powerful results in the areas of Marketing, Print design, and Web/CD-ROM development.

Learn more at www.RedFrogInc.com or by calling 888-955-0550.

You have permission to distribute this article as long as all of the text contained herein remains intact.