Last Updated: April 5, 2022 Hi Ladies and Gents,
Here comes that famous Monday post on a Tuesday again (facepalm moments!). Let's jump right in to things today - and, no, "color personalities" have nothing to do with the color of anyone's skin! Let's get that out of the way first! If you're ultimately hoping for a positive final outcome in your endeavors in life (who isn't, right?!), one of the most important skills in any business - or any situation that involves human interaction, for that matter - is relationship building. As someone who has worked as a service provider (educator and coach) my whole life, I can vouch for this whole-heartedly! The actual service you provide - while a big factor, of course - is only half the equation! How you offer and provide that service - and I mean the whole story, from beginning to end, from first contact to follow-up - determines if you will have happy repeat customers - or any customers at all, for that matter! These words of wisdom don't just apply to services, mind you. Every time you interact with other people, those people are either "buying into you" or looking for a way to get away from you (or if neither of these two options is true, then you are a just plain invisible to them - and you don't want to be in that situation either)! One thing psychologists, coaches, and salespeople sometimes look at is color personality types. Everyone has their own unique personality, that is for sure, but there are certain larger groupings that personalities fall into. These groupings can be categorized using colors. Mastering how to recognize and interact with the different "color personalities" is a tool you can use to help build those essential relationships in your life faster! If you know how to use this information to your and your clients' advantage, your business and life can become easier and less stressful. You can learn how to form bonds with people more quickly, therefore creating the "know, like, and trust factor" in less time. Without this knowledge, you may be speaking to your prospects in a way which will turn them off to both you and your business. There are four main personality types represented by colors: yellow, blue, green, and red, although I have seen this list broken up into as many as five, seven, and even 12. Each of these color types processes the spoken word differently. It’s helpful - crucial, actually - to be able to know how to communicate with each color in a way that makes sense to them. If you don’t speak their language, they’ll shut you out, and you’ll get nowhere fast! The Yellow Personality: Yellows are open and indirect. Making up around 35 percent of the population, they are wonderful people - they are nurturers, great listeners, fantastic team players, and generally patient, and supportive types. They are very open with their feelings, but when you ask them a question, they answer it and stop - they don’t volunteer any more information. Yellows can be awesome networkers, and are capable of building large and well-structured networking-type of organizations when they get focused and believe that they can do it. They enjoy life and hate any kind of confrontation. They don’t like pushy, aggressive salespeople - if you try to “push” them or “sell to them," they will be out the door, and you’ll never see them again. Take your time and build a relationship with them, teach them, and help them. If you do that with a yellow color personality, you’ll have a much better chance of turning him or her into a loyal customer/client and/or awesome team member/associate! The Blue Personality: A blue is open and direct. If you ask him or her a question, he’ll never stop answering, and when he does, he’ll forget what the question was! This combination of open and direct means that the blue color personality is very confident in what he or she does and knows. Blues are the life of the party and everyone’s friends! Blues love to be with people and like attention. They are very creative people and make up approximately 15 percent of the population. If you can teach a blue to focus and give him or her a system that’s fun and able to be replicated, you'll have yourself an unstoppable business partner. If you can find where his or her focus lays and what he or she wants and give this to him or her with no frills or fancy gimmicks attached (blues hate "frills and gimmicks" they want what they want plain and straight-up), you'll have yourself a loyal customer/client. The Green Personality: Green is indirect, like a yellow, and self-contained, and they make up about 35 percent of the population. They are very calculating and need all the facts and figures before they make any decisions. When you speak to a green, chances are he or she is trying to figure out why you’re asking this or that question. It’s important for you to remember to slow . . . down . . . your . . . speech. Don’t talk too fast to a green, or he or she won’t trust you - he will think you’re a "slick salesperson," who he tends to abhor! Rather, when you ask a question, let it sink in, and take a breath before you go on. Don’t try to sell a green because after he gets all the information, he or she will make up his or her own mind and your product/service/business proposition will sell itself to him if he's interested. Besides, that’s what you really want anyway! The Red Personality: The red color personality is very direct, like the blue, so sometimes people get them confused. The big difference is that reds need to be in absolute control all the time - they need to really feel the power and control surging through their veins! And they will try their absolute hardest to never expose their weaknesses if they can help it! Reds make up around 15 percent of the population. They will ask questions and control the conversation; they are in charge! They are very motivated by money - everything in their lives revolves around success and being the best. They like their egos stroked, and they demand a show of respect. Which color are you? Once you have mastered color personalities, it will become an invaluable tool you can use in your interactions with others. Being able to "read" color personalities in people can help you form a better understanding of how different people do and say the things they do and say in the ways they do them - they can’t help it, it’s who they are! Use this to your advantage and the advantage of those you interact with! Speak their language to them and you will have a better chance of getting your message across the way you want it to be received! Apply color personality profiling to your business and your interactions with others in general and watch your business grow and success come to you time and time again! Better life, better business, better you, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Ideas, Inspiration, Opportunity Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat.
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Last Updated: March 29, 2022 Hi Ladies and Gents,
Well, I’m a day late on the Monday post again. The Internet has been as slow as MUD lately with my whole district under lockdown, and I couldn’t get my VPN working most of yesterday to be able to reach the “outside world,” ha, ha! It is funny for me to think that Weebly, the platform on which this entire blog and website you are currently browsing was built, was very first recommended to me way back in 2012 when I first came to China to work as a website builder with a great free option that actually WORKED IN CHINA WITHOUT A VPN (key)! In those days I had come out to China to teach 5th Grade Science and lead the Elementary School Science Team at The SMIC Private School in the eastern portion of the City of Shanghai. My 5th Team Leader had us all build Weebly sites for our respective classes. Gosh, that was back at the very tail end of the era of the “individual” website, as I call it. And by “individual website,” no, I don’t mean the age of first-generation stand-alone personal homepages – oh how I miss those days; Facebook (and dare I even say MySpace, back in those days) had largely killed those by 2012 already. By “individual website” I mean, in this case, websites that people would build for things like throwing a garage sale, family reunion, or other event or party; websites that teachers would build for their classes; small-time informational sites built about certain things or places built by individuals, such as “Dave’s Guide to Yellowstone National Park;” and, yes, I do suppose the bigger, beefier, relaunched and reloaded “Web 2.0” version of personal homepages would fit into this category, too. I mean, there are still plenty of these sites around, for sure! And plenty new ones are built all the time, but it’s not like it use to be on the Internet anymore with all the “walled gardens” out there that people are so crazy about – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you know them all, and those are where everyone “hangs out” these days. Corporate websites and websites that sell things dominate your search engines these days, not “Dave’s Guide to Yellowstone National Park,” (unless Dave is an affiliate with some hiking outfitter!). I mean, let’s get real, no 16-year-old kid alive today is every going to believe that people use to go through the “trouble” of building a stand-alone website to showcase and invite people to their wedding, or to do something so mundane and trivial as throw a garage sale (I put “trouble” in quotes because those of us who did this back in the day didn’t consider it “trouble,” ha, ha! It was the wave of the future!). Heck, that’s what Facebook and Craig’s List are for, right!? I use this lead in about slow Internet speeds and lack of VPN accessibility under lockdown, websites, and how the web has changed in a very short amount of time (the story I am talking about here happened in 2012, a mere 10 years ago) to illustrate the title and the core of this post – the nature of reality. Reality is FLUID and reality can CHANGE in the blink of an eye! I suppose know one knows this better than a seasoned teacher who really has his or her eyes open to what is going on at school anyway, right?! Look at how COVID-19 brought the world to a stand-still, all because governments around the world didn’t want to “waste a good emergency,” or at least that’s the way I see it (and believe you me, at first I was one of the many masses of “sheeple” who actually thought I had narrowly escaped death by a hair’s breadth! Yes, you can laugh all you want – I have woken up and seen the light now!). Governments put policies into place and suddenly that becomes the new reality. Mass-distributed textbooks teach gigantic swathes of a population one thing at a very young age and that becomes that generation’s “base” for reality, then a section is thrown out, a chapter re-written, a story re-told by a different narrator, and the book is re-released, a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th….69th edition comes out, each with different parameters for “reality.” There are groups of people alive today around the world who are otherwise quite “normal” (whatever that really means) human beings who adamantly insist that people have never walked on the surface of Earth’s Moon, and there’s no convincing them otherwise! There are people alive today (many people, actually, myself included this time!) who believe that we should still teach cursive writing in school, despite the fact that no one writes with pen and paper anymore! “But we can’t let the skill die!” these people say! Well, but we have let the art and craft of stone tool making die. People don’t use those anymore (and don’t be the crackpot commentor who says you do, ha, ha! I’m sure some wise guy someone out there uses some kind of tool made of stone for something even now in 2022, but humor me here, will ya!). Just a mere 300 years ago people thought the idea of germs spreading disease was outright crazy! When we use examples of something so far removed in time, people easily tend to think: “Eh, well, yeah, of course, the ancients and old-timers didn’t know jack! Look at us today and all we know!” Well, if that’s your line, I’ve got news for you, bud! Ol’ Jack and Jane Doe said the same thing in 1722 looking back at the people who had lived 300 years before them! Reality changes ALL THE TIME! And it can happen suddenly, and then, boom! That’s it! Reality is different than it was last week, or different than it even was a day ago! I am not here to place a value judgement on reality’s fluid nature. In fact, if I dare try I say it is neither good nor bad – it just is; that’s just how it is. But why muse over this here on a site devoted to making money, coaching, and education? Well, the whole point in this regard is that reality is flexible, malleable, to a point, at least, and you have some control over it. You have quite a bit of control over it, actually. You might not be able to single-handedly change reality overnight – yet – but you can bend, morph, and sculpt the reality around you to a larger degree than you may even believe right now over time. This means that you can change things and make them different. You have free-will and thus the power to semi-control your own reality in big ways. While this can definitely be scary, on the flip side, there are huge implications and opportunities for growth, self-development, being a better person, and, of course, getting what you want and making more money (of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this, and I advocate for the right way)! Until next time! Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: March 21, 2022 Hi Ladies and Gents, and whatever else you may go by - there is no judgement here,
Welcome to the Monday post for March 21st, 2022. Now, today is a very special day, as today is the 7th Anniversary (ceremony date) of my wife and I's wedding. I say the "Ceremony Date," as in China the day you actually sign the papers down at the Justice of the Peace and the day of your actual wedding ceremony are generally (almost never) the same day. My wife and I had actually been married (according to the government) for almost half a year before our actual big, blow-out wedding ceremony was held. With that said, as promised last time, I am moving forward here with some MAJOR upgrades and overhauls here on the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises homepage, although you won't actually see most of them here on site for the next month at least. My theme for the next month moving forward is "What is Real?" Com'on, you know you ask yourself that question all the time - especially since the now-infamous Spring of 2020! This is a theme which is particularly near and dear to my heart as an Elementary Educator, as helping to sculpt the reality of children - even very young children - is something I do every day. This is highly dangerous business! And I'll tell you more about why so next week. Peace in all things. Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: March 19, 2022 Well, after jumping back on here last Monday after two months away, I already missed the second weekly post on Thursday and am making up for that now! But with that said, this post is actually a post about how I will be doing away with my Thursday posting for the rest of spring 2022, ha, ha! Yes, I am going to move away from twice a week blog postings for the rest of this spring, probably ramping back up to twice a week postings once again when summer rolls around. That doesn't mean I am stepping away from the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises website - no indeed! Actually, quite the opposite! After coming back to the site - my baby - after some time away, I now have a much better idea of the next set of updates and reformats that need to happen to the site. I will be spending my energy the rest of this spring largely tweaking, updating, and reformatting the site itself, growing my affiliate offerings offered through the site, and spending a lot of time and energy on actually promoting the site across the Internet - properly, like it should be promoted - as opposed to posting here on the blog!
With that in mind, I will keep going here on the blog with Monday blog posts, but don't expect regular Thursday posts for a while. Instead of regular Thursday posts, do look for growth and development apart from the job coming to the overall site itself over these next few months! These are exciting times! Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises went through a "level up" upgrade two years ago and it's now time to take the site to the next level yet again right now! Peace in all things. Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: 3/14/2022 Welcome back to the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises blog, ladies and gents! Today's post is going to be short, sweet, and to the point. It's been two months - two months and 4 days, to be precise - since my last post which was on January 10th of this same year. As those of you who have been following me will know, I am a Elementary School Educator and Life Coach with a freelancer/entreprenurial streak building his Online Empire one webpage and blog post at a time :). Due to burnout from working long hours for comparativley little pay as the institution started to massively restructure itself from within, I recently bailed from my previous job as an Elementary School Coordinator at a large private Taiwanese school in Central Eastern China to go to work for a school across town in the same city. Now I'm back in the classroom as a regular 2nd Grade Teacher without administrative responsibilites and am actually getting paid MORE than I was as a Coordinator at my previous school.
This was all a very calculated move on my part: 1) At this point in my life, I need some kind of stable monthly income, and I would much rather be doing something I actually enjoy and feel is worthwhile to maintain a monthly income as such (as opposed to something I didn't enjoy and just considered a "chore"). This current job satisfys this point prefectly - I get to do something I enjoy and feel to be worthwhile and helpful to the world (teaching Elementary Schoolers), while also getting paid fairly to do it. 2) Additionally, this current job allows me to work fewer hours. Granted, it still keeps me "busy for the man," in the sense that it is still an "8-5, Monday-Friday job." But I am able to complete much more of the job much easier in the "8-5" alloted time, which results in taking much, much less work home in the end of the day. This allows me to spend more time taking care of the family AND give me more time work on my other passion - Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises! Since my last post on here on January 10, 2022, I finished things off at and resigned from my previous job, had a nice, relaxing 3 week Chinese New Year vacation with family, and then started at my new (current) school, under lockdown, on Valentine's Day! It was a big adjustment to start at a brand new job online unexpectedly without ever even touring the campus, seeing my classroom, or getting to meet any of my students in-person, and that took some getting use to; hence, why I didn't jump right back on this blog on Valentine's Day as planned. With all that said, we are still under lockdown (we were supposed to go back to work today, but our lockdown was just extended last night, actually), but I have adjusted to the ebb and flow and cadence of the job as it is going now, at least, so I am able to jump back on here and pump some life back into the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises blog and website once more! Expect the bi-weekly Monday and Thursday posts to come back and expect to see periodic updates to the website taking place moving forward again. Peace in all things. Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: 1/10/2022 Hi Ladies and Gents,
Welcome to another rousing Monday here at Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises – 10 days into 2022 and still going strong! As the title clearly spells out, today’s topic is sales – in particular, what not to do in sales. And I will tell you what, one thing I am very thankful for is every time I don’t have to interact with an annoying, pushy salesperson. But before we jump into things, I’d like to make it clear that today’s post is not about “bashing salespeople,” in fact quite the contrary! Many of the world’s largest fortunes have been made in sales of one kind or another, and those mega-millionaires who have reaped such rewards aren’t necessarily “bad people” just because they spent their time selling things to people (well, ok, fine, some of them might be on the “unsavory character” side, but not all of them, and not just because they sold things, is my point). The point is, selling things and salespeople are not “bad” in and of themselves; but, just like anything in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about selling. No one likes a “hard seller” type of salesperson, let’s be honest – that annoying, pesky nuisance of a person who tries relentlessly to badger and push you into buying something that you know is way overpriced or that you don’t even want or need. Sure, there are some smooth – and, dare I even say, good – salespeople who have perfected a smooth and polished “harder” type of approach; but, honestly even these salespeople wouldn’t be my first choice of sellers to interact with. No one wants to be hounded into buying something, even if it is something he or she really wants, or maybe even needs. People will be much more likely to buy what you have to offer – and keep coming back to you for future purchase – if you are honest and transparent about your offer in its entirety, and if you focus on building a trusting relationship with your potential buyer as opposed to focusing on “just selling” him or her something. Let me give a personal example to illustrate what I am talking about: When my wife was pregnant with our youngest son, she shopped around a bit for a photography outfit she was happy with to get maternity photos taken at. After intensive looking (she is a very savvy consumer, particularly of services), she found one that looked worthy of her expectations on paper and she felt was worth trying out; so, she made an appointment and our family was all down at the photographer’s storefront on the appointed day for our photoshoot, which consisted of some shots of just my wife and some shots with other family members in them as well. The pictures were great and the whole experience proved itself to be wonderful! In the end, we were all happy. This photography business had just won itself a new family of loyal customers...or had it?! Fast forward to a month after our youngest son’s birth... When we had gotten the original maternity photos taken, the photography shop had let us know that they could happily do a FREE One Month Baby Photo Shoot at our residence – they would actually take the time to come out to us and do it! Cool, we thought! We liked the Maternity Shoot, were generally quite happy with the business and their services (so far) – so, “Sweet!” we thought! “Yes, we’ll take the free One-Month shoot,” we said. We arranged for the shoot on our son’s actual one month birthday itself, and the crew showed up to our apartment an hour late. This was even after they had called and said they were running “20 minutes late, sorry!” Anyway, this was mildly annoying, but when they finally did show up – members of the same photography enterprise we were growing to love and trust – we thought, “Eh, whatever, it’s not the end of the world, it is a free session, no biggie.” The crew made a very professional grand entrance into our apartment and flattered us with their professional demeanor, and their “We’re very sorry for showing up late, let’s get right down to business and not waste any more time” type of attitude. Ok, we were willing to forgive them...at least for that. Now, of course, with a professional crew as such coming to our private residence, one has to assume there will be some sales pitches thrown – of course! That’s pretty much a given! And that’s fair game. Sure enough, as the crew got busy preparing for the shoot in our bedroom, they wasted no time in letting us know right away that they were here for the free One Month Baby Shoot, which would be just a few different poses and costumes with the baby, but we could turn it into a bigger session and involve the whole family for a fee. No big deal and fair enough. We said we were not interested – and we were not – but would it be ok if big brother got in on a few of the free pictures. Sure, they said. That would be just fine. Then they mentioned another combo we could buy, for a bigger family session right now and another shoot at the baby’s 100-day birthday. “No thank you,” we said, although we liked this photography company, so we did say that we might consider a stand-alone photoshoot on the 100-day birthday, but we’d talk about that later (not today). Right now, we were just looking to get the free One Month Baby Shoot as promised, and grateful that such a thing was even offered! Ok, fine, they shut their mouths and went happily about their business – for the time being at least. The shoot lasted several hours and the crew was VERY professional the whole time. I even wound up complimenting the lead photographer’s assistant (who was also the sales rep with the crew that day) that she must be a licensed nurse in addition to her job with this photography company, because she was so good with our tiny baby son – handling him so gently and professionally for the shooting and everything. They even let big brother get in on some pictures as negotiated without any question and it was a very clean, crisp, professional experience right up until the end...and then everything went to Hell in a handbasket! At the very end of our session, when we were choosing the “5 best” free pictures we wanted, the lead assistant, who was also the saleswoman for that crew, started in on the “hard sell” – and she pushed HARD, detailing all the other combo packages we could get, and “why” we should get them, and pointed out that we “only get 5 free pictures, but could get more right now if we buy them!” Again, as mentioned, we were expecting some kind of selling; but what could have been a polite “fair mention” pitch at the end of the session, turned into a nightmare. The sales rep could have said something like: “You can buy more pictures today if you want, and don’t forget the other packages we offer – here’s our brochure in case you want another copy or one for a friend. I particularly recommend this package – it’s a great deal. Have a great evening. Thank you so much for hosting us today in your home! We hope you enjoyed your free one month shoot today and we hope to see you again at our shop in the future! XYZ Photography FOREVER!” But instead, she would up turning it into a session of trying to twist our arms and badger us into buying at least SOMETHING from her before she would dare to leave our apartment! We did not cave, and we wound up kicking the crew out – the same crew we had welcomed into our home just a few hours prior with open arms – in haste and with somewhat of a bitter taste in our mouths. Needless to say, we also “un-forgave” them for initially being late, if that’s even a word! The funny thing about this whole situation that still has me laughing is that the saleswoman tried twisting our arms with hard sales when she didn’t have to! And she turned already happy customers who were on the verge of becoming very loyal customers away in disgust. My wife and I debriefed the experience with each other extensively after the crew left. We both agreed that if the crew had shown up – even late as they were – with smiles on their faces, done the free one month shoot and delivered it nicely to us as promised, and made to leave with smiles on their faces and well-wishes to see us again and do more paying business with us in the future (with some light selling and encouragement to buy thrown in there, of course - that's only fair), we would have purchased a few of the other pictures that they said we could have purchased (in addition to the “free 5”), because there were a few others we really liked and would have been ok with buying (had their sales attitude been better), and there is a good chance also that we would have even signed up for 100-day photo shoot right then and there, or at least had a serious conversation about it (we were already thinking doing the 100 day shoot anyway, to be honest, before the crew even came to our apartment that day and started pushing it so hard!). If the crew had just shown up that day on our son’s 1 month birthday, worked their magic, delivered their free product as promised (with some light self-promotions of their business, of course, that’s fair!), and left happily, my wife and I would be telling a different story right now! WE would be doing free promotionals for that photography business amongst our friends and contacts!!! We were ALREADY happy with the maternity shoot several months earlier – this free 1-month shoot was like the icing on the cake and the cherry on top. “Hey, you know, we had this great maternity photoshoot done at XYZ Photography! They even came to our apartment for free on our son’s one month birthday and did a free mini-shoot just for him! We highly recommend this top-notch enterprise if you are looking for a great experience with maternity/kids/family photoshoots! They’re awesome!” That COULD HAVE BEEN the narrative, but, instead, the memory that we were left with of them – after one and a half nice experiences – was their pushy sales tactics at the end, which did NOT put us in the mood to want to continue doing business with them, which we had actually wanted to do before they started in on the hard sales! My point, like I said at the beginning, for all you entrepreneurs, freelancers, and other business people out their reading this, be transparent with what you have to offer and build trust. If a customer/client already had a great experience with you, that experience will continue to sell your business to the customer/client for a good long while to come without the need for you to step in with any hard selling. If you are offering a free gift to your loyal customers, do so with pride and professionalism, and don’t try to push a bunch of your other offers down their throat at the same time. Sure, of course you can – AND IT IS FAIR GAME TO – mention other things you offer at such a point in time and even lightly push them...you are doing business, after all, and you want your customers to buy more! But as soon as you get really pushy and start breaking fingers and twisting arms (even figuratively), the customer/client will get antsy and uncomfortable. There is no need to “hard sell” your good(s) or service(s) to someone who has already done business with you in the past and is happy with what you have to offer anyway – those are your happy customers who will keep coming back for more as long as you keep delivering what they want (and it is not your arm-twisting hard sales speeches that they want!). And, may I leave you with this: if you feel the need to “hard sell” your offerings to new targets, well, then, it might be a good idea to rethink exactly what it is you are selling and why you are so convinced it needs to be sold with an arm-twisting hard sell approach in order to get someone to purchase it the first place. A commercially viable product that is going to sell well should not need hard selling to get it to sell – such a product should sell itself, with, perhaps, some guidance and coaching from you as the salesperson/promoter. That’s all for today, folks. Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com, www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: 1/6/2022 Hi Ladies and Gents,
Welcome to another Thursday here at Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises - our first Thursday post in 2022! We’re going to jump right into today’s post on seasonal sales. Seasonal sales is a terrific business idea I have mulled over for many years, and I have yet to find a business that uses the exact take on it I am about to present. Of course, to qualify it for the record, when I say “terrific business idea,” as with any business idea, this all depends on what kind of market you can reach and how you are able to run your operation. There are always numerous factors involved. Even the best ideas can flop flat as a pancake if not implemented correctly or if the audience isn’t there to receive them. Right now, when you walk into just about any ‘big box’ store in the U.S. you won’t see much going on in terms of seasonal sales. Some places might be gearing up with MLK Day “gear.” If you walk into a ‘big box’ store in China right now, though, you will see the first big ‘wave’ of Chinese New Year paraphernalia starting to hit the shelves. In both countries, you may still see a small pile on the “deep discount” shelf of the last ‘dregs’ of Christmas stuff being hawked off at 75-90% off...being dumped for pennies because, hey, Christmas is over as far as business and commerce is concerned! Then, BOOM! All of a sudden, before us “commoners” know what is even happening, we will start to see Valentine’s Day stuff on the shelves! The displays rotate so quickly! But you know what, the rest of the ‘big box’ store remains the same. I mean, sure, they might put up some holiday decorations and play holiday-specific music, but really, the rest of the store remains the same (ok, sure, wise-guy – they might be remodeling or something right at that time, so they are not technically ‘remaining the same’...ya nit picky smart a$$!). A Novel Idea: What if you just created a “Holiday Store”? Think about this with me for a minute, will you? It could be online or brick-and-mortar or both, but the main idea of your store would be to sell seasonal goods, gifts, and novelties, and rotate these through with each passing holiday and season. Of course, this would require a lot of changing inventory – and may be better suited for an online affiliate or dropshipping startup as the result of just that – but why not? The traditional idea of a “Holiday Store” like what I am talking about generally tends to revolve around one theme – i.e. “The All-Year Christmas Store,” “The All-Year 4th Of July Fireworks Stand” (in jurisdictions where this is legal – yes, they do exist!); OR a shop that is only seasonally open for one specific holiday – i.e. “The Halloween Costume Store” that is open for the month of October only, “The Parking Lot 4th Of July Fireworks Stand” that is open the last week of June up until July 4th only. But what if you created a store that just sold “holiday-type” goods all year long and you kept rotating your inventory through with the passing holidays and seasons? Maybe you have seen a store like this out there somewhere – if you have, I sure haven’t; and I’m sure you can agree with me that it’s not a common place store in every town! Of course, in creating such a store you would have to pick and choose which holiday/seasonal items you would sell – you couldn’t recognize EVERY little obscure holiday or commemoratory day from every corner of the globe – you just couldn’t! I mean, maybe you could try, but things could easily get out of hand very quickly! Or maybe, on the flip side of this, you would want to specialize in “obscure days that no one knows about” – National Polka Dotted Underwear Day, or International Walk Your Dog Backwards Day, or, in the U.S., the National Lentil Festival for example. Of those three examples I just gave, I only actually know for sure that the National Lentil Festival is real, because it originated (and is still celebrated every year) in my hometown of Pullman, Washington. Yes, the festival really does have national status. As for National Polka Dotted Underwear Day and International Walk Your Dog Backwards Day, I simply made those up! If real commemorative days like those exist in this world somewhere it is purely coincidental! This is a business idea I have tossed around in my head for years now. And if you take my idea and run with it, I’ll punch you in the face...ha, ha, no, not really! If you take my idea and run with it, more power to you! I wish you profits and success and all the best – that’s why I’m sharing it here! Of course, such an idea could be easily incorporated around a ‘general’ store type of thing, i.e. you have your holiday stuff, but then also sell drinks (like canned pop and bottled water), and pre-packaged snacks, and maybe have a convenience store type of section within your store, but be careful with this, because then there you go! If you start going too far down the rabbit hole of the ‘general’ rest of the store that could accompany such a “Holiday Store” then you are no different than the big box stores anymore, now, are you?! Those big box stores I was talking about at the beginning of the post here are all ‘general’ type of overwise unchanging stores that have a section of holiday goods that rotate through! Some challenges: One thing you might catch some flak for with this idea is what kinds of days/holidays you recognize and/or don’t recognize. Of course, this is fine, no single person or group in the general population who comes across your store is going to be 100% satisfied with which days/holidays you pick to recognize and sell merchandise around or which you don’t. Some people might even be wildly offended. Let’s say, for example, you choose to sell merchandise around two different religious holidays that fall close to each other during one particular time of the year, but those two different religious holidays happen to be of two different religions, let’s even say two different religions that don’t always get along so well with each other – just for argument’s sake. Of course, it is your private business and you call the shots, but you are going to piss some people off in such a scenario – just be aware of that! To illustrate this further, even on this website itself that you are reading right now, some people probably key into my references to Christianity and Christian holidays and celebrations right away and have some kind of positive emotional response towards them. Others are probably turned off right away by such references and have more of a negative emotional response. Still, other readers might be un-phased emotionally altogether and just continue reading because of a keen interest in the "feature" subject matter being showcased. That’s my point. People can and will easily get charged up over a store that sells “something new with each season,” but that’s part of business and part of life. Another challenge you will face, as I already alluded to several times earlier, is your constantly changing inventory. Whether you are keeping a physical inventory (an intense way to pull this idea off!) or simply changing your dropping shipping and/or affiliate offerings online on a website with each changing season/coming of new days/holidays/festivals to recognize, this idea calls for constant change in your offerings. You will need to keep this in mind and make sure you have the energy, man-power (“people-power” – is that more politically, correct? Ha, ha!), and physical space (if you are keeping physical inventory) to pull this off! The Traditional Approach: Before wrapping this post up entirely today, let me just go ahead and give some quick treatment to the two more ‘traditional’ seasonal sales approaches I briefly gave reference to above. These are: The Year-Round One Kind of Holiday Type of Store/Setup and The Only Open During This Particular Time of Year Type of Store/Setup. The Year-Round One Kind of Holiday Type of Store/Setup: Examples of this type of setup include such things as your year-round 4th Of July Fireworks Stand (yes, this is legal in some jurisdictions!), or your year-round Christmas Store, and the like. Essentially, it is a store that is open year-round that just sells particular things for one day/holiday/festival that happens once a year. Of course, depending on your location and your skillset related to branding and marketing such a business, results can and will definitely vary, but the biggest challenge overall with such a setup is that you will have to expect that you will have a heavy load of customers around the time of the actual holiday and less customers in the off-season. Much fewer people will probably go to your Christmas Store in July and August than they will in November and December, for example; although, of course, you are bound to still have some customers in July and August – and, in fact, no doubt all year – because of the novelty effect, which is a plus with such a business! Two of the biggest factors in your favor with such an idea include The Novelty Effect and The Beat the Competition Because You Are Open Early Effect. What are these two factors? The Novelty Effect essentially is, as the name implies, an attraction customers will feel to check out your store because of the sheer novelty it has to offer! “What?! An Easter Store in the middle of Fall?! I can’t believe it!!!” they will say! You will get people who will be attracted to come into your store, check it out, and possibly pick up a thing or two just because of the novelty of the experience alone. I remember from personal experience walking into a one such store as a young child with my mom and younger sister. It was a year-round Christmas Store on the East Coast of the U.S. I have never seen a store quite like it since! Anyway, I was in Kindergarten at a time, and here I am now in my late 30s and still remember the experience very vividly. I remember using all the allowance money I had in my pocket at the time to buy a cool little cricket tree ornament. Why? Because I thought the ornament was cool and because I thought the store was cool. In terms of The Beat the Competition Because You Are Open Early Effect, what I am talking about here is if your Holiday Store is open year-round for a specific holiday, then, well, it is always open so it is essentially open “early” in relation to when other similar Holiday Stores will start to open or when the big box stores will start to put their garb out for said holiday. Again, using the example of a Christmas Store (just because that’s an easy one), let’s say the big box stores start putting their Christmas stuff out on Black Friday and other such Christmas Market type venues (seasonally-opened Christmas venues) start to open within the next week in early December. You, however, with your year-round Christmas store, have the leg up on the competition in this case and have already been catching the “early bird” Christmas shoppers who have started (slowly, but steadily building momentum each week) coming into your store since the beginning of November. One final plus with this type of setup is the fact that you don’t have to re-setup and shutdown seasonally, which takes time, money, and energy in and of itself to do. The Only Open During This Particular Time of Year Type of Store/Setup: This type of setup is your classic 4th Of July Fireworks Truck in the Big Box Store Parking Lot from the last week of June through July 4th; your December Christmas Market and/or Christmas tree seller; your February Valentine’s Day Roses seller; and, to use an example from the past that I clearly remember seeing the tail end of in my childhood before it died out completely (at least died out in the US), your classic seasonal firewood seller (usually set up in the parking lot of all mall or one of your favorite big box stores close to a street corner). I suppose, technically, large scale commercial farming where one or two harvests of a particular crop are realized within a certain season each year would fall into this category as well, but that is its own unique beast with its own unique game plan which we will not discuss here! Let’s be honest here, no one is going to make a living selling Valentine’s Day Roses from February 1st through 14th and only February 1st through 14th, so someone who runs this type of enterprise has to have other additional avenues of making money in mind as well! In fact, to be honest, it is largely large traditional farmers (or at least “larger” – larger than micro farmers) who run a traditional-style plant, grow, harvest once or twice a year type of farm who I have personally encountered are the ones who engage in and have success with these kinds of ventures. Traditional-style farmers like this also have the space to store inventory and equipment (think a fireworks truck, etc.) on their farms during the off seasons. In fact, as I type this right now I am thinking of the fireworks truck you can see parked in the field of a large family farm as you drive out of my hometown of Pullman, Washington. Of course, the truck isn’t parked in that field on June 25th – it’s parked in one of the big box store parking lots in town selling fireworks! But my point is, with this particular example, that family also has its farm income to go along with its two-weeks-worth of firework sales each year. A major downside to this type of setup is having to re-setup and take-down your sales front each time you go into business for the season. As you are only selling for a short amount of time during the year, finding an avenue to make your sales happen can take some hefty leg work in the first place! As for Valentine’s Roses, perhaps you could sell these through the Internet, keeping inventory right in your home, and then deliver them to customers around town; but let’s take a look at that 4th Of July Fireworks Truck again...when they only sell fireworks for two weeks out of the year, that family is not going to rent a piece of commercial property in town and pay rent on it all year just to set up on it for two weeks in the summer. Much less are they going to buy a piece of commercial property which will just sit empty except for two weeks in the summer. They will have to have some kind of mobile sales front (like a “fireworks truck”) and work out some type of seasonal rental agreement to setup in a parking lot somewhere. There are, of course, also seasonal sales permits that go along with all of this, too! They will also have to have a reliable and cheap enough place to store their mobile sales front during the rest of the year. With all this said, none of this is undoable, of course, but these are all things to think about. You will want to try your best to minimize the amount of time, energy, and money you have to spend setting up and taking down your seasonal storefront. The same rules apply here to brick-and-mortar locations as they do to online locations. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to seasonal sales, and there are numerous minor factors at play in a scenario like this that I have not even brought up here. Hopefully this article has given you something to think about until Monday (and maybe beyond). Until then, here’s to making money through the changing of the seasons! Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Check out: www.cityofpullmanportal.com www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. What's been going on with the site lately? A recap of what ANDREAS PHILIP GROSS ENTERPRISES does, what Andreas has been up to, and a showcase of products and services offered through the site. (Yes, Andreas DOES get paid if you purchase something through this website! How's that for full disclosure exactly where it counts?) Last Updated: 1/3/2022 Hi Ladies and Gents, Aaaaaand - we're back to our regular programming here in the new year of 2022 - the year of our Lord two thousand twenty two on the Gregorian Calendar! Andreas here again on the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises blog. A very happy Monday and HAPPY NEW YEAR 2022 to you all! You know, I really find it unbelievable that it's already 2022! For those of you who were paying close attention, yes, I did miss my final post of 2021 which was supposed to happen on Thursday, December 23rd. I tried hard to get a good, meaningful post squeezed in there; but, well, let's just say, what was I thinking trying to post the day before the start of a 4-day weekend; the day before Christmas Eve, ha, ha! Time hurries on like it's going out of style! Our youngest, Luke King, will be turning 7 months in a week. I really can't believe just how much FASTER time seems to speed up with each passing year! The older I get, the faster time progresses. Months seem like fortnights, and years seem like 6-month periods of time! As for last year for me, 2021 started off amazingly and ended with an absolute nose dive. Well, I shouldn't say a total "nose dive." Yes, it's true, I both got my basic ICF coaching certificate AND lost a TON of weight in 2021 - close to 50 pounds over 2020-2021 combine, to be precise - those two things being coupled with our youngest son being born and receiving a promotion at work. All of those things were A LOT of hard work, with losing all that weight and trying to figure out the cadence and PURPOSE of my new job probably being the two absolute hardest of all! I was within a hair's breadth - literally just a few pounds away - from dropping under 300 pounds for the first time since the big "Explosion At 30!" Well, in this regard, I "nose dived." That two years' worth of hard work was all lost in the last three months of 2021 when I gained it all back again. But, despite gaining those 50 pounds back, all was not lost! Actually, walking out of 2021 with those 50 pounds back around my waist AND a coaching mindset showed me just HOW MUCH I have been barking up the proverbial "wrong tree" with regards to my life overall. You see, because of now having a coaching mindset, I have started picking and prodding away at all the little things I can "fix" in life; however, all this picking and prodding has shown me that the changes need to be MUCH bigger and MUCH MORE fundamental than that! That is why, starting in just three short weeks here, I will be stepping out of my leadership role as an Elementary School Academic Coordinator and going back to the classroom as just a regular 2nd-3rd Grade English Teacher at a different school, and getting paid MORE in the process (because now I know and value my worth)! But more on this another time..... January and a new year are here, and with that, as today is the first post in a new month, that means it’s time for the Monthly Round Up and Peek at the Month Ahead. Let’s take a quick look back at December and see what happened here at Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises. December was the new and improved Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises’ second full-month back online! Although cut a little short because of the Christmas-New Year Holiday, we got to go through our second full monthly cycle of blog posts, and even managed to get an interview in! There was a Coordinate THAT! post, one Coaching Is... post (I missed the last one on Thursday, December 23rd), and several inspirational business posts. As laid out back in October when I came back on line, that is the general monthly collection of posts you can expect every month (except there should be two Coaching Is... posts) and, well, two months in and things have been going pretty strong - all this on top of a very busy day job and a family. The Coordinate THAT! post for the month of December was a guest post from my sister, U.S. Naval Officer Kim Herm, looking at Leading Teams. The one and only Coaching Is... post was a personal post about my own coaching journey so far. In our interview we heard from Pat Old, owner and operator of Estate Services out of Pullman, Washington. For those paying attention, this was a business interview from The Pullmanic last Fall that I hadn't yet run as a stand-alone interview here on the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises site yet. In terms of business inspiration, with the idea of Winter Break looming - at least for schools - in December, I exposed some potential money-making ideas for teachers to pursue over holidays as well as discussed three ways (out of MANY) to make money online - a good ol' classic! With December behind us now, we are now in the throes of winter proper, although Chinese New Year is just around the corner! With that said, January will be another shortened month of posts. My last post will be on Thursday, January 20th - you can hold me to it! - before I shut down for a full three weeks of much deserved, if I may say, Chinese New Year Holiday. With that in mind, there won't be an interview this month, but we will see business idea posts about seasonal sales and how no one likes a hard seller. I’ll bust out two Coaching Is... posts, and, I'll post my last Coordinate THAT! post as an Elementary School Academic Coordinator....at least for the time being. With all that said, let’s take a look at a few products you can find here on the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises website! You can go directly to the webstore HERE! Looking for a name plate for your desk? Click here! How about a cool Entrepreneur t-shirt? Click here! Or a nice business card design for your new business venture! Click here! As a proud Zazzle Affiliate Program Member, I offer you all these things AND MORE through the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises website. Go ahead and check out the Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises store HERE! Com'on, click my links, baby! Make my day! You KNOW you want to!!!
Yes, yes, I'm all about full disclosure: I (Andreas Philip Gross) WILL make money if you buy something from Zazzle after clicking on one of the links to Zazzle found on this website! Aaaaaah! Head for the hills and backcountry! We've got an Internet marketer here! It just may be the end of the world!!! Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises also offers professional services. Are you looking for a professional coach? I coach educators and entrepreneurs – particularly educators who are interested in starting their own business and businesspeople who are interested in getting into education. Shoot me an email at admin@apg-enterprises.com and let's discuss where you're coming from! Discovery Calls are free and always will be! Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Andreas Philip Gross: Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Other websites by Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises: www.cityofpullmanportal.com www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Last Updated: 12/20/2021 Hi Ladies and Gents,
Today is Monday, December 20. Before we know it, Christmas will be here! That gets me thinking about turkey, goose, brandy-doused-fruit-cake, and seasonal sales again, but I digress somewhat. Of course, Christmas is not the only holiday celebrated in December. You can check out this article right here (external site) that talks about six of the more major internationally-recognized holidays celebrated in December....and of course there are more than these six, too! I should mention, though, that I celebrate Christmas and also the Gregorian solar New Year, so I will be taking the week of Christmas-New Year off from this website. That means that we won't have our regular two posts next week - please be aware of that! Today we are talking about another one of my all-time favorite topics: how to make money on the Internet. Without any further ado, let’s jump right in here to the meat and potatoes of today’s blog post: 3 Real Ways to Make Money Online. You’ve heard all the sales pitches for various books, websites, apps, courses, and probably 101 other avenues and mediums that will supposedly turn you into a genius when it comes to making money online. Perhaps you’ve even invested in some of these items to find that they are full of useless information or only teach basic techniques that you already know. What you’d like to know is how you can really make money online, without a huge investment or getting caught up in some kind of Ponzi or pyramid scam. Before we go any further, let’s get two things straight: 1) there are dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds – probably even thousands – of ways to make money online. Reading this blog and the articles on this website is not going to teach you all the ins and outs of every single way to make a buck through the Internet, nor is reading this blog going to “magically” make you rich. What I do hope is that you find some good information, tips, and inspiration – that’s probably the most important part, the inspiration – through this blog and other articles and features on this website and that you are able to find that inner confidence to forge your own way and move forward boldly with your plans to make money online as the result of having been here! 2) The other thing we need to get straight is the bottom line, which is that making money online isn’t the gravy train it was back in the 1990s and early 2000s when anyone could just throw a mom-and-pop type website up on the Internet that sold literally anything and make their millions overnight. The Internet of the 21st Century, like your toothbrush, clothes, and cellphone, is part of daily life now. It’s not the “new, cool, mysterious thing” it used to be back in 1995. And remember, the Internet is a medium, an avenue through which you can make money, just like opening up a brick-and-mortar store front in the physical world is an avenue through which you can (still!) make money – yes, even now in the 21st century. I akin making money using the Internet to making money using the railroad back in the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s. Back in the United States of the 1800s, the railroad was the “new, cool, mysterious thing” that was very literally taking the country by storm. The advent of the railroad in the US ushered in a whole new era of mass, rapid (very rapid for its time!) movement of people, physical goods, services, and of course, communication. Suddenly, everyone who was anyone wanted to “make money off the railroad” – and many people were able to do just that! Of course, over time things consolidated and eventually there came a point when just a few supergiant companies owned the lion’s share of the entire railroad network stretched across North America (hmmm....sounds like Internet cables stretched across the world’s oceans today!). The railroad had its day, and I’m not here to go into the history of the rise and fall of the American railroad system in this blog post...but in the 1990s the “new, cool, mysterious thing” called the Internet took the US, and quickly the world, by storm....and…..is this narrative starting to sound familiar? It’s no longer your Uncle John’s “Wild West” Internet of the 1990s out there anymore; it’s the rapidly consolidating Internet of the 21st Century we have to work with these days, but there is still PLENTY of life and growth left in the medium known as “the Internet!” So, with that said, let’s take a look at these three ideas for making money online as promised: 1. Advertisement Programs Advertisement programs are available all over the internet; you see them every day – think Google AdSense back 20 years ago, but now there are so many more! How can these programs help you make money? Using this method, your mission is to build a website based on a particular topic, product, or service. Once you’ve published the website, you can sign up with any number of pay-per-click advertising services that will then populate your web page with advertisements. The people behind those ads – i.e. the people paying for the ads that show on your site and get clicked on – are literally funding your paycheck on a pay-per-click basis. Every time they pay their invoice to the pay-per-click ad company for clicks on their ads, a percentage will come to you (depending on the agreement you are operating under, and assuming people are clicking on the ads on your website). Imagine building a few small, basic websites with keyword density that will attract lots of traffic and then sitting back to wait for the money to start coming in. This was the exact scenario that use to be the classic “quick and dirty” way to make money through a website back in the days of yesteryear. It really isn’t as easy as this anymore, to be honest, like it was back in 1999, but it is still possible. People still make money running pay-per-click ads on their websites now in the 21st Century. The trick often lays in having BOTH relevant ads that complement your website content, and getting A LOT of traffic to your site – useful, “converting traffic,” as they call it in the lingo, that will actually be interested in, and, thus, click on the ads in question that are displayed on your website. Again, to be honest, with so many websites on the Internet today, and more being added every day, THAT is the tricky part! Getting people to your website; getting them to stick around on your website; getting them to TRUST your website; and THEN maybe getting them to click on an ad on your website! Of course, pay-per-click is just one way of making money through advertising on the Internet and the only one we are discussing here today. There are numerous methods of making money through advertising on the Internet – think creatively on this one! Just remember to stay within honest and ethical boundaries! In many jurisdictions, intentional false advertising is a legally punishable crime; and, if you ask me, it’s just plain wrong to do it anywhere, whether it is legal to do so or not! 2. Direct Internet Sales Like Internet advertising, while there are several avenues down which you can pursue Internet sales, there are some ways that are smarter and easier to get your foot in the door with than others. When first beginning your pursuit of Internet sales, you will need either a product or service that does not draw too much from your bank account. Buying a bulk product for discounted rates and reselling those items individually could be a way to break into the market. This, of course, requires you keeping inventory and dealing with shipping the items yourself – something to keep in mind. You can either set up a website from which to sell your product(s) or service(s), or you can sell from one of the plethora of Internet marketplaces and/or auction sites out there these days – i.e. think “eBay,” “Amazon,” just to name the two big “supergiant” names of what I am referring that have been around since the dawn of the Internet, there are numerous sites out there like those these days. Many people have made quite a large sum of money selling products on auction sites and online marketplaces in the past, and this is something that is still a viable and growing market today, although, true, more competitive than it was 20 or even 10 years ago. If you take into account the fees you will have to pay, the shipping costs, and the materials cost, setting your price at a level to return a reasonable profit, you can have an Internet auction or marketplace sales business that is highly successful. A good way to attract business is to have a unique offering, whether it is a service or product, that few or no other sellers are offering – “niche yourself” into something unique! Again, as with pay-per-click advertising discussed above, direct sales on the Internet – and particularly direct sales through auction and/or marketplace sites – is just one of a myriad of different ways you can make money selling things online. Other big avenues you can go down with the Internet sales idea are affiliate marketing and/or selling digital products and/or digitally-based services. 3. Selling Custom Kits (a unique twist to the “Direct Internet Sales” idea) Perhaps you’ve been frustrated in the past by having to go to several different places to collect parts and pieces for a project. You want to customize your car, for example, but you have to go to one dealer for wheels, another for body parts, and someone else for paint or decals. What if you could buy a whole “custom overhaul kit” in one place? This third point is really an extension and unique rendition of Number 2 (above). If you leverage your skills and abilities from Number 2 (buying in bulk) and create custom kits with various complementary items and then resell those kits as their own individual sales units, this can be a lucrative business venture because you sell everything as a package, giving you the ability to mark up the price for the “value added” aspect of the kit and earn quite a handsome profit in some cases. By utilizing this method, you are also offering the customer the chance to purchase everything he or she needs in one easy place through one easy purchase – assuming you are easy to do business with (ok, that’s a joke!). The example given in the paragraph above was customizing your car, but the idea of creating and selling custom kits can reach far beyond the automotive industry. Some other big ideas that immediately come to mind for me along the lines of custom kits are custom cleaning kits (for a variety of industries), custom finishing kits (for a variety of industries), and, of course, the famed and acclaimed “Starter Kits” which have become so popular over the last few decades. You know what I mean – things like “The Photography Starter Kit,” as one random example, which may offer a bunch of photography accessories, such as a carry-bag, lens cleaning paraphernalia, wallets/holders for memory cards, etc...many of these items are all things which are relatively easy to purchase cheaply and in bulk, and then when you combine all of them into your “Custom Photography Starter Kit,” you can mark up the price as you are selling a value-added unique stand-alone product now. There you go, some potential money-making ideas to chew on until Thursday. Better life, better business, better you! Ideas, inspiration, opportunity, -Andreas Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises Washington State Certified K-8 Educator, K-12 International Education Consultant, Professional Coach, Proofreader/Editor, Affiliate Marketer, Popsicle Stick Crafter, Print-on-Demand Products Designer, and Webmaster Other websites by Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises: www.cityofpullmanportal.com www.949crafts.com Looking for a professional coach? I’m your man! Let’s chat. Richard Old: Owner of Estate Services www.webuyandsellstuff.com Meet Dr. Richard Old: 5th Generation Whitman County Resident, Farm Owner, Estate Liquidation Expert, Weed Identification Specialist, Forensic Scientist, Teacher, Author, Entrepreneur, Jack-Of-All-Trades A business interview by Andreas Gross Pictures and photographs provided for use in this article by Richard Old Date of Interview: July 25, 2021 This interview first appeared in the the Fall/Winter 2021 4th Edition of The Pullmanic, published on September 18, 2021, a newsletter about Pullman, Washington, also produced and published by Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises. This is the newsletter being referred to in the opening paragraph of the interview. You can access that newsletter here. You can access previous editions of the newsletter on The City of Pullman Portal website, The Pullmanic page, a website by Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises. ![]() For this edition of The Pullmanic, I was able to catch up with Pullman’s famed and acclaimed Dr. Richard Old and get him to share his story with us. Being an entrepreneurial small business owner and running Estate Services is just one venture this multi-talented 5th generation Whitman County resident is engaged in, but let’s hear about it from him, in his own words! Richard, let’s start from the beginning here, shall we? Tell us your story please… Certainly, Andreas. And thank you for reaching out to me. I’m happy to share my story here in the Fall/Winter 2021 Edition of The Pullmanic. I was born in Colfax (due to the fact there was no maternity ward in Pullman) and raised on a farm near Albion. My Dad, Pat Old, knew everyone and everyone seemed to know him. He was well known for reciting poetry to anyone who would listen :). My mother, Dr. Leila Old, taught clothing and textiles at both Washington State University and the University of Idaho. She taught televised courses long before distance education became popular. I attended grades K-12 in Pullman (celebrated my 50th class reunion just this past summer!) and received both my baccalaureate and master’s degrees from WSU; my doctorate in plant science is from the University of Idaho. I have been doing plant identifications for WSU since 1976 and for the University of Idaho since 1984. For my doctorate, I created a computerized expert system to identify plants which became my company XID Services. My expert system and databases have been used worldwide and have led me to lecture internationally, including chairing a session at the International Botanical Conference and speaking at The Smithsonian. I have taken over 22,000 pictures of invasive plants which are used to illustrate my interactive computer databases. I started Estate Services in 1985 when I was still working at the University of Idaho; guess I just didn’t have enough to do :). My wife Tena and I have two children. They both attended Pullman schools. My son Patrick works as a software engineer at Nike in Oregon. My daughter Hannah recently returned to the area, and is living in Moscow. She is following in my entrepreneurial footsteps, having started her own business, Clarity Pilates (https://www.clarityclassicalpilates.com), after teaching at a widely renowned Pilates studio in Seattle for five years. Wonderful, Richard. What a life! A regular Renaissance Man, if I may say so. And you’ve got a next generation entrepreneur in your family as well – your daughter. Good on her for getting her own Pilates outfit up and running. Speaking of entrepreneurs, what else can you tell us about Estate Services? What is the focus of the company? The focus of my business is helping people who are faced with trying to figure out what to do with large amounts of personal property, either from an estate or due to moving into smaller quarters. If contacted early enough in the process, I can relieve them of a tremendous amount of work, expense and stress, allowing them to focus their efforts strictly on the items they wish to retain. And where exactly did the inspiration to start an estate liquidation business as such come from? When my father moved to the farm I grew up on in 1935, he had gone through the Depression, was 23 years old, and that farm was the 23rd place he had lived. As a result, he had never had the chance to have many possessions. So after moving there, he never threw anything away (and he lived there until he was over 100)! When I was a kid, our Sunday recreation consisted of going to the dump, not to throw things away, but to see what we could find to bring home. It was, and is, deeply ingrained in me that, “To waste is a sin.” One of the tenants of Estate Services is my commitment to recycling and donating as a way of keeping things out of the landfill. My mother specialized in the history of costume (in this context, “costume” is the clothing of an era, not what is worn on stage.). The Leila Old Historic Costume Collection at the University of Idaho is named after her (https://www.uidaho.edu/cals/family-and-consumer-sciences/teaching-labs/leila-old-historic-costume-collection). These two influences, one of accumulation and the other of preservation, are what led me to establish Estate Services. Very sound reasoning indeed, Richard. Now you’ve got me thinking about my grandparents, rest in peace, who lived through the Great Depression and kept every tin can, bent nail, and chipped coffee mug that ever came their way – even though they had plenty of those things already and everything else under the sun! Tell us, Richard, what makes Estate Services stand out? Why should someone use Estate Services as opposed to just dealing with their stuff themselves? The tagline for my business is “Keep EVERYTHING you want. We deal with EVERYTHING else.” Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases people do not contact me until they have exhausted themselves dealing with the stuff they don’t want. In many instances the first thing people do while handling an estate or moving is order a dumpster and proceed to throw out anything/everything they do not want or recognize to have value. See some of the stories of what I have encountered at https://webuyandsellstuff.com/pages/updates.html. I have seen many houses that have sat vacant for months and even years while people dealt with the contents. Since they are paying taxes, insurance, and utilities, this is costing them hundreds of dollars each month. By leaving a place vacant the only thing they can gain, in addition to their monthly bills, is thieves, rodents, and broken pipes. If they would focus on just keeping the things they want and call Estate Services at the beginning of the process, they would save time, money, energy, and greatly reduce their stress. This would also allow the house to be sold much more quickly, alleviating many potential problems and expenses. You hear that, Pullman?! If you’re looking to liquidate large amounts of personal property, don’t haul, call! Call Richard at Estate Services, that is! And on that note, as a small business owner in Pullman, Washington, and as an individual, what kinds of people are you looking to network with, Richard? Estate attorneys, realtors, retirement homes – really anyone or any business that has interactions with people who could benefit from my services. What aspect of running Estate Services presents the greatest challenge to you? Ninety percent of the time when people call me they have already spent a vast amount of time and resources disposing of things that Estate Services would have taken care of for them. Frequently they are far past the point that my services are of any value. Several times a month I hear people say, “Gee, I wish I would have known about you when . . . “. I belong to a Facebook group for Professional Estate Liquidators, and I see that everyone in my business faces this same problem. An auctioneer put it very well when they said, “Most of the time I would like to trade them straight across, what we got in the sale for what they threw in the dump.” That has to be maddening when a situation like that unfolds and both you and your client come to realize just what has been laid to waste in the local dump – and not to mention the energy wasted by the clients themselves before calling you! On the flip side, there have to be positives to running the business as well. What aspect of running Estate Services gives you the greatest joy or would be the aspect that you consider to be the most rewarding? Being able to actually help people that are in a difficult and stressful situation. You can see some letters from my former clients here: https://webuyandsellstuff.com/pages/references.html. Wonderful, Richard! Yes, that feeling of knowing you were actually able to help someone out is priceless. It’s one of the primary reasons I’m in the service industry myself. And right along the same line of helping others, what would you say to someone who wanted to go down a track like yours or a similar one? You know, someone who wanted to get into running an estate liquidation business, or a similar kind of business in Pullman or small-town U.S.A. in general – any advice or words of wisdom that you would care to share? People often comment to me about how “fun” or “glamorous” my business is. They only see the sales after the vast majority of the work has been done and have no idea as to the reality of the situation. There is a lot of work to be done in any residence. But in addition to the nice clean places I encounter, I also work in some places where I deal with lots of dust, mold, mouse poop, hazardous chemicals, garbage, pet residue, etc. I still suffer some health effects from the first estate I worked on 36 years ago. Wow! Lingering health effects from the very first estate you worked on 36 years ago – and you stayed in business! You are performing a true service to humanity, Richard! It just shows that you can’t keep a person from doing what he or she truly loves and feels destined to do. Now let’s talk a little bit about life in Pullman in general and how you fit into the community here beyond your Estate Services business. Let’s be honest here: you are somewhat of a living legend in Pullman. A master of weed identification – even using your plant identification expertise to deliver speeches for the Smithsonian and to fight crime with the Spokane P.D. – you’ve also written books, taught classes, developed invasive weed identification software, you own a farm here in the area…..and the list of amazing things seems to never end! I feel like there is a treasure trove of stories inside your head. Despite the fact that I teach classes on ethnobotany (edible and useful plants) and the poisonous plants field trips for the Veterinary School at WSU, my particular field of interest and expertise is newly invasive weed species. We are operating in an informational vacuum when it comes to knowing what goes on around us as far as changes occurring in the local biota. While working at the University of Idaho, I averaged reporting nine new species of weeds per year in the states of Idaho and Washington. On average when a “new” weed species is reported and we do as much research as possible on its occurrence, we find that in reality the species has been here 30 years and occupies ten thousand acres. By this time complete eradication is impossible leading to ever increasing detrimental effects on agriculture and the environment. I love to teach and have given hundreds of lectures on plant identification hoping to expand the pool of people that can see what is going on around them. If newly invasive species were detected earlier, we would have a much better chance of alleviating their harmful effects. The experience I gained identifying poor (sometimes fragmentary) specimens while doing plant identifications for the two universities resulted in my cooperating with law enforcement on numerous forensics cases, the most famous being the Spokane serial killer case which lead to me being included in a Discovery Channel F2: Forensic Factor episode (Season 5, Episode 5) as well as the following article in The Spokesman Review: Fighting homicide through botany! However you can fight it best, right, Andreas?! Right, Richard! And how about any special Pullman stories you may have? The funny thing about living in Pullman is all the people who knew my parents and my children. I named my son after my father. As a result, I spent the first portion of my life being known as “Pat Old’s kid” and the second portion as “Pat Old’s Dad.” J Furthermore, when it comes down to running a business in Pullman, there is still a small town component to living here. A large portion of my business is a result of word-of-mouth from people I have known and worked with over the years. This kind of support is more valuable than any advertising I could do. Great stuff, Richard. Thank you very much for opening up to us today. It’s been a pleasure hearing about your Estate Services business along with other aspects of your multi-faceted life. Before we wrap things up here completely, how can people contact you who may be interested in learning more about Estate Services? Certainly, Andreas; and thanks again for reaching out and allowing me to tell my story here in the The Pullmanic. My contact information is: Richard Old 509-332-2989 rold@pullman.com www.webuyandsellstuff.com And, as I’ve stressed over and over again – and will stress one more time here – I encourage people to contact me as early in their process as possible, for more information or if they have any questions! Thanks again, Richard, for your time today. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Richard Old: 5th Generation Whitman County Resident, Farm Owner, Estate Liquidation Expert, Weed Identification Specialist, Forensic Scientist, Teacher, Author, Entrepreneur, Jack-Of-All-Trades. Richard, the Pullman Community is truly blessed to have you as one of its cornerstone members. And remember, you read about it all at Andreas Philip Gross Enterprises!
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