WestJet Lands at StFX!

WestJet took to the skies February 29, 1996 with 200 people, three Boeing 737-200s, and five destinations. WestJet was a paradigm shift. They found a new way to price fares - offering the lowest priced flights, They spoke the right language and offered a unique culture of care.

Last week StFX students had the opportunity to hear from Jon Quinton, Station Manager at WestJet's Halifax base. He shared WestJets 5 secrets to success.

1. We Care to Plan

WestJets culture thrives and continues to provide WestJetters with a sense of community within the organization and a sense of pride in association with WestJet that maintains a fun, friendly and caring experience ensuring the well-being and continued relationships with their current and potential guests. WestJet has over 250 programs annually that celebrate the culture.

2. We Care to Share

WestJet offers an employee share purchase plan, over 85% of WestJetters are shareholders. Since the inception of the program WestJetters have earned $190M, they celebrate twice yearly where a percentage of their profits are divided among all WestJetters. As the profits get bigger, so does their share of it!

3. We Care to REALLY Listen

WestJet has put in place a variety of programs to listen to WestJetters. Programs like Tech Talks, Airport visits and Test ideas. Not only does WestJet listen to their guests by incorporating them into their decisions, they also conduct regular guest surveys.

4. We Care to Design

WestJet designs all of their experiences and processes to make sure their WestJetters can be proud and successful. They ensure that their guests are truly getting value out of everything they do.

5. We Care to Celebrate and Have Fun

Fun is part of the fabric of WestJet's culture.

• Profit Share
• Birthday parties
• New destination launches (Elvis on their first flight to Vegas)
• Incorporating family

Looks like FUN, sounds like FUN, but does it work?

YES! In fifteen short years WestJet has taken delivery of 94 Next Generation 737 aircraft, grown to 70 destinations in 13 countries, remained one of the most profitable airlines in the world, second in North America, launched WestJet Vacations and became a multiple award-winning airline.

WestJet succeeds because every single employee CARES.

Here is another blog entry from the SPARK event that myself and 30 StfX students attended on October 6th in Saint John NB. This blog entry is a summary of the keynote that Donald Trump delivered.

There's no such thing as personal business and work business, it's simply your business, twenty-four hours per day.  You are your own storefront, your own manager and your own brand, so don't mess it up by making bad business decisions in life.

Here are some of Donald's time tested rules for anyone working in business that will help you impress people and in return make money:                                                              

 1. Be on time

Punctuality is essential. You should never tolerate late arrivals and missed deadlines for yourself or from anyone else.

2. Do your Homework

Wasting other people's time due to poor planning and thoughtlessness will only leave a bad impression.

3. Make a mental dossier on people

Before meeting people for the first time, do some research on them. People will be flattered if you reference a deal you know they've done or a charity they're involved in.

4. Remember people's names and small details about them

People love to hear their names and their stories said out load

5. Be honest

Most people can smell a lie and will appreciate honesty, even if it's not exactly what they want to be hearing.

6. Let other people talk

Any business conversation should be two sided

7. Be self deprecating and disarming

Don't be a bulldozer in business; save your hardest edge for when you need it the most.

In summing up his keynote, Donald told the audience if you are intent on big success then take away these points:

• Think Big
• Stay focused
• Be paranoid (keep your guard up)
• Be passionate
• Don't ever give up
• Love what you are doing

To be a winner, you must think like a winner. Try it. You'll be surprised. And before long, you might be thinking like a billionaire.

Yesterday at the Spark event in Saint John NB myself and 30 StFX students had the opportunity to hear from some of the most successful and memorable politicians, entrepreneurs and leaders of our time.

For me the most valuable take away from the whole event was Rudy Giuliani's remarks on leadership and running a successful business. Below are Rudy's 5 principals of leadership

1. Have a goal

It is important as a business owner to sit down with your partners, workers and friends, and figure out what you want to do with your business.  If your business is standing still it is declining. By setting goals for yourself and working towards those goals your business will always be moving forward, which will lead to success. It is not good enough to keep planning; most people spend too much time thinking about their goals and not moving forward.  Successful people are goal oriented and know where they want to go and what they want to achieve.

2. Be an optimist

No one wants to go to dinner with a pessimist. If you want to be a leader you've got to be optimistic

3. Think like a problem solver

Young people need to train themselves how to think like problem solvers. How are you going to present the problem, how would you solve and or reduce the problem and what can be done about it. Your solution don't have to be the right one right away. When solving a problem you might go through 8 or 9 solutions before you figure out the right one. People who will move up in organizations or thrive in their own businesses are problem solvers.

4. Courage

Leaders have to be courageous. Courage is not fearlessness; courage is recognizing the risk but being able to do something about it. To take the risk and not be immobilized by it.

5. Team work

Anyone that succeeds in life has done it with the help of other people. No one has become successful in life by doing it alone.

If you are in charge of any business, little or big, you need to be able to identify what your weaknesses are, what don't you do well. Find someone that can balance your strengths.  The key to team work is balance; a team is not great with just offense or  just defense. In business you need a balance of skills. The job of the leader is to figure out the balance.

If you are a real leader and you want to create an organization where people operate above and beyond; you need to love people and care about them as if they were your own family. Weddings are discretionary but funerals are mandatory. Your friends need you more at a funeral, people need to be hugged, and supported.The same is true in an organization you need to be there to help people. If you do - your people will be there to help you in the organization when times are tough.

Final note

Never again will we have the opportunity to have these three remarkable people in one room. They all had a story to tell, but the messages were the same... young entrepreneurs will lead us to prosperity. Thank you to the Antigonish Evergreen Inn and Antigonish Family Dentistry for giving StfX students this amazing opportunity.  As Oprah once said, the future is so bright it burns your eyes.

According to a recent study conducted by G. Scott Erickson, visiting research chair at the Queen's University School of Business, small business owners don't follow the same buying process when purchasing professional services that individual consumers do.

Research shows that consumers typically go through 5 steps or stages when selecting a professional service provider (like a lawyer or financial advisor):

• Need recognition
• Information search
• Alternative evaluation
• Purchase
• Post-purchase evaluation

Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often skip a number of steps, basing their decisions largely on word of mouth recommendations from a trusted network - that and what is most readily available that meets their need. Most study participants showed a preference for using local service providers where possible, and relationship and trust were key factors in the decision. The search for professional service providers "was almost entirely confined to personal contacts and referrals". 

This research should give you some key points to think about if you sell services to small business owners - some of them pretty obvious, but worth repeating.

1. When small business owners go looking for a new professional service provider, it is usually triggered by change and involves urgency.  Because entrepreneurs are busy people they tend to make decisions quickly once a need is identified. For the same reason, they often choose the path of least resistance. In other words, they buy what is most readily available that meets their need.  Strive to be visible and "top of mind".
2. When entrepreneurs do look for information to help make a buying decision, they go to their trusted networks. Word-of-mouth and referral is extremely important. Establishing trust through networking links is critical if you serve this market.
3. Entrepreneurs would rather buy another product from someone they already do business with rather than find a different supplier. It pays to offer a suite of related products and services. If that's not possible - then the next best thing is to offer something that is highly specialized.
4. Traditional marketing and media is not the best way to reach this market, but social media are tailor-made for fostering entrepreneurial networks. Use Linked-in, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to enhance networking.

If you provide professional services to small business, you probably know this stuff already. In an increasingly automated world, however, we are often led to believe that relationship doesn't matter anymore; that people will just surf the internet and buy from the website that answers their last question.  In the B2B marketplace, research show that is just not the case.  Entrepreneurs buy from someone they know and trust - or from someone their network knows and trusts!

Does it make sense to use Group Coupons to promote your business?

These days there is a lot of buzz in the air about daily deal sites like Groupon and Daily Deals. Even Kijiji has joined the daily deal band wagon. Some of the talk buzzing around is over-the-moon hype about the potential for growing your business through group coupon offerings.  On the other hand, there is an increasing counter-buzz in the  form of dire warnings that these deals will destroy you.  As a small business owner, how do you decide whether these deals are an exceptional opportunity for your business, or a trap to be avoided?

Like any promotional activity, a group coupon campaign has to be planned and strategic.  When putting together a promotional deal, here are some things to consider:

1. Figure out the average lifetime value of a customer to your business.
2. Based on that value, decide how much you are willing to spend to acquire a new customer and make sure whatever deal you structure stays within those bounds (this applies to all marketing activity, not just daily deals and group coupons!)
3. When structuring your deal, run the numbers
   1. Consider best and worst case scenarios (eg. What happens if 100 people respond? What happens if 11,000 people respond?, etc).  
   2. Figure out the impact of the promotion on your business if everyone who buys a coupon redeems it....in the same week....on the same day.  
   3. Could your business sustain the financial impact? 
   4. Could your business meet that level of demand, or would it cripple you?
   5. Define the optimum result and try to structure your deal to support that optimum result.
   6. If the success of the campaign depends on retaining newly acquired customers, make sure you build in a customer retention strategy so your investment is not wasted due to lack of follow through.
4. Before committing to work with a particular deal maker, ask about their philosophy:
   1. Do they see themselves as champions of the consumer, focused on getting the best deal possible for buyers regardless of the impact on the business?
   2. Or do they have a more balanced, win/win/win philosophy (the customer gets a great deal, the deal maker makes a profit, and the business benefits from long term growth)? 
   3. If the former - don't do the deal.
5. All group coupon offers have a minimum number of sales required to validate the deal - that's how the model works.  Before committing to anything, make sure they also allow you to set a maximum. 
   1. If the number-crunching you did above tells you that a huge response would swamp your business, but the deal maker doesn't allow you to limit the number of coupons you will honour - don't do the deal.
6. If you decide that a group coupon offer makes sense for your business, and you find a deal maker who offers a win/win/win model, try one deal first as a test run.
   1. Run a focused campaign designed to optimize your results.
   2. At the end of the campaign, assess your results.
   3. Make sure you give yourself enough time to assess customer retention if that is a key success measure for the campaign.

Group coupons offer an innovative way to build awareness of your business and, when structured properly, to acquire new customers.  For a small business, they have the added advantage of leveraging the internet for maximum exposure and offering measurable results.  But, like any other form of marketing and promotional activity, they only work when used strategically and with careful planning.

What Training do Small Business Owners Really Need/Want?

Each year we put together a schedule of business skills development workshops. The topics we choose are based on a combination of core skills and knowledge that we know every small business owner needs, plus the feedback that we gather on the evaluation sheets, and through conversations and surveys.

Among those businesses that have at least one employee (other than the owner), the topic of recruiting, selecting, hiring and cmanaging people comes up time and again as an area where more information is needed. Starting a business is one thing - finding and keeping good people is something else all together.

For some reason, in spite of this recurring theme, HR workshops just don't generate registrations - even when we offer them at no charge.

We struggle with the apparent disconnect.

In April, we offered a series of HR related workshops. Admittedly, one had to be rescheduled because the facilitator had to pull out on short notice - but one was cancelled due to insufficient registration and another was poorly attended. Since the marketing workshops in May were all very popular, our natural reaction is to assume there is not a lot of interest in HR related topics.

So why do we keep seeing it as a suggestion on our evaluations forms? And why does it keep coming up as one of the most pressing issues when we do Organizational Needs Assessments for particular industry sectors?

If finding, hiring, managing, and keeping good people is a priority for your business - and you'd really like to see some support and training offered locally to help you do a better job of it - please let us know.

In the meantime, here are a few resources if you are interested and workshops are just not an effective way for you to access this type of information.

HR Policies Report

HR Best Practices E-Book (4mb)

Canadian Goverment Resources for Employers

One web-based HR management system for small business

The momentum for our Atlantic Youth Entrepreneurship Summit is building and we now have much of the speakers and session leaders confirmed. The two keynote speakers are Peter Kenyon from the Bank of IDEAS (Australia) and Brad LeBlanc, ,founder oif the Momentum Group (New Brunswick). Peter Kenyon will also bring his world renowned facilitation skills to the Summit as he leads the learning stream "Linking Entrepreneurship to Long-Term Economic Growth"

The program is shaping up to be an interesting mix of international, national and local expertise, including some young entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs with amazing stories to share.

If you are a young person in Atlantic Canada who is in business, interested in business, or wanting to use business for positive change - you will want to come to AtlanticYES. You'll find more information about the summit here www.xedc.ca/atlanticyes

The odds that Antigonish will reap the benefits of economic development by Hockey have dramatically increased.

CBC Hockeyville is coming to Antigonish!

While the Antigonish RDA is leading the charge on this - success will come from the combined efforts of everyone in Antigonish who loves hockey or just wants a better rink...or both!

CBC will be in Antigonish from Tuesday, February 22 until the morning of Thursday February 24! Their job is to pick the TOP 10 communities for the next round of the contest. Our job is to convince them that Antigonish belongs in that top 10.

So come out to the Community Rally on Wednesday, February 23, from 5:00pm to 6:30pm at the Antigonish Arena. The rally will feature some of Antigonish's youngest hockey superstars as well as a chance to hear from some of Antigonish's former stars and NHLers. We ask that you wear a jersey, bring signs to show support and also bring a box of Kraft Dinner to use as a noisemaker and for donation to the Local Food Bank after the rally.

When it comes right down to it, the Hockeyville contest is not really economic development by hockey - it's economic development by community spirit. Hockey is just the rallying point.  The contest allows spirited communities and committed residents to join together around a beloved sport to benefit their communities in a tangible way. We've already shown that Antigonish is such a spirited community by getting this far. Now it't time to take it the rest of the way.

I just got an email from the Antigonish RDA with the headline

"Antigonish is being given serious consideration as one of the top 10 communities for Kraft Hockeyville 2011!"

It's not every day that a community gets the chance to secure major economic development dollars just by showing enthusiasm for something we love to do and watch anyway - not to mention hosting a pre-season game right here in Antigonish.

ARDA's email goes on to say...

"We have received a notice that CBC will be coming to Antigonish to talk to people in the community about the importance of hockey in Antigonish and to gage communication reaction to the contest. A date has yet to be finalized for their visit, however we do know it will be in the next two weeks and we'll be planning a community type rally or event to show the country our passion and spirit.

Close to 300 communities from across Canada have been nominated to be crowned Kraft Hockeyville 2011. The country has been divided into five regions and two communities from each region will be chosen for the top 10.... The winning community receives $100,000 from Kraft Canada dedicated to upgrading their home arena, an NHL pre-season hockey game, and a CBC Hockey Night in Canada broadcast relating to the event. The remaining four communities from the top five receive $25,000."

There has been a lot of talk about putting Antigonish on the map. At the Chamber AGM last night we spoke about marketing the Antigonish Advantage to the world. Here is a great opportunity to do just that - and to contribute big dollars to badly needed arena upgrades at the same time.

So stay tuned for more information from ARDA about what we can do to help Antigonish get selected as Hockeyville this year.

We've been busy adding some features to our website that we hope you will enjoy. Here are just a few of the many improvements

1. Entrepreneur and Enterprising Faculty profiles
2. More images throughout the site
   
3. Direct links to our Online Diagnostic for small business and our E-Learning centre
4. This blog
5. Drop down sub-menus for easier navigation

Take a look around and let us know what you think and come back often to see what else is new!