Fax to Email

Every great company wants great press. If you’re sending aid to Guatemala, you want the world to know. If you’re saving the environment by sending faxes through email, you want the world to know. And if you’re hitting phenomenal growth rates, you want the world to know.

So how do you go about this thing called Public Relations. Well, I found a great website that might help small businesses start to think about the media and start connecting with it.

One thing the article suggests is that you need to be extremely respectful of the media. You can treat them the exact same way that you would a client or business associate.

I think something we think of media outlets as unreachable. We think that everyone who deals with big media distribution is on a celebrity level. But they really aren’t. They’re just ordinary people, like you and me. And they run a business. So treat them like you’re a business too, and you’ll be amazed at how responsive they can be.

One thing this article on this site talks about is the need for a media kit. This is a big subject that can’t be fully tackled here. You’ll want to do your homework on how to put one together and distribute it, but you should know about them. And you will want to use them.

As you create your own small business, you may be doing everything right technically. You might be adept at knowing how to use the Internet for everything from email to fax email. You may have cutting edge software. But if you don’t know how to organize your team, you’re tools will not be used properly.

Remember that you have two types of employees. One type is a specialist. The other type is a generalist.

Specialists are ideal in specific roles. They might be a good manager, but only over a department of similar specialists. They won’t be good at managing different departments outside of their area of specialty.

Generalists tend to make good managers of different types of departments. For example a generalist could theoretically be good at managing a graphic design, sales, art, and advertising department.

Generalists make great entrepreneurs, and will thrive with maximum autonomy and maximum diversity. Specialists are ideal in a more limited role, but they can be expected to perform at a very high level in that specialty.

So organize your team accordingly. If you have generalists stuck in specialist roles, get them out of there into positions with broader application. And if you have specialists caught in generalists’ positions get them out of there as well. They’ll thank you and be more successful in your company.

I believe in doing what we can to save the environment. I think that sometimes people fail to conserve because the world seems like such a big place and out of one’s control. It’s hard to think that actions of one person can change such a large globe with so many systems involved.

But it’s this kind of thinking that’s destroying the environment. The world is hurt by lots of little people like you and me failing to act responsibly.

Besides, sometimes impossible things aren’t as impossible as we think. When we think that fixing the problem is impossible, failure becomes a surety. So let’s have a little optimism.

And let’s use a little common sense to do our part. It isn’t huge. We don’t need to move next door to Leonardo Di’Caprio in his New York green apartment complex. We just need to make some small but helpful changes. Hopefully those small changes, collectively, will add up to exactly what needs to happen to fix the big problems.

So start by finally switching over to a fax to email account. Don’t print up so many papers. Recycle the newspaper. Change your light bulbs. These things aren’t hard, but on the whole, the whole will be helped by our small actions.

Much has changed in the world since the Internet came on the scene. YouTube has replaced “America’s Funniest Home Video’s.” Fax to email has replaced fax machines. And website domains have replaced company names.

But I have to wonder if the whole desire for a domain has gotten a little silly. For example, msnbc.com reports that a British travel company paid $1.1 million dollars for the domain name cruises.co.uk. makeing this is the biggest price for a domain name in UK history.

But apparently this pales in comparison with “.com” domain acquisitions. Recently sex.com was purchased for $12 million dollars.

Some people really question whether a domain name is really that important. Your domain name can mean absolutely nothing, but have the best content and SEO site on the block, and get top billing on Google.

But as I said before, it’s getting to the point where you actually may want to have .com in the title of your company. It sounds techie. It sounds modern. It sounds fast. It sounds cutting edge.

My advice is this: If you can get a good domain name, great. But if you can’t, don’t sweat it. Most people use Google and other search engines to find the right content, not the domain name. I mean, as millions of profitable sites demonstrate, you don’t need to be sex.com to make it clear what you are all about.

I know your type. You’re tech savvy. Not an expert techie, but you understand what technology is out there and how to use it. When someone told you about sending faxes by email you were thrilled and ready to be an immediate user.

No doubt you felt the same way about PowerPoint, the universal software for presentations. But I’ve read a wonderful article by Carmine Gallo that you need to know about. He tells this story:

“In 2005 a Texas jury ordered drug giant Merck (MRK) to pay $253 million in damages . . . while the Merck lawyers bombarded the jurors with science and data, Lanier told an emotional story using visuals. I saw the slides. They contained few words and no bullet points.”

Is that right? No bullet points. Yes. In the art of PowerPoint, bullet points are the worst offense.

He makes a few other suggestions. Write your presentation out on a piece of paper first, then translate it into the software.

Eliminate anything extra. That includes lines, shapes, and symbols that might be distracting.

Use pictures. You know the old adage that a picture tells a thousand words. It’s still true. So stick with it.

Gallo points out that one doesn’t need to be a skilled artist to create really interesting presentations. Just don’t bore them. Keep them interested by keeping it simple.

So you know that you want your new startup business to be cutting edge. You’ll be using every suggestion from the major business gurus of our day. You’ll be employing all of the latest convenience offering technology for small businesses like fax through email. But now you just need to decide your business.

If you’re interested in the food industry allow me to share a few helpful bits of knowledge. The food industry is not really growing. But within the industry, there’s a huge growing trend toward specialty foods.

Specialty foods can be broken down into three main criteria. There’s the vegan market, which avoids all animal bi-products. There’s the organic/natural foods market, which ensures that no pesticides or additives are used in their growth. And there’s the gourmet market, which offers unique, high end ingredients for fine cuisine.

If I was creating a startup in the food industry, I would examine this specialty market and find my niche within in it.

The entire food industry is moving toward a more natural, healthy, quality driven market. No longer are Whole Foods and Wild Oats the only major specialty foods retailers. Most mainline grocers are shifting toward the specialty market. It is likely that in 20 years, the average grocery store will look like a Whole Foods of today.

I’m all about speed. I like to start a project and end it in a timely way. If my projects drag out over the course of days they enter a phase of development where it is infinitely harder to finish them. So when I start something I want it done and I want it done fast.

If you’re the same, you can understand how frustrating it can be to wait for someone else to respond to your phone call or email. You want to get a hold of them right away, discuss your business, and complete the darned task.

So here’s a bit of advice. The longer it takes for your message to get to your recipient, the longer it will take them to answer you back. If you send a fax through an old fashioned fax machine, they’ll get it within minutes. But their phone line might be tied up for a while. And the secretary might not put it on their desk right away.

I like to send it through email or fax to email. That way I know that they’ve gotten it within seconds. I then follow up with a phone call. If I don’t get them on the phone right away, I keep trying back until I catch them, let them know that I sent the document and that I need a response within a certain period of time.

It’s a simple bit of advice, but I’ve found it to be a fundamental key to execution.

Aside from looking for new innovations like online fax, small business owners are always looking for advice from the big guys. Jack Welch might exemplify the American business leader.

When I was first looking into the business world, trying to decide whether there was a place for me, I picked up legendary GE CEO Jack Welch’s book, “Jack: Straight From the Gut.” If you haven’t read this you need to go out this weekend, buy it, and read the entire thing from cover to cover.

Jack Welch might seem a little full of himself, but frankly, in terms of business, he sort of should be. He knows how to take a very big company and make it a monster. Consequently, you should probably know what he has to say about the subject if you’re running a small business of your own.

One of his central themes is setting stretch goals. He says that at GE they would set goals that reflected their dreams. These goals represented the highest possible result that they thought was reasonably possible.

The result was a company culture that never hit their goals but they always did far better than they would have without the goal. This culture was always ambitious, shooting for the moon and getting far better results than anyone else could have projected.

I think it’s safe to bet that email faxing is pretty much a given in most big businesses. But what’s new? What’s ground breaking? What’s the future that small businesses can look to as an example?

Well, perhaps what’s new is actually old, according to former Southwest Airlines CEO James Parker. He built a successful airline during a huge downturn in the industry from 2001 to 2004. He did so by building a company culture of customer service that generated high profits.

He says in an article at BusinessWeek.com that CEOs spend a lot of time building up their high potential executives but not nearly enough energy building their front line managers. He also emphasizes the importance of putting strong people into good environments. He says that if you put good people into a bad place, they can become bad employees.

He says that leadership is training, and that the majority of that training needs to go into the front line management. It usually goes into the top-level leadership, and then you fail to execute where you need it the most.

I’m a big fan of Southwest. They’re the cheapest to fly, but they’re also one of the best in terms of quality. I’ve never had them lose a bag. Their customer service has always been top notch. After a disastrous trip back from Europe several years ago on a failing airline, I concluded to always travel Southwest whenever I could.

When you try to imagine the quintessential eccentric genius in the tech industry, you just have to think of Steve Jobs. Bill Gates may be one of the richest guys in the world, but everyone pretty much knows that Steve Jobs is the smartest.

Within a 30-year career he’s completely renovated several industries: Computers, Hollywood, music, retailing, and wireless phones. And the last four have been within the last ten years. It’s as if he’s gaining momentum, innovating faster and faster.

Jobs is the ultimate trail blazer. His products must be groundbreaking, they must be better in quality than anything else in the industry, and they must look good. On top of all of that, he’s brought a profitability to Apple while remaining fiercely outside of the mainstream.  We’re still waiting for our Macs to be compatible with PC but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

Word on the street is that Jobs is a little maniacal and mean to a lot of his coworkers. He’s a tad uptight about achieving perfection. And his business is going to have a really tough time when he leaves.  It’s hard to imagine that Apple will be sustainable past his generation.

But you’ve go to stand in awe of his achievement. There’s something to be learned for small business leaders here. I’d love to know when he switched from fax to fax to email? I’m surprised he didn’t invent it.