The title refers to a book about small towns within a couple of hours drive from where the author lives. Over the years many of the towns have been visited and it was good to read about their early years. All the towns grew up in a similar fashion with people either having a land grant or someone buying the land and the need to improve it. Over the years the towns made the tranformation from rural needs to a service economy with government services providing the stablizing base.

Linking to dividend providing stocks the same consistently sustaining activities which keep small towns viable are necessary to look for with stocks. Many towns have made changes over the years often times there was a fire, economic changes, people change and the town keeps going. With your stock there will be changes, but if there is consistent sustainability it is worth the investment.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

If you like a good mystery book – The Inquisitor’s Key by Jon Jefferson and Dr. Bill Bass, HarperCollins, NY, 2012 is a good read. The book’s main character is a forensic anthropologist who helps both the police and others identify people. The book is set in Avignon, France and to give reference to what they are doing many descriptions are given. It is important to note Avignon, was the Pope’s Palaces before they lived moved to Rome. Thus the book has religious inquiries, the art world, and secrets that some want to discover and others really do not want to be let out.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, similar to a mystery novel in order to find out who did it? research needs to be done or homework. Homework to be able to connect the dots and lead you to a variety of different paths and one path will have the best answer. Similarly in investing there are many methods to invest in, one tried and true method which is easier to do and consistently gives good returns is buying dividend paying stocks. If you start with the best dividend paying stocks, it helps make the selection of equals even easier. If you start with dividend paying stocks that have raised their dividends and have paid for greater than 10 years, whether the markets go up (even though that is what we want) or down, the dividends ensure a continuing payout and when markets do rise, dividend stock prices go up faster.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

An old Star Wars movie was on TV over the holidays and the title of the book caught my eye. Fly Fishing with Darth Vader by Matt Labash, Simon and Schuster, NY, 2010 is about outsized and outrageous characters who dominate the airwaves. Mr. Labash finds comedy, humanity and some of the reasons we the general public half care about these characters. If you are a regular watcher of the show 60 Minutes many have been profiled because they are both different and interesting. Some of the people have run for either governor or President of the US and while they have a viewpoint, they do not have much electorate success, however it is important in the democratic system we have that they do run. The profiles of the people make us both cynical and thankful about the political results that often occur – most of the people who do get elected actually try to do a good job. It is generally not to hard to find those that enrich themselves even as they pretend to be involved with politics. The other stories in the book are stories about great American cities which have declined – Detroit and New Orleans, at least New Orleans had a better reason – the Hurricane, but in reality the city in general has been declining for years. Detroit is more interesting because people and jobs have moved to the suburbs, the infrastructure of the city still needs to be taken care. Detroit likely has the highest abandonment of homes, even before the fall in housing prices. The city has a problem – when a house is abandoned the city can not tear it down, so squatters move in, invariably a fire happens and then the house can be torn down. The process places a great deal of pressure of both fire and police departments.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, while reading Mr. Labash’s book it is very easy to cheer for and want to support the underdog. Some of the people have great public relations so we want to seemingly care for the underdog. The reality is the road to success is very long, the rewards are great but 99% will not succeed to the final elected position. The odds are both Detroit and New Orleans, as much as something should be done, it is a very long term solution. A short term solution is to go with proven winners, who have an easier time to succeed and chances are higher they will. In terms of your investing, over the long term if you stay with proven winners or stocks which pay dividends, year over year you will do better than investing in the underdogs. If you want to invest in the underdogs, ensure the bulk of your investments are with companies that pay dividends, and a small percentage goes to underdogs. The ride is sometimes more exciting but it is often results in owning shares that cost you more than the market value. For the reverse situation let the dividend help you own shares with greater market value than the cost of buying.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

Alpha Dogs is a book written by Donna Fenm published by Collins, New York, 2005. If you know the publication Inc, the magazine for small and medium sizes business, Ms. Fenn writes at the magazine. The chapter headings are Seduce your customers; Convert your employees into true believers; Transform with technology; Stake a hometown claim; Innovate the mundane; Market your brand; Build a village; and Embrace reinvention. You will need to do all of them.

Embrace Reinvention – in some businesses, it seems the products sell themselves and you seemingly just have to open the doors and the business walks in. Over time something will change, the people, the environment, the reason why people originally rushed into the doors. This is an opportunity to reinvent the business, for there are still people desiring the product and things can change. The example in the book is Mike’s Famous Harley Davidson located in New Castle, Delaware. The product is Harley Davidson motorcycles which were very popular, then the brand went down, the company had to be sold and reinvented, now is doing very well. To ride the new wave, Mike Schwartz saw what could happen and bought the dealership and changed it. First he had a dream of adding things that would attract families such as a restaurant and motorcycle museum to have people drop into the site, and some may or may not buy a motorcycle. Fortunately he learned about selling motorcycles and including the famous as famous service. It took a number of months to years to learn what was important and what was not. The restaurant had focused on what Mike likes, it was changed to a good basic roadhouse menu which make money. Mike saw the trend but to capitalize on the trend took good managers who could complement Mike and give discipline to the business.

In summary, to be successful in business is hard work. Sometimes it seems easy for the business needs to be responsive, dynamic, take nothing for granted. The business has to be resilient and sustainable and refuses to accept that size is limiting. A lot can go wrong, but more things can go right if you stick to your core values of why you are in business in the first place.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, to continually make profits is a very good thing. Unless there is monopoly, and there are fewer and fewer of them, it takes good solid management to continue to make money. It takes good employees, training systems and a host of other things to keep customers coming back to your products and services. When you see good ones embrace them, learn from them and more importantly invest in them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

Alpha Dogs is a book written by Donna Fenm published by Collins, New York, 2005. If you know the publication Inc, the magazine for small and medium sizes business, Ms. Fenn writes at the magazine. The chapter headings are Seduce your customers; Convert your employees into true believers; Transform with technology; Stake a hometown claim; Innovate the mundane; Market your brand; Build a village; and Embrace reinvention. You will need to do all of them.

Market your brand – the reality is the smaller your company, the easier it is to market your brand. However as people deal with you and wish to continue, your brand will grow and at some point there will be a discussion about you and your brand integrity. The reason is as a small company you dealt with specialty stores and that appealed to a group of customers, as you grow you move up to the bigger box stores, you are now the big guy. The only method to stay authentic is to constantly remind yourself of your core values and make decisions within that context. It may take longer, it maybe harder to pull off, but remaining true to what your core values are, means the people who are attracted to your brand continue to buy and those who wish to work for you will stay with the company will stay longer. The example in the book is a bakery company called Dancing Deer. They started with the speciality stores, customers loved their cookies. People at the chain stores said, we would like to sell some items here. Dancing Deer found a solution that works – an exclusive product for the chain store. When they expanded, they could have gone to a nondescript factory in the suburbs but choose to stay within the roots in the city – they stayed in downtown Boston and moved to a renovated old fish processing plant. The owner, Trish Karter, noted a number of times it would have been easy to cut corners, but that would have compromised brand integrity and the company’s ability to differentiate itself in the future.

Build a Village – no one exists in business alone. It is easier if you have a large support system or network to help, encourage, send ideas, gain new business, work on projects, meet people. Every business belongs to more than one group – your industry group, the local business association – whether it is Chamber of Commerce or Board of Trade. Some of the times you belong to gain ideas, other times it is to find out who is a good person to do something which you are not particularly good at. During the recession many companies cut back on the number of people in the office, but work still needed to be done – it was contracted out. How do you get on the lists? fill out the request for proposals (RFP)? and everything else that needs to be done when you win the RFP? Your network helps you. The easiest and hardest method is choose your network carefully, set rules and be prepared to drop someone, even if you like them, if they break the rules (this is generally the hard part). In the book the example was a public relations group called PRConsultants Inc – an alliance of 34 independent public relations firms. They do there own thing on a regional basis, but when a client wants a bigger reach up to national or international, the firms work together to satisfy the clients. The tips include make sure everyone knows the rules of engagement from the outset. When dealing with a client one point of contact per vendor – the network co-ordinates.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, at this level it should be easy to see what kind of network the company has and how well it markets it brand. In North America with the cold temperatures, many dividend paying power companies had customers lose power. What did they do? what was their responses? No one planned for outages but good companies are good companies no matter the circumstances. If they performed badly, people will be looking for alternatives and there is always something in the marketplace.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

Alpha Dogs is a book written by Donna Fenm published by Collins, New York, 2005. If you know the publication Inc, the magazine for small and medium sizes business, Ms. Fenn writes at the magazine. The chapter headings are Seduce your customers; Convert your employees into true believers; Transform with technology; Stake a hometown claim; Innovate the mundane; Market your brand; Build a village; and Embrace reinvention. You will need to do all of them – the first two chapters were outlined in part one.

The next chapters – Transform with technology includes using what is there for your advantages. At one time, this blog was written on a desktop, then a laptop and now can be done on a smart phone. The comfort maybe with the big screens, but to embrace technology is to see where it can lead you. One of the examples in the book is Auction Systems Auctioneers & Appraisers – the owner Deb Weidenhamer grew her business though technology which helped everyone – more bidders, possibly higher prices. Deb used ebay and videos before anyone else was doing it. It took time, some hurdles along the way, but she could she where technology could help and she tried. The important aspect with technology is to try a number of different things to engage your customers, to increase the number of customers and watch the early adapters.

The Stake a Hometown Claim is best if you believe local is better. In theory products come from around the globe, but you are local. Why someone wants to deal with you rather than someone else is part local – you live there. As a local you need to embrace what the locals do, and although everyone does similar things, there are variances in the local community.

Innovate the Mundane is a great example because Thor-lo makes sport socks. The reason the company is in the sports sock market because small businesses can not compete with the large companies in the commodity game. In all markets there are niche markets, they are small but the margins can be terrific. To do well you must serve it very well. The danger is everything can be commoditized within two years, which means you need to stay ahead of the copycats and not treat failure as a sin, but a learning experience. Innovations need to come from everyone – management, staff, customers – the trick is to try, if it works scale up and run with it. If it does not work, try something else.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, gaining ideas from Inc and the small and medium sized businesses is the place to go because they have to. Dividend paying companies try to stay in high margin, low risk ventures. The problem is nothing is static as it used to be, which means industries change, new ones emerge but there is a lag time and that is where dividend paying companies are vulnerable. The American economy is doing better, but it has taken 6 years to recover from 2008. As the economy recovers and gets better more ideas will be tried and work which makes the ability to continue to make profits easier. During the lag times, dividend paying companies learnt good lessons, they need to keep it up.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

If you love customer service – books such as Alpha Dogs written by Donna Fenn, Collins, 2005 should be on your reading list. Hopefully you read it more than once because the book is about how to make a small business grow.

The examples in the book are something every day businesses can learn from the first example is Zane’s Cycles in Branford near New Haven, Connecticut.

Every entrepreneur must realize there is never just one solution to a problem. To go from start up to the next level, the equation had to be changed. There is an old Star Trek movie where Captain Kirk was asked how he solved something that all recruits were failing. He answered, to solve the problem he changed the rules. Similarly Zane knew he had to challenge the conventional wisdom or change the game as it applied to his business of bicycles. For example he started offering one year guarantee – eventually it went to 5 and then to life. In reality most people only keep their bicycles for 5 years, going to life meant a great deal to your customers but not to your bottom line. If you can raise customer expectations, they will talk about it and you will do more business. The trick is having raised the bar, keep it or go continually go higher.

One critical aspect is knowing how much are you willing to spend on each customer. If you can offer him something less, you are further ahead. It is also critical to let your staff know the same answers as you, for they will have to make judgements. Some things can be taught but guessing the answer is not going to be done. In addition to knowing the same answer, the staff have to be able to make the judgement, which means when you learn about it your response has to measured and showing support otherwise the staff will not do it again. You only have to look at the Peter Principle to discover many examples. If the boss says no, and you want to keep your job, the no is not a maybe. If the boss says yes, then possibilities open up.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, if the company wishes to provide great customer service then all levels of the staff must be able to deliver great service. Judgements are and will be made, the supervisor’s attitude will determine the type of judgement. Paying close attention to what decisions can be made, will determine what type of competition is in the marketplace and that could affect the ability to pay dividends.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

If you look at the art world today – some of the highest prices paid are those from the French Impressionists – names such as Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley and others. These mostly French citizens felt they had to paint something else than what was considered the norm. They used different techniques, perspectives, tried to capture the countryside differently. At the present time if you were the owner of one of the paintings it likely would be worth close to a million or more. Back in the 1870’s the paintings could be bought for considerably less, hundreds was more likely a cost, all of the artists had to do other things to earn a living in order to paint. In the book The Private Lives of the Impressionists, Sue Rose, HarperCollings Publishers, 2006 examines who the impressionists are in order to understand their work. If you were to paint, you subjects would be things around you and people you know. Therefore your background is needed to be looked at to understand who and why you are painting in the manner you are painting in. To be an artist, you first need to understand the masters in the museums for their technique, colours, the manner in which they painted. Next you go to studio and learn more and finally you develop your style. Hopefully, somebody likes it, a dealer is found to display it and the painting is sold. The more you sell or the higher the prices you sell at, the more time you can spend painting and the cycle repeats itself.

With the impressionists of France, the art dealer brought the work to the US which was developing a group of people interested in acquiring art and with sales in the US, the prices rose in France and Europe. The cycle continues as prices rise – museums need to have a piece to show and the cycle continues.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the impressionists banded together to both challenge the existing painting dealers and to display their paintings. It is a continuing cycle in the art world – artists display their paintings at galleries who sell on consignment and the artists depend on the galleries to bring in potential buyers for the art. It is the reason galleries are forever hosting functions at the gallery. Unless you have a good eye, buy what you like, for you have to look at it. Every once is a while, a great talent is to be found and prices rise, but if you stick to what you like in the case of dividend stocks  while you are paid with a dividend, the stock will typically rise in value. If you enjoy looking at the painting, others will likely enjoy it and in the long run you may be  rewarded as the value increases.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions

Steve Jobs as head of Apple helped changed the world as we know it – the computer, music, movie, and telecommunications industries all have changed because of Apple and visionary founder Steve Jobs. In the book Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo,  McGraw Hill, NY,2011, the author points out what Mr. Jobs did and the 7 principles to follow. The seven principles are Do What You Love; Put a Dent in the Universe; Kick-Start Your Brain; Sell Dreams, not Products; Say No to 1,000 Things; Create Insanely Great Experiences; and Master the Message. The 7 principles will not bring you to the billionaire status, but it may bring you a better life. A better life for you, your company and your customers and in the end that is what we all try to do.

In Mr. Gallo’s there is a number of examples of how innovation can work and some of them are:

At one time, computers were big and bulky, Steve Jobs and Apple saw their vision as doing something better for people. Steve studied the way people used their rotary phones in their homes and many of them sat on telephone books. One day Steve brought in the telephone books and threw it on the desks and said the footprint of the computer can be no larger than the telephone book. The existing computers were 3 times the size of the phone book. The team eventually responded going vertical and smaller, more important Steve Jobs’ actions reinforced Apple was different and trying to do better.

If you wish to be an innovator, you need to be curious – if you start with How can it be better? you will likely lead to small improvements. If you ask Why? Why not? and What if? those type of questions will lead to more explosive large improvements. Always going back to your customers and how they actually use the device, this knowledge will lead you in the correct path.

In terms of products you offer, each product you offer has people behind it – to help sell, to improve, to do administrate, to do something. You have a finite amount of resources – is it better for your customers and yourself to limit the product offerings and make the ones you have great?

Everyday, people do things, at the same time they do not other things, sometimes what you do not do is equally as important as you do. What do you say no to?

Apple stores have some of the highest gross revenue per square foot which makes looking at the Apple store very important – the concepts include: 1) design uncluttered stores – open, light, airy. 2) locate the stores where people live their lives – the mall 3) allow customers to test-drive the products – make it friendly to browse 4) offer a concierge experience – display the product and offer solutions 5) make it easy to buy  and 6) offer one to one training – anyone who buys a product can come in and learn how to use the products.

Whatever your product or service you sell, you have to tell people your story. Be a great storyteller. Steve Jobs followed the same outlined every time – you can copy him. 1) Create a Holy Smokes Moment 2) Stick to the Rule of 3 – most plays are 3 acts for a reason 3) Share the Stage if a long presentation 4) Introduce Heros and Villains – good and bad guys 5) Think Visually – the slides are meant to complement your presentation, sometimes all it takes on a slide is a picture or one word; 6) Create Twitter-Friendly Headlines – make it simple to talk about your product and 7) Sell Dreams not Products – what you can do with it

Linking to dividend paying stocks, most dividend paying companies are not going to be great innonvators, but they might be great implementers of well tested ideas. If a company does nothing but pay dividends, eventually others will start chipping at it, unless it is a regulated monopoly. Dividend paying companies can continually see what others are doing and do test marketing to see what can be adapted to their company. Often change comes slowly, but profitable change is what shareholders desire,

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions