Interviews

IS535 – Interview Questions

Name of proprietor _Angie Gooding __Name of business__ ___Inspire Fitness


 * Before starting the interview, describe the class and the project.__


 * 1) Please describe your product or service. How long have you been in business? What has been the rate of your customer growth from the time you started the business until now? //I am a personal trainer and have been in business for 1.5 years. My customer growth has been stable, but has grown quickly. I started with just close friends and distant family members and word of mouth has traveled quickly. I also made great connections early: Everett School District, Sound Health Solutions, etc. I got these connections by cold calling employees in the wellness/health depts..//
 * 2) Who are your major competitors?// I have few competitors. I compete with local gyms in the area (kind of) and there are a few other trainers like myself, but the ones I know of live at least 10 miles from me. For personal training, that doesn’t constitute as a competitor, as most clients are looking for a convenient location.//
 * 3) What type of advertising do you currently do? //Anything that is free. I use Facebook, word of mouth, and I write a column for our local paper. I have handed out fliers at schools, and I have had a booth at a local health fair. I’m also a “contestant” for Best of Western Washington, personal trainers, and even if I don’t win, it’s great publicity.//
 * 4) In your opinion, has your advertising been effective? Why or why not? //Yes, it’s been effective, but I also credit my clients for “talking me up”. Word of mouth has been my best form of advertising.//
 * 5) What social media outlets do you currently use (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, etc.)?// Facebook.//
 * 6) What made you choose these social media outlets? //I chose a social media outlet because it’s free, and provides quick access to people who I know and trust. Because I have a gym studio in my house, I am very careful with whom I “hire” as clients. Therefore, I would much rather market to those who I know, in hopes they know someone who needs a personal trainer. //
 * 7) Describe how social media has either helped or hurt your business.// It’s provided a medium in which to communicate about my business and specials offered. It’s also a great way of communicating about aspect of my business…I’ve offered free “tips”, “training techniques” and simple “nutritional advice” to keep people interested in what I have to offer. Most importantly, though, social media works because of those I can reach THROUGH friends.//
 * 8) Do you plan to expand your use of social media to promote your business? If yes, how so and why? If not, why?// I have no plans to develop more at this point. //
 * 9) // Again, my absolute best form of advertising is by word of mouth.//
 * 10) Is there other types of advertising that you plan to do, other than social media? If so, what types? Why did you select these mediums of advertising?// At this point I’m content, but we’ll see what the future brings!//
 * 11) Describe where you see you business in the next year. In the next five years?// Next year: doing the same. I have about 20-30 appointments per week and am happy with that number. In five years I’d love to have a larger facility with trainers working for me.//

Name of proprietor __Luan Nguyen__ Name of business ___VitekUSA____ 
 * Before starting the interview, describe the class and the project.
 * 1) Please describe your product or service. How long have you been in business? What has been the rate of your customer growth from the time you started the business until now?
 * 2) We specialize in high quality Vietnamese Karaoke systems. Our parent company is the biggest manufacturer of electronics in Vietnam. The distribution into United States just started in 2009.
 * 3) Who are your major competitors?
 * 4) Our major competitor is a low end, low quality, low pricing company called Arirang. People buy this brand because it is cheap, therefore they have brand recognition.
 * 5) What type of advertising do you currently do?
 * 6) Newspaper, adwords, some facebook.
 * 7) In your opinion, has your advertising been effective? Why or why not?
 * 8) Advertising have been effective, it lets me reach customers all over USA.
 * 9) What social media outlets do you currently use (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, etc.)?
 * 10) Strictly facebook.
 * 11) What made you choose these social media outlets?
 * 12) There are just too many ads on myspace that people don’t pay attention to any type of advertisement. I believe people are programmed to filter out any type of ads on MySpace.
 * 13) Describe how social media has either helped or hurt your business.
 * 14) Help, multi level networking, the best business model.
 * 15) Do you plan to expand your use of social media to promote your business? If yes, how so and why? If not, why?
 * 16) My long term advertising strategy is to push more advertisement on forums and blogs that has to do with karaoke, less of social media.
 * 17) Is there other types of advertising that you plan to do, other than social media? If so, what types? Why did you select these mediums of advertising?
 * 18) Question 8
 * 19) Describe where you see you business in the next year. In the next five years?
 * 20) Hopefully grow into other areas of electronics such as LCD TV.

IS535 – Interview Questions

Name of proprietor_RUSSELL MICKLER_

Name of business _MICKLER & ASSOCIATES, INC._


 * Before starting the interview, describe the class and the project.

> > Mickler & Associates, Inc. is an S-Corp filed in Washington State in 2005. Cumulatively, if you were to look at my range of consulting services from high school, this company has existed for over 25 years; I've offered consulting services throughout my adult life as a sole proprietor under my own name. We offer technology solutions to small and mid-range businesses: network management, telecommunications, hosting, database development and programming, and strategic consulting. I like to consider what we do “the poor-man's CIO” - we bring expertise and advice that'd be found in much larger organizations to smaller ones, so they can use technology better. > > I'll start from 2004 – I acquire about 7-10 additional customers a year (roughly a 15-20% growth rate) and that's been fairly consistent. Growth rate is tricky for a company my side: too much growth and I'd have to hire a staff, and that's not in my business plan; too little growth and I can't keep up with attrition and my competitors. Generally, 20-percent of my customer base are cornerstone assets that I spend my most time with. The other eighty-percent are potentially new cornerstones, or, for funzies (grin). > > Anyone who'd bill themselves as a computer technician or a technology solutions provider. That's a wide range of folks in the Clark County area. I niche myself pretty tight in small to mid-range businesses, though, so I don't take on residential headaches. I was ranked like number 18 last year in Clark County based off of revenues according to the Vancouver Business Journal; they said I made the top 25 again this year – it gets released in October. Not sure where I fall yet. Mickler & Associates, Inc. is a vehicle for me to shape a lifestyle I want – I really don't look at anyone as a “competitor” per se and I'm not out to acquire more market share, go IPO, and rule a universe of technology providers. My biggest competitor is myself and keeping up with my own ideas (grin). > > Almost exclusively web and word-of-mouth. I'm listed in the Clark County Yellowpages which pretty much reinforces web-based advertising. The random calls that I get and end up referring elsewhere are residential and PC repair/sales. I don't do that kind of stuff. I'm a member of the local chamber, and I attend chamber events from time to time to shake hands and get to know people. I also use Guru.com and I have an account with them; that channel has produced in excess of 10x its cost in revenue and has been very effective for me. > > Yes because, again, I'm not out to grow my company too quickly. I don't want employees and I deal exclusively with a team of contractors. If I advertised, I'd get a slew of “the wrong people”. I like a low-key, managed growth rate – not a ludicrously silly, phenomenal growth rate that most investors and business analysts like to see. Then again, I'm not out to impress them: I'm out to create a useful tax shelter and a means of supporting myself. So far, not bad: it's weathered the “worst recession since the Great Depression” really well... > > Twitter. I also blog on my site (it's a Wordpress site). I also use LinkedIn. > > I chose Twitter because of it's phenom-quality and its growth – it's fairly popular and has the greatest “sticking power” out of all of them, I think. I chose LinkedIn because it's a more professional site than Facebook, and conveys the professional information in a way that I can control. I've been blogging, well, forever, but it wasn't until this year that I pulled the traffic into my own site instead of Blogger.com/Google. > > It's very useful. Content pushes more search engine results my way, making me look like a good authority, and that improves people finding me on the web. More content, more Tweets, more blog entries, more links, improves my visibility. I can also channel students taking courses from me to my online content. I often use Twitter to point people to my blog and to other useful pieces of interests on the Internet. I also had a situation once where I saved somebody's data on their hard drive from a tweet they made (grin)... but I didn't make any money off of it. In another instance, a web admin in Texas needed help with a problem and emailed me from LinkedIn. I solved his issues and made a little money. Guru.com, though, by far, has been very successful. > > I'd like to stay where I am. I'm not convinced in Facebook's strategy so I'm not planning to go there. Twitter has staying power and I'm likely to be there for a while. LinkedIn makes sense to me. Guru I'll continue to use. I'll also continue to make content for my own website and blog, bringing people back to me. I'll also continue with the limited yellow pages stuff (I don't publish in the book, just online, which submits me to nine separate online directories – it's worth it's cost). > > Hmm. I guess I want to see fifty percent of my revenue “fly-by-wire” as residual income, recurring service fees, and intellectual property sales; it's about 25-percent right now. In five years, maybe I'll be in a position to sell it (grin) but doubtful: I'm not trying to get rich quick and I like to work for myself. If anything it'll be a revenue generator where I can devote less time to it. I hope this helps :). R
 * 1) Please describe your product or service. How long have you been in business?
 * 1) What has been the rate of your customer growth from the time you started the business until now?
 * 1) Who are your major competitors?
 * 1) What type of advertising do you currently do?
 * 1) In your opinion, has your advertising been effective? Why or why not?
 * 1) What social media outlets do you currently use (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, etc.)?
 * 1) What made you choose these social media outlets?
 * 1) Describe how social media has either helped or hurt your business.
 * 2) Do you plan to expand your use of social media to promote your business? If yes, how so and why? If not, why?
 * 1) Is there other types of advertising that you plan to do, other than social media? If so, what types? Why did you select these mediums of advertising?
 * 1) Describe where you see you business in the next year. In the next five years?

IS535 – Interview Questions

Name of proprietor: David Powell Name of business: Rex James


 * Before starting the interview, describe the class and the project.

Competing for gigs with venue holders. Not a lot of folk singers around. But end up working with people who do the same thing. Guitar building industry – selling harp
 * 1) Please describe your product or service. How long have you been in business? What has been the rate of your customer growth from the time you started the business until now? Rex James – entertainment and performance, live performance and entertainment. Started in 1996 – we’re limited by population, so hard to gauge following. Seen some growth, surrounding areas. Expanded to Post Falls, Sandpoint. Went from 0 to 150 in the course of 2 years. People being aware, hard core followers. Have branched out to Spokane now. Doing CD sales – units sold, how long it takes. However many people show up to show. Usually sold, 10% of CDs to people at show. Now 1500 of people following – worldwide followers. England, Canadians -1000% growth.
 * 2) Who are your major competitors?

3. What type of advertising do you currently do? We’re doing FB, hotmail, MS, newsletter, website, sonic bids – for bands, help you get bids, help you update your calendar. Artist Direct just recently – currently in BETA – currently free, they have a lot of cool tools to format calendar and they update FB and MS for you – one stop shop. Advertise at venues, we’ve paid for radio ads $12 per air time, so pay a $100 for air play – advertising for show at Panida – pay all this money peak hours per off ours. Now local station have local artist spotlight which is free – KPND – you send your demo, and they’ll have you on for an hour on a Sunday afternoon. That was a word of mouth kind of thing.

4 In your opinion, has your advertising been effective? Why or why not? Yes – helped gain following. DJs – get to know them, they get you on radio for free. Nice being in art field, people want to cut you a break, get on radio on much as can, been on three different news shows on TV, we were on there because of the gigs we were in – morning news, little interview, if you have a good story, it helps when on the news, radio or flyers go out – peaks on the website. ~Flyers, email, text messaging, word of mouth, facebook, myspace, local radio. > > ~Our social media advertising has gained us more following of people at our shows, some events would not have had any people if it was not for our band members posting our gigs on Facebook. > ~We have increased our local awareness and fan base at least a thousand times over from where we started by a combination of our advertising outlets and the gigs we play in the local and regional area. > ~We now have a worldwide awareness of our music by using the internet social media outlets to connect people and directly advertise our music to them. > > ~ Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Sonicbids.com, ArtistData.com, Harpguitars.net, Hotmail.com, Craigslist.org > > ~Little to no cost to use > > ~Most of the outlets are custom tailored for music and arts like mySpace which lets you host your music on your profile page. > > ~ You can integrate html code from one to the other so some are updated simultaneously > > ~You can gain access to people directly on their phones, via email, facebook or RSS blog feeds. > > ~Social media is critical for any business in todays social tech savvy generation because it gets information to people directly where they are looking like in their email inbox, or their facebook wall instead of the newspaper or radio where there is a chance they might see or hear your ad; so there is less wasted publicity or ad airtime. > > ~ You can direct the marketing of your product to the correct demographic easier using social media because people will give you their profile information, likes, dislikes, age, location, interests, etc. > > ~ You can get new contacts without spending any effort, people will find you if you are participating in the same circles, and with a little bit of effort you can build your friend lists greatly in a short time. > > ~Some of the media outlets have a lot of 3rd party ads built into the site, so your profile will have ads for other artists or products. > > ~Sonicbids has a good calendar to keep track of your gigs/showcases, and you can embed the code into a website, but you cannot embed it into Myspace, so you have to update 2 different calendars, the Artistdata.com site will automatically update myspace and post your gigs on facebook automatically, but that is still 2 different places to update. > > ~ Create a Facebok “Fan” site for the band “Rex James” combine all the members’ friend list into one profile. > ~ Post pictures of people that come to your shows on the fan site to drive more traffic to your profile. > ~Collect Email addresses from people at gigs and build our contact lists to send people weekly emails of our upcoming performances or new additions to our website and online profiles. > > ~A big one is ITunes, although it is not as much of a marketing outlet, now days anyone can get their music in a category being sold on iTunes, roughly $.99 per song. This is another way create more internet awareness and also generate income. > ~SEO: The more places your music and “Keywords” are on the internet, the better chance people will find you on the internet and search engines can correctly categorize your website with the keywords when people do searches, this is all part of a technique that large companies spend millions on each year to increase their search engine ratings called SEO, or “search engine optimization.” > ~Radio advertising is one more outlet we will choose to use in the future. Sometimes we can get on the radio for free as a “Local” spotlight or special artist promotion at certain times during the week. But we may also do some paid radio spot ads or underwriting (which may be a little cheaper) to promote the larger concerts, which will run somewhere around $12 – 15 for each 15 second airplay. > ~Local newspaper and entertainment periodical are another resource we will use, and can sometimes get featured for no cost, if our story is good enough. At the beginning of this year in fact, the local Coeur d’ Alene Press did a write up in their entertainment section because we build our own guitars and are doing analog tape recordings of our music and performing in the area. This helped our local awareness and look more professional to venues we are trying to booking our act in. > ~USPS, we are going to mail our music out to other promotions companies and music labels to see if we can get another party interested in helping us book more gigs and promote our CD. We can find lists of these companies on Sonicbids and internet searches, but also in a book I have called the “2005 songwriters marketplace.” > > ~We plan to do 2 things, we have also started a guitar manufacturing company called “Tonedevil Guitars” that designed a harp guitar that is going to be affordable for anyone that wants one (in the $3000 - $4000 range), and will not have to wait long to get it. Currently your only options for a harp guitar is the “el cheapo” Mexican model that is still $2200 and a piece of junk, or have a custom builder make you one, which takes at least a year and will cost $6000 or more. In the next 1 year we plan to be building our harp guitars for patrons across the world. For the convention we are attending next month we will have 1 new model finished and ready to sell which we hope will spark new orders for the instruments. This we plan on doing for supplemental income for the next year or longer. > ~In the same year, but actually sooner, we will finish our new CD and press 1000 copies to sell at gigs and upload the songs to iTunes and other internet retailers. > ~We are going to set up more gigs in our local and regional area for spring and summer 2010 here in the northwest and will include Seattle, Portland, Spokane and their surrounding areas, and then travel to and perform those gigs. > > ~In the next 5 years, hopefully we won’t be building the guitars ourselves anymore, we will either have hired people to do that for us and are working out of a larger facility and we can be just the company owners and/or the quality control, or we will have sold our patented design model and brand name to a larger manufacturer and build the harp guitar for us. > ~In the next 5 years of our music careers I hope to be playing in theaters or larger concert halls with a couple more CDs under the belt. I plan to build the independent music business I have started to the point where I have others helping me with the advertising and booking, or I build it to the point where a larger music label is becomes interested and offers their services. Keeping things independent as opposed to “signing” with another company may be an advantage in that we make more money per disk that sells and we are in control of the advertising budgets. On the other hand we might sell more CDs, get bigger publicity, and play larger concerts and festivals with another label helping. Either option is a goal to work for in the next 5 years.
 * 1) In your opinion, has your advertising been effective? Why or why not?
 * 1) What social media outlets do you currently use (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, blogging, etc.)?
 * 1) What made you choose these social media outlets?
 * 1) Describe how social media has either helped or hurt your business.
 * 1) Do you plan to expand your use of social media to promote your business? If yes, how so and why? If not, why?
 * 1) Is there other types of advertising that you plan to do, other than social media? If so, what types? Why did you select these mediums of advertising?
 * 1) Describe where you see you business in the next year. In the next five years?