Why We Re-Branded StoryManager Most small business owners hate the idea of re-branding. Fear of losing "brand equity" is typically offered as justification for not changing a brand. But frankly, customers will continue to find you ~ just send notices and update your contacts. Another common belief is that there's no better way to communicate an existing brand, but that's why professional communications people exist... they can figure out stuff that lay people can't. Then there's the reticence … [Read more...]
Secrets to Website Writing
Let's face it, website writing can be just plain hard work. In fact, it hurts. But the benefits are well worth the efforts. Writing helps you evolve your thinking. And if you do it enough, you might even become known as an authority on a subject. Further, search optimization is driven by words. So here's a few tips to get your website writing up to snuff: 1. Know Your Story It's amazing how many folks can't articulate their Vision. If you're a business, Vision is the beginning, middle and end … [Read more...]
Restaurant Branding Tips
This post entitled "Restaurant Branding Tips" is a result of my new morning coffee meet up called Steve's Lanai. I provide the coffee and smart folks stop by before work on Tuesday mornings (7-8:30am) to share a little community chat time. This week was the first installment and although there were just two of us, it felt like there were a dozen. Thx to Keola Reyes for opening my mind with his well-read mind. Keola came to me by way of a project I recently did (the Entree´-treneurship Center … [Read more...]
Voice of Customer Survey: Secret to Customer-Centricity
In business story development, there's no better place to start than with your audience ~ via a Voice of Customer Survey. If they don't get what you do, you're in trouble. And where their perceptions are not aligned with yours, you're likely suffering loss of sales and operational efficiencies. Voice of Customer Surveys are designed to compare audience perception against your internal "party line." The net benefit of Voice of Customer Surveys is gaining a customer-centric perspective on your … [Read more...]
Brand-Aid Kicks Off
StoryManager is proud to be a sponsor of another BizGym Foundation project: Brand-Aid Hawai‘i. Brand-Aid kicked off this week with an inaugural Brand-Aid Triage Pop-up in downtown Honolulu. Special Thanks to Dr. Evans and the gang at Argosy University for being the presenting sponsor and hosting the event at Tamarind Park at Bishop Square. The goal of Brand-Aid is simple: do free brand checkups on companies to help fix their businesses brand boo-boos. At the first Triage, we patched up a … [Read more...]
IPH Web Dev Sprint
Congrats to Island Partners Hawai‘i crew for blowing this site out in just a few days! This is a very deep site that was done with a number of IPH staff lead by Tony Vericella over a long weekend to make a key deadline. Web Development Sprint This site was a revamp of a 40-page site that we accomplished in our brand new development format we call a Web Development Sprint. In such format, we start by creating a "sandbox" development site, then import existing content followed by tidying up … [Read more...]
ChefZone Opens
As reported previously, StoryManager used BizGym to create a "Costco for Restaurants" concept for Y. Hata & Company in Hawai‘i. From business planning and financial modeling to brand development, we were able to define a "secret sauce" that ChefZone can use to win the day against big box stores. We wish the ChefZone team huge luck in growing CZ into tasty entree´-preneurial endeavor. … [Read more...]
ChefZone Comes to Life!
StoryManager is proud to have played a part in bringing ChefZone to life. ChefZone is a new foodservice concept that took over 2 years of planning and development to create a business sized to do $100M a year through a 45,000sf facility in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. This was an epic feat of new business modeling that is a multi-million dollar flyer for holding company Y. Hata & Co. For our part, we applied BizGym.com, our online entrepreneur's startup and growth … [Read more...]