Business & Political Radio Show | Interview Dan Weik CEO of Business Rater

Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business Show on Bloomberg’s home in Houston, TX (Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK) recently interviewed Dan Weik, President of Business Rater in San Diego, CA. Here is that interview:

Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).

Business Rater is a consumer review site located in San Diego, Ca. that helps consumers find great businesses and avoid not so great businesses by reading consumer reviews. Business Rater also offers companies a reputation management system & solution that makes it easier for them to better serve their customers by delivering 5 star service, capturing more positive reviews, identifying customer concerns and resolving them quickly. Business Rater Certifies companies to sell and retain more customers by improving how they serve their customers, capturing more feedback and marketing their positive reputation online; where a majority of customers now shop.  We have a total of 5 employees and work with all verticals of business both small and enterprise.

Tell us your story about the lengths you have gone to get a customer?

Business Rater has held special events at the Lincoln Center in NYC, the Versace Mansion in Miami, Fl. And sponsored digital technology conferences throughout the country.   Business Rater has been recognized as one of the top 10 companies to watch in 2013 by AutoSuccess Magazine.

Do you know of other examples of the lengths businesses have gone through to get customers?

Google AdWords, Social Media Marketing, Video Marketing, Blogging, Press Releases, Display Ads, Craigslist, TV News Segments, Radio Jingles, etc..

What lessons, if any, do you derive from these stories?

Considering our business, if you don’t have a strong online reputation, then you will loose serious ROI on any marketing or advertising once consumers check your business out online.  If you have negative or low ranking reviews about your business, products or services then you will have a high bounce rate and loose customers to your closest competitors.

Contact information:

www.BusinessRater.com / Info@BusinessRater.com / 800-401-0118

Dan Weik / dan@businessrater.com

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IF you’re not using leverage, you’re working too hard and earning too little

Interns almost always offer cheap, reliable labor. But how far should you push your younger part-timers their first time on the job?

This year, 53% of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees will hire more interns than they did in 2012, according to Internships.com.

Thankfully, the talent is there; 65% of companies report receiving more applications than ever before.

Although interns can eventually turn into valuable full-time staffers (69% of companies made full-time offers to their interns last year), experts say there are some things your interns should never be asked to do, no matter how much you trust them or how desperate you are for a helping hand.

Here’s a look at the best ways to manage interns — for your benefit and theirs:

 1. Keep them away from sensitive information

Anything pertaining to employee records or sensitive customer information should always be off-limits to interns, says Michelle Benjamin, CEO and founder of TalentREADY, a talent management company.

“Depending on the industry, there can be several types of sensitive information,” Benjamin says. When in doubt, leave anything private to full-time workers.

 

If interns will have access to confidential information – even limited access – it’s essential to provide them with the proper nondisclosure agreements and training, says Amy Burton Loggins, an attorney at Atlanta law firm Taylor English Duma.

“You want to limit access to the most valuable or secret information,” Loggins says, especially if it’s proprietary or contains trade secrets.

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2. Don’t give them too many menial tasks

Most interns will be doing their fair share of printing, copying and ordering office supplies, but such work shouldn’t be their main focus, Benjamin says. Instead, make sure that they have a defined project that they can complete during their internship.

“A good litmus test on how to treat your intern is asking yourself, ‘If you were them, what would you feel about the task you’re asking?’” says Liz Carey, a co-founder of leadership development firm Emerge. “If your answer is, ‘I wouldn’t feel too good about it,’ then probably it is not a good idea to ask them to do that.”

For example, you probably wouldn’t feel right about saying, “I had them drive my car to pick up my dry cleaning,” or “I had them get my Starbucks each morning,” Carey says.

• College job forecast

In general, avoid making “busy work” assignments, says Nathan Parcells, a co-founder and the chief marketing officer of InternMatch, an online platform that matches college students with employers.

“Your interns are with you to learn; giving them busy work wastes everybody’s time,” Parcells says. “Having them do filing and administrative duties will make your interns lose engagement, feel undervalued and unmotivated.”

3. Avoid giving them unsupervised access to customers

Simply put, interns should not be placed in roles where they will have direct interaction with your customers, Benjamin says. Because of their inexperience and lack of knowledge about your company and its processes, they could say or do things that hurt your business.

“They could job-shadow or observe a customer service person, but should not be dealing directly with your customers,” she says.

This was interesting to me, because I never want to complicate our staff at Business Rater, only support them.  Keep it simple, if you’re not using leverage, you’re working too hard and earning too little.

10 Great Quotes From Steve Jobs

1. ”What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” (film “Memory & Imagination,” 1990)

2. “I end up not buying a lot of things, because I find them ridiculous.” (The Independent, 2005)

3. ”I think death is the most wonderful invention of life. It purges the system of these old models that are obsolete.” (Playboy, 1985)

4. ”People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” (Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference, 1997)

10 things Steve Jobs taught us

5. ”Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful — that’s what matters to me.” (CNNMoney/Fortune, 1993)

6. “My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to make them better.” (CNNMoney/Fortune, 2008)

7. “If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.” (Playboy, 1985)

8. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” (“The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” 2001)

9. ”My model for business is the Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people.” (“60 Minutes,” 2003)

10. ”I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.” (Newsweek, 2001)

The Yoga Tutorial

Seriously, what’s up with yoga pictures these days?

 

Man, those people totally stole my idea for my next yoga photo shoot.

I don’t know a general consensus or anything, but most of the yoga teachers I know don’t typically practice in their bedroom, boyfriend still sleeping in bed feet away, in their underwear:

In real life, he wakes up and says, “You’re being really loud, can’t you do that somewhere else?”

I hate to burst your bubble, guys that take these pictures, but a real yoga practice almost never looks like this:

A wet t-shirt?*

Um….

Most days I practice here, in my dining room:

Yes, with that man in the window on two separate days last week- he was painting the house. Hey, sometimes practicing at home is that way.

Sexy

Hey, we are all a little bit vain.  But sometimes, you can just tell someone is taking a picture in a yoga pose because doing anything else in so little clothing would be like wearing a shirt that says “Check me out-I’m soooo sexy!”

Oooh, my bandhas!

Also, whatever happened to Right Said Fred? And it looks like guy on right is wearing a unitard, so that is awesome.

Justice Stewart. How’d you like to see this guy in a sexy yoga pose?

And, (feminist hat time) isn’t it weird how this applies almost exclusively to girls?

Seriously?

What’s the sanskrit name for this asana?

The above are two of thousands of similar results for the search terms “sexy yoga.” I had to look really hard on the internet to find sexy yoga pictures of dudes:

Karandavasana. It’s hard.

Point being, a picture like the one above would be way cooler than one featuring a smoldering look and a hot bod prominently displayed.  If you’re considering taking sexy pics, just know that you might have some trouble convincing students that yoga is all about inner beauty.  On the plus side, lots of people will “like” your pictures on Facebook.

Naked

For some reason, naked pictures seem less vain than sexily posed ones:

Yeah, that picture exists.

It’s probably because with sexyface/lingerie/high heels, it’s at least suggested that you might really practice like that.  Doing yoga naked is one of those things that sounds liberating and cool until you actually try it.

Yoginidrasana is one of many poses that might become more unpleasant. Pic from ibelieveinhumans.com.

The key to naked is to make it tasteful.

Wear Sox!

If you go this route, be prepared for people to get all outraged.  But that will be tempered by the people who tell you things like this: Thank You for being real and taking off all your clothes, not just some.  Naked is what the people taking sexy pictures are suggesting but not ballsy enough to actually do.

Soulful

Striving for that serious, soulful yoga face?

That yoga face is so hot right now.

There’s this great short story where the narrator talks about meditating: basically, that he can only do it when someone is watching.**  These pictures are like that:

One of my favorite parts about teaching yoga is seeing people’s faces towards the end of class right before savasana: when they’re all sweaty and beatific, like little kids lining up to go back to class after recess.  Hey students- lots of you probably think you look like that girl above. Actually, most of you are smiling.  It’s awesome.

When most people make “meditating” faces on purpose, they just look like douchebags:

This guy is probably perfectly nice.

Circus Act

By “circus,” I just mean really hard poses. Hey, wouldn’t you want to take a picture if you could do this, usually after years of practicing it?

Kino MacGregor.

When other yoga people see this kind of thing, we  appreciate the amount of time and effort dedicated to something so lovely.  After all, it’s by learning the tricks that you figure out how little being able to do them actually matters.  You can have an awesome handstand and still be an asshole.  Just like Tyler Durden says in Fight Club:

You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f^*king khakis.

You know, you are not your asanas, even if you can do a bunch of really challenging ones.  If you can do some crazy circus tricks, by all means, take pictures of it.  Just make sure you’re enjoying yourself and smiling.

Real

If yoga pictures really reflected what we looked like practicing, getting people to come to class might be a much rougher sell:

In Kovalum, Kerala. This is real yoga in India.

And that’s because yoga is hard.  You usually don’t look like a magazine cover during a real practice.  You look like this:

My face isn’t as happy looking as Kino’s.

And you only realize it when someone takes a picture of you while you arepracticing:

Me: “Wait, I’m IN this picture?”

So here’s my REAL checklist for taking yoga pictures:

1)    Pick a pose you know how to do correctly and are comfortable teaching in class.

2)    Wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. 

3)    Smile!

 And whatever you do, stay away from this:

Naked Yoga with Chimpanzees: one more thing I never would have thought existed.

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