A change of perspective is always a good thing.

When you are building your business especially in the early stages you can get tunnel vision and begin to see things only one way, your way.  Your world becomes consumed with assets/liabilities, income/expenses, insurance/taxes, and building your brand. You start losing sleep, your thoughts spin, and your conversations are monopolized by everything about your business. You are firmly planted in the forest and all you see are the trees.

Sometimes you need to literally stand up and move yourself to a place that you've never been before and just observe.  It could be attending  a local community group that is new and where you don't know any of the people.  Sit and just observe how the individuals interact and hopefully you will be able to listen to others talking about their businesses or ventures.  There's a certain wisdom that comes from listening especially when you are in a time of extreme focus about your own situation or project.  You may hear something that will help remove an obstacle in your process or you might gain a new connection that will be able to aid you in the near future.

A new fresh perspective does a world of good for one's attitude and outlook on life and in business.  The world is always moving and us with it.  Nothing is stagnant and when you simply get up and move to a different spot your situation will look entirely different!

Free Press - it doesn't have to be painful.

Remember as a kid visiting your grandparents house and fooling around on their old fashioned typewriter? This is all relative depending on who is reading this blog but let me give you my visual.  I was the youngest of 26 grandchildren born into my mother's family.  So needless to say my grandparents were always old and had really cool things at their house.  For some reason I remember being mesmerized with two of their items: a very old typewriter like this one and their very old beagle dog.  For very long blocks of time I would hover over the keys and just look at them.  I don't think I was even old enough to type or form an entire written thought but more than anything I wanted to get my fingers on those keys.
My grandparents born in the late 19th century prescribed to the train of thought that children should be seen but never heard so visits were most often painful and terribly long.  Opportunity would present itself and they would leave the room to share this or that with my parents and I would be able to take a precious strike at the keys and more often than not I would skin my finger on the metal arm from trying to hit it so quick.  Now I can envision reporters and businessmen sitting at those keys and painstakingly typing out their message or story trying to get it perfect each and every time.

Today - writing and publishing your work is as simple as it gets and the opportunities for free press for your business or organization are endless.  Even if you're not a writer putting together a press release is nothing short of filling in a template with all of the information you are trying to share with the world about your product, service, or event.  Always send off your press releases on letterhead whether going through the mail or being sent out electronically.  Your logo should appear at the top of the release and  PRESS RELEASE in bold capital letters needs to jump out at you from the page.  Remember that your purpose is to share as many pertinent details with the publication you are contacting to give them the whole entire story and if you catch their interest they will already have the building blocks of their angle.  Put your most important data and facts in the beginning.  Give a quick summary of what you are announcing and then go into more details in the following paragraphs and finally end with a summary of what you have told them.  When you are happy with your release and ready to end it make sure you include ### on the next line centered. This is a visual clue to the editor that you are done and complete.

You don't have to be a brilliant writer to get your press releases in the news just make sure that when you send out a copy that it is actually interesting and newsworthy.  You can be creative with your headline to make it stand out in the pile of other releases hot off the press.

Don't be intimidated by the process if you've never done it before.  Don't let fear hold you back from taking advantage of  one of the best way to get your word out there to your foot soldiers.  Remember that people like to be "in the know" and you are doing the general public a service by letting them know about your product and service! It's a good thing that you are doing!

If you have any questions or need any help, give me a call!

Jennifer Houghton
TRG Northeast
www.tylerryangroup.com
207-450-8441
jennifer@tylerryangroup.com
Marketing! It's what we do.

How strong is your logo?

Ideally you want your customers to be able to identify your company and product by a symbol.  That its your end goal when building your brand and creating your marketing strategy.  Most kids today can identify 1000's of brands by image alone without the company name anywhere in sight.

It's not going to happen overnight and it requires a lot of forethought and vision on your part. The best piece of advice is to keep it simple and go with your gut.  Most of us won't be able to come up with and create the graphic on our own so we'll need to bring in an outside talent to translate our ideas and what we are trying to achieve.  You will however in an instant know whether or not the graphic created to represent your entire brand and line of products and services is the right fit for you and your business.  Trust that intuition and know that you are going to need to commit to the basic  premise of the logo.

There's no doubt that your new logo will need to evolve over time as both your company grows and changes along with the market but you still want to make sure that the foundation you lay will be strong enough to carry you way into the future.

It's always good to receive positive feedback - especially when it comes from your CEO!

“When you look to take a big expansion step in your company, there are a few key players that can make or break you.  Recruiting the right people is often daunting.  It’s just shy of fate that I found the right person to head TRG Northeast not on a website or an ad…I just had to go back 25 years in school pictures.  I am very excited to welcome Jennifer in overseeing TRG-Northeast.  Since the minute we first spoke about the idea, she has been nonstop building not only the firm, but every client that was on my radar and relationships she had enjoyed for a long time.  Her vision, experience, and drive make it instantly clear her motives are to not only growing TRG Northeast, but doing by building a long list of successful clients along the way.”

Tyler Ryan

President/CEO

Tyler Ryan Group

TRG-Northeast

It's all about to change - are you ready?

It's Monday morning just shy of 9:00am on the East coast and in the day it's the time that just about everyone commuting to an office is getting ready to pull up there chair to the desk and say, "OK, let's do this."

Well okay, I've been there, done that and I'm not sure I always approached Morning with the excitement knowing it was the day I was going to make business magic happen. There was always a little bit of resentment that my relaxing weekend of doing housework, yard work, birthday parties, and family BBQ's had come to an end.

Many of us have left that way of life and are now integrating our offices into our homes, our cars, our methods of transportation, and even poolside. With the invention of the internet, smart phones, and ISDN lines basically any type of business can be conducted outside of the office. Is this a good thing? I'll leave that one up to you. However it is a catalyst for major change in how we are doing business and exactly who we are doing business with and I'm proposing the question, "Are you ready?"

Remember fifteen years back, relatively, when the buzz was the dot com movement? The first question out of everybody's lips was "do you have a website?". People were buying up urls like they were collectible Pez dispensers hoping to snag the right one and soon find themselves on easy street. The funny thing is that happened to a large group of intuitive buyers. I found myself smack dab in the middle of the dot come revolution and remember the swirling of misinformation and projections of the future of business that clouded everyone's way of looking at doing business. Some of the crazier notions were that newspaper, radio, and tv were on their way to becoming obsolete, it was actually possible to buy up all of the online inventory to block your competition from having any advertising real estate on the internet, and my personal favorite the great debate of whether an individual should log in or log on to the web.

Well buckle your seat belts and get ready for the next big advancement in virtual business. Most of you are already aware its happening many thanks to You Tube. The new question on the street is "do you have a video I can take a look at?". Think about it as a commercial for your business, product, service, or project. Companies are making it their entire focus and building their business plan around the creation and marketing of videos for commercial and non profit groups. Why? Because as one who prides herself on creating a story and then spinning it to build a brand or market niche it is one of the easiest ways to help give your story personality, reputability, credibility, and two very fast legs to help it spread out all over the globe. I love the possibilities it brings to the individual artist, small business, non profit and large corporation. The possibilities are endless and it doesn't have to cost an arm or a leg. We have a number of professionals in our town of 7,000 already servicing customers in this medium. TRG, our parent company, has been creating videos for clients for almost ten years. It is something that you as an individual can do by yourself.

Think about it, write it down, and let your creativity run wild.
If you would like help putting together your video, call me!

Jennifer Houghton
TRG Northeast
207-450-8441
www.tylerryangroup.com
Marketing! It's what we do.

Jennifer@tylerryangroup.com

Tyler Ryan Group Introduction

Pick my Brain for Free! Jennifer Houghton TRG Northeast

So you want to pick my brain? OK, let's be honest. During the days of our retail stores in Little Hat Company, people had a sixth sense of knowing when I was covering a shift or somehow knew that I would happen to be working behind the counter and would often say to me, "hey good to see you here today, do you mind if I pick your brain?"

The truth is I love business and would often spend hours listening, internalizing, and then helping to create solutions for their marketing strategies or new product launches. Sometimes it would be simple as letting them know what my accountant thought about a certain situation. I love hearing about business and its obstacles and growing pains - it's a puzzle and it always feels good when you "get a piece".

SO now that I no longer have the store fronts and school pick up is out for the summer I have a proposal for all of you who may want to pick my brain for free. Actually the proposal includes a FREE 2 hour sit down dedicated entirely to your business, project, event, or fundraiser. So - there is a catch but its not brain surgery.

Part of branding your company or positioning your product in the marketplace is getting people to know it exists. One way to jump start the momentum of growing your business is by using effective promotional products. What? You know - slap your name or logo on basically anything under the sun. School is just around the corner. One of the least expensive, most effective promotional product is a number 2 pencil or a bic pen. Most of you are already placing quarterly orders for promotional products anyways...Give TRG Northeast your next order of any size and I will give you two hours of my time with my complete attention and all of my experiences and business education at your disposal.


How do I know promotional products work? Ask my friend, Mr. Gagnon. Everytime I make my way to the gym I bring with me my faithful PGagnon and Son sports bottle. Every time my kids go to practice or the beach we fill up our trusty PGagnon and Son sports bottle! LOVE IT!! In fact it is common for when you cross paths with another carrying their PGagnon bottle to perform a "cheers" in recognition that we are supporting local business!


Anything under the sun can be branded with your logo or business name and it can be a very small expense or you can go hogwild and spend 100,000's of dollars. I'm suggesting that for now let's start small and let me show you how cool it is to work with TRG Northeast.




Email me and ask me lots of questions about this crazy idea or just pick up the phone and call me!

Jennifer Houghton
207-450-8441
jennifer@tylerryangroup.com


P.S. My first job out of business school was working for Forbes Marketing Group in Exeter, New Hampshire. I was hired to open up the Midwest and South Central Markets by selling promotional products to colleges and universities. I traveled like a demon, attended a zillion NACA shows, met celebrities, lectured to students on how to effectively promote their programs and events on campus and also experienced many unusual encounters with TV personalities: Skippy from Family Ties, Barry "Greg Brady" from the Brady Bunch, Mohamed from one of the original Real World Cast, and Faith Hill while she was still singing to crowds of 50 people or less....Very cool job right out of college!!