Maximizing profits, minimizing expenses and finding talented staff to keep things moving seem to be top challenges for both SMBs and large corporations. We have been interviewing companies from around the world to discover what challenges they are facing in their businesses. We also asked each company to share business advice they would give to a younger version of themselves.
Below is our interview with Jeff Butler, Founder and CEO at JButler International:
What does your company do?
JButler International is a consulting company that helps organizations retain Millennial employee talent. This includes showing companies how to optimally recruit, effectively manage, and implement modern retention strategies to retain talent. By combining research and case studies, our work usually involves going onsite and training corporate employees on these best practices. We also help organizations understand Millennial’s from a marketing perspective by training them on how to effectively reach, create a strong compelling story with a strong call to action.
What is your role? What do you enjoy most about your role?
I am the Founder of JButler International. My current work ranges from doing research, speaking to training. I am usually on the road traveling speaking at conferences or going onsite to corporations and training their employees. The best part of the role is the constant travel and change of environment. Each year I meet thousands of amazing people around the world and to be paid to do just that, is something I never thought was possible.
What are the biggest challenges in your business right now?
Our biggest challenge at the moment is scaling effectively. We recently got our foot in the door at some pretty big-name companies and now it is a matter of how to effectively grow the company without damaging the brand. This involves making sure our sales processes are in place, research is on point, and our new hires are adding value to the organization. Also, on the sales side, there are many decisions to be made such as which frontier to push next: PPC, content marketing, influential marketing? Since we are a bootstrapped company, ever dollar counts.
If you could go back in time, what business advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
Don’t listen to the people talking on social media about how to earn money, do what earns money. As a young business owner, still in my 20s, I would often find myself looking up to a lot of entrepreneurs in the world and the common advice usually involves building a presence on social media.
The bizarre aspect to this is that there are people are LinkedIn, YouTube and IG who have more followers than annual income. Followers does not equal revenue. I wasted months of my time trying to figure out social media rather than sticking to straight outbound sales in the beginning. Don’t get me wrong, social media works, however, there are many effective ways of producing revenue and a lot of them are old fashion. Do sales first, then worry about your social media brand.
