Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] All right, thank you for joining me today on the Small Business Hustle. Today's episode is going to be a pretty short one, so make sure you hang on tight so you don't miss anything. We are going to do a quick case study, just in time for Easter, on community involvement and how it can help your sales in your small business.
[00:00:30] Welcome. Welcome to the Small Business Business Hustle. And hello. Hello. I'm Molly B. Your host and owner of MJ's Market, a small general store in South Dakota. This is a weekly podcast where we discuss operating a small business.
[00:00:53] All right, before we jump in to our case study today, I would like to share a quote with you.
[00:00:59] The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
[00:01:05] And that quote's by Oscar Wilde.
[00:01:08] I love this quote because it's really pointing out the fact that no matter how small the act is, it is so much more valuable than intention. So if you intend to do good things, but you never act, it really means nothing. Even though small acts of kindness, just any small thing, is worth so much more than intending to, besides the fact that it is going to do well for others, it's going to do a world of good for you.
[00:01:35] So today, the case study we're talking about involves volunteering in the community. And that's why I picked that quote, because it kind of plays into that volunteer mindset. All right, so a business organization that I am a part of puts on an Easter egg hunt every year.
[00:01:54] It's a really successful event.
[00:01:57] And this business organization is a volunteer organization.
[00:02:01] So businesses pay a due or a membership fee for annual membership. And then they also are encouraged to volunteer for the organization.
[00:02:12] So every year, they put on in our baseball fields, they put on an Easter egg hunt. And the Easter egg hunt, the thing that's beautiful about being in the baseball field is they're already, like, fenced into divisions, so we can easily break up the age groups in each field. So it makes it really easy for you to define which children go into which group.
[00:02:36] The amount of time that it takes to put this together is significantly larger than the amount of time that it takes for the Easter eggs to be grabbed up by these kiddos.
[00:02:49] So what we do is we pack the eggs full of candy and small toys.
[00:02:55] That takes two days of about, oh, two, two and a half hours of volunteers, many volunteers packing the eggs full.
[00:03:05] So there's a lot of pieces. Before that, there's a lot of time taken in the transporting of the eggs. And then on the day of the event, we Also have to disseminate the eggs onto the field so that they're easy for the children to go get.
[00:03:22] Okay. So the. So the first year that I participated, we were told that businesses are allowed to put coupons in the eggs. So you can put coupons in there that are for your business.
[00:03:36] And there was a few suggestions made. And so what I decided to do, because we have a photo printer, was to put a coupon for a free photo print in the eggs. And so we. We did a couple different things that we thought were really smart.
[00:03:53] One of them was that we use colored paper. So that was our genius idea.
[00:03:58] One of the other things that we decided to do was to fold them so that the printing was on the outside, as opposed to. I think a natural way to fold something would be that the writings on the inside, and it would just be color on the outside. But I wanted that writing to stand out. So we folded them kind of like backwards so that the. The writing would show on the outside of the coupon. And we had to fold them up and make them really small to fit in eggs. And then we took them to the egg hunt so that we could get them stuffed in the eggs. And so we dispersed them evenly among the tables. And so the idea in my mind here was that parents are going to be taking pictures of their kids with the Easter bunny, and they're going to want to come in and do photo prints of their kids from the Easter egg hunt. While we did get quite a few takers from that, it really was not necessarily the best.
[00:04:50] I would. I would maybe say it was close to not being worth the effort. It's. It's kind of. I don't remember exactly and have the numbers in front of me, but the amount of people that I had turn them in was not crazy good. So for my second year, I decided I would do something a little different. And I found these adorable little sunglasses or shades.
[00:05:14] They have, like, the slats in them so you can see through them. And then they had little bunny ears on the top of the glasses. So these little bunny shades. So I put on the coupons. Hurry in to get a free set of bunny shades. I had 72 of them, and I felt like that was probably a pretty good number based on the very small number of redemptions I had from the previous year.
[00:05:37] I felt like 72 was way more than I had had redeemed the previous year, so it should probably be about enough.
[00:05:43] And I put slightly more than 72 coupons in the eggs because things get lost Things get, you know, missed. And also some children might get two coupons, but some families might have multiple children. So I figured it would all end up kind of shaking out in the end. All right, so the Easter egg hunt in a normal year starts at 10:00am and it is done by about 10:03.
[00:06:11] We encourage people to open the eggs right there on the spot and return the empty eggs to us. Also, there are some coupons in the eggs that say they won a large prize so they can go pick up that prize right there and they don't have to make an extra trip. So we encourage that they open the eggs right there. This year it had snowed a day prior, and so it was nice and warm the day before the Easter egg hunt, even though there was lots of snow. And so the city helped us out. They plowed. They did some plowing on one of the fields for the littlest kids and for the 0 to 2 year olds. And then the older kids were just stuck rooting through the snow.
[00:06:57] So I can say it was much more interesting this year. It took the kids about three times longer than normal to get all the eggs picked up on their fields because they had to trudge through the snow and work through gloves.
[00:07:08] And so it took until about 10:09 this year.
[00:07:13] So after the Easter egg hunt, I visited with some family for a few minutes, helped them break open eggs, talked about the coupons and the eggs, things like that. And then I checked back and volunteered to do a couple extra tasks. And so I got done by about 10:30, and then I headed to our store.
[00:07:32] Takes a very short amount of time to get the store, but because of all this crazy Easter egg traffic, it probably took minutes to get the store. So I get to the store, it's 10:38. I will remember that forever because I looked at my clock and I was like, what in the world? I expected us to get the traffic for the bunny shades, but, like, not that fast. Like not immediate.
[00:07:58] So the parking lot was packed. There were not was not normal parking spots available. So people were parking on the sides and up by the front, like in awkward places where nobody normally ever parks. So I into the store and by 1105 we were out of bunny shades. And this is the funniest thing. Like, remember, the Easter egg hunt only started at 10am it only began then. They had to open the eggs, get the coupon out, and then drive to the store to get these shades. And I was out by 1105.
[00:08:35] Our sales, some people came in and they just got the Easter, the bunny shades, and they left.
[00:08:42] But a lot of people were shop store.
[00:08:46] I was happy with both options. A lot of our customers that were coming in and they were just getting the bunny shades we see probably at least weekly come into our store, and there were many loyal customers. So I was very happy. Our sales were great, and the cost to be involved in this is very minimal.
[00:09:08] So what we had to do is to join the organization. It's $100 a year.
[00:09:14] We have to be involved in order to take advantage of all of that. So that means I'm going to probably about one meeting to one and a half meetings a month on average, just depending on what happens throughout the year.
[00:09:30] And those meetings last one hour.
[00:09:33] So I may be putting in two hours, some months, one hour, another. And so it's pretty minimal there. And then also the time that I'm being involved is really not going to hurt me in any way. And it helps propel the group forward to have people involved in it and have my help and support and my leadership.
[00:09:54] So the other thing is, the bunny shades were pretty inexpensive.
[00:10:00] I can't remember how I bought them, but they were just like a bulk prize thing that I purchased through one of my wholesalers. So it was really inexpensive thing for me to just add on to one of my wholesale orders.
[00:10:12] And the happy children was super worth it, just seeing how happy they were and the memories that I'm helping support.
[00:10:21] And then now I'm all of a sudden becoming super involved in this activity every year. And so the place that my business takes in creating these wonderful memories.
[00:10:32] So what are some ways that you can get directly involved with your community and get your business out there and in front of people?
[00:10:40] I think there's a lot of talk on podcasts about online businesses, and I just hope that those people who are running online businesses are also working to get involved in their local communities.
[00:10:56] Because if you're being successful online, wouldn't you want to share that with your neighbors? The people who live near you, worship near you, and work near you, they probably want to cheer you on just as much as your favorite customers do.
[00:11:11] Also, the leadership that you show as an entrepreneur is needed in these community organizations. So your involvement, your leadership, you know, when there was a lack of volunteers, I knew what needed to be done. I needed to drive in more engagement and get some extra volunteers to help fill the eggs. And along with the other leaders in the organization, we ended up getting so many volunteers the second night that some people just were forced to leave and couldn't help because there just was not enough physical space for them to all help stuff the eggs.
[00:11:46] So really, I think the point I want to drive home is that community involvement can be really great for you as a person. It can be really great for your business, and it can be really great for your bottom line. It can help your customers feel more connected to you. It can help you feel good about what you're doing and how you're living your life.
[00:12:06] And it can lead to people choosing your business over another business. And it can choose. They can choose to support you. And also the word of mouth, I don't know how that's gonna work because this really did just occur last weekend.
[00:12:21] So I don't know what the word of mouth is gonna be, but I feel like some kids are gonna be wearing some bunny glasses and saying they got them in MJ's. I also feel like that's gonna lead to some people coming in and wanting to buy the bunny shades, which I had not thought of. And so I do not have any bunny shades available for sale.
[00:12:41] Wish me luck guys, and have a very happy Easter.
[00:12:46] Thank you for joining me this week on the Small Business Hustle. I would love to hear your feedback so I can better serve you. And don't forget to subscribe so you can catch me next week where we'll continue to talk about small business.
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