What jewelers can learn from other business owners

WATCH: Ramberg’s follow-up on the jewelry store makeover

NJ: What are some of the top inefficiencies you see?
Ramberg: Not knowing where all your cash is going, not paying enough attention to your bills to see if you are getting the best price on things. 

Not having a good handle on your inventory, so you don’t know if you have all this cash tied up in inventory that’s just sitting there.

Not having a good understanding of customer flow, so you are wasting money on employees when you might not need them.  

We did a story on a laundromat and it turned out that they had, I think, three people working there at all times. Turns out, no one ever came on Tuesdays in the morning, ever. 

All you need to do is look at your receipts to find out (when people are coming in.) Paying employees when you are a small business, that’s a big cost for you. If you can figure out how to optimize your staffing, that’s an efficiency as well. 

NJ: You’ve featured thousands of small businesses on your show. Besides the jewelry store, is there one that really stands out?
Ramberg: Lots of them. 

My mom was an entrepreneur and she used to read us The Little Engine That Could, this “I think I can” (mentality.) You have to go after something, believe that “I can do this” combined with this idea of “I think I can’t.” 

There is a whole list of things that I don’t know how to do, so I can’t delude myself into thinking that I can do everything. But I can figure out who to go to do get those answers. 

I think the smartest business owners believe in themselves, not only to do it and be successful but (also) that they can figure out how to find the answers. 

This woman who started a bagel company in Connecticut, she had never worked, she was a part-time waitress. Her husband was the bread-winner in the family. He lost his job because of an illness, he couldn’t go back to work and it was the recession. 

She had this idea for a low-fat bagel company. She had done Weight Watchers and had lost (a considerable amount of weight) and so saw a hole in the market: there was no low-fat bagel.  

She took most of their money, I think they had $18,000 left, a mortgage, four kids, no job and she took the bulk of that and  put it into this company and just started knocking on doors and did it. She just wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

She knew with her heart that there was a market. But then she went out and got advice from people on how to start this thing. So it took a little bit of a combination of, “I can do this” with “I know I need to ask the right questions to get to the next step.”

You don’t need to recreate the wheel. People have done almost everything before; just ask.