This week every business promotes Black Friday, or the period of time when business are trying to end the day in the black, not red, an accounting term for positive cash and profitability. If you own a small business you know exactly what this means. Business dependent, this means that you must figure out how to best position your product or service in front of customers balancing pricing strategy, timing, location and what people want. While word of mouth is important, understand your customers, patrons and clients have way more options at their fingertips to explore and discover you.

Whether you’re in the product business, ex. food, beverage, retail, or service business, ex. photography, real estate, appraisal, architecture or construction, same thing applies, but this means ensuring your customers, patrons and clients can find you regardless of hardware, software or AI.

  • iOS, this means clients can find you on Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
  • Android, this means clients can find you on Google Maps. This blog here and here provide great step-by-step instructions.
  • Software options are several, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and location-based services here and here such as Swarm by Foursquare, Yelp and TripAdvisor. Key here is you won’t know how customers and patrons came to you– so you must excavate the various trails for them to get to you.
  • AI, software that communicates with other software automatically in the background, pulls its data from the web, various references, and blogs enabling users to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. If you’re not already on the web, AI won’t be able to find you.

In smaller, rural towns word of mouth and local recommendations are key. Everyone knows where the good spots are. But in an interconnected world, your ability to pop in on people’s minds and on their devices is key to attracting new customers, new sales and new opportunities. This week I’m focused on spending with the locals and enjoying traditional ponche, a mix of Mexican eggnog, cinnamon tea and Tequila Hornitos. I encourage you to spend locally as well. Salud.

David Molina is an entrepreneur, strategist, and thinker–doer dedicated to exploring the full spectrum of human performance. Born to Mexican immigrant parents, he forged his path from farm fields to Captain in the U.S. Army, commissioner, and eventually to founding companies, nonprofits, and creative ventures. He shares more about health systems, business workflows, and intentional work on Instagram at @davidcmolina.