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Small Business Spotlight: Brooklyn Entrepreneur Scales Property Maintenance Business to New Heights
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — This entrepreneur is coming into his own.
Anthony Finkel grew up in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn where he developed an appointment-based snow removal service in 2013. He cleaned up, literally.
“That first snowfall, I got a bunch of phone calls. They called us again that next time, and when that first winter was up, they started asking us, ‘Hey, can you paint my porch, can you clean out my garage, can you fix my deck?'” he told Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank.
Finkel met their needs and expanded his offerings at DPH Property Maintenance Service. When the pandemic hit, demand surged.
U.S. home improvement projects and repairs grew more than 3 percent last year to nearly $420 billion, according to a report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Finkel reaped the benefits, telling WCBS 880 demand has remained high over the past year and it’s picking up this spring.
“They’re home, they’re not going to the office as much, and now, they’re converting that extra room that might have had clutter in it,” he explained. “Now, they want to clean it out, they want to re-paint it and they want to turn it into their home office or their studio space.”
People are investing in their homes and personal space while many companies look to implement hybrid work schedules when they can bring workers back to the office with COVID-19 safety measures in place. Some employees may never return to the office.
Finkel is renovating corporate spaces, too. He says it’s a “mixed bag” among his clients who plan to work from home long-term and those who will go back to their office.
He had six employees pre-pandemic and has hired four more to keep up with rising demand. He hopes to double the number of workers in the next 12 months if he can double subscriptions to his home and garbage clean-up service from 50 city dwellers to 100.
“When you understand the scope of the work that you’re doing and the quality, and you’re able to bring high quality, it makes it a little bit easier to stand by your pricing and stand by your ask because you know what you’re going to bring to the table, Finkel said. “When people hire DPH, they’re getting dependability, reliability, high quality service and no-nonsense.”
He told Connolly and Carousso customer service and quality has been the key for DPH Property Maintenance Service’s growth not volume, emphasizing research as the foundation of his home improvement work.
“It’s not about how fast, but it’s how precise,” Finkel explained. “You don’t want to have to go back and re-fix things that you thought were done before.”
See how this small business is scaling quickly and meeting demand on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above.
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NJ Veterans Group Rebuilds Sandy-Destroyed Housing as Homelessness Crisis Worsens in Pandemic
By Neil A. Carousso
NEW JERSEY (WCBS 880) — It’s been nearly a decade since Superstorm Sandy rocked the Tri-State, but a veterans organization is still trying to rebuild while the COVID-19 pandemic compounds the homelessness issue at the heart of its mission.
There are nearly 600 homeless veterans in New Jersey – a jump of 7.99 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homelessness Assessment Report.
The American Legion Post 107 is hoping to reduce the number of homeless vets in Hudson County, estimated to be 70, by about a third next year when it anticipates phase II of its post-Sandy rebuild will be complete.
“Our objective is to take homeless veterans off the street,” said Post 107 Commander John Carey.
Phase I of rebuilding the Veterans Center of Hoboken took six veterans off the streets into fully-furnished apartments. Phase II will add 18 studios and six single-bedroom apartments to house 24 of our nation’s heroes. The organization hopes to break ground this summer for completion next year.
“Our apartments are furnished from everything from a toothbrush to a microwave oven,” said Carey who stressed this as the differentiating factor between the Veterans Center of Hoboken and other grassroots organizations that provide shelter for veterans – sometimes without even a mattress.
“These men, like myself, we served our country and for whatever reason they have a major problem right now, we need to service that problem,” said Carey who was drafted by the U.S. Army in 1965 and served two years in Thailand and Vietnam.
The Post Commander described his service as the “FedEx for Vietnam,” telling WCBS 880’s Neil A. Carousso, “We delivered everything from a bullet to a plane to Vietnam.”
Today, Carey is leading the non-profit effort to support his peers. It’s heartbreaking for him to walk by homeless vets on nearly every bench he passes along the Hudson River.
“The word homeless should never be used with the word veteran,” he emphasized.
The Veterans Center of Hoboken has provided meals, clothes and emotional support, virtually, during the pandemic.
“They’re out of the shelters because they can’t crowd in the shelters so they’re really all over the place,” Commander Carey explained. “We bring them food, clothing, we have a veterans closet where we bring them clothes.”
Carey told WCBS 880 he believes mental illness is at the root cause of the veterans homelessness issue and housing is a step for healing their wounds and providing dignity for those who bravely served the country.
“We will have an office there where we’re going to work with the VA. They’re going to have a counseling person there every day,” he said.
American Legion Post 107 has raised about $2 million from the community for the project.
They need roughly $3.75 million more to put Phase II over the finish line in the next 18 months. You can read more about the project and donate here.
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Watch: Mayoral Candidate Maya Wiley Reveals Plans for NYC’s Recovery
By Lynda Lopez, WCBS Newsradio 880
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — In about two months, New Yorkers will vote in the mayoral primaries to pick a new leader who will come in facing pressing issues including overseeing the city’s recovery from the pandemic.
More than two dozen men and women are running to replace the outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, including his former counsel Maya Wiley.
Wiley, an attorney and civil rights activist, chaired the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board after working at City Hall.
She also worked as a legal analyst on MSNBC before announcing her run for mayor last October.
Anchor Lynda Lopez spoke with Wiley for Friday’s installment of the 880 Weekly Rewind and asked how she plans to help the city recover and what she plans to focus on, not just to shepherd the city out of the devastated economy, but to make it work going forward.
“We had an affordability crisis before COVID hit. We have been struggling, frankly, with racial issues and racial injustice for generations, actually, but coming to a head as we saw this summer,” Wiley said. “We’ve had this kind of spiritual exhaustion because of the division, because of the struggle of daily life, and then COVID hits and now we’re traumatized and our economy is in tatters. We have 400,000 people facing eviction. We have over 200 million going hungry. This is a crisis of historic proportion, but as the candidate in this race that has also been in that hot kitchen we call City Hall, I also know that we have resources that we can use in order to not just meet the needs of our people right now, but start to solve some of our affordability issues.”
One of her proposals, New Deal New York, would create 100,000 new jobs by spending $10 billion of the capital construction budget to build affordable housing.
Another proposal would focus on investing in child and elderly care.
“The cost of child care and elder care is one of the top three expenses in the city before COVID, but what we’re going to do is put $,5000 a year into the pockets of, starting with 100,000 of our neediest families, to care for children and elderly adults, but we’re also going to create community care centers,” Wiley said.
Lopez also asked Wiley what she would do as mayor to improve the city’s schools and equity in education.
Educational equity was brought to the forefront when it became clear Black and Brown students were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic shutdown.
Minority students were at a disadvantage when it came to remote work.
Many families in underserved communities lacked the digital tools and resources to thrive in the virtual learning environment.
Wiley said every students deserves an exceptional education and that means ensuring that more dollars are getting into the classroom and to help kids who are struggling to get online.
“Something I’ve done inside City Hall is show city government how to do free broadband, getting every single apartment in Queensbridge Houses free service that the city paid for. I did that as counsel to the mayor, I know how to get it done, but we have to do that now because we don’t develop the educational opportunities for our kids if we’re not solving that digital divide,” Wiley said. “That is critically important.”
Wiley also said it’s time to stop policies that discriminate against children.
“We should not be using any admission standards that aren’t really about what kids need but are rather about what families have the resources to pay for the tutoring that gets them over the hump on a test,” Wiley said. “First of all, families shouldn’t have to do that and far too many of our families don’t have the resources to do it and it’s not meeting an educational agenda.”
She also proposes cutting some of the bureaucracy that’s coming out of the Department of Education to open the door for principals and teachers to bring more innovation to the table.
“There is a lot of it in our system, but it gets strangled by some of these rules rather than really thinking about what serves the need of our students particularly at a time when we have so much to do to help them come back,” Wiley.
Hear comprehensive analysis of the top stories of the week and original reporting on The 880 Weekly Rewind hosted by Lynda Lopez Friday nights at 7 PM on WCBS-AM New York. Listen to this week’s full show, produced by Neil A. Carousso, on the media player above.
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Mr. Wonderful’s 3 Steps for Growing Your Business Again
In Best Of, Entertainment, Featured, Guest, Interview, Latest, News Stories, Technology, The World, videosBy Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary stressed business owners need to adapt to what he believes are permanent changes to consumer behavior as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast, presented by The First National Bank of Long Island, the self-made multi-millionaire entrepreneur made several recommendations of digital tools, sharing actionable advice for business recovery with host Joe Connolly. Mr. Wonderful also revealed what some of his companies have found success doing despite the economic turmoil.
1. MAKE THE “GREAT DIGITAL PIVOT”
O’Leary divulged that only 36 of the 56 companies he had been invested in across “almost every sector” nationwide are still in business a year into the pandemic.
“They did the great digital pivot and that involves figuring out how to set up a platform – most of them use Shopify not Amazon, number one – to change their websites to be far more interesting and engaging,” he told Connolly.
Shopify allows businesses to create their own e-commerce website using the platform whereas Amazon is the consumer-facing website for companies’ online marketplace.
“They went to 4K photography, 1080p video, they told stories about their products, they had other customers talk about testimonials and how they were using them, so they really engaged people for the first time in ways they’ve never done before because they were forced to – everybody was working remotely,” O’Leary said.
He also shared the trick to monetizing digital content on the WCBS Virtual Business Breakfast. More on that later in Mr. Wonderful’s 3rd step to growing again.
2. PUT YOUR CUSTOMER FIRST
O’Leary said the best way to sell is to “promise customer support and deliver on it.”
He told Connolly his frequent advice to young entrepreneurs is that the customer is always number one, and if you treat them like that, you can have a very profitable business.
“The differentiating factor in selling is customer service,” O’Leary said, adding, “You can actually sell the same product for a higher price if you’re in the top quartile of customer service for it.”
The software tycoon invoked Apple as a prime example.
“When you buy a laptop from them, you’re paying 50 percent more than the exact same machine’s function on a Windows-based product or a brand you may not know, but because Apple makes you pay for customer support and you respect it and you want it, you pay a crazy amount more,” he said.
3. REDUCE YOUR CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COSTS
WCBS Business Producer Neil A. Carousso posed the number one question WCBS 880 listeners had for O’Leary, which was “How do you monetize digital content?”
Mr. Wonderful responded the only metric for monetizing digital content is whether it can reduce customer acquisition costs for one’s product or service.
“Basically, what you’re trying to do when you make new digital content is to tell a story about your product, show it in its best light, try and get testimonials from other users who are using it and why they use it, and try and acquire customers at the lowest cost you can,” the Shark explained.
“Remember, long-term outcome is basically customer acquisition costs have to be less than lifetime value of the customer acquired. Otherwise, you go out of business,” O’Leary added.
He produces a plethora of content for the companies he’s invested in and shows behind-the-scenes of commercial shoots, media appearances, and his daily life on his YouTube channel, which includes afternoon bike rides along Miami Beach, playing the guitar, cooking in his “Chef Wonderful” videos and enjoying O’Leary Fine Wines with his wife Linda.
A bonus step for growing your business again, O’Leary acknowledges, is a healthy work-life balance.
“I don’t work 9 to 5, obviously, and I try and find life balance in doing the things I love to do while I’m working,” said Mr. Wonderful. “I work seven days a week, but I don’t work every hour.”
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Small Business Spotlight: What Pandemic-Proof Businesses are Doing to Survive and Thrive
By Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso
NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — Every company has become a tech company.
AlleyWatch Founder and CEO Reza Chowdhury says brand news businesses are currently in better shape than the ones that existed pre-pandemic because they’ve entered the market at lower costs with the COVID-19 pandemic in mind.
“The businesses that have survived have really, in an interesting exercise of elasticity of demand, in many cases have raised their prices because they have less demand and this is a real paradox when it comes to economics,” Chowdhury said on the WCBS Small Business Spotlight, sponsored by Dime Community Bank.
These businesses are trying to cover their losses by raising prices on fewer customers.
“When things open up, new entrants will be able to enter because the demand will rise,” the tech founder explained, adding, “They’ll be able to come in with some sort of advantage.”
Those advantages include lower rents that will allow new businesses to undercut their competitors on price.
Chowdhury told WCBS 880’s Joe Connolly and Neil A. Carousso these new businesses should remain lean and keep their costs low until the future becomes more clear.
AlleyWatch currently has six employees – an amazingly small team for such an influential trade publication that features a daily startup funding report that shows what types of companies and industries are wooing investors. It offers other advertising and content services, too.
While some traditional retailers and professional services firms had resisted building their online presence, they’ve been catching up in the last year. Chowdhury believes they do have transferrable skills that will help them sell online.
“There’s a bit of storytelling involved to get people interested in these products on a digital level,” he said, noting brick-and-mortar stores double as in-person advertising.
The tech guru told WCBS 880 business owners should just try everything in the realm of digital content at first. Businesses should tell their story and share their brand identity to attract target customers. Then, Chowdhury said, utilize a number of research tools available to track engagement and monitor how many people are visiting the point-of-sale website from social media posts.
“You’re going to get, really, an instant feedback mechanism and feedback loop from these tools,” he said, continuing, “The beauty of digital is you can attribute this to where the lead came from.”
From there, Chowdhury says, invest the remaining advertising budget in content that has performed well and can be attributed to sales.
Watch the WCBS Small Business Spotlight video above for tips on implementing a digital strategy and the new trends in business investment.
