Food4Patriots Preps Itself for Continued Growth: Q&A with Co-Founder Allen Baler

Name: Allen Baler

Title: Partner

Company: 4Patriots LLC

Business location: Nashville, Tennessee

Years in business: 6 years

Number of direct reports: 23 full-time employees; 12 part-time employees

Chief service: ​Emergency food

Website: www.food4patriots.com

First of all, how is business these days?

Business has been growing since day one and there is no sign of a letup. In 2014 we enjoyed our best year since we started the business in 2008. The combination of consistently acquiring new customers and serving existing customers has kept the cash register ringing.

The growth has been made possible by offering products people need, marketing those products in a way that helps people see the value in what they are purchasing, and hiring talented people who know how to take a product from the drawing board to market.

What led you to start your own company?

It was the gnawing feeling that there was something better waiting for me out there. I enjoyed my job in marketing at an East Coast firm prior to starting the business with my partners, and what I learned in the corporate world helped us grow 4Patriots. However, I wanted to create a company that embraced modern marketing techniques like Internet advertising and that was a great place for great people to work.

What sources did you use for startup capital?

We were boot-strapped and used our personal savings to start the company.

What do you think is your biggest business strength?

I believe my business strengths are creatively marketing products and applying what’s working in other markets to our niche. Figuring out which products will sell with the right marketing strategies is an essential first step. But if you’re going to experience significant growth, you also need to successfully motivate the talented people you’ve hired and help them understand your vision to make your business grow.

What do you enjoy most about owning your own business?

I could talk all day about this one! Being able to make all of the key decisions about the business is one of them. I receive plenty of input and feedback from a variety of people, but at the end of the day we get to make the ultimate decisions and I thrive on that responsibility.

I also love the flexibility that comes with owning my own business. Depending on what else I am balancing during a particular week, including family responsibilities, I can choose to work whichever hours fit best with that. Other than scheduled meetings and calls, I’m not tied to a schedule or a desk.

Last but not least, I am so happy to be able to provide people with jobs in what has been a rough economy in recent years. There are so many talented people out there who deserve to be working, and I’m glad that my company is giving a number of them the opportunity to serve in fulfilling roles and be able to financially take care of themselves and their families as a result.

What’s your least favorite part of running a business?

I’d have to say the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. We have so many ideas – both for new products and for different ways of marketing our existing products – we have not been able to implement yet because of how busy we are. While that’s a good problem to have, it’s also frustrating.

Having said that, I’m convinced that controlled growth is the way to go. Companies that have tried to do too much too soon have collapsed under the weight of their expectations. If we continue our solid execution and steady progress, we will eventually revisit those new ideas and turn them into money-making realities more effectively than we would have if we had attempted to do it too soon.

What do you think are important entrepreneurial skills to have?

There are many skills that successful entrepreneurs possess, although no one possesses all of them. Two essentials that come to mind immediately are self-motivation and creativity. Also important is the ability to push through the inevitable obstacles without getting discouraged. Good decision making, strong problem-solving skills, and resilience come in very handy here.

Social skills are also crucial because you need to be able to deal with the many different personality types exhibited by your partners, customers, and employees. It certainly helps to be an optimist in your thinking, because that will rub off on your employees. Also crucial is an ability to inspire others.

As I mentioned, no single entrepreneur can have all of these skills. And that’s where having the right partners and hiring the right employees becomes so important. You need to recognize areas where you are not quite as strong as you’d like to be and make sure that one or more of your partners and employees possess those skills.

What are some challenges you’ve faced in business and how did you overcome them?

One of the earliest challenges I faced with my business was dealing with my reluctance to hire employees. I had the misconception that I would have to spend so much time overseeing employees’ work that I would be unable to devote enough time to coming up with new product ideas and implementing various marketing techniques.

Now I can’t imagine running a business without a significant number of employees involved in a wide variety of tasks that result in company growth. The key is hiring talented self-starters who only need to understand the vision and then be steered in the right direction.

What do you wish you’d known before you started out?

I suppose I wish I’d known which tactics would not work because then I wouldn’t have spent time on them. But then again, one of the best ways to learn is by testing different options. Most of them won’t work, but that’s part of the path to discovering what does work. As Thomas Edison is credited with saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

What is the smartest move you made with your company so far?

Without a doubt, it was committing ourselves 100 percent to the “emergency preparedness” market. We’ve successfully developed a number of different products to serve our customers in this niche. The key move was to recognize the potential of the market and to close our other businesses so that we could focus exclusively on it. One of the biggest mistakes many entrepreneurs make is to spread themselves too thin and to chase “bright shiny objects.” Focusing on a single market was essential to our growth.

How do you find new customers?

Acquiring new customers is the lifeblood of any company, and we are no exception. We specialize in direct marketing, where we advertise our products directly to the consumer. We don’t offer our products through distributors or via retail; everything we do is direct to consumer.

Advertising in various media outlets is a key strategy we have successfully employed to gain new customers. We make our products known through display ads on websites, in print publications, and with television and radio spots. Obviously, we are very targeted with this advertising. This isn’t about reaching the largest number of people, but rather connecting with smaller groups of people who are more likely to be interested in our products.

We also contribute articles to online publications that target the same types of audiences that we do. These articles include links to our product pages, so readers who are interested in our products can learn more about us.

What do you do to make sure they become return customers?

We treat customers as we would like to be treated. Specifically, that means money-back guarantees on all of our products. It means 24/7 customer service with people who are trained to listen patiently to complaints and respond in ways that satisfy our customers. It means setting up a product review site like www.food4patriotsreview.com that allows our customers to voice comments about our products and enables us to respond to that feedback.

What is something your company does well that you believe has contributed to your success?

We believe strongly in content marketing. When every single communication a customer receives from a company is a sales pitch, those customers start to ignore you. But if you provide your customers with a regular dose of information they can use – free of any attempt to sell them something – it will build up a level of trust and make them much more likely to open your emails to see what you’ve given them.

We accomplish this with content emails that our customers receive free of charge three times per week. We work hard to provide useful and entertaining information, and we encourage interaction and feedback to these email via a blog. Some of our posts have over 200+ comments!

What’s your management style with employees?

Because approximately one-half of our employees work remotely from other states, it can be challenging to keep the sense of “team” intact. The way we meet that challenge is with monthly all-staff meetings. Every quarter we all gather together in Nashville for a couple of days of face-to-face meetings and social gatherings. We also conduct weekly one-on-one sessions between each employee and his/her manager in person or over the phone or Internet.

As far as my personal management style is concerned, I believe in casting the vision for the company, providing direction to an employee, and then stepping aside to allow that person to do what he or she is paid to do. I have absolutely no interest in micromanaging, as it’s an inefficient use of my time. I’m there to provide help and whatever additional direction might be needed, but otherwise I’m happy to let my employees take the ball and move it up the field.

What are some other companies or entrepreneurs you admire, and why?

I’d say that Apple, Amazon, and Google are a few of the companies that I most admire. Apple seems to always come up with the product that people are looking for, Amazon has proven that it can sell just about anything, and Google has turned the digital age into its own playground. Among the entrepreneurs I most admire are Bill Gates, , Oprah Winfrey, and Mark Zuckerberg. Probably the greatest entrepreneur in history was Benjamin Franklin.

Do you have a favorite inspirational quote?

“You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

What new initiatives are you working on?

In addition to a variety of new products we plan to roll out in 2015, we’re placing a heavy emphasis on direct mail. What’s old is new again! Our target market tends to be older and sometimes more responsive to mail than to online offers, so we feel that direct mail marketing has considerable potential with our audience.

What advice would you give to someone hoping to start a company similar to yours?

The first thing I would recommend is coming up with a product that you are confident could sell with the right type of marketing strategies. Next, create a way to effectively communicate with your target market. A significant part of your marketing plan needs to involve testing because not everything is going to work. In fact, the first nine ways you attempt to sell a product might fail, but you could hit the nail on the head on your 10th try. Once you start gaining customers, treat them the way you like to be treated when you purchase products from a company.

Follow Allen on LinkedIn and on Twitter @allenbaler, and follow Food4Patriots on Facebook.

Commissioned Article (Source: Food4Patriots)

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