Author: Aaron Montgomery

I have been in the garment decorating industry since 1999, and have worked with many small businesses to help them make money and improve their marketing and sales. I love helping small businesses as I have been involved with or had my own small business since I was a teenager. In my free time, I enjoy volleyball, bowling and spending time with my sons. I have lived in St. Louis since 2010 by way of Boston, Colorado Springs and most major cities in Arizona. Aaron also delivers a bi-weekly Podcast called "2 Regular Guys" with industry friend Terry Combs. You can catch it at 2 Regular Guys.

Email Etiquette

Emails have been a topic of conversation at the office recently.  We use emails for internal and external communication on several different levels at Coastal Business Supplies.  For example during the week of May 11th, my stats are as follows:

An average of 200 received emails and 50 sent emails a day just for me! Given the large quantity of information in a short period of time, I thought it would be a good idea to share some tips gathered from several Internet resources to help us all make the most of email as a business tool in today’s society.   Please note, that the resources I referred to below are referenced at the end of this blog. Continue reading “Email Etiquette”

Top 10 Products of 2013

2013 is coming to a close and as part of my normal end of the year review of business, I took a look at what the hottest sellers for Coastal Business Supplies were in the last 12 months. About 6 months into the year I sat down with purchasing and some of the other folks here at Coastal and we decided to make a big commitment to these products and to the industry to bring these into stock. You the customers have responded and these items have proven to be the biggest movers of the year. The reason I wanted to write this blog post for you is to let you know what items you need to make sure you have in stock if you are not already buying these items. Don’t have time to read the blog? Check out my video HERE! Continue reading “Top 10 Products of 2013”

Top 3 Things Every Small Business Must Do

When talking to people about how things are going in their business, I have discovered some common tasks.  People who have successful businesses are doing certain things on a regular basis that appear to be marketingimmagesimilar. Also, it seems those who are struggling are not doing these things. In addition, I have noticed that sometimes small businesses believe that the normal business principles that work for larger companies do not apply to them because they are a small company.  At times, small business operators are not necessarily formally trained in business, rather, just nice people with a great idea trying to figure out how to make it work. That got me thinking about what key elements that I feel make businesses successful to avoid potential pitfalls. Below are the three things that I feel are critical for every small business to ensure success. Continue reading “Top 3 Things Every Small Business Must Do”