We were lucky to catch up with Dave Weiner recently and have shared our conversation below.
Dave, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
Overall, yes, I am much happier as a business owner than working a regular job. However, I would say that that when things get tough in your own business as they always will, being resilient and flexible will help get you through the most difficult times. Owning a business will always have their ups and downs no matter what industry you are in. There are always going to be those days where you will question why you’re going through all of this. That’s why being passionate about your business is important.
The best thing I can say about being a business owner is that there is a large amount of freedom that comes with being your own boss and being able to administrate your business in the way that you want to versus the way you would working for another organization. I also think that working for yourself allows you to have some measure of creativity that you might not get otherwise working in another organization or working for another organization.
In all honesty I haven’t had those thoughts in quite a while. I would say a majority of those thoughts were mostly in the beginning and getting the business started. That was a true challenge in every sense of the word. That does not necessarily mean things are easier now, it just means that you learn to adapt to the times when they become very challenging. As a business owner, you learn to improvise, adapt and overcome situations that sometimes seem insurmountable and incredibly challenging. You also realize, at least in my personal experience, that when you don’t have anything else to fall back on, essentially having “burned the boats” for lack of a better term, you tend to realize that you have no other alternatives but to confront those challenges and persevere. This is because your overall livelihood really depends on you persevering and going the extra mile, working the extra hours, and doing everything necessary in order to ensure the success of your business.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Initially, Secure Measures started out as mostly a consulting firm. However, through the course and lifespan of our business, we took the conscious step of focusing more on our training divisions rather than our consulting business last summer. It’s not to say that we do not do any level of consulting or advisory work, but we focus mostly on the aspect of training our clients, which is truly what we’re passionate about and truly what we enjoy! We have two distinct paths of training that Secure Measures provides to our clients.
The first is our public safety division, which provides crisis intervention, mental health, and similar types of training around our Veteran Culture for First Responders series of training courses. These courses which are what I would call our anchor trainings that provide first responders a look into the unique aspects of military service and then how to help our veterans when they find themselves in crisis and how to help prevent the losing anymore of the roughly 20 veterans a day that we lose to suicide.
Our private sector training offerings, focus on Workplace Violence Prevention, Active Threat and De-Escalation training. Those types of trainings for our private sector clients tend to be some of the top Corporate Security/Human Resources/Risk Management concerns that occur in the workplace today. We provide education to those in the corporate world about how to best manage and mitigate threatening or dangerous situations in the workplace.
I think one of the factors that really sets us apart from other organizations, is our unique approach to training, as well as our high degree of customer service/responsiveness to our clients and potential customers. Now I would say customer service is not a new thing or our approach to customer service isn’t necessarily innovative, however, I feel being responsive to customers and clients is incredibly important and also communicating as much as possible to ensure that all of our clients or have a positive training experience with us.
I think one of the things that I’m most proud of is we’ve been in business now for four years, through some very challenging social and economic times. But for those four years, we have been conducting training specifically for our public safety partners and we have received excellent reviews of all of our training courses. We consistently get a lot of positive commentary in a in a variety of forms and formats. People actually walk away with learned skills that they can use, especially our first responders, in their day-to-day activities especially when they’re responding to crisis and mental health calls. The consistently positive feedback for me lets me know that as an organization, we are on the right track and we’re providing necessary and meaningful training for our first responders
How did you build your audience on social media?
For us, social media has been a bit tricky in the sense that we are selling a service and not necessarily a product and that can sometimes be a different animal as I have found. The one thing I would recommend to anybody attempting to build their social media presence is to find a trusted mentor or another trusted business owner that has gone down this path and can share general knowledge and principles about what works with you. I have found that every business is different and the specific strategies some businesses use are specific to their niche or market with one exception. And that is good content. No matter what your business is, engaging content should be the focus. Currently, video is a great way to go in marketing your particular brand and making sure that you’re getting the word out about whatever it is you are doing.
However, before you really work on your social media presence, you have to work on your brand identity. This is an important aspect I think of your social media presence and in a lot of ways especially as a small business owner, you are in fact your brand. I think that is an important distinction about a small business as opposed to a large business.
The big question that you should be asking yourself “Is what problem/pain point am I solving for my potential customers?”. If you craft a strong brand message around the problem you are trying to solve, and position yourself as the “authority/expert” in that area, you will potentially draw in some potential clients.
What I have also found is that as a small business owner, you are likely dealing with your clients more directly, especially if you are an independent owner or maybe you’re the only employee. That allows customers and clients to directly understand your culture and business ethos in a way that feels more personal as opposed to a large corporation.
One other aspect is I cannot overstate the power of mentorship and finding those trusted folks to help you move your business aspirations to every next level. I say “trusted” as there is definitely not a shortage of folks on social media today, who claim they can get you more followers, more engagement, and more opportunities to grow your business. In those cases, I would only work with those you trust or take referrals of mentors from those you trust. They should be able to demonstrate tangible results of people they have helped grow their engagement or help them develop content. Engaging trusted organizations will be much better in the long run and not have you waste time with folks that randomly solicit you on LinkedIn or Facebook that indicate they have the newest and/or best product for developing social media content.
It takes times and consistency to build a true following on social media. If you are disciplined, consistent, and put out good and interesting and engaging content, over time you will build a decent following.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
I think one of the main things that helped build our reputation in our market is being known for our reliability and our expertise in our field. Being known for reliability and expertise comes from clients you may have that are already considered experts or leaders in their industry.
As an example of this one of our first training clients was the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which I was, and still am, super grateful to work with them. Now one could argue that an agency like this has a ton of resources, a ton of expertise in a variety of areas and the and the ability to develop great training. All of that is true about that organization. However, working with a large organization like this that has those attributes has helped me build my reputation as someone who had knowledge and expertise that further complemented and expanded LASD’s resources and expertise in the area of Veterans.
I also think that one should not underestimate trustworthiness and reliability as a factor in building your reputation in your own industry. if you are known that you can be relied upon and you are trustworthy in your business dealings, you will get much farther. There is also the increased business that gets referred to you or you will find that people want to partner with you to expand their own capabilities because of what you bring to the table. Trust, reliability, and expertise will typically get you to the table and then some of those intangible personal qualities that allow you to connect with and maintain great relationships with people will help you retain clients long term and even make new friends along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.secure-measures.com
- Instagram: @securemeasures
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/securemeasures
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/secure-measures-llc/?viewAsMember=true