Public Relations with Avi

Avi Golubchik is a new friend. He seems like a wonderful guy. I’m not surprised that he helps small companies with their public relations.

“How do you do it?” I ask him.

Avi explains that his first role is to coach the managers.  Many people open a business without knowing the basics – how to connect with your customers, and how to sell themselves. Very often, they can sell the product, but not the people behind the product. Both are important in any small business.

Many young companies don’t have a long term approach. For example, they don’t know how to allocate finances. When do you risk money and why? And even when you are succeeding, you have to make ‘noise’, whether on social media, radio, TV. Otherwise you can have an amazing business, but nobody knows about it.

It’s really important to be a people person. Avi clearly is. He has a closed Facebook group with over 800 locals and new immigrants. He knows all of them personally.

If you have a restaurant (and Avi does), then it’s not enough to have wonderful decor, a great menu, you need to have people inside your restaurant eating the amazing food that you know how to prepare.

One of the things that Avi learned is that managers of small businesses have to be more flexible. They have to learn when to stop banging their head against the wall, to know when it’s time to pivot, change the menu, try a different approach, a ‘business lunch menu’ for example.

Managers have to know how to manage themselves. Their time in particular. One of my customers has a Ph.D. and is brilliant. On the other hand, her politeness gets her bogged down in conversations and she ends up coming late to meetings. That’s a no no, even though her intentions are so good. Even in Israel serious people show up for meetings on time.

There was a ladies’ boutique that wanted his advice. They had a high quality line of clothes that they imported from London. She had the financial resources, but not the skills to manage a boutique. She couldn’t communicate with her staff. I advised her to close the boutique. She is now much happier, and saved herself from impending financial ruin.

I try to explain to my customers how important videos are these days. Here is one that we made introducing people to my new Ethiopian Restaurant, Habash (מסעדת חבש).

I promised Avi that I would shout out about his new restaurant. It’s at Hanegev 10, Tel Aviv.

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