Earlier today I received a call from an editor of a trade magazine for music instrument store owners (MMR Magazine)… yes, there is a magazine for everything these days… looking for comments on the emergence of super-niche stores (which I have previously covered, here).

He's noticed that there's a trend for (musical) instrument stores to become very niche—say, a store selling just flutes or one selling only left-handed guitars—and he wondered what I thought.

I cautioned that while specializing means you're definitely limiting your customer base, there's opportunity there as well.

Let's say that there is a store that only sells flutes and all the paraphernalia that goes along with them. And this particular store owner has customers fly in from around the country to shop at his store. He often "rolls out the red carpet" for his out-of-state shoppers, coordinating airport pick-ups and treating them to dinner at a local restaurant.

It makes great sense. Let's say you play the flute religiously, and maybe you'd rather shop at a store that just sells flutes, rather than a larger store that sells all sorts of instruments and only two or three kinds of flutes.

How does this relate to our industry? If you're going to specialize, you need to have a dynamite marketing program and wonderful customer service… and a niche that's viable.

Yesterday I received an alumni magazine from my college alma mater, Clark University. Now I don't know about you, but I love reading about my former haunt.

As I was thumbing through, I realized how nice it was to see what some of my old college professors are working on in terms of their current studies and research results. One of my professors (she helped me on my senior honors thesis… compensation programs in the workplace), has been studying managers who are also parents.

The old philosophy was that managers who are parents are less effective because of the distraction of the kids. However, her new research reveals that managers who are parents are more effective in the office, because they're used to multi-tasking at home.

I bet that this research carries over to parent entrepreneurs and/or business owners. I know that being a mom has definitely improved my multi-tasking ability. I often have to deal with a sick kid and still respond to emails and handle phone interviews.

Do you think being a parent makes you a better business owner? If so, in what ways?

I just read an interesting article today about a study that was recently conducted by the Verde Group. According to their research, Americans deem front-line sales staff as "the single biggest detriment to their shopping experience, resulting in more lost business and negative word of mouth than any other shopping problem."

The number one goal of their study was to find out what annoys consumers the most—and as it turns out, the answer was simple: salespeople. In particular those salespeople who don't have the product knowledge they should, are not around to service customers, are over solicitous or ignore customers (it's a very fine line, as you can see).

The findings reveal that American retailers lose six percent of shoppers due to lack of help, and even more alarming, three percent of shoppers won't ever return to a store where they have been ignored (meaning they didn't receive a smile, greeting or any eye contact).

So what does this information mean to you? It should encourage you to train your sales staff to greet customers and educate them about what you sell. This will lead to loyal repeat customers, and you'll have an edge over the big box retailers (the study found that big box stores are responsible for the largest number of shopping problems… 66 percent). Department stores are somewhat better, but shoppers still report problems 52 percent of the time.

Do you have a policy for your staff when a customer arrives? Are they supposed to greet them in a certain period of time?

I'll probably take a day or two off from posting because my aunt is in the hospital. I received a phone call last week from my uncle asking if I could change my plans to see her based on a change in her condition.

Even though I'm busy at work, I know I can head down there on a weekday without a problem… matter of fact, it's one of the best parts of being self-employed.

Family's always first for me, and being able to only worry about my business a little (what self-employed person doesn't?) when I'm needed elsewhere makes me glad I'm an entrepreneur.

Driving to work this morning, I was thinking how lucky I am to genuinely love my job. Publishing magazines and producing trade shows for the retail industry is honestly what I was born to do.

And over the years, I've tried to bring together a team of employees who are just as passionate about what we do here as I am. After all, it's more fun to come to work with people who are happy, you know?

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the process of bringing on new employees, so it's critical (in my mind) to continue to find people who are as energetic and committed to making our magazines and products great.

When we bring people on board who are happy, positive and passionate, we all work better as a team (except for those few little bumps in the road—but, hey no workplace is perfect!).