Archive for Business Basics
Are you the thermostat or the thermometer?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen it comes to running a business, belonging to an organization or living your life, there are ups and downs – things beyond your control that impact you directly.
For your business, the economy can tank, making it harder for you to make sales.
A trusted employee can leave. A marketing strategy that’s worked for years can suddenly stop sending you new business.
Whenever things go bad, you have a choice – to be a thermostat or a thermometer. A thermometer reports current conditions – what’s the temperature right now. That’s all it can do.
A thermostat however, Read More→
Monitor your goals for Q2 of 2012
Posted by: | CommentsWow! It’s April already and I’m sitting here wondering where the first quarter of the year went. Only 9 months left to hit my goals for the year.
I find that the beginning of each quarter is a good time to pause for a moment and look at your goals and results so far this year. Are your goals still relevant or have you made a decision to go in another direction?
If your goals are still relevant, have you been working towards them or did you get distracted by the bright shiny object and forget about your main objectives? I’m convinced the majority of people who start a business are at least border-line ADD and we easily get distracted by something new.
If you found you did get off track, sit down and create a plan for the next 90 days: what are you going to do each week that will get you moving towards your goals. Write them on your calendar.
Too many times we lose track of our major goals because we become over focused on the day to day minutia of our businesses. But if you schedule your major goals on your calendar, you’re more likely to remember to work on them. Read More→
Success Begins After 40 – Why it’s not too late to build your business
Posted by: | Comments
I’ve been listening to an audio version of the updated for the 21st Century edition of Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think and Grow Rich
. For some reason I resisted reading this book for many years but about a year ago I decided I needed to focus on making money so I bought the audio book. I’m glad I did.
A bright spot in the book is Hill`s assertion that most people don’t become a success until after 40 or even 50. In fact, he says “For the average person the greatest capacity to create is between 40 and 60”. I suspect that if Hill were alive today he’d expand that upper end.
Why are people not able to achieve before their 40s or 50s? According to Hill, Read More→
Don’t wait for perfection
Posted by: | Comments
Do you have a project or a new product in mind but you’re not quite ready to get started on it? Perhaps you’re waiting for a particular resource, or a chunk of free time to work on it. Or perhaps you need some extra money to put your plan into action.
I know because I’ve done this too – waited for the time/situation to be just perfect before getting started.
But then last week I was reading Prince Charming Isnt Coming
: How Women Get Smart About Money by Barbara Stanny. In this book, Stanny talks about how women often wait for a man to look after their finances for them. There is one particular passage that jumped out at me.
“Please note: “Mr. Right” or “Prince Charming” need not be a man, or even a person. Our prince could be an ideal job, an insurance settlement, the lottery jackpot, or just an amorphous “something” – anything that we fantasize will save us financially. To become genuinely smart with money, we must get to the point where we can say with total conviction, I can do it myself.
This passage really grabbed me by the throat and made me realize that there are a number of projects I’ve had on hold because I didn’t have everything perfect. Read More→
Are you measuring your business success?
Posted by: | Comments
This morning I filled in for a friend at his BNI meeting (Business Networking International) and the “Education Nugget” was about measuring. The point is, you don’t know how you’re doing, nor can you improve, until you can measure it. And you can’t make smart decisions about your business unless you measure what you’re doing.
Follow the money
First, you need to measure your money. Are your books up-to-date? Bookkeeping isn’t just for tax time. You need to keep them current so you can predict cash flow and see what products and services are profitable.
Cash flow is obvious, but looking at what areas are profitable is just as important. I knew one business owner who upon looking closer at his books, realized his best selling product was actually losing him money.
While the direct cost of the product was less than the selling price, the cost of servicing it meant he actually lost about $100 per unit. By eliminating that one product, although his total sales went down, his profits shot way up.
Do you know what products or services are most profitable? Look at your books. If you’re not sure how to determine profitability, ask your bookkeeper or accountant. Read More→
