Archive for Business Basics
Planning and Organizing Ideas With OneNote and Dropbox
Posted by: | CommentsI suspect I’m not terribly different from most entrepreneurs. I’ve got a lot of balls that I’m trying to keep up in the air. Not only that, I continually get new ideas. Some of 
them are crap, but some of them are actually things that I plan to implement. I’ve tried a number of ways to keep my planning, my projects, and my new ideas organized.
One of the things I do is use binders. Each project has its own binder, as does planning. This has been a relatively useful way to keep track of ongoing work (when the labels don’t fall off the binders).
New ideas were little harder to track. For a while I was doing the Post-it note method. Every time I got a new idea I’d write it on a Post-it note and stick it up on the wall next to my desk.
This didn’t work for two reasons. One, after a while the Post-it notes just became visual noise; I just didn’t see them anymore. The second reason is the mental clutter they caused me. Although I can block out the content on the Post-it notes, I still knew they were there. Although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, it was causing me constant stress.
I moved away from the Post-it notes to whiteboards. Now whenever a garden idea I could just write it on the whiteboard. The nice thing about the whiteboard is it’s one continual surface so it’s less visually cluttering than Post-its.
However, the whiteboard method isn’t perfect either. It’s great for recording an idea as it occurs to me, but what do I do later? Eventually the whiteboard gets full. I needed some way to deal with the ideas.
Then I thought about Microsoft OneNote. This is a software program that comes as part of Microsoft office. I knew it was part of the package but hadn’t looked at it. Last week I decided to open it and take a look. I’m glad I did. Read More→
Is Getting the Best Price Really Worth It?
Posted by: | CommentsAt a recent dinner party I happened to mention shopping at a local independent retail store. My friend Sean angrily remarked he never shopped there.
I was surprised 
because Sean is very loyal to the local business community. He makes a point of shopping in town, even if going to the city or buying online will save him a few bucks. So I asked him to explain.
It goes back to his career. You see, Sean sells cell phones. He’s an independent sales person and works out of his home, rather than a retail location.
His main focus is larger companies that need multiple phones for their employees. However, he also sells to small businesses that only need one or two phones.
Sean gives great customer service
What makes buying a phone from him different is the level of customer service. Sean goes above and beyond for his customers. He helps you decide which phone and which plan is best for you. He’ll deliver the phone to you personally. And if you run into problems, he cuts through the red tape of the corporation and solves it for you.
But there is much more to being a customer of Sean’s. Sean is extremely Read More→
How to keep up with your business reading
Posted by: | CommentsAny business person worth his or her salt is a voracious reader. Books are an inexpensive way to learn new skills, get new ideas, and stay on top of your industry without leaving the office. No need to dress up, drive across town (or across country) to attend an expensive workshop. And if you missed something or didn’t understand it, you can turn back a page and reread it.
And I love books. Forget shoes, for me there’s nothing better than wandering the isles of a good bookstore. It might even rival a computer store for pure fun factor.
There’s nothing more exciting than having $100 to spend on books. Even a spare $20 gets me going. You can’t get anything really exciting at the computer store for 20 bucks.
But there’s a downside to my love of books. There’s so much to do and so much to learn. I just can’t keep up.
The photo attached to this article is my current stack of non-fiction reading. Each of these books is on the go. Only two are library books. The rest I picked up somewhere along the way. And yes, I understand the irony of having Getting Things Done be one of the books I haven’t quite managed to finish.
These are all great books. I’m enjoying the read but I’m not getting through them. One of the library books has already been renewed once. I just spend so much time reading – emails, RSS feeds, websites, my own work – that I just can’t bring myself to read non-fiction for long periods of time.
Hence the stack of on-the-go books.
However, I have discovered a secret to getting through books faster. Read More→
Help! I’m locked out of my blog!
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I had a heart-stopping moment. It started out as a normal day. I was logging into the admin section of the blog and was notified that my password was incorrect. Since I have my password saved on my desktop machine, rather than typing it in manually, I was somewhat puzzled but I re-typed the password.
Still no go.
So I calmly clicked the “forgot my password” link. WordPress sent me an email with a link to change my password. I went to my inbox and clicked the link. I was then told I’d get a second email with my new, temporary password.
I waited.
And waited.
No new password.
So I tried again. Got the email with the link to change my password, but never received a new password.
Panic started to set in.
Then I remembered I’d had a friend look at the back-end of my blog when I’d had a problem with something. Problem solved! I asked if he remembered the password I gave him.
No.
Scrolled through our Skype chats to see if it was recorded there.
No dice.
My friend suggested Read More→
Boomers Are One Third More Likely to Start a Business
Posted by: | CommentsThanks to my colleague Jeff Apton, I recently discovered the report The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This study states that in the United States an entrepreneurial boom is looming; a boom created by baby boomers.
Apparently, Americans aged 55 to 64 are more likely to become entrepreneurs than those aged 20 to 34. For many people this statistic is counter-intuitive. Younger people are more likely to take risks, right?
Wrong! According to this particular study, “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34.”
How much higher? One third.
But that’s not all. The study also notes that “a longitudinal survey of nearly 5,000 companies that began in 2004, two-thirds of firm founders are between the ages of 35 and 54.”
What are the causes of this baby boomer boom? The study suggests Read More→
