Archive for Business Basics
Small business summer-time blues
Posted by: | Commentsor How to stay motivated when you’d rather be outside
Working from home is sometimes a challenge in the summer. Yes, there’s the fact that I have no air conditioning and my office is on the 2nd floor. (Last week’s heat wave in eastern Canada and U.S. was brutal).
There’s also my teenage son who is home from school and around the house. Plus there’s the sun shining and I want to be outside.
As a result, there are some days where sitting at my desk staring at my computer seems unbearable.
But I still need to work. The mortgage still needs to be paid and we have this pesky little addition to food.
So, what’s a home-based entrepreneur to do?
I posed this question to my network and got some interesting answers. Read More→
It Takes A Village to Raise a Business
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve all heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned after surviving five years in business is that it also takes a village to raise a business.
When I was in my mid-20s I actually tried to start my own business doing very much what I’m doing now (minus the social media since Facebook etc. didn’t exist back then).
I survived about a year before I packed it in and got a “real job”. The problem was that I thought in order to be a business person you had to be independent, and independent meant doing it all myself.
This time around, being a little older, and a little wiser (I hope), I recognized that trying to go it alone was part of the problem. Read More→
5 Reasons Why Imperfect Execution Is Better Than Perfect Planning
Posted by: | CommentsW
hy is it that some people seem to move ahead by leaps and bounds while other people who are perhaps more talented seem to be left behind in the dust? Seth Godin said it best in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable. He wrote: “Real artists ship.”
What did he mean? You don’t have to be the best to be successful. The people who get ahead don’t worry about being perfect. They get off their butts, take action and get their products to market.
So here are my thoughts on why imperfect execution is better than perfect planning
Work your plan
While I’m the first one to tell you that planning is important, I know that too often planning can be a form of procrastination. Rather than getting down to the work, you keep tweaking the plan. Get a plan in place and start working it. Over time you can tweak the plan as you see what works and what doesn’t.
Beating the competition
How many times have you seen a competitor release a new product that is just like the brilliant idea you had a year ago but is still in the planning stages? Don’t you kick yourself when that happens? I know I have. Let’s learn from our mistakes; when you have a brilliant idea quickly create a plan then work on execution so that someone else doesn’t beat you to the punch. Read More→
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→
