Happy Friday everyone! Welcome to the continuation of Wednesday's article on The Cost of Debt. At the end of the article I asked you all to think how having so much interest accumulate on a small debt that it would take 19 years to pay it off could negatively impact a business. I don't want to get into too much detail here as we've already discussed this, so let's get...
The world is cyclical. This is scientifically proven fact. Ice ages come and go, weather patterns change, and then change back. Animals migrate to one area, only to later head back to where they started. This is as true in business as much as it is in nature. Look at how many products that were once popular, died away almost entirely, only to come back again years later. Bell bottoms...
Social media is the single fastest growing method of staying connected with your client base. In today's ultra-connected world, there is no better way to link up with your clients, providing them with useful information, and getting immediate feedback in return. But you know this already, I've written about it before. If you've been following my advice, you should already have fairly active social media accounts. The shift in the...
As I'm sure we've all noticed by now, the quality of products and services available these days is dropping at an alarming rate. Extremely expensive consumer electronics appear engineered to break, call centers where clients expect competent and timeless conflict resolution are instead outsourced to countries where the Customer Service Representatives barely speak English and read almost everything from a script. And when was the last time you heard about...
Last week we talked about the art of negotiation from the point of view of the person with a product or service to offer. But there are two sides to every coin, and this week we'll be looking at the other one. That of the person trying to do the haggling, trying to score themselves a deal, and as such, hopefully earn themselves a slightly larger piece of PIE. The...
So you've decided to step out of the 9-5 world and take your first step on your path to PIE. You're motivated. You're focused. You feel ready for anything. You're Muhammad Ali, and the world is Sonny Liston. You have a plan. You have a goal. You have absolutely no idea what you're going to sell. You have a problem. Fortunately, it's not really that hard of a problem to...
Many of you will probably remember making presentations from school, or worse, your time as a 9-5er. They're awkward, uncomfortable, nerve-wracking experiences. They're also essential to success. There will come a time, regardless of your business, where you will be faced with the task of presenting yourself and your business to prospective clients. There isn't really any getting around it. Fortunately, there are ways to make it a little easier...
As I've become so fond of saying on this blog, there's an old saying. "When it rains, it pours." Anyone who's ever, well, lived, knows this is true. When things go wrong, things tend to go really wrong. Often multiple things at once. In the most extreme of cases, this can lead to the flat out failure of your business. But that doesn't always have to be the case, and...
Forget every racial stereotype you've ever heard. Everyone on the planet loves to haggle. Everyone loves to try and get a deal. Some may be more aggressive than others (and again, this has nothing to do with race), but in general, everyone will try to get something from you for cheaper than what it's offered. Make no mistake my friends, this is going to happen to you. It is unavoidable,...
I want you all to think about a hypothetical situation. For some reason, the government has decided they want to audit your business. They want to see sales reports, payroll, the whole nine yards. There's just one problem. All these necessary reports are scattered about your home office, strewn haphazardly across multiple areas on multiple computers, or both. You know you have all the reports requested (or you think you...