A topic that’s seldom come up on this blog before, though one that is incredibly important, is what to do when a business fails. We’ve already established that things will go wrong, and that there’s a good chance that your business might actually fail. We’ve even discussed how to know when it’s time to pack up your things and quit. But it’s not exactly quite so cut and dry as...
Everybody loves doing a good deed. I don't think any of you out there can think of a single time where you did something for someone for altruistic reasons and didn't feel great about it after. Well what if I told you that altruism could also help your business? As we talked about earlier this week with cross-promotions, a little bit of a partnership can actually end up being a...
They say two heads are better than one, and in most cases this is true. In the world of business, it can be especially true. Marketing can be a tricky business, especially in today's world. You need a big, creative hook. Something that will draw people in, and then most importantly, keep them coming back for more. So you've got a solid marketing campaign, and you're doing alright for yourself,...
Crisis management is a topic that has come up in several forms on my blog before. We've talked about using great customer service to avert disaster, how to properly deal with debtors, building rainy-day funds, and even creating time buffers. All of these are important skills to have should a crisis arise. But there are always more skills to learn on this subject, which is why we're discussing it again....
I think it's a pretty safe bet that most of us in our working lives has had one of those bosses who sits back and doesn't do any of the work themselves. They sit in their office playing on their phones, or otherwise doing anything else but working, while everybody else gets things done. Every so often they'll poke their head out of their little hidey-hole to issue commands (which...
I want to tell you all a little story. This particular story involves one of the members of my own personal team. This particular team member had a fairly old PC at home. As he's a music producer and avid gamer (and source of all the references to the gaming industry I have spoken about in the past), his current machine was no longer up to the task of handling...
So you've been in negotiations with a prospective client for some time (and hopefully been making use of the advice I gave here and here), and you're just about to put signature to contract and seal the deal. Now comes the hardest part. If any of you have ever worked in telesales (which is an absolutely dreadful job, if you're currently in this industry I highly suggest reading the rest...
Getting feedback from your customers is the single best way to identify ways in which your business can improve. Looking at it from the inside is all well and good, but you're too close to it, making it hard to identify the real issues that need fixing, or could be improved. This is why getting feedback from your clients is so incredibly important. They aren't directly tied to the business,...
There comes a time in any business, where circumstances will arise that will warrant you making a change to what you're charging your clients. A pricing change is a fairly common occurrence in any business. Just look at McDonald's and their "dollar" menu (which is in many places actually over a dollar), or the recent trend in "everything for a dollar" stores suddenly charging prices that are definitely not a dollar....
We've talked before about the need to build your company out so that you're doing more earning, and less working. One of the most important factors to consider when choosing a business venture that will quickly get you where you want to be is the notion of scalability. Originally an electronics term, scalability is the capacity of a system to handle increased traffic - to "scale up," so to speak. It's...