If you're like me (and you must be at least a little, if you're walking the path to PIE), you are a highly motivated, self-starting individual. You have an unending drive for success. You are tenacious. You have a tendency to go-go-go, until you attain your goals. The word stop just isn't in your vocabulary. And that is completely fine. But there's a difference between stopping and slowing down a...
As I previously discussed in my two part post on The Art of Negotiation (Part 1 here, part 2 here), everybody loves a good deal. There isn't a person alive who can resist a sale or special, especially on a product or service they've actually been looking for. Or even on things they haven't. Impulse buys play a big role in pulling in business during a special offer as well....
You hear about it almost every day. Another company faced with a multi-million dollar lawsuit, brought forth by a former customer or employee. Another business owner facing charges for illegal practices (more often knowingly than not). Now fortunately, as a small business, your chances of being waylaid with a gigantic seven figure lawsuit are extremely low, though the possibility of being sued should something along the way be less than...
Let me throw out a hypothetical situation at you, dear readers. You've been in business for yourself for a while. Your business, and consequently your Personal Independent Earnings, have grown to a point where operating from your home office is no longer feasible, you're pulling in enough money to begin heavily reinvesting back into your business, and you're looking to expand by moving to a dedicated office space. First of...
I want to tell you all a story. A long, long time ago there was a man. This man was, much like all of us, a very highly motivated and driven individual. He worked unbelievably hard at everything he did. His goal was simple: to push the boundaries in everything he did. More than that. To break those boundaries. To go above and beyond what any human being before him...
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...