Rick's Blog - Common Sense Experience for Small Businesses
Business Development – A Plus or Minus for Your Business?
Every business needs new business, right? How about your business? If so, then what kind of system or process do you have in place to develop new business? If the answer is no, no, and no, then read no further. If on the other hand your business can use new business and you do not have a process or system in place to generate then I encourage you to read on. Business development may seem…
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How High is Your Overhead?
How to effectively manage your overhead: treat it like any other expense, with care and constant review. Overhead is one of those numbers that always seems too high. Why? In my experience it is because like a credit card we charge items to the card and forget that the balance is always growing. It grows in good times and then when business softens, as it ultimately will, we are stuck with the number. A little…
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When Your Family is Part of Your Business – What Now?
I believe that the family-owned business can be among the strongest business structures available into today’s competitive business. However, like any good idea it needs to be fully understood and respected for what it is by every participant (family member). There are several challenges and distinct advantages that are offered by the family-ownership structure. First and foremost is the challenge to work-life balance. I grew up in a family business and the business was a…
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What is Your Vision for Your Business?
When you started your business what was your vision? What did you want to accomplish with the business? Was it to be your own boss or something more? Everyone has their own vision of what they want their business to be. I believe that is the main reason we start a business, not only to be our own boss (or for some other reason), but to build something our way. If you do not have…
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Customer Communication and How Your Business Wins or Loses the Battle?
Getting and keeping customers is the great battle fought every day in the world of business. We all know how expensive it is to get a new customer. Therefore, we should do almost anything to keep them, right? As Sam Walton said, “There is only one boss — the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” The key to winning the…
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What Do Your Customer’s Think About Your Business?
If I picked 10 of your customers at random what would they tell me about their experience in doing business with your company? Really good companies know the answer to this question simply because they ask their customers. In many cases they ask them on a regular basis. That allows them to adjust, change, or make right anything that is causing a customer to have anything less than a great experience in doing business with…
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Don’t Be Afraid to Swim Against the Current
Malcolm Muggeridge is quoted as saying, “Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.” I am not sure if this is always true but there is some encouragement in Mr. Muggeridge’s statement. All of us need to swim against the current from time to time to really succeed in our business. Fear is typically the main reason that most business owners are afraid of going against the current. Business decisions like all decisions…
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I Dare You And Your Business Not To Fail!
How many times have you as a business owner heard about how often small business fail. There are all kinds of statistics available and often they sometimes don’t agree to actual numbers, but then again, I imagine it is difficult to get an accurate count. Regardless, everyone seems to agree that the number is very high particularly in the first years of life of a new business. There are a good number of reasons businesses…
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How Can I Find the Right Mentor for Me and My Business?
I recently came across an article entitled, “10 Reasons to Avoid Executive Leadership Coaches Like the Plaque,” by Chris Pearse. (Forbes 12/22/19). In the article Mr. Pearse, who is a leadership coach himself, outlined a number of pitfalls one can encounter when engaging a coach or mentor. Two that really struck me were the coach/mentor who uses a structured process, which I call “using a notebook” and the other is those who focus on performance.…
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