Would be nice if we all had built cash reserves to deal with the kind of uncertain economic time we are living in at the moment. Truth is most of us haven’t built up the necessary cash reserves. Here are a few things small businesses can do today to help themselves: Ask debtors to pay…
Small Business
Putting your money where your home is
There is always need to support your local businesses but if a disaster strikes or the economy is not going well the need to buy local and support local small businesses multiplies. Outsourcing services to overseas providers, sourcing cheaper ingredients or importing products might save you a few dollars but at times as business leaders…
Same Difference
Looking for flights for future travel I was comparing flights on a couple of sites. To my surprise the same flights were 3.7 times higher on one of the sites compared to the others. Flights have become a commodity and surely there was no difference as both were exactly the same classes and same times…
The need for decision makers to understand a business
A successful business that has been going from strength to strength has to provide the banks with their business plan as part of their general review on a periodic basis. The bank manager says that the business plan is the same as the one we provided in the last review. My client and I explain…
4 business lessons from playing video games.
My school holidays were heavily used to play video games. We would play Super Mario Bros and Contra for hours. What a waste of time, you might think and I might just agree but unknowingly I was also training myself into four very important business mindsets: Know where you want to end up (rescuing the…
In Scheme Of Things
Some of us are of the view that everything needs to be perfect and any discrepancy needs to be sorted out. It would be good if the business world would be perfect and we had all the time we needed on our hands but the truth is we just can’t get everything right. I use…
Doing more with less.
We all (me included) want to have more. More money, more time, more clients, more holidays, and the list goes on. We at times don’t understand how more works. Say you want to increase your revenues. Your first thought might be “I can be able to do this by getting more clients/customers”. As true as…
The need for your business to focus on the present and the future and not the past.
We very often hear phrases like “When we were young”, “When I started my business”, “When I was at university”, “We used to do things like this”, “Before we expanded”, “When I was 25 year old” etc. Unfortunately some of us just stay in the past and don’t come to realise that as wonderful and…
Value of customers and team
A partner in a firm decides to leave the firm so he approaches another firm to be a partner there. “How many clients are you bringing with you?” he is asked. “None, I am going to leave them there and start afresh” he says. He is told to get lost. Customers who buy from you…
Be impressed not envious…
The nature of my work is that I come across many stories of success and super duper success. So what happens when I come across a client who is more successful than I am? I get impressed or inspired even. The other way to feel would be envy, which so many of us do feel…