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Business Tips
Written by Paul on November 16th, 2008
While watching TV last weekend, one particular commercial made me realize just how much the market is changing. Actually, it wasn’t really the whole commercial but a particular line — their tagline was “Lowest Cost of Ownership” and referred to Lexus’ decent fuel economy, durability, and resale value.
That’s interesting because they used to run pre-Christmas ads for their “December to Remember” events featuring a loving spouse giving his or her significant other a new Lexus wrapped in a big red …
Written by Paul on November 11th, 2008
In Profitable Growth is Everyone’s Business, Ram Charan puts it perfectly:
Focus on hitting singles and doubles. Home runs don’t happen every day or even every decade.
Everyone knows Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer ever and most people attribute that success to something vague and intangible, like talent or sheer luck. But, did you know that Tiger works out every day, runs for miles and wins less than 50% of the time? Did you …
Written by Paul on October 30th, 2008
This is a guest post by Thursday Bram, a freelance journalist currently located in Laurel, MD.
As you’ve built your business, you’ve put a lot of effort into building a brand. You have a logo, a website, and a business card establishing who you are and what you do. But there is one thing more important than your brand: your reputation. With a poor reputation, putting more work into your brand just isn’t worth the time.
Warren Buffett understands the importance of …
Written by Paul on October 26th, 2008
Seems that everyone’s interested in analytics these days — well, maybe not interested, but there sure are a lot of people talking about analytics on the web these days. Regardless, it’s great to see that people are starting to see the value of clear dashboards and actionable metrics. Though, I do wonder how they made decisions without all the fancy new dashboards that are available out these days.
Peter Drucker once said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” Let that sink …
Written by Paul on October 22nd, 2008
If you’re a business and you’re on the web, chances are that you’ve heard all about the importance of having a RSS feed, newsletter signup, social networking links and a million other things. More importantly, you’ve probably installed a bunch of these on your site without considering how you’ll actually use them to make some money. (After all, isn’t that why you decided to get your business on the web in the first place?)
Based on a number of websites I’ve …
Written by Paul on October 20th, 2008
It’s interesting to note that many of the people that handed out business advice when the going was good have strangely gone quiet now that things aren’t looking so good on Wall Street. The reality of the current situation is that entrepreneurs still have to wake up every morning, head to work and pave a path to a better future.
Most small businesses are already focusing on aggressively cutting costs by streamlining their current business processes and focusing on cash flow …
Written by Paul on October 11th, 2008
A BusinessWeek article points out that tech that doesn’t work won’t let us work. Well said.
Working 90% to 95% of the time is not working. When my company’s services fail to deliver, we don’t get paid—and our customers get angry. When a technology product doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do all the time, we’re stuck. Unfortunately, the technology my company buys fails way too much. But like everything else that makes me angry, I just deal with it.
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Written by Paul on October 4th, 2008
It’s interesting to watch an increasing number of mom & pop small businesses get online these days. There’s been no shortage of design shops and independent contractors that will charge a few hundred bucks to slap together some images and put up a website for you. Is it really worth it?
Unfortunately, most people have absolutely no idea how to determine whether they actually get any real value out of having a website. Let’s fix that today: read on for a …
Written by Paul on September 29th, 2008
Seems like everyone’s talking about innovation these days — isn’t it pretty much a requirement for doing anything that people are willing to pay for? Ditto that for quality, teamwork and strategy. Well, I guess it’s to be expected: it’s much easier to talk about hand-wavy things than to actually get into the bowels of the business and actually measure the stuff that matters so you can actually make educated decisions.
Call it what you want: customer loyalty, customer retention or …
Written by Paul on September 8th, 2008
I have a friend that recently bought a used car at full price. His excuse: “I asked for a discount but they didn’t give it to me so I gave up.” Sure, he could probably stand to learn a little bit about better negotiating but there is a better way to get a better deal.
It’s no secret that most people have a hard time talking about money — just look at how many bloggers write about ways to ask for …
