We Will Figure It Out…When We Get There
One of my new clients is launching a brand-new business. This is the first time she has owned a retail business, and the setup of the operations is expensive. The building requires extensive renovations, and the basic equipment will be another huge investment. Then there are the product and staffing costs. For this client, the time from the investment of substantial funds to opening day will be six months, if everything goes perfectly, but it is more likely to be nine months. I have been encouraging her to spend time developing a business plan that includes an understanding of the day-to-day costs of being open, such as inventory costs, labor costs, and the number of clients that can be served per hour, etc. She doesn’t want to “waste time” (her words) on a business plan. She is confident she can figure it out when she gets the doors open.
Credit Card Liability – Processing Cards Can Create Liability for Your Business
My business does not do a high volume of credit card transactions except at speaking events and trade shows. Yet I chose to make a significant investment this week to protect my firm from liability related to credit card fraud. The investment was not significant from...
Customer Service: From the Customer Perspective
This week a service provider demonstrated to me how important I was to her and her business. Let me share the story. I arrived for my appointment 20 minutes early and made myself comfortable on a bench outside her office suite. I could see through the glass wall that...
The Entrepreneurial Weeble® – The Lesson of Resilience
Once again I am going to date myself by referring to a product from my childhood; this one was called a Weeble® made by Hasbro. A Weeble® was an egg-shaped humanoid toy, and no matter how you dropped, punched, or knocked it over would spring back up right....
Wrong Client
The profitability of a company is significantly impacted by its ability to identify both the core client characteristics that make for a good client as well as those that do not fit with your business expertise or require more support from key resources than can be...
Women Mean Business – Seek Investors or Be an Investor
Women are often overlooked or underappreciated when it comes to participating in investment forums, serving on boards, and leading companies. Women pursuing investment capital and GETTING investment capital are disadvantaged because many forums aren’t “friendly” to...
“Who You Know” and Open Market Competition
The world is not objective. It is composed of people, and people are human (at least most of us are). People are at our most basic emotional and relationship-based. We do deploy our logical minds to override and control much of our instinctual behavior and that also...
Who Is Running Your Business?
In every business there are activities and tasks that the owner, manager, founder, or key executives don’t like to do, don’t know how to do, or just don’t want to do. When those tasks are key elements or effect the key elements of how your business does business, the...
Where Was the Board?
One of the most critical roles the board of directors plays is the fiduciary role of ensuring that the actions taken by the organization (through its management and the board itself) are in the best interest of the organization and its stakeholders in the long run....
Where Is My Cash Flow?
What do I do about customers who consistently pay late? Why does it seem that the money flows out faster than it flows in? These are significant questions for every business. Managing the cash flow is critical to a business's viability. The cash flow equation and...