Small businesses have always relied on referrals as a major source of new business. The importance of referrals and word of mouth has only increased as technology has improved our ability to spread messages (both good and bad) quickly and widely. A great way to increase the number of referrals in your business is to [...]
During my first couple of years as a solo consultant I worked from home, which was great in many ways but was never going to work as a long term option. This was partly due to my poor productivity, but more due to the lack of opportunity to meet and collaborate with interesting people, so [...]
In your normal business day, do you spend more time looking for ways to do the minimum or the maximum? Take these examples: What is the minimum I need to do to justify invoicing a client this amount? What is the maximum I could give this client within the project budget and still be happy [...]
I recently finished reading one of the best books I have ever read, The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Lewis wrote his first book, Liar’s Poker, in 1989 when he was in his 20′s, and this was one of the few books that almost all of my finance industry colleagues had read. (Although people took [...]
We are human, and that means we are not perfect in our decision making. Far from it, in fact. One area that we often make irrational decisions is around the value of time. Take this experiment, for example: You are shopping for a shirt that costs $50, and you hear that it is available at [...]
I am surprised at how few small business owners do any kind of financial forecasting given how valuable a tool it is. I am given many reasons as to why this is, but most often it is: “I’ve tried, but my industry is too uncertain and my forecasts are always wrong, so there is no [...]
I’ve never put together a list of the biggest problems across most small businesses, but if I did the abundance of short-term thinking would be very close to the top of the list. Short-termism The release of the results of a recent survey conducted by the Australian Institute of Managers showed that a significant number [...]
I don’t normally post gadget and technology news, but I think this news is worth me changing that policy. In the last couple of days Google announced and demonstrated their latest toy, and this time it’s a big one even by Google’s standards. It’s called Google Wave, and it is likely to be the biggest [...]
Too few small businesses have a current business plan, often due to a belief in one or more of the following myths. By dispelling some of these myths, I hope that a few small business owners will decide that now is the time to write a business plan and it will quickly become one of [...]
Every business should have this goal: be the best in your market. Luckily this is not as hard as it sounds. After all, you get to decide what your market is, from as large as the whole world to as small a niche with only a handful of customers. Also, not everyone’s definition of “the [...]
I thought I’d provide a free ad for a great online bookstore that I’ve been using for the last few months and have recommended to a few friends – The Book Depository. I also thought I’d add some thoughts on why I like them from a business point of view. They are a UK based, [...]
UPDATE: As an alternative to reading the whole post, here is a video that runs less than four minutes and does a good job of explaining RSS. You can then scan through the rest of my article to learn more. The free tool that I use far more than any other is Google Reader. While [...]
By now most of you would have noticed the link to Kiva.org in the sidebar. Many people have commented on it, including people that know and love Kiva to others that haven’t heard of them. I cannot say enough how great this organisation is, and this recently made video is a great introduction to the [...]
The goal for this blog is to share my ideas with clients and give potential clients some insight into the way I think. It is not to directly market my services, however one of the benefits for being self employed is I can do whatever I want! So in that spirit I’m writing this post [...]
In my most recent PMBA session we all read Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth Revisted”. It was a decent enough book with several interesting and stimulating ideas, however I wanted to share just one quote with everyone: Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t [...]
I was listening to a podcast yesterday where the head of a boutique investment bank said he believed the best investment bankers were the ones that cared the most. Leaving aside the obvious jokes about using “investment banker” and “care” in the same sentence, particularly in the current environment, this made me think… how many [...]
On most Friday mornings I am at my office in Richmond and available to meet small business owners to discuss their businesses. These meetings are free and without obligation. to arrange a time.
