All posts by Editor

business, development

Learn To Keep Your Ego In Check

One of the hardest things as an entrepreneur is to believe enough in your idea to do it, but not so much that overpowers everything else. I came across interesting article that expresses this sentiment exactly.

“Ego also gives entrepreneurs the confidence to sell their start-ups to partners, customers, and investors, and the courage to act like famous international CEOs even when they know they really are just playing a role. And ego is the force that allows entrepreneurs to get comfortable with their powerlessness and learn to love the word “no” instead of panicking in the face of it.

On the other hand, when allowed to run amok, ego keeps entrepreneurs from knowing what they don’t know and tempts them to believe their own press. Ego is also the culprit when entrepreneurs cling to their role as founder rather than turning their companies over to more capable managers. And ego is to blame when entrepreneurs can’t work with odd people who are clearly smarter than they are, or when they fail to remain calm and gracious in all business situations.”

To read more visit: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20050101/lucky-or-smart_pagen_4.html

business, Consultancy, Relationship

Deadlines

The word deadline causes a wide range of emotions in people.

Mostly people are filled with anticipation or fear, but it does deliver results.

Without a deadline projects, work, tasks could go on forever or much longer than anticipated.

So if we decide that deadlines are at the very least a way of insuring that work gets done on time. Can we alter the way that we use them?

Do they just have be used for work and involve anxiety?

Quite often when I need to make a decision I set a deadline.

I may have no information about the subject or the time to research it at that moment,

but as far as I am aware it always produces a result.

The mind is much more capable than we think, fed with the right input.

business, Consultancy, Management

How To Survive The Credit Crunch

There is a great post over at Link4business http://link4business.info/2008/11/how-to-survive-the-credit-crunch. About how to deal with the payment of invoices on time. As the excerpt below explains:

Credit Control – “no sales transaction is complete until you have been paid for the goods or services you have supplied. If your customers are not paying you within the agreed timescale, be that monthly or whatever, then it’s time to call in these outstanding payments. Make sure you remind customers a few days before payment is due. Whilst a letter or email could do I personally favour a quick telephone call along the lines of “Payment for our invoice 123456 is due next week, can you confirm that you have no queries and that we can expect payment on time?”

If you don’t receive the payment then wait a day or two to allow for genuine postal delays – these do happen – and follow up with another call. Be polite but firm and don’t be fobbed off with excuses. Remember, other suppliers will also be chasing payment and if your client is short of cash they will get paid first.”

Of course a very simple point to remember in all this. If somebody has got no money, it does not matter what you do, it is not possible to get it back. Hence why a online/off-line reputation is so important and paying on time if you want to keep your credit.

Finance, Management

New Year, New Stuff

It is easy with hindsight to look back and say if only. If only the Labour government had properly regulated the financial institutions in London we might not be in this sorry state.

Hindsight is a wonderfully thing.

Of course that does not preclude any government from properly planning and preparing resources.

One must ask themselves why is it that the UK may well with in the next ten years start to suffer black outs due to inadequate planning in electricity supply. What is more surprising is that we do not even have the skills to build a modern power station. We are totally reliant on the French EDF controlled company to do it for us. If a smaller percentage of the 400 billion pounds that we spent on bailing out our high street banks at a debt of 10,000 pounds for every single person living in the UK, was to be spent on upgrading our transport infrastructure. We might than have a few more engineers that could be used for our own energy related business. Not forgetting of course that we would have a coherent and reasonable transport network like the one that our European neighbours experience.

Long term planning

Suggest long term planning to politicians here is like talking about SDP winning the next election. It is a reasonable choice, but you know it is not going to happen. May be politicians could be more accountable if they were given a free vote on all legislation in parliament. Instead of the old line of using government whips to insure the party line is met. Than people can decide for them selves way we can not regulate a bank to lend money reasonable.

It is interesting to note that Obama has chosen to keep the current defence secretary from George Bush. The question now is who is he more accountable to Obama, the Republicans or the American public. A shrewd move indeed.

Consultancy, Relationship, SMO

You Got 7 Seconds To Do It – Hot Data

7 Comments

I have been reading the IOD magazines in my Christmas break and they have got an interesting article on e-commerce. They claim that you have got seven seconds to capture and interest your visitor. With so much content online these days the old maxim that content, content, content would guarantee a number of visitors is yesterdays news. Why?

First it takes time to produce quality content, not only do you have to be well informed you also need an opinion. Even if you have these two aspects it may not be enough. Writing content is an art as Sherrilynne over at Strive Pr can explain. Is it cheap to produce quality content? Hell no, even the most established bloggers such as Dosh Dosh require an indeterminate amount of time to write and check there content before it goes on there website. Other bloggers or companies employ other people do it for them. Which ultimately costs money instead of time.

Is Content King? Nope. A few months ago I looked at setting up a debt recovery business. In my research I was staggered to find so much quality content already on the net . I could have written till I was blue in the face with original content. I do not think that that my debt recovery website would have got on to the golden first page of google results for debt as a search word. As Chris Barling, in the IOD article also CEO of e-commerce software company Actinic, explains: “People try to trick Google, but it’s very good at finding relevant sites.

So what to do? Owen and I have been talking too about this problem recently and we do believe there is a solution. It does not lay in the content that you produce. Although original content is beneficial. It is no longer about one certain area but the concept as a whole. You can now buy a very respectable website for £1000 pounds. Unless it is geared to engage your market in all honesty you are better spending the money on hosting a wine and cheese evening for your potential customers . The only problem with that is, in a time poor world you are severely limiting your market and my 7 seconds was up long ago.

development, Relationship

The Plus and Minus of Groups

Why join a Group?

To share an interest, discover more about something? There are hundreds of groups from writers to sport fans all blogging on the internet. There are groups within groups such as Face book, and than for example the David Bowie group page. There you have a public and private group. You could just join David Bowie website group instead of the facebook group. Interesting!

What can you add to a group?

What do you expect from a group?

What groups are worth pursuing? Is there communication within the group? Do they achieve anything?

How can you tell?

First know what you want from the group and than start by asking questions.

Marketing

Spam by any other name…

2 Comments

I came across any interesting post at well written words about spam where a reader left a comment that ultimately had nothing to offer to the site or the readers of the site. This is not your simply increase seize, or earn a million pounds spam. This is one where the reader believes mistakenly he has something to offer.

I came across something similar here on this blog, In the following email I received about this site

Hello Leo,
I came across your blog through Entrecard and I am impressed with the content and design of it. I think you might be interested in promoting PrintPlace.com through our Affiliate Program. Typically the type of readers for a business oriented blog such as yours are interested in business related products; all businesses great and small have professional printing needs. Located in Dallas, Texas, PrintPlace.com is centrally positioned and offers a wide breadth of products and excellent quality and turnaround times to businesses and consumers alike.

PrintPlace.com’s affiliate program, hosted through the Commission Junction Network, offers an 18% commission on sales with a 90 day cookie duration. We make seasonal links available as well as blog content for bloggers. Please feel free to contact me for more information and details on how to join our program.

Thank you and have a terrific holiday season,
Trisha Fawver, Affiliate Manager, PrintPlace.com

The problem I have with this is, why would I want to do it?

What is the business benefit to me?

First I have to install their link or banner costing me time and other advertising. Is there product applicable to my website? Well as it is USA Texas print company, I think not. It might be fine if 80 percent of my readers lived in taxes but this is the first time the word Texas is mentioned on the site.

She then goes on and thinks I might be interested in promoting her business free. What kind numb-skull is she? If she wanted to buy banner space or was offering some kind compensation for the work done than maybe. All I have is all the work and all the risk. Does she really expect that I am going to be interested?