Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Improve Your Business Just a Little Each Day


As a business owner, it is sometimes hard to sit down and read a book.  Most of the business owners I work with try to read something that helps their business and they don’t always get through it.  The chapters are too long or they just run out of time.
Over the weekend I sat down with a book that had very short chapters.  Most of them three pages, four if they had a cartoon included.  This is an easy book to keep on your desk and read just one chapter each day before you start work.  
The Daily Drucker was the first book I read this way.  Before that I had used Benjamin Franklins method for self improvement.  Not to the letter, but the same plan.  Each week I would work on just one thing.  Ben Franklin created four personal resolutions, and from those thirteen virtues.  He would work on one virtue each week.
As a business coach this method works  very well when the students take it to heart.  Sometimes they want to fix everything now.  All that does is teach us the habit of failure.  The Daily Drucker was the longer course with simpler lessons.  The truth is I usually only did two or three “daily” items each week.  I think I needed more work than Drucker expected.



Sunday, November 6, 2011

If You Cut Your Costs To Zero, That Is What Your Business Will Be.


Step Back And Get A Better View

So what is more important, making more money or having the lowest costs?  Every business owner takes a different approach to managing the finances of the business.  If you read the business section of just about any paper, there is some one talking about how to reduce costs, or some executive blaming higher costs.  Generally when I work with business owners, I have very little influence on cutting costs so I focus on how to make more money with what they have.