Are The "While We're At Its" Killing Your Day?

The Four Hour Christmas Tree and Train

Have you ever had one of those days where you felt like you didn’t get anything done?  One of those days where you are sitting at dinner an hour late and can’t seem to remember actually doing anything?

Have you ever had a project take several times longer than expected?  Something you thought would take a day and it took a week or maybe even longer.  

Does this happen to you on a regular basis?  It used to happen to me all the time.  When I ran a custom home electronics company, something most people would call a “Home Theater” business, it plagued us regularly,  The builders we worked with called it the “While we are at its”.  During construction the homeowner would see something they missed or didn’t like and decide to change it mid stream and poof, two days are added to the project.  

Grow A Small Business By Doing Less

In today’s market, small business owners have more going on than ever.  If you have a small business you are probably wondering “What is going on?”  You probably feel like there are so many opportunities, that you can’t possibly handle them all, and if you don’t handle them, you might be wondering how you are going to stay in business.

I have a lot of friends and customers who feel just like you do.  After doing a lot of research to understand how some small businesses make it and others don’t, I found something.

Scott Bourquin in 68' Mustang GT

It is pretty typical for a business owner to fail once, twice or more before really hitting their stride.  I wondered why that was.  I know I fall into this category.  When I took over my dad’s little mail order auto parts business, I didn’t know anything about anything in business.  I knew I had parts for 67’ and 68’ Mustangs, and a couple of customers who owned 67’ and 68’ Mustangs. 

Build the Most From the Least

This weekend I came home from Houston Texas with a plaque that I couldn’t have earned a few years ago.  This might sound a little funny, but bear with me for a moment.  If you run a business, you need a hobby.  Sometimes your hobby is purely an outlet of stress, other times it is a place where you can let your mind do some background processing and clarify problems you have in life or in your business.  This is how successful people see a way around obstacles in life.  Sometimes, your hobby is a reflection of the problems in your life that need to be corrected.

One of my longer term hobbies has been racing in the 24Hours of LeMons series.  No, that isn’t a spelling error, it really is lemons.  The cars are junk, literally junk. 

The idea in the 24 Hours of Lemons is that you are supposed to take a junk car that you paid $500 or less for, and race it.  There are a lot of safety rules and track rules and team rules.  When my friend and business associate, Gabrielle Magno of Maxxom Communications in Houston and I first came up with the idea for the team, we both tried to do everything.  We couldn’t get other people to help or pay money to be on the team.  Just like many small businesses, we were targeting the wrong customer base.  Just because someone is our friend, it doesn’t make them a team member.

Determination

This is been a very cool week for me, I was able to do something I never expected to do. Well I shouldn't say I never expected do it, I should say that nobody else expected that I could do it, or really no one expected that I would do it.  Up until a few years ago I was one of those people who was always letting myself down.  I would say that I would to something big, and never get to it.  I just made excuses.

Now that it's been over a year since the book So Now What?  has been on the market, I was starting to get a little frustrated. I have been grinding and pushing to get anybody of any value to look at the book. Finally, a couple of months ago, Jim Pawlak agreed that he would look at it clearly stating that it only had a 1 in 40 chance of him even reading it and much less of it getting reviewed.  After Mr. Pawlak, two more people agreed to "consider it".

Almost one year to the day after the book was published, the San Jose Business Journal online was the first to publish Jim Pawlak's review. I had no idea that he read it and wrote a review, so getting the google alert was very exiting.  If you don't know what a google alert is, stay tuned.  I will tell you how to use them and why they are so important.

The 366 Method of Daily Planning

Today is one of those days where I really enjoy being in a business that helps other people. The entire reason that I went into business was to help other people avoid the mistakes in business I made. The more businesses that I can help and the more people that I can help, the better we all do. The mistakes I made are way too common in business and way too expensive to ignore.

I got an e-mail this morning with a great question. It was from a guy that I met in Scottsdale Arizona at a marketing conference. His question was this: "I have a problem staying focused on my daily tasks and I'm wondering if you have any tips to help me get work on things done."

Are You Too Busy To Make Money?

It amazes me to see how many business owners and sales people are “too busy” to make money.  Are you too busy to make money?  Most of them know and can clearly spell out what they need to do to get ahead and yet they don't do it.  Why is that?  Do you know anyone like that?  Are you that person?

The path to high achievement and success isn't a secret.  If you are a sales person or a baseball player, your path is a path of practice and numbers.  The more you practice the better you get and the more you swing at the ball the more you will get the hits.  What stops most people from achieving more is they hit their personal limit for the strikes or the “no” responses people give them.  Many others hit their goal and settle into a comfort zone.  Either way progress stops.

Stay Focused for Success

Some time ago, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine wrote the now infamous article about "the long tail". He argued that the music industry needed to have broad based "hits" and serve narrow "niches". How does this apply to staying focused for success or Internet marketing for an attorney in Fresno, California or an Aston-Martin dealer in Scottsdale (or Scotsdale as I have been known to spell it) Arizona?

The long tail theory applies to smaller businesses and Internet marketing in a very direct way. Successful Internet marketing only happens when you know exactly how people are looking for you. The search engines are smart, but if they were perfect, they would match the right website to the right person every time and Internet advertising would die along with their key source of revenue (and mine).

Are you choosing success today?

This holiday season has been different for everyone.  New home construction in our area has come to an almost standstill in the new economy.  Two years ago, the builders that we worked with were closing a house a week or better, in 2009 it bottomed at one a month with one builder closing his doors and retiring.  Right now we have three new home construction projects on the board for the next two quarters.  Two years ago, that would have been a weeks worth of work on the big board.