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.  

NAS Drive or Server, Which Should You Choose?

One of the personality traits that the military and airlines look for in pilots is a combination of perseverance and dedication to perfection.  There is a slang for this, and yes most people just say I am a little xxxx retentive.

When you put that together with a guy who has started several different businesses including a business focused on small business technology, some people think they have found their “go to guy” when they have a technology question.  A good portion of the calls I get from clients have nothing to do with my current business, instead they are related to one of my past businesses.  Since this question is a regular one, and not everyone has my number, I thought I would share a little knowledge about Small Business Servers, Windows Home Server and NAS systems.  My apologies to those computer support people reading this.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

What Will Your Retirement Be Like?

Will You Spend Retirement At The Beach?

I was having a conversation with one of the people I work with pretty regularly.  He is getting close to retirement so we discussed all kinds of interesting things.  He doesn’t have any children and has no desire to leave a “legacy” behind.  He is worth over a million dollars and has a healthy retirement account.

The conversation started off with his house.  He wants to sell it and buy a nicer place on the water somewhere with a very large down payment.  Because the market is down he thinks this is a good time to buy.  I couldn’t agree more.  Then he took a tangent I never expected.  He wants to take out a reverse mortgage where the payments he gets will cover the first mortgage until he dies.  Ideally he figures that when he dies he will have nothing in his home for equity.  The house will just go to the bank.

So I asked what happens if he needed the equity to buy into an assisted living facility or had some other major expense come up, or what if he outlived the reverse mortgage and had to start making payments again.  He didn’t have an answer.  He was more worried about getting to enjoy every penny, or to put it into his words, “be a mega consumer”.