Archive for Rants
The Art of Compromise Helps Your Home Based Business
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Ok, this a bit of a rant. But there’s a lesson here too for your home based business.
If you’re like me, you probably remember your parents and teachers saying something like, "you can’t always have your own way." That comment may have been followed by, "stop being so stubborn." Or, maybe it was, "why do you always have to be so selfish?"
Let me rant first and get it out. If you look at our politicians, what you mostly see is exactly the opposite of what we were told as kids. BOTH parties are playing this game of "It Has to be MY Way." Instead of compromise and progress, there’s bickering and stalemate. And the country is suffering.
What does this have to do with your home based business? Everything! Even if the only person in your business is you, you can’t always have your own way. There are other people effected by your decisions. Your customers, suppliers, and maybe the people you’re sharing the house with. You have to be willing to negotiate, listen to the other party, give a little. Maybe even once in a while let the other person have everything they want.
The art of compromise is understanding what is important. Do you really need everything to be your way or do you care more about the quality of the outcome?
If you find yourself always insisting on "your way". you may be losing customers and important relationships along the way. You may be winning the battles, but losing the war. Is it really worth it?
Congress Creating Hardships for Home Based Businesses
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For the record, I’m neither a Republican nor Democrat. I’ve been a registered Independent since I was 18. I’ve always voted for a person, not a party. And yes, I’ve voted for D’s and R’s both.
Starting and running a business is difficult. There are new challenges everyday and there’s always uncertainty. That’s true whether you have a home based business or one run out of an office somewhere. During the last 18 months, Congress has added to that uncertainty and is making it much more difficult for those of us who run businesses.
How so? Lets start with the healthcare bill. One of the reasons for passing the bill was to reduce costs. And yet, what we’re hearing from across the country is that premiums are going up 20-30%. That money comes right out of our bottom line. And it’s not that most of us will get anything more for the higher premium.
And we get hit a second way. Not only do our higher premiums come out of our pocket, our customers may have disposable income, so they can buy less from us.
There’s also uncertainty over Cap and Trade. Economists say that if passed, this bill will increase all energy costs. Since we work at home, that impacts us more directly than the person who works in an office and can adjust their thermostat during the day to save on costs. Will this pass? I don’t know, but Congress continues to discuss it without making a decision.
The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year. Congress has known about this for month, but has done nothing about it. Will taxes rise next year? I don’t know, but my point is that Congress is talking instead of doing.
So what’s the point? With all the unknowns and the uncertainty caused by Congress, it makes it harder to run our businesses. Setting prices becomes hard, especially if you have long term contracts. Deciding how to invest in your business becomes hard because you don’t know what will happen to your customers buying pattern. Money you spend today won’t be available as a reserve for tomorrow. If you guess wrong, you may miss an opportunity, or might even go out of business.
And remember, this impacts not only you, but your customers. The more uncertain they are about their economic future, the more incentive they have to save instead of spend.
What can you do? If you have a home based business, contact your elected representatives. Find out how they intend to vote? Find out when they expect to make some decisions that will take away some of our uncertainty. Push them. Get involved. Why? Because the health and success of your home based business is at stake.
Lessons for Your Home Business from Bernie Maddoff
Posted by: | CommentsYou’ve probably heard about Bernie Maddoff. He just went to jail for creating a 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme and will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
In case you don’t know what a Ponzi scheme is, here’s a quick overview:
Investors are enticed to put up money based on the promise of above average returns. The promoter gives a good sounding story about how the returns will be generated. People hear about the rate of return and want to join.
The reality is there is no investment. The first investors get their money from the investments made by later investors. Eventually the scheme, or pyramid, collapses.
Bernie’s story made all the newspapers but the truth is this process gets played out everyday in a much smaller way.
Lets say you get a credit card and you make a few purchases. When it comes time to make the payment, you only make the minimum. You keep that up, paying the minimum payment each month. Then something happens, maybe you lose your job or your expenses go up. You don’t have the money to make even the minimum payment.
Fortunately, you have another credit card that allows for cash advances. You take an advance and make a payment on the first card.
Next month, still no money so there’s another advance. Only this month you now have two payments – 2 credit cards.
You can see where this is going. Unless you increase your income or reduce your expenses, you’ll never catch up. In which case, I hope you know a good bankruptcy attorney.
Two lessons from all of this:
First: Be sure you manage your debt appropriately so you don’t end up in this situation.
Second: The US government is giving away billions as part of a stimulus plan. Next year’s deficit is estimated at 1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS. Estimates for the next 10 years show budget deficits every year … Even with significant tax increases. My reading of this says the only stimulus available to small business is the one we create for ourselves.
NOW is the time to start your own business.
NOW is the time to set it up properly.
NOW is the time to be sure it’s run for extremely high profits and sustainability.
The government may be there to help us out, but I’d rather be prepared to provide my own bailout.
How about you?
Who’s Going to Stimulate Your Home Based Business?
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Are you tired yet of hearing about all the billions being spent as part of the "stimulus" package? Billions for Wall Street. Billions for big banks. Billions for Detroit. Billions and billions of our kids’ money. AND THERE’S NO ACCOUNTABILITY!!
Ok, lets step back for a moment. What Congress says (and this is BOTH parties) is, these businesses are too big to fail. Maybe that’s true, I’m not an economist. But the reality is, over half the businesses in the US are home based. The government says the majority of jobs are created by small business. So where is our stimulus??
Hello????
Is anybody listening? No!!
The focus in Washington isn’t on us. It’s on all these big businesses who have loud voices in Washington. You’d think someone would stop and think. With all the trillions of dollars (yes, that’s trillions with a capital "T") being spread around, you’d think some would go to stimulate the parts of the economy that will actually make a difference … Small and home based businesses.
Yeah, I know. The banks are supposed to help us. Right. Have you called your bank recently and asked for money to start a business or to even expand the one you have? What did your banker say? Probably not something like, "I can have that money in your account today.
So that means we need to find our own ways. There’s no handout, bailout, support, or anything coming from Washington for us.
And you know what? That’s actually fine with me. I don’t want someone looking over my shoulder. I don’t want to feel obligated to anyone. I don’t want anyone getting in my way. I want to run my business. But it would be nice to know that my kids won’t have to pay back lots of money that didn’t stimulate anything other than someone’s sense that they needed to do something, without thinking about the best way to do it.