11.11.09
Posted in General Management at 20:07 by lnxwalt
If you are at all aware of the world around you, you know that the U.S. and most of the world is experiencing an economic downturn. As part of our national response, the government has pumped billions or even trillions of dollars into keeping the financial industries going, including commercial banks, savings banks, credit unions, consumer finance companies, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, and investment banks. They have even jawboned these companies, telling them to help keep consumers in their homes in the hope that arresting the mortgage slide would enable people to once again borrow against their properties and spend money. In other words, the Bush and Obama administrations’ hope for recovery is based on a return to the asset price bubble of the past twenty to thirty years.
This should scare you. Because when you hear “recovery is coming, recovery is coming”, what you should hear is we are going to make sure that we get a truly devastating and unique economic depression. Unique because nearly every depression in the past two hundred years was deflation-based. To have one where most prices are deflating, while certain prices (energy, for example, and very likely food) are rapidly inflating will be even more devastating. Just wait until sales of almost everything fall through the floor (I’m talking double-digit percentage drops, something we have not seen since at least the 1930s) as people see prices decline, yet food and fuel prices run in the other direction with almost the same speed. Some won’t be able to afford to buy food, while farmers won’t be able to sell food for prices high enough to cover their costs.
This, of course, will lead to some civil unrest. I’m hoping this is peaceful: protest marches about the availability and pricing of food and fuel (and jobs), rather than some kind of violence. I still remember watching some of the college protests on television in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As an elementary school student, this was quite frightening. Were these crazed and violent people coming to burn down our homes and schools and kill us? (This inability to put events into proper perspective is another reason why children should not be watching television or browsing the Internet without parent supervision, including some discussions that bring historical context to the situation.) You and I can help to minimize the disruption of these things by reducing our dependence upon outside resources–plant a garden, so you can raise a portion of your own food requirements; put aside some water and canned foods, including food for your dogs and cats; get a first aid kit; get some blankets and store them with the rest of your emergency supplies–and by helping to ensure that our family members, friends, and neighbors are also provided for.
But you should not allow the government, the financial industries, and their media servants to deceive you. Stop listening to them, or even better, listen with a critical ear. When someone announces that the recession is ending, ask yourself how gross domestic product can begin to increase when 70% of that figure comes from consumer purchases, and consumers are still losing hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. And then ask yourself why they would attempt to fool you into believing that things are getting better if the economy is clearly still down in the dumps?
Are you getting it yet? Perhaps the financial industries have some control over the politicians. I’m not suggesting anything illegal, such as kickbacks. Instead, I’m suggesting that campaigning for office is increasingly expensive. As the largest beneficiary of government handouts over the past couple of years, and as the beneficiary of such laws as the 2005 Bankruptcy Elimination Act, the financial industries wield enormous power in Washington. They have a lot to gain and a lot to lose.
Rather than allowing the government / financial industry / media message to influence you, block it out. Use your brain and think for yourself. Do not allow anyone–least of all someone on the Internet that you haven’t even personally met–to do your thinking for you.
Because if you think for yourself, you will quickly realize that you should be cutting your consumption and putting away some reserves for the near future. But here’s something else you should be thinking about: if there is a food or water shortage and you obviously aren’t being affected, your neighbors will kill you and take your food and water. Piling up guns and ammo won’t help either, because some of your neighbors can match your firepower. Instead, your preservation plan should include your neighborhood’s residents and even your town’s government.
Back in the 1930s, nearly everyone had an uncle who had a farm. Families could send their teens and young adults to help Uncle Jim in Kansas, even though he didn’t really need any more “help”. This meant that they’d have food to eat and some tasks to keep them busy, keeping them from becoming hobos or joining the “roam from town to town looking for work” brigade. Now, very few of us have that connection, so we have to find ways to reduce our dependence on “the system” for our basic needs. The political and economic system of this nation is buckling under the corrosive effects of undue influence by corporations of all kinds, and the entrenched power brokers are not going to easily surrender their control. It could take between two and ten years for their power and influence to be torn away by the continuing economic crisis.
And, no, I’m not advising anyone to turn into the kind of survivalists that head for Idaho with a cache of food and guns. Again, if things ever got that bad, your weapons are not going to be sufficient to keep everyone else out. Nor should you be piling up gold–you cannot eat or drink gold, so it won’t help if basic survival is in question–or other ‘barter-type’ assets to trade for food and water. Instead, your focus should be on getting through a moderately difficult period (but more difficult than today) for a period of two to five years. In that length of time, you will exhaust your stored food and water, so your plan should include marshalling the resources to replenish those necessities.
As individuals, you should be working out what you need to do to ensure that your family gets through. But if your family is anything like mine, don’t think that telling everyone to cut spending and save up is going to help. Neither, in this age of apartment dwellers, is telling everyone to start a garden or raise chickens and rabbits. Instead, you have to be like Joseph in Egypt, preparing the way for your family members, friends, and neighbors to also get through the rough spot. As with Joseph, this isn’t a reason to brag or be bossy, but to understand that God is positioning you to help preserve your family, your friends, and your neighbors.
Again, you have to shut your ears to the message they want to send you. Use your own eyes, ears, and mind, and you will make better decisions. You really have to be like a small child who puts his fingers in his ears and says, “La, la, la, la. I’m not listening.”
One more thing I want to add. I really don’t think it will be big business and big government that gets us out of this economic mess. I think it depends upon you and I to start and / or grow our own small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) and to put people in our localities to work in productive jobs. It depends upon us finding local (or at least domestic) suppliers and products. It depends upon us using our brains and not allowing someone else’s agenda-influenced news to dissuade us from preparing.
…..
IceRocket tags: Economy, Econolypse
Technorati tags: Economy, Econolypse
=-=-=-=-=
Powered by Bilbo Blogger
Permalink
10.30.09
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 02:34 by lnxwalt
When The World Changes Around You, You Must Change With It
Many times, when we are starting a business, we start with what we already know. We act as though the world we live in has always been the same, and that the business models that our former employers utilized are necessarily the best ones for us. A look at the history of the world’s climate should be enough to remove that idea.
Just as the Vikings found Greenland a warm and hospitable place 1,000 years ago, but were driven out by cold temperatures a few hundred years later as part of a changing climate, so too yesterday’s business models were built upon the social, legal and economic situation in the preceding years, and the business models of today are likewise built upon the social, legal, and economic situation of the recent past. What exists today may not work in a decade, simply because the world is not the same place today as it was ten years ago, and it won’t be the same place ten years from now as it is now.
Newspaper Example
Fifty years ago, publishing a newspaper was a high-margin business. The returns were high, and the barriers to entry were also high. This enabled thousands of local papers to support large editorial, production, and distribution staffs. But the world was changing. First of all, there had been two world wars and a global economic depression within the previous two or three generations, so the nation was now aware that people needed to be aware of overseas events. This really made wire services, such as UPI and the AP, an important part of a paper’s story collection process. Social and economic change was coming to the nation, too. And radio and the new thing, television, were starting to provide news at no cost to the audience.
Thirty years ago, the newspaper industry was starting to show the first signs of pressure. In major cities, the Justice Dept. started allowing two major local papers to share production (printing) and distribution operations, as long as their editorial operations remained competitors. Twenty-five years ago, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner closed down, leading to an exceptionally profitable few years at their rival Los Angeles Times. But KNXT-TV2 (now KCBS) added local news broadcasts from 4:30 PM until the network news. Local AM radio stations KFWB (960 kHz) and KNX (1070 kHz) were and are all-news stations, with sports, traffic, and all the top stories of local or national significance covered every half hour. Again, this comes without any out-of-pocket costs to their listeners.
In the late 1990s, Time Warner, which is both a publisher and a broadcaster, saw the rise of the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, and knew they needed to be involved. They launched Pathfinder. Over the next few years, they and other media companies experimented with models: paid subscribers only, split access (some for paid, some for unpaid with memberships, some for anyone), ad-supported sites, and e-mail blasts (with or without an actual web-resident story). With few exceptions, none of those has worked out–the papers are looking for something with high enough returns to allow them to keep their cost structures, and it isn’t going to work.
Now you will hear publishers blaming the Web for their losses: “If it wasn’t for sites like Google and Yahoo plastering our headlines and story summaries on their sites, we’d be able to charge people to read our stories,” they say. Unfortunately, that isn’t really true. Google and Yahoo generally link back to the original site, so that people who choose to read it see whatever advertising or “buy a subscription” messages the paper chooses to put up. There are definitely content-stealing sites (they also plague bloggers, such as myself) but they aren’t the major reason that papers are in trouble–the world has changed, and they are still trying to live somewhere that no longer exists.
Rationale
In my business classes when I was in college, I learned that high returns tend to attract new entrants into the market. But they also seem to attract competition from “replacement products”. For example, if the price of automobiles gets too high, people can purchase other products and services to get them from point A to point B, including bicycles, motorcycles, skateboards, hang gliders, commuter rail lines, bus routes, running / jogging / walking and so on.
Likewise, high costs of entry tend to keep competitors out of the market, raising prices and profits. In the case of the newspaper industry, the high capital costs of printing plants tended to keep the number of competitors low. The broadcasting industry is also fairly capital intensive, what with the limited availability of licenses, the cost of transmitters and antennas, and the constant flow of electricity. Building a business in a field with high capital costs and high barriers to entry tends to be profitable, unless something changes. When change comes, it often sweeps away even entrenched companies.
Cruise Control
In effect, our entire business has been pretty much on cruise control … for the past several months we’ve been neglecting many important tasks and just letting our business coast. –Steve from MyWifeQuitHerJob.com
A successful business has a business model that is working. Such a business also has a number of other factors working on its behalf, including some that the owner(s) and manager(s) may not know about. For example, the United States automobile industry benefited from a combination of the legal environment, the economy in the 1900 to 1970 period, a huge unified market, and wide availability of (motor) fuels. It wasn’t necessarily the quality of their products or their management prowess that made Detroit the world leader in motor vehicles. When things changed, these companies started a long-term decline that continues to this day.
Operating your business successfully means taking an occasional look at your market and at the situation that supports your business. You want to understand what circumstances are contributing to your company’s success, so that you will be aware when changes could upend it. Your business model can be considered a simple sentence or two that describes how you make (or intend to make) money. For example, the model for Twitter, the popular “micro-blogging” service, could be described this way: get as many users as possible, while raising lots of venture capital, then figure out what to do about earning money. (NOTE: This probably won’t work for you, so don’t even think about it.) Anyway, remember that there is more to your success or failure than your good looks or smart decision-making, and if those things change, your business could be on the rocks like the auto companies were.
It is important that you have a clear idea in mind of what your business will do to make money, your business model. If your plan is to make money when people walk into your store to buy products, emphasize that in the choices and decisions you make. If your plan is to sell products to the stores, so the stores will have something to sell, then make sure to prioritize this in your decisions and choices. Your product line may change, your industry may change, but if you don’t understand your business model, you will still find it difficult to succeed.
IceRocket tags: Small Business Management
small business management
Powered by ScribeFire.
Permalink
01.29.09
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 03:01 by lnxwalt
Healthy Sacrifices We Made To Start Our Online Business | MyWifeQuitHerJob.com
There are only 24 hours in a day so something in your schedule usually has to give in order to find the time to start your own business. When my wife and I first started our online business, both of us had full time jobs which left only about 3 hours of free time on weekdays and 2 full days on the weekends.
As a result, we had to make some sacrifices in order make time for the business. To make matters even worse, my wife was pregnant so there were always certain days when she simply didn’t feel up to working on anything.
I recommend that you read the entire linked article first, then return here.
Okay, now that you’ve read it, I don’t have to repeat most of the same points. You know that you have limited time, limited energy, limited attention, limited space, and limited funds. If, as is likely, your business requires more of these resources, you will have to cut back on using those resources for other things. In the case of the family at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, they had to make concessions and adjustments that included limiting television time. For you, it may be XBox time or Internet time that you have to limit.
Because every family and every business is a little different, I won’t presume to tell you what you need to include in your own self-examination. Simply look at the resources that you have available and compare them to what you would like to make available to the business. If the business is not getting as much of resource X as you would like it to get, examine your allocation of that resource. Every small, locally-owned business (SLOB) needs this kind of examination from time to time.
IceRocket: small business
small business
Permalink
01.11.09
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 19:34 by lnxwalt
What If You Never Make Money by Blogging?
I ask this question because I see people getting into this blogging industry and starting a make money online blog to make money. They think that is how money is made online. In all true honesty, if you think that you are an IDIOT. Yup you are. I have experienced and I am sure a lot of you guys will agree with me that blogs are not the direct source of income. It can become a main source of income but that is in a very long run. So what motivates you for the long run… It is actually a pain in the ass to get up and write daily or weekly. Why would you do it?
I’ve been blogging now for a couple of years. I very early ran into the “blogging for buck$” sites. I quickly noticed that they all seemed to be about–you guessed it–blogging for buck$. I also noticed that it was like the ads you see in those start-a-biz magazines. You can do this part-time, at home, and you’ll soon be living a life of luxury. Well, my take on the whole thing is this: I don’t want to work from home in my underwear. I want to produce products and services that benefit others, and to earn a fair income as a result.
Yes, search engine optimization is important. Yes, engaging, informative content is important. Yes, it is important to have advertising (it actually adds credibility). And if you want to have readers, promotional activities are also important. But if you want money, get a job at your local grocery store or something. If you are excited about sharing your area of focus, your personal life, and the inside scoop on what is happening in your business, start a weblog.
That said, I love the way that being on the Web enabled me to become–in some small measure–a publisher. It started with one ‘publication’ on Blogger, and one on WordPress.com. From there, it became two on each of those platforms, plus several on this domain. I still have my regular job, so there are months where I barely have the time (or connectivity, in some places I go) to post at all. But all in all, this has been a great experience for me. I feel that I am developing better communication skills, and that it is easier for potential employers or clients to find me and to actually see what I have been doing.
Which is why I find it so puzzling when one of those work-at-home companies contacts me, saying “We found your resume on Monster, and we believe you’d be perfect for our innovative money-making program…”. If you really read my resume, if you did a Web search, you would see that multilevel marketing, outbound telemarketing, and collections jobs are not for me. Yes, I will do some calling when I have to for my own business, but if you’re going to try to convince me that your job is for me, at least search on Google or Yahoo! to find out what I do before you contact me.
To answer Syed Balkhi’s question, would you still blog if you never got paid for it, yes I would. I have never gotten paid for it, and that was never my objective in the first place.
blogging for bucks
Permalink
01.05.09
Posted in General Management at 05:47 by lnxwalt
In a world where we are constantly bombarded with advertising (“buy this, buy that”) and media celebrities telling us what to do and think (“fight global warming, support our troops”), it is very easy to lose track of what we should be doing. You did not start your own business so that you could be stampeded and panicked into losing everything when the big corporations got into trouble. Therefore, you must get back to the basics of what you do.
Your task is to satisfy your customers enough that they continue to spend their dwindling resources in your business. You should be, first of all, talking to your customers about their buying plans and especially about their experiences in their dealings with your business. Go ahead and ask them what they liked, what they did not like, and how you can do things to make them feel better about doing business with you. But do not just talk about it–evaluate the things they tell you to decide what you can implement.
One thing you should be doing is training your employees. First of all, train them to serve the customers’ needs. They should smile, ask how the customer is doing (but only if they really mean it). If your employees do not care about the customers, you need to make it clear that the only reason those jobs are there is because someone buys your product or service. Employees should also learn to care about one another. You’ll know when that happens once employee B comes in for employee A’s shift, because employee A’s babysitter didn’t show up. But most important, in my view, your employees need to see that you care about their well-being. This is not about some kind of pop psychology touchy-feely thing.
Simply put, employees need to know that they matter to you for more than just how many burgers they make or how many orders of fries they upsell. Let them know that you have dozens of people every week showing up and asking for job applications, but you keep the employees you have because you enjoy working with them. This means that you have to get rid of that ‘no outside conversations’ rule. Let them talk about little Billy’s soccer games and little Mary’s science projects. Ask about the mother-in-law that lives in their homes. Don’t do it as some kind of manipulation thing. Do it because caring for others is the right thing to do.
Evaluate your product mix, your pricing, your expenses, your location, and the image your business projects. Given the increased competition for every last dollar of your customers’ incomes, would you be better off if you changed some things?
A lot of the companies you pass every day will be gone in the next year or two. If yours is going to avoid the same fate, you have to start focusing now on ways to survive.
Permalink
12.14.08
Posted in General Management at 22:04 by lnxwalt
The last couple of weeks, I’ve been reminded once again how important it is to have some preparations in place for devastating events. For example, if your home burns, how do you put a roof over your head? How do you get the resources needed to bounce back? Whether tornado, earthquake, hurricane, flood, or fire, a devastating event can ruin your day, your week, your month.
I was in Ohio earlier this year. Tornado warning sirens went off, but being a Californian, I did not know what they were. Fortunately, the people upstairs had a television that had a very loud set of instructions (find a room with no windows or outside walls, and stay there until the ‘all clear’ is announced). The lesson? Learn about the common devastating events in the areas where you expect to go, and the appropriate responses for those events.
You will notice that I keep referring to “devastating events”, not to “disasters”. This is intentional. A devastating event is an event that causes devastation and severe damage in your home, family, business, or employer. A disaster is a devastating event which is widespread enough that the government says “this is disasterous”. You can expect a devastating event to occur, whether it is a sewer backup that makes your home unlivable for an extended time period, a storm that blows your roof off, or a car that comes crashing into your daughter’s bedroom. These devastating events won’t usually be large enough to attract government attention, but their impact on your life and the lives of your family members and friends can be just as enormous as the impact of a large hurricane or major earthquake.
I visited the mobile home park in Sylmar where about 500 homes were burned. I can honestly say that I have never before seen such utter devastation. This is what I would imagine Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like in 1945. Looking at that has me thinking about ways to prepare for such an event.
Although the insurance industry tends to try to get out of their obligations during disasters, keep in mind that government aid is extremely limited. Your only chance of fixing your problems is to have sufficient insurance to cover most or all of your damage. Contact your state insurance regulators to find out what coverages may be available. Be sure to ask about state or federal disaster-event coverages, such as flood insurance or earthquake insurance.
The truth is, you have to start where you are. Do you have an off-site location where you could store resources (food, water, clothing, pet food [both canned and kibble], blankets, medical supplies, money, prepaid mobile phones under a different carrier than your usual one, an external hard drive with encrypted copies of your important files on it, and both digital and paper copies of important legal documents) so you’ll can utilize them if a devastating event destroys items stored at your residence? Are your files stored in open standard data formats (such as OpenDocument Format, text, and HTML/XHTML), so that you aren’t limited to a particular software application or operating system during a really bad time of your life? Do you have money and other resources that you are not presently using and which could be stored off-site? (Money recommendation: use your locally-owned bank for most of your needs, but have a small account with a state-wide or nationwide bank just-in-case. You should not have more than $100 in cash at any time, and generally quite a bit less.)
What can you start doing to reduce the damage from a devastating event? Can you strap your water heater to the wall, so it can’t topple during an earthquake? Purchase a fire-resistant box for most of your important documents? Learn where your utility service connections are and how to shut them down if necessary. Check out federal, state, and local government websites for disaster-preparedness information. Take a look at what you have and what is around you. Look at where you are, and make appropriate preparations.
While most of the above is directed toward your personal life, the truth is, your business will also be affected by a devastating event, should one occur. And your business will have even fewer government resources available. Once again, insurance, preparation, and mitigation are key to survival.
DISCLAIMER: This is not official information from any government agency, employer, or company. These are common-sense guidelines. You should contact your state or local disaster-response agency for more information about what you should be doing to prepare for disasters.
disaster preparation
Permalink
11.11.08
Posted in General Management, Political, Small Business at 23:24 by lnxwalt
Starting, growing, and operating a small business is an all-encompassing job. It includes many tasks that we do not always associate with business. For example, if you are in business, you are affected by (and in turn have some minimal effect upon) the economy. You are affected by taxation. You are affected by education. You are affected by policy decisions made by pointy-headed bureaucrats, decisions that benefit LOOACs at the expense of SLOBs.
This means that any small business forum or discussion must admit that questions of faith, politics, societal improvement, and economics are germane to any competent business discussion. After all, if your faith does not influence or govern the way you run your business, you don’t really have a faith. If your voice is not allowed in a political or social discussion, then whose voice will be? If you, the provider of jobs, are not included in talks about jobs in the inner cities or jobs for ex-convicts, how can these problems be addressed? When talk turns to taxation, you, the payer of taxes, need to be the first and foremost part of the discussion.
Zoning issues, environmental regulations, safety regulations, all affect you, and not just negatively. Safety regulations, for example, reduce your insurance costs by reducing accidents and reducing the damage caused by those that do occur. Zoning can prevent “Big Blue” from opening a superstore across the street from your little grocery, or it can keep you from opening in the part of town you desire to serve. Even economic empowerment initiatives, which often involve tax subsidies for businesses that open / move into certain areas and hire local residents, affect you. This is especially true if you are already in the area and your taxes are being used to subsidize competitors who move into your market area.
Small business is an everything job. Everything you are, everything you do, everything you believe is all wrapped up in that enterprise. And if it is not, you should be thinking about how you’re going to replace your business, because you have certainly lost your hunger and desire.
Therefore, do not feel that you cannot or should not be involved in the debate around any issue, whether schools, the economy, taxes, or foreign imports. You will be among the first affected by any decision that is made, so get involved. Attend your town’s board and council meetings. You cannot hit them all, but pick one or two and hit those (school board, water district, sewer district, cemetery district, irrigation district, public power district, resource conservation district, park district, fire protection district, et cetera). If we are going to make this country run right, it is going to be small business owners that make it happen.
small business
Permalink
06.17.08
Posted in General Management at 04:26 by lnxwalt
Anthropogenic global warming is taken as a proven fact and an article of faith, but many climate and weather scientists disagree. Science, if you did not know, is a religion. This means that it may be time for the founding of non-AGW-believing branch.
The founder of The Weather Channel recently wrote a guest article on “Watts Up With That?“, a blog that debunks much pro-AGW doctrine.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences.
I read Watts Up from time to time. What I’m seeing there interests me. You see, with my main job, I go to places that are devasted by fires, floods, and earthquakes. Let me tell you, this year looks to be a busy year for me. And I’m seeing, thanks to Watts Up, that it may all be caused by the sun. Hundreds of years ago, there was a period of time we call the “little ice age” because it was so bitterly cold. It appears that the pattern of sunspots observed then resembles the pattern observed today.
The article attempts to refute much of what former Vice President Al Gore is telling us (that man’s activities are causing the earth’s temperatures to rise, and that one of the possible consequences of our activities is the extinction of our species). I’m not a weather or climate expert, so I have to rely upon what those who are experts tell me.
I saw on the news that skiing is still happening in Colorado in the middle of June. Heavy thunderstorms and rainstorms have stayed over much of the Midwest, producing tornadoes, flooding, and lots of damage. If sunspot-caused global cooling is now in session, this is what lies ahead for us over the next few years. The cool year we are experiencing in 2008 could be the blueprint for the next few years.
What can you do? There are some things you can do, and should. First of all, check to see whether you are living in a low-lying area that is prone to flooding. Are you in a floodplain? Perhaps in an area that is protected by dams and levees? If the answer is ‘yes’, you need to start working toward relocating. Remember, one wise move can save the lives of yourself and your family.
There are other things you can do. Contact your state’s disaster preparedness / response / recovery agency for information on what you can do to prepare for an event.
The important thing is that you take the time to become acquainted with the possible kinds of disaster, from fire, to earthquake, to flood, to windstorm (e.g., tornado or hurricane), to societal breakdown, to a meteorite hitting and destroying your home. Then, develop a realistic plan for dealing with each situation, including possible actions you can take beforehand to lessen the impact of the situation. Finally, act on the plan, preparing for disaster–it will come eventually, so your best bet is to be ready.
Another important thing to look into is insurance. If your home or business burned down, you’d be in a world of hurt. But with insurance, you at least have a fighting chance at getting back to where you were. Be sure to ask about the national flood insurance program and any corresponding programs for earthquakes or other big events.
Permalink
04.08.08
Posted in General Management, Small Business at 02:58 by lnxwalt
The article is here.
I believe that small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) need more help than the big guys to form tight connections with their customers. After all, a bad experience can permanently chase a customer away from a SLOB, but a nationwide fast food chain will continue to get repeat visits even when a single visit is unsatisfying.
That said, we often hear about how we need to jump on the latest fad or get left behind. The article discusses many of the requirements that you should meet before you consider starting a company blog.
Permalink
03.28.08
Posted in General Management, Industry News at 04:43 by lnxwalt
AT&T CEO says hard to find skilled U.S. workers – Yahoo! News
This is pretty rich. I’m sure you, like I, have dealt with telephone support before. Normally, company policies are so strict that they have to follow a script, even if you’ve already eliminated the causes on their list.
I was in a hotel, calling the support line for their ISP. I knew what the problem was–they were doing some construction and one of the building’s access points was no longer working–but they had me step through the whole process. The thing was, I was doing support myself, so naturally, I had already done all that they listed. Finally, after going through the whole process multiple times, the rep agreed to have someone physically check the access point after he had logged into the local system and found that he could not “see” the access point.
“We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with
the skills that are required to do these jobs,” AT&T Chief
Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San
Antonio, where the company’s headquarters is located.
So, Mr. CEO, do you really want to tell me that you cannot find people who can follow a script? If so, I suggest you run right down to the Golden Arches and hire the whole counter crew. Those employees, like yours, are given a script that must be followed, sometimes even down to specific wording. They can read and they can operate often-antiquated computer terminals. They speak English or any of a variety of other languages. They already work for low wages and few benefits, with widely varying schedules that depend primarily on the needs of the company.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as
AT&T’s repatriation of service positions and education grants,
he added.
You see, this is part of the problem with large corporations. That man behind the desk did not get his job because he already knew how to do the job. They had to train him, even if he already had education and experience, because every business and every industry is a little different and no skills are fully transferable from one to another. And even though he knows this to be true, he will swear to the day he dies that he got his position because of merit, that he was effective from day one. In other words, neither the corporation nor the people running the corporation practice reciprocity.
Corporations will take all you can do for them, while giving you the absolute minimum they can get away with, until they find someone who will accept less. At that point, they will unceremoniously dump you like yesterday’s garbage.
This is what is wrong with the American economy. Domination by self-centered corporations and by officers and investors in those corporations means that every town and city and their workforces are merely tools to be used up and then discarded to help big companies fill their essentially unlimited appetites for money, power, fame, and reputation. Through pervasive advertising, they continue to drive consumers to buy the big name product from the big name store, when the best interests of individuals and their communities is served from purchases of locally-produced goods and services through locally-owned outlets.
When I buy tools at Big Blue, the world’s largest retail chain, I am depriving my community of the money that flies out of California and over to the chain’s headquarters city in Arkansas. If those tools are made outside of my area, then funds which could have gone to support locally-owned tool producers now goes somewhere else to support their companies and residents.
And when I support politicians that allowed SBC to buy AT&T (keeping the AT&T name) and Southern Bell, I am by extension supporting self-absorbed CEOs that cannot see a skilled worker even if they bumped into one.
Do not misunderstand me. Our schools are in desperate need of improvement, and our colleges as well. But the jobs people actually get do not even use the skills of a normal high school graduate. A superabundance of managers decrees every detail of what to do and how to do it, so that a worker of average intelligence is stymied in his attempts to do a better job.
Who knows more about customer service? Some guy in corporate who never even deals with customers or the people on the front lines dealing with customers every day? I’d say it is the professionals that actually do the work, not someone who talks to a consultant or reads a book and decides that he knows how to serve customers better. Which one do you think wrote this script?
Hi, welcome to <company name>. My name is <employee first name>. May I take your order?
Or how about this one:
Hi, welcome to <company name>. Would you like to try our new <product name>? It's my favorite!
That garbage was certainly not written by anyone who actually works with customers. Yes, those were actual scripts that were used at one company I worked for years ago.
So, Mr. CEO, if you want quality customer service, hire people who actually deal with customers, and then let them hire their co-workers. Get your legions of managers and send them to a desert island without a way back. Or even better, contract the job out to small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs) with fewer than one hundred people apiece and give them the freedom to experiment with ways to improve your service (this means you absolutely CANNOT try to squeeze them on pricing).
Maybe that outlook was the reason that AT&T consistently had the worst mobile service in every state where I’ve worked except New Jersey. You cannot find quality people? Maybe you aren’t paying enough or offering enough benefits in order to attract quality people. Maybe a lot of quality people are those who’ve seen their jobs slashed over the past decade at one of the AT&T predecessor companies (such as Pacific Telesis in California and Nevada). Or maybe your hiring process drives away anyone that has a choice about what job to accept. All I can say is that anyone who feels that there are no quality employees in the U.S. is seriously incompetent.
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
