Let’s face it—the economy is doing really bad right now. It may not require soup lines, but everyone is feeling the pressure weigh down on them. Wages are going down while expenses are going up, and worst of all as the value of cash lowers, bills start to pile up. This has meant a huge increase in the number of bills being left unpaid. With everything so tight to begin with, creditors and businesses are in a tough spot. They need their bills paid on time because they themselves don’t have much spare cash lying around. This has led to repossessions and canceled accounts for many people because of the apparent necessity to keep payers in line.
However, this isn’t the only choice businesses have. Yes, of course, bills need to be paid just for your business to stay alive, but a single paid bill isn’t as valuable as a customer that will keep returning to you again and again. Even in an economy where businesses may be hanging on from month to month, companies still need to look down the road and think about ways to maintain a strong customer base even in rough times. Moreover, as the economy will eventually begin to turn, the few customers you do have will be ready to spend more once the financial situation improves.
Does this mean not having your customers pay bills? Naturally, this will make them very happy, but it will put you out of business. No, customers still have to pay bills, but leniency should be exercised when it comes to late payments. Severely penalizing customers when they are delinquent for a couple months only trims them of extra cash they might have spent at your business. Now it may appear to be money either way, but it’s probably a definite that your customers won’t be coming back if you give them huge late fees for delinquent payments.
In a slow economy customers are always looking for the best deal. One way to still maintain your prices and offer a competitive edge is to offer a more lenient pay schedule. Doing so keeps your position exactly the same as before the down turn without doing much more than improving your customer relations. Additionally, consider that your customers are often in the same position as your business is—they have income and expenses that don’t always time up exactly. So, just because a customer can’t pay immediately, doesn’t mean they won’t have the money in the future.
Word of mouth is very important—good customer relations spreads the word about your business and can draw other customers from other businesses. You may take a wash for a couple months, but if this turns around and puts more people at your door, it will definitely pay off just like any investment.
Simply put—putting your customers out of business puts you out of business. Remember, your customers are not ATMs, simply distributing cash as you need it. Instead, they are people with memories and will develop loyalty to a company that shows them leniency; especially in a tough time. They may miss a bill every once and a while, but if you let it slide in this tough climate, your customers will be paying your bills for years to come.
Most successful entrepreneurs have a list of mentors and books that they have on hand acting as mantra for how we conduct and innovate our businesses. By being lucky enough to be one of those crazy work from home guys I find the discussions that I get going in my head from a good article or a book is needed to keep me sharp and often takes on the role of those old debates I used to get into with co-workers (Well that is the crazy shit I tell myself so I don’t attract attention to when I wander around my house in my robe yelling at myself).
Here is Part 1 of the books that always keep me challenged and pushing forward in my life and business even while wandering in my robe.
Trust your gut, the research is done and proven!
The Kolbe Concept and Kathy Kolbe’s work are both mind bending and life altering. These three books are a bit older now but they make no less of an impact now then they did when they were released.
When I was still working in a corporate environment doing marketing for a recruiting and coaching company I was introduced to the Kolbe A index. A test that validates our instincts and studies the Conative part of our brain. Kolbe Wisdom says that if we are free to be ourselves and faced with a task each of us will use a path of least resistance perfectly matched for ourselves to get to an outcome.
When I took the Kolbe A index and got my results it was one of the most liberating days of my entire life and gave permission to be who I am. I have long been branded on the ADD and ADHD scale but I and many other entrepreneurs will be happy to know that Kathy’s work attacks that the whole notion of this head on.
The impact of this work has been so great that I headed to Phoenix a few years ago to become a Kolbe Certified Consultant so I would be able to share this knowledge and coach people and businesses about it’s impact. So shameless plug time, if you have any questions about Kolbe don’t hesitate to contact me.
I have a lot more to say on the subject but I will do it in an upcoming series of articles, in the mean time if your are on twitter you need to be following @kathykolbe. At our growth seminar we were bugging Kolbe Corp that they need to be doing more in social media and now we have Kathy addicted to Twitter. Her tweets are always informative and will help to shed light on the tool.
Powered by Instinct: 5 Rules for Trusting Your Guts is a simple read done much like a conversation between two people. It might be to informal and lacking a bit of meat for some readers but it can be consumed in a few stress free hours.
The Conative Connection: Uncovering the Link Between Who You Are and How You Perform is Kathy’s first book and goes into a lot of the research, It was written in the 90’s so some of the research has changed but it is still very valuable information.
Pure Instinct: Business’ Untapped Resource This book goes into a lot of detail for how the Kolbe tools are used in a business group setting. I would suggest that you leave this one until you have a better understanding of the concept or if you like to read deep into a subject.
The “Secret” but built for Business without all the “When I wish Upon a Star” and still sit on my ass all this free money will come to me.
When I was on the road to getting the hell out of the corporate world and was looking for guidance for how I could take my small side evening business and make it more then just a hobby I got caught up in the whole “The Secret” movie explosion.
Do I regret it, not a chance. I credit myself with taking the time to study and listen to what the teachers from the movie were actually saying. In my opinion that 90 min movie will go down as one of the best pieces of marketing ever. Most of all it opened a dialogue to make it acceptable to say things like you are a business person who meditates.
If you take the time to look at the other coaching the teachers do you will understand that the Law of Attraction is only one law and a starting point. During the movie John Assaraf was the person in the movie that resonated most with me, I think because he came to it from a business perspective. I was on a conference call with him and his OneCoach partner Murray Smith when he said we all need to remember the next most important universal law, The Law of “GOYA” or GET OFF YOUR ASS. If you just sit on your couch and ask the universe to give you everything eventually they will come and take your house from around you and your seat out from under you.
From that I joined the OneCoach’s Business Mastery Program that taught me how to put the right things in the right order to create a successful business.
John and Murray took the process they were teaching clients with great success and published The Answer: Grow Any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom, and Live an Extraordinary Life It is a great read and provides a very good framework to help make sure as a business owner you doing the highest income producing activities that are right for your specific business.
I will be back with part two of my book list very soon. I also want to hear about your great reads and resources. I am an avid business, marketing and personal development reader so I am always on the look out for new concepts.
Again here are the books I talked about in this post:
Powered by Instinct: 5 Rules for Trusting Your Guts by Kathy Kolbe
The Conative Connection: by Kathy Kolbe
Pure Instinct: Business’ Untapped Resource by Kathy Kolbe
and The Answer by John Assaraf and Murray Smith
Tomasz Gorecki, fellow blogger and long time contributor to this site sent me a link today that I wanted to share with everyone. If this video does not stir your passion it will hopefully give a not so gentle kick in the ass we all need.
The video is from the Web 2.0 Expo in New York this past September with a presentation from Gary Vaynerchuk. So let’s start hustling!
Oh I almost forgot to mention take a look at Tomasz’s Blog on his journey to get debt free. It’s a great story and is packed with lots of good tips. Debt In Your 20’s Is The Kiss of Death
Sit back and enjoy.
Wondering why you should be listening to the “fresh prince” about the keys to life? I’ll tell you why. Will Smith has an interesting video on youtube where he explains to the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards audience his two keys to life. After talking about Will Smith in the Pursuit of Happyness in the Don’t let anyone (and I mean anyone) steal your dreams article I wrote, I seen this video in Leo from Zen Habits‘ link tumblr page. Watching the video really had me think about things a bit and in this article I want to touch on the two keys he mentions and talk about what I think about each, and why I think these are two real keys to life.
Running is the first key to life
In the video, Will explains that the reason for this is because when you run, you have this little voice in your head that tells you “I’m too tired, I have to stop running. If I only walk for a second I will regain my composure and can run again. I wish I could just sit down” (paraphrased in my own words). He says that if you can conquer this voice when running, you can conquer this voice in anything that you do in life.
I couldn’t agree more. Regardless of the way you want to give the analogy, that voice in your head, which is based on fear, doubt and insecurity, will run your life until the day you die if you do not learn to conquer it early on. Running is definitely a great way to overcome this voice and has many benefits.
The Benefits of Running
Will Smith touches on the fact that overcoming the voice telling you to stop when you are running is the reason why running is beneficial and I don’t disagree with him but there are many other benefits as well.
Health Benefits – I put this first because I figured since most people like to skip over this fact of life, I wanted to make it stand out more here. RUNNING or ANY FORM OF EXERCISE is a great health benefit. Not only will running help you keep the weight off but it is also great for stamina. At the risk of saying too much, I will just say that stamina is a great thing for any man out there and you should pay attention to it more. (Sorry ladies if you found that offensive – contact me and tell me you did).
Running will also help your lungs open up which improves your breathing and good breathing can be very beneficial to concentration and relaxation. Ask anyone who meditates or does breathing exercises and they will tell you the same thing. Try it and I bet you’ll see the great results.
Freeing Your Mind – I know a lot of people talk about how walking helps them to relax their mind and free their thoughts. The same goes for running. When you run, you can think about many things but for some reason, to me at least, it seems to help me not ‘think’ about much at all, in the sense that I am not stressed about the things I think about. I actually get a lot of great ideas when I am jogging/running and always carry a tablet of paper and a pen with me. The writing might be horrible but I can read it so thats all that matters.
Anyone who is in business for themselves can comment on this and say that their life is at times a bit more stressful then they’d like. Running is a great way to remove a bit of that stress and free your mind for greater things. Looking at a screen all day will make things start to look like tunnel vision, so running is a great way to release some of those things and see life in a better light.
Reading is the second key to life
Will Smith then goes on to explain that reading is the second key to life and again, I don’t doubt that for a second. Anyone who is successful in business will have at least ONE good book they’ve read that helped put them in the right mindset or on the right track to making their dreams come true. I read Bootstrapping Your Business and that influenced me to start Bootstrapping Blog and write about the art of bootstrapping.
Anything you can read from Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, or Benjamin Franklin will give you so much knowledge for life and business that you’d be upset you hadn’t read it earlier. Reading not only solves problems you might be going through, as Will Smith talked about, but it gives you a few more benefits as well.
Knowledge is Power – OK, I know everyone has read or wrote this phrase more than once in their life but it’s the truth. When you know more, you can do more. When you understand laws after you read a law book or study in law school, or study a CSS design book, when you are done reading, you will by far know more then you did before you read the book. The same goes with great blogs like Zen Habits, Pro Blogger, Skelliewag and Freelance Switch.
You’ll have the power to do so many more things in business and in life after you read these blogs and authors.
A good real-life example of this is that before I read the zen habits tumblr page, I didn’t know anything about this video or that Will Smith even said these things, but now, I am writing this very post because of it Knowledge does indeed give you power.
Better Communication – When you read, you will learn proper grammar (if the person writing it displays it, that is) and will learn a vast amount of new words. These skills will help you out in every day conversations with family, friends or co-workers. Your friends will laugh, or stare at you funny if you use some larger words in a conversation and they are the type to use a lot of slang terms or are the “myspace crowd” so-to-speak. I get a kick out of putting a 5 syllable word into a sentence instead of a 4-5 letter word just to play with people, its fun.
If you are in business for yourself, you normally are the name and face of your business and if you come off to your clients as ignorant or less-educated, you will surely lose many potential jobs and sales. I’ve seen many sales pitches with grammar mistakes that shouldn’t have been made, by writers who were selling their freelance writing services. This is unacceptable and easily avoided by reading more and learning more.
Why Will Smith is a Genius
Normally, people will give you some B.S. approach to succeeding in life, wrapping a cheap e-book page around it and slapping a $100.00 price tag on it while you have legitimate success stories (yes, I consider Will Smith a success story in himself) who give out great knowledge like this for free every day. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears while closing your mouth. Pay attention, you’ll thank me for it later…
Am I the only one that listens to what Will Smith and other stars say and grab the useful information from it like this?