Thursday, June 30, 2011

Business Advice Online

If you're working at a business, small or large, Inc. Magazine is one of the most best reads you can do. It doesn't cover craft industry enough for my taste (shame on them), and the big corporations (and bigger companies) are its major focus. But it does have practical advice for focusing your time and money that can be of use, whether you have fifty employees -- or just one.

Case in point: this illuminating column by Jason Fried from the March 2011 issue, "How I Got Good At Making Money." 
   An excerpt: "When you put a price on something, you get really honest feedback from customers. When entrepreneurs ask me how to get customers to tell us what they really think, I respond with two words: Charge them. They'll tell you what they think, demand excellence, and take the product seriously in a way they never would if they were just using it for free.
     "As an entrepreneur, you should welcome that pressure. You should want to be forced to be good at what you do."


I just wandered onto the Inc.com site recently, and realized they have a big batch of articles there that are separate from the magazine! The sales section currently features the ten best salespeople of all time (albeit ones that aren't always kind or ethical); I was much more interested, though, in the surprising ways ten top CEOS stay productive. You will, too.

* * * * * *
Basement Update (For Those Who Care): We're back in the waiting mode -- sort of. We finally found a company to deal with the aesbestos. (Take a moment and pray that you will never have this at your place -- the estimates for one wall of an average-sized room, plus removing the floor tiles, which are already loose, have ranged from $2500-5000. One day's work.)
    They start Tuesday. In the meantime, we're in the process of removing the stuffed-in boxes in the sewing room, pulling the carpet out of there (it got wet at the very entrance, along with some fabric), then rearranging shelving units inside to form a sort of storage area. That will keep things sort of tidy until we can paint and re-floor the main room.
    If you're thinking this sounds like hot, stuffy and boring work -- you're right! But it's getting done, and in the long run, we'll be better for it.

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