Apparently a significant number of new businesses fail because of under capitalisation.

IF YOUR BUSINESS IS STRUGGLING, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO USE THIS SENTENCE.

(p.s. if you need more, I’ll write more)

thomas valaitis finance capitalization

I used to have a dog that chased after cars, snapping at the tyres.

A split second was all it would take, and she’d be off!

I often wondered what Dodie (the family dog) would do if she actually reached the car.

She knew she wanted to chase a car tyre, I’m certain she didn’t know why, and I can’t imagine the mess if she’d actually caught up with one.

What’s your equivalent of Dodie’s car tyre fantasy?

The problem with having your own car tyre fantasy is that if you knew you were chasing after a horror show, you’d probably stop.

There are whiskers and rubber all over my offices on a regular business.

Not literally.

thomas valaitis random aims, chasing cars, fantasy, purpose

Why?

Well, in my experience people who claim to think or work “outside the box” do so because they either do not know enough to work within the box is or don’t understand how the bits in the box are supposed to fit together.

It’s become a euphemism for:

I don’t really know what I’m doing
or
I can’t articulate what sets me apart from the competition

I’m sorry if you were the first one to coin the phrase, but the wrong people got hold of it and redefined its meaning.

thomas valaitis marketing outside the box

Has your business been struggling a bit at times in the last year?

Well, don’t worry you’re not alone.

It would seem the worlds largest Diamond producer, De Beers was £140m in the red last year.

Now, this may be a gross over-simplification, but if you can’t make money picking diamonds up off the floor, well, god help the rest of us.

thomas valaitis random diamonds, rough year

So it’s nothing new to use a celebrity to shift your schwag, but headlines like this amaze me.

Do we really think that the millionaire entertainers/entrepreneurs Redknaps book a package deal with Thomas Cook?

Do you honestly believe that Davina McCall kneels over a bath and colours her own hair with bottle dye?

Do minor celebs throw luxury feasts centered around Iceland’s aesthetically remastered ballast centric platters?

I think not. I’m sure we all think not. But we still absorb this information and process it in such a way that makes us more inclined to buy stuff.

We give people permission to overtly talk absolute rubbish to us, because at some conscious level we want to be told what to do, and eat, and wear (like the Rolling Stones song).

It might as well be your product I guess?

thomas valaitis marketing celebrities, endorsement

A thought provoking statement over on Start Up Donut advising you to base a business on something you enjoy.

Here are 10 reasons not to do that:

1. Creating a distinction between work and play is important to give your life balance
2. Picking from a pool of 3 or 4 subjects may focus the mind, but might mean you don’t consider some other great opportunities
3. Just because you enjoy something does not make it commercially viable
4. When you are at work…are you working or playing?
5. It can be hard enough to find time to spend with your family and friends as a business owner already. This can be exacerbated if you are having too good a time!
6. Conversely, if you live and breath one subject you can easily become sick of it
7. If you screw up your business, you could end up not enjoying your hobby
8. You are more likely to make decisions with your heart and not your head
9. Eventually running most businesses (that succeed a bit) is less about the service you provide and more about administration and management. You may end up neglecting these if you enjoy the subject too much or conversely you may end up resentful of the business because it no longer feels like your hobby.
10. Profit and success create passion and motivation and gives you a reason to get out of bed, and pick up the phone. Without these, you’ll need one hell of a hobby to keep plugging away.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t turn a hobby into a business, I’m just saying that I value my work and hobbies too much to mix them.

thomas valaitis success strategies

How many entrepreneurs out there spend all their time looking for the quick wins in their new or existing business? You know, the type of actions or concepts that generate loads of profit very quickly with very little effort.

How many of these do you think you find every 10 years?

Perhaps a couple if your smart, perhaps a couple if you’re lucky.

I wonder if you’d do better to look for some slow burner, sure thing type wins. Not necessarily more easy and it will definitely take longer.

Probably a lot less stressful, probably a lot more reliable, probably a lot more profitable, probably a lot more sustainable.

thomas valaitis success strategies long term strategies, make money quickly, quick wins

It’s amazing how ridiculous are some of the questions we all get asked sometimes at work.

The problem is, if you’ve been doing something for a long time (mending cars, building websites, town planning) you can’t imagine what it’s like to not know at least the basics.

Many people underestimate how much they actually know about a subject, partly because are surrounded by peers that know as much or more, and partly because what once seemed new and powerful knowledge now seems old hat.

The point is that for most of us a good deal of our target market are virgins to our industry (first mortgage, wedding, car, website, baby, colonic irrigation, consultant).

Explaining fundamental concepts to new customers may be as annoying as hell sometimes, but if you hold their hand to begin with, they may let you be their first.

thomas valaitis customer services, reputation new customers, stupid questions

Interesting (ish) article over on Reuters about auditing your image. 2 Things really leaped out at me:

1. “…remember that it is usually not in employees’ best interests to point out any problems they might end up being assigned to fix or for which they might be blamed.”
   If this describes your office culture…well, good luck anyway (shudder).
2. “A confused mind always says no.”
   That’s a really good point, how hard do you try to make sure the most common questions that occur to your customers are taken care of before they are asked? (The point is that I guess they don’t always get asked). How clear is your message?

thomas valaitis reputation, staff, success strategies blame culture, clarity

Like him or loathe him, Obama had the family jewels to cancel the moon return project on Monday.

Your turn (it doesn’t have to be as big).

thomas valaitis leadership cancel project, obama