Team Talk: The Smart Financials of Investing in Your People

(A Four-Part Series) Part III: Investing in Your Employees You are the central energy of your growing business. It’s your baby.  It was your ideas, your sweat and, most likely, your capital that transformed a vision into a revenue generating beast! However, as we’ve highlighted in previous segments of Team Talk, an entrepreneur cannot wear…

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Team Talk: The Smart Financials of Investing in Your People

(A Four-Part Series) Part II: The Right Time to Hire The best part of starting up your own business is the carefree lifestyle that being an entrepreneur affords you. The endless freedom to pursue your hobbies. The ability to unplug and vacation at any time. The steadfast confidence that your team is managing all aspects…

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Becoming One with Your Customers – A 2-Part Series

Part II: Growing Customer Loyalty… and the Bottom Line! Often, busy, multi-tasking, success-driven business owners build day-to-day procedures and norms that are internally focused. In other words, we build our businesses – from sales to service to billing – that are based on our business needs, norms and challenges, rather than the desires and behaviors…

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Becoming One with Your Customers – A 2-Part Series

Part I: What’s it like being your customer? Amid the year-end chaos that begins the moment the last piece of Halloween candy was handed out (or eaten surreptitiously at midnight – I won’t judge), it is incredibly beneficial for us as business owners and employees to take a time out. Reserve a few hours away from fighting daily…

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Profit Drain #1 – Not Knowing Your REAL Costs

Are You Charging Enough to Cover Your Costs AND Make a Profit? The purpose of being in business is to make more money than it costs to provide your goods and service, right? And “what should I charge?” can be a loaded question. You’re making money, but is it enough?

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7 Steps to a Better Business Budget

Many business owners have some expectation of what their expenses and revenues will be in coming months, but most have not taken the time to put together and use a real budget. In order to better understand your business, and maintain good financial stability – a business owner should consider the following when developing their…

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Afraid to raise your prices? Don’t be – and here’s why.

When we first start a business, the biggest question we often think is, “what should I charge?” We tend to start out where we’re comfortable and confident people will buy.  After a while we may find that we’re making sales easily.  That’s an indication to consider raising prices.  If you also find that you’re working…

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