The Freestyle Entrepreneur

THE MARKETING REVOLUTION IS HERE
I’m a dinosaur, pushing 60 years of age.  I grew up in an age when marketing meant bending, twisting, shouting, cajoling, sex-appealing, manipulating, and pleading to get people to BUY!  BUY!  BUY!  It was a one-way message:  from the seller to the would-be buyer.  We talk.  You listen.  Any questions?  Not [...]

Curious which are the worst airline pilots?  (Korean.)  Ever wonder why some musicians are wanna-bes and others are superstars?  (Ten thousand hours.)  Or why the majority of National Hockey League players are born in January or February? (Age cut-off dates when they were children.)  Do you know why New York’s top merger lawyers are Jewish?  [...]

This is one of those books, The E-Myth Revisited,  that you almost love to hate.   
You hate it because the author, Michael E. Gerber, has a smarmy I’m-right-you’re-wrong attitude about him.  (His examples tend to be stories about borderline stupid business owners who he sets straight.) 
You love him (well, maybe love is way too strong [...]

I’ll get to the title in a minute.  First, I must start by saying that I love to hit the floor running hard every day in the quest for business.  I also love to end the day exhausted, spent, without anything left to give.  Family and friends have told me there’s only one thing worse [...]

If it’s the little things that count, here’s one big little thing:
I’ve noticed that, of the many successful business people I’ve met over the years, perhaps half of them keep a little notebook in their shirt pockets.  Tell them something of interest or when they think of a potentially good idea, and they pull out [...]

I know.  I know.  The customer is king.  But for a moment, consider two things: 

 Your customers have a need for your product.  They will buy it somewhere, either from you or from a competitor.
They will buy it from you if you can demonstrate not that you’re great, but that you’re better than your competition.  (It’s [...]

 
You don’t “stand” your business.
You don’t “walk” your business.
You “run” your business!
Ready?  Set? Go!
        –    John R. Ingrisano
               The Freestyle Entrepreneur
 

I love to work hard.  In my opinion, there’s nothing more demanding or thrilling than getting out every day and taking on the enormous challenges of running a business.  Some days I slay the dragons; some days I come home smoked and char-broiled.  That’s half the fun. 
 
But I also love to get away from work.  I can [...]

As business owners, we love (or envy) those stories about the business that increases its sales by 35% one year, 50% the next, etc.  Unfortunately, most of us would giggle ourselves silly if we picked up 10% a year.
Here’s what I do:  I look for ways to directly increase my sales or lower my expenses [...]

Socialism sounds nice.  Everybody takes care of each other, nobody goes hungry, etc.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work.  Capitalism does.  It enables everyone to take care of himself or herself so nobody goes hungry, etc. 
 
Capitalism makes it possible for people to purchase the greatest variety of goods for the lowest possible prices.  (Government subsidies, by the [...]

Two back-to-basics things you need to remember this January:

Market!  Market!  Market!  Bang the drum, reminding your customers about who you and what why you are the greatest thing to happen since Al Gore invented the Internet.  This how you bring in new customers!   Marketing is especially imporant now, since the economy is showing key signs of rousing from its [...]

The nature of being an SBO invites burnout.  That’s because, if we’re doing it right, we come home every night on empty – bedraggled, worn out, totally spent.  That can take its toll over time.
I know I’m approaching burnout when I begin having weird fantasies.  In addition to the one about two showgirls and Las [...]

My friends say I have no life.  Except for some fishing, spoiling my grandkids, service work with the Lions and experimental cooking with/on my friends and family, I have no major distractions.
That’s because I love to work.  I have found that there is nothing more thrilling than business … both working on mine and helping [...]

 
On a quick day trip to Milwaukee yesterday, we scheduled dinner out with my son, his wife and their three children.  Jonny (Jonathan to the rest of the world) is a successful, 35-year-old partner in a mid-sized law firm, who maintains a good balance between super-long work weeks and family time. 
 
During dinner, he apologized for being distracted, explaining [...]

Hopefully, you are knee deep in 2010 planning … or, if you’re an overachiever, you’re already done.  That means you …  

Have laid out your goals for the year.
Mapped out the daily or weekly activities that will bring those goals to realization.
Are chomping a the bit to break out of the gate on January 4 and charge into 2010.  

Go [...]

 
This is part rant, part rave!  I’ve had it and am fed up about the ignorant, anti-capitalism noise coming from the President of the United States and those around him.  I expect this kind of idiocy from euro-trash, people who see the government as a huge tit from which all their needs flow.  But from our own [...]

Guilty as charged.  I’ve cut my prices to my clients when times got tough.  The result? It made me look like just another hack writer out there.  In the end, I lost money and I lost business.
 
What I should have done:  Reminded my clients that I’m the best … and focused on how working with me will, [...]

Amazing!  Every retailer this holiday season (and a whole lot of service people, it seems) is slashing prices to draw in customers.  I suspect more than a few are losing money on every sale … but figure they’ll make it up on volume.  Look for them to go belly up in the first quarter of [...]

Who’d have thought that getting paid would be so tough?  Well, welcome to the recession, often evidenced by customers who try to stretch their payments as far they can.  What to do to collect on overdue bills?  Try the following ten ideas:
 
1.     Have a system in place to deal with delinquencies.  Establish good collection practices.  This [...]

Like Charlie Brown in a Peanuts cartoon standing by the mailbox in hope of receiving a Valentine’s Day card, too many of us small business owners  these days find ourselves anxiously waiting for the arrival of that overdue payment. 
If the problem gets too serious, it can domino-affect our entire lives –  as we stretch our [...]

 
It has been my experience that there are two kinds of people in this world:  those who dare to dream big and exciting and wondrous dreams … and those who live in little boxes waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
 
Where do you want to be in a year?  In two years?  In [...]

There’s a whole lot of worrying going on out there in this squeaky tight economy.  Everybody I talk to is having trouble sleeping at night, playing those “what if” or “oh no” tapes over and over in their heads.
 
As they say, ’snot worth it.  Worrying just saps your energy and clouds your mind.  What should [...]

I knew the economy was in a bad way when, several weeks ago, I saw a friend’s husband in church.  Not a regular church goer, he was there nonetheless, and he was looking grim.  (I learned later that his business is hanging on by a thread and he is fast running out of options.) 
 
He’s not [...]

It’s a great time to hire!   If you are weathering the recession in pretty good shape, this may be the best time in decades to bring on board quality talent.  With millions of folks out of work — and sometimes the best and the brightest are being let go — you can skim off the cream [...]

With hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost monthly, workforce reductions today create  massive liability for businesses.  Regardless of how it’s done, there is exposure to liability.  However, how it is done can still reduce liability.
John Haase, Managing Partner, Labor & Employment Litigation Leader for the law firm of Godfrey & Kahn, Green Bay, Wisconsin, offers specific steps [...]