I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Brent Green of the “Pursuing Meaningful Work” podcast. We had a great time before, during and after the interview.
Stop by his site and enjoy not just my interview but many others!
Archive by Author
007 – Mythellaneous – Business Is Moral And Losing Money Is Not
Episode 007 – Business Is Moral And Losing Money Is Not
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In this episode I discuss the portion of THIS video where Mr. Levine TRIES to summarize scripture. (skip to 2:50 into the video)
We discuss the importance of believing that business is a moral activity and how you can’t be successful in business if you struggle to believe in the morality of being profitable.
We also discuss the idea of purchasing equipment at the end of the year just to avoid paying taxes. I compare that myth with the myth that house payments are a means to avoid taxes.
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Forget Attachments?
I love using Google Mail for my business.
A few months ago I converted from Outlook Exchange through Godaddy to Google Apps. What I didn’t know was that I could turn Gmail into a full email client for my business email accounts. This isn’t forwarding or POP download. My emails go strait to Google.
Anyway, I was just sending out an email and forgot to add the attachment and the following happened.
Google Apps read the body of my email and noticed that I mentioned an attachment but nothing was attached.
Don’t you hate it when you send an email and forget the attachment? It’s always so awkward to have to send an ‘oops’ email.
Let me know if anyone would like some training on how to convert over to Google Mail for your business. It’s not terribly difficult and we should be able to help you keep ALL your current emails. When I converted I had to move 15,000 emails from my Outlook account and Google has a great application that does this for you.
Convert your work into hours
One of the first steps you will need to accomplish if you want to build confidence in your prices is convert all labor activities related to your product or service into hours. When you are done quoting or analyzing a job you should know how many hours that job is going to take (at least within a 10% accuracy).
One of the first questions IPA asked me when they were analyzing my business was why I charged $15.00 per piece for cabinet installation. I don’t remember what I told them exactly but I do remember not being able to answer it very well.
Maybe you own a trim company and your customers will only pay you $1.25 a square foot to trim a house. Maybe you lay carpet for a living and $7.00 a square foot is what a big carpet company will contract for. I’m not even opposed to charging for your product or service in this manner. What I am opposed to is you not knowing how your current pricing system converts into hours.
Let’s take the example of the counter tops I make. I have just one counter top employee. We were able to sit down and take a look at our production habits and build a ‘minutes per foot’ time calculation for each edge type. Here is what we came up with. (if you own a counter top company take notes!)
Square Edge = 10 minutes per running foot of finished edge
Wood Edge = 15 minutes per funning foot of finished edge
Bevel Edge = 20 minutes per running foot of finished edge
Now, there were all kinds of other activities that we had to assign a time frame to but I think you get the point. Now I’m able to sit down to a drawing with my calculator and add up the edges, convert to feet, multiply by minutes then divide by 60 and I had how many hours the job would take. It looks something like this.
I / 12 * M / 60 = H
Inches, divided by 12 times minutes divided by 60 equals hours.
I hope that makes sense. My counter top guy hit these numbers right out of the gate. I think it’s because he has been around forever. That’s why I’m a huge believer in hiring highly skilled help.
We haven’t analyzed every area of cabinet installation but we’ve hit quite a bit of it. What I do in that area most of the time is just take our current fee ($25.00 per box) and convert it over to hours. We can then look at it and if we need to add time to it we can.
Twitter, the best tool you are not using
Since doing a post about how anti-customer contact forms are I’ve been more conscious of the subject.
Today I decided to do a twitter search to see what is being talked about when it comes to contact forms. I think you might find this interesting.
Click here for the full twitter feed.
I think it’s interesting to see all the help out there for creating these forms. I can also see people who are excited that they’ve created a form. Here is my favorite tweet from the search.
” I completed ur contact form 3 weeks ago but haven’t received a reply.I’d like to use ur services.What’s the best way to contact u?”
My point to this post isn’t to just recycle past stories. I think my ultimate point is that you need to go to twitter right now and start an account and start using it to learn more about your customers and also give them other ways to contact you.
006 – Shall We Dance? – Hire Your First Employee
Episode 006 – Hire Your First Employee
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In today’s show we break down the process and mindset needed to bring in your first (or any) employee.
Thank you Dave with Smantec Manufacturing Inc. for the show idea!
I talk quickly about using a Virtual Assistant and mention http://www.virtualassistantpodcast.com/.
If you would like a copy of the notes for this show just email me and I’ll get you a copy.
Be sure to stop by http://bluecollarliving.com/products to see how you can have a pricing system that will help you see if you even have enough work to hire a production employee.
You can also download a copy of the Confident Pricing Model Workbook to see how this can be done.
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005 – Debt Valley – My Personal Debt Story
Episode 005 – Debt Valley – My Personal Debt Story
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In this show I give the unabridged version of my debt story. This is a must listen if you want to have a full understanding of where I’m coming from when it comes to business, debt and finances. I mention Dave Ramsey and how I used what I learned from him to keep from filing bankruptcy. I explain how I ended up with $35,000.00 of debt to the IRS and what I did to make sure I could make those payments over anything else. I talk about how awesome my wife (and best friend) has been through everything. I tell the story of how we purchased our dream home only to lose it 18 months later.
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Contact forms are stupid
It’s so fun to set up a contact form using your web site building software. You get all of these cool options from inside your web site. You won’t get any spam. People think you have web hacking skills. Life’s good.
The problem is that as a customer they completely suck! Your customer can’t tell if the thing even worked. Your customer might not want to give you all the info you are asking for. Your customer has no record in their own email client on what they even said to you. It also makes it look like you don’t really want them to have your email address.
Nobody cares about how much spam you get. Quit doing stuff at your web site that makes your life easier and start doing stuff that makes your customer’s life easier.
004 – The Price Is Right – Bid vs Estimate
Episode 004 – Finding The Right Price
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In this show I basically give away the first hour of my “Confident Pricing” class. I talk about the #1 reason you should be in business. I compare the difference of my June 2006 P&L and my June 2010 P&L and why it’s better now.
I also promise to give away the class workbook for free which you can download HERE. I continue a special offer made on last week’s show.
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Hold on to me!
(Photo by Dean Brittingham Photography)
I’m reading some blogs today and one of my big irritations has reared its ugly head again.
When you are writing and you give me a link it doesn’t automatically mean I want to leave your site, and you should want me to stay.
When adding links be sure to include the target “_blank” so your link will be opened in a new tab/window. This will keep you from losing your reader.
No, it’s not the same as forcing a popup on someone. They chose to click the link so they are asking to view something new. Don’t lose them off of your site. You may not get them back.
I’m not going into great detail on how to do this. If you are using WordPress for your site (and you should be) then there are lot of ways to make sure you do this.
The creation of links has a “_blank” option and when you are adding a link to a post in Visual mode there is a ‘Open link in new window’ option.
Use them, a lot!
