Who loves ya, baby?

Hang on, this just doesn’t sound right.  How can someone be cheaper, yet more effective than a consultant?

It’s the truth.  And it’s fast-becoming the realisation of many small and medium businesses in Australia that have simply had enough of the ‘help’ they’ve been getting.

Here’s what they tell me:

      -          ‘I’m sick of feeling that I’m in a race to the bottom’.

      -          ‘I need help, but I want more bang-for-my-buck’.

      -          ‘Advice just doesn’t cut-it for me anymore, that’s why I’ve stopped getting help’.

Only a different breed of person would enjoy taking on the accountability of working under those challenging conditions.

They are out there.  They are the Kojaks of the business world.

Tenacious and tough, these people have walked the beat.  Forget office politics and bureaucracy.  They are candid - with heart and feeling.

There’s no consulting-speak.  Its man-in-the-street speak.

The type of person that throws the ‘book of consulting poetry’ onto the back seat rolls up the sleeves and says “let’s get this done”.

When the chips are down that’s who you want watching your back.

Someone that’s willing to transfer their knowledge and experience - that will deliver results fast; and close the door on the way out.

Who loves ya?  Interim Managers love ya, baby.

Vote for my blog and I will Pay It Forward

Vote for my blog and I will Pay It Forward.

It’s entirely up to you………..but…………….a vote for my blog could win some really cool camera equipment for my fledgling business.

Here’s the thing.  If my blog wins, I will pay-it-forward for every vote I received, by doing a favour for someone else.

Hold me to my task by subscribing to this blog page, as I will use my blog to keep a record of progress.  Progress updates will drop into your inbox.  I will complete my favours within 6 months.

Vote for my blog and keep me busy!

Here is the original blog.

http://jlofbalak.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/how-i-ate-beating-heart-of-snake-in.html

Here is the link to vote for my blog.  Do it now coz voting ends this Saturday 31 August 2013.

It’s quick and easy.  Simply tick Entry Number 11 and click submit at the bottom.

https://apps.facebook.com/126231547426086/rjijr

How to go broke.....profitably.

Introducing the boogie monster of all start-ups called Uncontrolled Enthusiasm.  Uncontrolled Enthusiasm has a big belly because he likes to feast on your time.

As a new business owner are you sick of hearing that cash is king?

Look at it this way.  You have to believe in the boogie monster.

Most start-ups fail because they ran out of time.

Time is the most expensive thing you need to start a business – and you need lots of it.

What buys you time?  Cash

You need to buy time because you don’t have control of time.

Sounds like a no-brainer.  Sure. 

 

Why then do so many new businesses come unstuck?  By not budgeting correctly - they didn’t budget for the cost of lost time.

A common oversight is to account for a series of events occurring, not including the cost of time.

Thinking that your new business will then perform according to a simple budget is a gamble.

Including the cost of time requires some realistic assumptions about external situations that will inevitably occur.

These assumptions can suddenly make a profitable budget look very sick.  That’s called real life.  Most of these assumptions are the compromises of starting a business.

Ignore them at your peril.  A profitable budget isn’t necessarily bankable.

Things get pretty heavy when you include the cost of time.  Questions about how you will make your business happen get tougher and tougher the more realistic the scenario planning is.

It’s bloody tough.  The romance of starting a new business goes out the window.  But you have to do this.  Survival instinct: how am I going to generate the cash I need to survive the events that cost me time?

Too hard basket?  Remember this: most new businesses went belly-up when according to the owner “everything seemed to be going so well.”

But it's not just start-ups.  At the moment, most small and medium businesses in Australia are operating only one event away from running out of time.

How-well will you spend what little time you have left?

The sky is falling. The sky is falling.

Got chatting in a group at a recent food industry function.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to ‘tough times’ as always happens these days.

I remarked that a major positive of being under pressure, is small and medium business owners will have a much better understanding of how their businesses operate.

A business owner was quick to responded “I only see negatives in negatives.  There are no positives when things are negative.”

This comment startled me.  I have a keen interest in the human aspect of being in business.

It reminded me of the importance of self-speak / self-talk.

Self-esteem and confidence can have a major impact on how a business is going.  Whether you are the Board, management or employee – everyone should practice positive self-speak.

It’s virtually impossible to navigate stormy waters with a bucket over your head.

If your business has a positive ‘inner voice’ you will be amazed how quickly the tone and culture will change.

Then, even more amazing, is how quickly your business will start seeing positive results, in what you thought to be tough times.

It’s certainly not easy to maintain and takes practice.  After 2.5 years into my new business, studying an MBA and IVF I can personally vouch for that.

But I highly recommend it and my business would have failed a long time ago without it.

I mentor other businesses and it’s one of the first things I talk about.

Thanks for hanging-out at my blog.

If anyone has their own examples of positive self-speak they use or a time when positive self-speak changed a perceived outcome, personal or business, I would love to hear it.

Just use the comments section below.

Speaking of being positive, if you like my blog feel-free to share it around your own networks.

Happy Friday everyone.

The butcher, the baker, the local cake maker..............met a pieman.

Unfortunately, these types of nursery rhymes have outlasted the tradition of the local food producers that until recently have existed for centuries and were an essential part of local culture and community.

However, it is no coincidence that our food labeling laws under which remaining food producers must operate make as much sense as these nursery rhymes.

Australia must be the hardest place in the world to be a food consumer.  Why?  Because that’s the way the rules have been designed thanks to the lobbying of those that have everything to gain by confusing us.

This is known as arbitrage; when one party to a transaction, knowingly takes advantage of the fact that the other person entering the transaction does not have all the information they need, to have a full understanding and knowledge of the transaction they are entering into.

What does this have to do with food labeling in Australia?

Way back in 1970, a Nobel Prize winning Professor of Economics by the name of George Akerlof came up with a theory about what happens to a market when consumers have an information disadvantage.  The idea is that if consumers have no way of being able to confirm what is good quality and what is bad quality, they will only be prepared to pay a lower price. 

Consequently, if information is confusing or lacking, the consumer is trained to focus on price. 

Quality uncertainty means that poorer products are eventually able to drive good products out of the market.  This is known as market break-down.

How does this work in the food game?  By gradually introducing cheaper alternatives and then gradually presenting them in a way that makes it harder to tell the difference in quality at face value i.e. packaging all looks the same but information is hard to find.

In the end, only the lower quality products are sold because they are cheaper to produce and have a higher margin.  The consumer has been arbitraged.  The seller knows more about the product than the buyer.

Sound familiar?  Remember the early ‘home-brand’ products?  Look at them now.

Akerlof’s theory suggests that what consumers actually want is clear information about the products they are buying.  Unfortunately, some have much to gain by not making information simple for food consumers.

I strongly believe that if local food packaging was made simpler, consumers would pay more and we would have a better chance of saving what’s left of our local food processing industry.