Do you have a marketing plan? You don’t? Then you’d better get one. If you don’t have a road map for targeting the right product to the right people in the right way, keep your website on MySpace and start buying truckloads of lottery tickets.
Businesses talk about creating an environment that encourages innovation, change, openness, and so on. They believe that getting employees motivated with some good ol’ “rah rah” enthusiasm will make their workers feel good and inspire them to be more productive and innovative. They couldn’t be more wrong. You need to learn to think outside the box.
Starting a business is a bit like dieting, playing golf, or managing one’s health. Thousands of experts make lots of money telling you what you need to be successful. While the majority of the advice is excellent, most people fail in the execution, which is what I mean by the how in starting a business. In essence, it is essential to understand it is not what but how in starting a business. Below is a simple example.
I know everything there is to know about losing weight but still love to eat so the knowledge is useless. In contrast, my wife is the same weight as decades ago and can even forget to eat. (more…)
Everyone talks about creating an environment that encourages innovation, change, openness, new ideas, etc. In many cases this enthusiasm for innovation, however, ignores a number of powerful practices:
“If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it!
Another is,
“We have always done it this way.“
We at Startup Connection believe in trying simple ideas and approaches that work to foster innovation: (more…)
There are lots of great tools, rules, and accountants to help businesses complete and analyze profits, sales, and costs. Unfortunately, this is an area where clients frequently throw out the baby with the bath water. They often fail to use Gross Margin Analysis. Most business people understand the basic rules surrounding Gross Margin. They just don’t execute them.
Gross profit calculations are best made by item, by category, by customer and many other variables, each of which may be critical to your success.
Gross profit—or “Gross Margin” is simply calculated by the following equation:
Gross Profit = (Sales – Costs) / Sales (more…)