How to be Accountable Working From Home
One of the great things about working from home is being able to put a load of washing on while you think about that email you’re about to send. You and I started moving away from 9 to 5 some time ago, getting emails at all hours etc, but Covid has been making blended work/personal […]
You Need Cash – Maslow Levels for Your Business
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains why people will risk their safety to eat. First things first. Makes sense. Maslow is also a great way to think about important aspects of your business. Level 1 – Can you pay the wages? If you have ever had to scramble to cover payroll you know how much […]
You Earn Margin Even If You Go To The Beach
That’s the lovely thing about recurring revenue and that is why it helps make your business more valuable. Margin is “earnt” by each minute a contractor is on the job, not when you send the client an invoice, that’s just when you batch it up. If your lawyer charges by the hour they earn money […]
The Art of Seeing Your Business From More Than One Perspective
Robert Hughes’ excellent book The Shock of the New helped me to understand cubism. A movement that tried to see things from more than one perspective. Cubism broke things down into elements and reassembled them in different ways. It was trying to make sense of a fast-changing and somewhat out-of-control world at the time. Some […]
Sales and Accounts – Divided by Common Language
It won’t help to speak louder and slower to the accounts team, it will not help at all. You need to be able to ask questions and make requests in particular ways. Some tips if you are required to venture into the accounts office…… Say something nice. Just like you should to anyone. My […]
Make sure your spreadsheets don’t add up to a hill of beans
Have you ever been shocked by your credit card statement? Surely you didn’t use it that much? How did three cheap lunches, and one pair of jeans, add up to $2,000? The same thing can happen with your business. All businesses have some sort of quoting mechanism but not all businesses make sure they […]
Is it all in your head?
Trying to keep on top of everything is hard enough at the best of times but Covid has made it even harder. My To-Do list has 80 things in it today, and it’s a Sunday. We have to make lists because we can’t keep everything in our heads. In 1956 George A. Miller published “The Magical Number […]
How To Do A Cash Flow Forecast
A weekly cash flow forecast is one of the most important tasks you can do in your business. Lots of businesses have failed because of poor cash flow forecasting. Whilst it’s true that most cash flow problems are actually profit problems, a cash shortage has a way of getting your attention – you can’t keep […]
Will There Be a Lot More Doggie Day Cares?
I have always said that once you get to be an outside cat it’s very difficult to go back to being an inside cat. We hear that a lot of people are enjoying working from home. A lot have got lockdown dogs and bicycles. All that time and money saved by not commuting. Money saved […]
Xero Is Great Software: Not A Magic 8 Ball: You Need to Forecast
“No HAL 9000 Series Computer has ever made a mistake..” 2001 A Space Odyssey is a great movie to revisit if you are looking for something to do in lockdown. It got me thinking about how we can fall into the trap of thinking that a particular software package can fix all our corporate woes. […]