There are many factors to consider when choosing an attorney.  As a small business owner, you need to have the best possible advice on legal/security matters.

(Note: “Small business” does not mean small in revenue or profitability– that’s yet another future Blog post- “Why “Small Business” Isn’t a Putdown…)

Your Professional Team

It is better to have these relationships established BEFORE there is a pressing emergency. In many cases, an ounce of prevention can equal a tanker truck full of “cure” (Corporate record keeping is one such area). You should have established relationships with the following people on your professional team:

1. Lawyer (attorney)

2. Business insurance agent

3. Accountant/CPA

4. Banker

5. Mentor/Coach 

Choosing your Lawyer: 

1. You want a business lawyer, not one that handles divorces, or child custody, or your Uncle Ned who passed the bar exam on his ninth try and operates a Hair Care, Smoothie Bar and Law Office in Wichita.  Lawyers come in two types, those who specialize in litigation/lawsuits and those who specialize in day-to-day stuff like contracts, agreements, and other legal mumbo-jumbo.  These second types are what you want- they are sometimes called ”Transactional Lawyers”.  (Of course if you are already involved in a lawsuit, then you want the litigator) 

2. You want to choose a lawyer who is licensed in your state.

3. You want to hire a lawyer who has experience in your specific type of business, especially if there are going to be a lot of contracts that need to be evaluated and/or written.  At attorney rates, it is just too expensive to have to pay them to learn the basics of your business and the special issues that arise.  You are better to find one that already has relevant experience in your field as compared to a generalist. 

4. You want a lawyer who is actively engaged in his law practice.  Things change and you want someone who is abreast of the changes so they can let you know when things come up that concern your situtation.  You want a successful person like yourself to represent you.

5. You want to meet them and make sure you are both on the same page. You can interview attorneys like you interview real estate agents, they want your business and know they need to earn it.  Look for people that you can understand, that do not drag everything out, that appear authentic, and who you trust.  But you aren’t looking for a friend, they can be found for far less money per hour, you want someone who exudes competence.

6. You will ask for and check references.  (You really should check them you know).

7. You need to discuss money and fees.  A great lawyer at $350 an hour could be a bargain compared with the incompetent one at $200.  Sometimes you get what you pay for. Sometimes not.  If they have relevant experience in your field, they make only charge you for 30 minutes to pull something from their files, and fax or email it to you with a cover letter. If they are starting from scratch, you might be looking at a four hour project or even more for them to research and draft the entire reply.  Which is better? 30 minutes at $350 and hour or 6 hours @ $250?  Have I made the point that specific experience is good?

8. Talk to at least three attorneys, then make your decision.  I know this is hard, and it is a pain in the neck, but you will be working with this person and his team for the next ___ years, isn’t it worth it to choose the right firm?

Getting Referrals:  

This is the tried and true method to finding any professionals for your team.  As long as you ask the right people, referrals can be the key to finding a great attorney.  You are better off asking people in your field of business, or associations in your field for recommendations because they will refer you to people who understand your field already (as discussed above).

Secrets to Using Your Attorney Wisely:     I’ll discuss this in a future post.  The key is preparation.  See you soon…

Have a great day!  

Rob

Picking up on the “ABCs of Business” series I started last year,

I got stuck on “K” because I couldn’t think of a great K word I wanted to discuss in the context of small business. 

I thought of “K is for Kids” and how they should be incorporated into your business and taught the basic principles.  I thought of “K is for Kevin” as in Kevin Hogan but felt that this was a better topic covered under the topic “M is for Mentor” (coming in a short while). 

Last night as I was watching The Celebrity Apprentice it came to me…

Karma. 

Karma can be described most simply as the eastern religion’s version of the Biblical “as you reap, so shall you sow”  and the Golden Rule- “Treat others as you would like to be treated”… 

(but the Eastern religions extend the concept across multiple lives and our initial situation in our “present life” can be explained by our behaviors in “past lives”)… 

Whether you believe in an afterlife or multiple lives, or not, the concept of Karma has strong effect on business…

What is Karma as it applies to business?

Every action has consequences.  When a pebble falls into a pool, it produces rings that spread across the water in the form of waves.  A butterfly fluttering its wings can produce a typhoon under the right conditions.  In much the same way, our actions and the way that we treat people sends out ripples from ourselves and our business that can interact with the world and our customers in many unexpected ways.

We create a powerful Karma around us when we treat others with respect and when we deliver more than what we promise.  If we treat people well then. more often than not, we will have that same feeling reflected back to us.  If we rip people off, or treat them as something to be leveraged only for our financial gain, then this will come back to haunt us. 

Early in my sales career, I had flown across the country to see a company about a project.  We spent several hours discussing his needs, and at the end of that time I told the man that I didn’t think that my product– even though it would work marginally– was the right one for his particular needs. Then I suggested a product from one of my competitors that I knew was perfect for his application. 

This man looked at me for a minute, incredulous, and said that in his twenty plus years of doing business he had NEVER had a sales person do such a thing,  I told him:

“I’m not in this for the short haul and I don’t think you are either. There are other opportunities here to sell things to you that you need, and if I give you a bad experience with the wrong product right off the bat, then I’ll never get the chance at all that business in the future that WILL benefit both of us”. 

Needless to say, I lost the short term order, but I did end up doing over $3 million dollars in sales with that buyer and his company over the next five years and we became good friends. 

Then,

there is a the story of the man that moves to a new town and as he approaches the town he pulls into a gas station and asks for directions… After he gets the directions, he asks the attendant, “I’m moving to this town, could you tell me what the people here in this town are like?”. 

The attendant thought for a moment and said, “Can I ask you, what were the people like in the last town you lived in?”…  he answered “Sure, those people back there are a bunch of idiots, liars and they never had a nice thing to say about anyone”. 

The attendant said, “Well I’m sorry to tell you that you can expect the same from the people in this town as well, you are going to be very disappointed if you expect things to be better here”…

A little while later, a young couple came along to this town, and went to the same gas station and asked the same question about the people in this town, but the young lady answered his question differently…

She said “Oh, we hate to leave our last town, all of the people were so nice and warm and friendly, we will really miss talking with them” and the attendant told them, “Well don’t worry because this town is full of the same sorts of people and you are going to love it here.”

Always remember…

The people that we interact with, and our customers, are like mirrors…  They reflect back at us what we look like to them.  Try to send our positive waves of energy whenever possible.  You never know what they will cause…

Rob

PS: Can I ask a small Favor? I’m doing an experiment…  Please click on this link ( http://budurl.com/54cp ) and it should bring you right to one of my reviews of one of Kevin’s books at Amazon with my review title “Classic Salesmanship…”  Just click Yes on “Was this review Helpful to you?” below the review and you are done…

I hope you all are doing great today, and the year is getting off to a fantastic start.
(If not, what are you doing to change tomorrow?)

In Michael Gerber’s classic book “The E-Myth Revisited” (if you haven’t read it, you are in for a treat), he asks the simple question… Do you have a Business or do you have a JOB?

The E-Myth, or entrepreneurial myth is given two definitions by Gerber:

1. the myth that most people who start small businesses are entrepreneurs, and
2. the fatal assumption that the person who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does the technical work.

Many technician types decide to start a business because they love doing the work of the business, but they have no idea what they are doing otherwise.  Gerber explains that you need to step back from the technical delivery of the product and look at your business as separate from you.  In order for it to be a real “business” it should be able to operate without you personally doing the technical work.  These people are the ones doing the “jobs” in the business.   

Now, of course in many cases a small business owner is going to be one of the ones working at a Job in the business as well as running the business.  In my case, I have two businesses and I have “jobs” in both of them in addition to my responsibilities as the owner of the business… 

But the fact that I choose to take on some of these jobs in my business doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t step back from those jobs and look at the business from a more strategic point of view—the 40,000 foot view—and devise systems and tactics to make the business more profitable, and better able to serve the markets.  In this higher level role is where you also look at trends and market realities to decide when change is needed and in which direction to move.  And, in some cases when you are up in the cockpit at 40,000 feet looking at the business, you might even decide to fire yourself from some of the “JOBS” you are doing in the business and either bring on someone else to do the work, or outsource it.

The book E-Myth is highly recommended and it will give you a much brighter picture than I could ever do in a short blog post of how to grow a small entrepreneurial business.  I try to re-read it at least every couple of years and I am overdue.  Get a copy today…

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow!

Rob

Insurance is something that most people consider extremely boring.  Policies, coverage, riders, exclusions, blah, blah, blah…

Until an accident or other event occurs…

and then we dive into the small print of our policy with gusto.    

First off, what is insurance?  In the big picture, we are trying to protect ourselves from a reasonably low-probability event that we could not easily handle on our own financially.  We make a payment to the insurance company, and so do many other people, and the ones that have the unfortunate event happen get reimbursed for all or part of their loss.  So, there are two factors that determine what the insurance company is going to charge us—1) what is the amount of the loss we are trying to protect, and 2) what is the probability of the event occurring.

Just as a simple example, you have Homeowners insurance… let’s say your house and contents are worth $400,000 (not including the land which will still be there no matter what).  In a given year, if there is a 0.25% chance of you having a fire or other cataclysmic event that would cost the insurance company that $400,000, then they would charge you about $1000 a year plus their overhead plus a profit for themselves to take this burden.  As long as they made proper guesses about the probability, then they will do well, and the 0.25% of people that suffer the huge damage will be able to recover.  The lucky 99.75% paid their $1200 safe in the knowledge that a disaster wouldn’t ruin them.

Some things are not big enough to worry about insuring against—when you are able to handle the risk yourself and afford the cost of the event, then this is called being self-insured.  Many people with cars that are paid off do not insure their cars against collision (relatively small bucks), but only against the liability claims of someone who might be injured (could be big bucks if death or serious injury occurs)…

In business there are a number of key insurance areas that need to be looked into…

• Automobile Liability
• Home Office
• Business Interruption
• Professional Liability
• And many others…

If you have an Insurance Agent, they are a vital part of your team and you need to schedule a time to review your coverages.  Another new concept is what is called a Business Insurance consultant, and these professionals will review all your risk areas, and help you get the right coverages without any bias towards particular insurance companies.  This is a great way to proceed if you don’t already have coverage.  I would recommend you to contact Sunny Carlson to discuss your needs.

Also, one of the Bonuses in my Corporate Records system is an awesome report on Insurance called the Business Insurance Blueprint, and it also includes two audio conversations between Sunny and myself on the topic of Business Insurance….  I highly recommend this program…

Thanks for reading, and see you tomorrow!

PS: I thought about doing “I” is for Income and decided to do Insurance instead. Here is the twenty five cent version of Income… It is easier to improve your situation in life by increasing the ways you make Income than by reducing Expenses.  Of course you don’t want to waste money, but money spent wisely in the pursuit of more income is a good investment… How can you find new streams of Income?  How can you increase your income from your present streams?  Are you investing money in things that will return you more Income?

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “G” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter…

Dec 7.  “G” is for Google Alerts…

Google Alerts is an amazing Free Tool that uses the power of the Google search engine to watch 24/7 for information that is of value and importance to you.

How much would it cost to have an employee search the Internet continuously for new information related to your business? Google Alerts will do it for free and never whines or asks for a personal day off… 

Here are some uses where you can setup Google Alerts:

Here is a link to a simple two-page step-by-step instructions I put together on how to setup Google Alerts so you can put the power of the Google Spiders to work for your business…

Google Alerts Action Instructions…

Everyone go there now and setup a Google Alert on the term “Kevin Hogan” and also on your own name, and one keyword topic of interest to you. Do it now and you’ll see how this amazing tool can help you…

Next, we will move to “H” and we will be discussing the how you can use “Habits” are vital to your business and personal success…

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “ F” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter in the ABCs of Business…

Dec 6.  “F” is for Family (and Friends)

As we work in our businesses, one of the greatest challenges for many of us is achieving balance between work and not-work (I don’t say play because I believe that for most successful entrepreneurs work is more fun to them than play is)… 

Life passes so quickly you have to stop sometimes and consider…

“What is the purpose for which I am doing all this?” and

“Am I achieving that purpose?”

We don’t choose most of the people in our family (our spouse is the only choice we make).  But they are the people who are close to us when we are born, and they will be close to us when we die, and it is in our best interests to get the most joy possible from our families.

 At the same time, the ideas and principles that we pass down to our children, nieces and nephews, grandchildren will become some of the bedrock that makes up their lives, and might get passed on to future generations.  Might as well make it some good solid stuff.

Trying to achieve balance between work and spending time with family and friends can be a difficult thing to achieve… and there are no easy answers to this challenge– every person needs to find it for themselves.  My purpose with this post is not to give you the answers, but to get you started in thinking about this balance on your own so you can develop your own answers. 

Coming into the Holidays as we are, with a Fresh New Year on the horizon, this is a perfect time to make some changes in our daily interactions with our friends and families…to work on improving the balance in our lives…

You’ve probably heard the old saying…”On their deathbed, no one wishes that they had spent more time at the office”…

I think that there is some truth to that statement, but it conflicts (or seems to) with another old saying…“The only thing you live to regret are the risks you didn’t take”…

How can we reconcile these two sayings which both have a lot of truth in them?  

We turn to a few more quotes, that’s what…

Abe Lincoln said…  “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Mark Twain said… “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.  Dream.  Discover.”

I think that the answer lies in a few different directions, and here are a few things to consider…

1. When you are with your family and friends, are you really there?  Are you paying attention? (try to live in the moment)
2. Are there people from your past- friends or family—that you haven’t talked to in a long time and need to connect with?  (make a list and call to personally wish a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year)
3. Are you spending enough time and effort creating experiences and memories with your friends and family?  (time together doing memorable things)
4. When you are at work, are you trying to be as productive as you can with your time?   (the number of hours don’t matter as much as the output.)
5. Are you still looking for more friends? (they are all around you)
6. When you take a vacation, do you experience it with your family?

My life philosophy can be summed up as follows…

“If there is an afterlife, the only things we’ll bring with us are our experiences, our relationships, and our knowledge. I want to have plenty of each, the toys are less important.”

Tomorrow, we will move to “G” and we will be discussing “Google Alerts”… (I was going to talk about the movie Groundhog Day and decided to save this till later)

A few more quotes to ponder as you think about work/family balance…

“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”—George Bernard Shaw

 “One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead”—Oscar Wilde

“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”—Charles Kettering

And a few movies to watch this holiday season…

“It’s a Wonderful Life”

“The Family Man”

“Groundhog Day”

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “E” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter…

Dec 5.  “E” is for E-Mail

E-Mail (or electronic mail) is both a blessing and a curse.  It is a fast, free way to send even large amounts of information around the world at the click of a button.  The fact that it is so fast and cheap has led to rapid increases in the amount of “spam” (unsolicited commercial email) clogging up our inbox and wasting millions of hours of productivity.

Here are my most important tips regarding email…

1. Check it at certain times during the day, and do not be a slave to email.  (Unless your job is to respond to emails in realtime).  I find that checking every couple of hours is fine, and it allows me to get uninterrupted blocks of 90+ minutes to actually get work done.
2. DO NOT check e-mail as your first priority in the morning.  We will be discussing this a bit more in a future Alphabet post, but you should not let your first thing in the morning be something that you are reacting to.  Email is usually reactive.  I like to have at least 45 minutes worth of pro-active work done before I open the e-mail up.  And you should decide what this task will be the night before.
3. Have a junk e-mail account that you can use when signing up for stuff that requires an e-mail address but that is not vital, core information.  Then check that once a day or every couple of days, this keeps from clogging up your primary account.
4. Get a gmail account, they do a nice job of removing spam, and this is a great way to manage google alerts as discussed in an earlier post… The Power of the Spider…Google Alerts
5. This is a key point…DO NOT use your Inbox as a place to store things. You want to try to end every day with your Inbox empty.  You need to create Folders that you move things into to get them out of your inbox and into places where you can access the files.  I have several… Action (means I need to do something with the file), Print (means I need to print, or download when I get a chance), Waiting (means I am waiting for something else to happen before I can take action), Read/Review (means I need to read or review when I get a chance).  When something comes into my Inbox it gets put into one of these folders and I work from the Action folder when I am doing e-Mail stuff a couple of times a day.
6. Have a good folder system for filing away emails that you might need in the future, and put things in their proper places as soon as they are no longer Action items…
7. Try to respond quickly to email where possible, a quick short reply is often much better than the long delayed one.  Be smart about this but not everything requires a lot of thinking about it.
8. Acknowledge receipt of emails with a terse note at least so that people know you received it and appreciated it.
9. Use e-Mail effectively in your marketing.  It is a killer tool.  I will talk more on this in a future post about Autoresponders…

 Tomorrow, we will move to “F” and we will be discussing the greatest of all the F words… “Family and Friends”…

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “D” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter…

Dec 4.  “D” is for Desk

Your desk (or work area) can be a critical factor in how productive you are.  And getting 10, 50% or 100% more out of every hour is possible with the right habits and environment.  Here are several keys to a desk that will help you maximize what you get done. 

I find that by thinking of my desk as a “Cockpit” it enables me to have the right mental picture of the work space.  The pilot of a Space Shuttle doesn’t have to move to access the entire controls for the shuttle.  The closer that you can come to that the better.

1.      Have a Catchall near the entry to your office area where you can place wallet, keys, cellphone, voice recorder, camera, and other stuff from your pockets.  I use an antique wooden tray I bought for the purpose on eBay that is inscribed with the word “Simplify”.  This is a great habit and will help you always know where your stuff is.  (This is a great thing to buy someone as a gift for their house or office as well)…

2.     You should have an Inbox preferably on one side of your work area.  This is where you put anything that needs to be “processed”.  Mail, faxes, things in your briefcase when you get back from a trip… The Inbox is something that you will go through once or twice a day to move things to their proper destination. 

3.     You should have an Outbox on the opposite side of your desk from the inbox.  Work flows across your desk and into the Outbox which is where things go that need to be mailed, faxed, or filed.

4.     I also have a “To Be Filed” basket where I put things that need to be filed at some point that is not time sensitive.

5.     I have a large basket under my desk where I throw all magazines, newsletters and Internet printouts of things I want to read.  I save these up for plane trips and put a big stack in my bag to read and discard as I travel.

6.     Your desk area should be relatively free of clutter.  If you find yourself with a bunch of random stuff strewn about the desk, these distractions sap your energy.  Try to put things away and keep at least a reasonable sized work are free to work without distraction.

7.     Keep necessary things close by (pens, pencils, reference books, highlighters, post-its,…) whatever tools and items you need should be at arms length.

8.     Invest in a comfortable desk chair.  Even $1000 is a good investment considering how much time you spend there.  Just make sure that it is comfortable and provides back support.

9.     Organize all of your chargers so that you are not having to always fight with getting to them.

10.  Turn off your email and Internet access unless you are doing something that requires it.

I reserve the right to extend these comments at a later date. 

Tomorrow, we will move to “E” and we will be discussing “E-Mail”…

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “C” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter…

Dec 3.  “C” is for Cashflow

In any business Cash is King… the cause of most business failures is running out of cash.

For big companies that have large staffs of financial people to stay on top of cashflow, this can get to be a complicated subject, but for our small business purposes we can simplify this…

Cashflow in the timing of your income and expenses over time.  In a nutshell, cashflow is your bank balance projected into the future.  If you have an accounting system and you enter in future income (receivables) and future expenses (payables) on the dates that you expect to see the money or pay the money, then you will have a rudimentary idea if you have cash flow problems in the future.

I use Intuit’s Quicken program for keeping up with this.  Everything up to today is my actual bank account transactions and balance.  It  includes any other bank accounts like credit cards, lines of credit etc.  But there is more than just past transactions and reconciled amounts.

Future Banking…

There are entries in my Quicken account for the next twelve months into the future as well. 

For all income that is due to my business in the future, I have a planned deposit shown on the day that I expect to receive the money.  As things happen to change either the date that I expect to receive the money, or the amount, I change them in the Quicken account.  This also gives me a quick heads-up every month of what I expect to be paid in the near future so I can start asking about it and checking to make sure there are no surprises.

For all expenses that I know about, I have a planned withdrawal from that account on the day that the money is going to be due.  I put my Payroll expenses (salaries and taxes) into the account for the next twelve months. I also know what my approximate monthly expenses are, so I have a placeholder entry on the 3^rd of every month that shows just as Monthly Expenses and it is for the average amount of our expenses. 

Action tip for those reading this: Figure out a good estimate of exactly what your expenses are per month and keep up with this in a spreadsheet. You might be surprised at what you learn.  Question each expense at least once a year to see if there are ways to reduce it.  Even a little thing like changing your cell phone plan to one that is $60 a month cheaper saves $720 a year.  And bundling your phone, DSL, etc could save 10%… be on the lookout for potential savings…

Having all the future income and expenses in this account allows me to project my cash balance into the future as far as I want.  Note: I do not enter forecasted income amounts only those I know are real income.   This keeps me from fooling myself with rosy projections of income that may or may not happen.   This allows me to look and see where any shortfalls in cash are going to occur, how deep they are and how long they are likely to last.

If there is a major cash crunch at some future time, I can start doing everything possible to generate new income before the crunch occurs, or to speed up some receivables to earlier dates, or to reduce short-term expenses, or to defer some payables into the future.  If you can see into the future 6-12 months it is a lot easier to take small steps now to avert the cash crunch.  If you wait till it is too late, then you need to take much more severe actions.

One other thing… we have a business credit line attached to our account, and we use this for one purpose only.  If we have a temporary cash crunch, we can take money out of the credit line on a short-term basis to cover the required shortfall.  Whenever I access the credit line, I also put the payable into the account at the earliest time when the cash will be available to pay back the short-term loan.  Usually this is within 15-30 days tops, sometimes it is only for a day or two.

In changing times, it is important to have an accurate picture of our Cashflow projected into the future.  It allows you to manage this vital resource, and it allows you to concentrate on other things knowing that this issue is taken care of…

Tomorrow, we will move to “D” and we will be discussing your “Desk”…

First, a reminder… Don’t forget to organize all your “B” files today (as described in the Alphabet Strategy post a few days ago).   Now on to our next letter…

Dec 2.  “B” is for Backup

In most businesses today, there are so many files on our computers that represent hundreds or even thousands of hours of effort.  In some cases, the information is simply irreplaceable. 

If you have ever looked at the insides of a hard disk, you know that they are very complicated mechanical devices.  They are also very reliable but “very” is not the same as “100%”.

That is why you must have a BACKUP strategy that protects this very valuable asset.  The first step in my opinion is to make a list of all the information that is on your computer that needs to be preserved…

A side note, I NEVER let my family (or anyone) touch my work computer, even for a quick search.  There is too much danger of an inadvertent spill or accident– and the resulting loss of data.  Or they could pickup a virus.  They all have access to their own computers so there is no reason to use mine.  I explained why this is the case to them a long time ago and it is just a rule. 

My list includes:

§       password data (saved in Roboform files)

§       contacts list and notes (in Act)

§       financial records (Quicken files and spreadsheets)

§       e-Mail files (Outlook files)

§       Spreadsheets (Excel spreadsheets)

§       Websites (XSitePro files)

§       Word documents (including Corporate veil Pro)

§       Audio recordings (Corporate Veil Pro, and Bold Calling, assorted other MP3s)

§       Photographs (family and business)

§       Videos (testimonials)

§       Etc…

You should do this list to wake yourself up to the danger that you are in if that $100 hard drive decides that it is tired and wants to retire…

There are several good ways to backup your system, and it is beyond the scope of this post to give you specific advice.  I know that a lot of people like to use off-site backups from people like Carbonite which offers a popular $50 a year service with a Free Trial Offer. 

They keep track of all the changes on your computer so that it can quickly back everything up.  ( I have signed up for their affiliate program and I will change the above to an affiliate link as soon as I am approved, but don’t let that stop you from clicking on the above now, and starting your free trial, this is too important to wait).

Other people get external hard drives (like the Iomega Prestige 1 TeraByte Ext Hard Drive) and just backup their information locally, either by selecting the files to backup manually or using a software program.  It is your choice, but do something now to get your most vital data to a safe place.

As part of the Asset Defenses line of information products, I plan to add a product on Laptop and Computer Security for the small business owner in the next 3 months… I will interview experts and give more detailed advice at that time…   What are your thoughts on this?

Tomorrow, we will move to “C” and we will be discussing “Cashflow”…

First off, December is upon us.  Did you remember our Alphabet Strategy post yesterday? 

Have you organized all your “A” files today?   Make sure to get this done before you go to bed tonight… Paper files, email folders, and any account management software entries…

In keeping with this alphabet theme, for the next 26 days I am going to write briefly about a topic related to business and I am going to organize these alphabetically.  We’ll start with A and move through to Z…

Dec 1.  “A” is for Attitude

Of all the things in the world, your attitude is the #1 thing that you directly control that can have the greatest impact on your life.  We all know sad people with sour attitudes.

No matter what the situation, there are obstacles in the way.  People with the right attitude of confidence are going to assume that there are answers to the challenges and push through to find these answers. 

People with the wrong attitude will give up without trying, and blame it on conditions.

Ayn Rand was asked what her favorite book was, and one of her answers was “Calumet K”

Because of this, he was able to build the world’s largest grain elevator in the face of many obstacles.  I recommend this book for anyone in business, it is dated, and it is not a deep book, but it is an awesome portrait of the can-do spirit.

Having the right attitude has many facets, including having realistic expectations and striving to achieve them.. Dreaming the impossible dream is not what it is about.  It is about deciding what long-term outcomes we want to achieve, and taking the actions each day to bring us closer to that goal.

As a business person, there are many things every day that you need to just let roll off and keep moving.  Concentrate on the big picture and keep your attitude positive and you will be amazed at what you can accomplish…

Tomorrow, we will move to “B” and we will be discussing “Backup”…

Rob