The Wrong Spot
My medical short cut wasn’t.
It’s risky to ditch a trusted supplier for a cheap unknown.
I just learned this the hard way.
And have a scar to prove it.
Free & Easy
I was across town, visiting Dad.
My sore ankle wasn’t improving, so he suggested I see his doctor.
He liked this doctor because he was:
Close.
Free.
Malleable.
By contrast, my [...]
Night & Day
What’s your best time?
Thanks to MyCarBudget, last week’s discipline debate got me thinking about a kindred topic:
When do you do your best work?
Night Owl
Winston Churchill was notorious for grinding his staff to a paste.
They rocked up for work at the usual time.
He started late, napped in the arvo and went most of the night.
If [...]
The Disciplined Community
How do you curb your desires?
My tiler returned for an encore performance last week.
In chatting, he asked how I discipline myself to work from home.
My answer came easily enough, but it got me thinking more deeply:
Do we business owners approach self discipline in different ways?
TV Dinner
I don’t really like television, apart from docos and [...]
Barter Me Up!
Do you barter?
Remember bartering?
By specialising, you’d swap excess production for other specialists’ goods, e.g.:
Eggs for milk.
Milk for bread.
Bread for honey.
Bartering saved you having to make everything yourself.
Naturally, if you made pins and wanted a reindeer, this could take some time and several exchanges.
And as we invented more ‘needs’ and stuff, the system became progressively untenable.
But [...]
I Say Pareto, You Say Pareto …
Fine in principle. What about practice?
Have you heard of the Pareto Principle (also called the 80-20 rule)?
It says that for many things, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes.
In business, this means 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your clients.
I’ve found this principle extremely useful.
But does it work for [...]
Kids in the Kitchen
Last week I beheld a new level of business torment.
A woman devoid of support and overrun by systems, elements and offspring.
How do people manage to combine kids and commerce?!
Hot Mama
I was visiting a packing-and-sending place.
It was hot out and not much better in, as a loading bay countered the office air conditioning.
After a while, a [...]
Favourite Things
Happy happy. Joy joy.
Thank you for weathering my recent rants.
Having had a Bex and a good lie down, I’m in a much happier frame this week.
To celebrate, I’ve listed some of my favourite things.
Things that make owning and running a business worth all the aggro and pain.
Things that keep me at the grindstone [...]
Is Time Money?
Here’s an old chestnut I hope we can crack:
Can you charge clients for travelling time?
I’ve had bags of trouble with this issue.
My hairdresser has an elegant answer. I’d like to see if you’ve a better one.
Fly Buys
When I started freelancing, I had a weekly two-day gig at a client’s site.
I figured driving to this was [...]
Achieving the balance in business
Today we welcome back Malcolm Owens to Small Business Owner…
Working in small business can lead to feeling apart from the wider world. Time and achievement demands weigh heavily. Always frantic, balancing current workloads with the flow of new business, time at work and home. Never relaxing, always busy, trying to get ahead. A [...]
Go the guts
Do you feel and follow your instincts?
It’s cold, dark and raining. You’re tired, hungry and far from home.
A car pulls up: bright, inviting. The clean-cut driver smiles.
He offers a lift – just into town. Nora Jones croons.
It looks safe, but something in you goes click.
‘No, thank you.’
Long road
Having endured the GFC, we may be tempted [...]
