Mine Your Own Business

More Friday Fun

I had to name this post More Friday Fun since we had already done a post called Friday Fun back in May of last year. It focused on an article about six ways a small business could use video to attract customers, increase their rankings, and differentiate their products from competitors. I checked out the fun links I mentioned in the post (fortunately) since I found that the link to Will It Blend had changed so here is the correct link. There are eighteen pages of videos that show that a Bentec blender can blend about anything.

Now for another fun (and rather strange) article about some research that found that people with a full bladder exercised more self restraint when it came to making expensive or important decisions leading to a wiser choice. You have to wonder how they came up with the idea to do this study in the first place and also how they were able to get funding for it. I then got curious about the title of such an article and when I used the search phrase "bladder control and decision making" I came up with pages and pages of results. Who knew this would be such a popular topic?

One thing a small business owner can take away from this research is to keep the bathroom your customers would use very clean and if you are in the middle of a sales demonstration and the prospective customer asks to use the bathroom, be sure and let them. According to this research it just might close the sale for you.

Valentine's Day and Procrastination

We have a chain of pharmacies here in the midwest named Walgreens which has a little bit of everything and they seem to be everywhere. In fact, I was curious and did a search by zip code and there were seven within three miles of my zip code. So what is the relationship between Walgreens, Valentine's Day, and procrastination? The answer is simple, I always get my wife a Valentine's Day card at Walgreens.

One thing I've finally learned over the years is never to wait until the last minute to pick up a card for my wife on Valentine's day. I used to make the mistake of waiting until the day before, big mistake! All the husbands were three deep or so in front of the cards and it was a mad house of men waiting to get their chance at the cards. The other thing is the cards had been picked over and it was a problem because matching envelopes were sometimes missing.

I think I've fnally learned my lesson because this year I bought my wife a card on Friday and there was only one other man looking for a card. It made the whole process much more pleasant. I was able to take my time and pick out a more thoughtful card because there was no press of men and I had more time. I think I'm finally making a little progress on my procrastination and if you have some time check out our previous posting, Help for Procrastinators that has a link at the bottom to almost 200 great quotations on procrastination.

I think I may have a little fun this afternoon and swing by the closest Walgreens and see how all the procrastinators are doing just to remind me to not put off buying a card next year.

 

Small Business Tech Advice

You know the type, the person who has to have the latest and greatest version of anything they currently have (think of the guy who has to have a new car every year), or the very latest technology. A few recent examples are the iPhone and iPad, where sometimes people stood in line to buy them on the day they were released. Sometimes the early adopters of new technology really get burned, one example that comes to mind is the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD players in 2006 and 2007. I have to admit I was a fairly early adopter of Blu-ray but only after the prices had dropped, it was obvious that Blu-ray had won the war, and my trusty old DVD player bit the dust.

A recent (and very entertaining) article in Forbes titled Small Biz Technologies I'm NOT Buying in 2011 presents a list of technologies that small businesses should avoid in 2011.

• Search Engine Optimization.
• Virtualization.
• Office 2010.
• Smartphone Apps.
• Netbooks or Ipads.
• Anything That Synchronizes.
• Business Intelligence Software.

You may not agree with all the technologies on the list, in fact we just did a posting on Search Engine Optimization on Mine Your Own Business in Are All Businesses Internet Businesses? just last week. The article does give some very good reasoning for most of the items on the list and in addition sometimes provides it in a  very humorous fashion, so I recommend you read the whole article. I thought so much it, that I followed the link at the bottom to the author's Web site.

Some Great Quotes

I've often posted on Mine Your Own Business about how important data backup is for a small business. The almost worst case situation happened to me when my computer at work would only boot up in safe mode. I am currently posting from my computer at home. In safe mode the printer doesn't work, the display only has 16 colors, all browsers crash within a few minutes, and most programs work in limited mode.... Not a pretty picture. On the positive side, safe mode does allow downloads of all your data and I had a recent backup of all my data. The bottom line is make very sure you have all your business data backed up on a regular basis.

This very short post has some excellent quotes from an article we recently ran across. We previously posted about some other great quotes. If you have any other great business quotes please let us know and we will be sure and post them.

 

 

 

Help for Procrastinators

Like many people, I've always had a problem with procrastination. I've always used the excuse that it is genetic since my Mother is a bad about procrastinating and is also a pack rat and I am guilty of both vices. Now comes an article from the Harvard Business Review about some research from two business professors that may help with procrastination and improve the final results of a project as well. 

The professors conducted a study where three groups of workers were given a project to complete. One group just received a final deadline. Another group was given a set of interim deadlines at weekly intervals. The final group was allowed to set up their own interim deadlines. So what do you think the results were? The single deadline group was 12 days late and their results were the worst. The weekly interim deadlines groups was just .5 days late and had the best results. The third group was in between. So if your like me or have employees who procrastinate, set of series of deadlines for best results. I also ran across this series of quotations about procrastination that are really amusing and quite accurate.

Friday Afternoon Quiz

I've never watched a whole episode of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader but I must admit i have watched enough to know the basic idea behind it. This posting is about an interesting seven question quiz on Customer Think titled Are You Smarter than a 52-year-old? Test Your Knowledge! The quiz will take lass than five minutes to take.

I must admit in my case I'm not smarter than a 52-year-old because I took the quiz and only got two correct, but maybe you can do better. Some of the answers may surprise you, but no cheating, take the quiz first before you look at the answers at the end of the quiz.

Important Personal Job Skills

We ran across an article recently on the results of a survey that provided a list of personal skills that most employers feel are very important for employees. Some of the survey results are obvious, such as Cooperation, Drive, and Good attitude. These are very important traits for any employee. Others may not be as obvious initially, but on reflection make perfect sense. There are fifteen personal skills on the list and you can see all of them here.

As a small business owner, do you agree with the list or do you have some other suggestions you look for in current and prospective employees? When you read the article you also might want to check out some of the most e-mailed previous pieces posted on the right portion of the page, such as The 13 Most Annoying People to Work With. All of us can identify with some of the descriptions of co-workers mentioned in the article.

Sales and Great Quotations

Here's a good article with twelve great quotes that Dave Stein has used over the years in sales, writing, speaking, and coaching. Here are a few to entice you to read the whole article and see how these quotes relate to business: "Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell." (Unattributed) Or how about this gem: "Some people are so far behind in the race, they believe they are leading. (Uncle Junior on "The Sopranos")

These are just a few really of the great quotes in the article.  Here is a classic from Tom Bridges (now retired from Tacony Corporation) that he used frequently "If it was easy, anybody could do it". He would use that line when facing challenges. Now add your favorite quote that you use in your work.

Fun with your small business

Here is a very different article that stresses some ways to have fun with your small business. The article begins by reminding small business owners of some of the reasons they may have opened their small business in the first place, such as no demanding bosses, endless meetings, and a general lack of freedom. It then goes on to describe some of the reasons the recession may have spoiled some of the fun of owning a small business. The final part of the article describes some possible ways to restore some fun aspects of owning a small business.

Do you have any other ideas for having fun at your business, maybe bringing your grill to work and making a really nice lunch or dinner? Who knows, maybe the smell of grilling may even attract some new customers.

So what's all the Twitter about?

One definition of twitter from my ancient Webster's dictionary (copyright 1966) is "to talk in a chattering fashion", but lately the word has taken on a whole new meaning. This posting is about two articles, one from USA Today and one from a local newspaper that present two rather different viewpoints on Twitter and social networking in general.

The USA Today article provides a brief summary of all the new social networking tools on the Internet with a great deal of emphasis on how Twitter is expanding rapidly. The article from the local newspaper has a little less serious view of Twitter, saying it could follow the course of the CB radio fad of the 1970s and proposing a very interesting test to judge Twitter's staying power.

So what do you think of all the new social networking tools, will some of them become indispensable and if so what are the ones that will?