Matthew Biz Blog

When to cut your losses

It is something that you feel in your gut but you don’t want to acknowledge. You start making excuses to keep going or to invest more money. You know that you are starting to gamble.

When you are in this tough spot, take a moment and honestly evaluate your situation. It might be hard, but acknowledge the fact that the best option might be to quit. 

However, this doesn’t mean to just stop when the going gets tough. The real questions to ask yourself is…

Did I make the right decision when I started this endeavor? 

What has changed between now and when I made my initial decision?

What are the real odds of this situation turning around?

Remember you don’t have to make back the money in the same way you lost. Stop the bleeding now and start planning your future.

Priorities

Are your proprities with your business right?

From first time entreprenuers to business veterans I see people spend their time on the wrong things. They worry about minor details when their are major problems that need to be solved.

Who cares what witty name you registered your LLC as? Is anyone even going to keep the business card that you spent 2 hours designing?

Your time only needs to be divided into two catagories: getting customers and keeping customers.

Getting customers…

Your business is nothing without this element. Do you know how much it costs to aquire your customers? Who your perfect customers are? Where your customers hang out? What they like to read? What they like to eat?

That might sound silly, but the more you know about your top customers the more sales you can make. Almost more importantly, the more you know about your customer the better you can keep them.

Keeping customers…

You arent goign to get anywhere if your product is crap. You need to be constantly listening to your audience and making value added additions to your business.

The best part about this task is that it is easy. All you have to do is LISTEN and adjust accordingly.

So now that you know the secret to making a great business, go out and do it!

P.S. My offer is still open to give FREE business advice to anyone. Regardless if you just have a crazy idea, a business plan, or an exisiting million dollar business; I am available to give my 2 cents. Just email me at matthewbizblog@gmail.com

I am going to blow up in the business consulting world sooner or later, go ahead and get on the ground floor with me!

How to Boost your Bottom Line Right Now

This is going to sound like common sense, and in fact if has inspired many cliches such as “a penny saved is a penny earned.” The easiest way to increase your financial position is to trim the fat. 

Are you currently doing your best at keeping costs down in your business and personal life?

The tricky thing about expenses is that you usually pay them days or weeks after you use them. Payroll is usually biweekly, utilities are monthly, and so on. With the consequences of not being efficient delayed, it is easy to overlook wasted money. 

In my business (frozen yogurt) the biggest expense is labor. At any given time I usually have two employees working. During our peak times I really need both of them working hard, but as the night wears on, there are many instances that one employee will do. I used to often overlook the need to send someone home 30 minutes early, but once I did some math I try to trim hours as much as I can. 

If a typical employee costs 8 dollars an hour and costs an additional 10% in taxes, then the savings can start to add up. Just cutting 30 minutes a day, every day for a month results in a savings of over 130 dollars.

That is $1,560 you are throwing away every year!

If it is that easy to increase your yearly bottom line by $1,560 with a simple tweak, think about all the other areas you could improve. 

What are areas in your personal life or business that you can save money on? 

Post to comments!

P.S. I am still available for absolutely FREE business advice. I dont care if you just have a crazy idea you want to talk about or you have been running your own business for 20 years. Ask me anything you want! Email me at matthewbizblog@gmail.com 

In case you forgot…

I am offering FREE business consultations. You can email me anytime with any questions you can think of. 

All I ask is that I can repost some of the content (sensitive information removed)

I promise you will be happy with the results!

matthewbizblog@gmail.com

Looking for Daily Inspiration?

Easiest way to start your day off right is to subscribe to Seth Godin’s daily emails.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

I love getting a couple paragraphs every morning on business and marketing. I usually read it right before I get in the shower and spend the next 10-15 minutes reflecting on them. 

Weird. I know.

The key to doing great things is to eat, sleep, and breathe them. If you never turn your hustle off, then it will only come natural to succeed. Its really not that hard. Just work harder and smarter than everyone else. Once you realize that 99% of people are super lazy then it becomes a walk in the park.

Set out to dominate everything you touch, even if you are just showering.

What do you hate?

I know my readership is still next to nothing but hopefully when you are reading this in the future you still add a comment. 

Anyways,

What do you hate to do? What are everyday tasks that you wish you could do without? These could be at work, at home, in the car, whatever.

The best ideas come from solving a common problem. 

Give me a starting point.

Business Advice #1

I got my first request for free business consultation today. Here is a copy of our conversation with sensitive information removed…

Thomas contacted me about selling custom stationary, business cards, training, and other services to a certain group of individuals (sorry cant reveal). A good example would be selling these services to people who just completed their real estate licenses and are just starting their own business. 

My response, with some editing…

“I have bought licenses to use company trademarks, and I have also bought a franchise in the recent past. I am fairly knowledgeable in the field. All of these are physical real world, brick and mortar businesses though. No online elements.

I do not have any experience in [your field] though.

I love your direction thought. I definitely see your vision, but I think there are some major hurdles that you will have to overcome.

1) This is a common problem with many B2B sales. Why doesn’t the company just do it themselves? The items you are selling are not only cheap but common.

2) There are a TON of free resources online about selling to [your field]

I think at first your bread and butter will be the business cards, stationary, marketing materials, etc. Develop a good relationship with a printer, work out a deal with the [your field] companies to give them a cut, and start selling.

I think your best solution is to approach these companies and try to sell them on the idea of “saving them time, money, and labor dealing with all these nuisances.” I know it is bad to devalue what you are selling, but at the same time if you approach them with hopes of selling it to every one of their customers, then they will just do it themselves.

Partner with one company at first and really build that relationship. Become a member and get to know the people involved on the management side. Eventually I think you should convince them to have a booth at the meetings where people can sign up on the spot to order all of their business gear. That is when they are going to be the most excited about it. 

Once you have demonstrated that it is not only viable, but it is something you are passionate about, then I think you can look into becoming a larger business. Given the personal struggles that you laid out, it sounds like there is a chance you could bail on this project if it turns out to not be what you thought. If this is the case then why throw away a ton of money and time.

I am a firm believer in proof of concept trials. Prove that the market wants your product. Prove that you want to do this. Prove that you can do it. There is always room to grow the business, the absolute hardest part is getting started. Keep your eyes set on your next 3 steps, not how you are going to invest your first 100 million off this venture.

In regards to the training and teaching business skills, I think that is jumping the gun. I like the idea if you can execute it right, but it has a whole set of problems as well. I have already thought of some cool ideas to kickstart that side of the business, but I am going to save them until you are further along in the project.

I know the business cards and stationary are boring, but if you can execute it right then I promise you will make more money with that than with a membership training site.

Keep focused. Always think about what you have to do NOW.

Matthew”

If you want to chat about your business or just an idea you have, then please shoot me an email.

matthewbizblog@gmail.com

A Little Too Late

Every serial entrepreneur has experienced this feeling…

Something sparks inside of you and you are struck with the world changing million dollar idea. It starts racing through your mind and it starts to sound better and better every second. You have never heard of any business like your idea before and are confident you are on to something. You start to expand your idea more and more.

A few days later you are ready to unveil your master plan to some friends. You give your pitch and wait for them to be awe struck by your genius. Instead the first words out of their mouths are “Been done. Haven’t you been to www.whatever.com”

Bubble pops.

As you might have guessed this happened to me this week. In a moment of brilliance I came up with the idea of a site where you can bid out residential services. Instead of turning to the yellow book for a plumber, painter, or mover, you would simply post your job and have professionals compete for your business. Think Angie’s List meets Elance (I know, I hate when people give the ____ meets _____ too)

Come to find out the idea has already been done. In fact it has raised quite a bit of money from some investors that I follow (Scott Banister, Jason Calacanis, and others. The website is called thumbtack.com and it looks pretty well executed. 

I used to get so frustrated when situations like this happened to me. Now I kind of enjoy it. It confirms to me that my ideas were not stupid and in fact could be worth quite a bit of money. The more this happens, the more confident I become in my ability to jump on a new trend. I know most of the time my instincts are right. 

Has this feeling every happened to you?