Anticipating Change: Staying Current with Your Business Plan

1^st pod cast selected was “Anticipating Change:  Staying Current with Your Business Plan”.  I chose this pod cast because writing a business plan is where I am currently at in my life.

Point 1.  Financial transcripts. 

 He talked about how important it was to maintain a balance sheet, profit and loss, and a cash flow statement.  He explained how you can use these to since market change and adjust to it.  The example he used was the restaurant trade and how when they noticed that the average ticket was down they needed to make decisions on what to do about it, such as Introduce specials, cut administrative cost, be sure that their service people where suggesting add-on sales.

Before going to point #2 find your zen spot and check out these beautiful cherry blossom paintings

Point 2 communicating your business plan to your employees.

Once you have determined to make a change and you update your business plan to reflect these changes you can’t stop there.  Just because you wrote it in you business plan does not mean that it is going to happen, you need to act on it.  You need to be sure to tell your employees what the new direction the company is going and lead them in that direction.  Without the support for the new direction you will not go anywhere. 

Point 3 Growth and expansion.

Some of what a business plan is supposed to accomplish it to test out new ideas; to see if they are profitable or feasible on paper before launching the idea into your business.  If you want to grow or expand your business it is a good Idea to test it out in your business plan 1^st.  You want to make sure that you have the labor recourses and the financial means to launch an expansion.  You also want to make sure that you market can support your expansion.  Test driving this expansion in you business plan before launching it can save you and your business a lot of heart ache in working out the bugs. 

 

The 2^nd pod cast I chose was “Is Entrepreneurship for You?”  I choose this because there are times when my kids want my attention or I am just out of energy and ask myself what I am doing working more than a full time job, going to school, trying to turn a profit in my own endeavor, and making time to spend with my family. 

Point 1Decision making

When you own your own business you are the decision maker.  You don’t have a boss to fall back on to make the tuff decisions.  If you are having a hard time deciding what do to you don’t have anybody looking over your shoulder to keep you motivated and help.  When an employee does not show up for work you are the one that has to deal with the desition on how to handle it.  Not only in discipline for the employee but what your game plan is to get through the day being short an employee. 

Point 2.  Finances.

Many small businesses use their own credit card to finance their venture.  You need to stay on top of the billing so you don’t have to pay exurbanite finance charges.  Many small businesses barrow from their family, it is important to have a good agreement between you and who you are barrowing from to be sure not to hurt any family ties if something goes wrong with the business.

Point 3 Free training.

They talked extensively about the free training programs at www.sba.gov/training.  They have courses set up to help you apply for financing & accounting, submitting product for sale to the US government, survuvubg a slow economy, Marketing & advertising, as well as how to write a business plan.  They also offer free counciling.

 

The best pod cast was “Anticipating Change:  Staying Current with Your Business Plan”.  I found it helpful talking about staying current in you business and in you business plan, that you have to take an active approach to stay on top of what is going on in your market.  The 2^nd one was help full for future reference but was more of an advertisement of their services than actually learning something from it.  

Why do vendors never want to take resposibility

I ordered about 28 boxes of tiddlywinks for a customer that was going to install them on his floor. He wanted all sage green tiddlywinks. The customer worked all night to install the tiddlywinks and in the morning when he looked at his new floor he noticed that there was a discoloration throughout the floor.

If you are tired of reading this blog post maybe check out this one on building a chicken coop.
It looks like it was written by a furniture design co.  Why they would build a coop who knows, but I guess if you have the skills why not.  Maybe I will follow them to see what else they post
Any how, back to our regular scheduled blog post. 
 
He called me all up in a tizzy pissed that now in the light his tiddlywinks were discolored and wanted me to do something about it. I suggested we place a warranty claim against the manufacture for the discoloration.
I called the manufacture UStidilys to place a claim. They told me that because tiddlywinks grow naturally that each one is its own special color so there was no defect. I UStidilys that this color variation was in their finish and that it was defective. I had to force them to fax over their claim form for my customer.
We filled out the claim form and faxed it back. I followed up in 2 days and it was like taking to a different company. They accepted some responsibility and said they wanted to send out an independent tiddlywinks inspector to be sure. My customer agreed to this and waited the tidily wink inspectors call. 3 days went by and no call, so I called US tidily back and talked to the same person and he pretended not to have ever heard from me and that they have not ever see our tidily wink claim form. So I think they are play to see if we will give up. I'm here to tell you than gnomes do hold grudges and if they want to play that game I will have my cousin Chris the leprechaun break his legs.

Getting to know my friends family

When my friend and I walked into his living room, there stood a man standing on a chair in the middle of the room.  His arms moving in a jerky motion as he continuously pinched his fingers shut.  It looked as if he was trying to catch flies out of the air like Mr. Miagi in the movie Karate Kid, but there were no flies in the room.  My friend yelled.  “Hey Mom, Uncle Frank got out of his straight jacket again!”

Speaking of weird.  Sharon has booked marked some weird and wild things on diigo.
ok ok  back to the story.

Just as Uncle Frank fell off the chair their dog ran into the room to greet us.  He stood up on his hind legs leaning his front paws onto my shoulders and started to lick my face.  I pushed him away.  He then proceeded to smell my crotch.  I looked over at my friend and said.  “Dude, can you control your dog, or I’m going to put him in Frank’s straight jacket.” 

My friend just laughed

Wow is this a normal American family, I thought to myself.

Dear Portland Mayor Sam Adams

Dear Mayor Sam Adams,

I understand your support for the Occupy Portland protesters.  I support their right for freedom of speech and I applaud your effort to maintain a nonviolence approach in dealing with the protesters.

I do however hope you will reconsider your decision in letting them camp in the park.  As I understand it, there is a city ordinance prohibiting people from camping in the park, and for good reason.

I myself spend a lot of time in downtown Portland, and up until now was able to enjoy the park and the charm of downtown.  The park is a great place to unwind on a stress-full day and collect your thought before your next appointment.  The charm and culture of the park cannot be matched anywhere.  On any typical day walking through the park you will meet a rich culture of people.  Some of them musicians, on one end I have met a trumpet player on the other a guitarist and on several occasions I have met an artist capturing the culture of downtown in a painting.

"if you are getting irritated from reading this, take a break and watch a video on interior design by Sharon from Trading Places Interiors.  OK now that your calm again continue reading"

That culture and beauty is now gone.  In its place are broken tree limbs, trampled muddy lawns, piles of garbage, a smell that can peal paint, and a field of tents.  By allowing these protesters to continue to break the law and camp in the park you are allowing the livability and the quality of life to deteriorate for those Portland citizens that live and work in downtown.

Yes they have the right to freedom of speech and the right to protest, but camping in the park is illegal.  Camping in the park is not helping their cause.  The right wing media is having a field day with their camp.  Their has been reports of sexual assault, arrests for drugs, a protester caring a gun, a missing child, and the list goes on.  I’m sure you are aware of more issues.  These issues are all bad press and allowing their opposition to dismiss their cause.

Please encourage the protesters to pack up their camp.  If they want to continue to protest that is great.  Let them, let them march all night, suggest to them to march from the Justice center to a big bank of their choice and back to the Justice center.  They can do it over and over.  Please stop allowing the Occupy Portland protesters from camping in the park, they are infringing on the rights of the rest of Portland citizens that would like to use the park.  Please return the culture and beauty to the park and Downtown Portland.

If all else fails. maybe the protestors can camp in this fire truck guest house instead of ruining the park.

Occupy Portland / Wall Street

One of my customers said she was going down to the Occupy Portland protest. She then pulled out her Citi Bank Master card to pay for her purchase. Seems a bit hypocritical to me, if you are against big banks why do you have your account with them. I wonder how many Occupy (insert city here) protesters have accounts with big banks. There are a ton of local banks out there. If these protestors are going to make any kind of a difference they need to get organized and take an action that will actually make a difference towards the banks they hate so much. Instead of trashing downtown Portland, shitting in the park blocks they should be closing their accounts with big banks and move them to local banks. If the 99% moved their accounts would everybody be able to go back to work?

Some say It's not about taking big banks down, it's about the inequality of the distribution and wealth and expecting wall street to take some responsibility for the state of our economy.

However many of us have our 401K’s, IRA’s and other retirement funds invested in securities that are trade on Wall Street; we all participate in the system.  So who specifically on Wall Street do the Occupy Wall Street Protesters want to take responsibility and if those people do take responsibility what do the Occupy Wall Street Protesters want them specifically to do?  

Maybe they should just go to the beach!

Chose your Fuzzy Navel Lint Installer Carefully or you Could Lose a Good Customer.

I sent the wrong fuzzy navel lint installer to impress my new customer. Mrs. Newman is an owner of a whole bunch of rental houses and needed to replace the fuzzy navel lint flooring in one of her rental houses. So I sent one of my installers out to replace the flooring with some budget friendly fuzzy navel lint.

My installer went out to the house and found the house locked, not wanting to bother the new client with problems he took it upon himself to break into the house.
He went to work, but found that there was a ton of furniture in the house he had to move. So he called a friend to help move the furniture and install the fuzzy navel lint flooring.  

Mrs. Newman decided to stop by to see how things were going, she called me very angrily because nobody was at the rental property and the floor was untouched. I called my installer to find out what the hell was going on he said he had finished the job and got all of the furniture back in place. “Furniture what furniture” I said. “this was an empty rental house there should not have been any furniture.”

Meanwhile Mrs. Newman decided to go home which prompted 2nd angry call from her. My installers had gone to the billing address not the installation address and had installed that cheap fuzzy navel lint flooring in her house. 

It cost my installers a lot of money to fix their mistake. The fuzzy navel lint flooring they had removed from Mrs. Newman’s personal home was top quality. It came from the riches and finest navels in Beverly Hills.  This just goes to show how important it is to send out your best Fuzzy Navel Lint installer when trying to impress a new client. 

Maybe I should just go into the bedroom furniture delivery business and deliver all this bedroom furniture, or even just beds

Forest Gump

I liked how Scott introduced Forrest Gump in the first paragraph with some descriptive details and his own personal feelings.  It definitely grabbed my attention to keep reading, how exactly Scott was going to compare himself to Forest.  I think a lot of people can relate to Forrest and how he struggled to become accepted in society.  However I think Scott is writing mainly to those who have struggled with accepting their own physical appearance as if their appearance is what really matters.  His last paragraph drove the point home.  He states that, “each wanting “who he is” to be more important than “what he does.”  As if he was really saying, what you do and how you do it should be more important than what peoples’ perception is of you.   
 

After Forrest gets done running he is going to need some furniture to sit on.