A few years ago, when just starting out in the consulting business, I would have been reluctant to give up any business at all. If someone asked me to write them a tiny script, or a massive desktop application used by thousands of people simultaneously, I would have been eager and raring to go. The [...]
When Carl and Maria Griffin entered the Dragons’ Den to showcase their business and hopefully land an investment, they were awakened as to the true nature of their business. Their business, LiteLocker, makes it trivially easy to install and remove Christmas lights, by installing the system alongside the eaves of a building. The units can [...]
Over the last few years, I’ve begun to suspect that in some sense, I’m a magnet, and I’m not sure why. Not that I’m complaining – on the contrary, this magnetism has brought me large amounts of business, but I’ve tried to understand how this can be replicated. First, though, I should explain what I [...]
Perhaps one of the factors of life as the self-employed freelancer is in regard to what happens when you get sick. Or, if it isn’t you who gets sick, a family member who you have to care for. Even for those under the impression that they rarely get sick, it tends to happen, as Murphy’s [...]
I have a client with an interesting employee – he can take a product, and figure out who the best customers of this product are. He knows how to reach those people, as well as the people who would ultimately pay for the product. He can get these people to seriously consider using his product [...]
When a new product was launched by a company with a large amount of clout and marketing power, a project I was working on had its management team move into crisis mode fairly quickly. The competing product, at first glance, seemed to compete directly with the product we were building, which raised the question as [...]
In last week’s episode of Dragons’ Den, one pitch went sour for the simple reason that the biggest asset in the business was also its biggest liability. This is a fairly common problem in family-run businesses, often a function of one member of the family remaining in control of a business even when it has [...]
When my wife certified as a Fitness Instructor, she entered a B2B2C market focused on education, with a price. The first certification allowed her to teach fitness classes, though it turned out that most fitness centers look for instructors who are also personal trainers, a certification of its own. Certifying as a Personal Trainer was [...]
Elie Kochman is the author of Advice for Small Business Owners and the founder of Optimal Upgrade Consulting. Using his experience working in the corporate world along with his exposure to the world of small businesses, he writes these articles to assist others avoiding common pitfalls of growing a business. His experience in the corporate world, building his own business, and working directly with other growing businesses has given him some perspective on the trials and pains of running a business.
