The first part, though, in deciding to make a hire, is to determine whether it’s financially worthwhile to hire someone. In general, an employee must bring in about 3 times their salary in increased revenues. Not from the first day, of course, but over a relatively short period of time. As such, the decision to hire is often preceded by an increase in the amount of work to be done, coupled with an increase in the base amount of work available.

The second part is the creation of a buffer. A business that has an operating line of credit can often handle the buffer through that – if not, a reserve of funds for a rainy day must be put away. This can be quite difficult, since it requires adjustments to be made that affect cash flow.

Third is the locating of the third employee. This is where your network can come into play. Pushing out a message to your network clearly indicating the nature of the work, the type of person you’re looking for, can help generate some leads, while there is always the option of using a paid service. This will rapidly be followed by the selection process for an interview, the interview itself, and making a choice. The task here may seem daunting, and the unwary business owner may choose to take some shortcuts and just hire someone quickly.

This has the potential to create problems later on, as the choice made is quickly realized to be faulty for some reason. Without careful preparation for the legalities of hiring someone, this can prove to be extremely costly. Additionally, there are decisions to be made – hire a contractor, or an employee? What are the legal and tax ramifications of each route? What will the costs be?

The only sure thing here is to first, make sure you can afford to hire someone, second, make sure you know what type of employee you need to hire, and third, make sure you speak to your lawyer and accountant to be sure you do it right.

Related posts:

1. Mathematics of Hiring
2. Explosive Growth
3. Your Word is Binding

The problem is actually one that many small businesses that grow face at some point in their transitionary period – where the word becomes more than one person can handle, and yet there is not quite enough work, or enough regular work, to justify employing another person to help out. A typical work-work goes from 40 hours to 60 hours to 80 hours – and there is still a reluctance to hire someone, despite the fact that there’s enough work for two. I digress, though, as this is the topic of another article regarding growth, expansion, and the first hire.

The first thing I did when I realized that I had more demands on my time than I was able to track was that I wrote down a detailed list of all the projects I was working on. For each project, I wrote down what the next few tasks were, and if there was a real deadline involved.

Each morning, I would clear the list of all completed tasks, and add in the next set of tasks for each project. I would then figure out which tasks were most important, and therefore had to be done immediately, which projects I hadn’t worked on in the last few days, and therefore deserve attention, and which were waiting for some other input out of my control.

I found that merely creating and looking at this list increased my productivity, for a few reasons.

First, it gave me the ability to clearly see where I stood on each project.

Second, it reduced the likelihood of me forgetting a project, thereby impacting relationships with my clients.

Third, it helped me by providing satisfaction at marking another item as complete, limiting the number of items I would start one day and leave hanging, incomplete, until the next day.

A piece of advice given to me by Jeremy Lichtman of Lichtman Consulting was as follows. Make sure you work every day on every project, even for a few minutes. The reasoning is that by putting in some effort every day, even the low priority projects will get worked on, as well as the projects that have become irritants. Otherwise, you run the risk of having low priority projects never get completed until they become high priorities, which is usually at the expense of a client relationship.

Do you have any other suggestions to share? Please comment, I would love to hear from you.

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1. Task Management
2. For the Right Price
3. Crunch at the End of Time

The first thing I noticed was that businesses with only a single person involved in the decisions tended to limit their own potential. The reason for this seems to be a function of egocentricity, in that the manager of the business does not have someone to bounce ideas against, nor are they forced to recognize their own fallibility in their decision-making processes. With multiple people involved in making decisions, more thought is generally required of any decision made, thereby preventing certain errors from being made.

The second thing I noticed, which I found to be more interesting, had to do with the division of the management team. In a business with longevity in mind, a part of the management team must concern itself with the long-term plans for the business, while another part of the team must concern itself with the short term planning. The way I’ve come to look at it is the strategic and the tactical divisions of the management team.

In the tactical team, the key components of a perfect team include the ability to complete given tasks, to look for rapid feedback, and to execute plans of one to two years in length. The tactical team is not concerned with what happens to their work in the long-run, rather, that in the short-term, they prove to be as useful as possible. This may be in the form of becoming cash-flow positive as quickly as possible, the completion of short-term projects, or getting feedback as effectively as possible.

On the strategic team, the key component is vision. The management team here must look to the future of the company, five or ten years in the future, and where they would like to position the company in that time frame. They can then break that down to a sequence of short-term goals, which would be given to the tactical management team to execute. The strategic team would place controls over expenditures in the short-term, they would set goals and milestones for the company to ensure it will reach their vision.

On occasion, a company will have only two or three people managing the company. While this is perfectly normal, what they must be aware of is whether the members of the team have a tendency to focus on the short-term or the long-term. If the answer is the former, they should be made part of the tactical team, if the answer is the latter, they should be made part of the strategic team. Certainly, some people will cross both teams, which is important, but each person should have a primary area which they treat as their home-turf.

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1. Decision Making Process
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3. Task Management

Sam Zipursky is a Brand Consultant, Internet Marketer, and aspiring Digital Nomad. He spends most of his time focusing on the connection between internet, branding, design and marketing. He is one of the authors from the how to become a consultant blog Business Consulting Buzz. He is also a Co-Founder with Advicetap – The place where Canadian marketing and creative professionals find gigs and build connections with other professionals.

These days more than ever it’s really important to have a personal brand strategy in place. Whether you’re a freelancer, consultant, small business owner, or even someone working at a large corporation, it’s crucial to not only understand what it means but also be thinking about and applying what you know.

So what exactly is your personal brand?

Simply put, your personal brand is how the world around you sees and remembers you. For the point of this blog post I’m referring to what happens when someone types your name into Google? Do you get desirable and consistent results? Results that you control? This means thinking about all the information you have out there online – Twitter account, Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs, Websites, etc. The name of the game is here is consistency.

Grab all internet real estate with your full name

The first step is to take your full name and apply that to everything you do from your domain name, to your blog URL, to your twitter and LinkedIn accounts. For me I have uncommon last name so it was easy for me to register www.SamZipursky.com, www.Twitter.com/SamZipursky, etc, etc. If you do have an uncommon last name like me then you should make sure you register all your accounts like I have as it’s the best way to control the search engine results.

What if my name is already taken?

While it’s not ideal, don’t panic there is still lots that you can do. Think outside the box here. Can you use your initials to make it all work? Can you throw in what you do at the end of your personal brand? So for example if my name was already taken and registered maybe I’d go with www.szipurskydesign.com, www.Twitter.com/szipurskydesign, etc. I’m a designer so I would use my first name initial, last name, and then what I do. I think you get the point!

Things to remember

Once you choose the user name you want to go with and it’s available, stick to that with all your personal websites and online accounts. Of course when you’re designing your websites and filling in your profiles you should still fill in your full name and details (as this is how Google will know it’s you). The point here is that you have a consistent user name that is easy to associate with you and what you do across all your different online accounts.

Conclusion

I’m just skimming the surface here on how you can establish your personal brand online. If you remember one thing from this post please remember to be consistent in all your online profiles. Also if you want to learn more about this important subject there’s an amazing blog by personal branding expert Dan Schawbel www.PersonalBrandingBlog.com

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What I discovered along the way is actually pretty simple. There are two parts to a proposal – content, and context.

The content of the proposal is intended to answer a few basic questions regarding what is being proposed. It usually starts with a general summary, followed with some details regarding the proposal itself, some discussion about the benefits to both sides. There will be a section with supporting documentation, and another about the merits of working with this particular provider, along with a summary of the qualifications of the provider.

The content alone is not sufficient to win a proposal, though. The context is also important.

The context is how you present the material. It doesn’t need to be fancy, or presented in a particular style. It does, however, have to impart additional qualifications about the author. A graphic artist would make sure it’s in a style that showcases their skills as an artist. A financial planner might include some portfolio summaries. In all cases, there will be a single page that can be used by all readers of the proposal to find the information they need to make a decision.

One of the suggestions I made regarding the writing of the proposal was to keep the sentences short and the paragraphs simple. There should be frequent headings, and the entire document, in this case, should not exceed 3 pages (not including the cover). The reason is basic – the document became easy to read, thereby increasing the chances that it would, in fact, be read in its entirety. The frequency of headings resulted in the document being easy to navigate – and negated the need for a table of contents.

Do you have any tips for writing good proposals that you want to share?

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Your network is basically a big family, like the mafia families of the stories, in which some things are expected of you from time to time, and in exchange, the family will stand by you when you need their help. That is, a well-cultivated network can be an extension of your family, with people you’ve helped over the years who are glad to help you when you need it, much as you helped them when they needed it.

Cultivating your network means slowly growing your network by always looking to bring people closer to the center of your circles, and increasing the number of people in the outer circles. In the book Make Your Contacts Count which I reviewed following a networking event last year (Getting Started with Networking), the author describes 5 levels of your network, from an acquaintance you barely know to an ally who will stand by your side. Your network will grow by moving people through those circles as effectively as possible.

Growing your network, which I describe in the afore mentioned article, involves more than merely increasing size, but doing so in a manageable way. That is, you can meet many people and make them acquaintances in a relatively short period of time, but also slowly cultivating relationships with a few people from each group, such that the groups grow slowly but surely.

Additionally, maintaining your network will involve work, to constantly connect with the people you already know, to not disappear for long periods of time. In this, websites such as LinkedIn and Facebook provide an excellent service, facilitating regular contact. That is, of course, provided you still maintain the in person contact that you would have used prior to the development and growth of these sites.

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Another school took a very different approach toward imparting the same values. While some things were explicitly banned, activities were arranged to create alternatives to activities that were allowed, but did not promote the values the school was trying to promote.

Which is more effective? For some students, certainly the first system would work, in that they are inclined to follow the rules, and the creation of many rules will drive them along a particular path. Personally, however, I find the second approach to be more tasteful, and more likely to succeed. People do not want to be told what they can and cannot do. While the school can provide encouragement to participate in certain activities, students are more likely to do so with a smile when they are given a choice, rather than forced.

What does this mean to you?

When running your business, there will be times when you are trying to convince someone to take a particular path. You are more likely to see success if you promote something along the path you want them to take, rather than placing barriers along the road you do not want taken. Besides – it’s nearly impossible to block all the roads but one.

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What I discovered was that many people start networking when they lose a job, or start a new business.

From my experiences, that’s much too late.

The best time to start networking is when you don’t need anything from the people you connect with, and ideally, when you have something to offer. Networking is not about telling everyone how great you are, or how desperately you’re looking for work. It’s not about telling the world about your latest product and how much better it is than the alternatives.

It’s about making connections that are mutually beneficial. While you can certainly do this when you need something, it’s so much easier to focus on giving when you don’t need anything. When you attend a networking event, you should be looking for people that you have something in common with, or people that you can help out. You should try to be the connector in the room, linking up people who might otherwise not find each other to their mutual benefit.

What you will discover is that by helping other people, you establish a strong network of people who have come to respect you for focusing on their best interests. True networking is reciprocal, but not necessarily within a single connection. If you set out to an event with the plan to help make 10 connections between other people, maybe only one connection will be of value to your own needs. However, in the long run, that one connection can often prove to be of equal value to the other 10 connections you made that have no direct benefit to yourself.

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The question I’m often posed with, though, when starting work on a project, is whether or not I would be interested in trading my time and effort for equity in their project. While my answer is almost always a form of “no”, I do think about it. The reason for my refusal, though, has little to do with my belief in the potential of the project – quite the contrary, if I’m working on the project, it’s because I already believe the project has some level of potential be successful.

The reason I refuse is partially because I don’t really want to be involved in the running of these projects, whether because it’s in an area that doesn’t interest me, a lack of time, or because I don’t want to run a business like that at all. The other reason, though, is because I listened to the pitch, and it failed to motivate me to invest.

Yes, I’m an investor – because if I donate my time, then I’ve invested the value of my time in your business. If you want me to invest, then you’ll have to convince me that it’s worth investing in.

Having prepared a few pitches over time, here’s what I would want to hear in a pitch, what has the potential to convince me of the value of your idea:

1. Why – I want to know why you’re building this business. While money is a motivator, I want to hear a personal story of a need your business solves, something motivational.
2. What – Now that you’ve explained why, tell me what it is you’re building, and how it solves that need you described in the preceding minutes.
3. Who - Who else is in the market with a product that also solves the need? Show me some of the other players, how they’ve approached the problem, and why you feel there is still a need for another product.
4. How – If you want me to put work into building the product, what are you doing? Are you figuring out marketing angles, lining up customers, working with other vendors? What’s your plan to get your product built, on the market, presented? What are you personally going to be doing on the project?

That’s not to say, of course, that I wouldn’t consider a business that lacks answers to these questions. However, if the founder is already making phone calls to vendors and can’t give at least the basics of the answers, then I have a hard time taking the founder seriously.

What does this mean to you?

If you’re thinking of an idea for a business and want someone else to help you with it, you need to motivate that person to join you in your venture. You need to pitch your idea to them as a business venture that is on the road to success. You need to realize that most people will not be as excited about your idea as you are. Once you realize this, and start working toward figuring out how to motivate someone else to join you, you will find that the quality of the ideas will generally rise as you start to really understand the implications of what it is you are proposing.

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The question I get asked most often, though, is how I know what I know, why anyone should listen to me. The answer – I learned, and continue to learn from my experiences, and I’ve been exposed to the issues they’re facing.

Much of what I learned came from working in a mid-sized (1000 employees) corporation, and seeing what works, what doesn’t, and why they do things certain ways.

Change Control

Large corporations have process for doing pretty much everything, making rapid change difficult, if not impossible. The reasoning is that by having a proper process, it can help mitigate the risk of a change being bad for the company by ensuring that the proper people are aware, and that quality control can be enforced via the process.

The catch, of course, is that process for the sake of process doesn’t accomplish this, and a long, drawn-out change control process will only work to mitigate risk if there are similar processes for quality control and communication management.

Communication

Little happens in larger companies that doesn’t involve copious amounts of communication, with meetings and emails flooding in-boxes and calendars. The benefit of this is that communication by volume reduces the risk that someone with key relevant knowledge will miss something from a project or change. Since everyone is invited, or notified, about everything, little slips through.

The catch, again, is that with all this time and effort being devoted to communication, it’s easy to become side-tracked from the real work that needs to be done. Too much communication slows things down to the point of inefficiency.

Documentation

If it happened, it’s been written down somewhere, using a standard format. The creation, and enforcement of usage, of documentation can help a business learn from its experiences and avoid repeating mistakes. Having standard documentation processes means that people don’t struggle to figure out what to write, where to write it, or whom to notify.

The catch is that a poorly designed documentation process can create useless paperwork that is never read once it’s been filed. If the document doesn’t make sense for the purpose it exists for, then people will resent filling it out, as they will know that the document is doomed to be lost in the filing records, never to be referred to again.

What do you think? What are some lessons you would take from a large corporation? How would you describe them, both in terms of the need the lesson fills, and the risk of doing it wrong?

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Other companies have taken a different route – they identify a need, a consumer, and then build a product or service to fill a void. The vision is clear, the goals well-defined.

Which is correct? Both, and neither.

Building a product with no vision for market means that the product is likely to be built well, since there is little pressure to get it to market sooner rather than later. However, since there is no market, it’s a distinct possibility that the product has no market, and therefore will never see revenue. As well, since it is not fulfilling a real need, it’s possible that the product will be found to be lacking in key areas that customers are concerned with.

On the other hand, selling the product first means that there is external pressure to complete the product as soon as possible, which can have negative impacts on quality control. Additionally, there is the risk of unachievable promises, with features being sold without an ability to build those features.

Like many things in life, the best route is that of a compromise. No vision isn’t good, but too much vision can blind you to other options and alternatives. Waiting to find a customer means time is wasted that could be spent developing the product, but ignoring customer acquisition means that you can be headed into a dead end long after you could have realized that there’s no future in the product.

Do you ascribe to one of these two concepts over the other? Why?

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40% of the population will vote Democrat, because that’s what their parents and grandparents did, it’s how they’ve always voted, and always will.

40% of the population will vote Republican for the exact same reason.

10% of the population will vote based on platforms and issues.

10% of the population will vote for the man.

Okay, maybe my numbers are off, but essentially, 80% of the population is already decided (though they may profess otherwise, or give alternate explanations for their voting). Of the remainder, half are also already decided because of the stances the candidates have already made. Only 10% of the population is truly undecided throughout the election campaign, and will ultimately vote based on the person and personality of the candidates.

The focus of an election campaign is not about convincing the 90% of the population who have already decided how to vote (though they will not be forgotten). It’s about the 10% that can be convinced to vote, and presenting the image that it is believed they want to see. It’s about convincing those who are still undecided.

What does this mean to you?

Whenever you set out to promote your opinions, don’t focus on convincing those who have always opposed you, and are unlikely (though certainly possible) to change their opinions. Instead, you are more likely to see success if you focus on those who are open to seeing your point of view, who are ready to be convinced.

If you are promoting a product or service, don’t try to convince those who are already using a competing product or service about how much better your product is. Instead, focus on getting those clients who are not committed to anyone yet. Only once you have built your own following should you turn your attention to the customers of your competition, when you already have the successes of your existing clients to reinforce any presentation you now make.

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She explained her choice of exercises very simply. With only three exercises, it’s more likely that I will do them on a regular basis, as it won’t take me much time, and they’re easy to remember. By selecting exercises that could be done standing without any equipment, she gave me the ability to do the exercises anywhere.

Her reasoning is completely sound. I can do all the exercises in 5 minutes. While they are perhaps not as effective as others done while lying down, the freedom to do them anywhere means that I’m more likely to do the exercises, making them much more effective than other stretches that I’m not likely to do.

What does this mean to you?

If you want to get someone to perform a task, keep it simple. Make the task as easy to remember and perform as possible. The simpler it is, the more likely it is that the task will get done.

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The overall real estate market may be down by about 33%, but that’s not the case in Toronto’s central core, says real estate agent Kevin Loberg.

In 2009, 613 homes sold for more than $1-million. In 2010, 825 sales homes have sold in the same price range. That’s an increase of almost 35%, Mr. Loberg says.

Twenty-four Gardiner Rd. is on a 51×128 foot lot in the central core’s Forest Hill neighbourhood.

Custom-designed by Richard Wengle, the 4,515-square-foot home has an additional 1,640 square feet on the lower level. A stone fireplace in the living room, a combination kitchen and breakfast room and a walkout to a stone patio from the family room and foyer are features of the four-bedroom, six-bathroom home.

The home has hardwood and stone floors, walk-in closets and a sauna.

I haven’t seen the home. I have no idea what it really looks like inside, outside, or how it compares to other homes on the street. I have no idea what other similar homes have been selling for in recent months.

I do know that this home is over-priced.

The listing didn’t have much room to describe the features of the house. As such, one might expect the broker to put as much emphasis into the value of the house as possible. Instead, the broker spent the first two paragraphs talking about the market in general. That’s 40% of the listing.

As a seller, I might be interested to know what other homes in a particular area have been selling for, and whether the prices in one area reflect the market in a larger area. As a buyer, this sounds like the seller knows the asking price is too high, and is trying to justify it.

When the seller has to convince you why the price is high before discussing the product being sold, it’s a warning sign. The seller has a confidence issue – they can’t even talk about the merits of the product until they prepare you for the high price based on factors completely separate from the actual product being sold.

What does this mean to you?

When you pitch a product to a customer, the price should not be relevant to the early parts of the discussion. The discussion should instead focus on the merits of the product or service, the value it contains, and only then should the price be explained. If a complicated explanation for a high price is still warranted, then your prices are simply too high for what you’re selling, or you’re selling to the wrong people.

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In 2001, Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. home lender, changed the way it treated daily debit transactions and cash withdrawals so that transactions with the highest dollar amount posted first, rather than in the order they occurred, according to the complaint. The practice, allegedly intended to boost revenue from overdraft fees, led to customers overdrawing accounts by small amounts multiple times a day, according to the complaint.

The reason this ruling was of such interest to my associate was because his own bank does the same thing. His transactions are put into effect by size, which he has been able to demonstrate by watching the order of the posting of the transactions change shortly after they first appear in his account history.

The explanation from Wells Fargo is that this practice was put into place for the benefit of the consumer, in that by having the largest transactions complete first, the likelihood of a significant withdrawal causing overdraft (e.g. mortgage or car payments) is reduced.

Whether or not Wells Fargo’s decision to implement such a transaction policy is actually based on improving customer service (as opposed to finding a way to increase fees to users as was claimed against them) is not the point of this article. What is the point is that by claiming this as the reason for the practice, the bank has implied that their policy is set by people completely detached from the reality of how people use banks, or by people incredibly stupid.

When a person makes a series of transactions, their assumption is that they will be completed in the order they were made. If this causes multiple overdrafts to be incurred, that is the problem of the account owner. If the bank really wanted to help out customers, the only transactions they would process out of order would be to do all deposits prior to doing the withdrawals (thereby reducing the chance of an overdraft fee being incurred).

Second, to truly help customers not incur overdrafts, the Wells Fargo might have looked at the number of overdraft fees incurred as a result of performing the transactions in chronological order, and compare it to the number of fees incurred were the transactions to be processed in the order of magnitude. Only then should a reordering of the transactions occur, if doing so would reduce the number of fees incurred by the customer.

What does this mean to you?

Simple – when trying to make a decision on behalf of a client for their benefit, don’t make assumptions about what the customer would rather have you do, but instead, do what the customer would assume you would do. If you don’t truly understand the impact of deviating from the expected behaviour, then don’t deviate.

When you change from the expected, be sure you understand the ramifications, or you can find yourself, like Wells Fargo, sitting in court defending your practice.

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Recent discussions with a variety of office managers led me to the conclusion that perhaps, in a desire to have an open and comfortable environment, the lack of protocol in the offices exacerbated the issues with motivation. Protocol has a variety of components, including accepted arrival and departure times, accepted socializing, and dress code. While these and other aspects of office protocol are important, the one which is the subject of today’s article is dress code.

Some might say I’m not the ideal author of a policy on dress code. The average day will see me wearing dress pants and dress shirt, even when working from my home office. I’ll occasionally wear a polo shirt, or khaki pants, but rarely if a meeting with a client is anticipated. With a personal preference for more formal attire, I am certainly biased in that direction. However, I will attempt to justify my preference in such a way that you may gain insight from my opinions.

When showing up to an environment which tolerates apathy toward personal appearance, it is difficult to motivate yourself toward success. When your appearance reinforces the indifference of the office toward appearance, the appearance becomes the reality. After a while, when difficulties are encountered, it becomes increasingly difficult to find motivation.

While perhaps formal attire goes overboard, and certainly if employees are not being exposed to clients it becomes difficult to put an emphasis on dress, it is, nonetheless, a valid point of protocol. People looking at themselves in the office should see pride in their appearance, should exude a professional image.

They should also see work as a place that is not home.

Employees should be comfortable in their work environment, but that does not extend to include total indifference toward appearance. They should be aware, at least, that they are in an environment that has expectations from them, which does require their contributions to the best of their abilities. They should be aware that indifference and apathy are not desired traits, and that efforts are being made to reduce those.

Finally, if the office is suffering from a lack of motivation, changing the dress code can serve as a constant visual reminder that changes are underway, provided, of course, that other changes are being made. The visual reminder can put an emphasis on the new, an emphasis on the future.

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• Want a blog? We’ll use WordPress with a nice theme, $250 tops.
• Need a more powerful CMS? How about Drupal for $750, basic installation, $2,500 when you add in full shopping cart functionality with Ubercart.
• Photo gallery? It’s just a plugin, $50.

While this is not to say there is no value in hiring local, it does force the local prices to conform to international standards, despite the differences in cost of living between the various locations of development shops. A repeated comment from clients is “But I could outsource it to India for a fraction of the price”.

The local shops must therefore learn to compete against companies that will constantly be able to underquote them, without short-changing themselves in the process. Lowering the prices won’t do – the bills here are not being lowered, salaries here are higher.

The local businesses must learn to sell themselves based on what sets them apart. If that’s difficult to define, then they must learn to create value in themselves that can be defined. When you compete against a commodity, you must base your marketing against what makes you better than the standard packages.

• Clearer communication on account of no language gaps.
• Conforming to accepted best practices in application development.
• Additional SEO work both on and off page to increase the visibility of the client’s completed project.
• Larger basic packages without a proportional increase in price (that is, lower margins on the extras).

Is your target market being turned into a commodity? What can you offer that sets you apart? How will you continue to bring value to your clients that justifies your higher fees?

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3. Parks and Membership

Being able to instruct a class in fitness requires training, and there are certifications available for a variety of types of instructors. The pricing of the courses generally reflects the amount of effort required to become proficient at the content. As a result, the basic instruction course can be completed in a matter of weeks for a few hundred dollars, and will allow the student to teach a variety of general courses. Yoga, on the other hand, takes years of training and multiple courses, but once complete, again will allow the student to teach Yoga.

However, there are also a variety of specialty courses which are taught by individual gyms or fitness centers, and here’s where pricing becomes abusive.

An independent fitness center can offer any course it wants, and it can require special training. As an example, boot camps will typically train their instructors in their own system, though they do acknowledge and recognize training recieved at other boot camps. Other systems, though, are truly unique to the facility offering the course, and the training does not really have any comparable application elsewhere.

What is this training worth?

Considering that it only has application at a single facility, the answer would be that it’s worth a minimal amount. If the trainee does not get a job at that facility, the investment is worthless. It would be expected, then, that the training have a negligible fee attached, or a guarantee of a job at the conclusion of the training.

Neither part of that is true. The training in one case would cost over $1,800 over the course of 6 months, with no assurances of employment.

What the managers of these facilities must learn is that while getting certified does not create any assurance of reward, it is expected to have a potential benefit that is proportional to the risk taken on by the trainee to acquire the certification.

What does this mean to you?

When you price a product, you need to balance the cost of the product against the value it creates for the buyer, especially in a service-based product. If there are raw costs, you can factor those in, but at the end of the day, if the price of the product is more than the value it creates, then it will be difficult to find a buyer who is ultimately satisfied.

In general, your pricing should be proportional to the value, but still less. That is, if you create $100 of value, then the price should not be $100, but less than that. In that way, your buyers will leave feeling they got good value, creating satisfied customers who will refer you to others, and return to buy more.

Related posts:

1. Book Education vs. Job Training
2. Project and Hourly Pricing
3. Honesty and Consistency

Starbucks Experience

I’m not a regular customer at Starbucks, because I don’t like their coffee. I find it to be overly strong, as if it were roasted too long. As I’m into my coffee (I often roast my own at home), and I drink coffee for its wakening effects, I’m not going to frequent a shop that serves a product I don’t like.

Others, however, will continue going to buy their coffee at Starbucks, despite the fact that they readily admit that the coffee is not great. They return, however, for the experience. At Starbucks, the ordering, serving, and drinking the coffee is about the culture, the environment in which it takes place. The product itself will take a back seat to the experience, and there are certainly people who will pay for that.

Several years ago, before I got married and I was dating frequently, I became familiar with the various shops, and realized that when entering a coffee shop for social reasons, the experience is much more important than the product. (I also learned to order tea instead of coffee.)

Tim Hortons Taste

The other chain that contrasts well with Starbucks is Tim Hortons. Personally, I don’t think their coffee is wonderful, but I have been to several cafes, and what I noticed to be so remarkable about Tim Hortons is the consistency in the taste of coffee. No matter when I’ve gone in, whether it’s the shop near the office, across the border, in the airport – it always tastes exactly the same.

In early June, the National Post ran an article detailing how Tim Hortons produces such a consistent product. A fascinating read, it outlines the process that the company follows to achieve consistency. They are not aiming to be the best coffee, or the best experience. They’re aiming to be the most reliable coffee. When in doubt, drink a cup of Tim Hortons coffee.

What This Means to You

You may or may not be working with coffee. But you do work with either a product or a service. You have two ways to convince customers to come work with you, to buy from you. Either you can provide them with a great experience, or you can provide them with a consistent product. Neither way is more right than the other, but it is important that you determine which route you want to go.

Then you need to figure out how to go out and do it, and to be successful at it.

Related posts:

1. Universal Imaging
2. True Relationships
3. Succeed or Fail? Your Choice…

I’m looking more into finding ways to promote my business, and I’m doing it with a whole new look. In short, I’m rebranding myself.

Why? Because this site represents my journey over the past couple years, but does not represent my future. It represents what me and my business have done, what we want to do, but not where the business is going. It’s time to change that.

This isn’t really about just me and my company though. It’s something every business should go through every once in a while. Similar to goal setting, which I’ve discussed here many times, this is about seeing your future, and showing it to the world.

When was the last time you truly showed your customers where it is you want to go? When have you demonstrated to your clients how your business works, and where they in particular fit into the grand scheme of things? When was the last time you even thought about these questions?

Going through a rebranding exercise can make you do all this and more. When you rebrand, you’re looking for the image, whether visual or otherwise, that best represents your company both in terms of where you are today, as well as in terms of where you would like to be a year or longer from now. You’re trying to represent yourself to an unknown audience, without being there. You’re giving away material, but you aren’t there to explain it.

What does your brand say about you? What do your clients think your brand is? If the answers aren’t the same, you should take a close look at how you present yourself, and why others don’t see your image in the same light that you do.

Related posts:

1. Developing a Personal Brand
2. Universal Imaging
3. The Personal Brand