By MacNessa, on August 5th, 2009%
The rewards of working your butt off are many.
For one – there’s job satisfaction. Always a biggee – afterall we do spend our lives at our jobs (mostly) we best do a good job, enjoy it and be proud of our efforts.
I am so blessed to be able to do something that I love. That I absolutely thrive on.
Occasionally though, one does need a break.
A complete break to replenish the creativity stores.
A change of scenery to get the mind the hell out of that box that things like routine and familiarity put it into.
Sometimes I like to go to my quiet place in my head.
It’s on a mountain, near Banff, Alberta, and I’m riding a palomino horse, taking in the crisp mountain air. The grandeur is awe inspiring. (It’s a real memory, that I go back to when I need to stop and breathe).
 Another time I’m picturing fast paced Vegas vacations!
Golfing weekends in the desert!
A photoshoot in the Neon Boneyard!
The living, audacious lights of The Strip!
The ching-ching-ding-a-ling of a million slots tempting me with promises of wealth and fortune.
The things I could buy with my brand new, vast empire of wealth.
Just one more quarter.
Happy Day Dreaming it is an essential part of your day.
By MacNessa, on February 3rd, 2009%
Knowing your strengths is a key to business success.
This does not however mean, that you should ignore your weaknesses and blunder forth.
Let me give you an example. I am a photographer, who dabbles in graphic design. If I have a client who suddenly comes to me waving big bucks and looking for swish flash animation, or video production, I must not be so blinded by the big bucks and say yes – and produce substandard stuff, given that I know that these are not my strengths, rather, instead of turning the client away, which would be down right stupid, I should outsource that work.
Your client need never know that you outsourced that work.
Afterall, when you go into a furniture store, do they tell you where exactly that sofa was made? Or that they had it made by a new supplier? Not generally. Unless it’s going to enhance your oppinion of it – and generally if you’re happy with your purchase, they’re far more likely to want to bask in the reflected glory of your happiness. Why should your line of business be any different? By outsourcing those things which are not your strengths you are:
- Retaining Business and making money which you would not have had.
- Improving on relations with other suppliers, who may in return send you business back that IS your strength.
- Maintaining your brands integrity, by not producing work, that you are aware is not the best for the client.
- Keeping your customer happy, since they came to you in the first place, and now you’ve delivered what they wanted.
One of the ways in knowing how to outsource is, quite frankly, keeping your eye on the ball. That is, the internet.
You need to keep abreast of as many new things out there as you can, in order to keep your business current. Believe it or not there are some shops out there, that *still* spend hours on the phone, ordering off manual stock lists, because they don’t believe in that ‘fax machine phenomenon’. Um, welcome to the 21st century!
How many companies out there need video conferencing, but think it’s a huge expense, and are not willing to look into it?
Are they even aware of something like web conferencing affiliate programs? The fact that they could join a service that would allow them to use a web based conferencing service, improving their productivity and efficiency (at a fraction of the cost of say setting up an in house system) AND produce returns by joining the affiliate programme?
Well, if they never bother to do the research, they’ll stay in the dark ages, which is frankly, not somewhere I’m willing to let my business be.
By MacNessa, on January 31st, 2009%
I’m really thankful that I had such a great English teacher for my last two years of high school. She was witty, sarcastic, and borderline bitchy, but BOY you understood the language, and how to use it when you left her classroom. Or at least I hope so. (Makes mental note to run spell check on this post before publishing). Yes, she was a cool teacher.
So, thanks to her, I would say I generally have a good grasp of correct spelling (and spelling things the American way, is simply different, not wrong by the way) and of pronunciation (oh crap – anybody know how to spell pronounciation?). Unfortunately this has also left me with a very critical eye, and it pains me NO END to see in our local media i.e. newspapers how things are consistently spelled incorrectly (heck, is it spelled, or spelt? Damnit, where are you Mrs C when I need you!??) ANYWAY, as I was saying, I hate bad spelling. It bugs me that there are people who have jobs, where you’d think that spelling would be a key job skill, like a newspaper copy editor etc and there are spelling mistakes in the copy. It’s just not write. Ha haa. I meant right.
Even worse, if you run a restaurant, for gods sake, explain to your staff that when someone orders Quesadillas, and pronounces it correctly, saying Kay-SAH-Dee-YAH, that your staff don’t say back to the customer, “oh yes, the KWESADILLAS?”. Don’t even get me started on Tortillas. Or Renault. Or Peugeot. Maybe these companies should consider letting their employees do an online university degree to improve their work?
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If you’re in the market for a new tv stand, do take a look here. I’ve been dying to replace ours, but am holding out for getting to a new country and all, so no point in buying one now, if we’re not shipping anything other than personal effects. But it sure is fun to window shop online right?
By MacNessa, on September 25th, 2008%
…or really grate your customers depending on how you deploy the concept.
Getting a client to sign an exclusivity agreement can help your business. You will save precious hours that you might have spent working on designs ideas or concepts for a client, only to be told, “Oh we went with XYZ Design Company instead.” “Doh!” is what you say for being such a twunt and having wasted all those creative hours on someone who wasn’t serious about going with you.
This is particularly bad in the travel industry where clients will go to three or four agencies for an airline quote, and all the agencies will hold a booking in the system, hoping for payment, but in reality all this does is sell out the cheaper fare allocation quicker, and drives the prices up. I suppose in this scenario the airline scores, but no one else.
The downside of exclusivity is the annoyance factor. As a customer of mobile phones, it really grates me, that a particular phone that I may really like, is ‘network locked’. I feel like, if I’m going to like it enough to buy it, then it should be MY CHOICE which network provider I go with, especially now that number portability is more widespread. FYI you can get unlocked cell phones here. The other thing that annoys me is the 24 month contracts they drag you into (ditto my internet provider), you pay enough monthly, and you should be able to cancel when you want to – especially if you bought your phone/modem cash, and don’t owe anything on it.
By MacNessa, on September 13th, 2008%
Well that’s a very hoi polloi title for something that can actually be quite simple.
Business Process Management or bpm is often complicated to the point of ridiculousness. It is just about any technique that improves business. It is just about anything that contributes to a business process improvement, and can therefor mean any number of things.
One of the most awesome things about working for myself is that I don’t have to be confined to any one type of process, or methodology. Usually the reason why large corporates stumble and fall, and lose out to smaller competitors is because they become so bogged down in established methods and practices that they can go round and round in circles in those evil never ending spheres called ‘meetings’.
On the other hand, having an established practice and method can enable a business to maintain perhaps a larger area of business than if they were to apply no technique at all.
What am I saying here? Don’t be afraid to shake it up if you work for yourself. Try new things while using your established techniques on your core clients. But don’t be afraid to fix what ain’t broken, especially if you can make it better.
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