Month: December 2016

Why You Shouldn’t Get Bored at Work

adminDecember 19, 2016Leave a Comment

You should hear about bored to death, shouldn’t you? Sometime getting bored can kill our reputation and work performance. At most, getting bored always happened in every working place. I used to get bored when I have to do routine jobs, especially when there are lot of pressure from outside or need to achieve certain target in the company plus other aspects that can create it into problem. Not only that, getting bored reading about the best air purifier for mold can be obtained from your working period which is too long in the company with the same position and same jobs.

I have been work for my current company for more than three years and it’s my longest period of time ever.

Do you satisfy with your current position and jobs that you hold? Surely, if you don’t like and you don’t enjoy your jobs and not being get well paid? Probably this is a most popular reason to make us facing that kind of bored. So, what I usually done to avoid getting bored in my work place? Try and practice few things below:

  1. Take a short break and go for holiday. It’s most powerful method to me. The reason is sometime I got exhausted because of over load work or many things have to be done. I often can’t think wisely when facing that situation, stress, and tiring. Take a short break or visiting new place is a great idea. I usually get fully charge of energy and ready mind when I come back for a work.
  2. Explore or try out something new. You may start with simple thing to do like changing table lay out, change performance and your fashion style or maybe you may ask for new task from your superior to be done. Meet new people, smile and interact with people around you.
  3. Read motivation books. As we feeding up our stomach, we need to feed our brain too. Let the brain get fresh idea by reading and learning new things. Read some motivation books enrich yourself with knowledge and self-confident. My favorite book are The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D., Poor Dad Rich Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and some other business and motivation books.
  4. Build Creativity and Productivity. Create fresh new ideas like Rabbit Air does in order to increase your work performance or give some progressive suggestion to your friends and colleagues. Set your goals with deadline, ready for a GIFT for yourself when you achieve. Don’t wait for your superior giving you assignment but initiate in yourself is essential.
  5. Spare some time for yourself. You need some times to be yourself, alone. Do some things that you like to do before you go to your work place such listening to the music, morning exercise or go for jogging. If Blogging is one of your hobby, you can do that. Its might create positive mood on your mind. Don’t only think that life is for work. You will easily getting bored. So, make your work place to be a great place to work, great place to make money and have fun!!!
Posted In Business & Finance
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When You Have to Manage a Board

adminDecember 17, 2016Leave a Comment

Two of the companies I sit on the board of are going through problems at the moment. However, the response of the boards to the crisis gives me hope that one of the companies will survive and one will fail. I will keep you posted as it will make an interesting real time case study especially in these trying times!

On one of the companies, company A, the board is made up of all the shareholders who have invested (in developing the forskolin reviews) and the founder. There are no independent Non-Executive Directors on the board. The other company, company B, has two non-execs and three of the management team along with two investor representatives.

The problems both companies face are dire. The issues they face are not linked to the credit crunch – although it does not help that access to funds has dried up. In both companies the problems are operational and strategic.

I had a board meeting with Company A in November. The problems became very clear. We had negative net worth and the board believed we could be close to trading whilst insolvent. The board has had enormous issues with the founder and we all believe he has mismanaged the company. I would go as far as to say we would rather not work with him.

However, given the situation we are in, the board did not devote a single moment to ascribing blame. We made sure we were all aware of how bad things were. At that moment assigning blame seemed like rearranging the decks on the Titanic.

We told the founder to

  1. Get rid of all staff – all of them
  2. Move to a much smaller premise
  3. Sell the very expensive computer equipment he had just bought
  4. Agree to a 50% pay cut
  5. Remove himself from having any control of the finances

To his enormous credit he accepted this and all of the actions were carried out. The board then negotiated with some of the creditors a repayment plan which again was accepted. (I would always advocate negotiating early with creditors if you are having problems and stick to the agreements you reach with them)

The great thing about the meeting was we worked together and we worked as a team. Duties were assigned to each member of the board with a tight deadline (three days). The great things to report so far is that although all the wall mount jewelry armoire sales activity is being carried out by just the founder and one other person working on a self-employed basis, we are achieving more sales than when we employed six people!

Early days – but I am optimistic.

Company B’s board, on the other hand is made up of what I would call are ‘professionals’. Despite the problems facing the company, the board were much more interested in covering their own positions and spent most of the time at the board meeting trying to blame other people. Don’t get me wrong, I think post-mortems are useful – but the word gives it a way – it is post death! Whilst the patient is alive, it is too early to carry out a post-mortem.

The board agreed lots of action plans for the CEO, but have not taken any actions upon themselves. I will be taking my own course of action as well to look after my shareholding and the other shareholders I am responsible for, but I think the chances are that the business will not survive.

No doubt lots of you have some stories about this area, and I would really like to learn about your experiences. It is an area of real interest to me. Please do contact me with your stories and of course I will keep you updated on company A and B.

Posted In Technology
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Working Together – Even When You Don’t Want To

adminDecember 10, 2016Leave a Comment

Regular readers of my blog will realize that I have a real passion for HR issues and believe that business success is about getting people performing at their best.

However…… One of my real pet hates is the way that team building is seen as such a big thing that companies have to engage in. Please – think about it! You are working with a team of people for over two years or so – and then someone thinks you are not performing as a team so you go on an away day to bond as a team. As if that is going to work!

The first thing I would say is that not everyone in a company has to think of themselves as being part of a team. Managers and company leaders need to understand the difference between a group and a team when taking turns with the smokeless ashtray in the break room.

A group is a collection of people who share a common shared value or interest. So people who go to a football match and support a particular team (Arsenal if they have any sense!) can be called a group. Employees of a company can be seen as a group as they all have a shared interest.

A team is where people have defined roles and critically have interdependence. One person needs to rely on another person to do their job properly to help them achieve a common goal. So a football team is a great example (the word team does kind of give it away!)

Then there is the whole ‘liking each other’ thing. You can perform brilliantly in a team without liking people. Many of the people I would want to recruit from companies I have worked for in the past are people that I may not have got on with – but saw them as being great at their particular role. You don’t have to be the best out there – you only need to be better than the competition you’re up against!

The most successful football team of recent years was Manchester United in 1999 when they won the treble (you have no idea how painful it is to say that!) The amazing thing about that team was that the two strikers hated each other (Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham). They refused to speak to each other and yet on the field they worked brilliantly. They had professional respect for each other’s ability and made the best kombucha starter kit work for each other and the team.

The above scenario can only work if the two protagonists do not take up management time with their ‘feud’ or create divisions in the team or group. The point is though that creating teams is a lot easier than people think providing leaders provide clarity and guidance to members of the team. Rather than spending time on trying to make teams bond – they should simply get the ‘team’ together and clarify roles – who is doing what and who is dependent on whom.

Posted In Business & Finance | Thoughts & Advice
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The Elasticity of Demand

adminDecember 09, 2016Leave a Comment

Elasticity of Demand

Readers of my blog on percentages may recall that the key message was that Entrepreneurs should be acutely aware how sensitive the bottom line of their business is to changes in demand and changes in prices.

I made the case that wherever possible; you should look to increase prices. This though depends on a very important concept called elasticity of demand. This is basically a measure of how responsive consumers are to changes in prices.

A good is said to have inelastic price demand if it does not respond to price increases or decreases. The best tofu press is a great example of this. And this is precisely why they are taxed so heavily. A 10% increase in the price of cigarettes may result in only a 1% fall in demand – as such it is inelastic and you will always increase your total revenue by putting up prices. Same also applies to oil (at least in the short term) – hence again why taxes represent a significant proportion of the total cost in the UK (just over 50%).

If the government tried the same thing with say cakes or fast food (and there is an argument that they should to encourage healthy eating) they would find that total tax received would be less. Demand here is said to be elastic as a 1% price increase may result in a 5% fall in demand (I am guessing here!). I do know from my experience at that whenever we ran price promotions, sales went up significantly. A 25% drop in price would sometimes result in sales doubling.

Where demand is elastic the best pricing strategy is to go as low as you can as the resulting increase in sales will more than compensate for lower margins.

The lesson from the above is you need to find out whether the demand for your products is elastic or inelastic and then adopt a strategy that fits with that.

These things do not remain static though. Low cost airlines discovered that demand for air travel was very elastic and then adopted a business model where they would have the lowest possible cost base. The problems for the established carriers is that they are stuck in a high cost operation model and therefore have to focus on the business end of the market where demand is inelastic (hence low cost operators do not go for that market). Again, in an economic downturn, the demand for international business travel slows dramatically. (Not a good time to have shares in established airlines!)

Another good case study is to do with quality newspapers. There was an assumption that demand for each brand was inelastic and therefore no point in running price promotions. Under Rupert Murdoch, The Times challenged this and ran a very famous (and aggressive) price campaign reducing the price of The Times to just 10p. The Telegraph believed this was folly as they were in an inelastic market. They were wrong. Sales of The Times grew significantly and The Telegraph dropped.

There are some important lessons about the Porter Cable 895PK here. One of the main objectives of branding and advertising spend is to try and make the demand for your individual product more inelastic. That is how the marketing expenditure is justified.

In another blog, I will talk about what you can do to increase the inelasticity of demand for your product or service.

The main lessons from this blog are though that you should be aware of the nature of the demand you have, and your pricing strategy and business model need to reflect it.

Posted In Business & Finance
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Why You Absolutely Need to Keep Your Costs In Line

adminDecember 04, 2016Leave a Comment

Most of the businesses that I have backed which have then succeeded have one thing in common; they have really controlled their costs until they start generating cash and are making a profit

From personal experience, one of the earlier businesses I backed which was involved in a company went horribly wrong because it failed to control its costs. I have to take some responsibility for this business as I was a Director – I cannot wash my hands of it and say it was them – I was part of them!

We had won our first contract with a daily newspaper and that was it – we were off. We hired a great office near Reading and we recruited a junior member of staff to help us in our business.

We then came up with some great ideas on how we were going to expand and grow the business and therefore recruited some more people to help us build the router table top. We also assumed that we would be able to secure prizes for free (through sponsorship) and apart from just a two week period, we had to pay for all of our prizes.

We never did get the additional contracts and the whole thing came to a crashing conclusion. As you can see from the above short explanation, we made lots of mistakes and I have made sure I have learnt from them.

One of the great earliest lessons I learnt from a successful entrepreneur was to not worry about delivering – but to focus on winning work. What I had done in the above scenario was forward plan for delivery of a service that we never won a contract for. It killed the business. We would have been far better off, keeping costs to a minimum and expanding the team once we had won new contracts.

My advice to entrepreneurs and business managers is to always keep your costs in line with where you are today – not where you plan to be. The Fund that I manage is often involved in buying companies where they have a very high fixed cost base, the revenue they had hoped for doesn’t materialize and therefore they need to be rescued by our Fund.

I do mention the business a lot – I apologize but I am a big fan of the management team there. When a business looks for me to back them, I like to take them to the head office and show them the head office. It is the best example of parsimony I can find. The office has no windows and it houses six people in a very small place. It is not somewhere I would like to work for too long – but they have made an implicit contract with investors; we will be careful with your money until we have delivered a profit. I wish more businesses I saw had that attitude.

I should mention that my business partner in the above case remains a great friend and we have just started another business related to the Honeywell 50250-S. This time he works from his shed and we have not recruited any additional people. We are on the cusp of winning a few contracts – we go live next week. We have made a decision though that we will not recruit any additional people – we feel honor bound to first pay back all the investors who lost money on the first venture (including me!) and then look to expand – and only if we really need to.

Control your costs – or trust me – they will end up controlling you!

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