Is your business healthy?
Don’t jump and answer yes if the income or profit graph for your past year looks similar to the graph in the picture. Having a healthy business is not only getting higher profits or more income.
If your numbers snap into the graph you are on the right track, but have you considered any risks that could turn that graphs upside down in a matter of weeks? If you haven’t it is time to start doing so.
How many clients do you have? Is any of them, or a combination of clients in a monopoly position?
If you answered just a few or enough for the first question, then you expose yourself to a lot of risks. Here’s just a bad scenario I could think of right now. Half of your clients decide they no longer need you! Yes… it can happen. Think of this as the worst case scenario. Your revenue drops to half before you have time to cut your costs in half and in a blink of an eye you’re now on loss.
A good solution is to get more clients. You’re probably be okay when your answer to this question is somewhere close to more than I can handle.
What about the monopoly?
I am referring here to revenue monopoly, not anything else. Is any of your clients or a combination of a few clients generating more than 50% of your revenue? If yes, you’re again big trouble and walking on a very risky slope. If the client or clients combo suddenly cancel your services, your income drops by half again. Your costs remain the same and all of a sudden you’re on loss. Again!
So, if you do have a couple of clients generating most of your revenue, start getting more clients and diverging your income streams away from the few channels you’re currently on.
There’s more to it…
Of course the above are just a couple of ways one thriving business could go bust in no time. There’s a lot more things that could go wrong, and if you think of any please share them.
What’s missing in Twitter
One user tweets in multiple languages, merges business with personal
More and more users are starting to burst tweets. The bad thing is that many of them now switch from one language to another (I’ve done it), they switch from personal to business or from business to personal (although my twitter account is business, I’ve also tweeted some personal opinions too).
Loosing listeners
I don’t have the statistics under my nose (although it would be nice to get a response from twitter), but I guess it’s somewhat natural for users to lose their audience when they start doing the above. You’ve got your fan base listening in English. Then you tweet something in Romanian, German or Spanish. Although the tweet is on the same topic you’ve used your audience with, its very likely that you loose some of your followers if you start doing this often.
Geeting more followers
A nice feature that would solve this issue would be similar to Google’s circles in Google plus. One user has one account and multiple subaccounts (think of them like follower circles). This way tweets in English and on primary subject could be kept on the main account and followers of that account would get the info you share. Tweets in Romanian, German or Spanish on the same subject would be sent on their respective Romanian, German or Spanish subaccounts and only the followers of those subaccounts would get them in their timeline. You could also add a rant section, a personal section or whatever you want.
The above features would allow concentrating all your followers under one big roof and keep things simple. Currently, if you want to achieve something similar you’d have to create multiple accounts for each topic or language, switch between them and so on. A complete mess.
Yahoo mail’s awful spam assassin system
I’ve only used Yahoo’s email services because its bundled with the account you get to make if you want to use their instant messaging service. Although these days you can barely find me online on Yahoo Messenger, a couple of years ago I would have been one of those regular users who are online whenever their computers are powered. Given the fact that Romanians tend to use Yahoo Messenger without any chance for any other service, I didn’t have a chance and had to get the account to talk to friends, family or colleagues.
Yahoo’s spam detector has serious issues
A couple of years ago I had a server hosted in UK (don’t exactly remember where) which was running a website for a client I had back then. The main problem with the website was that it was a subscription service requiring email address validation and Yahoo was blocking (not just placing into spam folder) all the emails sent from that server.
Whoever signed up with a Yahoo email address couldn’t validate their account. After weeks of research and contacting Yahoo support the cause was identified and unfortunately it could only be solved by Yahoo (as it was on their end). The problem wasn’t solved so we had to switch datacenters, update DNS, experience downtime and the whole bundle of issues.
You’d think that since 2006 Yahoo’s problems with spam are solved, but no. WebRaptor [new window] hosts a couple of servers with BurstNet in UK and US. Neither could send initially any emails to Yahoo accounts as all of them very permanently rejected.
Had to go again through the entire process described above. The good thing was that this time Yahoo managed to solve the issue and emails are now going through. Finally!
The irony [ The “best” web-based email ]
I haven’t accessed my Yahoo email account much since I signed up (I think it was about 10 years ago). I never gave anyone that email address so nobody send me legit email on that address. However, although Yahoo has a very strict policy against spam blocking a lot of emails, legitimate emails, they fail to block spam from reaching my inbox.
My inbox now contains about 50.000 emails. My spam folder contains 62 emails, the oldest dating back to 1st of January 2003.
If you want to check out a long topic with the issue, check this one on Web Hosting Talk [new window].
The Writer's Block
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better - Seth Godin
Source: alexpopescu
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
- Steve Jobs
(via alfonsoparga)
Source: startupquote
Details Matter
It’s the little details that make the difference. Everybody must have heard that at least once but few actually realize the impact small details can make. Smallest details can make a client stick with you a while longer, separate you from your competitors or give you the chance to raise your prices and earn more. That’s because small details make up the quality.
Case study Pizza X
Or why I won’t be ordering pizza from a quite successful pizzeria in my hometown. I say successful because it’s well established and they do great for home deliveries. Last week I ordered three different pizzas. One was supposed to be a Margherita without olives, as I hate olives. I really do.
After I picked up my order I realized that my Margherita had olives, and while grabbing a bite off one of the other I almost crushed a tooth because there was an olive seed. Not a whole olive but an olive seed mixed within some small bits of sliced olives.
To top the whole thing, the pizzas’ crust was hard and awful. Wrapping things up, here’s the three small details that made me erase Pizza X’s number from my contacts:
- One pizza contained olives even though I asked not to have olives
- Pizza contained olive seeds
- The crust was hard, kinda like old and dried bread
Case study Total Taxi
I don’t travel a lot by taxi, but when I do I make sure it’s Total Taxi (when in Cluj). Why? One morning I needed a taxi so I looked on the net for a company’s number. Rang them, got a car in a couple of minutes and went to my destination. I liked the company because they talked really nice on the phone, kind and respectful, and the driver got really fast in front of the building.
But a couple hours later they sort of blew my mind when I called for another ride and the lady and I had the following conversation:
- Me: Hello, I would …
- Taxi rep.: Hello Bogdan, would you like a taxi at [my address]
- Me: Oh, hi… Actually no… need one at [the new address - the one were I got earlier via their cab]
- Taxi rep.: Ok then, a car will be there in 4 minutes
- Me: Great. Have a nice day
- Taxi rep.: Have a nice day
Then, 4 minutes later I got in my taxi and the driver greeted me and asked if I wanted to go home. Yes, yes I did.
Technology surrounds us at every step and these guys are putting it to good use. It’s not that hard to store in a database a couple of names and addresses.
Pay attention to details
Therefor next time before you release a new product or service make sure that details are taken care of every step of the way, because it’s the details that can make you grow and have great profits and enjoy your business, but it’s the same details that can make you file for bankruptcy!
Names in the case studies are fictive.
