Casual Articles - Business

Customer Service in the Bottled Water Business
Almost every company talks at length about customer service and the need for excellence in satisfying the needs of its customers but very few put that talk into action. This is particularly true in the bottled water business.The bottled water industry service a wide customer base with each company in the industry servicing many individual customers. The industry is characterized by a small number of very large firms and a large number of relatively small players with specific geographic niches. But all bottled water providers share the need for customer service.The Nature of the Business:The bottled water business consists of the manufacturing and delivery of spring or purified water in small packages and larger containers such as 5 gallon bottles. The product is delivered in company owned delivery trucks or through common carriers directly to the site of the customer. Each bottled water firm in the industry makes an implicit promise to its customers that it will produce the highest quality product and deliver that product to i

ure. While the statistics say that 9 out of 10 fail, I state that 9 out of 10 succeed and only one fails. Note that this analysis does not take into account how common the different scenarios are in comparison to each other.

In my previous article I also defined entrepreneurial failure as the choice to stop being an entrepreneur. I’d also like to apply this statement into the 9 out of 10 rule. An entrepreneur that decides never to fail (as in not having the business vanish within the first five years), lives with the mind-set that they are ready to attempt 10 times before making it big. They know that most often you have to go with trial and error, or the ready-fire-aim approach. However, those who don’t share this mind-set are likely to quit after their first attempt.

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

- 7 out of 10 fail/attempt once and don’t ever try it again (use the word fail if you like the mainstream rule over this issue and attempt if you find it more correct to relate these entrepreneurs with any of the nine scenarios explained above).

- 3 out of 10 are willing to fail/attempt 10 times before succeeding (if they define success as still running a business after five years), which means that they end up statistically failing/attempting twice and succeeding the third time.

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to

How To Prepare A Modern Meeting Agenda
The agenda is the key to a successful meeting – it is the roadmap, the guide, the plan. Studies have shown that up to 70% of meetings either have no agenda or have a poor agenda which is not helpful. In this article, you will see that there are some steps which you can take to make sure your agenda will contribute to making your meeting more productive. There are also hidden advantages. If the agenda is well constructed, you will also spend less time in the meeting and more time actually doing the things the meeting determines need to be done!1. Remember the key – the more detailed the agenda, the more focussed and generally, the shorter the meeting will be.2. You cannot expect intelligent decisions if people do not have time to think through the issues before the meeting. Therefore, agendas need to be sent out in advance, not given out at the meeting. People who have genuine desire to reach the best decision, and people who are organised, always have their agendas distributed in time for people to give thought to the issues.3. Ad

I have written previously in what ways a business may come to an end and I felt I should make some further clarifications and explanations to debunk the 9 out of 10 failure rule for good. Following I’ll present ten different scenarios for businesses that last for up to five years and conclude a more accurate failure rate analysis from the results.

1. The business is still around. This is the one out of ten that still exists and shows a healthy pulse. Congratulations! I hope the business is treating you well and you’re working less while earning more in comparison to being a full-time employee in cubicle land. Remember that during the next five years your chances of survival are still the same as during the previous five years. These words aren’t even remotely discouraging to you or your efforts since you already feel invincible by now. But please do read the following ones just to give yourself a heads-up on possible outcomes that may not be that bad as the failure statistics try to terrorize us with.

2. The business got sold. If this is considered a failure, then count me in. A great portion of business start-ups launch specifically with the vision of being sold for big bucks in the coming years. This certainly isn’t the aim for my own blog venture, but I do wonder what the founders of YouTube have to say about the sale of their business. I’m guessing they’re feeling a bit down seeing as they failed pretty badly - in the statistics of things.

3. A better opportunity presented itself. This is the case of a business being alive for say, three years doing just fine when suddenly some new idea leaves you sleepless at nights. It might be your entrepreneurship contacts and friends deciding to put all heads together and start a completely new and innovative business that has far more potential than your current, slightly above average cash cow company. For the thrill of things and excitement thereof, who wants to run a business that ended up monotonous after a couple of years when there’s a chance of far bigger deals to be made in something completely different? Statistical interpretation: failure.

4. There’s an entity shift. Consider the previous scenario, but instead of joining or creating something completely different, you simply change the entity form to a more suitable one after you’ve noticed changes in your income generation or business model. Maybe you’re successful enough to make it into a franchise system, or you’ve simply decided to move elsewhere while still doing what you already have found yourself successful in. Statistical interpretation: failure.

5. Retirement or health related hindrance. “You’re old, sick and tired - you have failed.” How’s that for a comment to receive when you shake hands with your successor as (s)he takes over your business from you? Note again how this scenario doesn’t tell you anything about how profitable or growing the business has been before the shift happened. Saying that the inevitable or unrelated (e.g. physical accident) is accounted and marked as a failure is just plain silly.

6. Unknown, other or misc. reasons. While I’d like to let you know all possible reasons for a business to close down, there will always be the entrepreneurs checking this box when explaining the fate of their business. My own interpretation is that it is far more likely that these reasons stem from personal choices rather than failure related causes.

7. Not making a go of it. We’re gradually shifting lower and lower in the greyscale of success and failure, getting to a point quite exactly in the middle of both of them. This scenario means that the entrepreneur seized the business because it wasn’t as profitable as it required personal effort and labour. Working 14 hours per day might not be very motivating if you receive the same pay as being a nine to five employee. Note however that once again there’s no failure involved, only subjective opinion of how much the running of the business is worth to the individual entrepreneur.

8. Prevention from further losses. Now we’re getting very close to what some might define failure. This is the scenario where the entrepreneur is red-lining - losing money month after month. However, the creditors are still getting their agreed-upon payments, which means that only the business owner is the suffering party. Is this a case of failure? That’s up to you to decide. And when it comes to personality, defining yourself as a failure has never amounted to anything good compared to just accepting that you’ve tried something that didn’t succeed. Your creditors want you back for your next venture unless you’re occupied with banging your head against the wall and not realizing that you just have to bounce back.

9. Bankruptcy. Failure at last. At this point I have to give in and define this scenario as a failure. Undeniably, there has to be at least one outcome you want to stay away from knowing that nothing good comes out of it. This still doesn’t mean that the entrepreneur behind the business is a failed human being. You will find it long and demanding to dig your way out of the rubble and after that’s done, the future is up to you. Do you throw in the towel or do you learn from your mistakes?

10. The statistical anomaly. Some say the failure rate is 80 % and some say it’s 90 %. I say you decide this for yourself. Appoint this last scenario to any of the other nine ones that you’ve found most dominating over the others. If it’s failure to the worst degree then choose the 80-20 rate and if you think it belongs closer to success then choose the 90-10 ratio. This scenario is you in the making as you give birth to your next business venture.

Conclusions

My objective with this article was to turn the failure rate completely topsy-turvy. I wanted to show in a most simple way that the ratio of success and failure is completely inverted in comparison to what you might have believed previously about entrepreneurial success and failure. While the statistics say that 9 out of 10 fail, I state that 9 out of 10 succeed and only one fails. Note that this analysis does not take into account how common the different scenarios are in comparison to each other.

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to y

How I Got onto Yahoo! News
If you've never issued a free press release about your business, then you must issue the first of many tonight before retiring to bed.Q When does one issue a press release?A As often as possible. If you launch a business, issue one. If you launch a new website, issue one. If you make a donation to charity, issue one. If you redesign your website, issue one...the list is endless. If you promote an employee, add a new product line, etc, etcQ Is it possible to create 'Press Release Spam'?A Yes. Make sure that what you have to say is news-worthy. (See above). It's possible to issue them too often. People will get tired of you and they'll stop picking up and distributing/publishing/reading your releases.Q How do you create press releases.A Write them yourself (There is a recommended format). You can pay to have it done (Will cost hundreds) but do you want to pay for this every few weeks/months? Perhaps not. It's worth learning how to write them anyway so that you can tell when it has been poorly written for you. (E

ented itself. This is the case of a business being alive for say, three years doing just fine when suddenly some new idea leaves you sleepless at nights. It might be your entrepreneurship contacts and friends deciding to put all heads together and start a completely new and innovative business that has far more potential than your current, slightly above average cash cow company. For the thrill of things and excitement thereof, who wants to run a business that ended up monotonous after a couple of years when there’s a chance of far bigger deals to be made in something completely different? Statistical interpretation: failure.

Conclusions

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to

Surplus Merchandise, the Direct Under Wholesale Source
The Austin Business Journal reported about a firm that ”buys and resells merchandise that has been closed out, overstocked or discontinued…to a wide range of retail outlets, from mom-and-pop shops to multinational chains such as Wal-Mart..”.Businesses everywhere struggle with changing buying habits, business costs and government regulations.Fads in clothing, toys, electronics, computers, furniture styles and eating habits change. Consequently, new unsold merchandise takes up warehouse space and ties up capitol.Surplus liquidators buy inventories of unwanted, obsolete or excess merchandise, often as low at .10 on the dollar, providing a cash injection for the seller. This merchandise is then resold at prices substantially below wholesale. One way to source surplus merchandise is to search the Directory of U.S. Importers and Exporters, available in many public libraries.Purchased in small quantities these products can be retailed or sold at auctions for substantial profit. And for the savvy surplus finder a substantial payday

physical accident) is accounted and marked as a failure is just plain silly.

Conclusions

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to

Economical Advertising
If you think advertising is a high-stakes gamble, one that is full of risks and gimmicks at expensive prices, think again. Advertising follows, in fact, some very logical rules. The first is that good advertising is based on market research. Before you advertise, you need to understand the customers you're trying to reach. What are their needs? What factors influence their decisions to buy? What features of your products or services offer what they truly want? And what weaknesses in your competitors could bring these target customers to you? The second rule is that when you are advertising, particularly with different media, you must always measure your advertising results. Only through consistent, systematic evaluation can you determine the percent of return you're getting for each ad dollar spent. Moreover, by pinpointing which advertising is working and which is not, you can capitalize on your successes, cut your losses and revise your program by trying a different sales approach or different media. T

ng good compared to just accepting that you’ve tried something that didn’t succeed. Your creditors want you back for your next venture unless you’re occupied with banging your head against the wall and not realizing that you just have to bounce back.

Conclusions

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to

Business is Very Similar to Understanding the Game of Hockey
Have you ever walked into a busy retail store, and heard a patron say, “this place must be making a fortune”? Obviously this analysis is simply based on the amount of people in the store at the time. Then maybe a year later, the same establishment closed. That very same patron might wonder what happened.Many people love to watch the game of hockey, why is that?They understand how the game works; enjoy evaluating and observing their favorite players in action. These fans will keep themselves up to date, go to the actual games, have long discussions with friends, watch the sport shows, and read the newspapers. Through these means they can study the players, know their stats, and can give an educated opinion on the game of hockey. Most of these types of dye hard fans are very passionate about the game, and some might agree with me when I use the term obsessed. If some of these fans would consider dedicating themselves the same way in business, they could be very successful!!!How does hockey relate to understanding business?• T

When you apply this to the given ratio, it gets distributed something like this:

The most important insight you can gain from this article is that you first have to define for yourself what a successful and what a failed scenario is to you personally. Just because the mainstream statistical notion says that only a business running for at least five years is a success, doesn’t mean you have to think in these terms. Some may define the greatest success scenario as running a business for three years, selling it and retiring for good. Some may define success as running a business until their health stops them. And some are serial entrepreneurs and thrive from the thrill of starting fresh on a frequent time frame - while still being tremendously successful at almost every venture. Make up your own mind what you want to achieve, understand what the statistics mean and start creating your own, personal statistics of success. Failing or attempting a few times may be exactly the experience it takes to gain all the wealth and success that come from the business that ultimately succeeds - strictly under your terms.

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Most of the businesses these days borrow money either in short terms or long terms basis. The majority of cash flow statements illustrate the increase and decrease of the earnings of the short term debt only. It does not report the total amount that are either borrowed or paid. On the other hand, when illustrating a long term debt, the total amount and the reimbursements of the long term debt must be indicated in the cash flow statement on a yearly basis. The figures on these cash flow statements are illustrated on gross not net figures.

Worried about making the wrong advertising decision? Having a hard time taking a position and stand? If making an advertising decision is keeping you from moving forward, here are some excellent tips.

Today with the internet and the information technology, work online from home jobs have been a continuous way to increase your income, there are many work from home income opportunities in the online marketplace.

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