Don’t you just hate it when customers don’t pay their accounts? Business owners are not all bad. In most cases, they are hard working individuals who provide goods and/or services to the best of their abilities. When it comes to debt collections, there are some people in the community who feel that a business can afford to lose the occasional debt – after all, they make plenty of money.
There’s a little analogy I used to use with my small business management students. If you buy a product for $10 and sell it for $20 – that’s a $10 profit, in theory. Let’s assume running the business costs money, and that chews up $5 of that product. You are now making $5 profit – not bad, still 50% profit. However, if someone steals one of those products, or if someone fails to pay their account, you are $10 down – that means you have to sell two products (with $5 profit each) just to break even. In fact, you have to sell 4 products to make a profit of $5 – that’s a $5 profit for a $40 cost – your profit is down to 12% now. That’s a big drop from the 50% profit you could have potentially made.
Now you can think about the alternatives. Spending a little extra to provide better security, and perhaps even sending in a collection agency to get people to pay their accounts. It all helps the bottom line – and you don’t have to get tough, you have to be a little smarter.
I love working from home. I can generally set my own hours, I can clock on and off whenever the family makes demands, and I can pretty much set my own income. The downside is the admin. When you work for someone else, most of that is taken care off. Even if you are working in admin, you are working to their system. If you run out of laserjet toner cartridges, you simply order more – someone else has to worry about paying the bill.
When you work for yourself, particularly at home, running out of anything can often be a big drama. You can’t send someone out to get it – you have to go yourself. In most cases, being a small business, you have to pay for it there and then. And of course, because you are not buying in bulk, you are paying retail prices. The Internet is starting to change that, especially if you’re smart. You can order these products online for much less than retail, and if you order three or four, you may find that shipping is much cheaper (if not free). I still hate admin, but at least I am able to save money and time.
I don’t mean to be rude (perhaps I do?), but there are some pretty dumb RV enthusiasts plying the roads these days. I have to wonder if they really do like their RV, or are they just keeping up with the Joneses. Let me give you an example. An RV owner rings up the local towing service because they have broken down. No problems there. When the towing service asks for more information, the problems start. For example:
“How big is your RV?”
“big”
“I am sure it is, but how long is it”?
“I don’t know – long”
“Look – I need to know the size of your RV so I can send the right tow truck out”
“yeah – well – it’s pretty big, you’ll need a big tow truck”
“do you know how much it weighs”
“yes – a lot”
“do you have the vehicle hand book with you”
“yes”
“can you get it out and tell me the model number”
Need I go on? Here they are requiring help, and they cannot answer the simplest questions. Before trying to get rv towing, at least have an idea of what we need to tow.
There are a lot of jobs in the healthcare field that we hardly ever hear about. We see the effects, and we may even see them at work. A good example is a Phlebotomist – do you know what they do? They are the people who take blood out of your arm for a pathologist. When it comes to administration, there are jobs that often leave you scratching your head. What is a coding educator? I guess someone who trains others in matters relating to codes.
There positions such as Chart Assembler Jobs – I guess they assemble the charts that nurses fill out with our blood pressure and temperature and so on. The field of medicine is huge and goes far beyond nurses, doctors and specialists. They say that 50% of a hospitals budget goes purely on admin – looking at the jobs available – I’d believe it too.
I love surprises, and that goes especially for surprise birthday parties. It always amazes me how people can keep secrets, sometimes for weeks, and more so when they are your best friend. I haven’t had that many surprise parties over the years – three that really standard include one that my work colleagues put together. It was only a lunchtime party, but it was a really good one.
What amazes me most is how, in the workplace, they can send out special Surprise Birthday Invitations to everyone, yet I never saw one. No-one left one on their desk and no-one spoke about them. Still – that’s what surprises are all about.
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