Business Owner’s Blog

If you have excel (who doesn’t?) get FlowBreeze. It installs itself within excel and allows you to make flow charts very easily. 30 days free trial and $30 introductory price. Works simply and easily - just as advertised. What a concept, and it’s still in beta, but I haven’t found any problems with it.
Why?
You’d […]

What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual. What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Tri-lingual. What do you call a person who speaks only one language? An American. - Old Joke
Numbers are the language of business, yet many business owners don’t really know that language. They survive, but […]

MedBillAdvisor raises the question; albeit mostly via post to this blog.
I’d say no one starts a company without profit as a motive, yet it’s never the only reason to be an entrepreneur. As the company grows, these goals can conflict. Profit is so generic and passion so individual, it’s often assumed you don’t need […]

I have a problem with this test of your Entrepreneurial Quotient posted by Guy Kawasaki. My problem is that while I agree with all the questions and answers save one [more on that in a minute] I don’t think it’s about entrepreneurial quotient.
It’s about the hyped up buzz about what is an entrepreneur: Someone starting […]

Most people don’t think - they just think they think.
Here are some interesting ideas about how decisions are made. (The first three come from a book about web site design by Steve Krug called ‘Don’t Make Me Think‘).

People take the first choice they can find that doesn’t have obvious problems. This means we […]

I actually believe most small companies have too few meetings. As a result effort is wasted, ideas aren’t shared, mistakes take too long to correct, and the cost is high.
The problem is that most meetings are run so poorly they are actually worse than no meeting at all.
The solution is to figure out what you […]

A trade show display has to do one thing in about half a second:
Allow passers by to decide if they should stop at your booth. That’s it.
To do that, it should be visually striking, and informative. The information should be in bold, short, jargon-free words. As someone is walking by, without slowing down, they should […]

In case you missed it: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Operations
The second reason to spend money is on operations. These are called fixed costs by accountants and they are the costs that stay the same from month to month just to keep the lights on and the doors […]

I actually didn’t make this mistake. We’re only remodeling two but I thought of it because the third one is downstairs in the cold part of the house, poor me [sniff].
Anyway, this thought is relevant here because of why we’re remodeling. We’re getting ready to sell the house. So now we’ll have two bath rooms […]

Does this make sense?
Stowe Boyd suggests that as the need for investment in start-ups diminishes (he’s talking high tech) the need for advice remains high.
He suggests offering equity in a start-up in exchange for and advisory role.
As an advisor, I think it’s a great idea. What do you entrepreneurs think?