Search Results for: blog what does bottom line mean for your home business

What Are Your Payday Habits?

The habits we develop determine whether we are a success or a failure. The way we handle stress, the things we do to reward ourselves, and our payday routines will all impact our financial stability. If we go shopping when stressed or as a reward and come home with bags of unneeded items, we’re obviously not laying a solid financial foundation. But what about our payday habits? What do you do when you first get your check? First, I hope you verify the amount instead of just assuming you received the same as always. Sometimes deductions are taken without our … Continue reading →

Negotiating Contract Work

Do you ever wonder how or why some people can have their homes remodeled, additions built and upgrades made for bottom line prices? The secret is in negotiating for these types of services. The first thing that you want to do before negotiating contract work for your home is to ask around for references to people or companies that do the work you want. Don’t be afraid to ask your friends and neighbors the price that they paid for similar services. Also ask if the work was completed on time and if the person or company was easy to work … Continue reading →

Baby Registry Problems

My wife and I have been having problems with our baby registry at a certain national retail chain of baby related goods that will remain unnamed. If you’ve been reading this blog you know that I am currently a doctoral student in the arts, particularly theatre, but what I haven’t said before is that I have an undergraduate business degree. I worked for a number of years as a lead teller at another national bank before the questionable ethical behavior (at least at those lower levels) made me too uncomfortable to continue cashing in in the business world and I … Continue reading →

Are You Making Any Money?

We talk about just nearly every aspect of organizing and running a small home business here in the Home Business blog; we talk about budgets and clients and customer service. I thought that we should probably talk about the bottom line here today—let’s talk about that question we may either want to ask or ourselves or are avoiding facing the truth: Are we actually making any money? I know that money is not the only indicator of success and many of us evaluate our home businesses with other criteria in addition to revenue. We may not be looking to make … Continue reading →

Babysitting and Hand-holding

It might not be your favorite thing about being in business, I know for a fact that it isn’t mine—I might even go as far as to say it is one of my pet peeves. The reality is, however, that we home business owners just cannot get away with NOT having to do a little babysitting and hand-holding of our clients, customers, prospects, etc. now and then… Sending out reminder notices, having to double-check to make sure that someone follows through, walking a customer or client through a specific process—all of these can take extra time in your business operations … Continue reading →

Too Much “Bottom Line?”

How many times do we hear the term “bottom line” when it comes to business matters? Even those of us who do not fancy ourselves to be very business-savvy know that we are supposed to keep a mindful eye on our “bottom line” as we grow and build our businesses. We are supposed to watch out for budgets, expenses, and revenue and make sure that the numbers show we are actually making money and not spending too much. But, can there be TOO much focus on bottom line? Enough to keep us from taking risks and focusing on the benefits … Continue reading →

Focusing on “Performance” For Your Business

“Performance” is one of those buzz words that gets thrown around for all sorts of things—particularly in the business world. It is one of those words that gets bantered about so much, it can lose its meaning and you might be wondering how, in your little home-based business, performance really comes into play? Performance is basically how well you are executing your business operations. It might mean different things to you than it does to your customers and clients. Your customers want to know that they are getting a good product, service and value and they want to know that … Continue reading →

Keeping Your E-mail Addresses Current

It is becoming increasingly “standard practice” for more and more businesses to do a lion’s share of their marketing over e-mail. This means that a small home business owner needs to learn how to manage distribution lists—including acquiring them, keeping them accurate, and learning how to NOT abuse those e-mail addresses. One thing you will find early on is that every time you send out a group or broadcast e-mail, you are likely to get several “bounces”—unless you manage and respond to those bounces, your e-mail marketing can quickly become inefficient and obsolete. When you get an e-mail bounce, that … Continue reading →

How Specific Can You Tailor Your Service Delivery?

There are a great many advantages that those large companies have over us small ones—they have more employees, more capital, more marketing—but we really do have some advantages too. As a small, home-based business, we have the flexibility to really know our customers and clients and tailor our service delivery to meet their needs. We can meet them in a more intimate place and really find a way to deliver top-notch service that is quite specific. Sometimes it does not even pay to try to play the “big boy’s” game. Instead, we can focus in on what we do well … Continue reading →

Do Turn-Over Rates Affect Your Home Business?

Although you may be a small, one-person home-based business, your efficiency and operations can still be affected by a high turn-over rate at vendor, client, and partnership companies you may work with in your business efforts. What does it mean for you and your business when you work with companies that do have a high turn-over with employees. Most businesses are relationship-dependent. We form relationships with our customers and prospects, but we also form relationships with the companies who provide our equipments, supplies and other things we need to do business. If you are in a consulting industry, relationships are … Continue reading →