True Costs of Your Business

Aaron Montgomery February 3, 2023 Management

Maximizing your profit while still being competitive all begins with knowing your true costs. Over the many years I have spent chatting with decorators at trade shows and helping small businesses, I have found that people struggle to set prices because they don’t have a good cost basis to rely on.

Overcoming Quitter’s Day

Aaron Montgomery January 27, 2023January 25, 2023 Business Tip

Quitter’s Day is the second Friday of January each year. Quitter’s Day is set aside to recognize those who set new year goals and fail to achieve them. The tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions began 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians. The idea for Quitter’s Day is to encourage and support those who have given up on their New Year’s resolution or goal to try again and ultimately succeed. Research has shown that people quit their resolutions for the year, and many good intentions are abandoned in about 2 weeks. Because this is only 3% of the entire year, which seems so tiny, it made me wonder why so many people want to improve their lives, businesses, and communities, yet for all our best efforts; we run out of willpower in only 2 weeks.

Do Sweat the Small Stuff

Aaron Montgomery January 20, 2023 Management

Yes, you read the title correctly, I’m saying sweat the small stuff, not DON’T sweat the small stuff. In this column, I want to talk about how little things can make a big difference. By focusing on the small stuff, not only will it improve your business, but it will make your lives easier. You will not be constantly faced with huge daunting tasks or attempting to make large changes in your business.

3 Principles – Keep Score for Success

Aaron Montgomery December 23, 2022 Management

“3% Of People Have Measurable Written Goals for their Life, Also 3% of the Population Owns 90% Of the Resources in the World” – Jack Canfield

Keep Score for Success

It is in our nature as humans to reach for something and to go for something better than where we are at now. It is how we became the dominant species on the planet and according to a study by Cameron Anderson of the University of California, Berkeley and John Angus D. Hildreth of Cornell University we actually strive for superiority. This nature makes scorekeeping very important as it gives us the push to grow that extra inch, sell the extra box of girl scout cookies or do that extra lap. The act of keeping score encourages you to eat right, ask one more friend and work harder each run. The scorekeeping is not a way to point out failures and cover your butt. Instead, it is meant to stimulate us to have more wins and get closer to success each time.

3 Principles – Be Willing to Pay The Price

Aaron Montgomery December 16, 2022 Management

“If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it would not seem wonderful at all” – Michelangelo

Be Willing to Pay The Price

We all know an overnight success right? Wrong! Even the successful people or companies that seem to show up out of nowhere, have built what they have and have been exactly where you are at right now. What they did differently is they paid the price, lived through the pain of failures, took big risks and made it. The harder they worked, the more they risked, the faster they got there, but they still had to get there. So, you have to be willing to pay the price. You have to put in the hours when you don’t feel like it. You have to have hard conversations with people holding you back. You have to make that big investment that deep down you know is going to help, but it makes you sick to your stomach to think about. You have to be willing to pay the price and accept possible failures as nothing more than a learning experience.

3 Principles – Believe

Aaron Montgomery December 9, 2022 Management

3 PRINCIPLES FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS #1 – Belive

I was fortunate enough to recently attend a seminar by Jack Canfield (Co-Author of Chicken Soup for the Soul) called One Day to Greatness. We spent the day reviewing some of his 67 success principles. During that seminar, I started thinking about which of the principles were the most aligned with business success and came up with a top-three list. These three can give you a wonderful foundation to work with, a reminder to reinvest in your business and a way to measure what is working. I want to break down my top-three principles for business success based on Mr. Canfield’s list of 67 Success Principles. Here is Part 1…

Believe

“If you can dream it, you can do it!” Walt Disney

Foundations of Advertising

Aaron Montgomery October 14, 2022 Management

Advertising and marketing are really the same things to me, while marketing does encompass a bit more of the front end work being done, it all starts with having a good plan. Without a plan, your advertising is shooting in the dark and potentially wasting a lot of time and money not reaching the right potential customers. The first key to good advertising is having a good plan. The plan and corresponding goal can’t be “I want more customers”. Rather, it should be more like “I want 10 new customers that buy full-color black shirts in quantities less than 12 in the next 3 months.” This would be S M A R T Goal which means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Trackable.

Knowing What Business Metrics to Measure

Aaron Montgomery October 7, 2022 Management

There are 100’s of metrics you can look at in your business from day to day, and many can be great indicators of the success or failure of your business. Obviously, you are in business to make a profit so that should be the number one thing measured, otherwise you have a hobby. Not that being happy and content with the enjoyment of your craft is bad, but as a business, you must eventually turn a profit. Then, you can look at other financial core metrics like cash flow, accounts payable, accounts receivable, direct costs, operating margin, and cash burn rate.

Being Customer Centric EQUALS More Profits

Aaron Montgomery September 30, 2022 Customer Service

We all have heard the saying “The Customer is Always Right”, and most companies state that in one form or another and give it half lip service. But, what if you really centered your business around what your customer needs and how you can best serve them? What if occasionally you lost a little bit on an order here or there? What if you put your future investments into ways to help your customers meet their goals, not your short-term metric driven selfishness? What if you made the customer the center of your business, the basis of how you and your employees make decisions? Is that a MORE profitable way to operate your business?

Admitting you Need a Standard Operating Procedure Doesn’t Have To Be Hard

Aaron Montgomery August 26, 2022 Management

Standard operating procedures are in a simple term a guardrail for doing the work that needs to be done in your business day to day. The standard operating procedure (SOP) documentation is just a tool that allows owners and managers to continue to focus on improving the business and allows the employees to feel confident to make decisions and solve problems because they have a guide.

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