Business: Are you Coward

Are you Coward

Written by Colin Shaw

Are You A Coward? I Was.

By Colin Shaw, Founding Partner, Beyond Philosophy -- May 2004

Over repparttar last month, I have come to hate emails and answer phones; not because I get 100 emails every day but because emails and answer phones are fast becoming repparttar 145170 tool of repparttar 145171 coward. At Beyond Philosophy we worked with a client a while ago whose account managers and sales teams never used to speak to anyone! They just used to send emails. If repparttar 145172 customer called in they were greeted by answerphones which were kept on all day. You see repparttar 145173 sales teams were all busy doing “real” work. The customers were just interrupting them. Surely this must be repparttar 145174 height of “inside out” behaviour.

But why do people do this? Primarily, it is because we all feel we can say things in emails that we would never say face to face. In my experience this never works how people would expect. No matter how hard you try, you think you have written one thing and repparttar 145175 person reads something else. Before you know it you have lost a customer or lost a friend. We seem to forget that that all important ‘relationship’ with repparttar 145176 customer is built on human contact, not emails!

One example springs to mind a few years ago when I worked in a multinational organisation and was involved in a large internal project. Things were not going well. I decided to send a “broadside” to repparttar 145177 party who were driving me nuts! I took great delight in constructing repparttar 145178 email. It was actually quite therapeutic. I worked on it to get repparttar 145179 right message across so they would absolutely read between repparttar 145180 lines and understand what I thought. I pressed repparttar 145181 button and off into repparttar 145182 ether it went. I remember thinking, ‘Great I have told them what I think’. COWARD! How stupid I was, how naive, how self-righteous I was, and how wrong I was!

Micro Loans Can Mean Macro Success for Your Business

Written by Cheryl Antier

"Inch by inch, row by row...that's repparttar

way my garden grows" was a favorite saying of my grandmother's -- usually when she was trying to teach me something about patience!

While I've never learned repparttar 145148 art of having patience, I have learned that that particular saying can apply to creating a successful business.

If you've got big dreams for starting or growing your own business, but you lack repparttar 145149 start-up capital, technical assistance or training that you need to succeed, then start by thinking...small.

In fact, think smaller than small. Think micro -- as in "microenterprise development programs".

What is a microenterprise development program?

Basically, it's a government sponsored or supported program that provides start-up or expansion capital, technical assistance and training to microbusinesses. It's designed to help entrepreneurs who don't have access to traditional means of credit. Which means that if you're low-income, you've got bad or no credit, you don't have enough collateral to apply for a business loan -- then you're a good candidate for a microloan.

Need other help?

How about training? Learning to write a business plan? Want to go back to school? Need help understand how to put together a cash flow statement?

Most microenterprise development programs also offer training, workshops and other assistance. If they don't offer it themselves, they'll be able to refer you to a community organization that does, and guess what? The help is often free, or offered for a very low cost!

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