Easier is HarderWritten by Dave Balch
Is your business as easy to operate as it could be? Is everything as efficient as it can be? I can tell that you're thinking, "What got you started on this one?"Horse manure. Horse manure? Horse manure! Since we live in mountains, turnout area for our horses is not level by any stretch of imagination: it is roughly shape of an amphitheater with barn at lowest point. I was, uh, "picking up" after horses, which involves walking around with a "manure fork" (which looks like a pitch fork), scooping up piles, and dumping them into a plastic barrel that I pull around in a little two-wheeled caddy. As you can imagine, barrel begins to get pretty heavy after a while, and pulling it up slopes becomes a chore. But… it would be much easier if I cleared highest points first and then worked my way down. That way, I haul an empty barrel up hill and, as it gets heavier, gravity will help me out as I work my way down. It's a perfect solution that takes no extra time. Pretty obvious, huh? Whenever we feed horses they get pretty riled up and anxious to eat, and start pawing and banging while we measure out proper amounts. But… if we prepare food in advance we can feed them as soon as we get there. Then we prepare next meal while they are eating that one. It's a perfect solution that takes no extra time. Pretty obvious, huh? The copies come out of our copier face up. That means that if we copy a 10-page document, we have to manually rearrange copies because page 10 is on top instead of page 1. But… if we copy pages in reverse order, they come out just way we want them to. It's a perfect solution that takes no extra time.
| | Entrepreneurs Are The Patriots of TodayWritten by Brian Hill
On Fourth of July, we celebrate anniversary of adoption of Declaration of Independence. The ideals and spirit of Founding Fathers are very much alive in 21st Century -- in lives, and struggles, of small business person. In fact, many entrepreneurial dreams begin with declaration of independence from tyranny of working for someone else, cutting loose from unfairness and inequity of rigid corporate structure.The truths entrepreneur holds self-evident include Life Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, and happiness involves much more than accumulating wealth. It most often means something much deeper -- an act of creation, seeing an idea for a new product take shape, seeing your name on a brand. For most small business people, there is no great financial reward at end - happiness is in pursuit itself. The framers of Constitution had daunting task of
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