“Sometimes what you want is right in front of you. All you have to do is open your eyes and see it.” – Meg Cabot

During the nicer weather, have you noticed dozens or hundreds of people outside your business, all looking down at their smartphones, smiling, and enjoying something? They aren’t your customers, they are clogging up the sidewalk, and you are tempted to go outside and yell at them all to “Go away and earn a paycheckisaur and start a careerachu!” It’s that darn Pokemon Go thing. Oh wait, there’s a little mark above the “e” so it’s officially that “Pokémon Go” thing. Whoever thought of this dumb game doesn’t understand how the world works! …or do they?

Let’s say that again. Some business owners complain about the crowds hanging around their businesses! Crowds! Potential customers! Additional revenue! #AreYouKiddingMe

As Niantic’s Pokémon GO hit record downloads upon release in the Apple Store and Google Play, the people who don’t understand the game are left scratching their heads and hurling sarcastic insults at the game players. Businesses who are near some of the game PokeStops or Gyms, sometimes gripe and complain about the sudden crowds of players that are hanging around outside their stores, or even inside their stores.

Poke-Who?

Who are these Pokemon players? They are mostly teens but there are also a ton of collegiate students, parents playing with their children, and adults of all ages. For most businesses, that’s a wide variety of their potential target customers.

Without this game, where would these players be? Many would be at home, probably playing some other video game. Instead, they are out of the house, walking all over your city and interacting with each other and the community.

Many parents are finding a renewed bond with their child as they play the game together while exploring areas of their city they’ve never seen before. In fact, the game travels all around the world so it’s an activity that keeps on providing discovery to the players. The biggest drawback is potential accidents while walking around with their heads down, or worse, riding a bike or driving a car while trying to glance at the game. With that aside, you are witnessing a miracle. Nothing else in the last decade has caused more people to leave the confines of their home to go explore their community!

Take the Poke Chill Pill

First of all, you need to take a chill pill, educate yourself, and realize that you are seeing something amazing and revolutionary. What these close-minded businesses owners are really saying is that they don’t understand the game and they don’t know how to take advantage of these crowds. Let’s explain some basics first.

Financial Statistics

Pokemon GO is big. It’s more than big, it’s huge. No other smartphone app game has been downloaded as frequently. The game is free to play, but because of optional in-app purchases, Apple estimates the game’s revenue between $1 million to $2.3 million A DAY. It’s estimated that out of every $1 earned at the Apple App Store, 30% would go to Apple (it’s standard cut from app sales), 30% to Niantic, 30% to Pokemon, and 10% to Nintendo. The game has double the engagement of Snapchat and is approaching Twitter in its percentage of daily active users.

Niantic raked in almost a BILLION dollars in the first year of Poke game operation! Even today, it’s on more cell phones than almost any other downloaded app. It launched in the summer of 2016 and was a world-wide phenomenon. Like all great games, it started on a slow decline and lost about 1/3 of its players over the first winter season. However, it is still one of the strongest players in the market…and it’s setup to possibly bring you extra business!

Niantic has updated the game with a few enhancements but has mostly worked on bugs, but they are expected to use some of their new wealth to come out with some huge enhancements that draw more players.

Game Concept

The game concept is brilliant and it has done something that no other game has been able to do on such a mass level: It is getting players off their rear ends and out into the community as they journey around looking for Pokemon. It’s a geocaching game that players spend hours on end walking, driving, skateboarding, and biking to various locations.

The game runs off an augmented reality HUD (Heads-up Display) of the real world around them. It shows streets and building structures, but intertwines it with Pokemon stuff here and there. Throughout the map, there are fixed PokeStops and Gyms. If your business is lucky enough to be near one of these, you’ll notice crowds of players hanging out, sometimes around the clock.

A PokeStop is a place where players can get free items that they use in game play. A Gym is a battle arena where they fight Pokemon to gain control of the Gym.

Every player ends up joining one of three teams: Mystic, Valor, or Instinct. Whichever team wins the battles, controls the Gym. You’ll find that Gyms change owners frequently so teams of players constantly battle at the Gyms to regain control of the Gym.

As players roam their cities, they will occasionally find Pokemon, little creatures that they can capture and use in battles. There are many common Pokemon but players really want to find and capture rare Pokemon, that have the novelty of being rare, but also have the potential of being more powerful.

So What?

So what? Why should you care? If your business happens to be in the path of these explorers or if you have been blessed by the gods to have a business that is the destination of these explorers, you may be standing at the end of a rainbow and don’t realize the pot of gold is right in front of you!

Do you realize how much expensive advertising it would take to get these people to come near your business? Yet here they are. Many have the ability to purchase too!

Your Game Plan

Now that you’ve got the basics, you need to find out if your business is near a PokeStop or a Gym. You can load the game onto your phone and check it out yourself. If you’d like to find an official map of all PokeStops and Gym locations, you are not alone. There currently is no map for Pokémon GO. However, there is a pretty cool workaround. Niantic developed a game called “Ingress” which has an online map of portals. These portals map almost perfectly to PokeStops and Gyms!

So how do you get Pokémon GO players to interact with your business? Below we explore several creative ideas, but these are far from an exhaustive list. You are only limited by your creativity.

The first thing you need to understand is that these players like the following: Being around PokeStops and Gyms, finding rare Pokemon, having a relaxing place to sit and play near other players, having a place to recharge their smartphones, food/snacks, drinks, air conditioning or heating depending on the weather. If you can provide some of these amenities, you’re on your way to being considered a fun business to hang out at. Let’s go through these in more detail.

Is your business near a PokeStop or Gym? If so, you’re in luck. Really, you are lucky. Players will come to you.

If you are not near such a location, all is not lost yet. Niantic’s CEO, John Hanke, says they offer “sponsored locations” which provide a new revenue stream for the game. These sponsored locations allow businesses to get Pokemon players to patronize their brick-and-mortar facilities. They also allow brands to be incorporated into the game. These location businesses pay a “cost per visit” charge, similar to a cost-per-click concept of Google and Facebook.

Finding Rare Pokemon. Pokemon are scarce to start with. You can walk for miles before you find one. When one does appear, it just randomly pops up nearby and you have to go catch it. Players want to catch all kinds of different Pokemon to fill out their PokeDeck. Collecting them is part of the fun. The more Pokemon you catch, the better chance you have of capturing a rare one. There is a very cool feature of Pokemon GO that significantly increases the number of Pokemon that appear in a certain location. It’s an in-app purchase called a Lure. When you drop a Lure inside your business, players will start showing up in droves. Prices can change but at one point, $100 bought 14,500 Pokecoins. An eight-pack of Lures cost 680 PokeCoins. That’s 84 hours of Lure time which is $1.19 per hour. If you drop the Lures during business hours, or slow periods, you’re making wonderful things happen.

Hopefully your mind is racing with new ideas. By the way, you might want to consider going back and re-reading the top of this section. Having a comfortable place to play and being invited into your business to recharge phones and relax, can make you a real magnet. Now that you’ve got the players at your business, can you figure out how to sell them stuff?

If you’re not a retail outlet, do you have a service you can impress them with when they need it later? How about starting a contest and rewarding someone for promoting your business in some way. For example, take a photo by your sign and post it with a hashtag of #YourBusinessName

Like mentioned above, your success is only limited by your creativity. Put those business marketing skills to work and earn some Pikacash from those players!

Products to Consider

Bamboo Charging Station $39.99 on sale.

X8 Power Station Cell Phone Charging $495

ChargeTech Tower Floor Stand Cell Phone Charging $550

Umirro 10-Outlet Power Strip with 4 USB Charging Ports $24.99

Wall Mounted Cell Phone Charging Station w-8 Universal Charging Tips $375

If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact me at Author@HireSelf.com
Copyright © 2016-2017, R. Scott Alvord

R. Scott Alvord, MBA-MCA, BSCS. is an award-winning, multi-business owner, and CEO of Advanced Development Concepts, LLC. He can be reached at www.HireSelf.com or (916) 782-4272

The post Embrace the Pokemon Go Craze! It’s Great for Business! first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

“Baby boomer” is a term used to describe the generation of Americans born from 1946 through 1964. That means these folks are now somewhere roughly between the ages of 53 and 71. I’m the youngest baby in that generation and I can attest that my older, generational siblings are a very large, wealthy, and powerful group. The boomers are also a goldmine for businesses if the business owners purposefully step back and think about the characteristics of this generation and how to position their business to meet their needs.

This article focuses more on the boomer attributes and not so much on specific entrepreneurial solutions and services. If you read between the lines, however, you’ll find some golden nuggets of opportunity.

They are Legion (Many)

“Large” is an important phrase. Boomers were the largest generation in the United States. Over 76 million large! Attrition is starting to take its toll. Some reports say they have been recently surpassed by the Millennial generation. In the 1940’s to 1960’s, maternity wards were not just filled with young couples eager to get their families going. They were joined by an abnormally large group of older couples who had postponed marriage and childbirth during the Great Depression and World War II. What does this mean for business? A business that can meet the needs of this generation has a lot potential customers.

They are Wealthy

Wealthy is probably an understatement when taking the group as a whole. A common mistake is to think that most of these folks are retired. Most are not. In fact, many are at the peak of their earning years and they have a lot of disposable income looking for a place to go. There are more millionaires than ever before, and most of those millionaires are in this generation.

Because there are so many people in this age group, there are also large and growing number of people on fixed income. The strain on Social Security will grow.

Baby Boomers Are Very Powerful

“Very Powerful” is an important point that should be clearly understood. Many don’t realize that boomers are the power generation at this moment in time. They literally control all other generations because they currently fill up most of the seats at powerful board tables. They sit in the government offices, with window views. They move armies, control banks, operate most corporations, and control most of the stock around the world. They are the veterans of business experience.

Speed of Technology

Boomers have seen the fast pace of technology in major ways that other generations will likely not experience in such large increments. They have seen the world change from analog to digital. From windup crank phones to the iPhone; from an abacus and slide ruler through major leaps like vacuum tubes to integrated circuits to a super computer in the cloud.

They love technology, even invented much of it, but the newfangled social media platforms are not as inherently obvious. …and that dang-small font size on those smart phones is a challenge for the older end of the generation.

Veteran Lessons

Baby boomers include veterans spanning multiple wars. Some are extremely proud of that service, and some want to just forget it and move on. But as a generation, they cherish those who served, no matter what their age. Their war experience in the trenches and back on the home front taught them perseverance, obedience, loyalty, humbleness, and the value of family. They respect authority.

Healthcare & Housing Challenges

The younger members of the baby boomers are trying to figure out the best options for taking care of their parents who are nearing end of life stages. This process hints at a giant impact that aging boomers are soon going to make on communities. The nation doesn’t seem ready to handle the huge change that is coming as the boomers start to retire and fill up homes designed for the aging population. This includes single-story houses, nice retirement communities, and, eventually, assisted living facilities.

The demand for healthcare will grow as the legions of experienced boomer doctors retire in masses along with their patients. Boomers will dip into the small social security bucket with big dippers. Watching their parents age and having disposable income often brings a strong desire to look and feel young. They will refuse to accept old age until their body proves otherwise.

The boomer impact on housing is likely going to take many by surprise. They want nice places to live during their last few decades of life. This means more single-story, independent homes, in nice communities. The median age of fifty-five-and-over communities has been climbing since they first opened and the majority of these communities are full. And while most boomers don’t want to think about it, it only makes sense that there will be an intensifying demand for assisted-living facilities. The existing facilities are already approaching maximum capacity. When inevitable death eventually overtakes the generation, it will come in waves that will overflow existing funeral-based services over the next several decades.

Legacy and Bucket List

This generation desperately wants to leave a legacy behind as they approach the need to vacate board seats, retire from executive positions, and turn over their massive power to the next generation. The exodus will happen in such large quantities, that there won’t be enough experience behind them to adequate fill the empty shoes. Not only do the boomer executives need to start building better succession plans, they will start searching for opportunities to make a lasting difference with the rest of their lives. They want to leave a legacy, and if they haven’t already done it before retirement, they’ll search for ways to do it after retirement.

They are looking to check more items off their bucket list and this is great for the travel and adventure industry. Legacy needs and bucket lists are partly why boomers are the largest growing segment of new entrepreneurs. Encore careers are highly rewarding for boomers, especially those who have always dreamed of owning their own business.

Is Your Business Boomer-friendly?

As an aging legion of consumers, are businesses ready to serve? Those who don’t accommodate the needs, desires, and pains of this aging generation will lose out on a huge opportunity.

Restaurants, do your menus have a large-enough font with bright-enough lighting? Retailers, are you changing your tough plastic product containers so the older generations can open them without risking stab wounds from scissors and knives?

When is someone going to realize that the incontinent pads and briefs shouldn’t be on the top shelf, requiring embarrassing assistance for the segment of boomers that need the products? And when is someone going to tone down the obvious content exclamations on the healthcare product packaging that causes further embarrassment at the check stand?

Who is going to provide easy-to-follow training on the latest technology for the internet, smartphones, and social media? The generation isn’t dumb by any means, but they weren’t born with this technology in their hands.

Businesses need to pay attention to where the baby boomers like to play, what they like to watch, and what makes them laugh. The opportunities to fix a pain and meet a need are enormous for creative businesses that study this generation.

I hope you found this article interesting and helpful. If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact us at Author@HireSelf.com

The post Does Your Business Understand Baby Boomers? first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Yeah, I’ll admit it. So should you.

As part of my recovery process, I have to admit something. I have experienced occasional symptoms that seem to point to a disorder known as Squirrel Syndrome. I am not alone in my plight. In all honesty, it should be called, the “SQUIRREL! Syndrome.” Not familiar with that term? How about the Shiny Object Syndrome? Or maybe the “I Need to Work on This but Got Sidetracked with That” syndrome? It’s not the same as attention deficit disorder, but when it comes to multi-tasking on multiple important projects, shiny objects can sometimes become a distraction.

Hopefully you get the point here and if it affects you on occasion too, you might struggle to make it through the rest of this article without wondering about your stock investments or the next step on a project for which you’ve committed to complete. In fact, you are probably reading this article when you really should be doing something else, right?

“I’ll get back to it,” and “What was I supposed to be working on?” are all common phrases muttered by someone infected with Squirrel Syndrome. Common phrases they frequently hear might include, “I thought you said you were going to do that first?” “You left to take out the trash an hour ago but fixed the fence instead?” We won’t even discuss what social media does to these folks.

What Tomatoes?

A gentleman named Francesco Cirillo developed a timeboxing technique using a timer that happened to be shaped like a tomato. He used the timer to break down his work into intervals of 25 minutes, separated by short breaks. He called these intervals pomodoros, which is Italian for tomatoes. Cirillo’s Pomodoro Technique improves mental agility by breaking projects into focused segments. During a pomodoro interval, a person commits to focusing on one project and ignores all other sources of distraction. This means no email, no phone calls, and nothing else that might distract the person for the task at hand.

Killing Squirrels

Entrepreneurs, writers, software developers, and similar creatives have latched onto this technique as a tool to overcome the Squirrel Syndrome. Although I recently published a non-fiction book, I have a larger, major book project in the works. I have been working on this book for a few years now and I have struggled at times to buckle down and make solid progress on the few days a week I can find time to devote to it. I found a cool Pomodoro timer app for my phone and have been using it for about a year. I can attest that this technique is fantastic. I first find a time on my calendar that isn’t stressed with surrounding meetings. Then I grab a bottled water, get comfortable, exit my browser, and let my phone go to voicemail. I start the timer and get to work. It gives me a gentle musical notification when the time is up, that lets me finish my thought process without being startled. I can then choose to take a break before starting another session or starting on another project.

This technique has been a wonderful productivity tool for me when I really need to focus. I used to get easily distracted with shiny objects. Now it’s rare that I get distracted and forget to finish my

The post Kill the Squirrel Syndrome with the Pomodoro Technique first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Up until now, it seemed that both would bend over backwards to get my restaurant on their list. They were heavy competitors and I knew it. I also made sure they knew they were competing with each other.

It came down to relationship. Unfortunately, one awesome sales rep played games this year when he was always very helpful in the past. The other was a partner trying to help me find a solution. I chose the partnership.

Setting the Stage

Taking Turns

In even years I went with LivingSocial and odd years with Groupon. Last year my restaurant finished another successful voucher campaign. This year it was Groupon’s turn and they knew it. They were chomping at the bit with frequent emails and calls.

The Miracle Tool

My primary business is a consulting firm. The restaurant is a whole other world. I did what any good business analyst would do, I built a spreadsheet to figure out exactly what my total profit would be at different levels of sales, redemption rates, and use of expired vouchers at their face value. Then I could manipulate offers, prices, and percentage cuts that I could negotiate with the voucher vendors, etc. It is a very cool spreadsheet, really it is.

Another One Bites the Dust

The sad thing about vouchers is that most businesses do not truly understand how they work. My niche restaurant is going on 12 years at the time of this writing. When we first opened, there were 12 niche competitors in the valley. When the economy tanked, they started dropping like flies.

The saddest thing I witnessed was when they jumped to voucher sales. It was like inexperienced sailors drinking ocean water to hydrate their bodies! Sure it might quench their thirst for a short time, but the salt in the water does the exact opposite of what their body needs, and it actually dehydrates them faster and kills them quicker. My competitors ended up drowning in debt. Here’s why…

Let’s say they sell a product for $20. To get a deal with a voucher vendor, they have to offer it close to half price, thus, $10. The voucher vendor estimates that they can sell 3,000 vouchers. The business owner does a quick calculation and sees that $30,000 in vouchers will be sold in two weeks. Sweet deal, right? Where do I sign up?

Wait a minute. If the business owner doesn’t catch it in the contract (many don’t), they may not realize that they don’t get that money. Instead, they have to split the sales with the voucher vendor. That means $15,000 goes to the voucher vendor and $15,000 goes to the business owner, right? Well, not quite. The voucher vendor will often try to charge you for credit card fees, which vary widely depending on whether a buyer uses Visa, Platinum Visa, American Express, American Express Gold, etc. To keep things clean, let’s assume that an average of 4% is built into the deal, 4% that comes out of your portion. In fact, let’s pretend that you negotiated it away so you don’t have to pay it.

Unfortunately, many business owners don’t think through this very well. Think about what the business owner just agreed to do. They are selling a $20 product for $10. But they only get to keep half of the sales price! That means they are selling a $20 product for $5. That’s a 75% discount! Very few businesses can profit with a 75% discount. This business just sold 3,000 of them and they have to provide that deal when the unexpired vouchers are brought in, else face penalties or even a lawsuit.

Yes, some voucher holders forget to use them before they expire. But in many states, the law requires that the price paid for the voucher never expires towards the same deal. That means the voucher holder, in the example above, can used the expired voucher for $10 off the $20 product, which is 50% off. Now, if the business owner is good at budgeting his money, he might still have that $5 he received from the original sale of the voucher and would realize he now only provided the product for 25% off.

The business gets paid over several months, not all at once. The voucher vendor retains sales dollars in case they have to refund vouchers out of your share.

Desperate businesses use vouchers as a quick funding to pay some bills, pay down the loan, or pay off the credit card debt. A few very inexperienced sole proprietors might see an extra $15K in their bank account and decide to take a draw on the money and go on a vacation…a vacation before the financial drought comes.

Then come the masses! The business is sizzling with customers and things are looking great…until the business owner can’t make payroll. Like I said, I’ve seen my competitors drop like flies because they didn’t run the numbers. The resulting failed businesses occur nationwide.

Back to the Story

This year was Groupon’s turn to partner with me. Because of restaurant cost increases, I needed a percentage adjustment to make my numbers work. In the past, the Groupon sales guy was always eager to help design an offer that fit my needs, but this time, he drew a line in the sand that I needed him to remove. I double checked with my LivingSocial rep, who was quick to say he’d meet that need. I took the info back to Groupon and threatened to do a second year with LivingSocial if they couldn’t match what I needed.

Groupon didn’t think I’d leave and wouldn’t budge. To bad, so sad. Therefore, it was LivingSocial who served me two years in a row. It’s getting to be that time again where I start looking planning for next year. Let’s see who wants my business this time around. My business comes before vendor loyalty in this case.

Need Help?

This post wasn’t intended to be an advertisement, but because so many businesses fail as a result of using vouchers improperly, I thought it might be wise to offer you some help so you don’t make a huge mistake. If you are interested in getting some qualified professional help in designing a voucher program for your company, you should consider contacting Advanced Development Concepts for expert business consulting in the area of Groupon and LivingSocial voucher plans.

#LivingSocial #Groupon #Vouchers #ADC #Marketing #BusinessPlans

Copyright (c) 2015, R. Scott Alvord

The post Groupon Lost to LivingSocial this Year first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

According to an Intuit report for 2020, the minorities in America will collectively become the majority of the population in the four largest states: California, New York, Texas, and Florida. They will comprise 40% of the national population with Hispanics being 20%.

Many minority groups have segments that struggle with financial stability. The opportunities that business ownership provides can help increase family income levels. (see April 28, 2015 Business Corner titled “Why You Should Start Your Own Small Business”)

The growth of minorities also presents some very interesting side effects on society. As these groups grow, their culture becomes more mainstream and less “ethnic.” The cultural infusion that will blend cultural tastes from around the world into the local economy, will provide a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs that position themselves to serve the changing preferences. This infusion will affect music, food, products, entertainment, and even the workforce.

There will be conflict as some cultural differences receive resistance, but the influence will be undeniable and the foreign tastes will infuse with local tastes as consumers start demanding them at a growing pace. The demand will not be for the strong foreign flavor in itself, but for the locally-infused version of that product or service.

Internet and Cloud services will accelerate the cultural infusion as easy access to products and services are readily available worldwide. This global cultural infusion will spur innovation and international sales.

Observant entrepreneurs who sense trends and influences can position themselves to capitalize on the cultural fusion opportunities. With excellent marketing techniques, many will be able to influence the trends.

I hope you found this article to be helpful. If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact me.

Copyright © 2015, R. Scott Alvord

#minorities #entrepreneur #EntrepreneurialMajorities #CulturalInfusion #ScottAlvord #HireSelf #ADC

The post Minorities to Entrepreneurial Majorities first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Rolling back the calendar to 1948, only one-third of American women worked outside the home compared to 87% of men. As the decades rolled by, the gap has steadily narrowed as men’s employment rates declined and laboring women increased. Back in August, 2014, men had dropped to 70% and women have raised to 57%.

When it comes to education, women now dominate American college enrollment. For younger workers ages eighteen to thirty-three, women are much more likely to have a bachelor’s degree than men are. They also receive 50% more masters degrees.

The fast growth in female employment and education is over. Growth still exists but the trends have slowed considerably. There is some great news, however. The next huge opportunity for massive growth is female entrepreneurship!

Women are currently underrepresented in high-growth entrepreneurship. Even though women own about one-third of all businesses, they only own 16% of businesses that employ others. When it comes to high-growth companies, female founders usually account for less than 10% in any given business segment.

When you put the puzzle pieces together, the growing strength of working women and the glut of highly-educated women, it seems clear that the future growth of entrepreneurship is in the hands of women.

Recent studies suggest that women entrepreneurs are making gains in fields previously dominated by men, but there is still a significant gap in fields such as information technology, manufacturing, construction, and transportation. These gaps are important to understand because these industries provide fertile ground for both revenue generation and employment opportunities.

This gap has sparked many federal, state, and local programs that target women who are primed to launch their own businesses or to boost their existing businesses into higher growth. Why is the government so interested in the huge potential growth of female-owned businesses? Because it is a great way to boost our local and regional economies!

Studies have shown that female potential business owners struggle in two key areas. The first is that they lack mentors and advisers to help guide and motivate them into successful business ownership. The second is that they struggle more than males in obtaining outside funding sources. Both of these situations are fixable, especially if we encourage governments at all levels to join with the business community to help fill these gaps. It will pay off for our communities!

In the meantime, if you’d like a free (really) eBook on How to Fund Your Business, you can get your copy at www.HireSelf.com/free-chapter And yes, it has lots of ideas, regardless whether you are a male or female!

I hope you found this article interesting and helpful. If you have questions or suggested topics you’d like to see in this column, please contact me at Author@HireSelf.com

#FireYourJob #HireSelf #FemaleBusinessOwner #ADC #StartYourOwnBusiness

Copyright © 2015, R. Scott Alvord

The post Female Business Owners are Primed to Take Over the World first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Even though it is visited by people from all over the world, if you are reading this now, you can probably speak the language. When you visit this place, you’ll notice that it has it’s own strange type of phraseology. You’ll understand the words and language, but you’ll discover that there are many very popular and repetitive phrases used at Sumday Isle, some of which can start to grate on your nerves.

These phrases include things such as:

• Someday I’ll pay off those bills.
• Someday I’ll spend more time with the family.
• Someday I’ll start that business I’ve dreamed about.
• Someday I’ll pursue that dream.

It’s a popular place to visit, but it’s never fulfilling and always leaves you feeling empty inside. I’d like to encourage you to boycott this popular destination. Instead, set that goal, and start today to achieve it.

The post Disneyland is Second in Popularity Only to Sumday Isle first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

When you’re a MAJOR, world-wide company, someone needs to take responsibility for double checking the result of your strategic planning meeting! Ronald McDonald, The Hamburglar, Grimace, and Mayor McCheese should have hired an English teacher to do a final review. Can you find the error?

“McDonald’s brand mission is to be our customers’ favorite place and way to eat and drink. Our worldwide operations are aligned around a global strategy called the Plan to Win, which center on an exceptional customer experience – People, Products, Place, Price and Promotion. We are committed to continuously improving our operations and enhancing our customers’ experience.”

You can still find this mission statement on their corporate website (unless they’ve finally fixed it since this post was written).

So what lesson can we learn from this? I’m almost afraid to say it because I’m not the best example of clean writing in all situations. In fact, I’m guessing there are even some mistakes in this post because I’m in a hurry to write it so I can get back to a project for a client. I think the bottom line is to double-check your work, right? Like I said, I’m preaching to the choir if not to my own mirror.

The chapters for my book are pretty clean once they leave the editing cycles, but I’ve shared unedited sections of the book before and later realized they had typos. When it comes to blog posts like this, or Facebook updates, my writing is much more “human” and buggy than it should be. I know basic grammar, even some advanced grammar, but I like to write less formally and I have the nasty habit of not double checking my work. I like to blame some of this on the combination of my smartphone and my eyesight. My eyesight is a problem because I can’t see what I write very well on my phone, so I often find myself squinting and skimming. I blame my smartphone because it’s the platform I use the most for informal posts, comments, and texts. I love my Windows smartphone. It is better at spelling suggestions than Apple’s iPhone. The problem is me. I tend to get lazy and resort to drawing out the words on the keyboard, which is very fast, but causes frequent phone guessing because of my fat finger. As I’m flying along, I often don’t go back and re-read what I wrote because it’s a pain to scroll and to see it anyway. This can result in some unintentional words in my sentences. Sometimes, these words can completely change the meaning of the sentence.

For example, I am in the process of selling a car. I was texting a buyer on Friday, a few hours before he was to come over with cash to buy it at an agreed-upon price. California law requires that I get a smog check within 90 days of selling it and I had not. I didn’t know this rule until I read it that morning on the DMV website. The car was up to date with smog certification but selling the vehicle requires that I perform one for the buyer. Oh dang. The guy was coming to buy it and I didn’t have time to get the smog check without postponing his visit. Instead of texting him, “It has current registration and smog but it hasn’t had a smog in the last 90 days,” my finger swipe caused the phone to spell the second word wrong. The text went out as, “It had current registration and smog but it hasn’t had a smog in the last 90 days.” That caused a big misunderstanding by the buyer and his next reply was, “I’m just gonna cancel.” He thought I was trying to sell him a car that wasn’t registered or smogged! The other big mistake my phone likes to make is switching “your” and “you’re” which makes me look uneducated even though I completely understand the difference and can spot it a mile away…when I can visually see it. In fact, when I first posted about this mistake in Facebook, a friend came back and pointed out that I (my phone) typed your when it should have typed you’re. Phone or not, I obviously didn’t re-read it before pressing Post.

So why don’t I re-read what I type? Laziness? In a hurry? I certainly have room for growth in this area. While I will continue to work on my shortcomings, I certainly think it’s okay to point out that McDonald’s blew it. They are way too big of a worldwide company to get away with such a mistake. Did it really happen in the board room? That would be embarrassing, horrible, and obviously something they’ll never admit. Did it happen when the secretary copied it into the minutes? Didn’t the executive who signed off on it re-read it? Did the website guy get it wrong when he updated the website? How about the person who approves the updates before they are applied?–most big companies have a review cycle.

How long will it take for them to realize the mistake? Let’s find out. This article was written on Feb 22, 2015, but I see writers posting that same mission statement AT LEAST as far back as 2012 (most didn’t catch the mistake but I see that a few did). That means McDonald’s doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, or doesn’t go by the same grammatical rules that the rest of us were taught in school. What frustrates me the most is that McDonald’s doesn’t seem to review their mission statement regularly, which is a best practice for leading corporations. Many of the best companies that I know do this annually during strategic planning sessions.

The post Even McDonald’s Needs an Editor first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

Busy owners tend to focus on the fire at hand, and often set aside mundane tasks such as paying bills on time. Here are five great tips for helping you get those bills paid on time, assuming you have the funds to do so:

1. Online Bill Pay

Many banks offer an online EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) service that allows you to set up one-time or automatic recurring payments to vendors. These are great for saving postage and quickly paying a bill that is about to come due. They are also excellent for paying recurring payments of the same amount monthly, such as insurance payments, lease payments, and minimum payment amounts (e.g., to ensure a credit card bill gets paid $100 per month, for example, so in case you forget to pay the full bill on time, you will at least have the minimum covered so you don’t get extra charges.)

2. Set Up Auto-pay Using Your Credit Card

Simple versions of this include setting up billing to charge your credit card instead of sending paper billing that requires you to write a check. This allows you to just pay the single credit card bill every month instead of multiple bills. If you get frequent flyer miles on that credit card, this is extra cool as long as the vendor doesn’t charge an extra fee to use the credit card.

3. Set Up Auto-pay for Your Credit Card

To avoid a late payment on your credit card bill, most credit card companies allow you to set up a minimum payment every month. In most cases, you can choose to cover the minimum due that month or a fixed amount. The goal here is to ensure you cover the minimum payment to avoid late charges in case you forget to make the payment on time. If you make the payment on time, this backup payment can be automatically cancelled for that month. Many credit card companies will allow you to pay the entire balance automatically. These payments are typically handled through ACH (see below).

4. Set up ACH (Automated Clearing House network) Payment Systems

Most big suppliers, and more and more smaller ones, offer an ACH payment options where they take the funds directly out of your bank account. This is about as simple as it gets. Some business owners get a little nervous with smaller vendors being able to draw directly from their bank account in case a mistake or evil intentions drain the account. In these cases, they might use a separate bank account and transfer payment funds into that account monthly.

5. Old School Organizer

For paper bills that you still need to pay, consider obtaining a 31-slot bill organizer (or file folder if you can’t obtain a bill holder). When each bill is received, open it, determine when you need to make the payment, and place the bill into that numbered slot. When it’s time to pay bills, grab all the upcoming bills and deal with them.

NOTE: I have a slotted bill organizer just like this in my office. It saved my hide many times!

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#accounting #AccountingTips #bookkeeping #GetBillsPaidOnTime #SlottedBillOrganizer

The post Five Easy Tips to Help You Get Your Business Bills Paid on Time first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.

I can’t believe I actually said “Thank you” to the IRS when they made the mistake, caused the problem, and probably shortened my life span. However, I was raised to be kind, so I was probably just thanking Carolyn, the very nice IRS representative on the other end of the phone (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

In case you didn’t hear my ranting in social media many moons ago, I’ll catch you up. NOTE: This story was originally written on 3/11/14.

For the 2010 tax season (early 2011), I prepared my W2 and W3 forms and not only gave them to employees on time, but I also mailed them into the IRS. Just a few months ago, I got my FIRST notice that they didn’t receive the W2’s & W3 that I know I sent them…AND, they were going to slap a $6,021.79 fine because of it! WHAT??? So I luckily found some old forms I could use, reprinted them, and immediately resent them, waited a few weeks, then called them to see if they got it. I was told that they did indeed just receive something from me but it hasn’t been processed into my file, yet, so they didn’t know what it was. I explained my situation and the person said that it should be easy to fix but the employee who was assigned to handle my case has been hired but won’t actually start work for a few more weeks; but if I call back in 6 weeks, I can find out if this person has resolved the issue. So…6 weeks are up but before I called them, I JUST got a letter yesterday (NOTE: This was first written on 3/11/14) announcing that the IRS will be seizing my property on March 13th (Thursday) if I don’t pay the $6,021.79 PLUS an additional $101.31 in interest charges!–interest that has accumulated for the last 6 weeks I guess. So last night was not a good sleep night. I was extremely frustrated and, honestly, a bit scared because I kept thinking this problem was going to be settled. And because I didn’t know what “property” was going to be seized and because I know, first hand, how long it takes them to fix problems, my faith was being tested.

SO…back to the story today (still 3/11/14): I picked up the phone, dialed the number, worked my way through the menu options, and then said a sincere prayer asking God to please resolve this for me (while the line was getting connected). Without having to even wait in the queue (that’s a first), Carolyn answered. I shared my story. She saw the notes from my previous calls. She said that I called at the PERFECT time. She said that if I had called even an hour earlier, she wouldn’t have an answer for me. However, she said that someone was literally JUST working my case and my account status had JUST been cleared because she could tell by the date/time stamp. They found ALL of my “lost” forms! No penalty, no interest, no seizure! I asked when I’ll get notified that it has been cleared. She said, “Well, we ARE the IRS so it might be a month or so.“ We both laughed. She did assure me that since the account has been cleared, no legal action will be taken so I can just ignore the letter. I got her ID number, made notes, sat back and released a big sigh of relief, then said, “Thank you.”

Yep, I just thanked the IRS for resolving a serious problem I didn’t create. Then I said a prayer of thanks as well. At least the IRS has to answer to Someone.

NOTE: On 3/20/14 I received an official letter from the IRS stating that they resolved the issue and abated (cancelled) the $6K fine.

The post The IRS vs. God first appeared on Fire Your Job, Hire Yourself.