Two Minute Business Wisdom

It is not old school. A business card is still a great way to promo yourself and your business.

This is not a trick question. Some people have the ability to tune out the world and let their business run completely on autopilot (and the hard work of properly trained employees) for a while. Many do not.

Be a little selfish and ask yourself why you creating your own business or choosing to help someone operate theirs is beneficial to the world around you. Study your answers. If your answers seem dull and mundane, then you are getting the right answers.

Working for a specific specialization does eliminate many from your pool of potential customers. by design. Having a well-established specialty will attract those in need of your specific services and will make up for any unqualified potential customer that could wander by in theory.

Many busy business people get most of their 'mentorships' from books and videos. The real lessons you learn, and a surprising amount of lessons you will teach, come from live interactions with people, whether titans of industry or interns learning the ropes of the business.

You started your business or non-profit to achieve some sort of goal. It might be along the lines of making a dent in the universe or carving out a piece of the prosperity pie for your personal use. If you are doing well and working towards your goal, there is no need to apologize to anyone. If you are being a jerk about it, then you do need to apologize and change your ways now.

While your goal to succeed in business is to sell you goods at a higher price than your acquisition expenses, there is some merit to using loss-leader pricing. That assumes you have a real loss leader strategy and are not just lowballing to make up for lack of customers.

You can take your business to great heights. But in the beginning, you need to temper your expectations to more realistic--and really basic--goals.

Give all your business expenses a test and give them a letter grade. Then, just like college, figure out whether the failing expenses are worth extra credit work to improve, or if you should just drop them.

Before you work hard to overdo the options you want to make available to your customers, make sure your customers have a need, or at least a general want, for the items in the first place.