Ed wrote last week about the content for your blog. He says to write about your passion. My passion is to develop cool products, solve problems, and doing something meaningful. One type of cool product is a company that is successful. If I can help a company grow whether it is to the next level or just increase a little bit, then I feel that it has been a success. And, THAT is the goal: do I feel like I did a good job.
I got a call today from a new client. They complained that they were losing money. When I asked about their previous advisor, they said that he did not help them at all. Can I help them? Fortunately, in my business our clients get a profit report once a month. This profit report lists how much money they make by each of their customers. It shows the revenue and the direct costs for each customer. You can assume that indirect costs (overhead) are about the same for each of them. This client makes approximately $13,000 per month. I told them to take that report and order it by profit from low to high. Start with the lowest, if it is negative, review why and then address it. If you have to, drop that customer; because losing that customer will make you more money! Within five minutes I identify how they can increase their profitability by $1080 per month by addressing the customers that were negative profits. That is more than 8%! I sent them instructions with a breakdown of the customers that were bleeding them money.
8% increase. That feels good. This company is going to be better off.
A lot of lessons can be learned from this but there are some meta-lessons too.
It is a good brag story, which did not take me long to write
Lessons learned:
1. Writing about your successes is fun and can be helpful.
2. Fun writing is faster and easier than writing that becomes a chore.
3. This type of writing can generate a lot of additional articles (I see a few already
