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New Year's Resolutions for Your Business

Whilest by no means complete, here is a list of things you may find useful. Successful management is simple. You:
1. Deliver a product or service that is needed and wanted,
2. Maintain income greater than outgo,
3. Maintain or reduce expenses relative to income,
4. Increase efficiency.
To increase turnover you:
1. Get more clients,
2. Lose fewer clients,
3. Keep clients longer,
4. Sell more to the client each time they purchase,
5. Sell more often to the same client.
To increase net profit you:
1. Reduce the cost of what you sell,
2. Increase the selling price of what you sell,
3. Reduce your overheads and expenses.
To eliminate wasted effort you ensure all your staff:
1. Know your organisational goals and targets,
2. Are in agreement with them,
3. Are working efficiently on the actions that will attain them,
4. Are not working on actions that will not contribute to them.
To get yourself some time off you:
1. Hire some productive people,
2. Train them to be competent at what you do,
3. Delegate responsibilities to them,
4. Change gears from doing to managing.
I have a suggestion for your New Year’s resolutions list. How about you spend just five minutes on each of the above numbered points? List what you are doing that works and work out what extra you could do to improve your results on that point.

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A free course on blogging

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

  • The best blogging techniques.
  • How to get traffic to your blog.
  • How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

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Protect Your Kids On-Line

One of my suppliers sent me this.
Hi,
Have a look at www.FreeKidsMail.com.au
If you have kids (or grandkids or even know someone who has them), this site is very important for you.
Why is this so important? “Most internet abductors email their target for months before arranging a meeting … and the parents never know” – IPA Child Safety Report in 2004.
This has been a personal project of mine for the last 12 months. I built www.FreeKidsMail.com.au to protect my own children online and decided to make it available to everyone … and as the name suggests the price it right too.
This site plugs a huge gap in the government’s filtering software that leaves kids dangerously exposed. In short this puts parents in total control of who can contact their kids online.
Please look at it and tell everyone you know about this website as it will make a big difference to keeping our kids safe online. Even if you don’t have kids please flick this email on to everyone you know who does; they will thank you for it. I know I would have 12 months ago as there was nothing out there that could do this … that’s why I was compelled to build it.
Thanks. I hope it makes a difference to you,
Andrew

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Petrol Pumping Tips

I thought everyone could benefit from using these tips!
Gas Pumping Tips from someone in the Petroleum pipeline business!!
I’ve been in petroleum pipeline business for about 31 years, currently working for the Kinder-Morgan Pipeline here in San Jose, CA. We deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period from the pipe line; one day it’s diesel, the next day it’s jet fuel and gasoline. We have 34 storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons. Here are some tricks to help you get your money’s worth.
1. Fill up your car or truck in the morning when the temperature is still cool. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground; and the colder the ground, the denser the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands, so if you’re filling up in the afternoon or in the evening, what should be a gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and temperature of the fuel (gasoline,
diesel, jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products) are significant. Eve ry truckload that we load is temperature-compensated so that the indicated gallonage is actually the amount pumped. A one-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for businesses, but service stations don’t have temperature compensation at their pumps.
2. If a tanker truck is filling the station’s tank at the time you want to buy gas, do not fill up; most likely dirt and sludge in the tank is being stirred up when gas is being delivered, and you might be transferring that dirt from the bottom of their tank into your car’s tank.
3. Fill up when your gas tank is half-full (or half-empty), because the more gas you have in your tank the less air there is and gasoline evaporates rapidly, especially when it’s warm. (Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating ‘roof’ membrane to act as a barrier between the gas and the atmosphere, thereby minimizing evaporation).
4. If you look at the trigger you’ll see that it has three delivery settings: slow, medium and high. When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to the high setting. You should be pumping at the slow setting, thereby minimizing vapors created while you are pumping. Hoses at the pump are corrugated; the corrugations act as a return path for vapor recovery from gas that already has been metered. If you are pumping at the high
setting, the agitated gasoline contains more vapor, which is being sucked back into the underground tank so you’re getting less gas for your money.
Hope this will help ease your ‘pain at the pump’.

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"ICE" Your Mobile!

We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory but nobody, other than if we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn’t know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency? Hence this “ICE” (In Case of Emergency) Campaign.
The concept of “ICE” is catching on quickly. It is a method of contact during emergency situations. As cell phones are carried by the majority of the population, all you need to do is store the number of a contact person or persons who should be contacted during emergency under the name “ICE” ( In Case Of Emergency).
The idea was thought up by a paramedic who found that when he went to the scenes of accidents, there were always mobile phones with patients, but they didn’t know which number to call. He therefore thought that it would be a good idea if there was a nationally recognized name for this purpose. In an emergency situation, Emergency Service personnel and hospital Staff would be able to quickly contact the right person by simply dialling the number you have stored as “ICE”.
Please forward this.
It won’t take too many “forwards” before everybody will know about this. It really could save your life, or put a loved one’s mind at rest. For more than one contact name simply enter ICE1, ICE2 and ICE3 etc.