Well after quite some time away we’re back and this time we plan to stay back. Business has been good while we’ve been away from here and there have been some less-than-good times too.

This area where we live and do most of our business is going through quite a difficult time and the rising value of the Australian dollar hasn’t done much for us either but we’re still here and still looking forward to getting out of bed every day.

So how has it been for you? Is your small business doing well? Is it surviving? Or is it struggling for breath and really looking like it’s about to fall over?

If your business is facing tough times and is struggling to survive then the carrion are circling. They may not be able to see you but they know you’re out there and they’re going to lay their traps for you. They’ll offer you great deals on just about everything … some may even offer to do business for you … and their offers will be so hard to resist.

For any small business that’s struggling a great offer is always hard to resist … you just want to grab it with both hands and run with it so you can drag your business out of its death throws and back in the game. You don’t stop to look to hard at the offer … you don’t have much time to think about it … grab it now or it’s gone forever.

That’s the pressure that they’ll put on you because the quicker you grab the deal the quicker you’re in their clutches … they quicker they’ve ripped you off … and the quicker they can move on to the next easy mark.

So no matter how tough things are … now matter how good an offer sounds … always stop to think things through before you grab it. If it’s that good a deal then spending a day or two thinking things through won’t do any harm.

But on the other hand if you begin to realise that the offer sounds too good to be true then it probably is. Walk … no … run away from any offer that sounds too good to be true because it always is too good to be true.

If your business is in trouble then the only way to survive is to go right back to basics and stop looking for quick fixes that are no fixes at all.

by Stuart Livesey 

It seems hard to believe that it’s almost a week since either of us had a chance to post here but it is. So to break the drought here’s a little piece of advice we spotted on the notice board outside an investment advisor’s office while we were in Brisbane last week.

Volatility offers opportunity

It reminds me of something a friend shared with me once. He is/was a very successful small business person and he got his basic training in a real estate office. Not long after he started working there the real estate market went through one of it’s periodic upheavals and the real estate market sank like a stone.

He asked the owner of the business if they were going to go on advertising at the same level while the market was so depressed and wasn’t surprised when the owner told him that they were definitely going to change the amount of advertising the business would be doing in the coming months. What did surprise him though was that, instead of cutting the amount of advertising the business was doing, the owner increased the advertising budget by a substantial amount.

I guess the owner understood that volatility offers opportunity.

That’s an interesting question asked by Seth Godin and one that any small business or home office person should be asking themselves.

You can read what he has to say about it here

I wish I had the recipe for this so that I could share it with you but I don’t, almost overnight and without us realising what was going on it just happened.

For several years now Toni’s small business has had a millstone tied around it’s and our neck – figuratively of course.

We had something that was holding us back, a burden that was weighing us down and then, almost overnight, that millstone has turned into a motivator. We can see a way of ridding ourselves of the millstone and now it’s motivating us to work towards that goal.

It’s motivating us more than you could imagine,

Almost everyone – and many businesses – have their millstones. A burden that is holding them back. If you have one can you see a way of turning it into a motivator?

Often all it takes is a little positive thought, a different perspective and suddenly than millstone isn’t weighing you down anymore. Instead it’s motivating you to strive for new heights in your personal life and in the life of your business.

As I said at the start, I wish I knew how it happened for us because then I could share it with you. But if you have turned a millstone into a motivator then maybe you would care to share it with us?

Toni and I were challenged the other day by a post on on Darren Rowse’s blog, Problogger

The post was a reflection by Darren on the way Problogger had gone for him during 2005 and I’m sure it will give you some food for thought too.

Problogger is just one of Darren’s blogs. The others earn him a six figure sum each year but Problogger earns him hardly anything. To make matters worse it is the blog that takes up most of his time.

Now you and I might think that a project like Problogger would deliver a very poor return on our investment of time and effort and we would probably kill it fairly quickly but Darren is not like the rest of us.

Instead he sees Problogger as an investment in the future because, through Problogger, he has managed to establish himself as a person who is obviously very talented in his chosen field. By establishing that he has been able to open up some great opportunities that he sees as being very lucrative in the year ahead.

I wonder how many of us are prepared to think that far ahead?