Posts Tagged ‘Business Tips’

Sometimes You Just Have To Say NO!

Posted on September 7th, 2012 by Kimanzi

When I got my first real job working for Burger King I was the happiest sixteen year old you have met. I was so proud to tell people I was punching the clock and getting a paycheck.

Naturally I wanted to be the best employee which meant never saying No. If they asked me to work over-time I would beg my parents to let me work. If it meant cleaning up some mess that no one else wanted to clean up, I did it.

I ran into a little crisis when my manager scheduled me to work on a Sunday even though I stated in my application that I couldn’t work on Sundays. I begged my parents but they put their foot down, there was no way they were letting me miss church for work.

When I started my first business, I wanted to go over and beyond for my customers. This meant that sometimes I got calls late night or super early morning to make special delivers.

I charged them for these mini emergencies but because I wanted to get more business, I charged a ridiculously low amount. I did this for a long time before a friend of mine sat me down and woke me up to the fact I was actually losing money.

The common theme in these stories is the fact that I couldn’t say NO.

Fast forward to the present and I’m living out my dreams as a public speaker, I get requests to speak at all kinds of event. At first I wanted to speak at every conference that would have me, but I have a family and get be gone everyday :) (more…)

It’s A Whole New World of Possibilities

Posted on July 19th, 2012 by Kimanzi

At the time of you reading this I will be in Sydney, Australia! I wanted to write to you before I left to tell you about something pretty amazing that I’m thrilled to be a part of.

250 x 250Do you realize the incredible potential that is available to us with the Internet and the rise of social media? In the past to get noticed or have your message heard you had to go through many gate-keepers. In the past of you wrote a book you had to pitch it to an agent and hope he would pick it up.

If that agent agreed to represent you, they had to find a publisher that would even look at the book. This year I self-published two books, sold a bunch of copies and got a book deal all without an agent or spending a single dime on advertising. It’s a whole new world.

With all this opportunity think of how this could benefit ministry. What about a missionary that self-published a book of their experiences or started some kind of online business? They wouldn’t have to be supported by anyone and with the state of the economy, mission’s giving has been way down. How much more effective could missions be?

The Lord is GOOD and will always provide for those that follow his command to go into all the world, but maybe one of the ways the Lord is providing is with all these new opportunities. (more…)

Taking Things One At A Time

Posted on July 9th, 2012 by Kimanzi

For my regular readers I want to share with you some good news. I have joined a collaborative writing project that is all about publishing and everything related to publishing from a Christian perspective. My first post went live today, if you have time I would owe you a HUGE favor if you checked the post out here.

I use to be a TV junkie and one of my favorite shows was “The West Wing”, I absolutely loved that show! I remember my favorite episode, which was about one of the characters (Josh) running the presidential campaign of a new candidate (Matt Santos), a relatively unknown candidate.

As you can imagine, running a presidential campaign even for an unknown candidate can be crazy busy. In the episode, Josh had two cells that were either constantly ringing or beeping from text and email alerts.

He had meetings schedule every three minutes (it seemed like it) not to mention, interviews, strategy and the occasional major crisis, his day was never-ending! I saw this episode and was convinced this was how I wanted my life to be, I wanted to be that busy (I now realize how stupid that sounds).

So even though I was watching a TV show, I went on to try to be as busy as Josh was. I would take on all kinds of projects at work; I would take on all kinds of side projects at home. I actually went out and bought two cell phones, I pretty much lost my mind.

I’m going to make a long story short and tell you that I completely chased and burned, I didn’t get a single thing accomplished. Do you know why that is?

Life is not a TV show. (more…)

When Should You Start Your Own Business?

Posted on June 27th, 2012 by Kimanzi

Note from Kimanzi: This is a guest post by Bill White who is the founder of Succinct Research, a company dedicated to conducting quality research products for business clients and the non-academic public. An enthusiast of alternative health, he is also the creator of “http://www.jobsinayurveda.com/”Ayurveda, which focuses on helping professionals in holistic healing and alternative medicine find jobs and improve their businesses. His most recent book, Resume Writing for Scientists, explains the techniques recruiters use to create killer resumes that help place their clients. It’s an excellent resource for anyone that needs a job. To guest post on this blog email a post to kimanzi@talesofwork.com and I’ll review it.

My job situation got extremely precarious this year. I was laid off and had to scramble to find a new job. With a mortgage and other bills looming large, I had to make sure my job search paid dividends quickly. My family was depending on me. Fortunately, I landed a new job in my career field within a few short weeks. Unfortunately, it only paid about 70 percent of what my former job used to pay. This new job has allowed me to cover the bills, but it fails to provide a few extra funds for all the little things I used to enjoy with my family. Eating out, going to the movies, grabbing a coffee, checking out a MLB game most of those fun activities have been cut from our downsized lifestyle.

Even though I’d found another job, I still felt like my back was still against the wall. I was searching for something that would make up that financial shortfall because my family and I deserve a little fun for all the hard work we put into our lives. That’s when I decided to start my own business as a resume and non-fiction eBook writer and consultant.

What did I know about eBook publishing? Not much, but I knew how to write and research. I had written or contributed to nearly 50 research reports, some of which were more than 2,000 pages long! Also, I had written several articles and done a number of public presentations. My job for the last 8 years has been conducting research and writing-up the results. Research is still what I do today. I decided to take the plunge in order to make things better for myself and my family. My financial situation was the impetus I needed to start getting paid directly for what I already knew how to do rather than keep using my skills to enrich my bosses. (more…)

It’s Time To Get Rid of Small Minded Thinking

Posted on June 22nd, 2012 by Kimanzi

“Never let your small business keep you small-minded” Brendon Burchard

Have you been guilty of small-minded thinking?

 

 

The Risks of Not Getting Enough Sleep

Posted on April 25th, 2012 by Kimanzi

A few years ago I read an article about how all successful people are multi-tasker’s. The article went on to show people who would balance several different tasks and “get a tremendous amount of tasks” accomplished, I was hooked. I would look for every chance I could to multi-task and took on way more than I could handle.

Soon I had so much to do I had to stay up late to get it all done. I would promise people I would do this and that and it got to the point where I would only get two to four hour’s of sleep a night. At first I would wake up at 2 a.m. for work and feel really tired but I downed a 32 oz Mountain Dew and convinced myself this is how all great, successful multi-tasker’s do things.

A couple of months later I was driving the bread truck in the morning, I already had my Mountain Dew, I gave myself the peep talk but none of it was working, I couldn’t keep my eye’s open. I was driving and gave in a just a few seconds (it honestly might have been 40 seconds to a minute) and closed my eyes, when I opened them I was heading head on into a building. The thing was I would have had enough distance to stop but there was snow on the ground. So I screamed, hit the brakes and watched the truck slide, I had about 15 feet before I would have hit the building, I was safe but the truck was messed up, all the bread was all over the place, one tire was ripped because I ran over a large curb. (more…)

The Best Way To Deal With Chaos

Posted on April 23rd, 2012 by Kimanzi

The best way to deal with chaos is to embrace it, there I gave you the secret right away!

I don’t know how life is for you these days but for me it’s busy. Between the 40 plus hours I spend at work, time with my kids, time with my spouse, ministry opportunities, family functions and all the random things that pop up from time to time! Thinking about it now makes me cringe a little!

In the midst of all of this it’s easy to get frustrated and want to go and hide in the corner, but there’s a lot better way to get through it all:

  • Prepare things as much as possible ahead of time. A great way to reduce stress and stay ahead of chaos is to set things up ahead of time. If you know you have a big project coming up or your kids have a big project coming up, work on it as much as possible way before the deadline. This can even apply to your everyday life, iron any clothes the night before, make any lunches the night before. Have everything in one spot so that in morning you can grab and go, this also works great when you wake up late and can just smell chaos down the hall. Do as much prep work as you can.

 

  • Stay as organized as humanly possible. I deliver bread and in the truck things can get out of hand pretty fast. In the past I would throw things all over the place telling myself it’s saving me time and I’ll clean it up later, I was completely wrong. One day after not being able to find some bagels, I told myself enough is enough, I’m getting organized! So from that day until today, I stack the trays in order and as I go throughout the morning I keep everything neat and clean. Doing things this way makes everything easier to find which in turn saves me time and I’m not accidentally stepping on bread. You may think that you can just put things wherever to get through a chaotic situation quicker, it won’t save you any time and it will add to your stress. Even as it seems everything is collapsing around you, stay organized and you can get through those chaotic situations. (more…)

Idea’s Are Great But You Have To Be You

Posted on April 18th, 2012 by Kimanzi

It was 2 a.m. on a cold Wisconsin morning, it had just snowed and everything was slippery, it was one of those mornings I wished I was still in bed instead of delivering bread. I had to take three stacks of bread into the store, they were 14 trays high and I had to put them on an electric lift. I put the first stack on and it was way more sliding then I wanted, the second stack went on and my gut told me that was enough. I thought about making two trips but I was way to impatient for that so I put the third stack on the lift and all three fell right off. It was 2 a.m. cold, snowy and I had to pick up 3oo plus loaf’s of bread and bagels, that was the moment I knew I had enough, this was not my true passion or calling!

After a lot of time and prayer and researching, I felt called to teach the everyday working person that you can find work that you love no matter what your experience is or how much schooling you have. I loved to write, so I wrote. I started a blog and wanted to draw traffic and attention to it so I looked into all the major websites of people already doing business online. Logical right?

After a month of doing research and finishing my book I was ready to get to work, so I copied what those major websites were doing, exactly. At first I saw a few results but for the most part I was ignored, it was very discouraging and made me want to quit. I just couldn’t figure out what was going wrong, these guys were killing it online and I was trying to use their playbook.

You may be on a similar path and you will read some amazing blog posts and hear some awesome podcasts and you’ll think all I got to do is what those people are doing and you’ll be successful, I hate to tell you it won’t work. The thing that is going to make you stand out, the thing that is going to make you succeed is you and what’s unique about you. (more…)

One Key To A Successful Business: Patience

Posted on April 11th, 2012 by Kimanzi

In business or in life we can never have enough patience.

As a business owner your patience will not only be tested on a daily basis but at times even an hourly basis. How you respond could be the difference as to whether your business can survive, especially in this economy. Remember, you are the leader and no matter what you say, your people will mimic your actions. If you are impatient with your customers or your employees, then when you’re not around……… Yep.

If you plan on starting a business or have just started a business, you better learn to have patience

We have all heard the saying that the customer is always right, the problem is the customer has heard that saying to and is convinced they’re always right. When you do something that the customer doesn’t like, whether you think it’s right or not, get ready to hear about it, this is where your patience has to kick in.

There have been times in the past where my customers have been angry at me for this and that and have come up to tell me about it. When I first started out in business, I would argue with them and as a result, lost a few customers, after a while I learned the best thing to do is to shut up and listen. (more…)

6 Things You Need To Know About Starting A Business (Part 2)

Posted on February 24th, 2012 by Kimanzi

My Story: (in case you missed it)

For the last ten years I have run a fairly successful business. At the height of the business I had four employee’s and brought in $200,00 a year. I have since scaled back but continue to generate decent income from this business. When I started out I didn’t have a mentor to guide me through some of the basic’s of starting a business, nor did I do the proper research.

My new business (Free on Amazon later today)

 

 

Why these two blog posts?

It’s my goal here at Tales of Work to help anyone with their job or their business to succeed. There are too many negative people and things in life that will try to hold us back or see us fail in our work or businesses. Any tips that I can give from my own personal experience that will benefit someone is the my main goal for this website and my writing.

If you are staring a business or have just started a business, or are thinking about starting a business, here are the final three points (out of six) that I feel would benefit you:

  • Pay your taxes!!! This is one of the biggest lessons I hope you take away from this series. I learned the hard way the consequences of not paying your taxes, and I’m still paying for that lesson. You have to set aside money for your taxes, not only at the end of the year, but also for your quarterlies. Your quarterlies are estimated taxes that you pay every three months and if you don’t pay them throughout the year, you will get hit with a penalty when you file your taxes. Pay this every quarter, even if it’s not the full amount, you’ll avoid the penalty. For those starting a business that used to be employee’s, it can be very deceiving. You’re used to an employer taking your taxes out of your check, you don’t even think about it. When you get those first checks from your business, they seem SO HUGE. I remember my first check for $1000, I almost fainted. I would then go on throughout the rest of that year getting large checks, the whole time telling myself I would be able to make up the tax money at the end of the year. You can guess what happened, right? The end of the year came and I had $10 in my kids piggy bank to pay my taxes, not very smart! You would have thought I learned my lesson after that first year, I didn’t and continued this pattern for a few more years when it all came crashing in my face! Learn the lesson it took me years to learn, you may be getting larger checks, it might seem like you’re making more, but you’re not if you’re not saving for your taxes. Many people have lost their businesses over tax issues, avoid being the next one, SAVE AND PAY YOUR TAXES! (more…)