I’ve been in business a long time now, from retail to service to ag, and I’ve learned some things about wrapping up one year and getting ready for the next. Some of it I learned the hard way! Whether you run your business on paper, desktop software, mobile or cloud services, there are common tasks…
As you wrap up one year and prepare for the next, your business needs to do the same. You have some accounting tasks to reset and some backups to make. Must do Jan 1 These are the ones you can’t easily do later, so you don’t want to put them off. The good news:…
To-do lists can be overwhelming. They can put too many demands on you, too many deadlines. You’re not the only person who feels this way. My friend Rob Hatch told me about a friend of his who felt just like this. He hated to-do lists because they made him feel much too pressured, like they…
Take this simple quiz. When I think of last year’s tax return time, I’d say it was: A breeze. I just printed out one or two reports and answered a few questions from my tax preparer. A bit of a mess. I had to do some work to catch up and then answer a…
I’ve got a new email technique to help those of you who get a crazy amount of email every day. It starts with a framework I’ve used before. Have your email sorted automatically, before you ever see it, into groups based on the frame of mind needed to act on it. Frame of mind might…
“Man, getting iPads was like discovering fire,” Lance Morgan, CEO of Ho-Chunk Inc., told me years ago. It’s still true that tablets can revolutionize business, but they can also be a boost to your personal productivity. We talked about ways to use tablets in retail businesses, and this time we’re talking about ways you can…
Each year, there are a few standard end-of-year tasks to complete. Right now, commit time on each Friday during January to work through the checklist until you are all finished. Count your inventory. If you sell or make products, take an inventory of all products or raw materials on hand at the turn of…
Boring tools are boring. Old-fashioned ideas lack the excitement of shiny new tools. But if your business has a problem with following processes, I have a really boring old tool that can help. You probably don’t need to learn anything new. You probably know the processes in your business really well. You probably can list…
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