The Wright Education Station™

7 Habits of Business Success

2011-03-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

The 7 Habits of Business Success
From Darrell Zahorsky, former About.com Guide
The elusive dream of business success captures the imagination of aspiring and existing business owners everywhere. A vision of flowing profits, industry respect, thrilled customers, and a balanced life. This vision is only possible by developing habits that drive business success. Take the time to learn the 7 habits of business success.

Habit 1. Cultivate Inner Networks: Entrepreneurs practicing the art of business success know the power of networks. They take the time to identify and build relationships with key peers, mentors, and advisors. This inner network provides support, direction, and an increased number of people to assist. Having an inner network of five people who have a network of five more, grows the network exponentially.

Habit 2. Customer Centric: Business success requires an unwavering commitment to the customer. This commitment encompasses a mindset of understanding the customers' world. Understanding the customers wants and needs provides the business with a greater opportunity to earn a loyal customer base. Focus away from business and profits, and toward what you can do to improve the life of your customers.

Habit 3. Humble Honesty: Business success requires the ability to know your strengths and weaknesses. Being open and honest about yourself and your business creates growth as an individual and as a company. Don't spend time developing weaknesses. Find help for weak areas, enabling you to focus on strengths. In the book, "Now, Discover Your Strengths", Gallup Organization reveals that building our strengths instead of fixing our weakness is the path to mastery and success. Take the time to know yourself and business.

Habit 4. Adaptability: Business success requires the ability to adapt to changing situations. Nothing ever goes as planned. The world of business is full of surprises and unforeseen events. Using the habit of adaptability allows business owners to respond to circumstances with the ability to change course and act without complete information. Being flexible allows us to respond to changes without being paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.

Habit 5. Opportunity Focused: Problems are a regular part of business life. Staff issues, customer misunderstandings, cash crunches- the list is endless. To achieve business success, look at both sides of the coin. Every problem has an opportunity. Being opportunity focused makes the game of business fun and energizing.

Habit 6. Finding A Better Way: Productivity is the cornerstone of business success. Formulate the habit of finding a better way to make your business more productive. This will create more time to focus on the critical issues that drive sales and profit. Productivity can be enhanced by technology, automation, outsourcing, and improving business processes.

Habit 7. Balanced Lifestyle Management: A business can consume an owner's time and energy. It's easy to allow the business to take control of your life. Business success requires the habit of balancing all aspects of your life. Separating time for daily business tasks, profit driven tasks, and free time is a habit that will make your business and life more enjoyable. Take the time to plan each week.

Learning and instilling new habits in your daily business life can have a dramatic effect on your level of success. Review each of the 7 habits.
Choose one habit to focus on for a month or until you achieve mastery. Gradually incorporate each of the 7 habits of business success into your life and attain your business dreams.

The 7 Keys to Business Success

2011-03-30T21:33:00.000-07:00

The 7 keys to unlock your business success. Discover how to break through the growth barriers and develop a business that provides unlimited potential, wealth and freedom from day to day pressures. You should not go back to work until you discover the 7 keys for yourself.

Do you run a business that seems to run you? It does not have to be this way. There are 7 keys that can improve your business results and help you achieve success with much less stress.

1 Take Charge
The first key is to realize that success will not just happen, it is up to you to make it happen. Successful people claim to be in control. They refuse to be victims. They accept responsibility for the results their business achieves and take the blame themselves if things go wrong. When we are in control we can choose what to do. We can’t always control the situation but there are two things we can control – our attitude and our skills. We can get stronger, we can get smarter, we can get better at all the skills we need to run our business. We can take charge of ourselves and our business and change the results we are achieving.

2 Know Where You Are Going
Without having specific goals, business owners often find working in the business becomes an endless drudgery. If being in business is not exciting, enjoyable and rewarding, then why be in it? It is exciting and rewarding for the few who are really successful. The difference is that they have a clear idea of where they are going and each day they can see their business making progress towards their clearly defined goals.

If our goals are not clearly defined it is easy to become like the mouse on the treadmill. We can expend a lot of effort going nowhere. All we can do is react to the pressures the business creates. The second key is to decide where you are going. When you know where you want your business to go, you can determine what needs to be done to get there. Doing these things creates excitement and enjoyment. Instead of struggling on with meager rewards, we can make progress towards success in a steadily growing and entirely planned way.

3 Spread The Word
You will never succeed by keeping your business a secret. You need to spread the word to let people know about your unique products or services. With many small businesses, there is a tendency to be reactive. If sales slow down, you decide to advertise to address the situation. When work picks up, advertising is stopped. The result of this approach is haphazard advertising which produces haphazard results. Rather than haphazard advertising, a planned advertising and promotion strategy can be applied to address specific goals.

Instead of one broad objective of "getting more sales", strategies can be developed in three areas. Firstly strategies should be developed to actively encourage word of mouth and a system for generating referred leads. Secondly, planned advertising approaches are needed to generate a steady flow of new enquiries. Thirdly, strategies can be developed to increase the value and frequency of purchases from existing customers. Marketing must not be left to chance. The third key is to spread the word, by developing planned, consistent and effective advertising and promotional systems and strategies.

4 Do It So Well They’ll Come Back And Bring Their Friends
The difference between the truly successful business and the average business is that successful business’ leaders live, breathe and preach quality, where the average business’ leader only pays lip service to it. There are many companies that have built their reputation on the quality of the service they provide as much as the product they sell. Even if we haven’t been, I’m sure we all know the reputation Disneyland has for the quality of the experience of a visit there. The title of this key is a quote (paraphrased) from Walt Disney. This man lived and breathed this attitude and accepted nothing less from his employees. The outworking is that standards and procedures are established so that employees know what is expected of them in every situation, particularly in an interaction with a customer. Delighted customers come back with their friends.

5 Train Your People To Do It Better Than You
When we start a business based on our own unique skills, we have a difficult choice when we get too busy to cope with all the work our expertise has created. We need to spread the load by employing others to do some of the work. This is the critical point in the business’ development. If the business owner gets this right, the future of the business is assured, but if it goes wrong, the business is doomed.

Many business owners wish they could clone themselves. They are unable to find anyone who can work as well as they do. Usually there has been some resistance to this move, but eventually the need becomes obvious. Business growth is always stifled by the owner hanging on to the work they enjoy. Having made the choice to grow, the key to unlocking this potential is to train the new people to be better than yourself.

6 Keep The Score
The greatest danger in a growing business is for the owner to lose control. This fear causes many to choose to stay small because they do not want the worries of growing too big.

WHAT YOU MEASURE YOU CAN IMPROVE!

A business’ performance needs to be managed and controlled. So many business owners worry about getting the work done, but they don’t measure results, they don’t keep score. Keeping the score indicates how well the business is going towards achieving its goals. If performance is behind expectations, steps can be taken to improve. If the score was not kept, no one would ever know that performance was substandard, and the goals would quite likely never be reached.

7 Celebrate Your Victories
Regeneration of our physical and emotional resources comes when we celebrate victories. One of the problems we have in small business is that we think we are too busy to take time off to celebrate. Even if we just get away from the business and relax, we come back rejuvenated and are usually able to tackle our work with a renewed vigor. Imagine how inefficient it becomes, using a battery powered machine, if we keep on working harder and harder to get the work done and never stop to recharge the batteries. If we don’t stop at times to recharge our batteries we keep working hard but become totally ineffective.

When we plan our future and set goals it is easy to determine when to celebrate. Without goals to achieve, we can keep on working until it becomes a drudgery. Celebrations put excitement into what we do.

Conclusion
Implementing the 7 keys to unlock the profit potential in your business could be what you need to end the frustration you feel from trying to build your business but seeming to take one step forward and two steps back. These are the keys to freedom from the daily grind of business pressure, the keys to gaining the rewards you deserve from the efforts you put in. It is up to you to take hold of the keys and unlock the hidden profit and excitement that is the potential your business holds.

© 2003 Greg Roworth, Progressive Business Solutions Limited.

Buy "The 7 Keys" book online at http://www.progressivebusinesssolutions.co.nz or check out the list of free resources and quality business building articles on our Free Resources page.

Greg Roworth is a business consultant and author of "The 7 Keys to Unlock Your Business Profit Potential." With over 25 years practical experience in business ownership and management, Greg has, over the last 12 years, worked with hundreds of small and medium size enterprises, assisting the owners to grow their business profitably and at the same time reduce their stress levels.

Derivatives: CFA Level 1

2011-03-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Macroeconomics CFA Level 1

2010-12-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

CFA Exam Prep - Level 1

2010-10-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

Beginners' Guide to Financial Statements

2010-09-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

Beginners' Guide to Financial Statements
by U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC)

The Basics
If you can read a nutrition label or a baseball box score, you can learn to read basic financial statements. If you can follow a recipe or apply for a loan, you can learn basic accounting. The basics aren’t difficult and they aren’t rocket science.

This information is designed to help you gain a basic understanding of how to read financial statements. Just as a CPR class teaches you how to perform the basics of cardiac pulmonary resuscitation, this brochure will explain how to read the basic parts of a financial statement. It will not train you to be an accountant (just as a CPR course will not make you a cardiac doctor), but it should give you the confidence to be able to look at a set of financial statements and make sense of them.

Let’s begin by looking at what financial statements do.

“Show me the money!”We all remember Cuba Gooding Jr.’s immortal line from the movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money!” Well, that’s what financial statements do. They show you the money. They show you where a company’s money came from, where it went, and where it is now.

There are four main financial statements. They are: (1) balance sheets; (2) income statements; (3) cash flow statements; and (4) statements of shareholders’ equity. Balance sheets show what a company owns and what it owes at a fixed point in time. Income statements show how much money a company made and spent over a period of time. Cash flow statements show the exchange of money between a company and the outside world also over a period of time. The fourth financial statement, called a “statement of shareholders’ equity,” shows changes in the interests of the company’s shareholders over time.

Let’s look at each of the first three financial statements in more detail.

Balance Sheets
A balance sheet provides detailed information about a company’s assets, liabilities and shareholders’ equity.

Assets are things that a company owns that have value. This typically means they can either be sold or used by the company to make products or provide services that can be sold. Assets include physical property, such as plants, trucks, equipment and inventory. It also includes things that can’t be touched but nevertheless exist and have value, such as trademarks and patents. And cash itself is an asset. So are investments a company makes.

Liabilities are amounts of money that a company owes to others. This can include all kinds of obligations, like money borrowed from a bank to launch a new product, rent for use of a building, money owed to suppliers for materials, payroll a company owes to its employees, environmental cleanup costs, or taxes owed to the government. Liabilities also include obligations to provide goods or services to customers in the future.

Shareholders’ equity is sometimes called capital or net worth. It’s the money that would be left if a company sold all of its assets and paid off all of its liabilities. This leftover money belongs to the shareholders, or the owners, of the company.

The following formula summarizes what a balance sheet shows:

ASSETS = LIABILITIES + SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY

A company's assets have to equal, or "balance," the sum of its liabilities and shareholders' equity.

A company’s balance sheet is set up like the basic accounting equation shown above. On the left side of the balance sheet, companies list their assets. On the right side, they list their liabilities and shareholders’ equity. Sometimes balance sheets show assets at the top, followed by liabilities, with shareholders’ equity at the bottom.

Assets are generally listed based on how quickly they will be converted into cash. Current assets are things a company expects to convert to cash within one year. A good example is inventory. Most companies expect to sell their inventory for cash within one year. Noncurrent assets are things a company does not expect to convert to cash within one year or that would take longer than one year to sell. Noncurrent assets include fixed assets. Fixed assets are those assets used to operate the business but that are not available for sale, such as trucks, office furniture and other property.

Liabilities are generally listed based on their due dates. Liabilities are said to be either current or long-term. Current liabilities are obligations a company expects to pay off within the year. Long-term liabilities are obligations due more than one year away.

Shareholders’ equity is the amount owners invested in the company’s stock plus or minus the company’s earnings or losses since inception. Sometimes companies distribute earnings, instead of retaining them. These distributions are called dividends.

A balance sheet shows a snapshot of a company’s assets, liabilities and shareholders’ equity at the end of the reporting period. It does not show the flows into and out of the accounts during the period.

Income Statements
An income statement is a report that shows how much revenue a company earned over a specific time period (usually for a year or some portion of a year). An income statement also shows the costs and expenses associated with earning that revenue. The literal “bottom line” of the statement usually shows the company’s net earnings or losses. This tells you how much the company earned or lost over the period.

Income statements also report earnings per share (or “EPS”). This calculation tells you how much money shareholders would receive if the company decided to distribute all of the net earnings for the period. (Companies almost never distribute all of their earnings. Usually they reinvest them in the business.)

To understand how income statements are set up, think of them as a set of stairs. You start at the top with the total amount of sales made during the accounting period. Then you go down, one step at a time. At each step, you make a deduction for certain costs or other operating expenses associated with earning the revenue. At the bottom of the stairs, after deducting all of the expenses, you learn how much the company actually earned or lost during the accounting period. People often call this “the bottom line.”

At the top of the income statement is the total amount of money brought in from sales of products or services. This top line is often referred to as gross revenues or sales. It’s called “gross” because expenses have not been deducted from it yet. So the number is “gross” or unrefined.

The next line is money the company doesn’t expect to collect on certain sales. This could be due, for example, to sales discounts or merchandise returns.

When you subtract the returns and allowances from the gross revenues, you arrive at the company’s net revenues. It’s called “net” because, if you can imagine a net, these revenues are left in the net after the deductions for returns and allowances have come out.

Moving down the stairs from the net revenue line, there are several lines that represent various kinds of operating expenses. Although these lines can be reported in various orders, the next line after net revenues typically shows the costs of the sales. This number tells you the amount of money the company spent to produce the goods or services it sold during the accounting period.

The next line subtracts the costs of sales from the net revenues to arrive at a subtotal called “gross profit” or sometimes “gross margin.” It’s considered “gross” because there are certain expenses that haven’t been deducted from it yet.

The next section deals with operating expenses. These are expenses that go toward supporting a company’s operations for a given period – for example, salaries of administrative personnel and costs of researching new products. Marketing expenses are another example. Operating expenses are different from “costs of sales,” which were deducted above, because operating expenses cannot be linked directly to the production of the products or services being sold.

Depreciation is also deducted from gross profit. Depreciation takes into account the wear and tear on some assets, such as machinery, tools and furniture, which are used over the long term. Companies spread the cost of these assets over the periods they are used. This process of spreading these costs is called depreciation or amortization. The “charge” for using these assets during the period is a fraction of the original cost of the assets.

After all operating expenses are deducted from gross profit, you arrive at operating profit before interest and income tax expenses. This is often called “income from operations.”

Next companies must account for interest income and interest expense. Interest income is the money companies make from keeping their cash in interest-bearing savings accounts, money market funds and the like. On the other hand, interest expense is the money companies paid in interest for money they borrow. Some income statements show interest income and interest expense separately. Some income statements combine the two numbers. The interest income and expense are then added or subtracted from the operating profits to arrive at operating profit before income tax.

Finally, income tax is deducted and you arrive at the bottom line: net profit or net losses. (Net profit is also called net income or net earnings.) This tells you how much the company actually earned or lost during the accounting period. Did the company make a profit or did it lose money?

Earnings Per Share or EPS
Most income statements include a calculation of earnings per share or EPS. This calculation tells you how much money shareholders would receive for each share of stock they own if the company distributed all of its net income for the period.

To calculate EPS, you take the total net income and divide it by the number of outstanding shares of the company.

Cash Flow Statements
Cash flow statements report a company’s inflows and outflows of cash. This is important because a company needs to have enough cash on hand to pay its expenses and purchase assets. While an income statement can tell you whether a company made a profit, a cash flow statement can tell you whether the company generated cash.

A cash flow statement shows changes over time rather than absolute dollar amounts at a point in time. It uses and reorders the information from a company’s balance sheet and income statement.

The bottom line of the cash flow statement shows the net increase or decrease in cash for the period. Generally, cash flow statements are divided into three main parts. Each part reviews the cash flow from one of three types of activities: (1) operating activities; (2) investing activities; and (3) financing activities.

Operating Activities
The first part of a cash flow statement analyzes a company’s cash flow from net income or losses. For most companies, this section of the cash flow statement reconciles the net income (as shown on the income statement) to the actual cash the company received from or used in its operating activities. To do this, it adjusts net income for any non-cash items (such as adding back depreciation expenses) and adjusts for any cash that was used or provided by other operating assets and liabilities.

Investing Activities
The second part of a cash flow statement shows the cash flow from all investing activities, which generally include purchases or sales of long-term assets, such as property, plant and equipment, as well as investment securities. If a company buys a piece of machinery, the cash flow statement would reflect this activity as a cash outflow from investing activities because it used cash. If the company decided to sell off some investments from an investment portfolio, the proceeds from the sales would show up as a cash inflow from investing activities because it provided cash.

Financing Activities
The third part of a cash flow statement shows the cash flow from all financing activities. Typical sources of cash flow include cash raised by selling stocks and bonds or borrowing from banks. Likewise, paying back a bank loan would show up as a use of cash flow.

Read the Footnotes
A horse called “Read The Footnotes” ran in the 2004 Kentucky Derby. He finished seventh, but if he had won, it would have been a victory for financial literacy proponents everywhere. It’s so important to read the footnotes. The footnotes to financial statements are packed with information. Here are some of the highlights:

Significant accounting policies and practices – Companies are required to disclose the accounting policies that are most important to the portrayal of the company’s financial condition and results. These often require management’s most difficult, subjective or complex judgments.

Income taxes – The footnotes provide detailed information about the company’s current and deferred income taxes. The information is broken down by level – federal, state, local and/or foreign, and the main items that affect the company’s effective tax rate are described.

Pension plans and other retirement programs – The footnotes discuss the company’s pension plans and other retirement or post-employment benefit programs. The notes contain specific information about the assets and costs of these programs, and indicate whether and by how much the plans are over- or under-funded.

Stock options – The notes also contain information about stock options granted to officers and employees, including the method of accounting for stock-based compensation and the effect of the method on reported results.

Read the MD&A
You can find a narrative explanation of a company’s financial performance in a section of the quarterly or annual report entitled, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” MD&A is management’s opportunity to provide investors with its view of the financial performance and condition of the company. It’s management’s opportunity to tell investors what the financial statements show and do not show, as well as important trends and risks that have shaped the past or are reasonably likely to shape the company’s future.

The SEC’s rules governing MD&A require disclosure about trends, events or uncertainties known to management that would have a material impact on reported financial information. The purpose of MD&A is to provide investors with information that the company’s management believes to be necessary to an understanding of its financial condition, changes in financial condition and results of operations. It is intended to help investors to see the company through the eyes of management. It is also intended to provide context for the financial statements and information about the company’s earnings and cash flows.

Financial Statement Ratios and Calculations
You’ve probably heard people banter around phrases like “P/E ratio,” “current ratio” and “operating margin.” But what do these terms mean and why don’t they show up on financial statements? Listed below are just some of the many ratios that investors calculate from information on financial statements and then use to evaluate a company. As a general rule, desirable ratios vary by industry.

Debt-to-equity ratio compares a company’s total debt to shareholders’ equity. Both of these numbers can be found on a company’s balance sheet. To calculate debt-to-equity ratio, you divide a company’s total liabilities by its shareholder equity, or

Debt-to-Equity Ratio = Total Liabilities / Shareholders’ Equity
If a company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 2 to 1, it means that the company has two dollars of debt to every one dollar shareholders invest in the company. In other words, the company is taking on debt at twice the rate that its owners are investing in the company.

Inventory turnover ratio compares a company’s cost of sales on its income statement with its average inventory balance for the period. To calculate the average inventory balance for the period, look at the inventory numbers listed on the balance sheet. Take the balance listed for the period of the report and add it to the balance listed for the previous comparable period, and then divide by two. (Remember that balance sheets are snapshots in time. So the inventory balance for the previous period is the beginning balance for the current period, and the inventory balance for the current period is the ending balance.) To calculate the inventory turnover ratio, you divide a company’s cost of sales (just below the net revenues on the income statement) by the average inventory for the period, or

Inventory Turnover Ratio = Cost of Sales / Average Inventory for the Period
If a company has an inventory turnover ratio of 2 to 1, it means that the company’s inventory turned over twice in the reporting period.

Operating margin compares a company’s operating income to net revenues. Both of these numbers can be found on a company’s income statement. To calculate operating margin, you divide a company’s income from operations (before interest and income tax expenses) by its net revenues, or

Operating Margin = Income from Operations / Net Revenues
Operating margin is usually expressed as a percentage. It shows, for each dollar of sales, what percentage was profit.

P/E ratio compares a company’s common stock price with its earnings per share. To calculate a company’s P/E ratio, you divide a company’s stock price by its earnings per share, or

P/E Ratio = Price per share / Earnings per share
If a company’s stock is selling at $20 per share and the company is earning $2 per share, then the company’s P/E Ratio is 10 to 1. The company’s stock is selling at 10 times its earnings.

Working capital is the money leftover if a company paid its current liabilities (that is, its debts due within one-year of the date of the balance sheet) from its current assets.

Working Capital = Current Assets – Current Liabilities

Bringing It All Together
Although this information discusses each financial statement separately, keep in mind that they are all related. The changes in assets and liabilities that you see on the balance sheet are also reflected in the revenues and expenses that you see on the income statement, which result in the company’s gains or losses. Cash flows provide more information about cash assets listed on a balance sheet and are related, but not equivalent, to net income shown on the income statement. And so on. No one financial statement tells the complete story. But combined, they provide very powerful information for investors. And information is the investor’s best tool when it comes to investing wisely.

Accounting Overview - Cliffs Notes

2010-09-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

Interview Questions & Prep

2010-07-07T16:47:00.000-07:00

Brian Krueger, President of CollegeGrad.com, presents "The Most Important Aspect of Successful Interviewing and response to common questions.

Five Tough Interview Questions

2010-07-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

The five toughest questions are discussed in these five videos.

You need to also prepare for behavioral questions. Behavioral questions are commonly used to select the best candidate. Here are just a few examples.

Why do you think you will be successful at this job?
The interviewer is concerned as to whether you see this as a career move, or stop-gap employment. As my resume reflects, I have been successful at each of my previous places of employment. My research of your company, the job description outlined, and the information we've exchanged today, lead me to believe I have the skills and experience for which you are looking; and I'm eager to be a contributing employee.

Tell me about a time that you participated in a team, what was your role?
Companies, for the most part, do not want "Lone-Rangers" - - they are looking for employees who will adapt to the company culture and get along with others.
In high school, I enjoyed playing soccer and performing with the marching band. Each required a different kind of team play, but the overall goal of learning to be a member of a group was invaluable. I continued to grow as team member while on my sorority's debate team and through my advanced marketing class where we had numerous team assignments.

Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a co-worker who wasn't doing his/her fair share of the work. What did you do and what was the outcome?
I worked closely with Ann who, for the most part, always carried her fair share of the work load. During a stressful time, working on a project with a deadline, I realized Ann's contributions to the project were almost minimal. I made the decision to wait until after the project to speak with her. I'm glad I did, because I learned she'd been going through a very tough time in her personal life and she appreciated my willingness to go the extra mile so the project was completed on time. As a result, our ability to work well together significantly increased.

Give me an example of a time when you took the time to share a co-worker's or supervisor's achievements with other?
At my most recent position, one of my co-workers, Dan, did an outstanding job of calming an irate customer, solving the customer's problem and completing a sale. When our boss asked me how things were going, I told him everything was going fine and that Dan had just completed calming an irate customer and closing a sale. It was a win-win-win- for our boss, Dan and the customer.

Tell me about a time that you didn't work well with a supervisor. What was the outcome and how would you have changed the outcome?
Early in my career, I had a supervisor (Judy) who was in a fairly good mood on Monday, but it deteriorated each day until by Friday, the supervisor was finding fault with everything I did. I didn't realize, until I left that position, that I had been a contributor to the decline in her mood. Judy would ask me how my weekend was (on Monday) and during the week she would ask how it was going. I would tell her how much fun I was having (I was single) and how I was looking forward to the weekend plans. After I left, I realized my life was in complete contrast to hers and I reminded her of it almost daily. When she asked the questions, I should have had a quick answer, and then asked her how she was doing!!!!

Have you worked with someone you didn't like? If so, how did you handle it?
Yes, I've worked with someone whom I found difficult to like as a person. However, when I focused on the skills they brought to the job, their ability to solve problems and the two things I did appreciate, slowly my attitude towards them changed. We were never friends, but we did work well together.

Tell me about a time that you helped someone.
Most recently, we had a new hire (Paul) that was really struggling with getting to work on time, and I knew the boss (Harry) was getting irritated. Over lunch one day I explained to Paul how important it was to our boss for everyone to be there at least 10 minutes early. It was personal with the Harry, but you could really get on his bad side when you were frequently late. The new employee was grateful for the advice. At his previous employment, the boss was only concerned about the work getting done on time;

What led you to this point in your life?
The interviewer wants to know if you are unhappy, frustrated, or lost?
My "road of life" has been interesting, sometimes challenging and always rewarding. The steps along the way that have led to this point in my life are, in some ways, very different than I had imagined; however, I like who I am today in part because of my past. An example is when the second company on my resume suddenly closed their doors during a down-turn in the economy. For a very brief time, the road ahead was unknown; however, I discovered I had previously untapped strengths such as perseverance.

Resume Writting A to Z

2010-06-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

Ten Easy Ways to Improve Your Resume
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

In my line of work, I see hundreds of resumes, and I often see the same patterns over and over again. I frequently observe resume tendencies that are not necessarily mistakes, yet the jobseekers behind these resumes could have much nicer, cleaner, more readable resumes if they just tweaked a few things. And none of these tweaks are hard to accomplish. Even if your resume has other problems, you'll see significant improvements if you make these 10 easy fixes.

Use a bulleted style to make your resume more reader-friendly. Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, they will find your resume a lot more readable if you use bullet points instead of paragraph style. It's just easier to read.

Follow "The Resume Ingredients Rule." Set forth by Donald Asher, author of numerous resume books (see our Q&A with him), the rule says that information on a resume should be listed in order of importance to the reader. Therefore, in listing your jobs, what's generally most important is your title/position. So list in this preferred order: Title/position, name of employer, city/state of employer, dates of employment. I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen that list dates first. Dates can be important to some employers, but they're generally not as important as what your position was and whom you worked for. Education follows the same principle; thus, the preferred order for listing your education is: Name of degree (spelled out: Bachelor of _____) in name of major, name of university, city/state of university, graduation year, followed by peripheral information, such as minor and GPA. If you haven't graduated yet, list your information the same way. Simply by virtue of the fact that the graduation date you've listed is in the future, the employer will know you don't have the degree yet.

By the way, the Resume Ingredients Rule is also the reason that experience and education are listed in reverse chronological order on your resume; it's assumed that your most recent education and experience are most important and relevant to the reader.

Eliminate "responsibilities" words from your resume vocabulary. Never use expressions like "Duties included," "Responsibilities included," or “Responsible for” on your resume. Why? Because your resume should be accomplishments-driven, not responsibilities-driven. Anyone (well, maybe not anyone…) can perform the duties listed in a job description. Job-description language is not what sells in a resume. Accomplishments-oriented language tells employers how you've gone above and beyond in your jobs, what makes you special, how you've taken initiative and made your jobs your own.

Eliminate clutter from your resume. Several elements can clutter up your resume and impede readability:

Unnecessary dates. Don't list dates that don't add anything to your resume; for example, dates you spent involved in college extracurricular activities. If you were involved in these activities during college, the reader can pretty much guess your dates of involvement, and listing the dates will just clutter up your document. Same with dates of involvement in professional or civic organizations; ask yourself if those dates will be meaningful to the employer reading your resume.

Parentheses. Jobseekers have a particular tendency to set off dates of employment with parentheses. It's easier on the reader if you just use commas.

The line "References: Available upon request." This statement is highly optional because it is a given that you will provide references upon request. If you couldn't, you would have no business looking for a job. The line can serve the purpose of signaling: "This is the end of my resume," but if you are trying to conserve space, leave it off.

Articles. Those little words "a," "an," and "the." Generally speaking, resumes aren't written in sentence form, but in concise phrases that have become an accepted shorthand that employers understand. Articles tend to clutter up that shorthand; your resume will read in a more streamlined manner without them. Consider these "before" and "after" examples:

BEFORE:
Recruited to manage the women's division and oversee the opening of the Madison Avenue Store. Recruited to manage women's division and oversee Madison Avenue store opening.

AFTER:
Promoted within five months to Vice-President and General Manager of the Beverly Hills store. Promoted within five months to Vice-President and General Manager of Beverly Hills store.

BEFORE:
Managed and controlled all aspects of the company's presence on the West Coast. Managed and controlled all aspects of company's West Coast presence.
Coordinated and supervised all aspects of the opening of the Beverly Hills Store. Coordinated and supervised all aspects of Beverly Hills store opening.
Facilitated the development of management and staff to ensure store growth and minimize turnover. Facilitated management and staff development to ensure store growth and minimize turnover.

AFTER:
Created a high profile for the store through effective personal relations with the entertainment community, Chamber of Commerce, the City of Beverly Hills and charity organizations. Created high profile for store through effective personal relations with entertainment community, Chamber of Commerce, the City of Beverly Hills and charity organizations.

Aren't the "After" versions a lot more streamlined?

Use strong, concrete verbs to describe your jobs, and don't mix noun and verb phrases. Let's look at this example:
Managed and controlled all aspects of company's West Coast presence. [verb]
Complete ownership of inventory and financial standards. [noun]
Full P&L responsibilities. [noun]
Analyzed market and forecast sales, prepared corporate budgets and monitored results to achieve ROI objectives. [verb]
Instead, be consistent with verbs:

Supervised inventory and financial standards.
Completely oversaw profit and loss aspects of operation.
Also avoid the weak verbs, “to be,” “to do,” and "to work." Everyone works. Be more specific. "Collaborate(d)" is often a good substitute. Instead of: “Worked with Marketing Department to launch promotional campaign,” say “Collaborated with Marketing Department to launch promotional campaign.”

Focus on describing past job activities that highlight the skills you most like to use and want to use in your next job. Don't spend a lot of time, for example, describing all that clerical stuff you did in a past job if you have no intention of doing clerical work again. Even if you've mastered skills that are in great demand, don't emphasize them if they're not the skills you want to use in the future.

Don't fret about the one-page resume rule. Sure, it's nice to keep your resume to one page if you can, but don't go to extraordinary lengths, such as by using tiny type. If you have significant experience, you'll probably need more than one page. What you should avoid is having one full page with just a little bit of text on your second page. If you fill a third or less of the second page, consider condensing to one page. Ways to condense:

Narrow your margins. The margins in Microsoft Word are set very wide by default. You can have margins as narrow as .75” all around and still have a nice-looking document.

Use a smaller point size, but not too small. A font size of 11-point is good; don't go too much smaller than 10.5-point.

Many jobseekers use a two-column format with headings in the left-hand column. To conserve space, narrow or even eliminate the left-hand column and simply stack your headings on top of each section.

Make sure your resume has a sharp focus. Again, given the microscopic amount of time that employers spend screening resumes, you need a way to show the employer at a glance what you want to do and what you're good at. One way to sharpen your focus is through an objective statement. Another way is to add a section called something like "Summary of Qualifications," or "Profile." To see an example of such a section, go to sample resume.

Don't list too much experience on your resume. The rule of thumb for someone at the senior level is to list about 15 years worth of jobs. Age discrimination, unfortunately, is a reality, and even more likely, employers may think you're too expensive if you list too much experience on your resume. Similarly, don't give the date of your college graduation if it was more than about 10 years ago.

Be sure the reader will understand all the acronyms and jargon you use in your resume. Resumes in the high-tech field are notorious for these mysterious terms. We recently received a resume containing the following acronyms and jargon: MCSE, MCP+I, TCP/IP, CCA, CCNA, token ring and PCMCIA network interface cards for LAN connectivity, NT Service Packs, Ethernet cards, Server 4.0, SQL 6.5, 7.0, Red Hat Linux 6.1, Turbo Linux 4.0 and Caldera 2.3, Cisco 2500 routers and switches. Now, chances are that employers in this jobseeker's field understand all these terms. Just be sure that's the case. Spell out any acronyms you think could be questionable, and explain any terms you think some readers of your resume might not understand.

College students, too, need to be aware of "inside" jargon. At Stetson University, my alma mater, for example, we have an annual charity fundraiser called "Greenfeather;" freshman-orientation leaders called "FOCUS" advisers; and a volunteer organization called "Into the Streets." The school's graduates routinely use those terms on their resumes without any explanation, as though everyone knows what Greenfeather, FOCUS, and Into the Streets mean. Look at your resume from an outsider's perspective -- and explain (or eliminate) any unfamiliar terms or acronyms.

Bonus tip: Be sure to list locations (city and state) for all your past employers. It's resume protocol to do so, and employers expect to see that information. I'm constantly amazed at all the resumes I see that list names of past employers, but don't tell where those employers are located.

Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.

Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author, and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers, edits QuintZine, an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling in the job search at A Storied Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press), as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her personal Website or reach her by e-mail at kathy(at)quintcareers.com.

Financial Performance Accounting

2010-05-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

Financial Ratio Analysis 101

2010-03-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

Ratio analysis is used to evaluate relationships among financial statement items. The ratios are used to identify trends over time for one company or to compare two or more companies at one point in time. Financial statement ratio analysis focuses on three key aspects of a business: liquidity, profitability, and solvency.

Liquidity ratios measure the ability of a company to repay its short-term debts and meet unexpected cash needs.

Current ratio. The current ratio is also called the working capital ratio, as working capital is the difference between current assets and current liabilities. This ratio measures the ability of a company to pay its current obligations using current assets. The current ratio is calculated by dividing current assets by current liabilities.

This ratio indicates the company has more current assets than current liabilities. Different industries have different levels of expected liquidity. Whether the ratio is considered adequate coverage depends on the type of business, the components of its current assets, and the ability of the company to generate cash from its receivables and by selling inventory.

Acid-test ratio. The acid-test ratio is also called the quick ratio. Quick assets are defined as cash, marketable (or short-term) securities, and accounts receivable and notes receivable, net of the allowances for doubtful accounts. These assets are considered to be very liquid (easy to obtain cash from the assets) and therefore, available for immediate use to pay obligations. The acid-test ratio is calculated by dividing quick assets by current liabilities.

The traditional rule of thumb for this ratio has been 1:1. Anything below this level requires further analysis of receivables to understand how often the company turns them into cash. It may also indicate the company needs to establish a line of credit with a financial institution to ensure the company has access to cash when it needs to pay its obligations.

Receivables turnover. The receivable turnover ratio calculates the number of times in an operating cycle (normally one year) the company collects its receivable balance. It is calculated by dividing net credit sales by the average net receivables. Net credit sales is net sales less cash sales. If cash sales are unknown, use net sales. Average net receivables is usually the balance of net receivables at the beginning of the year plus the balance of net receivables at the end of the year divided by two. If the company is cyclical, an average calculated on a reasonable basis for the company's operations should be used such as monthly or quarterly.

Profitability ratios measure a company's operating efficiency, including its ability to generate income and therefore, cash flow. Cash flow affects the company's ability to obtain debt and equity financing.

Profit margin. The profit margin ratio, also known as the operating performance ratio, measures the company's ability to turn its sales into net income. To evaluate the profit margin, it must be compared to competitors and industry statistics. It is calculated by dividing net income by net sales.

Asset turnover. The asset turnover ratio measures how efficiently a company is using its assets. The turnover value varies by industry. It is calculated by dividing net sales by average total assets.

Return on assets. The return on assets ratio (ROA) is considered an overall measure of profitability. It measures how much net income was generated for each $1 of assets the company has. ROA is a combination of the profit margin ratio and the asset turnover ratio. It can be calculated separately by dividing net income by average total assets or by multiplying the profit margin ratio times the asset turnover ratio.

Return on common stockholders' equity. The return on common stockholders' equity (ROE) measures how much net income was earned relative to each dollar of common stockholders' equity. It is calculated by dividing net income by average common stockholders' equity. In a simple capital structure (only common stock outstanding), average common stockholders' equity is the average of the beginning and ending stockholders' equity.

Earnings per share. Earnings per share (EPS) represents the net income earned for each share of outstanding common stock. In a simple capital structure, it is calculated by dividing net income by the number of weighted average common shares outstanding.

Price-earnings ratio. The price-earnings ratio (P/E) is quoted in the financial press daily. You simply divide the current share price by the earnings per share. Keep in mind their are two types: Trailing (based upon past earnings)and forward (based upon future earnings)P/Es. A P/E ratio greater than 15 has historically been considered high. But this by itself is a far to simplistic measure. One must consider other variables like revenue and earnings growth, the sector and industry, inflation and the economy.

Solvency ratios are used to measure long-term risk and are of interest to long-term creditors and stockholders.

Debt to total assets ratio. The debt to total assets ratio calculates the percent of assets provided by creditors. It is calculated by dividing total debt by total assets. Total debt is the same as total liabilities.

Business Communications

2010-03-13T11:50:00.000-08:00

Communication is one of the basic functions of management in any organization and its importance can hardly be overemphasized. It is a process of transmitting information, ideas, thoughts, opinions and plans between various parts of an organization.

It is not possible to have human relations without communication. However, good and effective communication is required not only for good human relations but also for good and successful business. Effective communication is required at all of an organization.

For manager – employee relations:
Effective communication of information and decision is an essential component for management-employee relations. The manager cannot get the work done from employees unless they are communicated effectively of what he wants to be done? He should also be sure of some basic facts such as how to communicate and what results can be expected from that communication. Most of management problems arise because of lack of effective communication. Chances of misunderstanding and misrepresentation can be minimized with proper communication system.

For motivation and employee morale:
Communication is also a basic tool for motivation, which can improve morale of the employees in an organization. Inappropriate or faulty communication among employees or between manager and his subordinates is the major cause of conflict and low morale at work. Manager should clarify to employees about what is to be done, how well are they doing and what can be done for better performance to improve their motivation. He can prepare a written statement, clearly outlining the relationship between company objectives and personal objectives and integrating the interest of the two.

For increase productivity:
With effective communication, you can maintain a good human relation in the organization and by encouraging ideas or suggestions from employees or workers and implementing them whenever possible, you can also increase production at low cost.

For employees:
It is through the communication that employees submit their work reports, comments, grievances and suggestions to their seniors or management. Organization should have effective and speedy communication policy and procedures to avoid delays, misunderstandings, confusion or distortions of facts and to establish harmony among all the concerned people and departments.

Importance of written communication:
Communication may be made through oral or written. In oral communication, listeners can make out what speakers is trying to say, but in written communication, text matter in the message is a reflection of your thinking. So, written communication or message should be clear, purposeful and concise with correct words, to avoid any misinterpretation of your message. Written communications provides a permanent record for future use and it also gives an opportunity to employees to put up their comments or suggestions in writing

Communication expert Dr. Bill Lampton explains how to adjust your communication style to match the styles of those who differ--so you will communicate more clearly and persuasively.

Are you HEARING or LISTENING ?

One Minute Business Ideas

2010-03-13T11:22:00.000-08:00

Understanding people and persuading people to understand your points of view are skills not often learned in Business Schools. Yet, as your career progresses they will become of greater importance to you than most finance equations and accounting principles.

If you wish to be more than just a business cubical dweller you'll need to add these skills to your business toolbox.

One Minute Motivations are quick motivational videos to motivate you to be your best, and to help you deal with some of life's most challenging problems. From relationships to fitness tips.

Debit & Credit Memory Tricks

2010-03-09T08:30:00.000-08:00

When it comes to Debits and Credits you need all the help you can get to remember the ups and downs. This young lady has come up with a method that many young students find helpful. It incorporates the age old use of fingers in math and Newvo Hang Ten sign. L.O.L. what ever works for you, works for me.

This video provides a great summary of the key accounting equations you need to commit to memory.

Debits & Credits A to Z

2010-01-16T06:33:00.000-08:00

The term debit comes from the Latin debitum which means "that which is owing" (the past participle of debere "to owe"). Debit is abbreviated to Dr (for debtor). The term credit comes from the Latin credere/credit meaning "to trust or believe" / "he trusts or believes" via the French credit and the Italian credito. Credit is abbreviated to Cr (for creditor).

The double-entry bookkeeping system refers to a set of rules to record financial information in a financial accounting system wherein every transaction or event impacts at least two different accounts. In modern accounting this is done using debits and credits, and serves as a kind of error-detection system: if, at any point, the sum of debits do not equal the corresponding sum of credits, then an error has occurred.

The above educational video provides a basic class on Journal Entries. Early in your Accounting learning when faced with Journal Entries it's important to ask yourself is this an ASSET or a LIABILITY and should this entry INCREASING or DECREASING the value of that ASSET or LIABILITY? The Map For Debits Credits concept helps to train your brain.

The term debit refers to the left side of an account and credit refers to the right side of an account. A debit is always entered in the left hand column of a Journal or Ledger Account and a credit is always entered in the right hand column. Debit is abbreviated Dr. and Credit is abbreviated Cr.

When you post (record) an entry in the left hand column of an account you are debiting that account. Whether the debit is an increase or decrease depends on the type of account. Likewise, when you post (record) an entry in the right hand column of an account you are crediting that account. Whether the credit is an increase or decrease depends on the type of account.

Simple Debit / Credit Rules:

All Accounts that Normally Have a Debit Balance are Increased with a Debit by placing the amount in the Left Column of the account and Decreased with a Credit by placing the amount in the Right Column of the account.

Assets
Draws
Expenses

All Accounts that Normally have a Credit Balance are Increased with a Credit by placing the amount in the Right Column of the account and Decreased with a Debit by placing the amount in the Left Column of the account.

Liabilities
Owner's Equity ( Capital )
Revenue

All You Need To Know About Debits and Credits
Summarized In One Sentence:

Enter an amount in the Normal Balance Side of an Account to Increase the Balance of an Account and in the Opposite Side of an Account to Decrease the Balance of an Account.

Additional Clarification:

Since Assets, Draw, and Expense Accounts normally have a Debit Balance, in order to Increase the Balance of an Asset, Draw, or Expense Account enter the amount in the Debit or Left Side Column and in order to Decrease the Balance enter the amount in the Credit or Right Side Column.

Likewise, since Liabilities, Owner's Equity (Capital), and Revenue Accounts normally have a Credit Balance in order to Increase the Balance of a Liability, Owner's Equity, or Revenue Account the amount would be entered in the Credit or Right Side Column and the amount would be entered in the Debit or Left Side column to Decrease the Account's Balance.

Principles or Rules of Debit and Credit

Each transaction consists of debits and credits, and for every transaction they must be equal.

' For Every Transaction: ' 'The Value of Debits = The Value of Credits'

This also means that the accounts with debits balances will equal the total value of accounts with credit balances. You can check the arithmetical accuracy of the accounts by doing a trial balance and proving that total debits equal total credits.

The extended accounting equation must also balance: 'A + E = L + OE + R'

(where A = Assets, E = Expenses, L = Liabilities, OE = Owner's Equity and R = Revenues)

So 'Debit Accounts (A + E) = Credit Accounts (L + R + OE)'

Debits are on the left and increase a debit account and reduce a credit account. Credits are on the right and increase a credit account and decrease a debit account.

Examples
1. when you pay rent with cash: you increase rent (expense) by debiting, and decrease cash (asset) by credit.
2. when you receive cash for a sale: you increase cash (asset) by debiting, and increase sales (revenue) by credit.
3. when you buy equipment (asset) with cash: You increase equipment (asset) by debiting, and decrease cash (asset) by credit.
4. when you borrow with a cash loan: You increase cash (asset) by debiting, and increase loan (liability) by credit.

For more information read Bean Counters Debits & Credits and The Quick MBA Accounting

Accounting - Overview 100 to 400

2010-01-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Accountancy is the art of communicating financial information about a business entity to users such as shareholders and managers.

The communication is generally in the form of financial statements that show in money terms the economic resources under the control of management. It is the branch of mathematical science that is useful in discovering the causes of success and failure in business. The principles of accountancy are applied to business entities in three divisions of practical art, named accounting, bookkeeping, and auditing.

Accounting is defined by the AICPA as "The art of recording, classifying, and summarizing in a significant manner and in terms of money, transactions and events which are, in part at least, of financial character, and interpreting the results thereof."

Accounting is thousands of years old; the earliest accounting records were found in the Middle East which date back more than 7,000 years. The people of that time relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Accounting evolved, improving over the years and advancing as business advanced.

Early accounts served mainly to assist the memory of the businessperson and the audience for the account was the proprietor or record keeper alone. Cruder forms of accounting were inadequate for the problems created by a business entity involving multiple investors, so double-entry bookkeeping first emerged in northern Italy in the 14th century, where trading ventures began to require more capital than a single individual was able to invest. The development of joint stock companies created wider audiences for accounts, as investors without firsthand knowledge of their operations relied on accounts to provide the requisite information. This development resulted in a split of accounting systems for internal (i.e. management accounting) and external (i.e. financial accounting) purposes, and subsequently also in accounting and disclosure regulations and a growing need for independent attestation of external accounts by auditors.

Today, accounting is called "the language of business" because it is the vehicle for reporting financial information about a business entity to many different groups of people. Accounting that concentrates on reporting to people inside the business entity is called management accounting and is used to provide information to employees, managers, owner-managers and auditors. Management accounting is concerned primarily with providing a basis for making management or operating decisions. Accounting that provides information to people outside the business entity is called financial accounting and provides information to present and potential shareholders, creditors such as banks or vendors, financial analysts, economists, and government agencies. Because these users have different needs, the presentation of financial accounts is very structured and subject to many more rules than management accounting. The body of rules that governs financial accounting is called Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP.

A detailed example of how Assets = Liabilities + Owners Equity as you the accounting double entry debit and credit system is seen in action.

We offer a series of free Accounting training videos. See Accounting tag and classes 101-107 from last summer.

Digital Text Books

2010-01-07T14:58:00.000-08:00

The future is now. Finally we're starting to get serious about digitizing text books. But don't think you'll save hundreds annually by getting all your college text books free throught Bit Torrents. You know the management teams of printed textbooks don't want to lose their cash cows. You know the thousands of university college bookstores don't want to lose their on campus monopolies'. Yes, you guessed correct...Amazon's Kindle has companies like Sony and Apple scrambling to create a similiar product to sell to you. Early adapters always pay preme prices for the newest must have gadget. These things will be selling for as much as a new mid-level budget PC or high end notebook. How many gadgets can we carry at one time?

On the day after Christmas, Amazon said the Kindle was the most-purchased gift in its history and sales of its electronic books surpassed physical book sales on the holiday itself. Amazon Kindle is a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 for rendering and displaying e-books and other digital media

Now Coursesmart, a joint venture of five textbook publishers, shows how students might use tablet-based textbooks. It is based on their own renderings, not specific applications being developed with Apple.

Can we see people buying two ebook readers? One for Standard Print Books and one for School Text Books? In 2005 the concept of a tablet laptops was gaining momentum -it faded fast. By 2007 the selection, power and price points on laptops under $1,000 was motivating record levels of buyers. In 2009 regardless of the greatest American recession notebooks where flying off the shelf's at $399 price points.

Given there's nothing extremely unique behind any of these technologies, can anyone see one primary light-weight high-powered device that does it all. Assuming we'll always want a very small mobile phone, I referring to the possibility of the Tablet PC/Laptop returning to the lime-light. What do you think?

How's Your Government Accounting & Marketing ?

2010-01-06T20:21:00.000-08:00

When your neighbor loses her job, it's a recession. When you lose your job, it's a depression. When federal workers not only keep their jobs but see their pay rise during a recession, it's a sign of the times. And when your home real-estate taxes have risen 18% during the period called the greatest recession and the city tax gets raised I'm ready to ask the federal government to make some layoffs and take some paycuts? How about you? Our state of Ohio employees have taken about a 5% cut but our unionized teachers got raises. let's post a few facts on how painful this great recession has been for the federal government employee vs the private sector employees.

USA Today:

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

Since June, the federal government has increased employment by almost 10 percent, while the private sector has cut employment by over 6 percent over the prior two years of decline.

Now you know why I've been advising many students to seek careers in government for over 5 years.

My advice for financial students? Start learning government accounting and tax law. My advice for State and Federal Government? Start hiring those marketing majors. You need someone who could sell Ice to Eskimos' The government worker in this video couldn't sell water in the desert. Start working on those Taxes Are US slogans.

As a young BBA about 40% of our Business School was Accounting majors. When private and public sector recruiters came on campus all us Beta Alpha Phi folks lined-up for the Big 8 CPA firms. Alias, for those of us who were finance majors too, Investment Bankers didn't come to WMU back in 1976. The only government jobs we thought might provide some stability and be cool were for the FBI and CIA. Frankly, we had no required government accounting classes within the core program -there was no need. All of my professors were CPA's and PhD's. I don't recall any of them had worked in government accounting.

It's time to start signing up for any and all government related classes.

After looking at the chart Scott Heintzelman just found(below)the advice I'd give to college business graduates is and old stock traders motto: The Trend Is Your Friend -start working on government internships and interviews. Remember government will not outsource or offshore itself. In 50 years it's never downsized -the trend has only gone up!

Project Management 101.1

2009-12-15T17:56:00.000-08:00

Project Management Process is suffering from endless Scope Creep. Project Management Professional (PMP) is a credential offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The credential is obtained by documenting 3 or 5 years work experience in project management, completing 35 hours of project management related training, and scoring a certain percentage of questions on a written, multiple choice examination.

In the 3ed edition of the PMBOK Guide (the PMI Bible) it doubled in size over the 2nd edition. Most video's on this topic were either sales pitches to sell training courses or poor quality video's not worth listening too. Here is the best of what I've found todate.

Blue Sky Project Management...The PMBOK is DEAD, well atleast from this mans point of view. He makes an excellent point...Traditional PM has become to complex...to bureaucratic. Blue Sky PM simplifies the process and focuses on first to market.

SCRUM PM -Basic Terms

2009-11-28T12:07:00.000-08:00

Scrum is an iterative incremental framework for managing complex work (such as new product development) commonly used with agile software development. Although the word is not an acronym, some companies implementing the process have been known to spell it with capital letters as SCRUM. This may be due to one of Ken Schwaber’s early papers, which capitalized SCRUM in the title.

Although Scrum was intended for management of software development projects, it can be used to run software maintenance teams, or as a general project/program management approach.

Scrum is a “process skeleton,” which contains sets of practices and predefined roles. The main roles in Scrum are:

the “ScrumMaster”, who maintains the processes (typically in lieu of a project manager); the “Product Owner”, who represents the stakeholders; the “Team”, a cross-functional group of about 7 people who do the actual analysis, design, implementation, testing, etc. During each “sprint”, typically a two to four week period (with the length being decided by the team), the team creates a potentially shippable product increment (for example, working and tested software). The set of features that go into a sprint come from the product “backlog,” which is a prioritized set of high level requirements of work to be done. Which backlog items go into the sprint is determined during the sprint planning meeting. During this meeting, the Product Owner informs the team of the items in the product backlog that he or she wants completed. The team then determines how much of this they can commit to complete during the next sprint. During a sprint, no one is allowed to change the sprint backlog, which means that the requirements are frozen for that sprint. After a sprint is completed, the team demonstrates the use of the software.

Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication across all team members and disciplines that are involved in the project.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

There are several implementations of systems for managing the Scrum process, which range from yellow stickers and whiteboards, to software packages. One of Scrum’s biggest advantages is that it is very easy to learn and requires little effort to start using.

Ken Schwaber (below) co-developed the Agile process, Scrum. He is a founder of the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance, and signatory to the Agile Manifesto. Ken has been a software developer for over thirty years. He is an active advocate and evangelist for Agile processes.

In 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka described a new holistic approach that increases speed and flexibility in commercial new product development. They compare this new holistic approach, in which the phases strongly overlap and the whole process is performed by one cross-functional team across the different phases, to rugby, where the whole team “tries to go to the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth”. The case studies come from the automotive, photo machine, computer and printer industries.

In 1991, DeGrace and Stahl, in Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions, referred to this approach as Scrum, a rugby term mentioned in the article by Takeuchi and Nonaka. In the early 1990s, Ken Schwaber used an approach that led to Scrum at his company, Advanced Development Methods. At the same time, Jeff Sutherland, John Scumniotales, and Jeff McKenna developed a similar approach at Easel Corporation and were the first to call it Scrum. In 1995 Sutherland and Schwaber jointly presented a paper describing Scrum at OOPSLA ’95 in Austin, TX, its first public appearance. Schwaber and Sutherland collaborated during the following years to merge the above writings, their experiences, and industry best practices into what is now known as Scrum. In 2001, Schwaber teamed up with Mike Beedle to describe the method in the book Agile Software Development with Scrum.

Project Management -Basic Terms 101

2009-11-28T12:04:00.000-08:00

Web 2.0 - Basic Terms 101

2009-11-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

Email - Business English 201

2009-11-28T07:12:00.000-08:00

Businesses are always striving to be more Efficient and Effective. Individuals need to strive to be more efficient and effective in our business email communications too. Here are educational videos from Business English Pod Ltd.

Strategic Objectives Setting 101

2009-10-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

Categories of Objectives
In addressing strategic planning's second key question, "Where do we wish to arrive, and when?," your management team will develop a set of quantified Objectives. And when developing objectives for your organization, you've got six categories to consider:

1. Financial
2. Marketing/Sales
3. Products/Services
4. Operations
5. Human Resources
6. Community

Within each of these six categories, you can select from a number of specific measurements for each objective. For example, you can set your financial objective to measure profitability. Like gross profit; or operating profit; or net profit, either before or after tax. Or you can write your financial objective in terms of return on assets, return on investment, or cash on hand.

You might write your marketing or sales objective in terms of sales volume, sales growth rate, or market share – and your product and service objective as quality of products and services, new products and services introduced, or customer satisfaction. And your operational objective might measure efficiency, productivity or cost reduction.

Your objective dealing with human resources – the people side of the business – can measure employee benefits, employee satisfaction, employee training or employee turnover. Finally, your social objective – your non-economic or community-related objective – might deal with non-pollution of air and water; equal opportunity employment; being a good corporate citizen.

Prioritizing Your Objectives

The order in which we've listed the categories of objectives is not arbitrary. This order – beginning with financial and ending with community – is referred to as the "Hierarchy of Objectives."

It's the order in which senior managers generally prioritize their objectives. When you arrive at the step in the planning process where you're ready to set your objectives, the first suggestion you'll likely hear is "Let's make a profit." Even the not-for-profit institutions – governmental, educational, charitable – jump to develop their financial objective first. Like their for-profit cousins, they too have financial needs and constraints. And their financial needs are first on the minds of management when setting objectives

And if the financial objective is so important, how can management attain that objective? In the jargon of for-profit firms, "How can we make a buck?"

The way you do it is you sell something to somebody. Simple as that. All businesses must exchange a product or a service for money. And since its selling something that produces a profit, the marketing or sales objective must support the financial objective.

And what is it you're going to sell to somebody? You need a product or service, don't you? So now the product or service objective supports the marketing/sales objective. Just as the marketing/sales objective supports the financial objective. Do you see how we're working our way down the hierarchy?

Operationally, you have to build your product or deliver your service. And it takes people to run the operation. And so you evolve the "Hierarchy."

Balance Your Objectives

Be careful though. Don't take the hierarchy too seriously. Don’t assign too much weight to the categories nearest the top of the list. Avoid ending up with all of your objectives in the top two categories – finance and marketing.

For if you do, you'll have a problem. Here's why. Employees outside of the executive planning group care a whole lot more about the categories in the middle and bottom of the list than they do those near the top. That's simply a fact of life. After you get a level or so down from the top of your organization, you find a lot less interest in the financial and marketing objectives, and a lot more interest in operations and in people. So if your objectives focus on profit and sales only, your employees will wonder, "What's in it for me?" If they ask that question out loud, you've got a problem. If they ask it silently to themselves, you've got an even more serious problem.

And don't forget – to successfully accomplish your objectives, you'll need the help of all the people in your organization. So balance your objective list. Consider including objectives in each of the six categories. Not that you must necessarily have an objective in each category. But at least consider each. Try to develop a balanced list of objectives. So you'll gain the commitment of employees who might otherwise ask, "What's in it for me?"

If you'll benefit from developing more than one objective in a particular category – do it. For example, you may write an objective for total sales; another for sales of a particular product line; or sales to a specific market segment.

Limit Your Objectives

But again, caution. Be careful not to set too many objectives. If you do, you'll lose focus. You won't be able to use your objectives in managing day-to-day. Consider this – If you can't memorize your objectives, you've probably got too many. For the memories of most of us, that's about six.

Some years ago, I worked with a high-tech manufacturing client in Los Angeles. On the second day of that company's planning retreat, the executive management team developed its list of objectives. I opened the objective setting session with a brief discussion on the categories of objectives, spoke for a few moments on the criteria of objectives, and asked for suggestions on the first objective we might consider.

After a lengthy discussion, the group agreed on a financial objective – pre-tax profit. From there, they moved ahead nicely, developed four or five well-quantified, challenging (yet achievable) objectives. So far, so good. But they kept going. There were another three or four suggested objectives still "alive." I stood up and gave my first little "mini-speech" about the hazards of setting too many objectives.

Just the same, the group continued developing objectives. When they completed writing their eighth objective, I delivered my second mini-speech. My third warning came between their tenth and eleventh.

In all, the group set thirteen objectives. About twice the number they should have. Knowing they couldn't possibly focus on all thirteen, I then had the group prioritize their objectives.

And I'm glad I did. Because within six months, the company's managers had abandoned their "C" priority objectives. They were working on all of the "A" and a couple of the "B" objectives. But they had spent nearly six months scrambling in an unfocused attempt to accomplish all thirteen. Efficient use of resources? Hardly.

Keep your objective lists short.

Criteria for Objectives

For an objective to be useful, it has to meet certain criteria. First, it must carry a single theme. It should tell you to do one thing only, not two or more. Example: If you decided to increase sales by 15% next year, you might write an objective that said exactly that.

But let's imagine you'd also like to increase net profit by 1%. Couldn't you write one objective that said "do both." Let's suppose you do. Suppose you write an objective that said, "We will increase sales by 15% next year and, at the same time, improve net profit by 1%." If by the end of the year you achieved the 15% increase in sales but missed the 1% increase in profit, have you made or missed the objective? You could argue it either way. At best, it's ambiguous.

Worse however, is that the objective does not provide you with guidance in operating your business. Here's why ... Imagine that six months after you write your objective calling for 15% increase in sales and 1% increase in net profit, your sales manager comes running in with the "golden opportunity of the month."

"Here's the deal," he says. "We have a grand opportunity to land a really sizable order. And if we get it, this order should be enough to put us over the top – to give us the 15% increase in sales we're shooting for." "Oh yeah," continues your sales manager. "There's some bad news. Since the market is so fiercely competitive, and since our competitors know about this large potential order, we're really going to have to sharpen our pencils to land the order. We'll have to shave our price just as far as we can."

So while the "golden opportunity" will go a long way toward achieving the 15% increase in sales volume, it will actually detract from the 1% increase in profit. Should you go after the big order, or not? Notice that your objective statement hasn't provided you any guidance in this decision. Why? Because in the same statement, you've bundled together the sales revenue increase and the profitability increase. The objective leaves you to debate which of the two (sales or profit) is the more important.

Wouldn't it be better to pull the objective statement apart? To have one statement that addresses the increase in sales revenue; another, the increase in profit. And then be sure to do one more thing – give a different priority to each of the two potentially conflicting objectives. During your planning sessions, you can argue all you like about whether sales volume or profit is more important. But when your sales manager appears with his "golden opportunity," you'll know how to respond.

Eliminate "Why" and "How"

In writing objectives, you should eliminate the "why" and the "how." If you need to discuss "why" you're interested in increasing sales by 15% next year, you'll have that conversation during your planning sessions. You won't explain "why" in your objective statement, and you won't attempt to justify your objective to those who read your plan.

Neither will you describe "how" you'll accomplish the objective. At least not at this point in the process. You won't write an objective that says, "We'll increase sales volume by 15% next year by implementing the following three programs...." The answer to "how" is really a strategy. You'll develop your strategies during the next step in the planning process.

You should establish results-oriented objectives whenever possible. There are two kinds of objectives you can develop – results-oriented and activities-oriented. Results-oriented objectives are stronger. Use them.

Example: "We will increase dollar sales by 15% next year." That's a results-oriented objective. "We will increase the number of sales calls by 15% next year." That's an activities- oriented objective. Obviously, the first is a stronger statement. Whenever possible, write your objectives in terms of a result, rather than an activity.

There are times when you simply can't write a results-oriented objective, and if so, write your objective as an activity. But these are the exceptions. "Install the new computer system by the end of the year," "Hire a manager of human resources by June 15th," "Launch the new product by the third quarter." Each is an activity-oriented objective. Each is used because no result (other than the completion of the activity) can be measured. Each, however, is an exception. Generally, your objectives should be results-oriented.

Quantify Your Objectives

Objectives must be quantified. When your objective is due for accomplishment, you've got to be able to measure it to figure out whether or not you've succeeded. More importantly, everyone in your organization has to know how hard to "push to go get it."

Sometimes quantifying an objective is easy. Sometimes it's not. It all depends on the category of the objective. Financial objectives are the easiest to quantify. After all, the world of finance is a number on a piece of paper. And marketing objectives are usually easy also. Certainly you can quantify sales volume. And market share too, if you can agree on a measurement for industry sales.

But how about something like customer satisfaction? A pretty gray area isn't it? Some say customer satisfaction is so difficult to quantify, that you can't do it. Or can you?

Sure you can! You can count complaints. You can measure defective product. You can count referrals to new accounts. Or repeat business. Or warranty costs. In every case – in all of these suggested ways to measure customer satisfaction – You've taken the same approach. You've decided that customer satisfaction is so difficult to measure directly, that you'll measure something else. Something which you believe parallels customer satisfaction. In effect, you’ll measure customer satisfaction indirectly.

So when warranty cost gets below 1.5%; or when the reorder ratio goes over 75%; or when referrals to new accounts reaches 25% of total billings – then you'll believe that customer satisfaction is where you want it to be. The point is, you quantify your objectives even if you have to "force" your measurement.

Managers often attempt to use market share as a measurable objective. But we discourage their doing so. here's why...

It's difficult to get agreement on the total market size used in calculating market share. And even if you could agree on total market size, data on market size is never available right now. This lack of timely information means you can't use a market share objective to manage your business day-to-day. For these reasons, market share is most often viewed as an approximate, rather than an exact measurement. It makes for a poor objective.

But suppose market share is important to your organization, as it is to many. If so, you can write your objective in terms of sales volume. Then you can estimate total market size, and put that estimate in your list of "planning assumptions." Finally, in an appendix to your plan, you can divide your sales objective by your estimated market size to arrive at your intended market share. That way, you'll have an objective (sales volume), whose measurement is familiar to, and accepted by, those who must accomplish it. And just as important, it's a measurement that's available right now. So you can use it as a day-to-day tool in managing your business.

Keep Your Objectives "in Concert"

Objectives should be "in concert." It's one thing to write down an objective and say "Yes, that's fine. I think we can do it. Let's commit to it." Then go on to the next objective and do it again. And again. It's one thing to take each objective one at a time. And it's quite another to write all of your objectives on a piece of paper, tack them up at the front of the room, take a long hard look at them, and ask, "Can we do this whole bunch of objectives all at the same time?"

Example: Let's imagine your industry is enjoying very fast growth. During your objective setting session, you decide, because you're in a fast-growth industry, to set an objective that says "We will build sales revenue by 35% next year." O.K., you write it down, and you've got your first objective.

A bit later, you remember that cash was tight last year. "Recall that in April we had trouble meeting payroll. Why don't we set an objective that deals with our cash position? Let's set an objective that says, 'During next year, we'll have, on average, 30% more cash in the bank than we had last year.'"

See what you've done? You wrote a set of objectives calling for growing by 35% in one year and, at the same time, having more cash laying around. But the two are conflicting objectives, aren't they? Because growth doesn't produce cash. To grow fast, you'll use cash to fuel your way up the growth curve.

My point is obvious – look at your objectives all together to make sure they're in concert. If not, make a choice. Choose among conflicting objectives. Cross out one or the other. Or modify one or the other. Either way. So when you're all finished writing your list of objectives, everyone on your planning team believes you can accomplish them all at the same time.

Both Challenging and Attainable

Finally, an objective – any objective – should be challenging and, at the same time, attainable. People in your organization should understand that accomplishment of the objective requires that they "reach." But given that reach, they should expect they can accomplish the objective. That the objective is achievable.

The analogy I like is that of the basketball hoop. The hoop is ten feet above the floor of the gymnasium. At that ten foot level, the game is both challenging and also attainable. If the hoop were four feet above the floor of the gymnasium, it wouldn’t be challenging. Your players wouldn’t work too hard at playing the game. If it were thirty feet above the floor of the gymnasium, it wouldn’t be attainable. Again, your players wouldn’t too hard at playing the game.

It's your job, as a manager, to keep your players working hard at playing the game. You‘ll need to find that "ten foot level" for each objective. So that each of your objectives is both challenging and, at the same time, attainable.

Article adapted from Bill Birnbaum's new book, Strategic Thinking: A Four Piece Puzzle

S.M.A.R.T. Business Goals 101

2009-10-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

When seeking to improve your business or life you need to set and make plans to achieve goals. And the best blue print process is called, SMART Goal planning. I encourage you to pick up a pen and a piece of paper (or your favorite word processor and PC) and jot down the goals you want to reach for your self or business just for practice. S.M.A.R.T. stands for:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Timely

Specific
Goals should be straightforward and emphasize what you want to happen. Specifics help us to focus our efforts and clearly define what we are going to do.

Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model.

WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.

WHY is this important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?

HOW are you going to do it? (By...)

Ensure the goals you set is very specific, clear and easy. Instead of setting a goal to lose weight or be healthier, set a specific goal to lose 2cm off your waistline or to walk 5 miles at an aerobically challenging pace.

Measurable
If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. In the broadest sense, the whole goal statement is a measure for the project; if the goal is accomplished, the is a success. However, there are usually several short-term or small measurements that can be built into the goal.

Choose a goal with measurable progress, so you can see the change occur. How will you see when you reach your goal? Be specific! "I want to read 3 chapter books of 100 pages on my own before my birthday" shows the specific target to be measure. "I want to be a good reader" is not as measurable.

Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.

Attainable
When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop that attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. Your begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

Goals you set which are too far out of your reach, you probably won't commit to doing. Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it's too much for you means your subconscious will keep reminding you of this fact and will stop you from even giving it your best.

A goal needs to stretch you slightly so you feel you can do it and it will need a real commitment from you. For instance, if you aim to lose 20lbs in one week, we all know that isn't achievable. But setting a goal to loose 1lb and when you've achieved that, aiming to lose a further 1lb, will keep it achievable for you.

The feeling of success which this brings helps you to remain motivated.

Realistic
This is not a synonym for "easy." Realistic, in this case, means "do-able." It means that the learning curve is not a vertical slope; that the skills needed to do the work are available; that the project fits with the overall strategy and goals of the organization. A realistic project may push the skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn't break them.

Devise a plan or a way of getting there which makes the goal realistic. The goal needs to be realistic for you and where you are at the moment. A goal of never again eating sweets, cakes, crisps and chocolate may not be realistic for someone who really enjoys these foods.

For instance, it may be more realistic to set a goal of eating a piece of fruit each day instead of one sweet item. You can then choose to work towards reducing the amount of sweet products gradually as and when this feels realistic for you.

Be sure to set goals that you can attain with some effort! Too difficult and you set the stage for failure, but too low sends the message that you aren't very capable. Set the bar high enough for a satisfying achievement!

Timely
Set a timeframe for the goal: for next week, in three months, by fifth grade. Putting an end point on your goal gives you a clear target to work towards.

If you don't set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there's no urgency to start taking action now.

Time must be measurable, attainable and realistic.

Everyone will benefit from goals and objectives if they are SMART. SMART, is the instrument to apply in setting your goals and objectives.

Strategic Business Planning - SWOT 101

2009-10-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Having worked in the capacity of a Strategic Planning Manager for a fortune 500 company this section on Strategic Business Planning is near and dear to my heart.

SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

It is the culmination of much internal analysis and external research. Thinking about the outcome, one can define SWOT analysis as the extent to which a firm’s current strategy, strengths and weaknesses are relevant to the business environment that the company is operating in.

SWOT analysis is an important tool for auditing the overall strategic position of a business and its environment. Once key strategic issues have been identified, they feed into business objectives, particularly marketing objectives.

SWOT analysis is often presented in a 2x2 matrix form:

Strengths and weaknesses are internal aspects and Kotler (1988) suggests that these should cover the four areas of marketing, financial, manufacturing and organisational.

Opportunities and threats look at the main environmental issues such as the economic situation, social changes such as the population getting older and technological developments including the internet.

A SWOT can be performed for companies, departments and divisions as well as individual people. Whatever the focus is the results will be very individual, even to companies competing in the same sector. One company may see new technology increasing the number of consumers who wish to buy online as an opportunity for ecommerce yet another player in the market, without any in-house internet expertise, may see this as a threat.

The importance of SWOT analysis lies in its ability to help clarify and summaries the key issues and opportunities facing a business. Value lies in considering the implications of the things identified and it can therefore play a key role in helping a business to set objectives and develop new strategies. The ideal outcome would be to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses in order to take advantage of external opportunities and overcome the threats. For example, the environment may present an opportunity for a new product but if the company does not have the capacity to produce that product it may either decide to invest in new plant and machinery or to just steer clear.

The biggest advantages of SWOT analysis are that it is simple and only costs time to do. It can help generate new ideas as to how a company can use a particular strength to defend against threats in the market. If a company is aware of the potential threats then it can have responses and plans ready to counteract them when they happen.

There are also disadvantages of SWOT analysis. A typical SWOT analysis is a usually a simple list and not critically presented. If a company is thinking about compiling lists it may not be focused sufficiently on how to achieve its objectives. Taking a list approach can also result in items not being prioritized. For example, a long list of weaknesses may appear to be ‘cancelled out’ by a longer list of strengths, regardless of how significant those weaknesses are.

A SWOT analysis is a strategic tool but it is generally not used in a formal way. However there are now several pieces of SWOT analysis software available to help formalize the process and give the analysis structure. This software can help companies brainstorm and create a SWOT analysis and then present it as a report or presentation.

The best SWOT analysis will be more than a simple checklist. It will consider the degree of strength and weakness versus its competitors to determine how good that strength really is. A company may have a strong research and development team but a competitor’s could be even stronger. A good SWOT should also look the size of an opportunity or threat and show how these inter-relate with its strengths and weaknesses

Memorizing Vs. Notes in Public Speaking

2009-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Interesting point about perfect vs. approachable.

Managing Time in Public Speaking

2009-09-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

Fantastic advice.

Pauses in a Public Speech

2009-09-30T10:38:00.000-07:00

Simple example of how three different pauses can have different effects.

Voice in Public Speaking

2009-09-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Voice is important. But no need to be a drama queen or king. Be yourself. But you must work to be interesting not boring. Yes, this can be a major challenge as some people just seem born with a great sense of facial animation and excitement. Still, even a calm and reserve individual can become an outstanding public speaker with just minor adjustments to voice energy and modulation.

Openers in Public Speaking

2009-09-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

Energy is important. Capturing attention in the first 20 seconds is critical. Even a room full of CPAs can fall asleep if a fellow CPA explaining the micro details of FASB 157 changes has no energy.

How to Close a Public Speech

2009-09-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Lots of talented people in the world like this young man to learn from. Naturally every event and profession may call for a different approach. But the advice given here is timeless and universal. Just be sure to incorporate this advice into your own personality.

Memorable Public Speech - Tips

2009-09-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

This young man gives excellent advice with specific examples

Presentation Master of the Digital Age

2009-09-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Steve Jobs was never a geek wizard like his co-founder partner The Woz. Steve was always the visionary who knew what the world needed before the world knew. He most certainly was an over demanding micro manager who expected nothing less than perfection. The same was true of the founder of McDonalds and Nike. Name me one great corporate leader or manager who build a business from scratch? But this is not a section on management style. This is the business presentation training section.

Steve jobs has a long history of being the inspirational leader of Apple. No doubt he is the master of the digital age presentations that can span the global and build bridges between generations of digital users.

Below is Steve, introducing the iPod. Listen to how he delivers the business case for iPod. Notice how he uses the big screen presentation. It augments his presentation with powerful visualization aids but Steve never uses slides as note cards to read. He does have a bad habit of pacing and removing his eye focus from the audience to much. But hay, this is Steve Jobs.

College and Professional public speaking training is always worth the time. But you can get free training simply by listening to powerful communicators and analyzing what made the presentation powerful to you. Below listen to Steve Jobs in 1983 provide inspiration to developers,workers and the news media.

How Not To Make A PowerPoint Presentation

2009-09-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

This guy is fantastic. This should be required PowerPoint training.

Presentations to Venture Capitalist

2009-09-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Let me share with you this video from VC Guy Kawasaki who wrote The Art of The Start.

Guy came up with his 10-20-30 Presentation Rule (below) to help young people pitch their ideas to VCs. This 10-20-30 rule is also a great general rule of thumb for any presentation ( natural details and style should vary with your profession and audience).

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA

Finance 107 - Project Cash Out vs Cash In

2009-08-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

Using the time value of money to determine net present value (NPV) or cost justification for a expendenture.

Finance 106 -Discounted Cash Flows (DCF)

2009-08-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Net Present Value (NPV) and DCF are the two workhorse tools of the business financial analyst. They are most often used to make investment decisions in capital equipment and projects.

Finance 105 - More PV / FV

2009-08-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Finance 104 -Money Choices Using PV / FV

2009-08-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

More education from Professor Sal

Salman Khan (Sal) founded the Khan Academy with the hope of using technology to foster new learning models. He is currently working at a hedge fund based in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to this, Sal was one of the initial employees at MVC Venture Capital.

Finance 103 - Money Today vs Money Later

2009-08-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Another great educational video on Present Value -one of the most important concepts of finance. The time value of money taught by Sal founder of the Kahn Academy.

Finance 102 -Present & Future Value

2009-08-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

The man behind the video is Dr. C. Dr. C is a MBA from Univ. Southern California and PhD from Claremont Graduate School. Dr. C is a college professor.

Finance 101 - Time Value of Money

2009-07-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

The time value of money concept in finance is the foundation of what you need to know to answer questions about money. Questions like these: Whats the future value of your money worth? Whats the present value of your monthly lottery winnings payout worth? How much do you need to save monthly to have one million saved for your retirement?

TeachMeFinance.com

Bond Yield Terms -301

2009-07-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

Here is a great overview of bond yield terms and calculations.

Bond Terms & Valuations -201

2009-07-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

Your one stop-shop for excellent precise and concise...Bond Education.

TeachMeFinance.com

Accounting 107 -Financial Statments

2009-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Accounting 106 - Expanded Equation

2009-06-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Accounting with Susan Crosson

Accounting 105 - Equity

2009-06-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

Susan Crosson discusses the basics of Stockholder Equity vs. Owner Equity along with Retain Earnings and other Equity Accounts. Always remember this basic Accounting Equation [ Assets - Liabilities = Equity ].

Accounting 104 -Liabilities

2009-06-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

Liabilities on the balance sheet. Liabilities are debts payable -bills owed. Unearned revenue means the customer has paid in advance. Susan says, "Liabilities end in payable or start in unearned."

Accounting 103 -Assets

2009-06-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

The concept of assets on a balance sheet explained by Susan Crosson

Accounting 100 -The Basics

2009-06-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

My Accounting Professor's were all CPA's and Ph.D.'s but I'd had more fun with these teachers. It's hard to get excited about accounting debits and credits just like computer zeros and ones. But a creative person can add some fun. Debit=Left...Credit=Right...cha..cha..cha.

In my Accounting College the Debits were closes to the windows (left) and the Credits were closes to the door (right). And we liked credits the best because they were closes to the door which was the way out of accounting class.

This dual Accounting and Finance major wanted to hang out with the Business School Retail Fashion and Marketing Majors -more fun....more females.

Accounting 102 -The Accounting Equation

2009-06-09T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's not quantum physics. It's Assets-Liabilities=Shareholder Equity

If you like this then you'll love this Financial Education

Accounting 101 - Measuring Profit/Loss

2009-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

This will provide you with the fundamentals of learning the accounting cycle for measuring a businesses income or losses. Eager Beaver Students may go to Window To Wall Streets new Free Financial Education Section and Wikipedia Income Statements for lots more financial education.