153 entries under "book"

Raise your prices. Add a three-tiered price structure (low, medium, high). Add discounts for up-front payment, annual plans, and institutional versus retail pricing.

[It's easier to sell more to existing customers than find new ones, so offer a menu of add-ons to increase your average revenue per job.]

[Use leads, conversion, jobs, and average revenue to calculate annual revenue, then annual expenses to calculate annual profits.]

Most small-business owners "live in their own wallet," meaning they won't charge any higher than what they would be willing to pay. That's dumb. Let rich people pay you lots of money if they want to. You'll be surprised how often they will.

[Lead with benefits, not features.]

[Output-based metrics measure numbers you don't directly control, such as traffic, signups, revenue, growth. Activity-based metrics track things you do to influence the other numbers, such as calls made, posts published, machines in operation.]

[Ask your potential leadership hire who they would bring from their past jobs: if there's nobody, they might not have been leading much.]

[Who probably knows the business better is the previous operator or owner. If they stay involved for the first 90 days, your new operator can: shadow them to document SOPs for month 1, work alongside them for month 2, and perform everything independantly with occasional checkins for month 3, all the while refining the Operator's Playbook as a living document.]

You are one good hire from cutting your problems in half. Two good hires from a completely different company.

[When the price is too high, a wince or verbal "How am I supposed to do that?" offers your no to the problem rather than the person.]

[Most job listings start as a love-letter to "whom it may concern".]

I'll invest in you as much as you're investing in yourself.

Whenever I can pay to steal someone's ten thousand hours, I do so.

[In real estate the terms are so standardized that most people sign and date without reading them. Buying a business has no standard format.]

[Avoid fixating only on price: instead adjust the terms to give the seller more or less based on performance — control the terms, control the deal.]

[Find closing or closed businesses and propose the owners a referral percentage for each of their customers or transactions, then find an adjacent business that would pay ongoing for those warm leads. This also effectively gives them stake in your business, skin in the game.]

[If you know how to turn a failing business profitable, offer them a percentage of the upside as they let you fix it.]

[Find the best lawyers in your area by asking professionals (like accountants), wealthy friends (who often have good attorneys), and local luxury magazines (or vault.com) for their "best of" in the legal field.]

[Attorneys will give you hourly rates, but you can express the list of things you need and ask how much it would cost, then comparison shop ideally for a flat rate.]

[You may want to change lawyers if the deal is of a different type, as there's probably an appropriate specialization for each type. Mid-size firms might be easier as they probably "have a guy" for everything, but make sure to change the guy with the deal type.]

[Contracts can cost 3–25k depending on deal complexity.]

[A seller with few buyers might be willing to accept installments spread over longer terms to close faster, minimize taxes, and earn more money in the end.]

[How much opportunity there is depends on your ability to notice it.]

[Sellers sell their businesses because of death, divorce, disease, distress, dullness, departure, disagreement.]

[Features of good seller opportunities are: 1. founded 10+ years ago; 2. profit under 1 million per year; 3. little competition to buy the business; 4. brick and mortar, or highly-commoditized online; 5. owner in charge for 5+ years; 6. lacking a successor; 7. owner near retirement age; 8. not applicable for bank loans; 9. overpriced for its balance sheet; 10. financials not clean; 11. no leadership team; 12. distressed business; 13. asset sale; 14. established relationship with seller; 15. owner prefers larger exit over long-term or cash flow instead of immediate lumpsum; 16. other sources of income besides the business.]

[Be a walking billboard by: 1. telling everyone you meet that you buy businesses, and 2. asking businesses who the owner is.]

In 1940, there were forty-two workers per retiree, but that number has fallen to three to one, meaning that there are not nearly enough workers to support Social Security beneficiaries.

the key to capturing clicks is convincing people that you have the answers to their questions—that you hold the proverbial key to all the solutions. If you can over-complicate simple things loudly, people will pay attention.

There's nothing worse than being right and everyone agreeing with you. There's no way to make any cash.

For the interview with Goldman I turned up in my hoodie and trainers and I told them that I definitely didn't want the job. They put me through to the second round after that.

Stocks never go down. Stocks only go up. When the economy is good stocks go up, and when the economy is shit, they print so much money stocks go up even more. Same with fucking houses. Everything goes up. The asset holders never lose.

[The economy is people and their ability to live, not numbers. We didn't need to make conversations with our cleaners to understand the lives of everyday people.]

[In the best trades, you use your nose to smell stupidity.]

This is another general rule of trading: you don't necessarily make money by being right, but by being right when others are wrong.

[It's easier to burn down a building than build one up.]

['Destroying' someone will not convince them.]

The person who helped me shift never made me feel small. Minds change when they are made to feel large. When they are respected and gently challenged. When they are helped to stretch and make more room for another point of view.

[A movie lets you spend time together without having to make lots of small talk; sports might even let you root for the same team.]

[Getting near is important for seeing clear. If we avoid those who think differently, our understanding risks to be superficial.]

Can you use a hammer without injuring yourself? Give Habitat for Humanity a call. Are you a budgeting ninja? Call Boys and Girls Club and offer to teach young men and women to budget. Do your friends tell you that you talk too much? Go to a retirement home and talk with people who have long been forgotten.

[God Speed is three miles per hour. Jesus didn't take a chariot to get there faster.]

[Can worrying add even a single hour to your life?]

[Bring some cookies to your neighbour for no reason other than they might need to smile today.]

[I didn't give her a tip or make her famous, just told her I loved her voice.]

[The point of leaving the flock to go after the lost sheep isn't to bring them back, but to let them know they're loved.]

[Journalism has a chance to present culture in a psychological order that helps us orient, but often submits to promotional calendars resulting in bestseller lists and cinema charts, as if popularity would be the most useful factor in making decisions.]

[Choosing of what we wish to be informed requires knowing ourselves well enough to not selectively ignore what we need; perhaps it's a position that could be prepared for with therapy.]

[Political news could draw us into how our society works and equip us to improve it intelligently. World news could humanize foreign cultures and add context beyond dramatic events to help break us from fixating too locally. Economic news could go beyond standard figures to instill understanding of the human realities behind our goods. Celebrity news could be refocused on people from who we can learn how to be better and realize our own talents. Disaster news could help us feel grateful for every pain-free moment. Consumer news could point us to what can help us live a more fulfilling existence.]

[As humans evolved from a time where not much would change, where when something that did might be important or deadly, we need to readjust our perceptions to clarify that what is novel is not always important.]

[We most desperately avoid introspection when forming awkward but vital ideas, and that's when the news grabs us.]

[Not everything we need to round ourselves out can be found in the present; for some perspectives we will need to look to the past for ideas that will still be in our thoughts tomorrow.]

[Children, wildlife, and heavenly expanse of the galaxies can give us relief from the news-induced self absorption that our time and moment is the most important.]