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Stay Focussed
posted by David Wolf on Sep 19, 2009 | Comments (31) | Permalink | Trackback URL
After being fired from a management job in publishing in 1991, I first started my business…about a year later my second daughter was born. One of the upstairs bedrooms was my office. Even though I paid the mortgage, I got evicted. We gutted the basement and made an office suite with two work stations. In short order I dropped some stuff all over the new floor and stained it pretty bad.
I looked for a service that would clean and polish the floor. I would cost me about $250 for someone to come in. Given very limited start up money and a very tight budget, I decided to save some money. I went to a machine rental place and renting a floor cleaner/polisher machine (I’m sure it has a more technical name) for about $100.
I brought the machine into the house and almost broke my neck getting it downstairs.
I got all the off ice stuff and important papers off the floor and onto my desk. I turned the machine on and polished away.
While I was cleaning and polishing the floor, the phone rang and the fax machine went off . The floor around my office equipment was wet with cleaning fluid. I could not answer the phone . It could have been a client or prospective client AND I couldn’t get to the fax to review an important document until the floor dried.
I soon learned that clients come first and everything else in business comes second or third.
Moral of the story: With one tuchus, you can’t dance at two weddings. Establish priorities and focus on what’s important and don’t be penny wise and pound foolish.
FILED IN: Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Entrepreneurship, Public Relations
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Moral of the story: With one tuchus, you can’t dance at two weddings. Establish priorities and focus on what’s important and don’t be penny wise and pound foolish.
I agree. Your clients are always a priority. Personal stuff must be set aside when owning your own business.
When opening your own business,you have to know one thing that you have to be dedicated to it. Your business comes first, you have to place other things aside and try to focus only on the business you have started. If you have your own business, and you will not take care of it, of course it won’t be successful. For your business to be successful, you have to keep an eye on it and make sure it’s your number one priority on your list. I totally agree with Prof.Bruce, establish priorities and focus on what’s important.
It is a given and a known fact that “clients” and “prospective clients” should be one’s NUMBER 0NE priority, most especially in the field of owning your own small business. That client who was calling on the phone or faxing you could have been the client that could’ve taken you out of the financial crisis you were unfortunately in. That fax could’ve been an urgent fax that needed an answer/response A.S.A.P. My father always taught me to be one step ahead of the game; don’t be on time, be early. So with your clients and prospective clients, dedication and alertness is key.
Customers first! All throughout school I have been told customers first. Also working at a supermarket I am always reminded to help our customers. Any smart business man knows that without their customers they have to business. Sometimes you get distracted and forget that customers need your attention at all times. The customer isnt going to go out of their way to gave you business. How things are today companies are doing anything they can to keep their customers happy.
Focus is one of the most crucial things in business. The ability to focus on your priorities, goals, and all other things that require your attention can mean the difference between make or break. In any business the customer is the most important and most valuable aspect of your business. Without a customer there is no business. So your first order of business should be to focus on the customer. How to provide the customer with what he or she needs, how to keep the customer happy, how to answer or solve any problems for the customer are all things that should be at the top of the priority list. Yes organization, appearance, and all other things are important. But to get to the most important thing you need to break it down to the basics which is revenues minus expenses equals profit. In order to create that you need to provide for your customer. The best way to provide to them is with laser focus.
In running your own business, it is important to keep the task at hand. Sacrifice and dedication go hand in hand. Therefore, I can completely agree with the message that is being but across.
I agree with Professor Bruce… If you get fired from a job, you can’t let that put you down. You need to stay focus and continue to search and find another job. One job doesn’t always dictate your future. I agree with what he said that clients come before your business. You need to make sure everyone else is satisfied that your dealing with and then worry about the business next.
“Penny wise and pound foolish” this is unwise because doing something small now would prevent much more trouble later! Everyone loves saving money, cutting back, and reducing expenses. However, sometimes there is a tendency to focus on the wrong things. While youre busy feeling good about reducing little costs here and there, every once in a while you neglect the larger picture. An example is Education budget cuts, this is penny wise and pound foolish because public education is an investment in our future.
I enjoyed this story. The truth of the moral is that clients always come first because they are the ones that are going to help your business. Everything else that needs to be done can wait until the clients are tended to. Its hard to take care of clients when you are busy doing something else, so time must be wisely divided to take care of what is most important to your business.
I agree with Prof Bruce. There is a important moral to this story and that is that the company always comes first. By not putting the company first, Prof Bruce could of easily lost out on a client. Im sure the floor stain was bad, but it should of not been a problem for Prof Bruce to attend to. The moral of this story is the clients no matter how annoying or rude they are , are the so called bread and butter of your business. Without these clients your business will not stay open for long.
I believe that life is easier when priority are established. We must remember the customer is always right. Cleaning the floor should have happened after work hours. Every missed opportunity is someone else’s chance to steel your business. So i agree with Professor Bruce it is very hard to do 2 things at one time
starting a small business is not hard, but keeping the business and keeping it successful is hard and it needs a lots of effort and focus. i think if you have a business you should focus and keep the business as number one priority and don’t mix between your business and the family issues.
Great article Professor Bruce. But like we said in class most businesses fail in its first couple years of operations. so staying on top of things is very important in the beginning stages
I think staying focus is an important task because it will help you in life. You can get the job done when you need it. Customers should also be your first priority because without them, you will have no business.
I agree with Professor Bruce, establish priorities and focus on whats important and dont be penny wise and pound foolish. In businesses you have to be smart especially when its your own. Your clients must be your number one priority.. That person could have been the answer to your financial crisis and could have helped your situation. Im happy you learned from this and can help others with their businesses.
This is an interesting story; everyone wants to save a nickel and dime here and there. For example you might go to car repair shop and get a quote and you say OK ill be back, what youre really doing is calling around seeing if you can get a better price. Some times it isnt worth the money you are saving when you are wasting so much time and effort. Professor Bruce is correct customers come first and everything else in business should come afterwards. After all where would you be if you didnt have any customers?
I absolutely agree that establishing priorities and staying focused on them is the most important thing in life. The thing is that if you dont do that you are almost destined for failure.
That’s true. The clients come first. They’re the one’s paying you so you can get your floor cleaned in the first place. That phone call could’ve been the additional $150 to hire someone to clean the floor. It’s a little ridiculous, the things we do to save some money. Sometimes we think we’re saving money but ultimately we end up spending more. Clients come first.
You know what they say….. you have to spend money to make money. That is so true about how in business everything else comes second….. i know some people that put the success of their business first, sometimes ahead of their personal life, marriage and their kids. It’s not always good to think this way because when the business is booming and successful you may end up alone.
Great lesson prof bruce. May times in business we get caught up in the big things, and we loose sight of the small things. Remembering that clients come first in vital, because without clients you have no business.
The most unorganized person in the world has an idea of what should come first. I can not agree that business should come first all the time. My thought is family then business in that order. No amount of money would make me forsake my family and no client is coming before them unless there member of my family. Certainly in business clients comes first because no one really notices the office floor.
I definitely agree with professor Bruce. Clients and customers first is very important. Even when i worked at a local convenient store in high school, my manager always told me that it is always important to keep customers happy, because everyone knows that cliants and customers is where the money comes in.
I like the penny wise and pound foolish line. My boss uses a similar quote when it comes to dealing with angry customers. He always says we may have won the battle, but we lost the war. He usually uses it in reference to when the customer is right. We always know when they are trying to get one over on the store even though they might think they are being really clever about it. But I comes down to do you want them shopping in the store again, because if you do you are generally going to give into them, because though you feel good about winning the battle, loosing the war is going to worse later on.
I would have definitely flew to the phone. I might have slipped but I would have probably hit the floor with my first prospective customer on deck. As long as I have been working, I have always worked directly with people and the qoute “the customer comes first” has been embedded in my mind. Without the customer, you have no business.
To be honest Bruce, im a multi-task kind of guy so in this situation i would of tried to answer the phone regardless if the floor was wet or not because of the fact that it could have been a potential client. and besides if i did screw up the floor trying to get hold of the phone, i would jus do it again since the machine was rented.
This story was a perfect example of how important it is to establish your priorities. You must attend to the more urgent matter first in order to obtain your goal. In this situation clients could have been lost because they were not established as the top priority. Most of the attention was being focused on cleaning the floor. It’s easy to see how a situation can be improved by just establishing whats more important at the time and dividing your attention accordingly. By setting priorities you could gain more customers.
there is a good moral to this story and it is very true. when running a business your clients must always come first.Even though the floor needed to be cleaned there were other priorities that should have be taking care of first.
Professor Bruce I have to disagree with the entrepreneur for not answering the phone because that person could have been a potential customer and customer are always TOP priority when it comes to business.
Now students need to learn effective multitasking. However, there are always priorities, that we need to focused on the most. We have to know what is more important to us instead doing everything at one and wasting energy on doing things of a less importance. However whatever decision we make, we have to take the responsibility for it, no matter what the outcome is. It is our decision.
What do you think?
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