The market turbulence is a call to action
By: Phil Holland, Founder of My Own Business, Inc.

You probably have noticed recently that your customers are getting shorter arms and lower pockets. They are spending less because they are fearful and fear can be both pervasive and intense. A number of reasons can be cited for disappointing sales including the recent stock market meltdown, persistent unemployment and a gridlocked congress. As your customers continue to spend less money, you will need to take action.

Fearful times are not overcome by passively "riding out" storms. Every ship has a point of no return. The moment a ship rolls to its degree of no return it will keep rolling and capsize. So in a hurricane a ship must take immediate survival action by making adjustments to course, speed, balancing cargo and battening down hatches. In a business, the point of no return occurs when you run out of cash. If you are a business owner, here are some survival measures to help navigate through these times:

• As prices drop, seek out opportunities to buy merchandise at deep bargain prices. Pass these savings on to your customers.
• Give your customers lower priced selections. If you sell wine, highlight the $3 dollar wine rather than the $10.
• Carefully reschedule your employees to reduce overall hours on your payroll.
• Benefits are expensive. Begin blending in part-time employees to save on rising health care and retirement benefit costs. Give part-timers who do exceptionally well a shot at full benefits.
• Follow up on the emerging trend to outsource job functions that can be fulfilled by outside providers. At the same time you can focus better on your core operations.
• Is there opportunity to shorten your hours of business without significant loss of sales?
• Keep focused on your specialty. Provided your business has intrinsic value to begin with, stick with what you know best.

Your overall goal should be to avoid reaching a point of no return: running out of cash. Your key management role should therefore be the practice of forecasting future cash flow. Each month, make a projection of cash for each of the oncoming six months. If any future negative cash is indicated, now is the time to make whatever adjustments are necessary to maintain liquidity by further reductions in expenses.

You asked for it, and we've delivered. Our Starting My Own Business course is now available in e-book form! It comes in .epub and .mobi versions, suitable for the iPad, Kindle, Nook, and all other e-book readers. We also have an enhanced .epub with embedded audio and video, for the best learning experience!

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A Salute to Steve Jobs
By: Phil Holland, Founder of My Own Business, Inc.

Steve Jobs' recent retirement at Apple provides a wake-up call to every CEO as to what their responsibility is really all about. At Apple, Steve Jobs provided the vision and leadership to keep fulfilling new needs. Year after year, new markets were created which were in some cases for products consumers didn't even know they wanted yet. At the moment Apple is developing new technology to deliver video to television.

Today, unless CEOs stay focused on Jobs-like forward thinking, their firms will be left in the rear view mirror of their competitors. And it can happen anywhere, in a business; Florists are being edged out by supermarkets, postal workers by email, travel agents by online booking, and even auto paint shops by more durable factory paintings.

For CEOs looking for ideas on building their businesses, our new free resources for CEOs is now live at www.myownbusiness.org/course.html. Please pay us a visit!

We welcome your questions to be answered in this Newsletter feature! Here is our Q and A for this edition:

Question: Is it better to buy an operating business or to start from scratch?

Answer: As a rule, acquiring a business in inherently less risky than starting one from scratch. Everything is already in place including the customers, financial records and organization. But there are pitfalls to watch out for:

• You should have gained experience in the business before the purchase.
• The seller's suppliers may not want to sell to you.
• Taking on more debt than you can comfortably service.
• Inadequate due diligence investigation of the business.
• Failure to justify the purchase price by earnings, return on investment and intrinsic value.

In our new free course "Building My Own Business" you will find many more details on buying a business, as well as the advantages and potential risks. See http://www.myownbusiness.org/buying_businesses/