TAS Case Study Bicycle Shop After eight years of brisk business, Wayne “Mick” McLellan, owner of Sprocket Cyclery, had built up a profitable business. In addition to the 15,000 square foot shop on East Main Street, Mick opened a second store in an adjacent tourist community serving a nearby national park. Soon the second location […]
Leading and Managing a Staff of Subcontractors and Freelancers For the past several years I’ve been a solopreneur. That is, I’m a company of one. Initially I offered consultancy services. Then I added periodical publishing to the mix and phased out the consulting work. I later added commercial freelance writing, while authoring and publishing books. […]
Writing, as with most worthwhile things in life, benefits from a bit of occasional introspection. Succinctly queried, what are your goals as a writer? After all, without goals, how will you prod yourself to write and by what measure will your evaluate progress? Here are some common motivations of writers: With the exception of the […]
TAS Case Study: Tree Trimming Service Tree trimmer Marv Burley began using an answering service to handle all his calls several years ago. This allowed him to spend more time in the field making money and less time in the office sitting by the phone. As his business grew, he added several more functions to […]
Discover How to Become a Company of Choice Unemployment rates go in cycles, oscillating over the years between seasons of high unemployment and times of low unemployment. The prior chapter addressed a worker surplus. Now we’ll consider a worker shortage. During times of low unemployment, it’s a workers’ market. With too many positions going unfilled, people […]
Reveals Insider Strategies to Run a Call Center Your Staff Is Proud to Work For Peter Lyle DeHaan, a seasoned call center industry expert, announced the release of his latest business nonfiction title, What Every Call Center Manager Needs to Know: Insider Strategies for Hiring, Scheduling, Technology, and Customer Service Success from a Call Center Veteran. […]
Five Kinds of Writers and How to Move Forward from Where You Are There are different types of writers. They have different motivations, are at different places in their writing journey, and have different goals. Here are five common scenarios: 1. The Aspiring Writer: I’ve heard many people refer to themselves as aspiring writers. But […]
TAS Case Study: Restaurant Supply Company Curtis Kadlec, owner of the Kadlec Restaurant Supply Company, started his company twenty years ago. He began selling equipment to schools, hospitals, restaurants, and lounges by traveling throughout the state, meeting with customers one-on-one. Two years later, he added a small catalog to his marketing mix and distributed it […]
A Rare Case When Inaction Is Better than Action Recall the parachurch organization where I was board president. I gave needed structure to the board meetings, trained the board members to be more effective, and groomed my successor. But this isn’t where the story ends. With a few months left in my term as president, […]
Ebooks Get Attention, but Print Still Matters People like to talk about what is new, what is exciting, and what is fresh. That’s why the book publishing industry has so much buzz about reading digital books and listening to audiobooks. I’m not going to dismiss those options—because they’re exciting opportunities for authors—but I do caution […]