Tips on Cleaning from the Fly Lady

I believe in running a school with white glove cleanliness. To make it easier on my staff, I wanted it outline each responsible. I am always looking for the most effective and efficient way. In my research, I run across the www.flylady.net.

I used the Fly Lady concepts to organize the cleaning at our business.

The Fly Lady’s concepts in a nutshell

1. Create Zones – The first area is to divide your business into zones. I divided our school in 5 zone: Entrance, Mat Area, Front Desk, Waiting Area, and Bathrooms
2. Make a Control Journal – The Control journal is where you store your basic routines and basic weekly plan.
3. Set Basic Routines – For each zone, you make a basic cleaning routine. The basic cleaning routine is a checklist tasks to finish the zone.
4. Determine the Weekly Plan – The weekly plan determine each day which routine and zone to cleaning.

Creating the control journal with a checklist of tasks and a schedule makes training and implementing with a staff easier. The bottom line is that your students reap the benefits. Most people don't want to train in an area that smells like a gym locker and they especially don't want to send their children there.

If you want to organize your business or home, I suggest visiting the www.flylady.com and set up your routines today. Next task to organize my home.

Eight Tips to Setting up your Small Business

“Are you Crazy!?” are the exact words that came from my wife’s mouth when I told her that I wrote a business plan to start a Martial Arts School. She was reacting to me telling her that we would require about $50,000 for start up costs and the first few months of operating costs. Back to the drawing board, I went. I tweaked my plan so that we were able to start on less than a $1000. In less than 4 years, our business grew to a six figures income.

In those first three years of operation, I learned many important lessons that drove our business to success. Here’s some tips to setting up your small business.

Eight Tips to Setting up your Small Business

1. Start small first - . Most people dream of that cushy retail spot with plenty of space that will bring in many walk-by customers. Beware… a prime retail spot comes with a huge price tag, think small at first. Ask yourself, “What is the quickest way to make money?” For example, my original plan calculated the cost for a prime retail spot. Instead, I found an alternate location at a church auditorium. This decision suddenly made starting a martial arts school affordable because the monthly rent was ten times less than a retail spot.

Starting small had many advantages, too - It provided us time to build better systems, find a niche, grow our customer base, and create an income stream to reinvest in the business without the risk. Yes, after a year, we got that retail spot but only after our idea proved itself and we earned enough capital to move without worries.

2. Create a detail plan – Most people ignore creating a detail plan in favor of just starting the business. A detail plan will help you identify a niche and determine how you will get customers in your door. Ask, “How is my business different then the competition?” and “What methods will I use to get customer in the doors?”

Your plan should detail your break-even point. The break-even point is the amount of money required to stay in business. Brainstorm on how you will meet this break-even amount.

3. Get professional advice - Before you open your door for business, seek the advice from a qualified accountant and lawyer. Your accountant and lawyer will become important members of your team to help you reach your business goals, assess risk, and hold you accountable.

4. Find a niche - You definitely do not want as Dan Kennedy says, “to roll around in the mud with Wal-Mart competing for the lowest price” This is a losing strategy for any business instead look for a niche – a special area that has little or no competition. A niche market resonates with specific customers – they want your product or service because it’s special – different. Niche markets enable you to charge a premium for your product or service, therefore maximizing your business revenue.

5. Market like crazy – Don’t let anyone come within 5 feet of you without telling them about your business. Constantly, paint a picture of the benefits of what you offer. Along with traditional marketing – flyers, ads, and mailers, the best marketing for small businesses comes through referrals and networking. Building referrals systems will assist in your businesses grow exponentially. Prospects referred from existing customers will purchase more and give less price resistance because their friend sold them on your business before even walking through the door.

6. Test your idea – Put your product or service in the market on a limited time basis. You could mail a simple test advertisement, set up a table at convention or festival, or offer it through a website. Stimulating interest in this way will provide valuable feedback so that you can tweak your product or service to fit with the public demand.

7. System driven business – Once your business is up and running, focus on creating a system driven business. Michael Gerber’s states in his book, The E-myth, that most business owners are technicians that one day suffers an “entrepreneurial seizure”. Instead of thinking about technical part of doing the job, build systems to drive the business. How will you greet the customer? What do you say when you answer the phone? What is your system of creating referrals and repeat business? What is your sales presentation? Every aspect of your business needs to be a written down procedure that you and employees follow consistently. The system can change but test each change and measure the results. With excellent systems, customer will applaud your efforts and you will save time to spend on the most important activities in the business.

8. Become the Obvious Expert – Do you want customers to flock to your business? Yes. Then work on becoming the obvious expert in your field. There are many methods of becoming the obvious expert. Here’s some quick ideas for you to boost your status to the obvious expert - writing article for newspapers, create a blog, give free talks and seminars, provide valuable free resources on a website, or publish a book or e-book

With a little brainstorming and perspiration, you can start your own small business. If you play it smart, you too can start your successful small business with little or no capital.

5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques

Today, you are going to earn your white belt in Environmental Self-Defense. Just like in the martial arts, I teach 5 basic blocks for white belt. We're going to talk about 5 essential techniques of Environmental Self-Defense. Once you implement these 5 essentials into your school – congratulation, you earned your white belt in the new martial arts style of the Green Warrior.

Why start with these 5 techniques?
I have organized the information so that the first five techniques are the easiest to implement and give the environment and your wallet the biggest impact. So, let’s get start! Shall we?

Checklist of 5 Essential Environmental Self-Defense Techniques
1) Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) – Replace any standard incandescent bulbs in your business used more than 15 minutes per day with compact fluorescent light bulbs.

2) Programmable Thermostat - Did you know that you could save over 33% on your energy bill by getting a programmable thermostat. You create a 10% energy saving on heating or cooling by simply turning your thermostat back 10% to 15% for 8 hours. 10% means, instead of setting you’re heating to 68, you set it to 62 or for cooling; you set the thermostat to 78, instead of 72. Programmable Thermostats make this easy by programming a schedule to turn your thermostat back when you are not there.

3) Water Heater Insulation - Water heating accounts for about 13% of your total heating costs. Reduce your impact by turning the thermostat down and insulating your water heater.

4) Recycle – Businesses are one of the biggest producers of garbage but also, business are less likely than individuals to have a recycling plan. Green you’re school by providing recycling bins. Place them in high traffic areas for example, by the entrance, by the front desk, in the parent’s waiting area, and by any vending machine. Make sure to clearly label the recycling bins and communicate with your students regularly about the importance of recycling.

5. Weather Stripping Doors – Tremendous heat loss occurs at the entrances and exits. Adding weather stripping to your doors will minimize this heat loss - especially focus on the often-neglected emergency exits. Weather stripping will not only assist in reducing heat loss but it has the added benefit of making the room more comfortable for your students and families by reducing drafts.

Once you mastered these 5 Essential Environmental Self-defense tasks, you can consider yourself a white belt in environmental self-defense. Your Green Warrior journey to a black belt in Environmental Self-defense has begun…

Making money work for you

These days, money seems to slip through your fingers as easily as the sands of time. The rich know that in order to build wealth, you must be able to keep money in your pocket and have methods of continuing to increase it’s value over time. Making money work for you is as simple as getting money and using it to create more money.

Essential Steps to Make Your Money Work for You

1. Control your expenses - If you don't control your expenses, your money will come in as a paycheck and disappear as an expense - leaving you living from paycheck to paycheck. This phenomenon happens regardless of your income level. As most people’s income increase, so does their spending. To control your expenses, create a buying policy. For example, waiting at least 24 hours before buying anything valued more than $50 then ask yourself the follow questions, “Is this sometime that I need?” “Do I own something that can serve the same purpose?” “Can I borrow one, find one used, or make one instead of buying new?” Like the defense of professional football team, draft a superior financial defensive line to tackle unnecessary purchases before they happen.

2. Save 10% of your earnings - At 10%, you'll see that your money will grow - giving you “attitude money”. What is attitude money? When you have money invested, you feel more secure and abundant, therefore, gaining a better attitude towards money and your financial situation. Okay, most people claim that they can't afford to save 10% of what you earn. Notice that people earn different salaries but are all equally as broke. This signifies that most people just spend as much as they make and don't really control what they're spending. The wealthy find ways to control their expenses and save 10%. Once you start saving 10%, I bet that you will not even notice that it's gone. Make saving this 10% easy by automatically deducting it directly from your paycheck into a wealth account. Essentially, paying yourself first.

3. Generate Passive Income – Now that you have an excess of cash flow and savings, it’s time to create a passive income. Passive income is money generated from sources that require some upfront work and generate a stream of income for a long time. For example, some passive income sources are investments in stocks or bonds, real estate or property rent, writing for Helium, creating a blog, or designing a website that generates advertisement income. These are just a few examples. Let the miracle of compound interest start working for you by building multiple streams of passive income.

4. Increase your current salary – Nothing can increase your worth quicker than receiving a raise or promotion. If you receive a 10% raise, as quick as Clark Kent changing into superman, you become instantly 10% richer. The best way to increase your salary is to “show up” for work. Most people just punch the clock and mill their way through the day. Give your job the full eight hours of attention it deserves. Talk to your boss about your desire to increase your value (read as salary) to the company. Ask yourself what are the five most important tasks to do today that will get you noticed. Assist your boss move up the corporate ladder and like the links of a chain, you will move up too.

5. Create your own Business – Are you going to slave away making all the money for someone else. Creating a side business is a terrific way to earn more money. Start small and follow your passion. Who knows in time, it may become a full time occupation. With a fantastic business and the right mindset, it's possible to work less hours per day and make more money than you did at your regular job. Wouldn't you rather have more time in your life and make more money?

By employing, these five essential strategies to making money work for you, you will begin a snowball effect on your finances. Each day adding snowflakes until the snowball builds momentum. That’s what making your money work for you is all about – overcoming the financial inertia holding wealth at arm’s reach.

Cater to our best customers, Fire your worst

I had a new prospect come in the parents talked to my wife, Ester. They were really drilling her with question and did not like our terms. Another words, they complained about the classes being only half hour long, asked if we could pick their son up from the daycare down the street, and making all kinds of other ridiculous demands. My wife could hardly believe it.

I think that excellent student service is vitally important, but when does it go too far. In America, we’re taught to be very accommodating especially to customers to the point of nauseam. Don’t get me wrong here. I believe in stellar service but this sometimes sets you up for someone take advantage of you at the expense of your good customers.

The impact… Your worst customers are still unhappy and complaining even with your special accommodations and your best customers suffer and leave. Would you rather keep your best customers, not your worst customers?

The longer I'm in business the more I realize the importance of attracting the right people to your business. I see too many business owners completely change the way they do business just because of one complaint. These changes often hurt the business because it take into consideration one client over the needs of your current clients - leaving them feeling disillusioned and upset about the change in service that they already enjoy.

Why?
Because you create a system of doing business, you must remain in the system for it to work very effective. When individuals go around the system, the system is no longer effective, and rest of your business follows.

If a prospect doesn't like the way, you do things, and wants you to do sometime totally differently. Beware… this is the start of a problem and this customer maybe better off as some else’s client. The best rule of thumb is to remain within your core competency.

Finding good customers assists your business in many ways. They are easier to service, complain less, see the value your service, spend more money, provide well-qualified referrals, and benefit tremendously from your service. Sounds like a win-win deal. On the other hand, get rid your complainers, cheapskates, whiners, and any other people who cause trouble and create more headaches. It's better to charge more for your tuition and to have fewer students that really enjoy your service than have many customers that only partly enjoy your service.