Tag: Business Posts

One of the hardest aspects of being a business owner is being able to come up with a metric, even an internal one, for what it means for that business to be successful. For some people, that goal is completely monetary – i.e., if they can sell the business for 1 million dollars within 10 years, then that represents success for them. As an example, one of my good friends recently sold his business. While it was always his dream to build a popular retail business, at some point he realized that the excitement, and the dream, mostly involved building a business, and not really running one. So even though the business was turning a monthly profit (which for some people would amount to owning a lifelong lifestyle business) he decided that it met his own definition of a successful business, at which point he sold it and cashed in […]

I recently was looking at a business plan for a new venture that came across my desk. The two individuals involved are trying to raise money for a bar in South America that they will manage. It’s one of those businesses that most people dream about – a foreign country with lots of sunshine, lots of friendly travellers, and evenings spent sipping beer on a patio. Sign me up! As part of their business plan, they needed to come up with a value for what this new business would likely be worth once it was off the ground. The reason you need to have a value is that when you are trying to solicit investments from people, they need to understand how much of the company they will own. So if a business is worth $500,000, and an investor puts in $100,000, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to own […]

Inside my suitcase upstairs is a huge manilla envelope that has the majority of receipts in it for my trip to South America. Since some of them represent expenses that I can write-off on the business side, it was important to keep them for Revenue Canada in the odd event of an audit down the road. Unfortunately for me though, it meant that I had to collect all my receipts while traveling around the world. It’s one thing when you have an apartment in Canada and everything can be sorted into file folders once a week or so, but when you’re traveling with a backpack and trying not to accumulate anything else, having to store paper receipts is a pretty big drag. Not only is storing receipts a pain, but often the ink will rub off on the ones that stay in your pocket or your wallet for more than […]

I tweeted about some rather recent banking problems I’ve been having, so I thought I’d tell the whole story. About five years ago (probably longer to be honest), I opened a business account at TD bank on Broadway in Vancouver. I was going to start doing a little consulting on the side while doing my master’s degree, so I thought having a business account would be a good idea. At the time, I also got a small mastercard as well. I never really ended up having time for the consulting, so the account kind of just sat there for a few months. Eventually I ended up cancelling that mastercard and (my recollection at least) was that the account was shut down. Jump ahead to about a month ago (five years later), and I get an statement in my mailbox from TD for that account. I was obviously surprised, since I […]

That’s probably the hardest question to answer nowadays for me when crossing the border. My life and my job are pretty intricately mixed nowadays, that it’s often hard to differentiate between the two. For example, when I went to WordCamp San Francisco, I was asked that question by the border agent. The conference I was attending definitely interested me on a personal level, especially since I have a personal blog, but clearly I can extract some business value out of it as well. So is it a business trip, or one for pleasure? The problem with going down the business line is sometimes the border guys get a bit pissy when you eventually tell them you have US clients. Technically that’s fine, but sometimes they guys/gals can be a bit anal, and start asking to see contracts or what-not (if the client is near your destination city). My friend Dragos […]

This is the second post in an ongoing business series I’m going to be writing. You can view them all by visiting here. So there you are, on the brink of making a big life-changing decision, and you’re trying to get the nerve to finally do it. You have this great business idea, are tired of your current 9-5 job, and are ready to take the plunge off the cliff, hopefully landing somewhere far better below. This is probably the hardest stage of a new business, in my opinion – getting up the nerve to quit your day job. You’re forcibly taking action that is going to upset your life and move you pretty much as far away from your comfort zone as possible. In my case, it took me nearly a year to get my life in order such that I could minimize the risk of a new endeavor. […]

Wash, rinse, repeat – that’s my life these days. Wake up, work, code, sleep. I eat once and a while, although considering I had a bit of cream cheese at midnight and called it supper, I think I need some drastic improvements in that department. My thermostat in my apartment shows 27C at 9am, which obviously makes it rather difficult to sleep. Actually, sleep in general is pretty difficult these days. I have a little bottle of Zopiclone that I keep around for special occasions, and even though it helps me sleep, it usually makes me a groggy mess in the morning. So in that department I am sort of screwed regardless of what I do. Today’s post of the day is about ethics and their place is business. I’ve had this conversation with a few different people in the last few weeks, and it always surprises me what kind […]