Congratulations to our 2016 Jump START Your Nonprofit WINNERS!

We'd like to thank everyone that voted for these 3 wonderful organizations. St. Vincent de Paul edged out the competition in Cincinnati. Neighborhood Design Center tallied the most votes in Columbus. Senior Resource Connection came out on top in Dayton. Each of these nonprofits will receive a $10,000 office technology makeover from MOM.

Ken Staubitz, our Vice President of Service, and Julie Italiano, Marketing Manager, presented each of these winners with their big checks on stage at The Rusty Ball on Saturday, October 15. MOM has been a proud sponsor of this event for the past 4 years and we look forward to many more years of presenting local nonprofits with big checks on stage! Congratulations again to our winners!

5 reasons you will be successful

Yes, I know that you are preparing to swap gifts, travel way too far to see family, and eat enough to put you into a sugar coma, however, a brand new year is right around the corner.

Below are 5 reasons you will be successful in 2017:

1. You will find a qualified CPA who can assist you and your decision making year-round, set a fixed amount that you will pay them, and use their advice.  They will save you more money than they cost.
2. You are going to perform a cash flow projection for 2017 and identify potential shortfalls today, not tomorrow!
3. You are going to raise your prices, because you offer a premium product/service!  You will have a better profit, better customers, and sleep well at night.
4. You are going to delegate some of the roles that you currently perform in your business, so you can grow the business, i.e., bookkeeping, digital marketing, payroll, and anything that someone else can do as well as you, for less money than you!
5. You are going to schedule an appointment with your local TSBDC counselor to get a jump start on your 2017 goals!

Go ahead and visit Aunt Edna, attend Christmas Eve services, and hang on to those gift receipts and we will see you next year!

Klarna - Making shopping simple and safe for your customers

Founded in Stockholm in 2005, Klarna is one of Europe's fastest growing companies, and offers safe and easy-to-use payment solutions to e-stores.
At the core of Klarna's services is the concept of after delivery payment, which lets buyers receive ordered goods before any payment is due. At the same time, Klarna assumes the credit and fraud risk so that retailers can rest assured they will receive their money.

Klarna Group has more than 1,400 employees and is active on 18 markets. Klarna serve 45 million consumers and work with 65,000 merchants, attracting major international clients such as Spotify, Disney, Samsung, Wish and ASOS. Klarna's goal is to become the world’s favorite way to buy.

Klarna Group statistics:
Total end-customers:  45,000,000,
Total number of merchants:  65,000,
Number of transactions per day:   400,000

Optimize your entire checkout

Reduce cart abandonment on all devices with a simple checkout experience. Accept all popular payment types with one contract. Plus, give your customers the option to pay after delivery and Klarna takes on all of the risk. Klarna Checkout helps with:

    Increasing average order value

    Improving checkout rates

    Improve return customer rates

Most items added to carts don't actually get purchased — in today's world of mobile commerce, there is up to 82% checkout abandonment. That's why it pays to have the easiest checkout possible

Maximize conversion by removing friction

Karna removes friction at checkout by letting customers pay with just their emails and addresses – done. Details will be remembered for next time, so checkout is just one click away.

One integration – all major payment methods

Not only do Karna offer all major popular payment methods. You as a merchant get them in a single, integrated solution. This means that you only have one supplier, one integration, one agreement, one payout, one settlement and one customer support. Plus Klarna assumes the customer risk, meaning you get paid even if the customer doesn't pay Klarna.

Pay after delivery 

Klarna's technology driven platform allows customers to try before they buy - giving them more confidence to complete the purchase. How it works is simple: Klarna pay you and later they pay us.

Complement your checkout with financing

Traditional financing solutions aren't adapting to the new world of e-commerce. Instead of asking consumers about their marital status and employer information, Klarna use data to enhance the shopping experience for your customer. Klarna don't just increase your customer purchase power, Klarna also improve loyalty, conversion and AOV.

Just plug it in

Integration and maintenance are easy. One-time integration for all markets and products. Automatic updates to ensure global and local compliance, performance and tailored credit offerings.

eCommerce platform plugins

Klarnas platform works with most common eCommerce systems and can be integrated in no time.

You think you're better...but you're not

Have you ever noticed that you are constantly comparing yourself with others?

And yes, I blame Facebook for most of this!

Was your vacation cool enough, is your car new enough, are you as fit and trim as you should be, etc.?

Many times you compare yourself to others, who are in worse shape, to justify your situation.

For example:

• An out of shape person may feel better about themselves after watching The Biggest Loser.
• A financially strapped person may feel better about their finances, after listening to the first few callers on the Dave Ramsey Show discuss bankruptcies and foreclosures.
• An overwhelmed parent may feel better about themselves after doing some service work in a shelter.

However, you may still be overweight, broke, and in disarray.

So should you bother comparing yourself at all?

If you are a business owner, the answer is YES!

Why?

 “What gets measured gets done!”

Unfortunately, there are many business owners still justifying their situations.

• A restaurant owner may feel good about their business, because they have great Yelp reviews, but they could still have a net loss for the year.
• A landscaper may feel good about their Accounts Receivable being an average of 60 days, because they know a consultant with an average of 90 days.
• A hotel owner may feel good about their debt-to-equity ratio being low, because it was even lower last year.

However, the restaurant is still losing money, the landscaper still has some collecting to do, and the hotel owner is still upside down on the business.

So how should you compare your business?

The best way to measure your business is against your competition.   This way you get an apples-to-apples comparison, instead of an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Common measurements are your costs-of-goods-sold (COGS), net profit margin, current ratio, payroll expenses, advertising expenses, etc.

In fact, the TSBDC has a “comparison” tool that compares your type of business vs. others in Tennessee and nationwide.

Comparing against other businesses in your industry is a more accurate way to determine how well you are doing and what you could improve upon.

And remember, nobody posts the bad stuff on Facebook, so stop comparing yourself there too!

p.s.
Email me at charles.alexander@volstate.edu to learn more about the "comparision" tool.

A Great Question

So...if happiness is such a good thing, what are the main influences on our happiness and which can we do more about? If happiness is considered 100%, what percentages would you consider the influence of genetics, life circumstances, personal choices, phases of the moon, etc?

Surprisingly, research has shown that our genetic set point influences 50% of our happiness. There are a variety of ways that our predisposition to happiness is heavily influenced by genetics. Regardless, this does not mean individuals are trapped. In the same way we are genetically predisposed to specific diseases (diabetes, heart disease) and we can make changes to lifestyle, diet, sleep and exercise to reduce risk, there are practical ways to positively impact our genetic predisposition with respect to happiness.

More surprisingly, life circumstances only impact long term happiness by  only 10%. At only 10%, this removes a significant portion of factors that can be blamed for unhappiness. The good news is that this also means we are not defined by out past or imprisoned in the present!  The reason why circumstances do not affect us much is that we adapt over time. A great example is that research has shown that money does not lead to lasting happiness because individuals will adapt to any level of money over time. Ask most lottery winners!

The most challenging factor influencing out happiness is personal control, calculated at a whopping 40%! It is not events themselves that determine our happiness, but our perceptions of those events. Our personal control suggests that being happy involves choices, the motivation to expend effort and the decision to see situations as opportunities for growth and learning. 

How often have you heard someone say "I didn't have a choice"? What they are really saying is "the right choice for me was too hard to make!".

If making the right choices for you is too intimidating, your coach can support you in creating process and accountability that will lead to greater happiness. 

The Myths Of Happiness

For many people, maintaining an optimal level of happiness seems elusive. When they are happy, they tend to ignore why and when their happiness drops, they instinctively start looking for ways to jack it back up. This is the point at which one or more of the myths of happiness take over.

The myths generally fall under the category of "if - then"; if I get something, then my happiness will improve.

So...what are some of the myths?

1. Once I obtain A, B, or C, then I can be happy.

People often live in the future as though tomorrow holds something special that today does not. Moreover, people make decisions about being happy if only conditions A, B, or C are present in their lives. There is no justification for not permitting yourself to be happy now. There is nothing wrong with setting goals - like A, B, or C - but not allowing yourself to happily experience the process of achieving them is a lost opportunity.

2. There is little to be happy about: I don't own my home, I have debt, I need to lose weight, I just got a divorce.

You get the picture. All of these things - and more - may be true. However, it's not what happens to us so much but it's how we thing about what happens that matters. Shakespeare famously wrote "there is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Research has shown that our personal circumstances account for no more than 10% of our overall sense of happiness. The reason it is not higher is that we continually adapt as our lives unfold. Understanding this reality is the first step to successfully navigating the rough waters life creates.

3. If I get therapy, read the right book, take a workshop, or watch enough TED talks I can become happy.

All of these things can make a positive impact on a person's happiness but they come with the potential trap of unmet expectations. Setting an expectation about what will happen is trying to accurately predict the future -  a risky exercise indeed! By all means be proactive, but wait until the end to see how it turned out. This reduces the potential for disappointment and the feeling that, once again happiness has eluded you.

A large body of credible research has shown that taking personal charge of nurturing our happiness is the most effective way to make a positive difference. Check out this short video to see why.

If growing your happiness appeals to you but you are frustrated with where to start, your coach may be just the answer!

Would you rather eat an elephant, a snowball, or a frog?

I know you have heard this one.  How do you eat an elephant? Wait for it…one bite at a time. We all know the saying, but we often fail to apply this lesson in our businesses. 

Brian Tracy wrote a book called “Eat that Frog.”  He quotes Mark Twain, saying, “If the first thing that you do when you wake up in the morning is to eat a live frog, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that’s probably the worst thing that’s going to happen to you all day long.”

Yuck!

And we’ll discuss snowballs in a moment.

Right now, I'm working with a business owner right now that needs to eat an elephant, a snowball, and a frog.

She has a decent size business with 5 employees.  She has been at the same revenue for as long as I've known her and she wants to get over the hump.

She wants to work on marketing, managing her production crew, her admin staff, bookkeeping, and her own day-to-day activities. 

In other words…everything.

• First eating the elephant.

She’s finally letting me really dig in and help her. We have identified her three major goals for the next year and are simply breaking down each area of her business, one bite at a time.

• Next is the snowball.  Well, she’s not actually eating it, but you’ll get the point.

She is taking on the easiest project of her business first, like Dave Ramsey's snowball method for paying off debt. In this case, it is just job descriptions. She feels like this would be easy to work on.  Once she has that done for November, she will have some confidence and see her progress paying off and we move on to the next project. 

• Lastly, she is eating the frog.

Even though she is taking on the easiest project of her business, she is committing to working on the hardest task first each day.   In the case of job descriptions, she works on them for 30 minutes each morning, before answering any email or phone calls.

It's never a perfect process and there can always be a reason to put it off. 

The key is to break down the process into small bites, starting with the easiest project, and do the hardest task first each day.  

This will make the process manageable, allow you to build some early victories, and make each day count toward your goal.