31. December 2008 by admin.

You might think this is crazy, but in the world of economics, I prefer flatness or contraction. A couple of bullets;

• Growth will put you out of business quicker than recession because you have to re-capitalize, hire, spend. It’s exciting to see the top line soar and dissapointing to see your quality, reputation and bottom line suffer
• In a contraction everyone works on quality, slowing down, educating, doing the best job for the best price. There’s more gratitude for the work that’s available, less greed, less like a land-grab.
• Quality thrives, greed, avarice, corruption and poor character diminish.
• Its easier to cut costs than re-capitalize, disciplined busioness owners are rewarded

 I know my company will come out the other side of this recession tempered by it’s furnace and better able to handle what comes our way. Our website, www.needrecon.com, is a good example of this. I’ve always worked on quality, my backlinks and SEO work have all been geared towards quality and providing service. The websites that link to mine are in the same general category, there’s no phishing, spamming or clogging google with unrelated backlinks. It’s been slow, but I think there’s benefit for our customers this way. In a growth economy this has not helped me, cometition has spammed google, and although google promises to punish these tactics, my niche of bumper and dent repair is too small for them to notice, and so things like reconexpress and bumperdoc that were started locally by out of state businesses to look like me and take business away from me,  prosper, even though reconexpress sends it’s clients to a San Diego company with no accountability in Las Vegas and Bumperdoc is essentially doing market research. Both of these companies have almost 20,000 backlinks, whereas I have 400 quality links placed and another 500 or so given for a total of 900.  One could say they are just doing a better job, but when I consider the  thousands of hours scouring the internet for related topics and opportunities to post good info, then I see their links to bikini babes because it gets more hits, I feel good about our quality.

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22. May 2008 by admin.

Here’s the article at CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/22/lifelock.flap.ap/index.html?eref=ib_topstories

The real story here isn’t that Todd Davis screwed up giving out his social security number and criminals trying to profit from it, nor is it a story about LifeLock working or not. The real story here is that Todd Davis created a fortune and a good company with an idea that really worked and some fantastic marketing. It was only a matter of time before the attorneys came seeking a part of his fortune through a frivolous lawsuit.

The real story here is about the aptly named attorney David Paris.  He’s formed a cadre of suers I’ll call “Parisites” that want a portion of Todd Davis’s earnings. A great moral and lesson for everyman seeking his fortune in our country. When I learned how to write a Business Plan there was encouragement to be critical and ask the question “What could go wrong” so we could be prepared. The new element in a successful business plan shouldn’t be in what areas could there be liability but in addition, if we’re successful the parasites will come and what do we do with the money reserved for legal defense. Fast fortunes bring fast lawsuits.

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19. March 2008 by admin.

1. 15% of the dashboard space of my company is dedicated to getting me to spend more money with Quickbooks instead of forecasting profits like it should
2. Often when I write a check it prompts me to buy Quicken checks
3. My email box gets spammed from Quicken
4. They offered me 20 key tips every business should know. Click on the link and I have to buy something to get the tips. I already spent hundreds of dollars with these people. Are they withholding information that could help me be successful?
5. Every year it gets more complicated without getting better
6. It costs a fortune compared to Peachtree, but Peachtree makes more sense to my CPA
7. When listing the reasons to upgrade to 2008 quickbooks they failed to mention my current software can actually do the same thing
8. There’s no easy way to get the clients PO number and my invoice number to appear on the same line when I print a statement, I have to make a special customer remark to do it. How does it benefit me not revealing PO numbers on a statement. Don’t AP people pay the vendors first when there are no questions?
9. Everything is proprietary, it doesn’t play well with other children.
10. Quickbooks makes it easier to use a payroll service than pay employees through their software.

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4. March 2008 by admin.

Scratched paint is the hardest paint repair there is, barring paint and body work, but with a little information you’ll be ready to tackle the biggest headache.

If you can see the scratch, but when you run your fingernail across it you can’t feel it, this is good news. The scratch will polish out. Recon recommends 3M Perfect-It 3 Extra cut Compound, you can buy it at any auto paint store, if they don’t have it, the fellow at the counter will recommend a product for you. Get a paper towel or a soft terry cloth rag, put a thimble full of compound on it and rub it vigorously into the scratch. The compound goes through a process, first of being a white colored liquid sandpaper, you’re rubbing will turn this into a clear polish in a couple of moments, when you see the white stuff go clear, change your rubbing motion into a light circular pattern until all the compound is rubbed in, wipe with a dry part of the towel and take a look. Repeat till the scratch is history.

If you feel the scratch with your fingernail, try the last process any way, usually a good part of the scratch will disappear leaving a smaller less noticeable scratch.

If the paint is gouged into the color, there are two repairs. First, you can run a bead of touch up paint over it, this fixes it 50%, it’s still visible, just not as ugly, unless you get globby with the paint. Keep trying and wiping it off till it looks appealing. The other way to make it go away is to sand it out and respray, this is the only way to make the damage disappear 100%.

We use a squeegee method sometimes, pushing paint into a scratch and then polishing with a chemical afterwards. Langka has a similar product, but the color is an eyeball match, I prefer the more expensive Paint Bull method, it uses Standox paint for a perfect color match, necessary with pearls and metal flakes, and an easier to use liquid polish over Langka’s solid compound. You can try this at home, but expect to mess it up a couple of times before getting it right. Buy some touch up paint from your local car paint store, put a bead on a squeegee and wipe it into the scratch. Let it flash dry, usually a minute or two, then carefully rub the excess off the undamaged paint with rubbing compound being careful not to pull paint out of the scratch.

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