Bazyn Communications
“Making the Impossible Possible” Newsletter
Winter 2016
“True vision with insight”
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Contents
1. Letter from the editor
2. Articles
a. “Should You Follow Up in December?” By: Wanda Allen, Follow Up Sales Strategies
b. “Investing in Your Business” By: Chris Scully, Total Biz 360
3. Updates
4. Products and Services
5. Contributing to this newsletter
6. Recommended links
7. Contact information
8. Favorite quotes
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Letter from the editor
Dear Readers,
The holiday season is my time of the year to be thankful for all my blessings: a wonderful supportive family, considerate and loving friends, congenial and helpful colleagues, and time to celebrate the Christmas blessing of the birth of Jesus. It’s also time to reflect on the future: what positive changes should I make and how I can better assist others. In this newsletter, I’ve included two articles written by other successful business owners. Both follow-up and investing in your business are topics we all need to remember.
I recently offered to sell a large print calendar planner for a visually impaired friend who created them. You can purchase one from my shopping cart online or give me a call and I’ll ship one to you. Please remember I offer a free consultation to see if I can assist you in developing your strategies for the future, whether you are considering retirement, deciding on whether to become an entrepreneur, or more fully develop your business with a new marketing or business plan.
This year, my travels have included Las Vegas, NV; Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; Dallas, TX; San Diego, CA; Paso Robles, CA; Faro, Portugal; Madrid, Spain; Minneapolis, MN twice; Santa Barbara, CA; Sioux Falls, SD; St. Cloud, MN; Santa Anna, CA; Chattanooga, TN; Redding, CA; Seattle, WA; and Denver, CO. In the next few months, I’ll be travelling to Las Vegas, NV; Washington, D.C.; Garden Grove, CA; Woodland Hills, CA; Sacramento, CA; Reno, NV; and Sioux Falls, SD. To give organizations and corporations discounted speaking fees, I try to coordinate events and trainings. Please let me know about events or possible speaking opportunities in these and other areas, since I’m always adding cities to my itinerary.
Have a wonderful holiday season!
Ardis Bazyn
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Should You Follow Up in December?
By: Wanda Allen, Follow Up Sales Strategies
The answer is YES!
Is December a busy time for many….of course. However, that should not stop you from following up with your clients, prospects and referral sources. It’s important that you stay “out of your head” with thoughts that will prevent you from taking action. Some of the action defeating thoughts are:
• He’s busy with year end
• She’s probably taking time off this month
• I’m sure she’s in the holiday mood and not wanting to be bothered
• I’ll follow up with him after the 1st of the year
I want you to say no, no, no and no to the above thoughts. So often when we get “in our head” we think we know what’s going on with our prospects, clients and referral sources, but more times than not we really don’t know.
During the month of December, focus on taking action and not worrying about the outcome. Not everybody puts business off until January. You have to make the call or send the email or text to find the one’s who aren’t putting business on hold this month.
On another note, December is a great time of year to show appreciation for your clients. Call and thank them for their business this year and let them know you look forward to working with them in 2017. This simple phone call can go a long way in deepening your relationships and creating loyalty.
For her Follow Up Sales Strategies Coaching Program. Call 858-382-1952 or wanda@followupsalesstrategies.com
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Investing in Your Business
By: Chris Scully, Total Biz 360
Treat your business as your most important investment. Make sure you get a good return.
Is Your Business a Good Investment?
Good question, isn’t it? How can you, a business owner, determine the answer without ego or emotion getting in the way? The short answer is look at the numbers. If there’s a return on the investment, good. If there isn’t, bad. There’s no justifying or explaining the numbers at this point. They are what they are.
Financial Planning
What you might miss is that any time you disburse business funds, you’re investing. At least that’s how you should view it.
Let’s look at beans to illustrate the point. You have 10 beans. If they grow into healthy plants they’ll produce enough new beans for your family to enjoy some and enable you to plant more next season. You wouldn’t bother planting the beans if you couldn’t get that kind of result. If you keep getting that kind of return, you’d be able to have beans growing on every available square foot of your property, eat what you want, set aside
enough for next year’s crop and sell the rest. Now your beans are a business. Every bean planted returned many times that to the farmer. That’s how business finance should be managed. Every bean you spend must produce so many more beans in return.
When you view business expenditures as investments that are supposed to produce a return, you’re less likely to waste money or foolishly buy things that you don’t need and won’t contribute to your bottom line. You can do the same thing with your time. Look at the time you’re spending at work as an investment that’s supposed to produce a return and you’re far less likely to spend it watching cat videos. That change in perspective will help you get on top of time management.
Lost Revenue
Lost revenue is usually a bigger problem for business than money wasted on expenditures that don’t result in a return. How does that work? If your business has the resources in terms of space, equipment and personnel to generate $10000 per week in revenue, bit it’s only producing $5000 per week. Operating at 50% of its potential is costing you $5000 per week in revenue you could have made but didn’t.
There’s another way a business can lose revenue. It’s similar to the example above, but much harder to see. Here’s how it happens. You build up your business to the point where its producing as much as it can possibly produce with current staff, equipment and space. Well done. Now, you can get people to work harder, maybe put in a little overtime, fine tune things to make them a bit more efficient and squeeze a little more production out of it year over year for a while.
You look at getting more space, hiring more staff, buying more or better equipment, but you don’t do any of those things because they’ll “cost a lot of money.” Spending that money might double or triple your revenue. Not spending it will keep it in the same range. Again you’re losing revenue.
Another example in the lost revenue category: You’ve been a solo operator for some time and you’ve done pretty well growing your business. You’re starting to hit your limit in terms of how hard and how smartly you can work. You’re maxed. You’re pretty sure that if you hired someone to take over some functions from you, you’d be able to keep the business growing. You don’t do it. You think, “I can’t afford the salary because that money would have to come out what I’ve been paying myself.” Similarly you might think, “I don’t have time to train anyone. I barely have time to eat lunch and do everything I’m supposed to do. It’s easier to just keep doing everything myself.” The truth is that you will be tighter on money and on time while you’re training your new
employee, but once you’ve gotten him or her trained and producing what you need, you’ll get a much greater return on that investment.
Conclusion
You can make your business a good investment by evaluating the potential return on all expenditures and ensuring you’re not losing income due to not operating at full capacity. When you do hit full capacity, increase your capacity. If you run your business finances this way, you’ll get a great return from the investments you make in your business!
Copyright © 2016 Total Biz 360, All rights reserved.
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Updates
To order books or seminars, check out www.bazyncommunications.com or call 818-238-9321. Checks, money orders, and credit cards through Paypal are accepted.
All my books are available for purchase on my website: www.bazyncommunications.com in several formats. You can receive a discounted print copy of my third book by ordering it on my publisher’s website: www.xlibris.com. BUILDING BLOCKS TO SUCCESS: Does the Image of Your Business Attract Customers and Motivate Employees?
Go to the author page and look for Ardis Bazyn or go to the book page and look for “Building Blocks to Success”.
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Products and Services
Bazyn Communications continues to offer inspirational and motivational speaking, business coaching, and writing. A free consultation by phone or in person is available upon request. For a list of speaking or coaching topics, visit www.bazyncommunications.com. We’re also available for a variety of writing projects, small and large: business plans, marketing plans, articles, and copy for most types of media for small businesses and nonprofits. Small Braille transcription projects
including greeting cards or business cards are offered at reasonable prices. Contact us for pricing.
If you wish to receive a text version of this newsletter or receive any past issues, please email: abazyn@bazyncommunications.com or call (818) 238-9321.
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Contributions Accepted
If you wish to contribute an article to a future newsletter, or make any suggestions, please send an email to abazyn@bazyncommunications.com. Each article received will be read and will be printed if it meets the newsletter criteria.
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Favorite Links
Check out the links of organizations in which I participate:
American Council of the Blind www.acb.org
Burbank Activities www.burbank.com
Burbank Business Network International www.bniburbank.com
Burbank Chamber of Commerce www.burbankchamber.com
California Council of the Blind www.ccbnet.org
California Voter Empowerment Circle www.calvec.org
Democracy Live Accessible Voting www.democracylive.com
Independent Visually Impaired Entrepreneurs www.ivie-acb.org
Randolph Sheppard Vendors of America www.randolph-sheppard.org
Speaker Match www.speakermatch.com
Success Simplified www.successsimplified.com
Xlibris Publishing www.xlibris.com
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Contact Information
Bazyn Communications
Ardis Bazyn
818-238-9321
abazyn@bazyncommunications.com
www.bazyncommunications.com
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Favorite Quotes
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance” – Steve Jobs
If we could look into each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently, with more love, patience, tolerance, and care.
Marvin J. Ashton—
“The right idea with no follow-through is dead on arrival”
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Copyright © 2016 by Bazyn Communications, All rights reserved.
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“Making the Impossible Possible”