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Reputation Isn’t Everything

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I’m a code monkey by trade. Software development pays my mortgage.

I’m also–and separately–a small business owner and have been for years. I’ve actually got several side-hustles going, but only one of them is formal, organized, and incorporated as an LLC. A few years ago, a friend and I decided to go into business together, got certified by the state and start making some extra money.

I have recently discovered that two of the government agencies related to our business have been referring students to us. When our customers call the certifying organization, they are–at least some of the time–recommending us over nearly 200 of our competitors. You can’t buy that kind of marketing. At least, I hope you can’t.

How did that happen? How did two faceless bureaucracies decide that we were the company to recommend?

People talk. Over the last few years, we have worked to make sure people want to say nice things about us. What did we do?

1. We never lie. Our business is training. If one of our students asks a question I can’t answer, I admit it and promise to find the answer. Then, after class, I find the answer and email it to everyone.

2. We are reliable. If we schedule a class and just one person shows up, we hold the class. We have had classes with two instructors and one student. Our hourly rate sucked those days, but the students loved the attention and sent us business afterward. I’d never cancel if even one person is planning to be there.

3. We give it away. We give a lot away. If our customers have questions before or after class, we answer them. I spend time on related forums answering questions. Veterans take our class at cost. I try to give away at least as much value as I get paid for.

Now, this sounds like a sales page, but it’s not. I’m not mentioning the name of my company or even the industry, just so nobody thinks I’m trying to drum up business.

We have dropped a crazy amount of time and effort into building our reputation. With a firm foundation of knowledge and the 3 items I mentioned above, a good reputation is easy to build. A bad reputation is even easier. It’s been said that a happy customer will tell 1 person about his experience, while an unhappy customer will tell 100. Repairing the damage from the unhappy customer is much more expensive than just doing it right the first time.

Building a good reputation is absolutely critical for a successful business. Be ethical, honest, and helpful. Always be there when you say you will be, and try to give away as much as possible without actually hurting yourself. People will talk, so don’t give them a chance to say bad things without being liars themselves.

Reputation isn’t everything. You also need knowledge, marketing, and a product. Without a good reputation, however, the rest doesn’t matter.

Charity is Selfish

Finance, Life

I try to give 10% of my income to charity. I don’t succeed every year, but I do try.

I don’t give because I’m generous. I give because I’m selfish.

If you give to charity, you are too.

I’m not talking about people who give to charity strictly for the tax deduction, though that is selfish too. I’m referring specifically to the people who give to charity out of the goodness of their hearts.

If I give a thousand dollars worth of clothes to a homeless shelter, I get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I helped people stay warm.

If I send $100 to the Red Cross for whatever terrible disaster happened shortly before I made the donation, it makes me feel good to have contributed to saving those lives.

The put-the-inner-city-kids-on-a-horse thing we do? Makes me happy to get those kids into a positive situation.

Donating blood? Yay, me! I’m saving lives!

While it’s nice to help other people, that’s not the ultimate reason I’m doing it. I do it because it makes me feel good about myself to help other people, particularly people who–for whatever reason–can’t help themselves.

That’s the basis of altruism. It’s not about helping others, it’s about feeling good about helping others.

The truly selfish, the evil dogooders, are the ones who want to raise taxes to give it away as “charity”. They get to feel like they are doing something and helping others while not actually contributing themselves and, at the same time, stealing that warm fuzzy feeling from the people who are providing the money to start with.

Evil.

Charity has to be done at a personal, local level or the benefits to the giver are eliminated while the benefits to the receiver are lessened. Bureaucracy doesn’t create efficiency.

For the record, if it’s taken by force, by tax, it isn’t charity. Charity cannot be forced. Forcing charity is, at best, a fraudulent way for petty politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and activists to feel they have power over others.

Again, evil.

Anchor Price Your Salary

Finance

: Image by Dalboz17 via Flickr

Conventional wisdom says that, when negotiating your salary or a raise, you should make whatever crazy ninja maneuvers it takes to get the other person to name a number first.

Horse pellets.

Have you ever watched an infomercial? Those masters of of impulse marketing geared towards insomniacs, invalids, and inebriates?

“How much would you pay for this fabulous meat tenderizer/eyelash waxer? $399? $299? No! If you call within the next 73 seconds, we will let you take this home for the low, low price of just $99.99!”

That’s the magic of anchor pricing.

The first number you hear is the number you will base all further numbers on. If you hear a high number, other lower numbers will feel much lower by comparison. The number doesn’t even have to be about money.

There was a study done that had the subjects compare a price to the last two digits of their social security numbers. Those with higher digits found higher prices to be acceptable, while those with lower prices only accepted cheaper prices.

What does an infomercial marketing ploy have to do with your salary?

If you are negotiating your salary and your potential employer gives a lowball offer, every higher counteroffer after that will much, much higher than than it would otherwise. On the other hand, if you start with your “perfect” salary, they amount you will be happy to settle for won’t seem to be nearly as high to the employer. At the same time, you will be less likely to accept a lowball offer if you set your anchor price high.

For example, if you are looking to make $50,000:

The employer offers you $40,000. $60,000 seems too high by comparison, so you counter with $50,000, then compromise and settler for $45,000. Or, you could start at $60,000, making the employer feel that $40,000 is too low, so he counters with $45,000, leaving a compromise at $52,000. That’s a hypothetical $7,000 boost, just for bucking conventional wisdom and taking a cue from the marketing industry.

How have you negotiated your salary?

Build a Bunker: How to make a vault without breaking the bank

Life

The door to the walk-in vault in the Winona Sa... — Image via Wikipedia

In your home, you should be safe. When the crappy things happen and somebody decides they want what you have, how easy will it be for them to get it? Is your home a convenience store, or is it more trouble than it’s worth?

Some people will avoid making themselves safer because they think that will make them a “paranoid nut”. In reality, they are just making themselves easy victims. The sad fact is that evil exists and it does not care how you feel about it.

Other people think that it will be too expensive to fix up their home. While you can spend as much as you want on a security system, it’s possible to get started for little-to-no money and still be more effective than 95% of everyone else.

There are a few simple things you can do to make your house less attractive to thieves, and to protect what you have if they do decide to make your home a target.

Lock your doors. This costs nothing, but gives you a first line of defense that can’t be beat. If someone is going to break into your house, make them work for it and force them to be noisy about getting in. Keep the door locked, even if you are awake and alert. It’s a simple thing that can make a huge difference. Most exterior doorknobs have a setting to stay locked at all times, so there’s nothing for you to remember.
Reinforce your door. If you’ve ever installed a doorknob, you’ve seen the little screws they give you to attach the strike-plate. Those screws aren’t long enough to make it through the decorative trim. One swift kick and those screws will pop right out and let your door swing open. The $2 fix? Replace those cute little baby screws with 3 inch screws that can reach the studs in your wall. Do that where the hinges attach, too. Tada! You’ve made your house a bit more of a pain in the butt for a thief. Don’t forget to treat the door to an attached garage the same way.
Install a motion-activated security light. When a thief is thinking about getting into your house, they don’t want the lights on, so install a light for them. If possibly, put it too high for someone to reach.
Lock your screen door. If someone comes to your door, and you open your door, you are removing any protection a door would normally offer. If you have a screen door, and it’s locked, you are gaining precious seconds to shut and lock your main door if the person on the other side doesn’t have your best interests at heart.
Lock your car in your driveway. If you have an attached garage, keep a garage door opener in your car, and don’t lock your car, you are giving every crook who passes by a free pass into your home. Lock your car and at least make life difficult for the little thug.
Consider getting an alarm system. You can get an unmonitored wireless alarm system for about $100. It won’t call the cops, but it will let you know if someone comes into your house and it’s a snap to install.
Put your cell-phone charger in your bedroom. If you need to call 911, you don’t want to have to run to the kitchen to get your phone. Keep it where you will be if and when you’ll need it.

There, seven tips that will cost you less than $150 to implement, but will go a long way towards keeping yourself safe.

Lost Wallet: What to Do Before It’s Gone

Finance

The Costanza Wallet — Image by shareski via Flickr

I’ve never been mugged. Hopefully, fate has decided that I never will be. Given my habits, it is far more likely that my money clip will fall out of my wallet without me noticing.

That’s a significant piece of my life. That would mean I lost my driver’s license, my debit card, my business credit card, my insurance cards, my carry permit, and the only credit card I carry.

What happens when you lose your wallet? You go to the DMV and get your driver’s license replaced. You call your credit card companies and ask them to invalidate your credit card numbers and send you new cards. You write off the missing cash and hope you don’t need the business cards that you tucked in behind the photo of your great-grand-uncle’s neighbor’s cousin’s mistress’s puppy.

How do you reach your credit card company? You take the card out of your wallet, flip it over, and call the number on the back. But you lost your wallet? What now?

Do you have every statement, that comes with the phone numbers you need to call? I don’t. At this moment, I do not have the phone number for the bank that issues the debit card for my Health Savings Account. I don’t actually know who issued the card. I don’t even know who I would call to report the card missing.

How do you prepare for that? What can you do do make your life much less miserable when your wallet walks aways with a pickpocket, or falls out of your pocket while you’re tooling down the highway on the back of a motorcycle doing 100 miles per hour, dodging the police and winking at the innocent passerby rocking out to really bad back-room country western music in a late model orange convertible? (That’s probably just me.)

How would you prepare for a lost wallet?

There is an 6 step solution to remove all of the worry about someone finding your wallet and using your credit card to fund a Russian adult chat membership, the only site where basement-dwelling losers can talk to someone pretending to be the cooperative mail-order bride they are about to order.

Take everything that matters out of your wallet.
Find a copy machine or a scanner.
Put everything from your wallet on the scanner.
Scan it.
Flip the cards over and scan again.
Either print the scan and put it in a fire-proof safe, or encrypt it and email it to someone you trust who does NOT live in the same house you do. If your house burns down, you want to have access to the files.

Depending on the number of things you keep in your wallet, you might have to repeat the steps a few times to get it all copied. You definitely want to copy both sides, so you can have the card numbers and the phone numbers saved.

Now, if you lose your wallet, you have all of the information you need to deal with the problem and get those cards cancelled.

How do you track your cards and contact information?

How to Prioritize Your Spending

Finance, Uncategorized

Don’t buy that.

At least take a few moments to decide if it’s really worth buying.

Too often, people go on auto-pilot and buy whatever catches their attention for a few moments. The end-caps at the store? Oh, boy, that’s impossible to resist. Everybody needs a 1000 pack of ShamWow’s, right? Who could live without a extra pair of kevlar boxer shorts?

Before you put the new tchotke in your cart, ask yourself some questions to see if it’s worth getting.

1. Is it a need or a want? Is this something you could live without? Some things are necessary. Soap, shampoo, and food are essentials. You have to buy those. Other things, like movies, most of the clothes people buy, or electronic gadgets are almost always optional. If you don’t need it, it may be a good idea to leave it in the store.

2. Does it serve a purpose? I bought a vase once that I thought was pretty and could hold candy or something, but it’s done nothing but collect dust in the meantime. It’s purpose is nothing more than hiding part of a flat surface. Useless.

3. Will you actually use it? A few years ago, my wife an cleaned out her mother’s house. She’s a hoarder. We found at least 50 shopping bags full of clothes with the tags still attached. I know, you’re thinking that you’d never do that, because you’re not a hoarder, but people do it all the time. Have you ever bought a book that you haven’t gotten around to reading, or a movie that went on the shelf, still wrapped in plastic? Do you own a treadmill that’s only being used to hang clothes, or a home liposuction machine that is not being used to make soap?

3. Is it a fad? Beanie babies, iPads, BetaMax, and bike helmets. All garbage that takes the world by storm for a few years then fades, leaving the distributors rich and the customers embarrassed.

4. Is it something you’re considering just to keep up with the Joneses? If you’re only buying it to compete with your neighbors, don’t buy it. You don’t need a Lexus, a Rolex, or that replacement kidney. Just put it back on the shelf and go home with your money. Chances are, your neighbors are only buying stuff so they can compete with you. It’s a vicious cycle. Break it.

5. Do you really, really want it? Sometimes, no matter how worthless something might be, whether it’s a fad, or a dust-collecting knick-knack, or an outfit you’ll never wear, you just want it more than you want your next breath of air. That’s ok. A bit disturbing, but ok. If you are meeting all of your other needs, it’s fine to indulge yourself on occasion.

How do you prioritize spending if you’re thinking about buying something questionable?

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