What happened?

I've been spending the past day and a half trying to figure out what exactly happened. Why was I let go?

I was not given a reason when my former boss said they were moving on. The CFO of the company was there as well and briefly explained some benefits I would receive, but her body language and tone of her voice told me that she was not pleased with what was going on (I did not get the chance to get to know her too well, but we were friendly and she helped me out when I needed her assistance).

In addition, I was too blindsided to even ask why I was being let go. I turned over my keys, indicated where a couple of things were, and that was it. Halfway on the drive home, I just said to myself 'What the hell just happened there?' I've been thinking the same thing ever since.

Were there performance issues? None that I can think of. Had there been any, I would have expected my former boss to say something like 'Hey, I really need you to work on X' or 'You are struggling with Y, let's figure out a plan to get better in that area.' But there was none of that.

I spent about four months there, but those four months were spent cleaning up tens of thousands of square feet of indoor and outdoor space, rearranging floor space and improving the pricing strategies all in order to make things better for the staff and customers.

I'm just trying to figure out what to do going forward. Do I try to contact my former boss and obtain an explanation? One of my former staff members called me yesterday to see what happened, and I told him I didn't know. He indicated to me that my former boss gave them 'some politically correct answer that didn't make any sense' and that 'everyone was wondering who was next' and 'morale was terrible.'

How do I also frame this in cover letters and resumes? It's one thing if there was a reason given and I could explain that I learned from Z event or A reason and so forth. But there is none of that. If anyone has any tips, I'd love to hear from you!

What's next?

It's been a tough two years for me professionally.

I left my corporate job to focus solely on my business.

My business failed shortly thereafter.

After that, I found a great volunteer gig for a local affiliate of a well known non-profit. It even turned into a part time paid position! But it was short lived, as my wife and I had decided to relocate.

However, I turned that part time position into a management position with the same non-profit, just a different affiliate where we moved to. Awesome! Things are looking great!

Yesterday, I was informed they would be moving on without me. I wasn't given a reason why. I was too blindsided to even ask.

I've learned a ton about business and myself along the way, but I just don't know where to go from here. I know there are brighter days ahead.

Don't kick the can down the road

CNNMoney has an article out today regarding businesses trying to figure out who they are and what they do during down economic times.

Now, if a business has to spend any amount of time trying to figure out who or what they are during any economic condition, they have to be concerned. But let's disregard that just for the sake of argument.

When businesses find themselves in a challenging time, among one of the things they do is cut research and development. The first item in the article discusses this, and it is very true. It's low hanging fruit and the immediate results of that research is not to be reaped. But the problem is that when the down turn ends, there are a reduced number of products in the pipeline to be rolled out.

Plus, it opens the door to your competition catching up and passing you. If you need to trim the budget in tough times, R&D is not the place to do so. All you do is kick the can down the road a bit without solving the initial problem.

If you do need to cut costs, find where the fat is. Before you do layoffs, can you discover if your people  are not focusing on the right things? Can their time and efforts be directed elsewhere to increase revenues or decrease costs?

Can your manufacturing costs be reduced just by improving the process your products are produced or assembled? Can it be done quicker and with fewer steps? Don't just cut corners by reducing the quality of your inputs (your customers can always tell).

At the end of the day, don't take the easy way out when trying to get through challenging times. Keep up the R&D expenses. Don't lay people off, instead better utilize their talents to get more for your bottom line. Find other ways to reduce costs other than just the quality of the inputs.

These won't guarantee your businesses survival, but when the downturn ends, you will find your business in a much better position moving forward.

Why your small business no longer needs a website

There is no need for you to create or maintain a traditional website for your small business anymore.

Now, that does not mean to eliminate all presence of your business from the Internet. That would be suicide. But there are a couple of  reasons why you should ditch the traditional website and fully embrace social media.

Those reasons would be time and money.

If you have ever set up, or tried to set up a website, you know how time consuming that can be to get the perfect look and to get everything working properly. Sure, a lot of hosting sites provide templates, and even let you customize basic layouts, but that still takes a lot of time.

Then you have to pay for hosting. Depending on what your needs are, it could cost a few dollars a month or a few hundred dollars a month.

The simple and easy way to avoid all of this would be to get your business all over social media.

Facebook, Twitter and blogging are all excellent ways to get and keep your name out there. It takes very little time to set up a Facebook page, Twitter account and blog (Blogger and Word Press are the easiest ways to go).

Plus, all of those are free. It takes 15 seconds to compose a tweet or Facebook post. Perhaps a bit longer for your blog if you have more information you want to put together and share.

When I had my small business, I never even had any of my customers asking me for what my webpage was. I connected with them via my Twitter account and Facebook page. That way I could keep my customers informed and directly answer any questions they had or address any of their concerns. They never had to find me...just contact me through Facebook or Twitter and I could get back to them very quick.

So do yourself a favor. Ditch the time consuming and expensive webpage. Fully embrace social media. You will have much more time and money to focus on your business.

Why you should not buy Facebook stock...yet.

Facebook officially goes public tomorrow, with an initial price of $38 per share. That price has largely been set due to initial demand and absolutely nothing to do with any form of rational thinking.

Yes, there are going to be some very wealthy people tomorrow both on paper and in their pockets. Those that are wealthy on paper are those that have a lot of Facebook shares and those that have their pockets overflowing with money are those that sell some or all of their shares tomorrow.

Here is the problem. Facebook pulled in only about $1 billion in revenue last year. That is no number to sneeze at, but with their IPO price of $38 per share, that values the company at about $104 billion dollars. Is their P/E ratio really worth being at 104?

Google's P/E ratio is 18.9. Apple's is 12.9. Even non-tech giants Johnson & Johnson and General Electric hang out at 17.4 and 15.3 respectfully. Sure, those companies have been public companies for much longer, and have even had significantly higher P/E ratios then they do now (especially Google and Apple).

So yes, Facebook's stock price will probably even rise tomorrow and perhaps into the next week as people trip over themselves just to get a piece of the action.

But the price will fall. It has to. Unless Facebook comes up with an amazing new revenue stream over the next several quarters. Once the P/E comes under 25 or so, it would be worth looking into owning.

That is, unless the company is one of so many other tech companies who were the hottest thing going and is no more - and is beginning to be passed by some new kid on the block.

Come tomorrow, take a pass on Facebook. Wait until their revenues come up, or the stock price falls then jump in. One or both of those will happen, and that, you can take to the bank.

A post about procrastination

I'll get to it tomorrow...

Think about the short term but focus on the long term

I have always been annoyed by something in the world of business. It's not a new problem. In fact, I'm not even sure how many people even realize it is a problem. However, it is something that should be looked at more and something should be done about it.

There is just way too much focus on company quarterly earnings reports.

I suspect that a lot of this is being driven by the 24/7 media cycle we find ourselves in these days. The media talking heads that are on all of the tv networks, business websites or bloggers such as myself need stuff to write and talk about. It is easy to talk about companies quarterly earnings because it gives great talking points about where the business currently stands, and provides contrast against prior quarters.

Add all of this to 'meeting analysis' expectations' and it becomes easy to see how companies can shift focus to maintaining the good news every quarter - and maintaining a good stock price. When those expectations become too much, companies can turn to various shady practices to keep the good times rolling, but they will inevitably get caught.

That is why I believe companies should continually maintain focus on their long term plans, strategies and growth. Yes, short term thinking is obviously needed, but don't let it overtake focusing on the long term.

However, companies must maintain their focus on the long term. By doing so, short term plans will take care of themselves. Yes, there will be quarters of disappointing news, but it happens to all companies. Don't lose sleep over that and keep looking forward!