Archive for August, 2009
Public Works genuises
Posted by: | CommentsOn Friday I showed you the latest building award pics. Many of them are probably from 3rd world or “poor” nations where you would “expect” it.
Well many thanks to Lorna today I’d like to show you a doozey from Auckland New Zealand perpetrated not by private contractors but the government!!
At least they added cones 
Hey it’s only a pole carrying high voltage power lines in the middle of a road.
Side of the road, middle of the road, don’t be so fussy!!
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Smart Building awards
Posted by: | CommentsSome companies insist on going that extra mile, even when a simple inch would have done!!
Words fail me.
The back of that screen has not been stolen.
OSH gone mad??
Straight, what is straight?
All aboard the midget express.
And out of this balcony you can see……
I want to be there when the next train arrives
I don’t know, is this laziness, stupidity or what?
And the winner is
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Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Technology
Posted by: | Comments
It is a changing world we live in isn’t it?
Yesterday I had 2 meetings with people regarding investing software. One had been developed nearly ten years ago and the person showing me thought it was amazing. I am sure it had been amazing in its day but I was struggling to see where the viable product was. Later in the day I was given a tour of some new software that just blew me away. They were both doing the same thing basically but in terms of how technology has changed they were worlds apart.
It can be hard finding this balance between the things that need to “change with the times” and “fundamentals never change”.
The most striking thing I noticed about these 2 software approaches was that ten years ago we were trying to find ways to gather information in quantity and present it in one place. The focus was on the excitement of being able get information more easily.
The new software on the other hand was all about removing information so that you could make sense of the bits you want. In other words the focus was on helping solve the problem of too much information being available so easily.
What a shift!! How we have changed in 1 decade as a culture!.
I reluctantly embraced Facebook and Twitter for example as a means of connecting with people. And I have “met” some amazing people and love being able to connect globally. As a relational junkie I just love it.
But the part I hate is the hundreds of people who send me farmville animals and mafia wars requests etc and “you should join this group that likes to join groups of people who are connected to people who like small fluffy ducks”.
Information overload is already changing the way we do life and the changes come thick and fast. The highest compliment I ever receive is from people who say to me “I never subscribe to anything or read anything on the internet except your blog and newsletter. Wow!! Considering how much stuff they could read I am unbelievably honoured that people find my content valuable enough to let it through the overload filters.
So if you’re not a digital native, (in other words you are over 40), understand that your life is forever changed from the world you grew up in. Your brain developed in an environment where it did the job of filtering, sorting and gathering information. And it had time to do so. Today you will have to embrace technology (or become a quaker), because you just can’t stop the messages coming at you. The sheer volume of information coming at you will literally do your head in unless you actively decide to limit and filter it.
Now I have to go and deal with the 1483 emails I haven’t been able to file yet
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Retention
Posted by: | CommentsIn your business, or even in your personal life, what’s your retention level like? Do you collect people or trade them. For businesses it is an important distinction.
I look at my client list and see people who have been with me for years. I get 10 new subscribers for every 1 who unsubscribes. And usually an unsubscribe comes with an explanation as to why. I’m very proud of that because it means people want to stay connected with me. If those stats changed I would be deeply concerned as to what I was doing wrong.
Businesses often refer to clients coming and going as “churn” and it is just considered a part of doing business. Clients come and go and that behaviour is just accepted or expected.
I believe that we don’t take enough notice of why people come and go in most businesses to our detriment.
You see keeping a client “costs” a fraction of what it costs to get a new one. And it doesn’t matter whether you are a car salesman, cafe owner or a sports club, keeping clients should be your number 1 priority.
In the personal development industry for example if you add up the costs of seminars, print advertising etc. etc. your “cost of acquisition” to obtain a new client might be anything from $10 to $500. The cost of keeping that client and the value they add to your business is immeasurable.
So lets say you’re a small business with 100 clients and they cost you on average $100 to acquire. And they spend on average $1000 per year with you. That means your current client list is worth around $10,000. And you get a return on your initial investment of 900%.
Generally new clients are higher maintenance and lower profit margin until you have them “trained” so the 2nd and 3rd year of having them are the most profitable.
So if you keep 100% of your clients you have locked in 100K income at no ongoing cost. This gives you the ability to spend money keeping those clients happy and making them even more loyal. The fruit of that typically is word of mouth advertising which adds to your client base with no cost of acquisition.
However most businesses don’t even know what their retention rate is and often they churn as much as 50% of their clients annually. This means they have to constantly spend money on new client acquisition and they never exit the new client low margin profit cycle. In fact their whole business ends up structured around constant client change. This is both inefficient and incredibly profit sapping.
My favourite example recently of this is a cafe I visited that wouldn’t let me pay for my food without me giving them a business card. The next day I started receiving emails telling me the daily special and anything else interesting about the menu.
That cafe is full everyday. In fact you can’t get a seat if you arrive after 12. Because they send a 50 word email daily to their clients they have almost 100% client retention. But more than that they are insanely profitable too because they serve exactly what people want. By rotating the specials and tracking the number of orders they build up a picture very quickly and basically for free of exactly what their regulars want to eat. So they give their clients what they want!! Result no food left over, no waste = increased profits.
And because they are making a smaller selection of food because they know what their clients want, they need less staff to prepare and can buy fewer ingredients in larger quantities to drive production costs down!!
DO you get the power in this. All for the “cost” of a daily email this cafe is making a killing in a recession and in an industry that is considered very high churn this company has almost perfect client retention. Imagine what YOU could do in YOUR business if YOU kept all YOUR clients!!
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Crystal ball crushing, the new emerging industry
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I met with yet another senior banking official today and he again confirmed my pessimistic outlook in the medium term. He said “We all crushed our crystal balls some months ago” and all we know for certain is that the carnage has a long way to go.
He enlightened me as to another reason why the banks are being so “patient” by letting tens of thousands of mortgagee properties and insolvent developers stay afloat, and that is that if the banks take action they not only stuff the property market for some time but if they crystallize their losses it will significantly affect their bottom lines and THAT will affect their share prices. So there is a significant degree of self interest going on that I hadn’t thought of before.
In fact it was fascinating to listen to his years of wisdom in dealing with the fallout of investment failure from a bankers perspective. They often get a bad rap as boring or conservative but it was hard to fault his accountant like common sense.
It has often been said that common sense is very uncommon and that is often true isn’t it!
Anyway back to the topic, we can be thankful that the banks have as much of an interest in keeping things going as we all do individually because this is preventing the carnage we saw in the late 80′s when the banks showed no mercy.
So if you are in a good position today thank God and if you are still trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel be thankful that the banks are on your side, even if for their own ends.
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Reaction or response
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When you say things publicly as I do you often get to see a large variety of replies to your thoughts or comments. This happened recently when I warned you all HERE about the new Sales and Purchase Agreements being promoted by REINZ.
I did have one of my facts wrong, which was that the date for REINZ membership becoming voluntary is the 16th November not the first, however other than that everything I said is substantially correct. In fact since I posted that newsletter a prominent conveyancing specialist has been touring property organisations nationally saying exactly what my solicitor said, albeit in more restrained formal language.
Anyway my point is not to defend myself in this case but to comment on the way people react in general. In any situation we have an opportunity to react, which is a bit like a reflex action where we might angrily lash out OR respond, where we think about what was said and how and make a response designed to either educate, challenge or inspire.
For example with my newsletter above I received an email from someone telling me that my emotional statements undermined my authority. Fair enough but when I asked him to tell me what I said that was factually incorrect I have never had a reply. He reacted to me and has been unable to respond, if that makes sense.
Then I received another from someone who had forwarded an emotive reaction from someone else but he simply said, ‘You might want to look at this”. So he was giving me feedback and information rather than yelling at me. In his email I discovered my solicitors mistake over the dates.
I have had to learn to respond to people and not lash out in reaction becuase I get more feedback than many people and it is easy to take negative feedback personally. But I have found as I learn to respond that often my attackers even become my friends as we learn to understand each other. After all we are not looking for everybody to have the same opinion on everything but we should be able to be connected with people who we might disagree with. Isn’t that what life and relationships is all about?
I hope you have a most responsive day!!
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
Award for creativity goes to the tenants!!
Posted by: | CommentsWe are all tempted to come up with an excuse when we get caught doing something wrong. However I can’t think of anything that comes close to the creative genius of tenants who are behind in their rent. In New Zealand the most common excuses are illness or family bereavement but here are some excuses gathered from US landlords. The duck is my favourite!!
NOTE: The first 5 entries are all from the same tenant!!
- “My daughter rear-ended an off-duty police officer while drunk-driving last night. I had to use the money to bail her out of jail.”
- “I thought that the last month of the rent for the year lease was covered by the ‘last month’ payment that I made when I moved in. I didn’t know I had to actually give you notice and move out for ‘last month’ to apply. You didn’t tell me that!” Unbelievable.
- “I was out of town with the cash. Thank God I had it because my car broke down and I luckily had that money with me to fix it.”
- “We are late because we had to pay the movers to move in.”
- “My accountant said I can’t afford to pay my rent.”
- “We had a new gazebo installed which makes your property much more valuable.”
- “I meant to pay you, but things got crazy. It’s the thought that counts, right?”
- “I got paid but someone stole only the $600 I owe you in rent.”
- “I couldn’t pay the rent, I had something in my eye and couldn’t come to your office.”
- “I’m sorry, I spent this month’s rent on a much needed cruise vacation. Don’t worry- there’s a casino and I’ll win back the rent PLUS the late fee!”
- “I MAILED IT AT THE POST OFFICE LAST NIGHT BUT SOMEONE LIT THAT MAILBOX ON FIRE THIS MORNING.”
- “I had the rent yesterday when I called you to come pick it up. You didn’t show so I spent it.”
- “With my daughter’s graduation, our new boat and our trip to Europe this year, we’re a little strapped.”
- “I couldn’t pay the rent because I had to pay for the California Lottery Machine in my business because it costs $10,000 to renew. I’ll have the rent in three weeks.”
- “My boss’s mother was in the hospital and I had to go to the hospital to visit her.” followed by “My son had the flu and I’ve had the flu for a week so I couldn’t work.” followed by “We’ve both lost our jobs” followed by “We’ll come pay you the $2,000 we owe you tonight” followed by “I couldn’t get to the bank before it closed” followed by “I couldn’t leave work to come pay you” followed by “My boss couldn’t give me my pay this week” followed by eviction by Police
- “I know the rent is late again, I figured it was okay if we got it to you late. If we knew you needed it on the 1st we would of got it to you, but we thought it was okay to mail it on the 5th (It’s always been due on the 1st for the past four years!) . We’ve been going through some hard times and I’m sure you probably are too.”
- “I lost my job.” ( again) and “You have no right to talk to me that way.” When asked about the $80,000. divorce settlement she bragged about recieving, the fine ‘woe is me’ tenant then agreed to vacate but now has pending charges for stealing the laundry equipment.
- “My dog ate it.”
- “The swine flu freaked me out so much, I forgot to send you the rent check.”
- “I have plenty of money to pay rent but my husband has to pay it because he’s the man and has to take care of his babies.”
- “We all have the flu. We’re not sure if it’s Swine flu, and we like you so much we didn’t want to give it to you, so we didn’t pay the rent.”
- “I don’t have time for this– We are going to see the new STAR TREK movie. We’ll worry about the rent another time.”
- “It is SINFUL how money hungry you are! Our last landlord was THANKFUL we paid every 27th of the month!” Oh yeah. I finally tracked down her last landlord. He evicted her!
- “I just found out my husband is a homosexual. I don’t know what he’s been doing with our money!”
- “I was riding my bike over to pay the rent and someone came up from behind me and hit me on my head. When I woke up my money was gone and there were police & ambulance & people all around. I spent three days in the hospital, I have cuts and bruises all over my head”. So I drove over to the house and knocked on the door. She was fine, she just didn’t have the money and wasn’t going to have it for a long time. Can you say Eviction?
- “Come see what I did for you. You won’t want the rent when you see this!” Oh my God! She painted everything fire engine red — glossy! All my beautiful crown moldings and wood work. Her deposit will never be enough to restore it.
- “How can you expect to get your rent on time in this economy?”
- “My husband got some new tattoos that got infected so he’s missed work and lost his job. The tats weren’t cheap y’know, and now he’s gotta get a new job! Whatd’ya want from us???” Let’s start with the rent.
- “I lost my job because you (the landlord) is always texting me regarding the (7 months) rent I owe.”
- “We all had food poisoning the last 2 weeks. Don’t come near us. I’ll have the rent to you by the 15th.” Food poisoning is contagious?! Just admit you don’t have the money.
- “My son won’t clean up his room, he won’t pay his room & board, he won’t do any of his chores. I had to pay a lawyer to get him out. So I am short on the rent.”
- “I was on vacation most of the month so I wasn’t even there. Why should I pay the whole month if I didn’t even use the place?”
- “I thought the first month with a new landlord was free.”
- “My duck was injured in the basement when his wing got caught on the oil burner. The vet bill has delayed my rent. Sorry.” Doesn’t NO PETS include ducks?.
- “The people upstairs said they were behind six months last year and it wasn’t a problem. We’re only a month behind. Why are you giving US a hard time?.”
- “I wrote the check out on time, I just didn’t mail it.” The delivery is key to getting your rent paid. – Walter H.. Colorado
- “I had to quit my job because I couldn’t find childcare. They won’t let me get free childcare unless I have a job, and I can’t get a job unless I have free childcare.
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv
To get the latest investing information on time and for free make sure you get my regular newsletter here
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