Picture by Prettywomen_1969 

If you’re an established business (i.e. out of the start-up phase), there’s a pretty good chance that you’re making a major mistake that’s costing you a lot of money.

You’re setting a goal to grow next year – maybe you’d be happy with a 10% top line growth.  With that in mind, you start building your marketing plan and think of all the ways you can spend money to attract the new customers you’ll need.

Of course you’ll need add quite a bit more than 10% of your current revenue base to get a net growth of 10%, what with customers leaving you or spending less…

Wait – does that make sense?  You’re going to spend a lot of money on getting new customers (there’s been several studies that show that new customers typically cost 3 – 7 times more to acquire than keeping an existing customer would cost).

How much are you going to spend on keeping those existing customers?

If you’re like a lot of businesses, not much at all – and that’s the problem.

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photo by ed ludwick 

The following is a guest post by Mike Vande Brake, partner at Vande Brake and Baker CPAs.

It’s nearly time to begin making those New Year’s resolutions, the wishful thoughts borne out of our guilt for the things we typically let slip. Lose weight. Exercise more. Eat fewer sweets. You get the idea.

We can all come up with something we should be doing or at least something we ought to do better. Sometimes these things are trivial, and if we don’t keep our resolution, the impact is negligible.

But there are those rare occasions when a New Year’s resolution can completely change the course of your life.

Even in our business lives, we set goals: I will not avoid the person in the next cubicle but will, instead, be friendly and open to conversation even though my inbox is a mile high.

Yet for many business owners, particularly new ones, the day-to-day trials of working with clients, answering phone calls, or completing the day’s task list can be overwhelming. The thought of setting a goal other than “Be home by 5:30 p.m. one day a week” is a pipe dream.

There is one goal, though, that may make all of your dreams come true: organization

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photo by RandysonofRobert 

I imagine I’m like a lot of people – I’m proud of being an American, I love this country and I strongly believe in the many things that makes the whole thing great.

However I’m guilty of sometimes taking that for granted.  Which is made worse when you make the mistake of watching too much TV and getting inundated with all of the incredibly stupid, greedy, occasionally evil things that many of our politicians do.  It doesn’t take much before you tend to become jaded and a bit cynical.

But this is still the greatest country out there – despite the constant bickering and the general stupidity that might go on in Washington. 

I was reminded of this when I went out to vote yesterday morning.  The idea was to take advantage of the advance voting available here in Johnson County Kansas and to avoid the lines and the rush on election day.

Apparently a few thousand other people had the same idea yesterday!

I got to the voting location (Metcalf South for those that know the area) within 15 minutes of it

opening and the line was several hundred yards long…! 

The total wait ended up being about an hour and fifteen minutes – but that gave me a great time to people watch and to really reflect on why I was there and what the whole process means.

photo by RandysonofRobert

My fellow line mates came in all shapes and sizes, I’m sure they all had their own strong opinions on who they were voting for – but the one thing we all had in common was the willingness to invest a good chunk of our day to wait in line for more than an hour to participate in the civic process.  Kid were running around, people were smiling and pleasant and overall it was actually a very pleasant hour.

I’m not normally moved by these kinds of things, but it was a very inspirational scene.  I’ve got my own opinions about how I would like the vote to turn out (although candidly I’m not thrilled with any of the candidates across the board).  But I respect that different people are going to reach different conclusions and based on my experience yesterday, the most important thing is people need to get out there and vote!

It’s likely to be a hassle, but I encourage you to take the time and make it happen.  I bet you’ll end up with a sense of pride that you might not have expected.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach