Apparently the local press got together and decided that this would be small business failure week.  Crain’s has a big section on it.  So does The Business Ledger.  The problem they agreed on?  Poor cash flow.

Yeah–tell me something I don’t know.

Cash flow is king.  I’ve always said it and I still sometimes forget and extend more credit that I probably should.  The thing is that extending credit generally isn’t doing my customers a favor.  In fact, it can have the exact opposite effect.  It can encourage them to bite off more than they can chew.

One of the reasons FastWebUpdates.com charges the way we do–by the hour or eight hours, charged against your prepaid account–is to impose real constraints on the work we’re doing.  These limits help everyone focus on what’s really important and encourages everyone to prioritize.  This includes everyone here and our customers.
As Cesar would say: rules, boundaries and limitations.  It works.

I received two copies of the most recent B to B.  One was for me, one was for Keith Burkhalter, VP.

Who?

We’re only three people here, so you’d think I’d know Keith.  Maybe he works out of a different office.  And maybe I don’t sign his paycheck.

He’s not the only ghost employee.  We’ve also had a director of European operations and a director of marketing.
So be careful of those purchased mailing lists, my friend.  You might just be wasting precious resources.

This email greeted me in my inbox this morning. Notice that I have all of the images turned off. (It’s a personal preference thing.)

Now as much as I like costco, I don’t really care about their “large banners 1-4″ or “small banner 1″.  Moreover I don’t know what they mean.  Sure — I could unblock images or I could “click here” but this email as it is isn’t motivating me to do so.

How could it be improved?

Those large banner-small banner labels are image alt tags.  Alt tags let you control the text that displays if an image isn’t available.  For example, they could say something like “Choice Steaks on Sale” or “Special offers for Reid Carlberg”.

They don’t have to make the whole pitch by themselves.  Alt tags just have to convince me to take the next incremental step (enabling images).

David Sonday, Chicago designer, is thinking about starting a blog. I generally recommend it to all my clients as a great way to increase visibility.

Like everything else, take it with a grain of salt.  It’s over at InfoWorld.