Appoint a “Scrooge” company that must account for all expenses.
For those who work hard to attract high-paying customers, note the fable about how a hungry grasshopper begs an ant for food when winter comes. The situation includes business lessons about the virtues of saving for the future.
For the regular business class — Subchapter S entrepreneurs, agency owners, consultants, business coaches, small business owners and sole proprietors — every dollar spent comes with a traceable pedigree. Those dollars have to be earned first, says Alf Nucifora, a Fortune 500 and major agency marketing expert.
“Remember what you have to sell to make a dollar,” Nucifora said in a phone interview. If you’re working on regular margins, think five to 10 times more. Then reconsider the purchase. Seen through that prism, cheapness becomes a compliment rather than a badge of insult.
Cheap is such a hard word; I prefer frugality. As another business consultant taught me, for every dollar you spend, you can keep the business when you own it. Like Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper, you might need those dollars one winter day.
While the clamor of wealth is being lost on citizens – tech billionaires with multiple private jets, fancy girls with 7-figure wedding receptions, huge yachts that require millions in annual running costs – one should observe these ups and downs in a zoo. Interesting species, flashy in nature, except in feathers, but not for anything more than a voyeuristic need,” Nuciphora said.
Nucifora is the Chairman and Founder of LuxSF, which includes all of the Bay Area areas of Carmel-Monterey, Silicon Valley and Napa-Sonoma. Currently, he serves as the principal of a marketing consulting firm. In the year We met in 1990 before he “retired” from his position as chairman of the Southeast office of a $310 million advertising agency.
“As a practicing small business owner and operator for more than 30 years, there are basic guidelines for spending habits that must be learned at an early age for the constant consumerist drug that permeates mainstream marketing communications and popular media entertainment,” Nucifora said. It’s because it felt like it: I wish many of those flashy dollars would go back now.”
Here are several reasons from Nucifora to manage sparingly.
There is no perfect information. “So stop trying to find it or buy it. Be willing to make business decisions based on available information and your own accumulated wisdom and experience.
Beware of the dreaded break. “He’s an old business professor. Reminder. This means that you are always striving and promising to reach profitability with good intentions, but spending money always seems to get in the way of those goals.
Appoint Scrooge. “We have our Scrooge and we proudly promote her brand. She’s a constant pain and her need for proof of cost drives sales types crazy. But she saves us a fortune. And, she covers situations where we say no because people are afraid to offend.”
Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. “A prominent regional bank CEO always checked the lobby desk on his daily commute to see how many FedEx packages were lined up for pickup. He realized that many could be mailed, saving hundreds each week and thousands each year.
Skillfully micromanaging. “Micromanagement has gotten a bad rap lately, as tech wunderkinds preach about the view from 30,000 feet, big and tall. Remember, God is in the details, especially in a small business where every customer and transaction counts.
Homework work. “Be willing to shop around. That’s the beauty of the Internet. Someone will always offer a better deal or a cheaper price.”
Go for the recurring dollar. “Yes, we need new customers and new dollars, but repeats are easier to find and deliver more profitability. Yet most of the business world, especially service industries, forget about customer relationships once the initial transaction is complete.
A native of Brisbane, Australia, Nucifora entered the advertising and marketing business through the corporate side of two Fortune 500 companies, first in Australia and then in the United States. He then went into advertising and later into agency management.
During his career, Nucifora learned that waste is a state of mind. “It’s ingrained and built into the DNA of most businesses that a Realtor pays hundreds of thousands in parking fines every month because they can’t find an empty parking meter and consider it an operating expense,” Nucifora said. “An understandable behavior, but hardly worth imitating.
