Business development Archives - Page 4 of 11

Finding out What Your Customer Wants and Needs

Pamela Ayuso August 24, 2020

In business, we all sell something. We may have a great product that has done well in the past but needs updating, or we may be looking for new product lines to grow. Whatever the case may be, the key to creating a great product is to find out what your customer wants and needs and make it for them.

I’ve thought about this often – producing the type of invention that will be just the right combination of features our customers need. My company is a real estate development firm, and we construct apartment and office buildings. Before we launch a new project, we tweak it and modify it until we are confident that we have the best possible design. Our customers and whether they buy it or not, however, are the ultimate judges.

How Risk Management Can Protect and Grow Your Business

Pamela Ayuso August 17, 2020

In his book, The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, Howard Marks (public library) writes extensively about risk. As the co-founder and co-chairman of a highly successful asset management firm called Oaktree Capital Management, he assesses investment risk daily and has unique insight into how it works. Risk is variously defined as volatility and uncertainty – he describes it as the “likelihood of loss.”

Most of us do not buy and sell securities for a living, but we all face risk whenever we make a decision. The quality of our outcomes depends on how well we deliberate and manage the inherent risk in our choices. We aim to select the best possible path, but there is always a risk that it will turn out differently.

The Issue Log: Why It Can Benefit Your Company

Pamela Ayuso August 3, 2020

I have spent the last year and a half implementing some of the ideas that Ray Dalio describes in his book, Principles: Life and Work (public library). The book holds great concepts and theories that apply to any company. I recommend spacing out the content and new implementations so that you can ensure that what you’ve rolled out in the past has been fully integrated before moving on to a new idea

One of the concepts that has had a significant impact on our company is the issue log. Dalio implemented it as a management tool in his company, Bridgewater Associates.

What to Do When You Cannot Find the Information System You Need

Pamela Ayuso July 27, 2020

At my company, Celaque, we have been looking for a Human Resources system to keep a more accurate employee database of our contractors, subcontractors, and other personnel at our construction projects. We can have as many as 300 people working on a building during our peak construction months, and using spreadsheets to track this data is no longer enough.

We have been searching for the ideal tool for over a month and have explored dozens of options. However, we have found our choices to be either too expensive or too limited. Sometimes what you need does not seem to exist. In that case, the solution to the problem is not always straightforward. The following steps may be helpful.

COVID-19 and Your Business: How to Manage

Pamela Ayuso March 30, 2020

I was thinking yesterday about the plans I made in January for the first six months of this year, and how different they are to the reality we are living today. I never saw this coming; I don’t think any of us did. The year was starting so well, and now, we’re currently in lockdown in my city, scrambling to keep our company operations going. COVID-19 found us in the middle of the construction of one building and two weeks away from finishing another one, and we had to, nevertheless, pause our construction activities today.

I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts and finding my way through this. It’s shocking, yet we are all in the same boat.

Growing Your Business with Incremental Investment

Pamela Ayuso March 23, 2020

I’m writing on a Monday, and it is one of those Mondays. I feel tired after waking up early to start my day and my week. Not only do I feel fatigued, but I’m also not feeling motivated. Writing isn’t easy today.

It is at times like this that I am encouraged by compound interest. I realize it may sound silly to read that I draw inspiration from something as bland as interest, yet compound interest reminds me of how consistently adding more (money, effort, knowledge), regardless of whatever else is happening, will result in exponential growth.

Introducing the Concept of Trust in our Organizations

Pamela Ayuso February 24, 2020

Our responsibilities as company managers are many: we must build a great team, structure our organizations in the best way possible, make sure the company is achieving its objectives, and plan for growth. One of the challenges we also face is infusing the company with a sense of trust. Organizations that inspire trust in every direction run more smoothly, and in the end, trust can make the work more enjoyable, too.

When Something Goes Wrong, Try to Get Something Good Out of It

Pamela Ayuso December 2, 2019

We’ve all had to deal with situations that we would not have chosen. Failures or bad turns of events are uncomfortable, and the easiest thing to do is to solve them and then move on. However, there is always gold hidden inside these events, even if it is just a sliver. Whether we are responsible for the circumstances or not, if something unfavorable happens, we can always learn from it and improve our world in ways we may have not appreciated before.

The more uncomfortable the circumstance is, the more beneficial it is to try to find the silver lining. It can give the event meaning and can help you move forward more easily than you would have otherwise. Sometimes finding a positive outcome from a disagreeable circumstance can be a struggle because some things are simply unpleasant or even sad, but again, there is always something to be learned.

Get to Know Yourself and Understand Your Strengths

Pamela Ayuso November 11, 2019

There are many options are available today for getting to know your team and how to best work together. I think, though, that these exercises can be more useful for getting to know the person you will always have on your side: yourself. Sometimes it is hard to see ourselves as others see us and as we are, but these tests can help us see what we may have never understood before and to learn more about our preferences and how we act in different situations.

Wrike for Business: How to Manage Your Work and Productivity

Pamela Ayuso October 28, 2019

Migrating to a project management app, Wrike, has been one of the most significant breakthroughs I’ve had in my productivity level. Not only has it been a superb discovery for me, but it has also transformed the way we work at my company, Celaque. Wrike is the backbone and the basis for how we record everything we do at Celaque.

I found and started working with Wrike a few years ago with my previous company, where I managed operations. In that role, I experimented to see how Wrike could work for each team member as well as for the company as a whole. We started to use it for processes and task management, evolving and improving upon how we utilized Wrike. When I co-founded Celaque, I knew that Wrike would be one of our primary tools.

As we continue to grow and as Wrike continues to implement new features, how we use Wrike is enhanced. It is a fundamental block of how we operate and communicate within our firm.

Category: Business development