The Grandest Canyon Ever
The good news for those who many not yet have visited America’s Grand Canyon is that it inarguably lives up to all its hype. No matter how exaggerated that hype may sound.
What a truly massive physical experience standing on its southern rim is! You peer down into what seems an impossible distance, only to realize that the vast span between you and the bottom of this awesome rent in the earth actually masks the true gargantuan size of boulders which present themselves at all levels — impressive though they may already seem! A huge boulder halfway down the abyss is likely the size of a cathedral. The band of colored rock outlining a sub-canyon wall across may well be twenty stories in height. The proportions take time to fathom.
This is a Nick Yates travel experience not to be missed if you’re traveling the American southwest.
For those of an even more adventurous nature, the trails leading down into the canyon from its rim can offer the chance to confront the limits of your own physical and mental stamina. The most challenging have you edging along meter-wide pathways with shear rock walls on one side and shear drops to eternity on the other. And no guard rails to interfere with your personal destiny should you choose to step carelessly. A Nicholas Yates tip for grand canyon trekkers: Do make sure you’re well rested and alert prior to setting out on any but the most gentle of Canyon hikes!
Whatever the Grand Canyon’s original Spanish explorers must have thought of the place when led there by natives, one doubts that even the recorded gasps of astonishment fully convey the surprise at the Grand Canyon’s grandeur — nor the urgency with which they must have longed to communicate news of this natural wonder’s existence.
The 2 Biggest Mistakes Made By Start-Up Businesses
By Bill Stroud
In my career as a business consultant I have evaluated numerous businesses from high-tech start-ups looking for venture funding to small businesses conducting selling personal services. The two biggest things businesses seem to get wrong are:
1. No Understanding of their Break Even Point
Understanding how much money you need to make to cover your costs may seem like an obvious thing to do but many businesses don’t seem to understand this. More specifically, businesses often don’t calculate what it costs to produce or deliver a single unit of their product or service. This is where a basic break-even analysis should begin. If you are selling widgets, figure out the cost of all the inputs to manufacture that widget. How consistent is the pricing of the inputs. A good example of how this can be underestimated is with gas and commodity prices sky-rocketing these costs are likely to have gone up in the last six months. If you are selling a service this is a bit harder but you need to calculate things like office supplies and products (toner, printing costs etc.) whatever the per unit costs are of delivering your service. Overhead and factoring this in comes into play as well but first just focus on the per unit costs.
2. No Marketing Plan
Not having a marketing plan or underestimating what amount of marketing is necessary to generate a sale is the second biggest mistake start-up businesses seem to make. Frequently, if it is a service business or some type of franchise, small businesses got into the business because someone sold them on how easy it would be to do the particular business. Oftentimes this resulted in vague or undefined explanations of how to market the business. Activities like going to networking meetings, advertising in the paper or flyers or simply putting up a website are the only advice and instructions given. No accounting for how long it would take to realistically generate sales from these activities is given or understood.
The Result
The result of making these two big mistakes is an unprofitable business. Either sales are made but with no regard for the actual costs is the outcome, no sales are made and therefore no income or both. Either way the business then fails.
