Cards Cut

What is the number one way to prevent failure in business? Take a minute to really think about your answer. What comes to mind? Increasing patients or customers served? … Effective marketing? … Location, location, location? … Improving patient or customer care? … Being the best in your industry?

Although these are all essential aspects of business, the answer isn’t any of the above. The number one way to prevent business failure is to properly manage your working capital.

To ensure that we’re all on the same page, working capital is simply defined as the difference between your current assets and current liabilities. If this figure is positive, you have working capital available. This working capital may exist as inventory, accounts receivable, or cash on hand.

Working capital management is a critical management issue for growing businesses or medical practices. Take the example of a growing doctor’s office: As expenses rise with patient-load increases, you accrue more outstanding cash, particularly before receiving reimbursement from the health insurance payors. At this point, your incoming cash does not nearly offset your costs going out. This may be manageable while you work with payments for past services; however, eventually the time lag may become a significant stress-point for your business.

By adopting a few working capital management strategies, you can make your assets work for you, without becoming beholden to banks.

Strategy #1: Get Paid Now

Let’s take a look at the most obvious area: accounts receivable. What do your receivables do for you when they are not being paid? While your profit margins may look stellar if you have a lot of orders, you have essentially loaned all of your clients the amounts of your invoices-until they decide to pay you. Doctors, in particular, know the pain of this situation. Insurance payors are particularly adept at prolonging the time for payment; they realize that the longer they take to pay, the greater their profit margins.

Is this just another cost of doing business? Well, not necessarily. Eighty percent of small business owners, medical practitioners, and small hospitals are completely unaware of a resource Fortune 500 companies have used for decades: accounts receivable funding.

Banks often measure accounts receivable at as low as 50 percent of their overall value as collateral for a traditional loan. In accounts receivable funding, however, accounts receivable are calculated at full value. Plus, you accrue no debt for this financing, as you essentially sell your accounts receivable for payment against the full value.

Perhaps the idea of selling your revenue stream makes you nervous. But consider this: You usually receive 80 percent of the entire amount of the invoice within one or two days-at least 28 to 118 days sooner than usual. This cash injection allows you to make capital improvements for your business to generate more revenue, leverage the cash for discounts on your inventory, cover operating costs, or provide bonuses to your employees, for instance.

As your invoices are paid, your funder will repay the other 20 percent, minus the negotiated fee (average four to five percent of the invoiced amount). Don’t get hung up on the ‘cost’ of the funding. With proper management of those funds, you will more than make up for fees by the investments made in your business. Your day-to-day business costs may stay the same, but the tremendous increase in incoming cash will enable you to rest easy.

Homework: Review your accounts receivable aging report. Note the average payment time from one of your best clients or insurance payors. Assuming payment of 80 percent of the invoice value in 48 hours, make a list of ways to use that money for your business:

• Cash discounts on inventory (estimate in dollar amounts).

• Buying or leasing new equipment (anticipated return in additional sales).

• New marketing campaign (anticipated additional revenue).

After you total the increased income generated by implementing this strategy, you can easily see the real benefit.

Strategy #2: Shorten Your Operating Cycle

Your operating cycle starts when you take cash out of your account to begin work for a client, and ends the day the client pays you. If you complete a project on Tuesday, for instance, but do not invoice until the following Friday-or even the end of the month-you lose days of income. Since you need the cash in your account-not just in your profit margins-you must minimize the time between service rendered and service invoiced.

Homework: Review how long you usually take to invoice a client. If that period of time exceeds a week, have your staff shorten that time. This adjustment will decrease the payment time by as much as 25 percent.

Strategy #3: Collect Past Due Accounts

Do you have a significant number of invoices out more than 60 days? If so, is your staff doing anything to shorten this timeframe? Call the clients whose invoices have been out 30 days and inquire about the invoice. Devoting a few hours a week to completing this task is money well spent if it ensures that even half of your outstanding invoices are paid a couple of weeks earlier.

Some delays in the healthcare industry, for example, are intentional. Prolonging the turnaround for payment controls costs. In these cases, you don’t have any recourse. As any doctor can tell you, calling the insurance company to inquire about a claim can be a fruitless task.

Homework: Review your collections procedures and tighten up your ship, if needed. Assign one person to follow up on invoices outstanding for more than 30 days. Realize, though, that collections results fluctuate with your clients’ priorities. Don’t count on this as your only means of improving your cash flow.

Strategy #4: Turn Existing Equipment Into Cash

As we know, keeping current with technology improvements are constant and necessary to remain competitive. Leasing is a way to stay up-to-date without incurring the charges of frequently buying new equipment.

But have you ever considered leasing equipment that you already own? One option is selling your equipment to a leasing company, and leasing it back from them. This way, you generate some cash for your business. You will, of course, incur the lease payments.

Homework: Take stock of what you own. If you need capital, contact a few leasing companies and gauge their interest in purchasing equipment for you to lease back. Alternatively, a Certified Cash Flow Consultant will shop for you. Since they are independent consultants paid by the leasing companies, you will avoid any additional charges.

Strategy #5: When In Doubt, Outsource

Outsourcing certain support areas of your business, in which you are not an expert, is an excellent way to reduce payroll and insurance costs. You will spend a higher dollar per hour for importing experts, but the reduced costs (no health or workers’ compensation insurance) usually compensate for the cost variance.

Be sure to hire these experts with as much diligence as you would any in-house employee. As you’ll typically retain this type of assistance through specialty staffing houses, interview the individuals to be assigned. As integral members of your team, they must be as reliable as any employee on your payroll.

Homework: Contact area firms that provide the kind of staffing you need. Compare the cost of those contracts against the cost of keeping these staff on payroll. Be careful: Consultants can get expensive, so be sure to build cost controls (i.e., fixed fee for a weekly basis or hourly with a ‘not to exceed’ clause) into your contract. Be clear on their scope of work, to whom they report, and how you define satisfactory performance. In addition, you must directly approve any staff changes.

Strategy #6: Inventory When You Need It

Inventory that sits in the warehouse, not being sold for income, eats away at your available cash flow. It is an asset, sure, but it should not become a liability because it is not quickly converted to cash. Over-ordering of inventory gets many businesses into trouble.

Review your inventory forecast all the time, and be aggressive. Know your options in times when you have shortfalls. Fulfilling customer orders on time is a number one priority, so don’t take unnecessary risks. If you simply hoard inventory to offset any chance of being caught off-guard, you lose the potential profits made by managing it more aggressively.

Homework: Review your current and projected inventory for the coming months. Do you need to make changes, or is it all under control? Make any necessary calls to your suppliers to negotiate better terms or better understand their supply controls.

Make Your Working Capital Work for You

Working capital management is a key element to business success and the number one way to prevent business failure. By implementing strategies such as accounts receivable funding, outsourcing, or inventory management, your business can optimize the return on assets it already possesses. Your company will then be well positioned to handle future growth or economic downturns.

*Reprinted from Create the Business Breakthrough You Want:

Secrets and Strategies from the World*s Greatest Mentors

© 2004 Mission Publishing, a division of The Mission Marketing

Mentors, Inc., http://www.missionpublishing.net, or

http://www.missionmarketingmentors.com

About The Author

Ms. Anindya Kar, Certified Cash Flow Consultant, specializes in helping small businesses and medical providers with business financing. Her company, AKSF Funding Group (http://www.aksffunding.com), is based in Oakland, California, and works with clients nationwide. You may contact her for more information at 800.406.1399 or mailto:akar@aksffunding.com.

The Isuzu brand is one of the least known of the Japanese car brands sold in the North American market. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru are all well recognized and respected Japanese makes while Isuzu lives perpetually in their shadow and underneath the wings of world auto giant, General Motors. Let’s take a look at Isuzu and what makes this car company tick.

In 1981, Isuzu followed competing Japanese automakers and entered the US, the world’s largest automobile market in terms of annual sales. Getting a late start, Isuzu had some catching up to do as each of its Japanese rivals had already established themselves in the lucrative American market. Indeed, it has always been perceived by automobile experts that if an automaker was going to be successful in the world, then they needed to establish a foothold in the highly competitive U.S. market.

Earlier models from Isuzu included the I-Mark, a compact four door sedan; the Stylus, which replaced the I-Mark; the Trooper, a compact SUV; the Impulse, a sporty two door coupe; and the P’up, a compact pick up truck.

Unfortunately for Isuzu, bad publicity and a small marketing network have limited the brand in its quest to grow. A report completed by industry watchdog, Consumer Report’s, alleged that 1995 and 1996 model year Troopers, “…have too great a tendency to roll over in certain situations.” Consumer Report’s also gave the vehicle a rare “not acceptable” rating, something very few vehicles have ever received by the group over the years. In a previous negative report during the 1980s for the Suzuki Samurai, sales of the Samurai plunged. Indeed, Suzuki is another Japanese make with limited appeal. Could Consumer Report’s findings adversely effected both companies? Some experts believe this to be true, judging by their respectively small market shares.

Eventually, many of the original models in the Isuzu line up were replaced to give the automaker a better footing in the U.S. During the early 1990s, Isuzu decided to stop importing cars, concentrating solely on pick up trucks and SUVS. An overhauled Trooper joined the Amigo and Rodeo in the Isuzu line up followed a number of years later by the VehiCross.

Isuzu’s thrust into the U.S has all but stopped and, for now, they do not import a single vehicle into the U.S., relying instead on their relationship with GM, who owns 12% of the company, to sell rebadged GM vehicles as Isuzus. At last count, Isuzus sales were averaging about 1,000 vehicles per month, certainly not a sustainable figure for any car producer.

So, what keeps Isuzu going? A few things: diesel engines and GM. As a world class manufacturer of diesel engines, Isuzu provides engines for - you guessed it - GM trucks. Filling a glaring void in the GM line up, Isuzu has turned from an automotive importer to an automotive supplier; at least as far as the North American market is concerned. GM, in turn, has invested heavily in Isuzu and together they have joint ventures around the globe including a shared stake in an Australian operation.

The long term strategy for Isuzu is unclear, but it does appear that the North American market is unsustainable at least as far as the passenger car market goes. The company does have a line of commercial vehicles that are sold in the US which are favored by companies needing an economical, but compact commercial truck in their fleet. Couple that with their relationship with GM, Isuzu’s future may well lay in the areas of engine supplier and commercial vehicle provider, two niches that have been successful so far for the Japanese company.

Copyright 2005 — Matt Keegan is a contributing writer for the Auto Parts Warehouse, a wholesaler of fine Isuzu accessories and Isuzu parts for your vehicle.

I’m often asked to come in to organizations and give a motivational speech to their employees. I reply that I’m not a motivational speaker. Never have been. Never will be. Don’t want to be. I do something else. I teach their people how to become motivational leaders. That’s a far more productive endeavor.

The concept and application of motivation are misunderstood in most organizations. The motivational industry is based on a fundamental contradiction; because the focus of motivation is misplaced. After all, leaders (salespeople included) should be motivated. If they aren’t, they shouldn’t be leaders.

Here’s where the focus should be: not on the leaders themselves but on the people they lead. Can those leaders transfer their motivation to other people so those people are as motivated as they are about the challenges they face?

Furthermore: Can those people who “catch” the motivation of their leaders then go out and motivate others — and those others go out themselves and motivate still others … and on and on?

Finally, can people at each phase of this “cascading of cause leaders” translate motivation into action that achieves results — and not just average results but more results faster on a continual basis?

All my books, articles, courses, seminars, workbooks and interviews are based on that simple sequence of ideas.

I have written many articles on motivation and how to transfer your motivation to others.

But there is another way of transforming your motivation to others that doesn’t take much explaining. It’s surprisingly simple, easy to use, and effective. Yet few leaders I’ve encountered use it, and those who use it, don’t use it well.

It’s the Way of the Question Mark. A “way” is a course of life one undertakes to advance in a particular discipline.

So it is with the Way of the Question Mark. It is not simply a technique; you’ll find it is actually a disciplined course of life. (I’ve been using it for years and am still a long way from mastering it. Because the question mark is often particularly appropriate in a highly charged emotional situation. However, in such situations, when strong emotions are getting the better of me, it takes practice and discipline to step back, gather my thoughts, and ask a question.)

Practicing the Way of the Question Mark can enhance your relationships with the people you lead so you get a lot more results as a leader.

From now on in all your leadership endeavors, make a conscious effort to put a question mark at what would otherwise be declarative sentences.

Asking the question rather than using a declarative is usually more effective because it gets people reflecting upon their situation. After all, we can’t motivate anyone to do anything. They have to motivate themselves. And they best motivate themselves when they reflect on their character and their situation. The question prompts people to answer, and when they are answering, they may engage in such reflection. You may not like the answer; but often their answer, no matter what it is, is better in terms of advancing results than your declaration. Also, their answering the question may prompt them to think they have come up with a good idea. People are less enamored of your great ideas than they are of their ideas, even if those ideas are simply average.

For instance, your organization needs to have people to from point A to point B. An order leader might say, “Go from A to B.”

Practicing the Way, one might ask: “Tell me what you think about going from A to B?” or “What’s the best way for you to go from A to B?” or “Tell me how I can support you going from A to B?” or “How will you take leadership of others going from A to B?”

Mind you, I’m not talking about pandering to people’s whims. I’m talking motivation, motivating people to get more results faster on a continual basis. (In fact, you can’t order people to get more results faster continually. Only motivated people can do it.) I’m talking about challenging people to undertake extraordinary things, to be better than they think they are.

The question mark, as opposed to the simple declarative, opens up a world of results-producing possibilities. And it’s a world predicated on their choices.

Make the Way of the Question Mark your way. Discipline yourself to ask questions rather than make statements. You’ll start getting more results.

2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.com

The author of 23 books, Brent Filson’s recent books are, THE LEADERSHIP TALK: THE GREATEST LEADERSHIP TOOL and 101 WAYS TO GIVE GREAT LEADERSHIP TALKS. He is founder and president of The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. - and for more than 20 years has been helping leaders of top companies worldwide get audacious results. Sign up for his free leadership e-zine and get a free white paper: “49 Ways To Turn Action Into Results,” at http://www.actionleadership.com

You are standing on a small stage yelling, “What’s the name of the game?!”

“Win as much as you can!!!” comes roaring back.

“Who’s responsible for your score?!”

“I am!!”

The audience is composed of ninety men, all prisoners in a federal maximum security prison.

One more thing - you’re a woman.

For three years, Alicia volunteered every Thursday at FCI (Federal Correctional Institute) in Bastrop, Texas-

“I used my skills as a corporate trainer to help these men learn to shift their perspective on themselves and the world.”

“Along the way the prisoners taught me as much, perhaps more, than I taught them.”

“In my training business, I use games as a way to break down barriers and shift perceptions. What I came to realize is that your behavior in a game is an exaggerated reflection of your behavior in real life.”

Games are an opening to behave true to our natures, to react immediately rather than with a careful response. Depending on the other players, we may monitor our behavior less in a game than in the real world, but we aren’t acting differently. In a game there are no emotional holds barred.

In a game, we are allowed to be more right brained than logical. After all, “It’s only a game.”

Saying something is only a game tends to trivialize its importance. Precisely because we view it as trivial, and of no importance, we can give ourselves permission to let our true natures out.

When we floated this idea before a number of colleagues, several of them told us stories of self-discovery. One woman, a very sweet and kind person in “real life”, was known as “the enforcer” when she played hockey in school. Another shared that, when she plays a game against total strangers she becomes “brutal” and highly competitive.

So if our true nature comes out in a game, what can we do with that information?

Can we transform situations so that we can be true to our nature? Can we make a game out of real world situations to allow our true nature to flourish? The obvious example is to view business as a game to be won. This implies competition and a winner take all attitude.

Yet Covey and others have told us about creating win-win situations. Is there such a thing as a win-win game - a game where everyone wins, where no one loses? Can you devise a game where you can put your competitive streak toward a larger goal? Can the proverbial pie be made larger? As someone said to me, to transform from “me winning” to “we winning”.

What’s the name of the game? Win as much as you can!

Who’s responsible for your score? I am!

The game Alicia played with the inmates was called “the handshake game”. She had them pair up by size, height and weight and explained the rules. “We’ll play the game for 45 seconds. You get one point when your hand taps his hip; he gets one point when his hand taps your hip.”

The vast majority of the pairs had a combined score of 0 points. A few pairs scored in the 10 - 20 point range.

But one pair scored 260 points.

The high scorers had realized that the name of the game and scoring responsibility did not define a win-lose (or “zero-sum”) game. That is, one person did not win at the expense of the other.

Of course, the entire thing was a set-up. Alicia paired them up by size, height and weight to set the expectation that it was an evenly matched contest. She got them chanting to get their excitement up.

And she neglected to tell them that the pair was a team and the team members’ scores would be combined.

“Deliberately I didn’t tell them they were supposed to cooperate with their partner. I also never told them who the competitors were.”

We all know that a “formal” team must cooperate to win. The revelation here was that by cooperating they could maximize their individual scores.

What’s the name of the game? Win as much as you can!

Who’s responsible for your score? I am!

The rules say nothing about preventing the other person from getting a high score. The pair who “got it” quickly settled into a rhythm of “one for you and one for me”. And they could have kept that up for as long as the game ran. Meanwhile, the other teams were struggling and would have exhausted themselves long before the winners did. And, when the few teams who did spot the pair who “got it” there were charges of “cheating” leveled at them. “We saw what they were doing but thought they were cheating or didn’t understand the rules.”

The cooperation - competition confusion is nicely summed up in the concept called “the prisoners’ dilemma”. Two people are arrested for a crime and there is enough evidence to put them both in jail for 1 year.

The police keep them isolated from each other and offer each the same deal: “If one of you talks and the other does not, the snitch goes free and the other one gets 3 years. If you both talk, you both get 2 years.”

The partners can work together (by staying silent) and both get only a year in jail. By both defecting from the partnership to work with the police they will both get 2 years.

A single defector will go free while the one who cooperated gets 3 years.

The dilemma is formed by pitting trust against greed. The temptation of greed combined with a habit of competition blinds us to a different perspective.

But don’t think that only prisoners are subject to this. When Alicia has had groups of corporate executives play this game, they fall into the same behavior pattern as the prisoners. In fact, in some corporate sessions nobody “gets it”.

There seems to be a dichotomy between competing and winning. The idea of cooperating to win seems odd. In fact, we see other players complain that the ones who “get it” are cheating!

What you do depends on your view of the game. If the game is seen as a one-time event, why not be brutal - there will be no consequences. But if this event is one in a series, then cooperation is clearly the better long-term strategy, if only because there will be a chance for the other to get even.

In studies of prisoners’ dilemma style games (played for points and not reduced jail time) the players eventually settle into a strategy dubbed “tit for tat”. Their actions are saying, “If you cooperate last time, I’ll cooperate next time. If you defected last time, I’ll defect next time.”

Using the word “defect” helps us see the shift - the opposite of cooperating (working on the same side) is defecting to the other side.

The desire to compete and the desire to win are not the same.

Game terminology (strategies, tactics, moves, etc.) is often applied to “serious” parts of life. Because the word game has a connotation of triviality, we sometimes bristle at its use to describe the things that mean the most to us.

What if we kept in mind that ‘it’s all a game’ - would we behave differently?

Philosopher James P. Carse writes in the first chapter of Finite and Infinite Games, “There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

The book’s subtitle is “A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility.” His premise is that a game is about the relationship between the player.

In the book he characterizes two types of players. Finite players play within the rules, infinite players play with the rules. Finite players play to end the game (with their victory), infinite players play to continue the game (by whatever means they see fit). Finite players play to win, infinite players play to keep playing.

The players who “get it” are playing with the rules looking to transform a finite game into an infinite one.

If this article has intrigued you we encourage you to look at the various “games” that you are “playing” and with whom. Who are your “teammates” and what kind of game are you playing? With increased awareness of our behavior, and the behavior of others, we are able to create a “win as much as WE can” mentality.

© Copyright 2004 Alicia Smith Consulting & Training. All Rights Reserved.

This article was written by Alicia Smith as told to John Satta

Alicia Smith is a Coach and Trainer whose specialty is helping business people to Make Money Now. She has taught over 10,000 people how to improve their business bottom lines. To learn more about her courses, products and services, please visit http://www.AliciaSmith.com

“Now go on and enjoy yourself, dance to your heart’s content and win the Prince’s heart. But remember, you have to be back before the clock strikes twelve at midnight.”

We all are familiar with the words of the Fairy God Mother in the evergreen fairy tale ‘Cinderella’. It’s these words that probably made us aware-for the first time in our lives-of the value of time. We all sympathized with Cinderella when all her splendid gown and other finery turned to rags at the stroke of midnight. Our first acquaintance with the villainous Time!

But then, is time such a villain, who should always be painted in black? We have heard the proverb that says “there are no wounds that time cannot heal.”

Here of course we get the image of a wizened old woman who comes hobbling up to us with a pitcher full of balm and gentle fingers that soothe away all our pains and sorrows.

But that’s enough! This book was not written to eulogize time. There is no need of the romance of Cinderella or the soothing finger of an old lady when we are talking about time. And do you know why? It’s because we do not have the time for it.

We are going to try and understand time in its many faces. No, I was not referring to the faces of watches or clocks. I was referring to the many meanings that time has. Oh yes it does! You thought that time meant the same to everyone. Well think again; or maybe you could try to explain the logic behind the following cases.

Picture a farmer who plants a sapling of a tree that would probably take ten to twelve years to reach the stage when it would start to bear fruit, by then the farmer would in likelihood be under the soil himself.

Picture a jailbird in bird counting on the bars of his cell waiting for the seconds, minutes, and hours, days, weeks, months and years to go by before he can be free again.

Now picture a young couple madly in love with each other cherishing the few minutes they get to spend with each other every day, cursing time because it flies so fast when they are together and never the other way round.

So what does time mean to you?

When was the last time that you realized the value of time?

The answer is probably the last time you watched one of those Hollywood thrillers in which the hero is driving a car in which a time-bomb has been planted and the hero is unaware of this. But we being the getting-to-see-it-all audience watch with bated breath as the tiny needle of the timer ticks towards the point at which the explosion is sure to occur.

But just before that, the hero hits the brakes screeches to a halt to avoid hitting that old lady crossing the road. And when he jumps out to help her cross the road the needle reaches the point and the bomb is exploded. And our hero is safe. It’s funny how the hero always escapes without a scratch in these movies. But I expect that’s why they call them heroes.

Now we are really transgressing aren’t we? So back to our subject that is Time Management.

Do you know what is interesting about the concept of Time? It is absolutely uncontrollable.

Personally I believe that there is something very humbling about this concept. Just imagine, man with all his power is just like a helpless babe before time. There it is Time stands tall and strong before man and man remains vulnerable and weak before it. Man, the big strong man who tamed rivers and seas, who reached out to the skies and beyond, who harnessed wind and water and dug up the bowels of the earth is but a worm before Time.

The best he can do to win the battle against time is die is hair and use some anti-wrinkle cream on his face. In fact, the closest that man has got towards conquering time is those many history books that have been penned; they are of course chronicles of events that happened long ago and that is certainly not much to boast about.

And so now we come to our subject that is time management because after all the illustrations given above, I hope that I have made one point clear, that is that Time cannot be controlled, it can only be managed. And that is what we are going to do. We are going to learn the art of time management. I don’t want you to have an air of helplessness. You might begin to feel that if the battle cannot be won, then what is point in putting up a struggle? Ah, but there you are missing out on a very important point. In all the illustrations that I used above, I was referring to man in general and not to one particular Tom, Dick or Harry.

So you can see that this aspect of time is applicable to every human being and there is no running away from it. Every person has only twenty four hours in a day and no force on earth can alter that. So in order to get the cutting edge what you have to do is to be able to manage your time in the most effective way possible.

And that is what Time management is all about. It’s about managing your time effectively and if I may I would like to add the word efficiently too.

Now, when we talk about our resources, every one knows that we are referring to the resources like fossil fuels, forests, mineral wealth, and water bodies and so on. But surprisingly time is never included in this list. When we talk about non-renewable resources, fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas top the list. But what about time? A point that most people tend to forget is that time is the most valuable resource that we have, and time once lost, is lost for ever. We can think about alternate sources of energy for fossil fuels like electricity, fuel cells, solar energy and the research goes on. But is there any alternative for time that is lost.
Again I stress on the point that time once lost, is lost forever. And hence we have the proverb, “time and tide waits for no man.”

Mia LaCron is the founder of time-management-guide.info - http://www.time-management-guide.info - devoted to helping individuals manage their time powerfully and effectively.