So I was watching that new TV show Kitchen Nightmare yesterday. For those who don’t know, the show is basically about the famous chef Gordon Ramsey and how he has about one week to see if he can turn a disastrous restaurant business into something great and profitable.

I always like these types of shows because as I mentioned before I think they give you a good insight on the obstacles and challenges in running a business. This first episode was particularly interesting from a financial point of view I thought. One of the co-owners of the restaurant seemed like he was more concerned about spending company revenue on luxurious items for himself such as a fancy car. At the same time his restaurant’s kitchen was a disaster as the equipment was all old and broken down.

That isn’t a too far fetched scenario for a lot of people as well when you think about it from a personal point of view. For example, spending money on non essentials first as oppose to thinking if you could use that to further enhance your financial situation.

Overall I thought it was very entertaining and educational at the same time. I’ll definitely keep in tune with this one.

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Today I went to an event that was simply a way to meet more people to generate new contacts. While it was okay, I’m kind of surprised to see that for a lot of these events certain people are reluctant to speak to others who are in the same field/industry as they are.

I once had this funny experience where I attended an event and as expected people began to talk to each other to find out more about what they do and offer. The activity was to simply speak to the person right next to you. The person that I talked to just happened to run a business that offered some of the same type of services as myself and it was definitely an odd conversation.

Essentially, I took it as a positive where maybe we can discuss about tools and challenges that we have experienced in our business. The person instead saw it from a different view and figured that I was their “competitor” and so they didn’t want to reveal anything to me. It’s one thing to want to protect your trade secrets and another to be overly paranoid to the point that you are cutting off ties with people you may potentially need in the future. Strangely enough, that was indeed the case with this scenario.

You never know as what you don’t need today may be something you do need tomorrow. At the same time, it can be great to collaborate with others in such a way that both parties will benefit.

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When it comes to a working space a lot of times people debate whether or not it is better to set something up at home or if one should simply go out and rent a space.

Working from home is definitely more convenient while at the same time it can be more distracting. You can definitely save a lot of money by doing so too. There are even big corporations that implement a work at home program for their staff in order to save money and it works out well for them.

I personally think an office space is only necessary when it reaches to a point that you have to have a lot of staff or if your profession heavily relies on in-person meetings a lot. Other than that, a lot of people tend to want one just because it sounds like the right thing to do I’d say. A home office can definitely be just as good if not better for a lot of small business people.

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One of my readers, James, sent this link to me at https://www.dreamworld.bmo.com/ which was kind of an interesting interactive tool. It’s a contest by the looks of it you are simply creating your ideal retirement scenario.

So for fun I created my own and now it looks like it is floating around that page. I also don’t rule out the possibility that the contest is to capture a list of people to potentially sell some kind of retirement plan service too as well. But, if you want to enter for fun I guess there is no harm.

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A person I knew recently had to go to exchange a gift that they received as the item was something that she had already. So, she decided to exchange it for something else by first getting store credit. Then the tricky part came as always with store credit as rarely can you ever simply spend the exact amount of credit that you have. You usually end up having to spend more.

This particular scenario was a little more excessive than normal as the person ended up using the credit to buy another item that was two times the value of the original item. I guess the mentality was that the credit made it feel like you are getting the item at a half price sale and so it seems like a great deal.

I know this is usually why companies love to have things such as gift cards as it does usually translate to people spending more than the value of it. I once heard of one person who always tried to simply sell his gift cards as this way he doesn’t end up having to spend more and can actually gain some interest out of it as oppose to leaving the card idle. I guess even using store credit requires some discipline as well.

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