Many times when we see one of those “You save this much off the regular price” type of signs it can create a rather emotional purchase if the savings amount is large. Sometimes too, you have to be careful on whether or not the price has been bumped up which means you aren’t saving as much as they are portraying.

There is this one example that I saw today which made me think just that as I saw a USB memory stick on sale for about $9.99. As you can see here too, it indicates that the regular price of this item is $62.99 which means you are saving $53.

For these types of products, I happen to know what the average price is and so it immediately got a reaction out of me as the original price of the product seemed so overpriced. Here are some quick examples from other stores which sell the same product:

As you can see, one place sells it for $15.98 as a regular price. While granted you can argue that the price indicated is the store’s own regular price, although I personally never seen it that high, it just goes to show that you still need to do your research when it comes to buying things regardless of some sign indicating what the regular price of the item is.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

I was having an interesting conversation yesterday about business in general with another gentleman. It was an interesting contrast as I’m personally not the type of person who say hangs out at bars to mingle with people whereas he mentioned that he had actually met a lot of good contacts this way and it is in many ways his lifestyle.

We then started to talk about our personal experiences on whether we found that more people tend to do business with you because of your personality where they can relate to you like a friend or if demonstrating your knowledge and track record is more effective. While like anything it is always to have a good balance, it was kind of a fun conversation as we kept throwing “what if” type of thoughts to each other.

For example, for a person that is too outgoing does it prevent say more formal high figured people from wanting to speak to you? Likewise, does being too professional prevent you from getting your name out there faster as there are more casual people in existent than can spread the word about you faster?

In general, it seemed like we were both in an agreement that by being more socially involved in more pubic gathering activities you tend to acquire more personal leads/contacts whereas if you are one who focuses more on say an identity and its reputation it tends to bring more people directly to you. Realistically though, you do need both in the big picture I’d say.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

I was at a seminar yesterday and one of the topics that came up was about making patents and how even if you don’t want to be the person who actually executes the idea, just thinking them up can generate people a lot of wealth.

I was then reading up about an individual named Ronald Katz who owns over 50 different patents with most of them consisting of technology patents that businesses use everyday. As a result, he generates billions of dollars licensing out his patents.

While this is not exactly the same, just by reading this it almost sounds like a person who just sits down while trying to think of the best domain names to register and then hoping that someone will pay top dollars for it. I can only assume that trying to patent an idea requires more financial investment, but it sure puts it in perspective when people say you just have to be the first to think of it.

It definitely made me more curious to learn more about the industry and process though.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

While it’s true that being able to leverage your time is a fundamental component in creating a business or even generating an income for your lifestyle, this week reminded me so much on how it’s one thing to have people aid you for certain things and another to be completely dependent on them.

I guess an example would be if you opened up a restaurant and had absolutely no idea how to cook then you are entirely dependent on that one chef to follow through as oppose to if you were the chef who happens to own the restaurant.

While this may be an extreme generalization, I remember there was one person that I talked to who happened to be a very successful business person who came from China. He was mentioning how he believed that a reason why so many Asian people here were successful in creating a small business was largely due to the fact that many Asians try to make sure that in starting a business they are fully capable of doing everything themselves first. Therefore, hiring say more people is to save time/productivity as oppose to being a necessity in the beginning.

Again, an extreme generalization since that type of thing isn’t tied down to one’s ethic background, but the idea is true in many ways. I had an interesting day this week as I literally went through 30 hours straight without rest as I took it a bit too easy that I could simply just rely on another source to take care of a workload which didn’t turn out as planned.

While I didn’t consider myself better qualified to do the task, fortunately having basic knowledge of the solution helped the situation a lot as well. Always be prepared to jump in yourself.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.

I had a fun opportunity to be on a film set recently and a lot of people were participating as either a casual hobby or side engagement to their regular life I guess you can say. Now the people that were there obviously didn’t know anything about each other.

Now what was interesting was that after mingling around with others there was this one group of people that were talking to each other and one person mentioned he needed a photographer. It just happened that one person in the group was a professional photographer. The person then expressed quite loudly in a humorous way on how that’s why you should always be nice to everyone as you never know who you could be talking to.

The funny thing too was that I encountered a similar situation where I was talking to a lady who happened to be a teacher and she was struggling with Internet related matters as she couldn’t figure out what to do. Again, it just so happens that I know a lot about those types of things and she was delighted to go home and put her new found knowledge in action.

It’s kind of too coincidental in some ways too huh? But in general, never pre-judge people and treat others well as that person you are talking to could easily be the help that you are looking for either presently or in the future. Especially from a business perspective, it can’t hurt to have more connections.

For blog updates subscribe to our RSS feed.