Just updated our home page
www.knightgroupcorp.com As always we value your feedback. Let us know what you think.
also installed google analytics to see % bounces
Monday, May 17, 2010
The Knight Group, Inc. - Comments: Just updated our home page
Just updated our home page
www.knightgroupcorp.com As always we value your feedback. Let us know what you think.
Honey Bee Ware
Name of a new beekeepers supply company in Wisconsin. Just getting started. Expect more soon. www.honeybeeware.com
Friday, May 14, 2010
WI - Work Force Development - Gets it
Work Force Development is about creating Employment, Employment comes from Sales, Sales happen for those who work hard, are self directed, have a servants heart, and are humble enough to ask for help.
Grow our economy, create a product or service that people need and are willing to purchase. Sound simple, well it is, but absolutely not easy! Go entrepenuership!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Knight Group, Inc. - Comments: Need more cash to grow?
My thoughts on how to handle a cash crunch. Now is the time to improve efficiencies in sales, marketing, and cash flow.
Need more cash to grow?
Now that the economy is starting to look-up. Managers will have a new set of challenges. One of the biggest will be finding the operating cash necessary to return the business back to its previous sales volumes.
For most businesses, inventory, wages, utilities, etc. are purchase and paid long before the customer pays for the product or service. The increased business we are looking for will automatically translate into additional inventory, wages, utilities, etc. weeks or months before additional sales income is deposited into the bank.
So where to get cash to fund the growth of my improving business?
The standard response, go to the banker. However, the banker is still reeling from the downturn and the banker is very cautious of risk. Providing you an increased line of credit is tough for them to do even if you stayed current over the last 48 months.
While the bank may be part of the answer, there is more we can do.
Without a doubt, inefficient operations result in wasted materials, time and effort. What inefficient operations really waste is cash. Cash that is absolutely needed to fund additional growth...
Internal improvements can free-up the cash needed for growth.
As a matter of fact, as a banker I may be more inclined to assist you if I knew you were trying to help yourself. Some internal improvement areas that can help reduce waste and in turn free-up cash.
Marketing, track effectiveness, if not generating inquiries/awareness it is not working. Word to the wise, don’t stop marketing, but do get it working. Marketing is still less expensive than door to door sales. It is your message, your geographics, or you demographics. Could be all three.
Sales, create your process, know what is happening and contribute the time. Sales is a verb, maybe a chore but certainly something that has to be done. If done well, it can provide the strategic information needed to transform your business. Listen to the customer. Current customers, past customers, future customers. Knowing their needs will help you be efficient in how your respond. Less expense in keeping a good customer than finding one to replace them. Bad customers are expensive too…..
Order to Cash cycle, in simplest terms the business of your business is to create cash. While we all know that satisfaction, quality, safety, ethics, and the list is long and all play a part. If the business does not create cash it does not exist for long. A poor order to cash cycle will have us slow to invoice, slow to collect, quick to order, slow to pay, lots of unpaid invoices in every area. The time needed to deal with this is a colossal waste. Waste of time, waste of opportunity, waste of talent.
Once have taken steps to improve these areas, now let’s once again ask “Where do I get the cash to fund the growth?”
For most businesses, inventory, wages, utilities, etc. are purchase and paid long before the customer pays for the product or service. The increased business we are looking for will automatically translate into additional inventory, wages, utilities, etc. weeks or months before additional sales income is deposited into the bank.
So where to get cash to fund the growth of my improving business?
The standard response, go to the banker. However, the banker is still reeling from the downturn and the banker is very cautious of risk. Providing you an increased line of credit is tough for them to do even if you stayed current over the last 48 months.
While the bank may be part of the answer, there is more we can do.
Without a doubt, inefficient operations result in wasted materials, time and effort. What inefficient operations really waste is cash. Cash that is absolutely needed to fund additional growth...
Internal improvements can free-up the cash needed for growth.
As a matter of fact, as a banker I may be more inclined to assist you if I knew you were trying to help yourself. Some internal improvement areas that can help reduce waste and in turn free-up cash.
Marketing, track effectiveness, if not generating inquiries/awareness it is not working. Word to the wise, don’t stop marketing, but do get it working. Marketing is still less expensive than door to door sales. It is your message, your geographics, or you demographics. Could be all three.
Sales, create your process, know what is happening and contribute the time. Sales is a verb, maybe a chore but certainly something that has to be done. If done well, it can provide the strategic information needed to transform your business. Listen to the customer. Current customers, past customers, future customers. Knowing their needs will help you be efficient in how your respond. Less expense in keeping a good customer than finding one to replace them. Bad customers are expensive too…..
Order to Cash cycle, in simplest terms the business of your business is to create cash. While we all know that satisfaction, quality, safety, ethics, and the list is long and all play a part. If the business does not create cash it does not exist for long. A poor order to cash cycle will have us slow to invoice, slow to collect, quick to order, slow to pay, lots of unpaid invoices in every area. The time needed to deal with this is a colossal waste. Waste of time, waste of opportunity, waste of talent.
Once have taken steps to improve these areas, now let’s once again ask “Where do I get the cash to fund the growth?”
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
The Knight Group, Inc. - Comments: WOW! Video 2010
this took nick and I less than 2 hours to complete. Incredible how easy it is to get the word out. Followers please forward to those that have a need to know.
WOW! Video 2010
via youtube.com
Please take a look at this video. We are here to help grow businesses, love to discuss our approach with you! www.knightgroupcorp.com
Saturday, May 8, 2010
What Twitter’s New Ad Model Could Mean for Small Business
via mashable.com
keeping a close eye on twitter. More like news and less like social media. interesting that they are finding a way to turn the concept into cash.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Harris: Google's venture funding arm extending its reach - San Jose Mercury News
Venture CapitalWhen mighty Google got into the venture capital business a year ago with "an aspirational goal" of investing $100 million a year in startups, the initiative was not universally welcomed by the Sand Hill Road crowd. Certainly, Google investors like Sequoia Capital and Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and a few other firms were easy to work with, but "...
"There are other firms I won't name" that seemed suspicious, said Google Ventures managing partner Bill Maris. He summed up the vibe as: "How dare you. Are you going to steal deals from us?"
Suspicion, sour grapes — just type the phrase "success breeds" into your favorite search engine and see how quickly it comes up with "contempt." With venture capital growing scarce, Google Ventures was decidedly good news for entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley as a whole. But struggling VCs had a special case for resentment.
Even before the Great Recession hit, the venture industry was undergoing a painful shakeout — a kind of lingering hangover from the excesses of the dot-com boom. Many firms and individual partners were fighting for professional survival. Then along comes these Googley VCs who (a) didn't have to hustle up investments from limited partners like pension funds and university endowments and (b) weren't having to practice triage on their existing portfolios in a brutal economy.
As it happened, Maris offered a one-year progress report of Google Ventures this
week on the eve of the annual meeting of the National Venture Capital Association, a shrinking organization that serves as the industry's chief advocate in Washington.AdvertisementToday, the sense of crisis in the venture capital industry has largely passed, but the shakeout continues. Venture fundraising has plummeted and the recovery is expected to be slow.
Mark Heesen, the association's longtime CEO, said Tuesday that while mergers and acquisitions are generating returns for investors, the market for initial public stock offerings remains spotty. Looking ahead, he predicted that the number of funds won't decrease as much as some predicted, but that some will be run by two partners instead of three.
More than 700 members of the National Venture Capital Association registered for the two-day confab at the Hyatt San Francisco Airport Hotel in Burlingame, which ended Wednesday. Addressing the crowd, Heesen was generally upbeat about the Obama administration's role in promoting technology. He also emphasized that VCs are considered "the lowest-hanging fruit" to be taxed to fund health care reform. And he took a moment to remind members to send in their dues.
Over at Google's campus in Mountain View, money doesn't seem to be much of an issue. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters this week that he expected the venture operation to branch into Europe and Asia.
Seeking "best of breed" opportunities in a wide range of fields, Google Ventures is now invested in 10 companies — seven involved in the Internet, two in cleantech and one in biotech. (Maris earned a degree in neuroscience before succeeding as a Web entrepreneur and a biotech and health care portfolio manager.)
The staff has grown to 15 partners and associates. Among the full-timers are such notable partners as Android co-founder Rich Miner and Excite founder Joe Kraus. Listed "advisers" include YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Google Ventures, Maris emphasized, is able to also tap into "20,000 Googlers" as a resource. Recommendations from Google employees, he said, have generated about one-quarter of the "deal flow" — startups the venture team has considered. So if you happen to have a startup in the works, you might want to work your Google connections.
Funny thing is, while Google is hugely successful, it's too early to judge the Google Ventures investments. The best-known startup in its portfolio is smartgrid software maker Silver Spring Networks. Maris said he prefers to invest in companies like Silver Spring that already have earnings, but he demurred from commenting on rumors that Silver Spring is headed for an IPO.
Google Ventures, incidentally, is a member of the National Venture Capital Association. Paying the dues shouldn't be a problem.
Changing of the chairman
Kate Mitchell, co-founder and managing partner of Scale Venture Partners of Foster City, on Wednesday was named chairman of the association for 2010-11, succeeding Polaris Ventures' Terry McGuire. She is the third woman to hold that post in the mostly male industry.
Contact Scott Duke Harris at sdharris@mercurynews.com or 408-920-2704.
via mercurynews.com
Google is taking their cash and helping start-up businesses. They help with what they know. Can the New North help with manufacturing? wouldn't that be great?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Google’s Venture Fund Steps Up the Pace - Bits Blog
very cool, who knew that google is helping to launch new businesses. add cash and talent to get good ideas off the ground. Wonder if NEW could do the same.
Popular - Google Fast Flip
This thing keeps getting bigger and bigger. who can help us figure out how to apply this properly! who you gonna call. SoMediaBusters?
Officials search Time Square bomb suspect’s apartment
Officials search Connecticut apartment of Times Square bomb suspect
Faisal Shahzad, arrested overnight as he tried to leave the U.S., is due in court Tuesday. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder indicates more arrests are possible.
Related
By Tina Susman Los Angeles TimesMay 4, 2010 | 7:39 a.m.
Text Size
la-naw-times-square-bomb-201000505
Reporting from New YorkInvestigators on Tuesday were combing through the Connecticut apartment recently occupied by a Pakistani-born man accused of driving an SUV rigged to explode into the heart of Times Square and arrested as he tried to flee the country overnight.The man, Faisal Shahzad, 30, was due in court Tuesday, but it was not clear what charges he would face. Shahzad was arrested about midnight EDT as he tried to leave the United States on a flight bound for Dubai. The flight was on the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport and was minutes from takeoff when it suddenly returned to the gate, passengers who were on board said. One of them, Mark Sutherland of South Africa, said there had been nothing unusual on the flight up until then.
In the working-class neighborhood of Shelton, Conn., north of New York City, where Shahzad had lived for several years, neighbor Brenda Thurman said Shahzad had a wife and two children and stayed to himself. "He didn't like to come out during the day," Thurman told The Associated Press. She said Shahzad told her husband he had a job on Wall Street, but that the Shahzad family left the home a few months ago after it fell into foreclosure.
From there, Shahzad apparently moved to nearby Bridgeport, where FBI agents early Tuesday began searching a building in which he had an apartment, looking for clues to determine if Shahzad had links to international or domestic terrorist organizations.At an early-morning news briefing shortly after Shahzad's arrest, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. indicated more arrests would be made in the case, which erupted Saturday evening when vendors noticed a suspicious vehicle left idling on a busy Times Square corner, its keys in the ignition. Investigators linked Shahzad to the case after learning that he had recently purchased the SUV from its previous owner.
"This investigation is ongoing. It is multifaceted," Holder said. "We will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice." He described the failed bombing as a "terrorist act" intended to kill Americans.
An official in Washington who could not be identified because of the sensitivity of the case said the amount of material inside the car bomb suggested it was the work of at least two people. The components included about 100 pounds of fertilizer as well as a large metal gun box, firecrackers, cans of gasoline and three propane tanks, which would have been difficult for just one person to pack into the SUV, especially in secret, the official said. However, the official described the work as "done with little sophistication" and noted that if the perpetrator had been part of a Middle Eastern terrorist group, the planned attack likely would have been a suicide bombing. Instead, the would-be bomber simply left the vehicle by the curb and walked away.
The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the incident, but administration officials, including Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, insisted Monday it was too early to draw any conclusions as to the legitimacy of the claim. "No leads are being discarded," Napolitano said, but she added, "This is an open investigation that really is in its beginning stages."
Despite the murkiness of the situation, New Yorkers seemed unfazed by the developments as they returned to work Monday. New Yorkers regard terror threats much the way Californians look at earthquakes: They know another one is coming and they prepare as best they can, but they get on with life.
Take Danny Pugliese and Bobby Marshall, construction workers who had plunked down their lunches at a table in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. Pugliese, 35, and Marshall, 39, said they hadn't thought much about the incident over the weekend. Marshall said he and his family had driven from Long Island to Yonkers to attend the christening of Pugliese's third child.
"If anything, the economy was more of a topic," Pugliese said.
They had talked Monday about the potential of a car bombing in the city, but only briefly. Both electrical workers who specialize in elevators, they had vivid memories of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Before 9/11 you saw something funny and you walked by it," Marshall said. "Now you look and you wonder and you think twice. It's just part of the city now."
It was, in fact, two Times Square street vendors who first noticed the suspicious SUV and alerted police. Marshall said it showed that the city's post-9/11 campaign that urges people to "say something" if they see something suspicious had worked. Pugliese was not convinced. He said it was the would-be bomber's ineptitude that saved the day. "He was an amateur, and his bomb messed up. We were lucky. Again," he said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has said the car bomb, made of easily purchased items, including alarm clocks and gasoline, could have sent a "significant fireball" hurtling through one of the world's busiest tourist spots.
The incident, coming months after a foiled plot by Afghan immigrants to blow up New York subways, underscored the vulnerability of heavily policed Times Square, which since the 9/11 attacks has been under close watch by police and scores of surveillance cameras. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday said bystanders' attention and the reaction of police showed the ability of the city to respond to threats, and that the bustling crowds in Times Square showed the city's resilience.
"It's a sick and despicable act, but New Yorkers are going about their normal activities," Bloomberg said.
Vinnie Gorham, a bike messenger who pedals across Manhattan, agreed. Watching out for danger, whether it comes in the form of potholes, distracted pedestrians or terrorism, is all in a day's work for New Yorkers like him. "I'm so caught up in what I do and on the move, I hardly think about the worst that could happen," said the wiry, 45-year-old biker before slinging a silver messenger bag over his shoulder and taking off.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times
Related stories
From the L.A. Times
From KTLA
- untitled entry|ktla.com
- Flames Shoot Out of Manhole Near Times Square|ktla.com
- ’Suspicious Vehicle’ Shuts Down Times Square|ktla.com
Around the Web
- Officials: NYC car bomb suspect in custody|chicagobreakingnews.com
- SUV Full Of Explosives In Times Square Had Connecticut Plates|courant.com
- NYC bomb investigators probe ’suspicious’ car in Times Square|baltimoresun.com
Digg
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-naw-times-square-bomb-20100...]" title="Add this to Twitter" rel="nofollow" target="_new" alt="Add this to Twitter"> StumbleUpon
Share
via latimes.com
that is amazing, nice work from those dedicated to public service, from the T-Shirt vendor (VET) regular people doing extraordinary things, HEROS!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)