CablesAndKits Blog

Adding value to your IT infrastructure

CEO Daily Update – 8.05.2020

by

New Layout | CPU Wall Mounts | Free Money! | Emotional Bank Accounts 

Happy Wednesday!  

Welcome to the CablesAndKits CEO daily update. 

I am changing things up a little today. I am going to start with the products I want you to see, buy, and love. We are playing with the email format to see how different things affect clicks and sales (because let’s face it, I don’t write this every day purely for my health! … but I still love you all haha). Think about it like “today’s update is brought to you by …. ”  

Today’s Product Spotlight:  

Today we are highlighting our CPU wall mount shelf. With this thing you can mount your PC under/to your desk or on a wall, or you can mount a variety of other things like UPS’s, cable modems, or really anything you can think of that would fit in it. You are your own person – you can mount what you want to mount when you want to mount it. 😉  

Thanks Rerun (AKA Rebecca) for the write up!  

Kendall Howard Desktop CPU Wall Mount Shelf 

https://www.cablesandkits.com/racks-cabinets/wall-mount/pc/cpu/pro-5233/

Keep your computer safe from unexpected spills, kicks, or drops with this Kendall Howard CPU Wall Mount Shelf! Made from heavy duty 14-gauge steel, this CPU bracket is designed to safely secure your computer off the floor or desktop to give you a more organized work space and keep your computing device safe. This wall mount takes only minutes to install and includes a Velcro strap to keep your computer secure. Made in the USA! 

From Joe, our friendly Safety Supplies Product Marketer: 

Joe is still out of town (or so we are told), so I will carefully select and hand pick the finest of safety product to present to you for your consideration ….  

Thermometers!! We have three options for you – basic, standard, and premium. To be honest, you can’t go wrong with any of them but if I am honest, I like the basic and premium ones the best. Check them all out here.  

Alcohol Wipes!! We have plenty of our single-serve low-calorie rust-proof, easy to handle, luxury alcohol towelettes back in stock – The NOW towelettes good for 1000 household uses (you’ll want to hear what’s at the other end of this link). Buy in packs of 50, 100, or a case of 2500!  

You can also check out our entire selection of disinfectant wipes including Lysol wipes, here.  

Nothing like free money! (Especially when it’s already yours):  

Did you know that you may have money out there owed to you that you don’t even know about?  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 8.05.2020

CEO Daily Update – 8.4.2020

by

Lessons and Tips of a Work-From-Home Culture | Joe Goes on Vacation | COVID-19 News Updates

Happily Dapily Tuesday!  

I read an article today titled “Don’t Buy Into The Work-From-Home Hype“. The author talks about some of the benefits of working in the office, as well as the dangers of being isolated from growth opportunities in a more interactive environment. I agree with some of the dangers posed, but I think it is possible to overcome them without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  

To be certain, working from home is here to stay. Maybe not for every company, but for some significant quantity of them that have learned how to do it. With a small amount of reservation, I’ll say I am pretty sure we are one of them. (There are two weasel clauses in that last sentence in case you didn’t catch them). I think that the ability for each company to succeed at maintaining a work from home culture depends on several factors. Here are a few that spring to mind….  

Vision and Leadership are important. One thing we have learned at CK is that we MUST be able to help a person understand what is expected in their role and how it fits into the overall picture. If we don’t know what we need them to do, they probably won’t either. You have to know your business model and know who needs to be where doing what. If you are a fly by the seat of your pants start-up where everyone “just does what needs to be done” this will be a lot harder. You might be able to solve for it with daily video calls to sync up until you can get better role clarity and reporting in place. If people don’t know what they are supposed to do, or what results are expected, it will be a lot easier to let things slide.  

Vision and/or good leadership (they are not the same, but can create similar outputs) also compels a person (or should) to WANT to drive things forward. Your team, and especially leaders, should be laying in bed at night thinking about how to accomplish things. When the vision is that compelling, you’ll be much more likely to be able to rely on your people to perpetuate a performance culture, no matter where their butt is parked. And vision doesn’t always have to come from the top (although it should start there). Don’t underestimate the inspirational and passionate leadership of mid-level managers and leaders to achieve the important things necessary to drive the business forward through their people.  

You’ll benefit from good reporting – You can’t rely on hallway conversations to fill you in on how a project is going since you’re not having them. Be intentional. Who needs to report on what, when? Determine what you did in the office and make sure you are at least doing that, but take this opportunity to refine the expectations and reporting to help you run the business well.  

Also, the accountability that comes with good reporting is important. There is some FALSE sense of accountability when you can SEE someone in the office, but that doesn’t mean they are getting anything done. Defining the expectations will help you begin to frame out what the reporting should look like.  

Focus on Outcomes. As much as possible, when redefining roles, accountability, and reporting for people who work from home, try to focus on defining the expectation of outcomes more than activity. Giving a sense of purpose to each team member helps them make their own decisions throughout the day that drive the desired outcome, instead of only measuring their efforts based on inputs of time … or worse, them feeling like they can simply “be available” (queue fingernails on chalkboard).  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 8.4.2020

CEO Daily Update – 8.3.2020

by

Amazing prices on 3-ply masks | Out of Practice / Shape | Supply & Demand

Happy Monday!  

I hope you had a great weekend. We went back to church for the first time since all this COVID stuff first started (months). We could have went back weeks ago but at first it seemed that masks may be required so it was easy to just stay home another week. One week turns into two, then three. Then I got the ‘Rona so that put me out a couple weeks.  

To keep everyone socially distanced they went from one service with a normal chair arrangement to three shorter services with small groups of chairs spaced apart. God bless the pastor and staff/volunteers! It was great to just be back in the building, a highlight was seeing friends we haven’t seen in a while.  

In fact, we invited some of those friends who also have small kids over to the house Sunday afternoon / evening to swim and partake of those ribs I spoke of on Friday. He makes his own BBQ sauce and I experiment with different rib rubs and prep methods so it was definitely a “coming together” sort of moment. It was fantastic!   

Back to “getting back to church” – scripture has a lot to say about believers gathering, learning, and worshiping together (which doesn’t HAVE to mean “church” as we know it today but that’s another conversation). If you compared it to “practice” or “training” of something you want to get good at you can see why for matters of the faith it’s an important thing to do. When you get “out of practice” you get “out of shape”.  What we focus on and spend time on will be who we become.  

Are you consistently doing things that take you in the direction you want to go? (Whatever that may be) 

Throughout this pandemic we have had people complain about pricing, or even accuse us of price gouging. It caused me to write this as a reply of sorts to an email from a customer. Check it out and let me know what you think ….  

How do products in short supply and high demand become so expensive? Here is how:  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 8.3.2020

CEO Daily Update – 7.31.2020

by

The Need for Rest | Inspect the Inputs | Goggles? | Prayer Requests

Happy Friday!  

Woot Woot! I am going to do some sleeping, some rib cooking, some TV watching, and ……. well, what I mean to say is I am going to do whatever my wife tells me we are doing. Ha! I still have my laptop finishing touches to do, which shouldn’t take long, but I do hope to do all the things mentioned above this weekend. I have learned that the longer and harder I work my brain (and body), the more I need to be intentional about rest and recovery.  

I am my best when I am not worn down, and if I go too far it takes much longer to recover. True story – I got so worn down from work once (perhaps about 8-10 years ago) that my wife and I went on a beach vacation for two weeks and the ENTIRE time we were there I never turned the TV on, and we went hardly anywhere –  I just laid on the couch staring at the ceiling or sat on the porch watching the ocean. For two weeks. I was that bad off. I let myself get way too far gone from being too overworked.  

Since then I have learned that I tend to work in sprints. I will go really really hard for a few months, and then either need a vacation, or a season of going much slower. It’s near super human when I am sprinting but I have to recharge. What I seem to be experiencing now, at age 41 (soon to be 42), are batteries that don’t seem to be charging back up as fast as they used to.  Maybe “When you get my age” is really a thing – haha.  

Inspect the inputs:  

Over time we have tried to build leading indicators and funnels to understand and predict outcomes. Instead of looking at invoicing, which is “staring out the back of the bus”, we look at booked revenue, preceded by a list of other things that begin at activities and actions (like Google Adwords impressions) all the way through site traffic, conversion rate, cart abandonment, etc. It’s scientific, it removes a lot of guessing, and it’s real time. In fact, we have charts that show average site traffic by hour over the last several weeks compared to actual site traffic by hour TODAY. We can tell throughout the day if an hour is off (up or down).  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Update – 7.31.2020

CEO Daily Updates – 7.30.2020

by

Moving to a new computer |Clorox Wipes in Stock | A prayer request

Happy Thursday!  

We are a mere one day away from the glorious weekend! Do you have anything interesting planned?  

My new Macbook Pro: Moving to a new computer 

I bought a new Macbook Pro last week to replace the one I had. It was having some funky issues and I DO NOT play when it comes to my computer having issues. I will allow a tad bit of troubleshooting but if that doesn’t solve the issue completely, I am buying a new one. I do not ever reformat the one I have … I buy a new one, get completely up and running, and then format and sell the old one, or pass is to someone else in the company that is due for a refresh.  

I have learned the hard way that when you format the computer you are using you are just asking for trouble. I have had issues that kept me down for a couple days, I have lost data because I didn’t remember everything I needed to move over, etc. Then you are without a computer “until”. Nope. I buy the new one, start getting things working on it as I have time, and when I am completely done, I give myself several days or a week to make sure I don’t realize something I am missing from the old one before I wipe it.  

During this switch over it took me two days to realize I didn’t move my email signatures over from the old Outlook to the new one. You would think that using Office365 would cause those to move automatically, but alas, the work is mine. I have 11 email accounts each with their own signature. Fortunately my old machine isn’t wiped yet. 😉  

My last Macbook Pro was the 13″ and I really loved it. Small, powerful, and super portable. This time, I was on the fence but at the suggestion of my IT guy I went for the 16″. It is more powerful than the new 13″ and of course has a bigger screen. I was nervous when it was on the way – I really didn’t know if I would like the bigger screen / bigger form factor. I was a little shocked when I opened the screen but in just a short while I was thinking “OMG – this is amazing”. It removes any desire I might have had for using a monitor, and it fits in my same laptop bag so the only thing that changed was the weight. And I am not joking – I had a book that stayed in my bag that I never read. I removed it and now the bag is back to what I am used to.  

I didn’t intend to do a 16″ Macbook Pro product review in this email but it sorta feels like I did – ha!  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Updates – 7.30.2020

CEO Daily Updates – 7.29.2020

by

An analogy of Financial Reports | KN95 Masks on Sale | COVID-19 News Updates

Happy Wednesday! (Huuuuu……. Huuuuuuuuuuummm…) 

During our weekly leadership meeting, Gary (our Chief Administrative Steward) was giving the leadership team a refresher / class on financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Statement). In an effort to help with some understanding I jumped in with an analogy that I personally really liked (it came to me in the moment), and I thought I would share it with you.  

First, the overview of the financial statements.  

In a business there are three primary financial statements used to monitor financial health and to inform decisions – the P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. You may or may not be familiar with these statements so I will, in my own words, explain what they tell you.  

The P&L (profit and loss) statement, or Income Statement, shows your income, cost of the goods or services you are selling (COGS), expenses, and profit (or loss). Income minus cost of goods equals your gross profit. It is from this gross profit that you can pay your expenses, and what’s left over is your net income. Taxes are a factor but they only show up on the P&L if you are a C corp. Otherwise, if you are an S Corp or LLC the taxes are the responsibility of the shareholders each year and therefore do not show up as an expense in the business.  

The Balance sheet shows the cash and assets of the business, as well as any liabilities – usually loans, but also the money you have booked as an expense but have not yet PAID. For instance, if you booked an expense for a vendor onto the P&L but have not yet sent the check, it shows up as a liability on the balance sheet in the “Accounts Payable” account. Glancing through the balance sheet you can see what cash you have in the bank, what people owe you (Accounts Receivable), what you owe as balances of loans and accounts payable, and also any “balance of value” of any fixed assets you purchased. For instance, if you bought a big ‘ol underwater basket weaving machine for $250,000 it is not (typically) able to be “expensed” on the P&L, and therefore shows up as an asset on the balance sheet. The IRS allows you to “depreciate” (write off) assets over a set amount of time, depending on the asset type, and to do that you transfer a piece of the value of that asset away from the balance sheet and onto the P&L. You are basically reducing the value of the asset and taking that reduction in value as an expense a little at a time. That one is maybe a little hard to wrap your head around without looking at it on paper.  

[Read more…] about CEO Daily Updates – 7.29.2020