Bridging The Gaap

“All I know is that I know nothing” - Socrates

When the opportunity arose to write for the Logoworks small business newsletter I was elated, and nervous. I’d been running my own financial education website BTGNow.net for just under six months, providing high quality content for my readers, earning advertising revenue in return. The question facing me now, as I sat down to write this article, was what, if anything, had I learned through the experience? What pearls of wisdom had my experiences unearthed?

While brainstorming about this article, I realized I’d learned a number of things:

- I’d learned the value of time management that week where I was too busy to update because of work, a painful lesson that could have been avoided had I simply planned everything out ahead of time.

- I’d learned the value of quick, polite and timely communication, and how much people appreciate when you respond to emails and phone calls within 24 hours.

- I’d learned that one can’t count on customers to let you know if a product is defective (they just won’t use it anymore!), a lesson I learned when I saw my traffic figures plummet, all because I didn’t check whether or not a change to my site would display properly in a browser that 50% of my readers used (it didn’t).

But when everything was said and done, one simple lesson edged itself out from its competitors: the best lesson I’ve yet learned is that I Don’t Know Everything. I know what I know, but I also know what I don’t know.

And that has made all the difference, measurable in US dollars.

I chose to write about this because I believe that this is a lesson that successful business people have learned, and it’s applicable to any business and every business person. I believe that to be successful, I have to not just learn, but internalize this lesson too, and the earlier the better!

Sure, it seems obvious, perhaps even silly, after all no one can know everything. But think for a minute: how many good businesses fail because they dismiss customer complaints? How many fail because they don’t seek the help they need? How many resources are wasted when a company or business person thinks it can do all things perfectly (but then isn’t capable of doing even one thing particularly well)?

As a content provider in the financial education sector, the realization that I Don’t Know Everything impacted my business practices in a number of positive ways:

- I began to do far more detailed research, looking for better, higher quality sources to improve the quality of my articles. Consequently the quality and scope of my product increased.

- I began focusing on my strengths, which included writing and promoting the content, and interpreting my product statistics. This allowed me to provide a better product, as I began to write articles based upon what my readers were telling me they were interested in.

- I began outsourcing my weaknesses, such as having my website and logo redesign handled by outside sources. Outsourcing my weaknesses allowed me to have more time to focus on creating and promoting my product, which has lead to more traffic and a tripling of my September revenue just three weeks into October (Update! BTG’s total October revenue was 6 times that of September’s! Yeehaw!). 

- I began to realize exactly what I still needed to learn! Business, as in life, is a continual process of learning: when you stop learning, you die.

I’ve learned many things since I started this entrepreneurial journey but I firmly believe that the sooner one realizes the limits of their own abilities and knowledge, then the sooner they can focus on finding people, services, and information that will fill those gaps. Once one realizes that You Don’t Know Everything, that you’re not always right, and that you may not be the best person for the job, it allows you step bank, re-evaluate your situation, focus on your strengths, and outsource your weaknesses. And if a lesson this simple can help me succeed, just an Average Jane trying to make it in the business world, then chances are it can help you too.

About the Author
For more information about Sarah L. and BTGNow.net, please read the ABOUT BTG page!

A few weeks ago I found this in my email:

I decided to write a post about this, because there are a lot of people asking about situations just like this on Yahoo Answers, so I thought I’d post a little primer on how to recognize financial scams. Let’s take a look at the 6 warning signs to look for!

How Can I Tell If It’s A Scam?

There are 6 warning signs to look for! Let’s go through the scam email I received and point them out one by one.

Warning Sign #1: This email was unsolicited (ie: I didn’t want or ask for it), and came from someone I didn’t know (ie: it didn’t come from a company or person I’d had prior contact with). I have no idea who this guy is (supposedly some kind of lawyer, but why would he use a hotmail account?), and no idea as to why he would be contacting me…starting to smell like a scam…

Warning Sign #2: SECOND NOTICE!!  is used as the subject heading, and the email makes multiple references to the fact that this is the second time they’ve tried to contact me. But think for a second, did you get a FIRST notice? By creating a sense of urgency, they are making it harder for you to feel like you can take the time you need to properly think about these things. Scammers use these types of words and phrases in their subject lines to get you to actually open the email, instead of ignoring it or deleting it. 

Here the scammer says a few times that this is the second time they’ve tried to contact me, but I NEVER received a first. I live in a first world country in 2008; most email does get delivered.

Warning Sign #3: Lawyer speak: Often these scams will use “official” sounding, really complex terms that your average person isn’t going to be able to understand. Take a look at the email I got: The codicil and last testament of the deceased? Surname identity? High court probate division?…Huh?!?

Also note that the deceased is never named (underlined in blue) because this is supposedly the second email, even though you never got the first one :/ . In some cases, they may name the deceased, but it is almost always someone you have never heard of, who would have no reason to know you (Nigerian Princes? So-called “long-lost” relatives you’ve never heard of who HAPPEN to have your last name?) Don’t fall for it!

Warning Sign #4: Poor English: this can be tricky to spot, especially if you’re just reading it quickly, or distracted by the huge amount of money these people seem to be offering you for free. In a lot of cases, improper English in the form of spelling and very obvious grammatical errors can easy to spot. But in some cases it can be more difficult, as we see in the picture below.

Who talks like that? Name Identity? Reckoned?  Someone is trying WAY to hard to sound British!

For those of you getting emails from “foreign” people or “royalty”, do not assume the poor English is due to the fact that they’re foreign, and of course they won’t speak English properly. This is not the case. Anyone important enough to need this kind of help will a) not seek it from you and b) hire someone who speaks perfect English. Poor English is a warning sign.

Warning Sign #5: A REQUEST FOR PERSONAL INFORMATION. This email is asking for my phone numbers my fax information and my address, but they can sometimes as for much more, including bank account numbers and your social insurance (US: social security) number. Scammers can do a hell of a lot with that kind of information. Do not release any personal information over email, over the phone, or in person. Never agree to phone anyone from an unsolicited email, and absolutely never agree to meet them.

What deal?  (underlined in blue) Also, these people have what, exactly? My LAST name and email address? How did they even get that? Even thumbing thorough the phone book would have given them more information. 

Warning Sign #5 and a half: ASKING YOU TO DO SOMETHING. Another warning sign is if they don’t ask for personal information, but do ask you to DO something, like deposit a cheque and send some of the money back. Often times these cheques will bounce once you have sent the money (meaning there was not enough money in the person’s account to allow the cheque to go through), which means you’ve now withdrawn and sent a total stranger a ton of money (likely pushing you into overdraft) for nothing. Do not do anything a scammer asks you to do.

Warning Sign #6: A sense of urgency: this is the same tactic as we discussed in warning sign #2, where scammers create a sense of urgency. They want you to feel like time is of the essence, because people who feel they can stop and think about things for a minute usually are able to realize it’s a scam.

These six warning signs are pretty common, but the trick is to always use your common sense. Stop and think before replying to ANY suspicious email, and NEVER give out any kind of personal information, ever. 

Have you ever received an email you thought was a scam? What made you think it was a scam? What happened? Leave a comment below and let us know!

N.B. Woohoo! This article was an Editor’s Pick at the 177th Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by The Sun’s Financial Diary!

I just had to post this for everyone interested in critical thinking:

http://www.modernfeed.com/

I’m watching Frontline, online, right now. No more waiting until 2 in the morning for me!
If you are in the United States, you can also access Nova, and a whole host of other PBS shows.

Edit: Wow. Way to miss a capitalized letter in a country’s name. No more late night posting for me (yeah…right…).

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room was playing Sunday night (er…technically Monday morning…)on CBC’s The Passionate Eye.

Unfortunately I tuned in about half-way (I only came in right around that whole California electricity fiasco) so alot of the accounting fraud was over my head.

What was incredibly clear however was the lack of integrity by all parties, on all accounts. As one gentleman put it at the end of the film, in a company who’s motto was “Ask Why?” it appeared that nobody did.

I have decided, then, that when the time comes for me to review a book about the importance of critical thinking (as voted by you guys), the first book will be Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room.

On a personal note, this is exactly the kind of thing that inspired me to found Bridging the Gaap. The discipline of Finance has so much good to offer the world, when properly applied.