Gas $0.
75 per gallon.
How about $100 for an ounce of Gold? I know...
, how about $100 for a one carat diamond? What kind of return do you want on your investments? ...
100, 200, 400 or even 1000 Percent? There are so many people telling you that you can make such a huge return on your investment these days that you just can't believe any of them any longer.
I know, I have received so many get rich emails that I should be earning about a billion a day now! How about investing in something that you really believe in.
Yourself.
All of the investments listed above would be great investments, since they have a guaranteed return because the equity has a much higher value than the offering price.
Sure, a 100 bucks for an ounce of gold is a great price since an ounce of gold is selling for about 800 bucks these days.
We can only dream of the days when gas sold for 75 cents a gallon.
Even though all of the above would be great investments, none are as good as investing in yourself.
Investing in yourself is like turning on a money generating engine that never goes down in value.
Education opens doors of opportunity that only has yourself as the limit.
There are a million things you can spend your money on, but the best financial investment you will ever make is in your education.
A 1000 percent windfall in a gold investment is a one time return.
Investing in yourself returns over and over again.
I recently started a business as an investment in myself.
I had dreamed for years of running a business that provided the process improvements for small businesses that I had helped Fortune 500 companies with.
I knew I could provide the same type of help at a much lower price point and help many small businesses improve their bottom line.
Small businesses and large have similar process problems, data everywhere, redundant processes, and escalating time pressures.
Everyone has to get more out of the resources that they have available to compete in their market segment.
With that in mind I looked for the best way to help at the lowest price entry point possible.
Again, one of the major problems is data everywhere.
Most companies duplicate it as many as seven times.
That itself adds redundancy in the processes just keeping the data synchronized.
Another thing that is common with large and small business is the standard software tools used to author data and manage their business is Microsoft Office.
That seemed to be a logical starting point.
It is also true that most users know how to take advantage of only a small percentage of the capabilities of Office, but they get by because they have to.
They develop techniques that help them survive and they rely on them day in and day out.
It is truly amazing to see the incredible techniques developed out of necessity used to manage businesses in places where users have little training but huge need.
The old axiom is so true.
Many businesses are so busy with business that they don't see that they can take the time to improve how they do business.
It leads to a downward spiral of productivity allowing their competition to overtake them in the market place.
Unfortunately, that is a long term view that most small business does not have the luxury to deal with.
Here are the facts I considered when choosing a way to help.
Data is one of the major problems facing business today.
Office has a powerful database solution that perhaps millions of companies already own.
Most of the businesses that own it do not know how to use it.
So it seemed that the best entry point to help businesses improve their bottom line was with Access applications built to solve their specific data problems.
Whether it was interfaces to several tools already in place to reduce input, or a custom tool to manage a complicated business process Access could handle it and most companies already own it.
When I started trying to build real world Microsoft Access Database applications I found it pretty difficult.
On top of that, I could not find any examples that went beyond very basic instruction.
Embarrassingly enough, I was told the first database I built with Access looked "elementary" after spending weeks on it! So, having a lot of experience with software and wanting to have advanced Access features in my applications, I was pretty frustrated.
I could not find database examples that looked and felt professional.
There are a lot of good tips and examples to be found on the internet, but how was I to tie them all into an application that had a powerful and friendly interface for my users? What I needed was advanced access database examples or even full access database applications that I could study.
I wanted examples that could help me springboard my ideas into full user applications.
Like I said, there are tons of great tips on the internet, but they don't really help that much as a collection of disjointed tips.
What I wanted was an application full of interface tips, forms, queries, and modules that made it a powerful multi user, security controlled, database application.
I also wanted features that I had seen in high end enterprise database systems.
The key to a great database is developing it so that data entered once can be used everywhere and making data entry as easy as possible.
If data entry is complicated and disjointed, your users will get frustrated and stop using the application.
I was confident that Access with VBA could produce great applications, after all it has sold millions of copies, but I could not find any advanced code examples to work from.
Though often overlooked by database developers, you will find that it is important to have your design aesthetically pleasing as well.
Put a high end look and feel in the GUI so the users will enjoy using it.
If your are going to be staring at your computer screen for hours a day, you may as well enjoy what you are looking at.
I could not find any examples that meet that criteria so I spent a lot of time developing ideas that make our databases really pop.
Now our customers continually say things like, "That does not look like Access," or " I didn't know Access could do all that! Users will expect advanced features available like how to interface directly to email so they could send orders or communicate to their team instantly.
I wanted to provide Pop up forms to fill in data, or live "where used" functions.
I could imagine a function that would display where a record was in use as I scrolled over it but figuring out how to create it was a whole different matter.
I was tired of typing in dates so I searched until I found a "Date Picker" example.
I was excited until I spent hours trying to make it work.
You will found out that you can spend a lot of valuable time looking for advanced Access examples, then a lot more time making them work, and even more time on how to integrate them into your applications.
I discovered, even though I really appreciate those that post Access help tips and examples, "free examples" are not so free.
Every hour spent searching for the right Access Database example then fixing it was costing me money.
How was I to handle security? No database application is complete with out user security.
A logon screen was one thing, but how was I to handle multiple users in multiple departments that wanted to share some but not all their data? Go ahead and spend a little money on training or education.
Don't forget that the time you spend trying to teach yourself a new product or new functions of a produce is money spent, time spent that you can never get back.
Find a good example database, or a good Access training class or an advanced training book and rip into it.
Spend a little money on yourself to get the best payback for your training dollars.
I have found over the years that most people and companies that are struggling are the ones who put training dollars as a low priority in their budgets.
As the old saying goes, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later," and often the later is much more expensive when you add up lost opportunity.