🍺Bad pancakes, decent whiskey, and a post-pandemic comeback kid.
🍺Bad pancakes, decent whiskey, and a post-pandemic comeback kid.
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No. 62 | March 24, 2023
We're in the bracket-busting sweet spot of the NCAA tourney, and hourly corporations are bracing themselves for an estimated $1.9B in losses due to workers whose attentions are focused elsewhere. You won't hear similar complaints from pizza and American beer companies, both of which see a (un)healthy consumption increase during this season of madness.
ON TAP THIS WEEK 🍻
Essentially essential: 📃5 reasons you need SOPs, like yesterday
The weight might be over...but at what cost? 💸
War: What is it good for? 🤔 A lot, actually. (In business, anyway.)
BMW 🚗 is shifting gears when it comes to car manufacturing.
It aint over 'til it's over. 📚 Why bookstores are the pandemic's comeback kid.
Are you leaving $$ on the table? 🤑 Find out in this week's Money Minute.
Feel like an IT dunce? Don't miss last call on the LLP podcast 🎧 with small-biz IT expert Orrin Klopper.
And from 🌐 Around the Web: Where this 🦈 shark is putting his money, why the Supreme Court is talking 💩 shit, and how hard work doesn't always pay off🤦🏼♂️.
THE CLASSROOM
Five Reasons You Need Standard Operating Procedures
by Luigi Rosabianca
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are essential for any business. They’re basically the “user manual” that outlines how processes and tasks should be carried out that (ideally) anyone can understand and implement. They might seem like a formality or a bunch of bureaucratic bung, but they can be incredibly beneficial for small businesses in several ways.
HEARD ON THE STREET
💊 Americans Can't Weight for These Drugs
If approved for weight loss, an Eli Lilly drug could become the best-selling drug of all time, but concerns are mounting about who can afford it. Experts are confident the drug, called tirzepatide, will be approved by the FDA sometime next year. If that's the case, it will join Novo Nordisk's two other popular (and pricey) weight loss drugs, Wegovy and Saxenda. Without hard-to-get insurance approval, a monthly supply of these drugs hovers around $1K in the US. High costs and waning supply led to a recent run on cheaper Canadian and Mexican pharmacies. To prepare for anticipated demand, Novo Nordisk has invested $2.5B+ in expanding production capacity for their diabetes drug unit, while Eli Lilly's similar expansion has cost $1.7B+. Classic lesson is gearing up your inventory for that expected feeding frenzy.
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🥷🏼 No Neutrality in This Suisse War
Imagine Pepsi acquiring Coke. Elon driving a Ford. Manchester United moving to London. Jordan wearing Reeboks. We need rivals in life and in business; they create distinction. Competition increases qualitative output, and clients are brand conscious and align with certain perceived values. Business rivalries encompass:
The battle to win new customers who do not yet buy your kind of product from anyone
The struggle to capture existing customers from rivals while keeping your own customers from switching to rivals
The fight for the best possible share of business from customers who are not exclusively with you or anyone else.
UBS and Credit Suisse have engaged in these battles for decades. Now, with the interventionist arm of the Swiss government, CS got sliced up like…Swiss cheese (you saw that coming a mile away!).
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🏭 This Car Manufacturer Has its Head in The Clouds - Literally
Building a car factory aint for the faint of heart. You've got to make sure thousands of human and robotic workers are all working together in a perfectly choreographed dance to turn 30,000 individual pieces into ONE automobile. And they need to do it in one minute. What could possibly go wrong? And before construction on the factory even begins, thousands of engineers will draw millions of CAD drawings and meet for thousands of hours. Worse yet, they know that no amount of planning will prevent a long list of bugs once the factory finally opens. That's how it used to work. BMW said "no thanks" and has partnered with Nvidia to build a digital replica of its soon-to-open EV factory. The tech is saving them millions - and a lot of headaches.
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📘 Book Worms Moving Fast
Bookstores are back, baby! Once feared to be going the way of the woolly mammoth, book sales rebounded in the post-pandemic world, with US publishers raking in $29.3B in '21. And the '22 data suggest bookstores remain in expansion mode. Case in point: Barnes & Noble. After spending most of the 2010s battling (and losing) for the market share to Amazon, they're now the comeback kid and expecting to open 30 new stores this year. What's their secret? By refocusing away from trinket sales, welcoming influencers, and giving local stores more autonomy over displays, sales grew 4%+ last year. But it's not just B&N; the number of independent bookstores is also rising. Last year, 334 indie stores opened in the US, with women driving this change.
Book sales didn't increase in a vacuum, and releases from in-demand writers flooded the market. Colleen Hoover, aka CoHo to her legions of adoring fans, claimed many spots on the Top 25 Bestselling Books of 2022 and sold a whopping 14.3 million books last year (powered largely by TikTok.) This shouldn't come as a surprise: Some reports estimate women are buying 80% of novels today. And the market is aligning in this direction. In the 1970s, female authors accounted for approximately 20% of all books; in '20, their share surpassed 50%+. Let's hear it for the girls!
In other Big Book News, you'll soon be able to get your hands on our contribution to the literary world. Our book, Buying the American Dream, releases Friday, April 7. And while it might not be the (some would argue) poorly-written, abusive relationship tropes that CoHo can't seem to get away from, we think it still deserves a spot on your bookshelf. (Learn more about it here.)
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
Are you leaving money on the table?
with Matthew R. Meehan
In last week’s newsletter, I touched briefly on R&D tax credits, but honestly, it deserves another mention. Even though the government gives out billions every year to US-based companies, billions more are left on the table, and that’s because many small biz owners don’t think they qualify for them.
In the same boat? Here’s a simple, 4-part test:
Is your business developing OR improving products, processes, or services in order to resolve a problem that will benefit the company?
Are your activities technological in nature? (Computer science, engineering, etc.)
Did you demonstrate that you’ve attempted to eliminate uncertainty regarding the product/process/service you developed or improved?
Can you show your work? You need to demonstrate a systematic process of experimentation.
R&D tax credits aren’t just for people double-fisting test tubes and wearing white lab coats. We’ve helped people in all kinds of industries - from software companies, manufacturers, rehab facilities, and restaurants - get THOUSANDS back in tax credits. Our team at Shield Advisory Group is standing by; contact us today to learn how much you might be eligible for.
🍻 LAST CALL WITH THE LIQUID LUNCH PROJECT PODCAST
🎧 Ep 97: Small Business IT with Orrin Klopper, CEO at Netsurit
Dealing with technology and IT issues is far too often a thorn in the side of small business owners who - quite frankly - have enough on their plate already without worrying about security updates and malware issues.
Enter today’s guest: Orrin Klopper is on a mission to enable and empower entrepreneurs and small biz owners with honest, predictable tech and IT support. He’s the CEO of Netsurit, an IT, Cloud, and Security service provider (MSP) that helps organizations innovate and embrace digital transformation to ensure tech challenges are never in the way of them achieving their dreams. Through adoption and automation, he has seen his clients increase productivity and triple the return on their investment.
We also cover standard IT processes for in-office versus remote workers, the importance of investing in training, what he was able to achieve through organic marketing efforts, what it’s like working in a very competitive industry, and the criteria he looks for when acquiring companies.
If you’re ready to explore how automation and new technologies can improve productivity, don’t miss this episode.
AROUND THE WEB
The recent SVC and SB failures got you feeling a bit spooked? You're not alone. Here's what Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank fame has to say about it...and where he's putting his money instead.
Talk about a shitty day in U.S. Supreme Court. Jack Daniels' is trying to stop the sale of a dog toy that they believe will make people associate their whiskey with dog poop. The vinyl chew is a bottle replica, but instead of "40% alcohol by volume," it says "43% poo and 100% smelly." But despite spending 90 minutes "chewing over" the case, the justices did not reach a decision yet.
A (not so smooth) criminal: After what was undoubtedly a very long and very tedious project, two prisoners dug their way to freedom using a toothbrush and metal object, only to be found hours later at a nearby IHOP. We give them an A+ for their tenacity and a D- for their choice of pancakes.
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