Planning for profitability.(From the Publisher)(Brief article)

It is the duty of business to earn a profit.

Experienced readers will distinguish the difference between earn a profit and make a profit. It is often easier to make a profit (frequently a one-shot deal) than earn a profit, which requires ethical integrity and top-rate goods and services for established clients and customers over a period of time.

When a businesses, large or small, but especially the small, fewer-than-100-employee businesses, fail to be profitable, there can be serious and far-reaching consequences: employees out of jobs impacting families and mortgages; customer and clients who have come to rely on the enterprise can no longer do so; a loss to the economic fabric of a community; and not the least, dreams shattered for a once optimistic owner.

Making a profit at any cost, costs too much. Earning an ethical profit is what counts and what can be counted on to sustain all interests in the enterprise.

SET TARGET GOALS NOW

Now that kids are back in school or headed off to college; the in-laws, the out-laws and the unwritten laws have departed the Great Land; and those business contacts who always do business in Alaska during salmon season have wended their way southward-this is the right time to start conscientiously thinking about how to earn more customers and profits in 2008.

If there ever was a time when businessmen and women needed to step up to the plate, as people often say, and to make a difference for Alaska, this is surely that time. While we may have temporarily become the focus of late-night and Sunday-morning talk show pundits, for the main part, Alaska's businesses can retain and even enhance their ranking in the fields of economics and world business endeavor. Alaska is still the place that most people in the world want to come and see. Let them see us at our best. There is still time to work it. Let's get hot!

Vern C. McCorkle

Publisher

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