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Surviving the Family Business

Leo Tolstoy said, “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. Tolstoy could have had a family business.

No business venture is as fraught with challenges as a family business. Even the closest relatives can become disillusioned, hostile or just plain unhappy when working together. Mature, educated adults can be reduced to jealous toddlers (you were always Dad’s favorite) when faced with the day-to-day operations of a business.

The work, customer service, even the bottom line can suffer because of unresolved family conflicts. If you have hired every slacker in the family to make Grandma happy or pay one child more than another for the same job because he has a larger family or a gambling problem you are set for eventual failure.

You business will never be as fragile as when the boss, President, or CEO retires. If you leave without a plan, you may find the company in complete revolt as members jockey for position and start taking sides. It is imperative to make your successor known, in a written plan for all to know.

Who leads your family business? Who will assume leadership when you retire? Do you have a plan? Is it in writing? Are you prepared for someone to quit in protest? Have you separated family from your family business?

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Marketing Your Freelance Business

If you are a freelance writer, graphic designer, web developer or any other position where you work from one short-term contract to another, you probably run into the same problem as a number of other freelancers: not enough marketing. If you have a big job for several months, it can be easy to forget about the future — and your profits — and stop marketing for the duration of that job. Then, when you finish, you’ll find yourself work-starved due to your lack of marketing when things were good.

This is always a stressful situation, but, like many stressful situations, it can be avoided with careful planning. The key is to do a little bit or marketing every day, no matter how tired you are, how much work you have lined up, and what else is going on in your life. Set a small enough goal that you can’t make excuses for yourself.

So, you need to be mature and proactive. Set yourself a small, manageable, daily goal such as “call five potential clients and email three past clients.” This is much easier and less intimidating than the 50 calls and 30 emails you’ll have to make and send each day if you let your marketing slip during the big jobs.

This is the edge that a lot of other freelancers will have over you. You’ve probably seen a less-talented freelancer get more work than you before and internally seethed at the fact that firms were hiring people like him while avoiding people like you. The reason for this is marketing: firms knew about him, and they didn’t know about you, so they had no idea there was a better-qualified freelancer positively dying to work for them.

So make some calls and send some emails. For better or for worse, marketing is a key part of every freelancer’s life, and the sooner your embrace it the sooner your small business profits will start to rise.

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Business Break Room Grudge

11  Business Break Room Grunge

1. The company break room can be a very scary place. Especially on Fridays.  A week’s worth of food some left over, abandoned and other wised discarded lay in random shapes of office  break room refrigerators. With no one to claim the forgotten items leaks, mold, and the smell of something gone bad will take over the break room.

2. Nobody’s Business

As a business owner  you provide your employees with a space to take required mandatory breaks and to have lunch. If  the space is becoming uninhabitable it is time to take action. Actually, having a plan in place prior to the grunge works better. A clean work and break environment is everyone’s business.

3. Your Mother Does Not Work Here!

It is amazing to people watch sometimes. When you finish eating it the next step should be in clearing your area and leaving it presentable for the next person. As you may well know not everyone subscribes to that creed.  You have to task of enforcing order and cleanliness in a break room your business supplies.  Even with a cleaning staff you employees should have a standard of cleanliness or find an alternative eating space.

4. The Refrigerator  and Microwave Issue

The  refrigerator and microwave will become unrecognizable items if they are not cleaned out and aired regularly. You may wonder how some people live at home when you look at the spilled tomato sauce gracing the sides and door of  the microwave that everyone uses. As note explaining that contents left on Friday night will be discarded. A person assigned to kitchen duty follows through with the tossing of items. Eventually employees will get the message and offenders of shared kitchen etiquette will be called out. Nobody wants to eat behind slob or f room a questionable refrigerator. Staff with preferred hygiene issues will help enforce policy and respect  of the break room privileges.

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How Foreclosures are a Boon for Investors

The biggest result from the 2008 financial crisis was the flood of foreclosed properties in the real estate market. From homes to entire apartment buildings, a glut of properties in both poor and rich communities have been put up for sale, creating a large supply.

This has also created a wide-open field for investors to make significant gains in the real estate market again. There are many viable reasons why foreclosed properties are a safe investment. Most importantly, they give investors the opportunity to put up little and get much in return.

Low Cost

When a property is foreclosed, a bank takes on ownership. This creates a problem if a bank becomes saddled with a large inventory and cannot unload them. However, this means the properties are going for little money, so investors can acquire property in valuable areas at a greatly discounted price.

Low Interest Rates

Additionally, if an investor chooses to finance a property instead of buying, interest rates remain significantly low, leading to very small monthly payments.

Multiple Uses

By investing in a foreclosed property, an investor has diverse options on how to make money with it. A common approach is renting the property out. Investors can also get creative and offer the property to vacationers for weeks at a time while they wait for the economy to improve and for someone to buy the property above market value.

Management Options

With a foreclosed property, investors can sit back and watch their money grow since there are professional property management companies that can do the heavy work. These firms can make owning a property a much easier investment with fewer headaches.For example, an investor can buy in a state hit hard by foreclosures like Nevada and work with a Las Vegas property management company to manage the property in an area that will certainly turn around.

With little input, investors can make big gains with foreclosures.

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Loss of Family

Loss of Family

1. Business Affair

When staff members lose family it a empathetic work environment offers condolences. Your business gets extra points for ensuring that something is in  place to support workers during their loss.

2. Offering

An offering of concern should be sent to your staff member or to their next of kin. Flowers and a card are standard thought gifts. Having employees sign and donate for the cause is one way. Your business picking up tab is another. You decide. The point is that your employee had a life and much of it was spent working for you. No guilt trip needed just a nice dose of etiquette and business savvy. Acknowledging the loss of life regardless of   title or status is fitting. A plaque or gesture offering something tangible the family can touch is also a sign of appreciation and respect. You don’t have to name wing in honor of employees but empathy can go a long way and is always appreciated.

3. Moment of Silence

In extreme cases of tragedy you may need or want to offer counseling for staff. This can help in garnering understanding and offer group support to those affected by the events. If counseling is not an immediate option do take a moment for a moment of silence in honor of  the employee.

4.Regrouping

You may consider closing down for a short period of  time allowing staff to regroup and process in their own way. People react differently to stressful situations. Grief and loss are a real part of life and employers who have a plan to handle crisis situations do a service for employees and how they are perceived as business owners.

4. Right Thing To Do

Having a policy in place to deal with crisis situations is the responsibility of a compassionate business owner. Human compassion and interaction around grief and loss should be part of every business model.

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Vacation Time

Vacation Time

1. Vacation Time

You work hard and your company is in the business of making sure you have some down time. Times have changed and  long gone are the days where professional staff coming in at the entry level received six to eight weeks of vacation days. More often than not you get less than half of that compensation offered today. Two weeks’ vacation may be tied into sick and personal days. In many companies what you don’t use you simply lose.

2.Benefits of Vacations

Unless you are serious workaholic you probably don’t need to come up with reasons for a little rest and relaxation. Job related stress is costly in productivity , time, and money. However you elect to divide and use your time enjoy it. A vacation even just away from the office  can rejuvenate and restore a tired mind and body. We operate on overload balancing home, life and work responsibilities. Taking time to rest our minds and bodies is good work for soul.  Getting away from home and work is a real treat. Taking time to plan a budget and to research vacations possibilities is doing the legwork for a much deserved rest and retreat.

3. Before You Take Off

Your desk is super clean. No sign of the long days working on projects with little reprieve exist. The framed picture on your desk has a glow of light as the smile on of your image seems to have widened as the hour to check out for vacation draws closer. Before you go check to make sure you have updated your voice message directing work related calls elsewhere in the universe during your absence. An email alert  tagging you as out of the office with the necessary information and  a name of someone who can help with questions. Tie up any loose project ends and sign out. Enjoy your vacation.

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The More Wall Street Changes, the More it Stays the Same

In 2008 the country experienced the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Companies failed, thousands lost their jobs and the government moved in to try and clean up the mess. Many viewed the culprit as the free wheeling financial institutions on Wall Street that gambled too much when the stakes were too high.

This prompted the government to enact a large program of financial reform to reel in everything from CEO compensation to exotic forms of stock trading. But has anything really changed on Wall Street?

The Individuals

Plenty of big and small trading fish lost during the recession. As things went from bad from worse, many stockholders opted to either take their money and go home or only put them towards stable entities like Treasury bonds or gold. This new found caution has made more traders think about the long term over the short, and think twice about where they’re putting their money.

However, the stock market is still a place where money can be made. As the economy begins to improve more and more traders will join in on the fun once again.

The Institutions

The Wall Street landscape after the recession has changed with some major players, like Lehman Brothers, no longer around and others working off their debts to the government. Like individual stockholders there is a greater emphasis on how deals can perform in the long run, but that is about where the change ends.

Financial CEOs are collecting large bonuses like before and are residing over institutions that are cooking up new ways to score big profits. And banks are no longer afraid of risks. However, almost paradoxically, that same old Wall Street has the ability to spur trading and give stockholders the ability to see their investments grow substantially, which is ultimately the goal.

Change on Wall Street came and went, now it’s business as usual.

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Business – Is It Really For You?

We all know the fact that business world is really exciting and attractive one. However very few among us actually know the fact that it has many risks and uncertainty to deal with. Many people don’t really realize this fact and want to get into this field without much knowledge. It could be really dangerous. You cannot expect that to happen.
Success in business won’t come overnight and the sooner you realize this fact the better it will be for your future. Any business will succeed in long term and do not expect short term success if you are looking to build a long term business. This will ensure that the business will go in the right direction. You cannot expect it to be on par with other professions because there will be positive trend and so also the negative. Learn to go through these phases and make sure your business won’t run out of fuel at the time of crisis.
You need to know the various risks involved in the business and ensure that all of them have been taken care of. Every business has its own merits and demerits and you can know them with proper research. Don’t expect it to give rich dividends if you choose the wrong business. You need to know the market demand for a particular product or service rather than blindly jumping in to it.
Every business requires some amount of capital and you need to arrange that in order to earn good profits. No business is free from investment and therefore you need to have certain amount to start with. Don’t rely completely on the loan amount as it may be difficult to repay. These are all the factors you need to remember while going to step into any business.

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How to Begin Your Business: A Look at Finances

Save Money Vacation
Image by o5com via Flickr

While taking a business requires passion, you won’t be able to start up a business without any finances. Starting up a business requires a lot of money up front. While a lot of people have personal finances saved up that they can use to start a business, many people do not. That is why the most common way to finance a start-up business is through business loans.

Business loans are readily available for a lot of people who are looking to start up a business. Many banks and financial institutes offer separate business loans that business owners can use to start up a business. However, the key to getting a business loan is your personal finances. Chances are if you have bad personal finances, it will be hard to obtain a business loan because until your business is established you will have to rely upon your personal finances to gain a loan. If you are one of those people, do not lose hope is a way you can improve your personal finances to gain a business loan.

The most common way you can improve your personal finances is through a debt consolidation service. These services will take all your personal finances and put them into one lump group. Through the service you will start to pay down your debts and bills and eventually your personal finances will start to improve. It might not happen overnight but it will allow you to get a business loan eventually.

Even though you can apply for business loans and financing by yourself, it is recommended that you get professional help with your business financing plans. No one knows what it takes to finance a business better than the professionals. A professional will help you secure financing for your business and even help you keep your business profitable during tough times. Who knows, the professionals may just come up with financing options you never even knew about!

Filed Under: Business

Fun in the workplace

Having fun in the workplace is a great motivator for many employees.  Having some humor will not only allow you to appreciate your fellow coworkers, but your job as well.  Below are some ideas to make your workplace fun and invigorating.
Make sure to always use common sense when telling any jokes.  Take a moment before telling the joke to make sure not to offend anyone.  If the joke is something you could tell someone you look up to such as your grandmother, then it most likely would be appropriate for sharing with people at work.

Take a trip to the local toy store and brighten up your office with purchasing childish things.  Look for anything that could lighten up your meetings, staff interaction or just to put a smile on someone’s face.
Start meetings with someone telling a joke, a humorous story, playing a game, whatever you can to get everyone to relax.  Purchase noisemakers and make it a rule that before you can speak you must use your noisemaker.  Make it as fun as possible to encourage workers to attend the next meeting.
Hold fun contests. It could range anywhere from karaoke contests, to free lunches, to coffee breaks, to gift cards.  Anything to boost the moral of the employees.
Hold an employee of the month award.  Have fellow coworkers nominate the employee if they did something to contribute to the company.  For example, they went out of their way for a customer, or a fellow coworker.
Ask around the workplace and see what others do outside of work.  Try to organize a sport everyone could play, or start a fitness club.  Make sure to include everyone in the activities.
Last but not least try to open up.  Invite your fellow coworkers to get together once in a while to get to know one another.  If you know one another you will enjoy each other’s company that much more at work.
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