Business Record - Iowa Biz

Would you please report to security?

Just as I was about to sit down at my gate at the airport this week, I heard my name over the intercom.

"Would Mitch Matthews please return to the ticket counter." 

That's not something you ever want to hear... especially when you're minutes away from needing to jump on a flight.

So I threw my bag over my shoulder and hoofed it back down to the United counter. 

The whole time I was wondering to myself... "What could it be?"

When I arrived, I knew the problem in an instant. 

My Dutch Boy Paint can was sitting on the counter with airport security hovering over it. 

Yup.  That's right.  I had a paint can in my luggage. 

Why? 

It's a prop for a talk that I give on the power of asking the right questions and innovation.  (By the way... have you seen how cool their paint can is?)

The reason they'd called me back down was that there was "paint residue" in the can. 

There wasn't much but it was enough to be considered hazardous material. 

I made an argument that I'd taken the can on 8 flights prior to this and it had not been seen as dangerous before. 

But that didn't hold any water with the security agent.  In fact, I think it made him more determined.  (Hindsight's always 20/20!)

In the end, they destroyed the paint can and I was almost late for my flight. 

PLUS... I'm told that I'll be receiving a letter from the FAA in the next few weeks explaining the new regulations on what can and can't be taken on a plane.  How about that?!?

Now you may be asking why I brought this up when I'm supposed to be talking about work-life balance?

Well, the reason is... I have to admit that deep down I knew that something like this could happen.

I'd thought about cleaning out the can numerous times.  But I never got around to it. 

I just never thought I had enough time to do it. 

Can you relate? 

But, at the least convenient time... it became a problem. 

The 5 minutes that it would have taken to clean out the can turned into 30 + minutes of stress, a dance with airport security... and a letter from the FAA!

My question to you is "What's your paint can?" 

No, I don't think your doing dorky things like hauling paint cans on airplanes. 

But I'd bet that you have something around you... in your business... at your desk... at home... that's your "5 minute task." 

Something you've been avoiding?

Something that you haven't wanted to take the time to do?

My guess is that it's also something that... like my paint can... could blow up on you if you don't take the time to address it.  (Figuratively speaking... of course.)

What is it for you?

What could you take 5 minutes to do today... that might save you hours of stress later?

How would it feel to have it done? 

What would getting it done save you from?

Join in the conversation and let us know.  Then... get 'er done!

Photo credit: ellesmele

Is that worker actually an employee?

Let’s take a minute and look at a few industries where an apparent employee might not be an employee.  Today we’ll focus on businesses that are seasonal in nature or that have high turnover. 

Hard to think of an example? I’ll help you out – restaurants and landscapers.

Picture a college town where you have students who need jobs.  In college towns you have restaurants and plenty of part-time help.  The only problem is getting them there and keeping them employed.  Turnover is usually quite high.

The leased worker
Because of high turnover and the lack of reliability the restaurant owner, who we will call, Frankie, decides to outsource wait staff through the local staffing agency.  Now the owner can focus on the restaurant and not the hiring, firing and training of staff.

The incident
Frankie is walking through the kitchen while the beeper is going off for someone to remove the daily special from a boiling pot.  In the spur of the moment, Frankie decides to just remove the pot from the burner and a waitress just happens to be turning around at the same time.  Frankie splashes hot boiling water on the worker “Karen” as they both turn into each other. 

This is definitely going to leave a mark. 

Frankie is OK – but the leased waitress is burned badly.

Who covers the work comp claim?
The staffing agency pays for the workers’ compensations benefits that are due to Karen. But due to the severity of the injury, the leased waitress feels the need to bring action against Frankie. 

Confusion
Frankie turns in the claim to his general liability carrier only to receive a denial letter because the waitress is a “temporary worker” and not an employee.  Now an argument
between the insurance carrier and Frankie pursues and Frankie is just beside himself. 

The insurance carrier wants to classify Karen as a leased worker not a temporary worker. 

Remedy the situation
When you, as a business owner, use a staffing agency that provides workforce on a short-term or long-term basis, carefully review of the details of the arrangement. 

Do not hesitate to call your insurance agent and discuss options on how to provide insurance coverage. The definitions of leased and temporary employee need to be understood by all parties involved.

For the purpose of simplicity, I have taken a very complicated situation and briefly touched on the ways workers are classified in insurance policy language.  A worker could be classified as a 1099 or subcontractor, a leased worker, temporary worker or even a volunteer.   

Issues Now or Tissues Later

"Why do we need to communicate all of these problems?"

The question seemed legitimate coming from the young and relatively inexperienced project manager.  His concern was that if he communicated what was going wrong on his project that his management would perceive that he wasn't able to handle problems on his own and was either whining or tattling.

What this young project manager had not yet learned was that 90% of his job is communication.  If he's NOT communicating the issues that could bite him later, he's leaving himself open for considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth when those issues and problems blow up.  According to Craig Brown of the Better Projects blog,

Good communication is iterative. Each new round of communication and feedback helps parties narrow the opportunity for misunderstanding.  Keep communicating and you learn to accommodate the natural filters and barriers that are inherent in new relationships.

He's right.  I've communicated things to management, they've reacted (sometimes overreacted and blown up over it), I've calmed them down and clarified, they've wised up, we've all taken action.  But at least the problems and issues were communicated.

But let's think about the alternative:  Keeping everything quiet and hoping you can resolve it yourself or that it goes away.  If you think your managers and customers get mad when you share bad news with them early, wait and see how they react when you blindside them at a point when there's no longer any reaction time left.

How about opening up the channels of communication with your project stakeholders?  Try telling your management, subordinates, suppliers, and clients what is really going on in a timely fashion.  Then partner with them to fix it.

Carpe Factum!

What's Your Company's Culture?

What's the culture of your company? Service Untitled recently had a great post about corporate culture. Did you know that you have a corporate culture? You do!

Having worked with many companies in may different call centers through the years, I find it interesting to visit and discover that the culture of the company is like. Here are a few descriptions of company cultures I've experienced:

• The Gulag: No one is to be trusted. The customers are probably lying or trying to cheat us out of a buck. The CSRs are probably giving away the farm on every call. Make sure you ask permission before you do anything. Watch your back. Someone is probably going to lose their job and it could be you. C.Y.A.! "If you need to go to the bathroom, raise your hand and wait for a floor supervisor to give you a pass! But be careful, your bathroom pass rate is being monitored. It will go into your performance management file!"
• The Commune: Welcome to utopia. We are overstaffed and have people sitting around doing nothing, but that's okay by us. We're family. We don't fire people or lay them off. That might do irreparable harm to their self-esteem. "It was inappropriate for you to cuss that customer out, but I understand that you were probably just having a bad day. Oh, and your QA scores are the worst in the call center, but I know you're never really gotten over the fact that your cat died last year. Here, why don't you have some chocolate and try to do better next month."
• The Manic: "Look, I know I told you to work on your quality last month, but forget about quality. I just got a call from the V.P. and we've got to focus on SALES. We've got to increase revenues by next week or heads are gonna roll. Yes, we've focused sales before. Let's see it was before last month's quality initiative, before last summer's continuous improvement campaign, before last Spring when we were focused on getting our talk time down, and before last Winter's abandon rate initiative. We need to focus on SALES! Oh - hold that thought...the V.P. is calling again."

It culture important? Sure it is! It impacts morale, policy, and procedures which - in turn - impact the service the customer receives.

So what's the culture of your company? How would you describe it? How would your employees describe it? Share your own experiences!

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr and nicholas jon

Planning Your Website: Every Page is Important

Earlier this year, we posed the question How Important is Your Website's Home Page? While the home page is very important, it's not always the entry point for your readers. Therefore, every page is important - and you should have a plan for each page.

If you Google the phrase "planning a website" - not a single result of the first 30 results points to a home page. Each result points to a sub page in a site.

When we begin planning for a site, most of us look at the plan in a family tree type of hierarchy. This is fine for organizing a site, but it's not search engines normally see your site. Think more of a mind map, with each page being indexed.

Knowing that every page could be an entry point, it becomes important to know how and where you want the reader to go next...and then make it easy for them to get there.

Do a quick check of your stats to see what entry points you get readers, then go visit that page to see if your reader has a great first impression....or a quick exit.

Photo on Flickr by netan

Share what you know

One of our strongest held beliefs at McLellan Marketing Group is that it's a wise marketing practice to give away what you sell.

Think of it as sampling -- demonstrating your expertise and giving your potential customers a taste.  It's a great way to establish your abilities.

That's one of the reasons we started the monthly Iowa Biz Business Building Breakfasts -- to let our blog authors each share some of their expertise.  This is your opportunity to hear from some of the area's experts in their specialty area.

This month, we want to make sure you aren't accidentally putting your business at risk.  Do you know the insurance mistakes you can't afford to make?

Why not join us at this month's Iowa Biz Business Building Breakfast to make sure you're not spending money where you shouldn't be or missing coverage where you need it.

As always, there will be no sales pitch.  Just good information you and your business needs.

Wednesday, November 28th
7:30 am
Professional Solutions Insurance Services
University Ave, Clive
RSVP so we know how many to expect.

You'll enjoy a free breakfast and be a lot smarter about how to best protect your business.

Are You an Infringer?

There, but for the grace of God . .
Have you ever sung “Happy Birthday” in public? Forwarded an email? Photographed someone without their permission? How would you feel if you got sued for doing those things? How would you feel if you had to choose between paying thousands of dollars in damages or paying an attorney even more to represent you? I would assume it would teach you a lesson. Unfortunately, the lesson would probably not be a fair and just approach to preserving the rights of intellectual property owners. The lesson would more likely be something which involved a Santeria ritual, a Voodoo doll and a gross of hat pins.

A Costly Backlash
Suing customers into oblivion and treating them like criminals (if only I had a nickel for every piece of DRM and anti-piracy ad I have had to PAY for . . .), has all lead up to a strong backlash against not just the purveyors of these tactics, but against the 99.99% of intellectual property owners who have never even considered using such tactics. With the RIAA suing college students and dead grandmothers and extracting a $200,000+ judgment from a single mother for sharing music on the Internet, things are not getting any better. 

Is the Pig Singing Yet?
According to court testimony, suing music sharers is not even profitable.  I appreciate the RIAA trying to win the ultimate Pyrrhic victory before artists make the RIAA obsolete, but it would be nice if the RIAA could immolate itself quietly, without generating a national disdain for all intellectual property. Just speaking with some of the thousands of people from whom the RIAA has extracted tens of thousands of dollars, I do not get the impression those people appreciate the not so subtle distinction between a single entity wielding dubious tactics to squeeze pennies from paupers, and your average intellectual property owner. Do you think the RIAA left these people with a healthy respect for intellectual property? Given that many of those sued did not have the vaguest idea that what they were doing was wrong, (and that some did not even DO anything wrong), do you think if the next time they get an intellectual property owner over a barrel they are going to be fair?

Let’s hope the RIAA and MPAA fade away, or at least choose some new tactics before they turn the entire country into a nation of infringers.

Brett Trout

 

Tax Theories of Relativity

When families get together for Thanksgiving they talk about all sorts of things.  Maybe they even talk business.  When relatives do business, the tax law becomes suspicious.

When you do business with relatives, the tax law has ways of tripping you up.  Some are perverse.  For example, if you sell a corporation you own to your sister at a loss, the tax law disallows the deduction.  But if the corporation itself has loss carry forwards on its own tax return, those losses are limited because under a different set of rules for corporations, your sister isn't your relative.

You could write a book on all the tax rules that can cause tax trouble for relatives who do business with each other.  A few of the common issues:

- If you incur a business expense by doing business with a relative, you can't deduct it until it is time for the relative to pick it up as income.

- You can't deduct a loss on a sale to a relative.

- Some like-kind exchanges with relatives done through intermediaries fail and are currently taxable.

- If you redeem stock of a corporation owned by your relatives, the proceeds might be taxed as dividends instead of as a stock sale; even if your sale is at a loss, you might be taxable on 100% of your proceeds.

Different provisions of the tax law have different definitions of "related party."  Most of these definitions are broad enough to bring in partnerships or corporations owned by your relatives, and some are even broad enough to bring in aunts, uncles and cousins.  So if you hatch a big business deal with your family over the holidays, check with your tax advisor before you follow through.

Be A Relationship Farmer

Have you ever caught yourself asking the question... "What value does this person bring me?"  If so, you're not alone.  It's very normal but may not be the best way approach a networking situation.

As a networker/collaborator/business development/salesperson, I believe that is important to operate on the "you just never know" principle. 

Often times, the people you meet aren't the direct contacts into sales opportunities for your organization.  As a matter of fact, the real opportunities lie layers deep and can only be reached through strong relationships.

We must work very hard to develop and nurture the relationships around us before scratching someone off your list.  As my good friend Richard Rowe says, "Networking is farming. Not hunting."

Concentrate on growing your relationships rather than monetizing them and your sales yields will grow.

Oh yeah... Happy Thanksgiving! 

Protect Yourself When Signing Contracts

I love this post from New York business lawyer Imke Ratchko regarding the best practices in executing a contract.

Her tips (and my comments):

1. Don't let technology or anyone else fool you.  This is a great lesson.  Once I negotiated a employment contract with another lawyer for several hours.  The last version of the day contained language that had been inserted for the first time and not discussed previously.  If I had not read the entire agreement (for what seemed like the tenth time) we would not have caught it.
2. Date the contract.  It goes without saying but it often does not happen.  It is important to date contracts for a variety of reasons including statute of limitations and it puts the dealings between the parties in chronological context.
3. Both parties should sign the agreement.  Again, it is surprising how often this does not get done.  While the contract still may be enforceable without both signatures it is obviously best to have the signatures and avoid a potential dispute about whether a party agreed to the terms.
4. Initial last minute changes to the contract.  Sometimes changes occur at the last minute.  If this occurs each party should initial by each change.  If time is available rewriting the language is always the best alternative.
5. Sign in your correct capacity.  If you are a corporate officer, you should sign in your corporate capacity such as President or Vice-President.  If you have an LLC sign using "Member" after your name or use your title.  This helps limit personal liability and indicates to the other side that you are signing the agreement on behalf of your company and not personally.  Similarly, make sure the entity is the party to the agreement and not you individually.
6. Check the other party's authority to sign.  You should make sure the person signing the agreement on behalf of the other party has authority to do so.  It is often a good idea to include language in the signature block that indicates the agreement is signed by an authorized representative of each party.
7. Get an original executed contract of the contract for your files.  It is generally not required under the law but it is often helpful to make sure that each party to the contract has an originally executed agreement.  So if there are two parties you will sign two sets of the agreement.  Perhaps not so important today and into the future with the use of electronic signatures however.

Photo on flickr by diylibrarian