Business Record - Iowa Biz

Apathy

Why should I care what happens at this company?  I do my job, keep my mouth shut, and go home.  I have no influence, no power, and no one cares about me.  Just leave me alone and everything will be fine.  Nothing will change no matter what I do.

If these thoughts ring true for your company, you have an infestation of apathy.  This may well be the number one killer of motivation, creativity, and efficiency.

Apathy is a clear sign that there is no linkage between what a person does and some higher purpose - a better world, bonuses, profits, stock value, work-life balance, etc. I guarantee that employees who are infected with apathy will never take the extra step, the extra minute to finish something, worry about equipment, and they may even border on the fringe of sabotage.

Take a minute and reflect back on your own career and I am sure you will recall your own periods of apathy - not a pretty picture.  This is the picture that may well be the center of your company's culture.  You should also take note of how many of your people in leadership positions have the apathy bug.  These leaders are like an incubator and increase the level of apathy infestation.

Apathy can be defeated by sharing financial information, involving people in decisions that affect them, creating a sense of pride about your company, and providing opportunities to learn.  The opposite of apathy is engagement and successful companies have made engaged employees a priority.

Today's business environment is too competitive to ignore the issue of apathy.  Do not let apathy become your company's eulogy.

Flickr photo by apathy_obsession

Are you prepared for a catastrophic event?

When discussing insurance, you may think insurance agents always want to ask you questions that are so far fetched. I mean really, you’ve never filed a claim, so how likely could something catastrophic happen to you?

I don’t know this for sure, however, I feel pretty confident that the residents of Parkersburg did not think such an event would happen to them either.

I have been in the insurance industry for 10 years and am still amazed when an event such as this occurs. The devastation that the residents of this community are going through cannot be put into words. Their homes and businesses are destroyed - simply wiped out in a matter of minutes. These people have lost everything they own and then some.

So what can you do? Well for one, you need to review your coverage.

The purpose of your insurance policy is to be there for you in the event of a loss. If you are not reviewing your insurance policies with your agent on an annual basis, you are doing yourself a disservice. 

Many things change in the course of a year. Your business could grow faster then you originally projected. Perhaps you purchased new business equipment or rented a storage building. All of these changes need to be considered on your insurance policy.

The next thing is to ensure you have the right coverage in place.

If you are a business owner, ask yourself, if a similar situation as in Parkersburg happened to you:

• Would your business be affected?
• Could you incur any additional expenses?
• Could you recreate your records or accounts receivables?

If any of these questions are a concern for you, then you may want to review your policy with your agent and make sure you have adequate accounts receivable coverage, business income and business expense coverage.

What about documentation?

• Do you have an itemized list or photos of your business or personal property?
• Where are you keeping them?
• Do you back up your records?
• If so, where are you storing your back up files? 

As you can see with Parkersburg, it’s not going to do you any good if you are backing up your records and keeping them in your office. If your office is destroyed, so are your records. You may want to look into backing them up and storing them offsite. There are several companies that offer this service for both business and personal records.

I don’t mean to be ominous and this is not a ploy to get everyone scared so they buy more insurance. I am just being realistic.

A recent article at Entrepreneur.com says that 4 out of 10 business professionals admit to not being prepared for a disaster. Why? Because it's not a priority and they're not quite sure what to do.

Take the first step - talk to your insurance agent. Having good communication with your agent can ensure that you have the right coverage in place when you need it.

But how do they feel?

We spend a lot of time wondering what our customers think and know.  We want to make sure they have the specs, the facts, the details and the features.  All well and good.

But in the end, not what matters.

Every purchase anyone makes (yes every and anyone) is based on emotion.  Most marketing material is packed with fact and a little light on the feelings behind the those facts. 

Take some time and put yourself into your customer's shoes.  Why do they really buy?  What emotion does your product or service serve?  Do you give them peace of mind?  A sense of security?   A little re-found youth?  Are they looking for a solution to feeling overwhelmed?  Do you help them celebrate something they love?  Or protect it?

The real question you have to ask yourself is this.  How did you make them feel?

flickr photo courtesy of almoko

FriendFeed: A cure for social networking fatigue?

New social networks and applications pop up every day, causing many to suffer from what is known as "socal network fatigue." You've got too many usernames and passwords across multiple platforms to remember, and you've got different circles of friends spread across all the networks. This deluge of information can be difficult to manage.

Now, services are springing up that aim to help us with the social networking overload. One of particular interest is FriendFeed. Basically, you sign up once, enter all your logins for the various networks you participate in, and FriendFeed spits out a "life stream" of data about what you're doing.

Imagine all of your recent Twitter and Facebook updates, Flickr photos, blog posts, Upcoming.org events, StumbleUpon bookmarks and favorited YouTube videos mashed together with what you're currently listening to on Last.fm - all in one central feed.

That's what FriendFeed is - a chokepoint for all of the scattershot data we post about ourselves online, and perhaps a temporary cure for social networking fatigue.

Winding Up

When the day is done for a business, Iowa may have a special break for taxpayers who have hung in there a long time.  A taxpayer has both owned and "materially participated" in a business for 10 years may have no Iowa tax on on the gain from the sale.  "May" is the key word here, as not every business sale qualifies.  There are a number of conditions you have to meet to qualify for the "ten and ten" exclusion. 

• You normally have to sell "substantially all" of the assets of the business to qualify for the exclusion (though it can apply to sales of real estate even if the rest of the business isn't sold).
• A sale of corporation stock or a partnership interest normally won't qualify (but sometimes proceeds of a corporate liquidation may).
• To determine whether you have "held" the business interest for ten years, you look to federal tax law holding period rules.
• To determine whether you have "materially participated" in the business for ten years, you look to the material participation rules in the federal "passive loss rules."
• Special rules apply to farmers.

As you may have guessed, these rules can be quite complex, so talk to your tax pro before you sell your business if you think you might qualify.

Speaking of winding up...

I understand IowaBiz.com will close up shop at the end of this month, so this is my last post here.  It's been awful nice of our friends at Professional Solutions Insurance Services to sponsor this blog and feed the bloggers once a month.  Thanks, guys!   Be sure to keep them in mind when covering your risks. 

Please stop by the regular sites of the IowaBiz bloggers; I post daily at www.taxupdateblog.com.  I hope to see you there.

Flickr image by jaycoxfilm. 

Nudge Your Way to Success

Inertia is a killer! Just ask that diabetes patient on her deathbed who was going to get serious about eating right and taking her medicine -- next Monday. For the past five years.

Inertia is deadly for those of us in the work-world as well. If only we could get up the momentum to:

• read one critical industry publication every week
• give positive feedback to our star performers
• keep our Outlook folders organized

But inertia works against us. In physics, inertia is an object's resistance to a change in its state. Remember Newton's words: "an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest." And oh, how we love to rest.

Two University of Chicago professors, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in their new book, Nudge, ask this provocative question: "If you design a choice the right way, could a small nudge help people make better decisions?" According to their research, the answer seems to be "Yes!" Get inertia -- or should we call it laziness -- working for ya! Here are some examples:

• In Germany, like the U.S., you have to opt in to become an organ donor. 12% of Germans opt in. In Austria, people are organ donors by default. They have the right to opt out at any time but guess what...they don't. 99% of Austrians are available as organ donors. The momentum of staying "in the program" is stronger than the initiative it takes to opt out. That's Austria's way of putting the "default option" to work.
• Think of that book club or coffee club that keeps sending you books and coffee that you don't need ... and don't even want!... but having to DO something to get them stopped takes more effort than the inertia of accepting them. Can you see the default option at work here?
• Was that 75 cents you paid for the USA Today outside your last hotel room door really what you'd have chosen to spend your money on? Probably not. But sticking the paper into your briefcase was easier than calling the front desk and going through the hassle of trying to get your 75 cents back, wasn't it? Do nothing, accept the paper and the default option is at work once again.

Here's your assignment:

Q.: What could you gently nudge yourself (or your employees) to do, that would get you going in the right direction and then, the momentum would keep you going?

Q.: What's a choice that you know you need to make? Now how could you design that choice so that doing nothing makes it happen? Over and over again.

Photo on flickr by hoobygroovy

The Right Time To Depart

One of the key elements of a highly evolved company culture is leadership transition.  The leadership transition may be the most important task of being a leader.

Good leaders think about their departure early in their careers.  They combine vision, business goals, and personal goals to create a plan that enables the business to continue on successfully.  The biggest hurdle in this process is making the emotional choice to pick a time.  In far too many instances the leader cannot let go emotionally and that is when trouble begins.  If a leader cannot let go emotionally, it can become a very stressful time for everyone.

Organizations have a life of their own and must grow and evolve over time.  New leadership is vital to organizations. If you are the leader in your organization, have you taken the time to plan for your departure?

I encourage you to start a dialog with your board, key staff, and family.  As with anything, the more you plan the better the results.

Flickr photo by simply

In Case of Emergency, Break Glass

A picture is worth a thousand words.  Do you have an action plan in place just in case things get really wild and crazy on your project?  Do you know what you need to do first?  Second?  Whom should you call?  What is the first meeting you should hold?  What messages should you relay?

We spend a lot of time and energy on business resumption and disaster recovery plans for our organizations.  Do we know how to apply these concepts for our projects?

In your next risk management plan, put in a scenario for "everything bad happens at once" and see how well you can prepare for it

Carpe Factum!

Tag! You're it.

This week I discovered an interesting project called Brand Tags (Brandtags.net) - where visitors can drop by and "tag" popular brands like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, GE, etc.

Tagging is commonplace throughout the Web. While watching YouTube videos, you may notice a cluster of descriptive words to the right - those are "tags" that the user has added to help categorize where the video belongs. Brand Tags works in a similar fashion, except that you "tag" based on your perception - not categorization - of the brands.

Brand Tags is fascinating because it gives us a window into the collective mind of hundreds of thousands of people and how they currently see large companies - companies that spend billions of dollars to shape our perceptions.

Here are a couple examples of brands and their corresponding tags:

Brand: Apple
Tags: Cool, Design, Awesome, Innovation
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=72

Brand: MySpace
Tags: Annoying, Friends, Music, Kids, Teenagers, Ugly
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=41

Brand: Google
Tags: Search, Everything, God, Evil
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=2

Brand: McDonald's
Tags: Cheap, Fat, Food, Unhealthy
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php?id=47

This is just another great example of how social mediums have leveled the playing field between large organizations and their consumers.

Lay the foundation first

I’m the first to advocate great creative.  If your marketing materials are boring or just like everyone else’s, you’re going to get lost in the shuffle. 

Strong, memorable creative can make your ad pop off the page or your brochure be the first one they reach for.  But, way too many marketers leap right to the creative execution.  Who can blame them – it’s fun.

But, you have to lay your foundation first. The foundation of any marketing piece is the strategy.  Do you understand your audience and why they would want your product/service?  When it comes to crafting your message, there’s an easy formula to make sure you’re helping your potential buyer understand why they should buy. 

Problem:  This is how you get their attention.  Show them that you understand their problem.   Use vivid language to remind them of how troublesome the problem can be.  You want them to recognize themselves and their pain in your ad.

Solution:  Once they know that you understand their concerns, they’re ready to hear how you can help them solve their problem.  Explain how they will benefit from your solution.  What will it change for them?  How will life be easier, better, cheaper, smarter, etc.?  Paint a picture with your words. 

Call to action:  Don’t make it hard for them to buy. Make your communication compelling.  Give them both a reason and a method to act immediately.  A number to call.  A URL visit.  A special bonus if they buy within a certain amount of time.

Pretty simple, right?  But look through the paper or listen to the radio.  Most of the advertisers out there are missing the boat.  Hopefully your competition is among them!  Follow this easy formula and you’ll already be ahead of the pack.