Mine Your Own Business

Major Illnesses Impact on Small Business

I partially remembered a famous quote about near a death experience making a person stronger, so I did an Internet search and came up with two similar quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche. The first one goes like this, "That which does not kill us make us stronger", while the second one is similar but just a little bit different "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger". What brought this quote (or rather quotes) to mind was an article in USA TODAY about three business owners who had faced very serious health issues and how these issues changed their perspective on their businesses.

The article begins with a video featuring one of the business owners who suffered through chemotherapy for cancer when he was 36 and then had a heart attack at 37. Talk about a double whammy! One analogy he makes in the video is how the chemotherapy got rid of the cancer and how he thought the Great Recession had gotten rid of some problem areas in our economy. He thought eventually we would come back stronger than ever.

The three business owners and some others in the article who also experienced major illnesses came up with these lessons they learned from their health experiences:

• Use your energy wisely.
• Build on prior accomplishments.
• Marshall all resources.
• Give back.
• Enjoy your profession.
• Have faith.
• Know your strength.

All these owners are living examples of the quote from Friedrich Nietzsche that led off this post. Their health issues made them stronger and for these business owners, their businesses stronger as well.

Small Business and Elder Care

There was a recent article in the Los Angeles Times recomending that small businesses should prepare for elder-care issues. Even if you aren't a rock and roll fan, the song Time Waits for No One by the Rolling Stones is applicable to all small business owners. The Los Angeles Times article descibes how small businesses are not prepared for the impact of elder-care issues on their workforces. The article provides some suggestions on preparing for the elder-care issue:

• Free information
• Paid leave
• Job training
• Flexible work arrangements

There are some great links in the article in the Free information section. Small businesses should not procrastinate in this important area for it has an impact on both employees and owners of small businesses. On a personal note, I recently had to take some vacation time to take my Father to the Veterans Admistration for some new hearing aids. I was happy to do it and we had an interesting talk about his service the South Pacific in World War 2 on the way to the Veterans Administration. 

The final point in the article is that now is the time to prepare. Elder care is going to impact small business empoyees and owners greatly in the future.

 

 

 

Chaos Control for Small Businesses

We've posted so frequently on the challenges facing any small business owner that we even have a specific category for it titled Balancing Business and Personal Life. Now comes a new article in Small Business Trends that describes how more and more people are starting their own business, but a report from the National Small Business Association reveals that 41 percent of new entrepreneurs are worried that their small business will fail. The article makes the point that chaos is what is causing so many problems for small business owner and reports on a new book that proposes six steps for controlling chaos in your small business.

1. Build your emotional capital.
2. Practice disciplined optimism.
3. Assert your entrepreneurial independence.
4. Centralize and organize your stuff.
5. Tap into the magical power of follow-up.
6. Burn the to-do list and move from manual to automated.

The article provides a great argument on how these steps can be used to control the chaos that threatens to overwhelm any small business, or at least make your business and personal life a lot more difficult. Do you have any other ways that you control chaos in your small business?

Business Vacation

We promised in the last post to follow up on how to delight your customers, but in the meantime this article on the importance of small business owners taking a vacation and also emphasizing that their vacation may actually have some positive impact on their business caught our attention. The article presents four points on how a vacation can be beneficial to the owner and the business:

1. Define Success.
2. Hire Quality.
3. Delegate.
4. Leverage Technology.

The last point of the article about leveraging technology really caught my attention. I'm on vacation in Florida for two weeks, but I can log in to my computer at work, check my e-mail, and even do this blog. I don't spend hours every day online, but just a few minutes early in the morning or late at night gives me peace of mind that when I return from my vacation everything will be just fine with no disasters when I return. Something to think about when a small business owner takes a well deserved vacation.

Avoid the Summertime Blues

Summertime can be complicated for small business owners.  During the long cold months of winter it is easy to focus on your business since a lot of our time is restricted to indoor activities (except for those who love snow, ice, and frigid temperatures at least for those of us in the Midwest). Summers are a time of vacations, graduations, weddings, BBQs, the beach .... Well you get the drift, summers are busy. So how does a small business owner balance summertime activities and the complicated job of running a small business? We found an interesting article at Small Business Trends on 4 Ways to Avoid Summer SMB Burnout. The article recommended the following four main points:

1. Put more focus on things you value.
2. Revamp your business.
3. Re-adjust expectations.
4. Treat yourself.

The main point of the article is that summer is a very busy time of year, but a small business owner can find a balance between running your small business and the many demands of summer living. As a bonus question, did you spot the typo in the article in the first paragraph?

Bonus question two, how many versions of the Summertime Blues from the title of this posting were recorded (the answer may surprise you)?

Another Sports Metaphor

We posted a piece yesterday on an article that used the baseball metaphor in describing how businesses can cope with unexpected bad news. The posting today is about article in USA Today that uses another sport (ping-pong) to describe the problem faced by many small business owners of switching from one task to another all day long to the detriment of accomplishing any long term goals. The article calls this the "Ping-Pong Syndrome" (or PPS) coined by supply company Staples and a survey they conducted resulted in 61% of small business owners suffer from PPS.

The article then goes on about a program Staples has come up to assist small business owner that suffer from PPS, the Staples stickK to it! Business Challenge and provides a link to the program. We also blogged about this on Mine Your Business on February 19th in Not Too Late so there is great deal of information on the program and some of the results so far. One last thing to consider are the four tips recommended at the end of the article to help small business owners cope with Ping-Pong Syndrome.

Two Health Articles

Most small business owners know how hard it is to balance the demands of their business with their personal life, especially with regard to finding time for exercise and other health matters. This posting is about two health related articles that once again show how important it is to really strive to reach that balance.

The first article is on the importance of heart health and provides 7 essential factors for heart health. Some of them are obvious, such as getting more exercise on a regular basis, but it also provides some other factors that are also very important for heart health. The article goes on to give some general tips to reach some of health goals and also includes some links to other resources.

The second article is aimed more at men and presents some surprising results. The article describes how men may be able to reduce their cancer and heart disease risks by donating blood on a regular basis. It seems that men produce too much iron and excessive iron is one risk factor for both cancer and heart disease. It applies to women in one sense as well since women can have excessive iron as well and provides some ways to reduce iron levels. Regular blood donation has a few things going for it, you are providing something life giving to others and you get your blood pressure checked on a regular basis for free. Something to think about anyway.

Blue Monday

This is a probably a good post for a Monday in January since it concerns an article in USA Today about those times when we are having trouble getting motivated. Now, you may be someone who enjoys Mondays even in January, but for almost all of us there are those days that we'd really rather not face the daily grind. This is especially problematic for a small business owner since that blah feeling can have an impact on employees and sales as well.

Hopefully this article will be helpful because it takes a two pronged approach to solving this problem. The article first suggests that you need to figure out the root of the problem and provides a list of possibilities, such as are you overworked, or under worked, or let down (there are eight suggestions altogether).  Once you've figured out some reasons, the next step is to take some steps to rev up your motivation such as get outside help, or remind yourself of you long-term goals. The article concludes with the thought that maybe a day off will solve the problem if all else fails.

6 tips for being a better manager when you just don't have enough time

We did a posting on Monday this week on how important it is to step back from the daily grind and do some planning. If you missed the post you can scroll down and review it. Probably a question that came to mind for many of you who read the posting or read it now, is how do you free up the time in your hectic day to do this all important planning?

Now comes an article from Art Petty that gives 6 tips that a small business owner can use to ease some of the frustration. Several of the tips involve taking care of certain types of problems as they come up instead of taking care of them later. The last line of the article sums up what these six tips can do for you. "There’s little chance we’ll find more hours in a day, but you absolutely have the ability to make each and every minute count just a bit more."

Perfect 10

What exactly does a perfect 10 mean? Some research on the Internet came up with several definitions, but probably the most appropriate ones for this posting was: "Perfect 10" meaning a perfect score of 10 out of 10; as if being scored by judges. Somehow it brings to mind some of the Olympic competitions.

The term perfect 10 was used in a recent USA Today article describing 10 resolutions small businesses should make for 2010 to help them achieve a perfect 10 business wise this year. There are some excellent suggestions in the list and at least some of them would apply to any small business. The closing part of the article is not one of the 10 suggestions for business, but is very thought provoking in our increasingly hectic lives.