Tips for Getting Through the Nasty Parts of Running a Business

by Elle Ray | Jun 25, 2019 | Small Business Advice

While Keeping Your Sanity and Ethics Intact

Most days, there’s nothing better than running a business you can call your own. You make the rules. You call the shots. You get to do what you love each and every day — and get paid for it! Running a business and watching it grow is a little like having a child: it’s one of the most rewarding tasks you’ll ever take on — and one of the most challenging.

You can set up your company so that it runs as smooth as the apple juice running down your baby’s throat. And then something happens — as it always does; remember Murphy’s Law? The cogs that seem to jump into the smooth-running machinery are ever-present, always lurking, just waiting to throw you off with some nasty little piece of business that’s as integral to running a business as dirty diapers is to raising a child.

Why Can’t They Just Behave?

Running a business solo is one way to avoid the nasty business of dealing with employees. But you can only get so far when you’re doing all the work. Having people work for you is amazing in many ways; they allow you to grow and expand and even, maybe, take a day off now and then.

But getting other people to care about your clients and the future of your business can be difficult. It’s like trying to get your kids to realize that if they do their chores properly, the whole household runs smoother. Correcting mistakes, fixing mishaps and getting everyone to follow directions are challenges for both entrepreneurs and parents.

The hardest part of being in charge is letting someone go, especially when they beg for another chance. It’s doubly difficult when you really like them. But firing an employee is part and parcel of being the boss. It’s nasty business, but someone has to do it every once in a while. A few tips for making it a little easier include:

• Keep track of the employee’s foibles, leaving little for them to disagree with.
• Give them a warning, so that when they mess up again, they’re prepared for the axe.
• Let an employee go early in the pay cycle, so they still have a paycheck coming as they look for a new job.
• Stick to the facts. They aren’t bad people. And they don’t need to know how they’ve messed up your life temporarily or how truly bad their work is. They just need to know that you can’t afford to keep them on.

But We Had a Deal!

Poor-paying customers or clients that refuse to honor a contract pose another of the nastier sides of running a business. There’s an entire industry that collects bad debts because very few small businesses have their own collections department. And face it; most people are pretty good about paying what they owe — what they’ve agreed to. It’s that one percent, though, that can ruin your 99 percent love affair with being the boss.

You have options, although none of them is very much fun. When a client refuses to pay in a timely manner, the first thing you need to do is to stay on it. Don’t let matters slide. Regular calls, invoices and emails are in order. A few more tips that come from Nolo.com include:

• Stay calm and don’t let calls or emails get too personal.
• Maintain a tone of urgency.
• Ask the client if she has financial problems and offer to work out a payment plan.
• Offer to settle for a lower final payment. (This may be sound more appealing after about six months of non-payment.)
• Hire a collections agency to send letters for you. For a flat fee, averaging about $30, they can send a few letters and make a few calls on your behalf, using their proven techniques.
• Sell the debt to a collection agency as a last resort. They’ll pay you 50 percent of the total due (at the most). But, hey, sometimes, that’s better than nothing.

Give Me a Break

Running a business is not for the faint or weak of heart! You always end up doing things that you never really bargained for. In addition to those two nasty examples above that every small business owner eventually has to face, you know the other downsides of being the boss if you’ve been running a business for more than a few months:

• You’re the last to get paid.
• There’s no paid time off … and often little time off at all.
• No one covers you when you’re sick.
• Slow periods can leave you questioning yourself relentlessly.
• The company bennies generally suck.

But oh, the freedom! And when it’s good, it’s very good. A big payday can make you forget all about that slow-paying customer or that incompetent you hired. Just like when you watch your kid walk down the aisle in a cap and gown — or better yet, when your offspring sends you money, the joy of running a business far outweighs the nastiness involved. That is, if you love roller coasters and parenting.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

What to Do When Negativity Knocks

by Elle Ray | Jun 4, 2019 | Small Business Advice

Or How to Stay Positive When You Don’t Feel It

Most business owners know by now that you have to stay positive to make it in business. It’s been revealed that how you think affects your outcomes. See books such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking and Oprah’s favorite, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.

But what can you do when you’re just not feeling it? When there just seems to be a black cloud hanging over your head that no amount of positive thinking can dispel? When you wake up and just know it’s all going to come crashing down?

Sometimes, those negative thoughts and feelings come unexpectedly, out of the blue, for no seemingly good reason. At other times, perhaps you’ve been sitting on the precipice of doom, with one bad move following another. No matter where they come from or how based in reality they are, it’s imperative to your health, happiness and success that you find a way to stay positive no matter what.

Start Questioning the Origin

It helps to look for a logical reason for why you can’t seem to stay positive, whether it’s just one negative day or several weeks’ worth of spreading darkness. Begin with some basic questions. You may find a common source of negativity, which may include:

• Am I eating right? Low blood sugar and hunger are two culprits that can make it difficult to remain positive. Eat something nutritious and you suddenly may feel cheery right away.
• Have I gotten sufficient sleep? A lack of a solid six-to-eight hours of sleep sets you up for a potential bout of depression that’s hard to overcome with positive thinking. Take steps to get enough sleep and the blues may just fade away on their own.
• Did I do something immoral, illegal or unethical to bring about the bad karma that seems to be coming my way? If you’ve made a mistake, clean it up. If you owe someone an apology, do it and that black cloud may soon turn pink again.
• Am I “shoulding” myself? No one’s perfect. As soon as you get over all the “shoulds” you think you need to have under control — I should have done more, I should have known better, I should have called him back right away, I should have asked someone first, I should (place anything here) — the sooner you can enjoy your life as a fallible human being once again.

Dig Deeper

Negativity and pessimism seem to be built into some people. Perhaps character flaws that you’ve lived with all your life are keeping you from the ability to stay positive and overcome the bouts of catastrophizing you may be going through. Those deep-seated beliefs most likely have been with you from childhood or developed as a survival mechanism to help you get through troubling times. Negative personalities share a number of characteristics, such as:

• Blaming others for everything that goes wrong
• Feeling like a victim with little or no control over outcomes
• Personalizing everything so it’s always about you
• Overgeneralizing so that situations always seem all good or all bad
• Giving too much credence to your emotions instead of looking at the facts
• A strong need to always be right, even if it’s to your own detriment

If you fall into any of these categories, it may be wise to invest in a good therapist to help you work out the kinks left over from childhood that aren’t serving you well anymore. Self-help books and groups where people help each other overcome negative thinking and behavior can be helpful.

Moving On

No matter how much you change, sleep or eat, there still are going to be days when the black harbinger of doom sits on your bedpost just waiting for you to get up so he can tell you how bad it’s going be. To stay positive and deal with those now occasional days of darkness, fill your toolbox with tips to get and keep you on track so that you can put your thinking cap on straight. It’s really no secret that when you stay positive, you act positive to your best end. (And everyone around you benefits too.)

The next time you have trouble finding a way to stay positive, consider:

• Turn it over and look at a situation (or your life) from a different perspective. For example, maybe you didn’t land that big client because a better one is in the wings. Or perhaps you realize that running on fumes for your business is actually jeopardizing your health, so you take action — and both get healthier.
• Get moving physically. Take a walk outside, hit the gym hard or take in a dance class you’ve been meaning to attend. Exercise releases endorphins, those feel-good hormones you need to stay positive.
• Take a risk. When you feel stuck in a rut, it can lead to some pretty negative reactions like: “Not that again,” or “I’m going to scream if I have to do that one more time.” Shake things up and buy into a new marketing campaign, let the Debbie-downers in your office go and hire some upbeat employees, call that big client who turned you down last year.
• Remember the good times. When it seems like you’ve become a dumping ground for the world’s waste, it’s easy to jump on that garbage truck and continue the dumping on yourself. Turn it around by remembering your successes, your great talents and the people and circumstances that got you where you are today.
• Take a break. As a small business owner, you may be notorious for skipping vacations, worried that the business won’t survive if you aren’t there to handle it. A vacation is in order when those negative days seem to be gathering more often than usual. And really try to unplug, leaving the day-to-day to others or freeing up your schedule even for a long weekend. Start planning the vacay now and the anticipation may be enough to allow you to stay positive right now, even before the jet has left the tarmac.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.

Spring Cleaning for Business

by Elle Ray | Apr 22, 2019 | Small Business Advice

A Clean Space Helps Recharge Your Batteries

You take your winter clothes out of the front closet, bring coats to the dry cleaners and sort out your spring and summer wardrobe. The house gets a thorough spring cleaning and you clear all the winter debris from your yard to prepare for new growth.

Spring cleaning is a rite of passage for those who love the freshness that the new season brings. And while you may take painstaking care of your home, have you spent an equal amount of time and energy giving your office and your business its share of attention? If you’re like most busy entrepreneurs, the answer often is “No.”

Clean Up and Breathe

One of the reasons that spring cleaning is a vital annual ritual is that it gives you the opportunity to rid your home of moldy spores that have been waiting for the temperatures to rise so they can be fruitful and multiply. Your office, where you spend so much of your time, needs the same disinfecting as your home.

So while you’re cleaning the walls and baseboards of your office as part of a yearly spring cleaning, don’t forget to sanitize your:

• Keyboard and mouse, where the winter’s germs have surely found a place to settle
• Bookshelves, where dust mites love to congregate behind the tomes and knick-knacks
• Desk and all that’s accumulated there while you worked so hard all winter
• Chair, on which you sat for endless hours, catching up and paying your dues while you waited for warmer weather to get you outdoors

Spring Cleaning for Windows

Don’t forget about the inside of your computer! That doesn’t mean you necessarily have to take apart your case and give your hard drive a good scrubbing (although people have done that). Instead, consider your files and all that they contain.

When you get the spring cleaning bug, take it to the next level and clean up your cookies, junk files and other temporary files that just get in the way. For example:

• Go through your saved files and delete those items you’ll never need (or want) to look at again. Not only do useless files take up room on your hard drive, they add to the clutter that ends up slowing down your searches and ultimately, your mind. Sometimes, unneeded files take up time too, especially when you forget what’s in them and have to open them to trigger your memory.
• Use an external hard drive or even a thumb drive to store those files that you might need in the future. By keeping them out of your main memory, you clear up storage and still keep them nearby — just in case.
• Consider your client list and begin a purging process to get rid of those customers who aren’t adding sufficient benefits to your business or your bottom line. Spring cleaning is the ideal time to clear out from under those clients who are more pain than profit or who bring you down. One rotten strawberry can ruin the bushel; don’t let one negative client ruin the fun you’re having with your business.

Spruce Up for Spring

Just as you cut fresh flowers to grace your table, bring in some freshness to your office environment. Paint the walls. Put some new artwork up. Exchange your old, tired motivational posters for some new, bright ideas.

Move your desk to give yourself a fresh perspective. If possible, set your chair toward a window (newly cleaned of course). It reduces glare on your computer screen and opens your view, which in turn may open your mind to new ideas.

Get more great ideas from our small business advice section of our blog. Contact us for more information.

Work at Home Benefits

by Elle Ray | Mar 26, 2019 | Small Business Advice

What Are the Pros and Cons of a Home Office?

There’s a lot to be said for going to work everyday in an office that someone else has to pay for. You can simply drop everything, shut it all down and leave it there when the clock strikes quitting time. And the camaraderie of an office setting is hard to replace. In fact, belonging is one of the five pillars of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Having a place to go to work is why many people go to work at all — to make friends and build social relationships.

According to a 2018 Forbes piece: “Strong social connections make people happier and physically healthier, which can translate into work performance.” This implies that those who work at home have a tendency to work less and even live unhealthy lives of desperation! Could it be true?

We Know Better

Whether you’re a freelance or contract worker — or your corporate boss has offered you remote access and the ability to work at home, you may find that it’s an ideal solution for your lifestyle. Maybe you already have enough friends and need some alone time to keep your sanity. For many who savor their work at home situation, the florescent lights, constant chatter and ringing phones are more of a distraction than a comforting atmosphere in which you can be productive.

As entrepreneurs and writers, the principals of Ray Access spend most of their time in isolation. They gave the office thing consideration, but the accountant said an emphatic “No.” One of the most important benefits for small business owners is the savings that comes with a home office. The tax write-offs are just as astute as if paying for a brick and mortar office space.

Work at Home Benefits to Beat the Band

To those workers who’ve done the work at home bit for a long time, the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages. Many could never return to an office shared with other people. They’re spoiled. In addition to saving a bundle on monthly bills, some of the most outstanding benefits of working from home include:

• Flexibility. Unless your keystrokes are monitored by your boss, you can get up when you want to, have lunch at any time, take a two-hour break and go work out, move your laptop outside, call a friend in the middle of the afternoon and just darn well work whenever you want. As long as you fulfill the tenets of your contract, you set your hours.
• Dress code. There is none! Big savings on wardrobe updates and dry cleaning.
• Family time. Removing a commute from your workday gives you an enormous chunk of time you can spend with your family. You can be there when the kids get home from school and return to work as they settle in. Make dinner for the gang and then work some more in the evening if you need to.
• Health. While some people need the discipline and socialization found in a workplace to be mentally healthy, when you work at home, you have a much better chance of eating more healthfully. It’s just as easy to throw together a salad for lunch than to go out to get a burger and fries. And back to that mid-day or early morning workout: you don’t even have to shower when you get back home. It’s just you in the office!
• Less meeting time. Even if you do have to sign in for the daily office meeting electronically, you can always mute your end and turn up the radio. Entrepreneurs who work at home set meetings at coffee shops on their schedules. Just remember that meeting clients means you have to put on some decent clothes. But at least you can write off the coffee.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.