2015 Prediction? Be ready for anything—and don’t stop getting ready

At a family dinner over the Holidays, my father in law leaned in to me and said, “Hank, you’re a blogger. You have access to a lot of research and smart people. What’s your big prediction for 2015?"

Now my father in law’s going to be 95 in March, but he reads 3 or 4 newspapers cover to cover every day. He constantly analyzes his investments, and is still active in local politics. He’s sharp as a tack and I wasn’t going to get off easily with an off-the-cuff prognostication.

I said, Dad. “I don’t really know.” “Why not?” he grumbled.

I said, “it seems everything’s just more volatile than it used to be. The good stuff gets better at an increasingly better rate (think stock market, low-oil prices, improving job market) and the bad stuff gets worse at an increasingly depressing rate (depressingly low interest rates for savers, a global economic slowdown, record number of working age people out of the  official workforce, global warming, currency devaluation, Ebola, ISIS, cyber terrorism, etc.).” Even worse, sometimes the good stuff is what causes the bad stuff, I explained.

“Hmm,” he muttered, taking a painfully long pull from of his wine glass. I braced for the worst, hoping that a less-informed family member at the table would jump into the conversation with a suicidal comment that he’d quickly dissect and dismiss with a sardonic chuckle. Most of the time someone pulls through for me, but no such luck on this day. “OK,” he said. “Nice analysis, but what’s your opinion.”

I thought I had just given my opinion, but my father in law come of age during all night bull sessions in college and the corporate and military command and control era. A member of the Depression Era silent generation, he was a Fortune 500 exec, a Navy man and a chemical engineer. Each direct question requires a direct answer in his world view. Ambiguity and the knowledge sharing/link-and-tweet economy is an enigma to him. He assumes anyone with a byline is obligated to have a singular clear-cut opinion about something.

But that’s my point. There are just too many variables in the equation. By the time you have your strategy and game plan together, the playing field has changed. YOU HAVE TO BE READY 24/7/365 to change on a dime. As we’ve mentioned many times before in this blog, the winners are not necessarily the strongest or the fastest, they’re the ones who are the smartest and most agile.

Doesn’t matter if you’re in sports, business, the military, agriculture, the arts or any other human endeavor. You’ve got to be agile. You’ve got to be good at partnering, collaborating and sharing your knowledge. To that end, here are some excellent quick reads on the subject that came across our radar this week….

Justin Wolfers -- From Unemployment to Oil: The Big Unknowns of 2015
Thomas Friedman -- Is Vacation Over?
Paul Krugman -- Tidings of Comfort

Conclusion

As Steve Jobs liked to say, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”  Let’s have a great 2015. There are going to be some lows and some highs, with lots of roller coaster rides along the way. Let’s enjoy the trip and get after it!

Best, HB and team

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6 Dumb Things That Business Owners Do at Year-End

With Christmas trees trimmed and Chanukah menorahs fully lit, the last thing that most of us want to talk about right now is year-end planning and tax mitigation. But you’ve got to, or else experts say you and your clients could have a heck of a fiscal hangover in the weeks and months ahead.

Josh Patrick, CFP®, a wealth manager who specializes in working with owners of privately held businesses, checked in with us recently about some of the really dumb things he sees business owners do at year-end. “If you’re spending money unwisely, you’re taking at least 60 cents out of every dollar you spend and just flushing it down the toilet, said Patrick, head of Burlington, Vermont-based Stage 2 Planning Partners.

Here are 6 of the biggest mistakes Patrick sees his clients make again and again at this otherwise festive time of year. Make sure you and your clients don’t fall into these common year-end traps.

1. Buying capital equipment you don’t need. Just because you’re having a good year doesn’t mean you should go out and buy equipment to get a tax write-off. Before buying capital equipment, do an analysis to see if there is a payoff for the expense.

2. Pay bonuses because you had a good year. Patrick warns about the “pennies from heaven” bonus. Employees don’t know why they’ve received the bonus. They surely will appreciate it, but if you haven’t told employees why they received the extra money it can turn into an annual sense of entitlement—not an incentive to work hard every year.

3. Rushing to acquire a business before year-end. There is nothing magical about December 31. “If you’re really not ready to close the transaction, don’t do it,” advised Patrick a frequent contributor to the New York Times “You’re the Boss column” and our client CEG’s Elite Advisor Report newsletter. “Rushing into any transaction, let alone buying a business, is always a bad idea. It’s really hard to do an acquisition that’s accretive under the best of circumstances. The only way to make a business purchase that actually works is to follow a purchase process very carefully that you’ve designed before you start.”

4. Rush because it’s year-end. Don’t rush to finish up a project just because the end of the year is coming, advised Patrick. “I made that mistake when I launched our new website. For some reason I decided that I had to rush to get our site up and running before the end of the year. One of the things I missed was making sure that all of the pages from our old site were linked to the proper pages on our new site. Our old site was never mapped to our new site. Because we didn’t map our site properly, Google penalized our site for almost a year. This happened just because I rushed a project for no really good reason.”

5. Increase your inventory. If you or your client is a cash-based taxpayer, you can deduct inventory as you buy it. The problem with loading up on inventory is that you then have to sell it. If you have too much inventory, you can be sure that some of it is going to go bad. Don’t fall prey to end-of-the-year deals. They’re always just so your suppliers can make their numbers. Before loading up on inventory, make sure it’s returnable. Otherwise Patrick said you’ll be in the market for a full-size dumpster.

6. A tax write-off still means you’re spending money. The days of tax credits for buying stuff are long gone. Don’t buy stuff just because you have money burning a hole in your pocket. Your clients shouldn’t either. “A tax write-off is only part of the money you spend. It really does come out of your pocket,” admonished Patrick.

Conclusion
Be smart and think about your year-end purchases just like you would for one in April. If you need it and

Wishing you and your families a safe, happy and fiscally festive Holiday.

Best, HB and team

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TAGS: Josh Patrick, Stage2 Planning, dumb things year end tax planning

Don’t Overlook the Quiet Voices in the Room

This is the time of year when many of us start thinking about brainstorming and drilling down into our organizational strengths and weaknesses. We look closely at our clients and customers to see which ones are most profitable, and which ones are sucking the life and energy out of us. We look at who we’d like to have on our client list and ask ourselves if we have the financial, technology and people resources to get those ideal clients—and keep ‘em happy. Makes sense, right?

If you have doubts about your people, think twice before casting your line into the outside talent pool. You’ll be tying up countless hours of staff time as you vet, argue, interview and recruit new talent that may or may not work out. Before looking outside, ask yourself  how well you really know the team you already have in place. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got two people or two thousand people on your org chart. Chances are you may not be aware of everything they bring to the table—especially the quieter ones.

The loudest aren’t the brightest

Phil Gilbert’s recent piece Hearing Every Voice in the Room got me thinking about how often the introverts--the serious, quiet contemplators who actually think first before shouting out their ideas and opinions. They’re the ones who often have the best ideas, but tend to get overlooked when organizations or all sizes are looking for fresh ideas. It doesn’t matter if it’s a quick coffee room conversation or a formal offsite brainstorming session—the squeakiest wheels tend to get the organizational grease. Unfortunately, that’s another form or organizational complacency and rarely leads to innovation. Why? “Because team dynamics can easily get in the way of good ideas and the loudest voice often wins,” observed Gilbert.

“There’s always someone who dominates the conversation and others who defer to that person out of frustration—or worse, complacency,” wrote Gilbert a general manager of IBM Design. But the article reminded me of a conversation I had last week with Frank Rudd, new president of the Florida Society of Association Executives (FSAE), a 1,000 member organization with six full-time staff. Rudd is spearheading FSAE’s merger with another organization and he told me of the first things he did when he came on board was ask everyone at the combined organization—regardless of their position—to revisit all of FSAE’s programs and services and assess whether those programs were really things members wanted or were just continuing out of habit.

“One of the first things organizations can do is keep doing things the same way, just because that’s how it’s always been done in the past,” Rudd noted. He looked to see where each member of his team (and army of volunteers) could be best deployed—and not a single person at either organization lost their job during the merger. On Day One, Rudd replaced the automated voice mail system with a live human operator and soon he and his team began driving around the state and to hand deliver welcome packages to all the new members they’ve acquired during the merger. That’s right. Hand deliver! Don’t think that approach helps you get to know your stakeholders and your staff?

At Gilbert’s division at IBM, they focus on two things: (a) getting everyone to contribute and (b) letting everyone’s contributions be heard. They start with stacking up sticky notes filled with ideas onto a whiteboard. Everyone is free to post or “popcorn” in IBM-speak until the ideas slow to a dribble. Then the team leader groups the sticky notes into overlapping and logical area. That, he said is how you go from thinking about “what’s not possible, to thinking about what’s possible,” wrote Gilbert. Because everyone has buy-in.

Conclusion

If you, or a talented but quiet person on your staff is afraid to step up and champion ideas, we recommend Susan Caine’s book “Quiet-The Power of Introverts.” She’s also a terrific speaker for your events. A former corporate lawyer and negotiation specialist, Cain said that when it comes to adapting to change, it’s important to understand that the introverts on your team aren’t “lesser contributors or less successful in social interaction.” Instead, they process knowledge and interact with their surroundings in a quieter way. “They tend to be passionate, but somewhat shy and value periods of solitude which allow them to be [optimally] creative,” she said.

Food for thought, especially when you’re “popcorning.”

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It's All in the Family

As most of you will be hosting or traveling to family gatherings this week, remember that family dynamics are a lot like client relationships. They’re often rewarding and memorable, but can also be a minefield of emotions, tightrope-walking and innuendo. Focus on what’s good about your family, not what’s wrong with it. Here’s why.

Sometimes what’s said or done is often less damaging to family harmony than what’s NOT said or done. Why didn’t you invite Uncle Joe to the ball game last month? Why didn’t you apologize to Aunt Miriam for poking lighthearted fun at her dance moves at your sister’s wedding last year? Did you ever apologize to second-cousin Sam who assumed his invitation to your son’s bar mitzvah was “lost in the mail”? How about your brother in law, Larry, a lifelong Wildcats fan? Do you consider his feelings when the rest of the family is gathered around the TV cheering on the Bulldogs who are giving the Wildcats their annual Thanksgiving Day whuppin’?

Even if you’re from a large, extended family that (mostly) gets along like mine does, communication breakdowns and lack of clarity about responsibilities—anything from who’s bringing the cranberry sauce, to who’s taking over as grandmother’s healthcare power of attorney—can cause friction throughout the year, not just during the Holidays.

Separate your work persona from family persona

Another area in which it gets tricky for adults is separating your work persona from your family persona. At the office, you might be CEO, senior partner or dean of your department….i.e. you’re used to calling the shots. But in your family, you might be the youngest of four siblings and have to defer power of attorney to an older sibling or relative who might not have the same business experience or legal acumen that you do.

Family gathering are even trickier when several blood relatives work in the family business. Tom Hubler, president of Hubler Family Business and a frequent contributor to Elite Advisor Report that we publish with CEG Worldwide, LLC told us happy business families don’t discuss business at family gatherings. He said they also know how to “manage boundaries where normal business differences erode family relationships, or where family rivalry undermines working relationships.”

Hubler said that harmonious families, like successful family businesses, have four common characteristics:

1.      Commitment to harmony

2.      Clearly defined roles

3.      Emotional intelligence skills (empathy, self-awareness, self-confidence, self-control, etc.)

4.      Forgiveness

Remember that, even if you’re in the business of advising families on sensitive estate planning and wealth transfer matters.

Another of our Elite Advisor Report contributors, Hyman Darling, an estate planning attorney in Springfield, Mass. courageously shared his personal story about his own family inheritance disputes with the Wall Street Journal recently.

Conclusion

Hubler may have summed it up best. “Even with people you love, it is virtually impossible to be a family and not accidentally step on each other’s toes. What is crucial is to have the ability to say, ‘Ouch, that hurts,’ as well as the capacity to say ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I forgive you.’”

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
Best, HB

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TAGS: Tom Hubler, Hubler Family Business, Gary Shunk, Family Wealth Dynamics, Hyman Darling, Bacon Wilson

Positive Thinking Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer as you’re starting to get into the Holiday spirit. But, I couldn’t resist sharing Gabriele Oettingen’s recent piece about The Problem With Positive Thinking.

Obviously you don’t want to walk around shrouded in a black cloud of negativity. However, research has shown that being eternally optimistic can be just as debilitating as being overly pessimistic. Say what?

Experts say that fantasizing about “happy outcomes” all the time calms you down, and significantly reduces systolic blood pressure. Sounds good. So, what’s the problem? According to Oettingen, being overly optimistic can also “drain you of the energy you need to take action in pursuit of your goals.” She also argues that positive thinking tricks your mind into believing that you’ve already achieved a goal, thus “slackening your readiness to pursue it.”

Think about that if someone on your team is always playing devil’s advocate or if someone in your family isn’t always in the Holiday spirit.

The power of mental contrasting

So, you need to be on edge all the time if you want to hit your goals and keep competitors at bay? Well, that’s not the right approach either.  Oettingen says you need a “hybrid approach” that combines positive thinking with “realism.”

Here’s how it works: Think of a great client outcome such as landing an ultra-wealthy new client who came to you via a current client’s referral. Spend a few minutes imagining how your wish came true. Go ahead and let your mind wander. Then, spend a few minutes thinking about the obstacles that might prevent you from achieving your wish—for instance, you don’t have the infrastructure in place, or you don’t have a specialist in fine art and antiques on staff, or you don’t have someone who’s fluent in Spanish and Dutch. That’s what researchers call “mental contrasting”—and research shows this approach outperforms excessive optimism or excessive pessimism.

Here’s why our firm finds mental contrasting so powerful. On one hand, it really motivates you when it truly makes sense to pursue a dream hard. At the same time, it allows us to abandon our dreams more readily when a new project or idea just isn’t going to work out. That frees us up to go after other clients, projects or innovations when an eternal optimist would just keep “plugging away.” Mental contrasting works in dieting, exercise, sports, romance, war, business and most other human endeavors.

As Oettingen explains, “ Like so much in life, attaining goals requires a balanced and moderate approach, neither dwelling  on the downsides nor a forced jumping for joy.” What she didn’t explain is how to know where and how to draw the line between plugging away and cutting your losses so you can move on to more productive pursuits. More on that next week. As regular readers know, we’re big on starting your New Year’s resolutions early.  

Conclusion
We wish you and your family a safe, happy Thanksgiving. Just don’t expect to sail through the Holidays without some traffic, flight delays, family friction and extra pounds. That’s not being negative. That’s just being realistic. Save you energy and focus on the good stuff.

Best, HB

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TAGS: Gabriele Oettingen, Problem With Positive Thinking, mental contrasting, early New Year’s resolutions.  

An Unexpected Gift of Time

Yesterday afternoon, one of our weekly client conference calls was cancelled at the last minute. Nothing remarkable about that, except the meeting organizer, who’s always very on top of things said: “Enjoy the gift of time” in her meeting cancellation notice. You don’t hear that every day.

And, it was a gift. Due to some IT issues that shut us down for half the day, we weren’t as prepared as usual for our weekly “gut check” call with this no-nonsense client. Nice folks from the midwest, but you can’t BS your way through a call with them. Suddenly, we felt we had magically “manufactured” an extra hour of time in the day. Trust me, it didn’t go to waste.

For many of us, the next 60 days will be a series of moving deadlines, delayed decisions, interruptions, weather “events,” travel delays and last minute shopping and year-end planning. You won’t know exactly when a big hole will be blown into your carefully organized schedule, but sooner or later it’s going to happen. We’ve found our most successful clients are not necessarily the ones who are the most organized; it’s the ones who can adapt the fastest to a changing landscape.  

How to cope? Tough love

If you’re expecting us to tell you to take a deep breath, count to 10, make a nice cup of herbal tea and talk a long walk, you’ll be disappointed. As regular readers know, we prefer the “tough love” approach.

So does one of clients, Gary Klaben, of Coyle Financial Counsel in Chicago.  Klaben suggests placing boundaries around yourself and your team so you can’t procrastinate or get distracted. Klaben said the simplest way to accomplish this is to get tough tasks on our schedule. Right there where everyone can see it.

Borrowing a page from Tim Ferriss (The 4-Hour Workweek), Klaben only puts something on his schedule only when it’s a “Hell yes, man, I’m really excited about it!” In addition to “hard scheduling,” Klaben said you should tackle your most difficult tasks first thing in the morning. “I find that if you put those boundaries in place and really schedule things, then 80 percent of the time the task gets done,” he said. “By contrast, very little gets done if you don‘t put it on the schedule.”

A West Point grad (like his son and daughter), Klaben is clearly a disciplined guy. But he also recommends building in “focus” days, “buffer” days and even free days into your monthly and quarterly schedule. This forces you to take a step back and think. In other words spend some quality time ON the business rather than IN the business. But, if you don’t schedule those days, they ain’t gonna happen.

As many of you know, we advocate getting at least a one-month head start on your New Year’s resolutions and revisiting those goals several times throughout the year. It doesn’t matter how lofty or modest your goals are. You need tangible metrics to show progress and make them stick.

If you’re not a morning person like Klaben, don’t sweat it. Just try to figure out when you’re most productive and leverage the heck out of that time of day. For tips on how to do that, check out one of our most popular posts of 2014, The Best (and Worst) Times to Do Things at Work.

Conclusion

Time’s going to keep flying by; we might as well have fun adapting. Happy Holidays  (way in advance).  We also recommend Tom Friedman’s NY Times op-ed piece from yesterday, The World is Fast. He explains how the three biggest forces on the planet — the market, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law — are interconnected and why you need to pay attention to all three.

Fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride. We’ve got a lot more to do before we ring in 2015.

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Is Work/Life Balance an Oxymoron?

As many of you know, October is the time of year when financial markets tend to be their spookiest. Add to that the Ebola crisis, ISIS, roller coaster weather (at least here in the Northeast) and November elections. It’s no wonder that many of us are not “in the zone” as much as we’d like to be at work.

Being deluged by a 24/7 news cycle doesn’t help. Neither does earlier darkness and later sunrise this time of year. We’ve talked before in this blog about unplugging from the grid and taking the time to think on a regular basis. But, how do you keep all your clients, partners and customers happy without disappointing your family, friends and community organizations--especially at night and on weekends?

Vivian Giang outlined nine definitions of work-life balance for entrepreneurs in Fast Company recently. Hubspot CEO, Brian Halligan, said you have to take a break from email so you can actually think and get in to that state of “relaxed attention.” His big goal for the next year? “Think more and work less.” Natalie Madeira Cofield, head of the Greater Austin Black Chamber of Commerce said you should remember that life is a “marathon, not a sprint” and that you don’t have to accomplish all your goals by the time you reach a certain age. Better pacing, she implied, will foster better long-term results. Nick Taranto, cofounder of Plated.com observed: “You can only cut so many pieces from the pie. Work-life balance means making decisions around where, who, and what you're going to sacrifice, because you can't do it all,” said Taranto. “When I was in my early twenties, I said, ‘F*** those old guys, I don't need balance. I can do it all.’ ... but I was juggling too many balls and was dropping a lot of them,” Taranto added.

Conclusion

Demandbase founder, Chris Golec, may have summed it up best: “We all have to work a lot, but lack of balance happens when people start to feel guilty about taking time to meet their out-of-work commitments. It really all comes back to the flexibility, trust, and respect with your work and personal relationships.”

And don’t forget regular consistent sleep, something many of the FastCompany interview subjects alluded to. We’ve found here at HB that it’s not how many hours of sleep you get every night, it’s about hitting the sack and waking up on a consistent basis so your internal clock doesn’t get thrown off—especially during the October witching hours.

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TAGS: Work life balance Vivian Giang, Fast Company, Brian Halligan, Natalie Madeira Cofield, Nick Taranto, Chris Golec, unplug from the grid

Think Like an Artist, Work Like an Accountant

Feeling overwhelmed by the day to day? Not feeling very creative? Maybe what you need is a little more order and discipline in your life, not a fancy offsite retreat or an innovation workshop from a productivity guru.

Say what?

As columnist David Brooks recently observed in a New York Times op-ed piece, “People who lead routine, anal-retentive lives have a bad reputation in our culture. But life is paradoxical. In situation after situation, this pattern recurs: order and discipline are the prerequisites for creativity and daring.”

Quirks of great visionaries

Novelist John Cheever supposedly got up every day, put on his only suit, rode the elevator in his apartment building down to a storage room in the basement where he’d take off his suit, sit in his boxers and write until noon. Poet Maya Angelou rose at 5:30am, had coffee and by 6:30 was off to a modest hotel room she kept with nothing but a bed, desk, Bible, dictionary, deck of cards and bottle of sherry. She’d write diligently until 12:30 p.m. or 2 o’clock and then call it a day.

According to Brooks, Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope would arrive at his writing table at 5:30 each morning. His servant would bring him the same cup of coffee at the same time. He would write 250 words every 15 minutes for two and a half hours every day. If he finished a novel without writing his daily 2,500 words, he would immediately start a new novel to complete his word allotment.

According to Mason Currey, author of “Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration And Get To Work” renowned carouser/novelist Ernest Hemingway was always up at 5.30 am, even if he'd been drinking the night before. Beethoven, personally counted out the 60 beans that his morning cup of joe required. Benjamin Franklin swore by "air baths", which was his term for sitting around naked in the morning, whatever the weather, Currey recounts.

I can relate. My dad was a vascular surgeon during his prime working years—that meant long hours, late night emergencies and a LOT of coffee. But he always loved art. To relax after a long day, he’d come home around 9 pm, eat a quick dinner and take a nap on the couch. Then he’d rise around 11. But instead of going to bed, he’d put on a fresh pot of coffee, work on his oil paintings to relax until about 2am, before finally calling it a night. Must have worked. He’s in his 80s now and sharp as a tack. Still stays up late at night, drinking lots of coffee and is now painting professionally and exhibiting work all over the Philadelphia/South Jersey area where he lives.

While visionaries’ eccentricities make for great stories, it’s the routine and sense of discipline that makes these folks so productive, so consistently for so long. My dad was a chemical engineer for Procter & Gamble before turning to medicine and then art. Doesn’t sound very creative except he spent most of his time visiting P&G’s various manufacturing plants trying to find a better way to make household products “that we knew nothing about.” History shows many visionaries had unusual starts to their “creative” breakthrough careers. 

As columnist Brooks observed, “creative people organize their lives according to repetitive, disciplined routines. They think like artists but work like accountants.”

One of our clients, Gary Klaben of Coyle Financial Advisors in Chicago, has everyone in his firm schedule their toughest tasks of the day first thing in the morning—that’s right, put ‘em right there on your calendar for you and everyone else in the firm to see.

Others may need to ease into tough task mastering a little, but if you have a disciplined process for warming up your brain (the way athletes warm up for a game or musicians warm up for a performance) you'll have a leg up on most of your peers.

We’ll share some of our daily mental warmup exercises with you in an upcoming post.

As a former marathoner and triathlete, I did years and years of “interval training.” I’m too hyper to sit at my desk all day long. I found I’m most productive if I break up the day into three or four shorter “hard work” sessions punctuated by generous breaks to walk around the block, hit the gym, socialize with colleagues or run quick errands. You can call it slacking or goofing off, but I come back to my desk three times more energized than when I left. Whatever problem I was stuck on before leaving seems to get solved pretty easily and clearly within the first hour of my return.

Conclusion

If you’re in the corporate world, “interval training” may not go over well with “facetime” obsessed bosses, co-workers and HR wonks. Fortunately most of you are in positions to set your own hours, if not your own firm’s policies. As my college track coach liked to say, it’s not how many miles you put in, it’s what you put into those miles. Substitute the word “hours” for “miles” and you’ll get the same result.

Just make sure you “run” your brain hard a little bit every day without overdoing it or taking too much time off without using it.

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Our Top 5 Posts of the Year

With all due respect to January 1st and Times Square, now is the time of year that many of us start thinking about new beginnings, fresh starts, resolutions and goals that did or didn’t get achieved in the previous 12 months. Autumn officially started this week. The weather’s getting cooler and leaves are changing colors in many parts of the country. Kids are back to school. Offices are humming with full staffs for the first time in months, and tonight marks the start of Rosh Hashanah, the official kickoff to the Jewish high holidays.

Even if you’re not Jewish, you probably know that Rosh Hashanah (aka “Rush-a-Homa”) is a generally festive holiday for those of the Hebrasion Persuasion albeit more solemn than American New Year. Like the American New Year, Rosh Hashanah is a time to look back at the past year and make resolutions for the following year. It’s also when the Torah, (Hebrew Bible) resets to chapter 1, part 1. Regardless of your faith, why not take advantage of this short pause in the hectic work week and see if your work/life balance is really in balance and if you’re getting closer (or further away) from the reasons you started your own firm or practice.

Our 5 most popular posts of the year

1. Can Your Staff Really Work Effectively from Home?

2. Face to Face Networking and Why You Need to Take the Shuttle Bus

3. Do You Know Why Your Marketing’s Working (or Not)?

4. Were You Laboring on Labor Day?

5. The Best (and Worst) Times to do Things at Work

Based on our web stats over the past nine months, it’s clear that time management and work/life balance are top of mind for our readers. You’re also concerned about professional networking, face to face interaction in this digital age and finding the right metrics to gauge your marketing efforts. Management guru, Peter Drucker, famously said, “Business has only two functions--marketing and innovation. All the rest are costs." To that we’d like to add a third function—time management, as in finding the time to do marketing and innovation well.

Too busy sawing to sharpen the saw

In one way or another, most of you have told us you’re well on your way to living the true American dream. You your own boss and making a very comfortable living doing work that you find challenging and fulfilling. You’re spending most of the day with intelligent clients and co-workers that you like and respect. You’re making a difference in their lives.  But how many of you are really spending enough quality time with family, friends and community organizations—and pursuing your favorite avocations such as tennis, golf, fly fishing, chess, auto racing and triathlons? C’mon be honest.

Conclusion

Drucker also said, “follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”  However you do it, take a little time this week for some quality introspection. Make sure the important people in your life (and your health) do not fall by the wayside as you take your business to the next level of success. You may not have another time to catch your breath until the next set of Holidays in December.

Have a Happy New Year (L’Shna Tova).

PS: Click here if you’ve always been mystified by the Jewish Holidays, and you’ll find answers to many of the questions you’d like to ask, but weren’t sure if they were politically correct. For instance, why don’t the Jewish Holidays fall at the same time every year?

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TAGS: Peter Drucker, Rosh Hashanah, time management, work life balance, self reflection

Research Shows Passion and Legacy Goals Drive Business Success

According to Infusionsoft’s recent Small Business Market Survey, there are four distinct types of business owners—Freedom Seekers, Passionate Creators, Struggling Survivors and Legacy Builders.

Most of your business owner clients fall into one of these four areas and chances are so do you. As you help clients build out their retirement, wealth preservation and charitable giving plans, it’s important to understand how they like to be marketed to. While the researchers didn’t go into as much detail as we would have liked, our experience is that successful business owners tend to be most receptive to the marketing techniques that they themselves use.

Let’s take a closer look at the four business owner profiles and see if any remind you of yourself:

1. Freedom Seekers
These small business owners started their businesses because they wanted the ability to control their fate, decisions, work environment, schedule and revenue. They are more likely than the other segments to place high  importance on “living the life I want”, “being in control”, “reducing the amount of hours I have to work” and “having flexibility in my schedule.”

With time management being their biggest challenge, Freedom Seekers are more likely than other groups to use email marketing automation, bookkeeping software, ecommerce, project management and CRM systems.
Infusionsoft’s Lindsay Bayuk said Freedom seekers want the autonomy that comes with being their own boss and that money isn't the only measure of success for this group.

2. Passionate CreatorsThis group loves what they do. Running their business or firm gives them a sense of accomplishment and pride. They value the impact they are able to make for their customers and the world at large. Passionate Creators are the most likely of the four profiles to mentor other entrepreneurs and to speak to audiences about small business.

• Nearly half (48%) said they always knew they would run their own business.
• They believe passion is one of the most important qualities for business success and are motivated to serve a target customer well.
• They showed the most longevity and success, ranking as the most likely to have been in business more than 10 years and to report revenue of over $1 million last year.
• Passionate Creators are most optimistic than other types of business owners—71 percent expect their revenue to be ‘somewhat’ or ‘much’ higher than last year.
• They demonstrated the most marketing sophistication, with the highest rates of marketing spending and involvement in digital marketing, social media, email lists and content marketing
• They are the most likely to track financial performance vs. budget, and 70 percent use analytics to support decision-making, the highest level of any segment

3. Struggling Survivors
This group is motivated by fear that’s rooted in the very real challenge of running a business.

·         Many believe that traditional jobs are more secure, and feel that corporate careers garner more respect than small business ownership

·         51% are “solopreneurs,” the highest of any category

• They are least likely to report achieving many of the benefits associated with owning your own business, from financial security to time with family and friends.
• They are the most likely to have considered closing their business (53%), and the most pessimistic about their five-year outlook.

According to the study, half of Struggling Survivors (51%) are the sole employee at their company. This solitary management leaves little time to implement a sound marketing strategy.

4. Legacy BuildersBusiness owners who fall into this profile see small business ownership as a practical economic choice. They believe that small businesses are more ethical than larger corporations, and believe most people would start their own business if they could. They started their business to bring something new to the marketplace that no one else offers. They take tremendous pride in the business they’ve created and plan to run it for the long haul.

• They are the least likely of the four profiles to have a website, and even those that do have a site are least likely to use email, content marketing, SEO or marketing automation to generate leads

Researchers said “Legacy Builders are pragmatic. For them, marketing tech may be fairly new and may not be the most practical investment of time and resources.”

This group is the least likely of the four to have a website (45%). Many legacy businesses are driven through word of mouth. 

Conclusion

Fortunately, most of you are Passionate Creators and Legacy Builders. Successful people tend to surround themselves with successful people. Chances are your clients are, too.

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: Infusionsoft, Passionate Creators, Legacy Builders, Freedom Seekers, Struggling Survivors

Were You Laboring on Labor Day?

We hope your re-entry into the real world hasn’t been too painful today. Tuesdays that feel like Mondays are always a bitch. Not to mention all the recurring tasks, reports and housekeeping chores that rain down on you whenever the calendar page flips over to a new month. Not fun.

Admit it. Many of you snuck in some work over the long weekend to get caught up or to preempt a crisis from hitting this coming week. Not surprising.

Most of you have been around the block a few times. You know you can’t just saunter into the office tanned and relaxed and expect everything to go smoothly after a long weekend away from phones, emails and your desk. It doesn’t matter how great your team is or how “self-managed” you think your firm is.

That’s the joy (and stress) of being an entrepreneur and/or being in a leadership position. You may be out of your “place of work,” but work-related issues (problems and opportunities) are always lingering in your subconscious while friends, family and neighbors are having a carefree time at the pool, beach, lake or barbecue.

How the other 90 percent get by

I bring this up because I finally got around to reading Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich’s gripping account of what it’s like to be among America’s working poor—a group of workers that’s unfortunately growing by leaps and bounds. Without pity or hyperbole, Ehrenreich brings you inside the life of a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aid and Wal-Mart associate. She didn’t just write about those jobs while working undercover and then go home to a plush home or condo. She lived the life 24/7 trying to eat and pay rent on her low-wage income. Her health, not just her psyche, took some hits for this book.

We know many of you have risen from modest upbringings to achieve great academic and career success. But, if you haven’t lived the low wage life since high school or college, give Nickel and Dimed a skim.

Here’s what got to me. It wasn’t the lousy work conditions as much as the LACK OF AUTONOMY. You’re told when you work and when you don’t. You’re told when you take your meal and bathroom breaks, what to wear and when you’re permitted to talk with colleagues (almost never). If you’re lucky enough to be hired, you’re also presumed to be a criminal or drug addict until you’ve proven yourself trustworthy. Then there’s the issue of “time theft” in which the overtime hours you didn’t want to work in the first place mysteriously disappear from your paycheck.

We may have demanding clients, employees and vendors who drive us crazy. But most of us know the times of day and days of the week in which we do our best work. We can schedule our hours within reason to work when we’re most efficient. We can schedule or vacations (or mental health breaks) when it’s most convenient for us and our families—not when “the man” says we can go. Sure relationships with spouses, family, friends and communities can suffer when we’re under deadline or traveling a lot. But at least we’re not a slave to a disgruntled supervisor or an outdated HR policy.

Can you say PTO day!

Conclusion

Five years into the economic recovery, the stock market and corporate profits are at record highs. But the number and quality of jobs are still lagging for most Americans. As a New York Times editorial noted yesterday, “Wage growth has not kept pace with productivity growth, resulting in falling or flat wages for most workers and big gains for corporate coffers, shareholders, executives and others at the top of the income ladder.”

We’re lucky enough to make our living, directly or indirectly, from the top of ladder. Respect your perch. HB

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, time theft, post Labor Day blues