Refreshed from our little break. I told you, that you needed it. I know that I sure did.

So before we went on vacation we covered the following.

* Welcome to Connie McCools
* A Short History of who we are
* The Personal Side of CM
* Learning to do Admin and Ops all by yourself
* Leading by example
* Being consistent, fair, Inclusive, Responsive and Available
* Quitting a client
* Fraud
* Social Media
* What to expect when calling a small business
* 10 Books every New Business Owner should read
* Taking breaks.

So I have a number of things I want to cover moving on but I thought I would ask if there is anything you would like to see covered. Please leave topics in the comment sections.

Moving on… Here’s the twitter list.

Fox Small Business @fbsmallbiz
Our job is to help you run a better small business.

Yahoo Small Business @YSmallBusiness
Our Blog: bit.ly/8bTw32 System Status: bit.ly/8UvngN Contact Us: bit.ly/4KxPwd

Small Business Tech @businesstech
Small Business Tech team on twitter. Follow us for tech advice & tips for the small business world. Why not write a guest post?

Anita Campbell @smallbiztrends
Tweets from the Small Business Trends community and its CEO, Anita Campbell. Author of @VisualMktgBook. A Forbes Top Influential Woman for Entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneur @EntMagazine
Entrepreneur is the magazine for the small-business community.

For more simply sign into Twitter and type small business into the search bar.

Good luck and happy following!

What I am trying to say is that as a business owner it is easy to get caught up in having to be “there!” And in wanting to be “there” we forget to take vacation, holidays, time off, time away… Then we burn out.

No matter how much you LOVE what you do. EVERYONE needs a break.

So whether it be a week in Florida or somewhere more exotic… OR an at home week of leisure. REmember to treat yourself to some much-needed YOU time…

We have gone through the steps of

* surrounding yourself with people you trust.
* keeping people honest by splitting job functions
* you are blogging and social mediaing to keep the customers coming in
* you have read the books that will help you to set this up

So now you should be OK to go… Go go goooooo!

Anyway from our family at Connie McCools to yours… Have a happy Holiday Season no matter what you celebrate. Celebrate well! Be safe, be happy and enjoy!

We are going to take our own advise and we are off the air till the new year!

See ya then!

2 — Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Small Businesses [Paperback]
Donna R. Childs

“An essential handbook for anyone who owns, or plans to start, a small business, Prepare for the Worst, Plan for the Best helps you move from paralysis to preparedness. It’s a logical, understandable approach to protecting the business you worked so hard to build.”
—Lauren Simonds, Managing Editor, SmallBusinessComputing.com

3 — The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Negotiating [Paperback]
Richard Weisgrau

Product Description
Not confident with your negotiating skills? This book will cure you! A must-have for any small business owner, The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Negotiating is full of helpful tips and strategies for getting what you want without alienating your clients and suppliers. You will learn to analyze your wants, needs, advantages, and disadvantages going in, maintain your resolve, and see the negotiation through to a successful end. Topics include position bargaining, contracts, purchases, conflict resolution, and more. Also included are sample negotiation scenarios to illustrate different approaches. Concisely, clearly, and engagingly written, this guide will empower you to reach your negotiation goals!

4 — Make Sure It’s Deductible, Fourth Edition [Paperback] Evelyn Jacks

About the Author
Evelyn Jacks is the president of the Knowledge Bureau and one of Canada’s most prolific authors. She is an award-winning entrepreneur, having written over 40 books on the subjects of personal taxation and wealth management. Evelyn has recently been appointed to the Federal Task Force on Financial Literacy, which will set a national strategy for financial literacy for Canada. Evelyn lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

5 — Canadian Small Business Kit for Dummies [Paperback]
Margaret Kerr (Author), JoAnn Kurtz (Author)

Amazon.ca
It takes a certain type of person to start a small business. Among other things, you need self-confidence, a flair for innovation, the ability to work alone as well as a knack for managing others. Being your own boss isn’t all about polished leather executive chairs and business lunches. It’s about long hours, stress, and risk. So it’s fortunate that the Canadian Small Business Kit for Dummies begins with a small-business personality aptitude test. If it shows that you are fit for a life of entrepreneurship, then be prepared for the crash course in how to run a business. You have to know more than the expertise or product you are selling your customers; to be the owner of your own business you have to become an expert in purchasing, marketing, accounting, and many skills you thought you’d left behind in high school.
It’s all in the details, and the Small Business Kit covers all of them, leaving no eventuality to chance. “We bet you can’t believe you paid money for some of this advice,” the authors tell us at one point. It’s true. It is common sense. But there are so many small points to consider when you’re running a small business that it’s vital to organize and prioritize everything to cut the risk. Each chapter ends with action items to put into your agenda, as in: “Give some thought to your distribution channels” and “Take the first steps towards calculating the break-even cost of your product or service.” It’s elementary, but it’s essential. –Edward Trapunski –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Thank-You Amazon.com for this information (this is simply a conglomeration of information I found on amazon.com)

2 — Business Plans to Manage Day-to-Day Operations, Real Life Results for Small Business Owners and Operators/Book and Disk — Christopher R. Malburg

3 — Canadian Small Business Survival Guide — Benj GallanderThis book has case studies and actual checklists and very visual components to learn from

4 — Women Entrepreneurs in Small & Medium Enterprises — Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development
This book is from the late 90′s but still relevant. And had to get some “Girl Power” in here too!

5 — Succeeding Generations: Realizing the Dream of Families in Business — Ivan Lansberg
Just another angle on a small business, just because it was successful for your pop doesn’t mean it will be for you!

So get your Christmas (Chanukkah, Kwanza, whatever you celebrate) list ready and add these… Happy Holiday reading.

Most small businesses do not have offices, they work out of the owner’s home.

So if you do that, then expect that the person you are calling just may do that too.

Also when you call us for services we will need to see somethings that you feel are confidential…

For example, you call us to ask us to help you to get your “books in order and to pay your taxes…” please don’t be shocked when we tell you that in order to do that we have to see your books… We cannot pay taxes when we don’t know what we are paying for…

Sure some places are very forward and may have software that will allow them to remote into your system, however you should be prepared to meet with the person that you are hiring to take care of your financials…

Really I don’t want to work for someone I have never met anymore than you should want someone who you have never met working for you.

Be prepared as well to have to wait for a meeting… Just like you are a business and have other jobs than the one you are talking to me about… So might I. Just because you may want to meet in five minutes because you are on your third “pay your taxes” notice from the Ministry of Finance, doesn’t mean I am going to be able to accommodate that schedule.

Also, if you are going to use some obscure software for your finances, because it is cheap please remember that someone is going to have to learn to work with it in order to do your books and that is going to be at your expense…

Anyway… These are just somethings that have come up in phone calls lately and I felt the need to share them.

I will try my best to help you… But I am also in business… to make money. I cannot help you by lowering my costs because you are small… My costs are set based on the level of service you are getting.

So… Now that I have pretty much un-professionally had a rant here… Please tell me what you think!

Have a great day and see you next week!

Image of Rant from — http://www.mylot.com/w/photokeywords/2/rant.aspx

Don’t have a website budget? Well that could be the kiss of death for your business in this day and age. BUT… You don’t really need it. Just start a blog. You can not only advertise your company, what you do, pass on info about you or your products, but you can promote sales, and well… Give advise and actually have conversations with your clients.

Check out wordpress.com. That is what you are reading this on. I personally find this to be the easiest to maneuver blog system. There are others. Blogger.com, Blogspot.com etc. You should look at them all and decide which one you like best it’s really up to you. You are the one who has to maintain it. You have to be comfortable.

Once you have your blog you should sign up for StumbleUpon.com it calls itself a discovery engine that finds the best of the web, recommended just for you. You can set up you own parameters and you can stumble while others are stumbling you.

Another site that is GREAT is Tumblr.com. It’s a micro blog site. You can post a link to your blog here and it will simply be seen by another audience. Go over and check it out.

So once you have set up your blog you need only maintain it to make sure that your info is up-to-date. If you choose write a blog for your clients like I do, you can choose a weekly, monthly etc time frame and just make sure you keep it up. Once you finish that blog you can simply take that link and past it in all the other sites and Bob’s your uncle you have a network of advertising. Because remember you post it and then other’s share it.

So You can set your blog up (if you are with workpress.com) to automatically post to Facebook and Twitter as soon as you publish it. But if you have a Facebook or Twitter account you need to make sure that you have time to at least daily read and respond to all the posts. If you leave them to linger people will lose interest. Also remember that if you ask for an audience of one million you have to be ready to service an audience of one million. If you can only service and audience of 579 then gear your social media presence to that number.

Also remember that you need to make sure that you keep all of your writing to online standard.

Make it short
Get to the point quickly
Write in short chunky passage
Put keywords in as many times as you can for Search Engine Optimization.

Most of all have fun with it. You can build a huge audience and take advantage of free word of mouth and online advertising for your business…

Check out this FB page that I think is successful. Surf Dog Ricochet

and this Twitter account… Puppy Rescue Mission

Come back and post a comment on why you think they are successful.

As I mentioned in past blogs even the most loyal of employees/vendors/clients can turn to fraudulent manners when they are faced with a situation that they perceive as a need and fraud is the only way to fix the situation.

There are tried and true systems that you can follow to make sure that you are doing everything to keep your money and business where it should be.

1 – There should never be one person seeing a “function” from a-z. The same person should not be responsible for:
setting up a vendor
placing an order with a vendor
placing said order into the system
receiving an invoice from said vendor
creating a payment for said invoice
entering the said payment into the system
completing the bank reconciliation
completing cash reconciliation

What would make this even worse is if this employee also
received the product
signed off on the receipt of said product
and was responsible for doling said product to clients.

Do you see that with one person doing all of this the only time you as the owner get to see any of this is when you sign the cheque to pay the vendor’s invoice. It could be too late.

The vendor may not actually be real. It could be your employee’s best friend.

If the vendor is real they could have cooked up a kick back deal with your employee.

Who knows.

There should be one person who enters a vendor after that vendor has filled out a vendor validation statement so that there can be a follow-up with their other clients to check up on their authenticity and their reputation.

There should be another person placing the order with the vendor and one entering it in your system so that there is another set of eyes on what goes into your system.

Yet another person enter the invoices from the vendor and then create a check for you to sign.

This way you know that if the vendor gets past the vendor validation check and the order gets input there have been at least two people other than the person placing the order to question anything that doesn’t look right.

Then you have another entering invoices and creating payments. So that you know that the cheque you are signing is going to a real vendor and not Joe the next door neighbour of your receptionists.

This sounds like a lot of people for your tiny little business…

I know. So you place the orders. Make it a rule that they all come to you to be placed.

Your receptionist can deal with the new vendors, get them to fill out the statement and check up on the validity of it. Your book-keeper can do the entering of the vendor so that it is set up properly, you place the order, your receptionist puts in the order and you book-keeper can enter the invoice and create the pavement which you will have to sign off on.

You are still saying that this is a lot of people. Well that is why I have set it up this way. Your receptionist is there everyday and so are you.

You two are doing the actual placing of the order and all the entering of it too. Your book-keeper can come once a month and do all the invoice entering and cheque running… Remember you are only paying them net 30 days anyway!

So that is dealing with orders… Next week we will deal with services, and keep going…

Have a great week-end!

Just because they are paying you for a service does not mean you have to tolerate any rudeness, inappropriateness or bullying. One thing I HATE is when someone says “I pay your salary.” My response is “not really you pay my company for a service. I provide you the service, the company makes money from you and other sources, they pay my salary.” The other thing to keep in mind is that they are not the only contributor to your business’ cashflow.

There is no excuse for anyone to see a client relationship as a power relationship. There is a mutual need, they need the service you provide, you need to be paid. Sure they can go elsewhere for the service however that doesn’t give them the right to bully anyone.

I know some of you are saying that this is a hoity attitude to take. Let me explain. I am not saying that they do not have the right to say look I am paying you for a service so please provide me with it. I am saying that they cannot and should not, use profane language with you or any of your employees, they should not use bullying tactics. They should not threaten, they should not be inappropriate in any way! They should not misrepresent anything.

Sure you are saying but where is the money going to come from when this client is gone? This is why you must have a diverse client base and you can never ever settle for a list of clients and then stop looking for more.

Sometimes when there are client issues with staff members you need to be prepared to change the relationship the client has with your staff. Move them from one sales person to another. But if you do that make sure that you do it with the understanding that you are doing it because it is best for the business and not as punishment to your employee (unless there is a reason to discipline said staff member.) If you do not show your staff that you are working in the business’ best interest and therefore theirs, they can make your life hell. They will leave and as with many small businesses they have not signed any confidentiality agreements or a non solicitation agreement either. Which means once they leave they can bad mouth your business as well as solicit your clients to move to their new company with them.

REmember too that you have to make a certain amount from each client so once you get to a point with a client where they want to bargain you down on cost and your profit margin is not working for you. You have to realize that continuing to work with them is actually costing you money so is it really worth staying with them… Keep in mind too that servicing some of these bad clients can deter you from actually servicing your good clients.

If clients are not paying you or simply not paying you on time. You are spending more time working for free than anything else. As well you are paying someone to try to collect your money. How is this benefitting you or your business? Cut them loose. But don’t allow their account to get to high that writing off their balance will actually hurt you.

Sometimes you have to give a different level of service to different clients. Sure a client is a client. However a client that pays you $1 Million a month is going to get a different level of service and response that one that pays you $500 per month and make sure that this is somehow in the contract you sign with them, you cannot suffer a client who constantly tries to add things to your service that were not agreed to either. As well you cannot promise your $500 per month client something that you will not be able to give them because you can only afford one staff member to work on their account for one day a week because you need everyone else on the $1 Million dollar account. While you can honestly try to give everyone what they need be realistic in giving them THE BEST for what they pay for. You can’t do anymore.

I hope you find this helpful! Please post any questions you may have! Thanks for reading!

Cartoon from http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/a/acting_crazy.asp

So, how you treat one you have to treat another. For if you don’t it will back fire on you.

There is a tendency to over work the ones that are go-getters, do-ers, the “get ‘er done” type and to ignore or write off the difficult ones.

However in doing so, not only do you reward the “good” staff with your trust, the ability to work on the good/meaty projects and possibly more money and responsibility but you also give them a sense of “Why the hell should I care and work so hard if others never do.” While doing this you also reward the “bad” staffs’ bad behaviour, reinforcing the fact that if they don’t work hard they will still get paid for working as little as possible however you are also making them feel worthless and un-needed.

Now that I have told you that you have to continue to reward but not “use” your best workers and that you have to push and not de-value your problem workers…

I also want to say that you have to make sure that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If one is allowed to come in at 10AM then they all should be afforded this luxury. If you cannot afford to have them all coming in an hour after the start of most work days then you have to make sure they are all coming in at 9AM. Allowing one to come in even five minutes late each day will have the rest on edge. While you can tell them “to worry about themselves and not their co-workers and to trust that you are taking care of the tardiness.” This only goes so far. If you allow one to choose an accommodation, then you have to extend it to all. So say you give one the option of coming in later due to child-care issues, then allow your other staff to consider an accommodation that will suite them. Maybe you can let one work an extra half hour a day so that they can take a full hour lunch instead of half an hour. Maybe the other can claim 10 minutes of time that they spend each morning checking their emails before they come to work.

No one need know what each individual accommodation is. All they need to know is that you are willing to give them something while they SEE you giving something to their co-workers.

As well. Praise and Thanks is a great gift to give to your staff. If they do a good job tell them so. Make sure that you tell each member of the team too. You can speak about it in a staff meeting too so that their co-workers know that they did a good job and you appreciate it. It’s VERY motivational.

However do not get into employee of the month or team of the month awards. They simply alienate those departments that are not in line for the reward. So many times, corporate functions, like, HR, Payroll, Finance, Procurement, etc are not given the chance to win the award as they are not seen as doing the job like sales, customer service etc. It is very hurtful to the staff in these departments because after all they are the corner stone of the company. Try getting your sales staff to continue selling when payroll stops paying them. Try to get your customer service department to keep answering maximum calls when procurement stops procuring their phones or headsets… See what I mean?

In short. Be Consistent, Be Fair, Be Inclusive, Be Responsive, Be Available, Be Happy!!

photo of consistency from http://www.mbd2.com/EWN/?p=1373
photo of fair from http://www.voicemale.com/nederlands/nieuws/index.html
photo of inclusive from http://sivers.org/include-everyone
photo of available from http://blogis.dr.ag/show_page/available
photo of responsive from http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/r/responsive.asp