In honor of good business writing, St Patrick’s Day, and blarney in general, I included one of my favorite poems. 

• It is true that including poetry is not a typical part of our business blog.
• It is true that this particular poem is written with a particularly thick brogue. 
• It is also true that sometimes, especially around St. Patrick’s Day, my antics may cause consternation for friends, family, and now my fellow team members. 

Yes, things can get a wee bit daft.  St. Pat’s Day gives us another excuse to have fun at home and at work.  Since everyone is an honorary Irishman tomorrow, I invite you to join in the fun.  Take a glance at the poem.  It makes me laugh.   http://frontdeskbusinessbrief.com/2012/03/15/business-writing-a-funny-lesson-learned/  

 However, if that isn’t your thing, I offer the following slightly less appropriate, but non-verbal alternative.  My brother has dubbed this  Origin of The Irish Dance.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0rrLdWLu_0&feature=player_embedded

The need for effective writing isn’t really a new concept.  Clear, concise writing has always been a preferred business style.  American humorist and journalist, Strickland Gillilan, shows us that this was a concern back in the days when they were building the railroads. 

So, in praise of simple writing, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, and just for the fun of it, we share this poem with you.  Work through the brogue, have a pint, or some Baileys, and enjoy!

(Before you get started, someone just asked for clarification.  A Shanty was a ramshackle wooden hut thrown together for temporary use.)

FINNIGIN TO FLANNIGAN
Strickland Gillilan  (1869 – 1954) 

Superintindint waz Flannigan;
Boss av the siction wuz Finnigin;
Whiniver the kyars got offen th’ track
An’ muddled up things t’ th’ divil an’ back
Finnigin writ it to Flannigan,
Afther the wrick wuz all on agin:
That is, this Finnigin
Repoorted to Flannigan.

Whin Finnigin furst writ to Flannigan,
He writ tin pages-did Finnigin.
An’ he tould jist how the smash occurred;
Full minny a tajus, blunderin’ wurrd
Did Finnigin write to Flannigan
Afther the cars had gone on agin.
That’s th’ way Finnigin
Repoorted to Flannigan.

Now Flannigan knowed more than Finnigin-
He’d more idjucation-had Flannigan;
An’ it wore ‘m clane an’ complately out
To tell what Finnigin writ about
In his writin’ to Muster Flannigan.
So he writed this here: Masther Finnigin:
Don’t do sich a sin agin;
Make ‘em brief, Finnigin!”

Whin Finnigin got this from Flannigan,
He blushed rosy rid-did Finnigin;
An’ he said: “I’ll gamble a whole month’s pa-ay
That it’ll be minny an’ minny a da-ay
Befoore Sup’rintindint-that’s Flannigan-
Gits a whack at that very same sin agin.
From Finnigin to Flannigan
Repoorts won’t be so long agin.”

Wan da-ay on the siction av Finnigin,
On the road sup’rintinded be Flannigan,
A rail give way on a bit av a curve
An’ some kyars went off as they made th’ shwerrve.
“there’s nobody hurted,” sez Finnigin,
“But repoorts must be made to Flannigan,”
An’ he winked at Mike Corrigan,
As married a Finnigin.

He wuz shantyin’ thin, wuz Finnigin,
As minny a railroader’s been agin,
An’ his shmoky ol’ lamp wuz burnin’ bright
In Finnigin’s shanty all that night-
Bilin’ down his repoort was Finnigin
An’ he writed this here: “Muster Flannigan:
Off agin, on agin,
Gone agin.-Finnigin.”

This poem is in public domain. 

Note:  My thanks to William (Bill) Brown, CPA for answering my question on Linked in about the length of IRC sentences and providing the following source 

• http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/242688

We really are making progress.  My grandmother was 36 years old when women got the right to vote in the United States.  When my mom was a young adult, women were encouraged to stay at home or, if they needed to work, be secretaries, teachers, or nurses.  Most baby-boomer women can share stories of the challenges they faced when they began their professional careers.  Today women hold leadership positions in major corporations. There may still be a wage gap but the opportunities are substantially better than they were.

Today women are becoming small business owners at a faster rate than men, although men clearly dominate the field in terms of numbers and earnings.  According to Kauffman Foundation research only about 35% of start-up business owners are women.  This seems to be a low participation rate at a time when more than 50% of the college students are female and about 46% of the workforce are women. http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/Growing_the_Economy_Women_Entrepreneurs.pdf  However, 35% represents a dramatic increase over the last 10 years.  Since the vast majority of new business owners are over 40,  this means that the men and women starting new businesses now already experienced that transformation of roles for women in the corporate setting. That assumption of equality will make it easier for all small business owners to grow together.  Many of these baby boomers share the belief that entrepreneurship is the best path to overcome the recent economic issues that resulted in corporate lay-offs, diminishing savings, and reduced retirement funds. 

This economy needs effective entrepreneurs.  Today is International Women’s Day.  This month is Women’s History Month.  It is worth celebration.  The elimination of artificial barriers frees us all to work together to rebuild the economy and our individual lives.  The Front Desk Team staff work with small business owners every day.  It is exciting to see the enthusiasm, expertise, and energy these entrepreneurs bring to their companies.  It’s exciting to think about what we are building together.  This next decade is going to be fun!

Warning: Ignore at your own risk

What do you do when someone posts a negative online comment about your product or service?  

Whether or not it is a fair comment, it may influence readers purchase decisions.  How you handle the situation can make an even bigger difference.    

How to respond

1. Think 10 times before removing a negative comment. It can be tempting to remove these negative comments if you have the administrative capability. Don’t.
2. Trust the readers.  Readers will evaluate the credibility of individual posters and make their own decisions.  They will also evaluate your credibility.  If they catch you removing negative comments, your credibility and the credibility of all the positive comments go down the drain.  It is better to leave the comment as is.  If it is out of line, other commenters may step up themselves. 
3. Provide a constructive response. This provides the opportunity for a balanced discussion.  What a great thing it would be if you can actually foster a discussion.  You might respond directly to the criticism.  Or, you might redirect thinking by expressing the positive intent of your product or service.
4. If necessary, take it off-line.  Give them an email address or phone number and promise to work with them to resolve the issue.  A public response may end the negative discussion and demonstrates to other readers that you are following through.

Example of a response that  influenced the purchase decision

Last night I was checking out the business books on Amazon.   Reading the user reviews wasn’t proving helpful because the 5 star reviews were so vague that it was hard to tell if they actually read the book.  Then there was the post from a man named Bob who gave a less that flattering review.  It had impact because

• It was negative.  People tend to remember the negatives.
• It was contrary to what everyone else said.
• It was clear that he actually read the book.  He had credibility.

Subsequent posts thanked him for his honest feedback and indicated they might not buy the book.  In my own case, I started thinking about my favorite free library instead of making the decision to buy.

Here’s what turned the tide

The author of the book responded personally.  He made a statement about why he thought the book was good.  He expressed confidence in his product.  He said he was so confident that his book makes a difference that he offered to buy it back himself and re-sell it.  He implied confidence that others were just waiting in line to get their hands on that book.

The author’s response hit a perfect tone for the readers.  After that, posters offered to buy the book themselves.  They praised the author for being responsive.  They praised his coming to the Amazon site to comment.  They became loyal followers because of his response to a negative post, not because they had read the book yet. 

That is the power of  internet comments.  I welcome yours and promise to respond.

Are you spending time doing things that others can do better, faster, or cheaper? 

If this is happening, take time to ask yourself “Why?”  Sometimes this happens because we haven’t taken time to consider the opportunity cost.  Sometimes it happens because we are more comfortable doing something we have already mastered than learning or doing what we really need to do for the sake of our business. 

What are the activities that only you can do?

When you are the only person who has the knowledge and expertise to provide certain services to your clients, you want to allocate sufficient time to these activities.  When you spend time on activities that could be performed by someone else, you forfeit  time that could be spent on revenue generating activities.  If you are doing someone else’s work, then who is doing yours?

What are the activities that only you should do?

Taking advantage of resources offered by other professionals is not the same thing as abdicating your business leadership role.  It may be a smart move to work with experts.  We hire accountants, attorneys, consultants, etc. because they can save us time and money – as well as keep us out of trouble.  It is your job to make sure that the advice you adopt is consistent with your business vision and values.  A well-intended but misdirected piece of advice can cause more harm than good.  Regardless of input, the end result happens because of a decision you made.

Small business owners often underestimate the importance of their leadership role – even if they are just leading themselves.  You ARE the company.  You can build relationships and a business reputation in a way nobody else can.  You provide the leadership that takes your business to bankruptcy or brilliant success.  You develop a vision for your future and make plans to take the business there.  This involves identifying the options available to you and selecting the best ones to lead the company to achieve your objective.

Opportunity cost is what you gain or lose by choosing one option or action over another.  It is the difference between the choice you made and what you would have gained if you had selected the next best alternative.  Every small business owner can improve profits and efficiency by making opportunity cost a part of the decision – making process.  Unless we do this, we underestimate the economic impact of the decisions we make every day. 

For example:

If your bill rate is $50 an hour and an assistant would charge you $30 an hour, you gain $20 an hour by using the assistant.  Of course, this assumes that you actually use that time as billable time.  If this is a recurring activity, there is an obvious on-going benefit to purchasing some assistance.  Sometimes it costs more to hire and train someone than it costs to do it yourself.  When the math is this clear, it is easy to make an efficient business decision.   

Opportunity cost calculations should also consider the long-term impact of our decisions.  How much revenue does a single client generate for your business?  You may have a one-time project worth thousands in a single year.  Or, you might have a client who generates thousands over the course of several years.  How many billable hours will you forfeit to obtain a new client?  We can be fairly certain that we need to spend time doing sales in order to have clients and billable revenue in the future.  Forfeiting guaranteed billable time to do sales is a time investment that requires a leap of faith.   If you are tracking your time and expenses, you and your accountant will be able to develop a reasonable estimate of the cost of gaining a new client or losing an existing one.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Small business owners wear many diverse hats that compete for our attention, time, and resources. We make educated guesses.  We take risks.  We try to make decisions that have a positive long-term impact without sacrificing short-term security.  Understanding the concept of opportunity cost and using it as a decision-making tool can have a profound impact on the future of your business.

We had a rough day, but it wasn’t a bad day. Good people made the difference.  Murphy’s Law says that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong – in the worst possible way and at the worst possible moment.  We write our procedures, hire our staff, and implement training programs so we can handle those moments when Murphy’s Law runs amuck.   Kasey and I are fanatical about creating good systems that ensure excellence.  We critique our processes all the time.  We work to be prepared. There is a corollary to Murphy’s Law that applied here:   

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong,

and circumvent these,

then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.

OK, it happens.  What matters is how you handle it. 

We really appreciate how our clients responded.  Those who were affected trusted us to fix the problem as quickly as possible.  They gave us the time we needed to make the right things happen.  We plan to nurture that trust by making every effort to prevent this from happening in the future.  Caveat:  we acknowledge the corollary above and somewhat reluctantly admit that I am actually related to a number of Murphys.

I’m really proud of the team response.  There was remarkably little grumbling and a great deal of professionalism.  People focused on identifying the problem, tracing it to the root cause, and implementing a solution. They also focused on damage control, taking steps to minimize negative impact on those affected and to fix everything that needed repair. We’re in the process of our Kaizan debriefing, a.k.a post mortem.  We welcome your comments and suggestions.

And now for some related fun.  Here’s a clever artist’s drawing of what can happen when things go wrong.  Enjoy!

Cost of Wasted Time

Interruptions use your valuable time and money.  Researchers have found that it takes between 2.9 and 20 minutes to get back to the same level of concentration you had prior to an interruption.  To estimate your own cost of wasted time in each month, multiply the following numbers:

_____  #  of Phone Interruptions:                                                            

_____  x   # of minutes needed to resume concentration at the level prior to the      interruption:

_____  x   # of workdays/month (assume 22):

_____  =  Total # of Minutes wasted/month:

_____  ÷  60 (minutes in an hour):

_____  x  your hourly rate (Business owners; enter your billable rate):

_____  =  Total cost of your time wasted:

Every day Front Desk Team staff watch our clients quietly serve their patients, clients, and customers.  There is a certain dignity about being a small business owner who is personally connected with the people you serve.  You make a difference every day!  We have the privilege of working with some incredible professionals who really do care about what they do and how they help those who rely upon them.  We see the experience created by your good service and treating people with dignity.  We see how all that you do on a daily basis makes a difference in the lives of others.  We see their loyalty to you and their appreciation of your care and service.  We sincerely appreciate being a small part of your work.

This holiday season gives us another opportunity to thank you for all you do.  On behalf of the entire Front Desk Team, Kasey and I wish continued blessings for you, your families, and your circle of special people.