The "Health Club" for Your Business

As we being a new year, don’ t forget to include your business in your New Year’s Resolution-Making!

Making the Most of Your Chamber Membership

Anyone can join the chamber. But just like a health club membership, you only get out what you put in.  If you join a gym, pay your dues, but never show up, at the end of the year, whose fault is it that you did not reach your fitness or health goal?  The gym’s owner, the trainers, the staff? Of course not!

Chamber membership is exactly the same way.  If you pay your dues, but then never “go” either  by getting involved or attending any of the events, you will not attain your business fitness or health goal—the one that compelled you to join in the first place!

Many small business owners may see it as a waste of money. In actuality it is relatively inexpensive depending how you chose to use YOUR membership. It can be long lasting advertising in the form of:

• Promotion
• P.R.
• Networking
• Free Media Coverage
• And Fun

In many "small chambers" a majority of  members pay less than $400 per year for membership.  That is less than $1 per day, per year—some of us are crazy enough to spend $4 or more per day on a cup of coffee, certainly we can find $1 each day to invest in the success of our business!  Where else can you get access to so many qualified business leads and contacts right in your own community for less than $1 each, have 24/7/365 presence for your business included, and get referrals on a regular basis, in addition to a number of other benefits of your membership?

 

If you truly want to become involved, I suggest you join a Chamber committee. Committees need your input and expertise! You probably talk to one hundred business owners and residential customers per week. Five hundred per month. They know you, they trust you and they generally speak their mind to you. When these associates, business customers and business people talk to politicians, it’s a more tactful type conversation. When they talk to Chamber of Commerce staff, they tend to also choose their words more carefully. When they talk to you, it is more point blank, to the point, blunt and the reality of the way they feel. You will never get a sugar coated answer to a small business dilemma from an actual owner. They will tell you how they feel. Whether they are happy or mad as hell about an issue. You also are the eyes and ears of the community with its residents  

How do you join a committee? Talk to the chamber staff. Tell them you want to volunteer. Find out which chamber committees are available. Some have year-round commitments; some have short-term commitments, such as for specific events. Join a committee that interests you and that you will be able to make some time for. Don’t join one you don’t care about. Just like in school, you always got better grades in the classes you enjoyed, didn’t you?

Grand Openings

Are you taking advantage of the opportunities a Grand Opening presents?  When you read/hear/see that a new business is opening or has held a grand opening ribbon cutting event, you should visit the business:

• To sign them up as new customers
• To offer to give free products or service coupons for grand opening goers
• To help them meet potential buyers, namely all your customers
• To say hi and let them know you are all in the same boat and wish them many years of success

Attending Events

You should attend meetings and events sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.

As many as you can.  Enough that you don’t need to wear a name tag because everyone already knows you. You still should wear a name tag.  After all, there is bound to be a new face popping up every once in a while. Many of these new members may feel intimidated and you can help them and really make a new friend and business associate creating team work, co-marketing efforts and sharing of customer lists with non-competing businesses. Bring lots of business cards, and make commitment to yourself to attain at least 2 new solid business contacts that you will follow up within the next week.

Letters To The Editor

You should rifle off at least one letter a month to the local paper praising a small business that you have recently visited, the Chamber of Commerce or how happy you are to have a business here. This is free publicity for you as well as the person you are writing about—and we can all agree that there is never enough “positive” news in the media.

Conclusion:

Your success in your business is up to you, we live in the greatest country in the world. You are allowed to have unlimited success, but with that incredible gift you are also allowed to fail. The ball is in your court, your chamber membership can be one of your greatest assets, but you only get out what you put in. Stay involved, do not ever give up and use your chamber to help you win. Your Chamber Membership is your business’s Health and Fitness Club—be sure that you are taking your business to the gym regularly so that it can get the exercise it needs to remain healthy! 

Shopping Local Really CAN Make a Difference!

In 2010, we introduced the 3/50 Project, and because we are in the “slower” winter months for most of us, I wanted to take this opportunity to reintroduce it to you all in effort to “renew” our focus on the importance of “Shopping Local”. The 3/50 Project is a nationwide, grass-roots initiative that promotes stronger local economies through support of independent retailers and the consumers who shop with them. The basic principle of The Project is quite simple — pick 3 independent retailers in your community that you don’t want to see disappear, then spend a total of $50 per month among the three. (Just for clarification, that is $50 total, not $50 at each—although of course, you can always feel free to spend more!)

Using this basic concept, here is one way that you can rise to the challenge to spend more locally:

As we have asked before, for 2013, commit to spend $50 of your budget that you might normally spend out of Oswego County, either in and around the malls or on-line, and spend it locally.  Simple!

So what sort of impact can that have?

Currently, we have approximately 530 members — if each of us do this just once, that is $26,500 put into our local economy! (This is essentially one full-time job created by simply shifting our spending habits!) Moreover, if we do this monthly, as The 3/50 Project suggests, we could put $318,000 into our local coffers, or potentially create the equivalent of more than 12 full-time jobs, based on the US Census Bureau’s current Oswego County medium income of $25,488!

What can happen if we share this concept with our family and friends, clients and customers? According to the US Census Bureau, Oswego County currently has approximately 46,400 households. If each household just once during the year opted to spend $50 locally that they may have normally spent outside the county, $2,320,000 would be generated!

Now, we all realize that we can not always get everything that we need locally — so let’s consider the following: talk to your local merchants about some of the items that you can only seem to find online or outside the county — they may be able to special order it for you — or if they have enough requests, it may become something they can regularly stock. Also, if you are ordering on-line from a national retailer (after exhausting all local options), if you choose delivery to the local store where possible, most often your sale is credited towards that local store’s sales. While this option may not necessarily generate more payroll hours for the retailer, it at least keeps the revenue local.

In closing, before you run off for an evening of shopping and dining, consider your choices — we have great dining, shopping, and entertainment options right here in our community — and your local purchase could just help create or keep a job that could be your own!

For more information on The 3/50 Project, including free materials and other resources that you can use in your business to help promote the “Shop Local” movement, please see www.the350project.net

Business Bullies

Certainly we have all heard about what a problem bullying is, however, what most may not realize is that bullying is not just limited to the classroom or school yard.  Bullying is becoming an increasingly prevalent problem in the business world-and not just on Wall Street, but also on Main Street, and yes, this does include our community.  In fact, I was compelled to write about the issue of “Bullying in the Business World” about a year ago, because I had been either witness to, or confidant in, a few bullying cases over several months, and truly felt the need to shed some light on the issue, as it seems to be coming all too common place.  In some cases, it has even become an acceptable way of doing business.  Recently, it seems to have once again “reared its ugly head”,  prompting me to resurrect this column and post it to my blog.

Like most things that get my attention, and yes, even raise my blood pressure, I went right to “Google” to see what I could find on the subject~and not surprisingly, found a wealth of information, including a few websites dedicated solely to workplace bullying as well as a number of studies that have been conducted.

According to Kickbully.com, “roughly one-fourth of employed Americans have reported bullying at work. That’s over 30 million people.”  Another leading website dedicated to work place bullying cites that “according to the Workplace Bullying Institute's national scientific surveys (in 2007 and 2010), 35% of adult Americans (an estimated 54 million workers) report being bullied at work; an additional 15% witness it and vicariously are made miserable.”  While the numbers are a bit different between the two sources, it is still an awful lot of people being victimized by something that we surely thought we had left behind at high school graduation. 

One of the pieces of information that I found most alarming is that bullies tend to target the most skilled workers, and therefore can easily cripple your organization by driving away your most qualified employees.  This can actually hamper the growth of your business, while creating a whole host of other issues such as high turnover and absenteeism rates. Workplacebullying.com states that “Employers are often reluctant to confront hyper-aggressive employees. They fear lawsuits and difficulty replacing the jerks considered "indispensable." The truth is that it is costlier to fail to act than it is to pursue solutions. Bullies are undermining legitimate business processes and harming people in secret. It's time to examine the real costs of unwanted turnover, absenteeism, lawsuit or complaint settlements, workers comp and disability claims. The bully is expensive. Current losses warrant greater weight than imagined future worst-case scenarios.”
Additionally, if your workplace bully is taking that behavior outside of your organization, and subjecting their behavior onto other business people and/or clients, it can certainly damage your reputation as a business. One of the most common forms of this type of bullying is “If you do this (or don’t do this, or continue to do this) I will no longer patronize your organization, I will also be sure to tell about this and do my best to be sure your organization fails”.  This usually stems from a business decision that is in the best interest of the “victim” organization that the bully does not agree with and takes it personally.   Isn’t the business world tough enough without having someone single-handedly trying to put another entity out our business—which is not good for anyone—even if it is a competitor!

Also quite alarming is that employers often unwittingly create conditions that foster and encourage bullying through their corporate culture with seemingly harmless things like contests or other competition-type incentive plans—even when not sales or production related—that are so often used by employers to motivate employees! 

So, how do you recognize a bully in the workplace?  Kickbully.com describes a successful workplace bully as being “much more clever rarely resembling the stereotypical bully. His methods are very subtle, disguised with all the right behaviors. In that lies his treachery. People respect and trust him, and he quietly betrays their trust whenever necessary to fulfill his ambitions. For him, the ends always justifies the means. And if the bully is particularly good at this, no one except his victims sees the betrayals. In some cases, not even the victims realize what has happened. To make matters worse, a highly skilled bully usually has the dedication, focus and business acumen to create success, or at least the appearance of success. Then he is honored and promoted, held up as an example of a company-centric leader. He is rewarded while the frustration builds among the targets of his bullying and intimidating, backstabbing and manipulating. For them, life has become an upside-down hell. A skilled, clever bully displays an elaborate, complex set of behaviors to exploit people around him. Those who only consider bullying to be blatantly aggressive behavior are missing the point. Any habitual pattern of intentional, socially cruel behavior is bullying, including the subtle tactics of deceit, distortion, misrepresentation and misdirection. When the penalty for resisting someone is destruction of your position and reputation, it’s fair to describe that person as a bully.”

Theworkdoctor.com nicely defines what bullying is not: “It is not incivility, simple rudeness, or the routine exercise of acceptable managerial prerogative. When abuse becomes routine, the work environment is toxic. Quality work and employee engagement are impossible. Neither is it a conflict between two equally-powered individuals who simply disagree over intellectual ideas.”

As an employer, how do we handle bullies?  First, if an employee comes to us with concerns about another, we can’t be complacent and presume it is “simply a personality conflict”   that two adults will work out—and remember—the bully is usually a trusted, long-time employee.  We owe it to our employees, as well as the reputation of our organizations to look into what is happening. Document the conversation with “victim” employee, ask the employee to document specific incidents (either in the past or future) noting any “witnesses”, ask the victim if other employees are being bullied by the same person but are afraid to report it—you don’t need have them provide names, but you can ask them to convince the others to step forward, confidentially of course.  Begin carefully observing interactions between not only the “victim and the bully, but also with other employees.  Once you have all of your fats, speak with the “bully” about your observations only to maintain the confidence of the victim(s).  Your only resolution may be separation from the “bully” and you don’t want any retaliation outside of work to victims.  Be warned—according to one document I ran across, depending on the circumstances, the bully may threaten you with a whole host of “employee protections” such as whistle-blower policies and various forms of discrimination. Remember—they are a bully—and when they do this, they are now bullying you, the employer!

What can we do prevent bullying from taking place to begin with?  This can be even trickier than dealing with the bully.  First, be sure you are not fostering a corporate culture which encourages it—carefully examine any contests, incentive plans, etc—even promotion policies.  Have regular interactions with all of your employees in large groups, small groups and one-on-one and not just on a formal basis at meetings.  Sometimes just a small amount of one-on-one time where you can simply ask “How’s it going?” can provide more insight than anything else. Observe, observe, observe—and don’t be afraid to immediately address anything that you observe that makes you the slightest bit uncomfortable with the way your employees interact with another.   And most importantly, create an anti-bullying policy for your company and treat it as just as important as you do your other harassment policies in your employee orientations and on-going training.

Monday

Monday. Just the thought of it typically brings dread, loathing and perhaps even a little fear to many of us. But why?  What if this week, yes, I do mean today, we chose to look at Monday differently~As a new beginning.  An opportunity for a fresh start, rather than the end of what was hopefully a great weekend.

 
I read recently that most people hate Mondays simply because they hate their job. So change it. I realize that it is easier said than done, especially in this economy, but what little step could you take TODAY toward that new career opportunity you've dreamed of that actually makes you want to go to work on Monday? 
 

Instead if looking at your "to do" list for the week and wondering how you are going to manage to get it all done, start by looking at last week's "to do" list and congratulate yourself for all that you accomplished. You may also find that your list for this week doesn't look so scary after all. And if it does, ask for help!  Prioritize-what are the top 3 things you absolutely must accomplish this week?  What about using today to get them done and out of the way?  So cue up your favorite music and get to work.  You already don't like Monday.  You might as well work your @$$ off to some great music and go home with a sense of accomplishment and look forward to perhaps a bit easier week.  Don't have a "to do" list? Get one- TODAY-while it may seem a bit daunting, in the end, it can reduce your stress as you will see everything mapped out, fewer tasks will "slip through the cracks" and I know I find great delight when I get to cross things off.  Then next week, you can look at it for inspiration! 

What about giving yourself something to look forward to. Call a friend (or email or text) right now (or at least when you are done reading this) and schedule something fun-lunch, coffee, drinks, a mid-week movie--whatever, for later this week. Get it on the books NOW.  Schedule it and prioritize it like you would any other meeting or appointment. If you wait to be sure you can "fit it into a busy week", chances are it won't happen.  It should be an important part of your schedule because the break is good for your stress level and when we are less stressed we think more clearly and are more creative and productive. If you DO find that you are having a "challenging" week, by the time you finish with your "friend appointment" chances are very good you will be feeling better~refreshed and ready to get back at t. Also, if you wait  to schedule it, you won't have something enjoyable to look forward to except, the weekend.

Which brings me to my next point:  If all you have to look forward to each week is another weekend, you are wishing your life away.  The week seems to go on forever, while the months and years slip past quicker than you care to think about.  Only looking forward to the weekend very likely makes you not as productive as you should/could be, which will certainly just lead to more Monday dread and stress.

Monday is a fresh start. A chance to start over   Embrace it!  Make it a great one.  By Friday will you say "It's been a great week, I have so much celebrate this weekend?" or will it be more like "what a terrible week. I can't wait to drown my sorrows in that glass of wine, hot fudge sundae, bottle of rum, etc...this weekend!" It's for you to decide. Today. Resolve to make Monday happen for you, not to you!

 

Remember that great weekend? Let's strive to make it an equally great week.