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How To Get Out Of The Habit Of Concealing Flaws

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By Lindsey Tolino

I’ve had acne since 7th grade. It’s been 15 years now. By the second year of my struggle with acne, I learned to conceal it. I have bought countless bottles of concealer in 14 years. I have learned how to conceal my flaws well.

Makeup

We’re taught to conceal. Not to admit our flaws, but to bury them under a mask. This is true of our businesses too. I’ve seen businesses try to conceal their flaws with social media campaigns, investing in more marketing and pouring energy into public relations, all trying to change public perception without resolving the underlying problems.

When you live with something for 15 years, you hardly even notice it. It becomes a part of life. But, every once and a while, the acne is painful.

Then I notice it.

I think about addressing it, maybe trying to resolve it. But once the pain subsides, I mostly go back to living with it.

Is it like this in your business?

If I stopped wearing makeup to conceal my acne, then I’d have to face the reality that I have it and should do something to resolve it. This is what so many businesses need to do. We need to stop concealing our flaws. We need to stop blinding ourselves to the fact that employees are unhappy, that sales are lower than expected and that our businesses aren’t as healthy as we’d hoped.

But I can’t just stop wearing concealer and say “I love this face of mine, pimples and all.” Because I don’t love it. I don’t want to have broken, unhealthy skin.

We can’t just stop concealing our business flaws and say “I love this business, high turnover and all.” Because if we’re honest, we don’t love it.

We don’t want to have broken, unhealthy businesses.

Our businesses aren’t perfect, but we can’t simply cover it with concealer and expect it to get better. We can’t be content to blindly love them in all their imperfection. We need to care that things aren’t healthy. We need to resolve core issues to make them healthier.

We need to do this if we want to have sustainable, profitable businesses.

So how do we resolve issues in our businesses instead of trying to conceal them?

1. Acknowledge that our businesses have flaws that are making them unhealthy.

This is often presented in a variety of symptoms such as high turnover, high customer complaints or a low number of repeat customers.

2. Investigate the flaws.

At this point, you have to resist the desire to simply treat the symptoms, because ultimately you want to cure the disease. You have to resist the urge to hurriedly pour money into marketing, to hire better salesman or to increase employee salaries. You have to investigate to make sure you understand the underlying cause of the symptoms. This may mean inviting honest conversations with your employees, scrutinizing finances and digging into your own thought process.

3. Decide how much you want to invest in resolving flaws in order to create a sustainable business.

This is an important step, not only to plan out what you’re able to invest, but also to intentionally move forward in resolving issues. When you’ve decided to set money and time aside to resolve an issue, it makes it easier to execute the plan.

4. Work to resolve the issue with what you decided to invest.

Don’t get discouraged in the process. Be persistent and do what you can with what you have.

5. Evaluate and repeat as needed.

Your consistent hard work to resolve issues at their core will benefit your business. When you stop trying to conceal flaws and invest in resolving core issues, you put your business on a healthier, more sustainable path.

Image info: Royalty-free image from http://www.freeimages.com/photo/909988.

Author’s Bio: Lindsey Tolino is a young creative who helps make businesses better. She serves business owners with her words at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.

The Business of Properly Billing Clients

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abill

If your business isn’t on top of the billing process, then there’s a good chance it’s missing out on precious income.

Whether you’re in the retail, medical, service industry, or other, you need to make sure your clients are billed properly.

When it comes to income, here are just a few reasons why billing is so important to your business:

 

Too Many Claims = Lost Revenue

There’s a difference between a few outstanding balances and multiple claims that completely disrupt the revenue process.

When your business has more claims than payments, it can seriously damage your income to the point where your business has trouble covering its costs.

Claims have a snowball effect, especially for a billing department that isn’t prepared for the collections process. It’s important for your business to have a plan in place for anytime an outstanding balance does enter the claims cycle.

Outstanding Balances Are Difficult to Track

Customers who pay their balances on time make owning a business a pleasure.

However, every business experiences customers who allow their outstanding balances to grow beyond what is acceptable. In cases such as this, the numbers become difficult to track.

A bill that’s paid on time is considered an asset in the eyes of accounts receivable. When that same bill becomes an outstanding balance, it puts your business’s collections in the red.

In addition, the outstanding balance costs your business more money every day it’s not paid because it takes your billing department more time and energy to track it.

Whether your business collects interest on unpaid bills or not outstanding balances are bad news for both your business and its customers.

Revenue Software

For medical practices in particular, claims and unpaid balances can seriously damage revenue over time. Because medical practices have such a high volume of patient turnover, hospital and clinic billing departments oftentimes become overwhelmed.

As the following article asks, Where does your practice fall on the medical billing risk matrix?

Well, if you are in the medical industry, Revenue Cycle Management software, or RCM, can help you get your billing under control. With RCM software, your practice can automatically track balances, claims, and insurance coverage considerations from one payment cycle to the next.

Collections Agencies Are a Headache

Collections agencies are an unneeded stress that no business should have to deal with.

Unfortunately, there are clients who don’t pay their bills and some businesses have no choice but to use outside resources to collect on outstanding balances.

To avoid the hassle and headache of collections agencies, there are some things your business can do to improve its billing process.

Billing Tips

There are clients who are negligent with their payments, but in most cases, clients simply forget a bill is due. Sending helpful email reminders to your customers a few days before their bill is due will help avoid unpaid bills.

If an unpaid balance does go beyond one or two billing cycles, then your billing department should call the customer directly.

Explaining the payment situation to the customer and coming up with a new payment plan is the best way to reach a payment resolution.

By keeping in mind the pointers above, your business will keep its income stream flowing without issue

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: Adam Groff is a freelance writer and creator of content. He writes on a variety of topics including small business and finance.

Five ways to attack the hard things in your business

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Running a business is an exhilarating, adrenaline-pumping, wild ride. It’s also grinding, lonely, and terrifying.

And then there are days when you just have to do something hard.

Hard like firing or laying off an employee, telling a client that you can’t meet their deadline, or (worst case scenario) shuttering a business.

It comes with the entrepreneurial territory.

There will be days when you would rather have a meteor land on your head than go to your office.

I’ve had to do all of the hard things I mentioned above, over the last 25 years. If you find yourself facing a hard thing, it’s time to prove your mettle, (wo)man up, and get to the other side.

With every “hard thing” you handle, you are putting on another piece of armor, like a medieval knight. Over time, you’ll find yourself in full battle gear, fearless in the face of any challenge.

knight on a rearing horse

Five ways to attack business challenges

1. Look Inward and Reframe

Staring down a challenge that seems insurmountable, one simple tactic is to change your attitude toward it. After all, you may not be able to change the nature of the task itself. Sit down and consider why it’s important to embrace the challenge. How will you feel once it’s done? What benefits will accrue after it’s over? Use visualization techniques to put yourself in the mindset of someone who has already accomplished it.

If you feel negative thoughts start to creep in, write down your battle plan and be very specific about why you need to overcome the difficulty at hand.

2. Outsource It

I know, I said you had to buckle down and do it yourself, but sometimes a task feels harder than it should because you’re not the right person for the job. If you’re consistently dreading doing something, perhaps it’s a task you can outsource to someone who specializes in it.

If talking to the media is a job that makes you break into a cold sweat, think about hiring a consultant who will do it with pleasure.

3. Get Backup

Strength in numbers, baby. As an entrepreneur, you need to be the driving force, but you don’t always have to go it alone. Find a colleague or friend to help you get over the hump. Shutting down a business is somewhat like grieving for the loss of a loved one; it’s OK to bring in help as you deal with the fallout.

4. Rip off the Band-Aid

Stop worrying about how difficult something will be, and just do it. The task will loom larger and larger the longer you procrastinate it. So take a deep breath, trust yourself, and get it done quickly. In the case of laying off an employee, your business can suffer if you drag out the process unnecessarily.

5. Find Inspiration

There’s no such thing as a new challenge in business. No matter what it is, someone out there has already dealt with it. Many of the most enduring business books have stories and inspiration to get you through the tough times.

Look at some of the large business communities, like American Express OpenForum, where you can talk to other business owners. You are not alone.

And certainly, this Successful Blog community is here to support you!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: matthijs rouw via Compfight cc

Are you an entrepreneur?

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By Robyn Tippins

Over the past twenty years, I’ve run several businesses and I’ve found that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. And, even the strongest business owners have seasons when they should not be running the show.

open sign

Here are a few ways to tell if you are ready to be your own boss.

Motivated

When you are the boss, there is no one to tell you what to do, which can be both a positive and a negative. While it’s wonderful to pilot your own destiny, it can also be terrifying. You have to decide, each day, what tasks get your attention. It involves constantly asking yourself to prioritize your day, focusing on activities that move you forward towards your goals.

I run a content marketing agency, and I use Asana to manage my projects and tasks, and to delegate work to my staff. Basecamp, TeamworkPM and others are equally useful. You just have to give rigorous attention to planning and prioritization.

At Peace

There are some times in your life that being a business owner is not the right path.

In my own life, there were seasons that I decided employment was a better choice, and I don’t regret that decision. If your life is already out of control, adding the strain of managing a business is unwise.

A friend of mine is in the middle of selling her business because she had a stroke.

Another friend of mine has decided to take a season off for medical reasons. And I know 3 people who are getting out of their businesses because one is pregnant, one is divorcing and one has cancer. Running a business is at times heartbreaking, infuriating, terrifying and exciting – none of these are conducive to healing.

Willing

An entrepreneur has to do a variety of tasks, some glamorous and some not. If you are too good to perform the gritty work, this life is not for you. In the course of a day, I may bill for work that exceeds $200/hr and then go from that strategy based task, on to an execution task that bills at $20/hr. As you grow, you can hire for some of this, but in growth mode, the boss does that work.

You’ll also work long hours some days, and that can’t be a problem. I just made plans for a late evening meeting tonight (boo!) because we have clients with offices in Australia and Canada, so time zones were working against us. Three times this week I’ve worked past 7pm, either redesigning a website or writing a last minute press release. The hours can be long, but at least I have the flexibility to work them where I choose.

Vision

Not every business has to change the world, but your vision should be exciting enough to change your world. Whether you are building a lifestyle business or a business that will crush the giants, your vision will make or break it. Use this vision to inspire the troops, create your goals and make the hard decisions.

You have to look at the bad and weigh them against the positives. This lifestyle can be great. You are granted incredible flexibility and, if you try very hard, you can achieve a wonderful work/life balance. Your business can impact your local economy through both tax revenue and job creation. Beyond that, there is the potential to not only pay your own salary, but to build significant profits as you grow.

Are you an entrepreneur? Share your business and your elevator pitch in the comments below.

Author’s Bio:Robyn Tippins is Co-Founder and CEO of Mariposa Interactive. She has been managing online communities for 17 years, and her book, Community 101, is a primer on online community management. You can follow Robyn on Twitter via @duzins.

4 Fundamental Workplace Changes of the Last 20 Years

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By Teddy Hunt

Renovated, repurposed, and re-engineered. Today’s workplace has clearly changed over the past two decades. As people and politics evolve, it’s important to remember that, for better or worse, change happens. Here are four fundamental workplace changes that transpired over the last 20 years.

Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y

Baby Boomers, born roughly between the years of 1947-1966, still play an active role in today’s work force. Two younger generations now share center stage with them in the world of gainful employment: Generation X and Generation Y.

Gen X members were born roughly between 1965-1983; Gen Y members hail from the years 1984-2002. Although the two cohorts might share a workplace, they don’t necessarily share the same attitude toward work itself. Maureen Hoch of the Harvard Business Review reports that Gen X employees tend to focus more on their home life, shirking work responsibilities in favor of family time more often than their Gen Y counterparts. Gen Y folks tend to “merge their work and home lives” more than any other age group.

Members of Gen Y, sometimes labeled the “Me Generation,” are also more prone to “job hop” than members of Gen X. While this might be an inconvenience for HR departments, fickle Gen Y folks are more likely to settle down in the long run with a job that truly fulfills them.

Education: Higher and Higher

Graduation rates
Image via Flickr by Thirty30 Photography

Now more than ever, society views high school graduation as an essential step toward employment. Approximately 83 percent of Americans age 25 and up have graduated from high school. College grads account for nearly 25 percent of all people.

A person’s education directly impacts the amount of money they can expect to earn. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a person with a doctoral degree brings home a weekly income of $1,600 or more. A person with a Bachelor’s degree earns around $1,000 per week, while a person with a high school diploma receives a check for about $600 per week.

The demographics of employment landscape are making a shift in the recent years due to technological advancements in most work fields. Analysts predict the slow decline of manufacturing jobs and the rise of the service-oriented careers, including IT and finance jobs, but with all change comes evolution as well. New career fields are popping up, and whether you’re wanting to invest in a financial career or looking for a brand new career field, the time for change is now.

Policy Changes: FMLA

The Family Medical Leave Act of 1993 brought job security to new mothers, people with long-term illnesses, and family members of those deployed by the military. Employers must continue a person’s health coverage during job-protected medical leave, according to FMLA law. The benefits last for up to 12 weeks.

A caveat: The law applies only to companies that employ 50 people or more. According to a 2012 Labor Department survey, 17 percent of all workplaces in the U.S. fall into this category.

More than half of all FMLA leaves occur for personal health reasons, while about 20 percent result from maternity leave. Military FMLA is rare, accounting for only about 2 percent of all FMLA absences.

Lean Enterprise

In the late 1980s, Toyota unveiled a concept of business efficiency called “Lean Enterprise.” Today, the quest for efficiency, or “lean thinking,” drives business operations like never before.

In a nutshell, a lean enterprise strives to simultaneously maximize customer satisfaction and minimize waste.

A lean enterprise asks itself the following questions:

• How can we help customers in a way that grows our business?

• How can we streamline and optimize all processes used by our organization?

• How can we engage our employees for maximum product quality and efficiency?

• How can we work as a team to buoy our company to a higher level?

The surge in “lean thinking” over recent years is attributed, at least in part, to increased competition and fickle customer demand. Consumers today want a low-cost, high-quality product that provides immediate gratification. Companies seek to supply that product so their customers stay satisfied in today’s highly competitive business world.

The face of the modern workplace is changing. Employees hail from younger, more educated generations. They expect more from their employers, and their employers expect more from them. As education and innovation continue to blossom, more interesting changes surely await today’s working population.

Staying abreast of shifts and trends in the workplace, generational differences (and similarities), and regulatory changes is just one crucial component of being an informed leader.

Author’s Bio: Teddy Hunt is a freelance content writer with a focus on technology. When not behind a computer, Teddy spends the majority of his free time outdoors and resides in Tampa, Florida.

Why Did That Employee Just Get Fired?

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afiredBosses have many hats to wear, at least that is the case in numerous offices these days.

Given that many companies have slimmed down their employee rosters in recent years, it is not uncommon for those running companies (especially smaller businesses) to find themselves doing some tasks that were typically handled by their HR person over time.

In some instances, bosses are having to say goodbye to employees for one reason or another. One of those reasons is simply issuing a pink slip because the man or woman did not live up to the expectations set for them when they were hired.

While letting someone go is oftentimes difficult, it can very well be justified in certain cases. Even though it can be a hard decision for a boss to make, the end result is typically harder on the employee, he or she now finding themselves out of work.

For those employees that may be walking a tightrope at work, there are some telltale signs that their jobs are on the line. Whether you are in your very first job or a veteran of the employment world, take note of some warning shots that should grab your attention.

They include:

The Obvious

In a bad state of mind

If you have been coming to work under the influence of drugs or alcohol, if you’ve been stealing (not just money but supplies or other things at work), or if you’ve been skipping work, getting fired would probably be no surprise.

Some actions are simply inappropriate at work and are good reason to be let go. You know if you’ve done these things and chances are so do your employers.

The Not So Obvious

Taking too much time off?

Maybe you’re not, in so many words, skipping work, but you’re spending a sizable amount of time out of the office.

Do you take every other Friday as a personal day or roll in late every Monday? Do you always have an excuse to miss a meeting or call?

Sure, things come up in life, but if something big comes up where you need more time, you need to discuss with your managers. If you notoriously have taken time off for no good reason, or without prior approval, that may be the reason you just got fired.

Using work time inappropriately or wastefully and/or disrupting others

Maybe you did always come to work, but how did you use your time?

Did you surf the Internet, updating your FB status and checking your fantasy football team instead of getting necessary work done? Did you chit chat with fellow workers more often than discussing relevant work topics? Did you consistently keep others from getting their work done either by distraction or other poor conduct?

Lastly, did you make some online comments about a co-worker, perhaps your boss? Even though sites such as Reputation.com and others can help limit hazardous online profiles and comments, you need to be smart from day one about what you say on the Internet regarding your job, particularly as it relates to your online reputation management.

All of these could get you fired, as you are there to be productive and let others be productive, too. If you want social time, go out for happy hour after work.

Insubordination

So maybe you never really mouthed off to your manager, but did you always do what he or she asked of you?

If you didn’t follow up on your responsibilities and expectations, that’s insubordination and a pretty good reason for getting fired, especially if your managers have ever had to speak to you about it before.

Lying on your résumé

Did you fib a bit on your résumé thinking it’s fine, everyone does? It’s not really fine, and if you did, you are probably getting fired for that.

Just because you got the job doesn’t mean that your résumé is null and void. Your employers have expectations of you from that résumé, and if you lied on it, your credibility and trustworthiness are gone; you probably are, too.

What to do?

If you’re fired, you’re fired.

But you can get a fresh start – get out there and find a new job – then work ethically, diligently and responsibly and keep that job.

Have you ever been fired from a job? If so, what did you take away from the experience?

Photo credit: foxbusiness.com

About the Author: Heather Legg is a writer who covers a variety of topics from careers and family to the business world.