Small Biz Ideas

A Little Restraint Goes a Long Way

2008-11-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

A Little Restraint Goes a Long Way

When I started the business, I had a partner that loved cars - expensive and showy cars. Range Rovers. Corvettes. Mercedes. He rarely held onto a car for more than a year, and when he leased a new one, it had virtually all the options available.

In those days, neither of us could afford to take a salary from the business, and fortunately, both of us had some income from other sources. Me from my publishing activities, and he from the consulting he was doing on the side. If I was going to hazard a guess, I bet we each took out about $5,000 for the whole year - well under the minimum wage rate - but, we both felt we were building something and were willing to make the sacrifice.

Around this time, we decided to hire a proofreader for our Japanese translations, and we budgeted the position at $10 per hour - not generous, but a fair compensation for the job.
Well, this was all happening during a recession, so once we advertised the position, we got tons of resumes from people who were far more qualified than we needed. But, being optimists, and believing that the company would grow, we thought it would be a benefit to bring on someone who had better skills than we originally planned, so as we grow, we’d have the people in place ready to assume greater responsibilities.

The candidate we decided upon was a young lady who had been making $19 per hour and couldn’t find anything at that rate. Not that she wasn’t worth it, but the economy was bad and no one was hiring. Begrudgingly, and somewhat desperately, she accepted our offer, and, I have to admit, we thought we were getting a bargain for our money.

What a mistake.

From the minute we hired her, she started spreading poison to the rest of the staff - complaining about how badly we’re paying them and how we were making a ton of money off their sweat and labor - and the proof was my partner’s car.

She calculated the sum of everyone’s salaries, subtracted it from her (inflated) estimate of our sales, and convinced everyone that my partner and I were making the difference. According to her way of figuring expenses, we were paying $0.00 for rent and insurance, $0.00 for phones and electricity, and $0.00 in fees and taxes. Computers were free,software was free, desks were free, printers and photocopiers were free, and so on.

No matter how ludicrous it sounds, everyone believed her.

Once we heard the grumbling, my partner met with her to discuss her complaints, and in reaction, she charged out of the offices, telling everyone that she was fired for telling the truth.
There was near rebellion and we quieted everyone down by opening up our books to the staff, so they could see where all the money was going - a practice, by the way, which we continue to this day.

So, I’m telling this story to a Starbucks buddy - the manager of a lawn furniture store - so, she tells me her story.

She hasn’t had a day off in almost two months… why?

Well, it seems that because the store had a bad summer season, they had to lay off several salespeople. The remaining salespeople were told that they had to work all weekends and six day weeks every other week (and since everyone was on commission, there would be no overtime). The salespeople were in rebellion, and the only way the manager could stop them from quitting en masse, and give them their time off, was for her to fill in for them.

This might not have been so bad had the owners of the store been visible, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the staff, trying to keep the business alive and protect everyone’s job. But they weren’t there, they were in Switzerland - skiiing. Since the store was a seasonal business, they owned a condominium at a ski resort in Switzerland and went for two months every year - and they had no intention of ever not going.

So, while their staff at home, was wondering how they were going to pay the rent/mortgage on one place, the owners were enjoying a vacation at a their second home.

My friend, who has her resume on the street, says her first hope is that she can keep the store staffed till they return, and her second hope is that she has a new job waiting for her once the owners return.

There’s a lesson in all this - actually, two lessons - and they both deal with restraint.

1. The first lesson is about image. Just because you can afford $100,000 Mercedes or a $40,000 antique desk, don’t get them, unless your staff is feeling flush and over-paid.

2. The second lesson is about getting a bargain. Just because you can hire people cheaply, don’t. Besides resenting you, they’ll leave the first chance they have to get back to where they used to be.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

The Verizon Fios Installation was a Disaster

2008-11-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

The Verizon Fios Installation was a Disaster

We had a T1 line for internet access, which was supposed to give us 1.5mbps upload/download, but was giving us less.

So when Verizon made their fiberoptic service available in our area - with its promised 50mbps download and 20mbps upload capability - for just about the same amount as we were already paying, I committed to it instantly.

From the day I signed up, I should have seen the problems coming.

The Verizon tech support team set up a date to install, which is fine, but then someone shows up in the office, days before the installation date, and says he’s supposed to install something, so they can install their something.

Not a big issue, but it does mean that we have to stop what were working on to clear space in the phone closet for his installation.

The first big issue comes when their tech team does arrive and announces that there is no where for them to install the equipment. The walls of the phone closet aren’t sturdy enough to support their heavy equipment. I need to have a 4’ X 4’ piece of plywood attached to the wall so they can attach their equipment to that.

“Why didn’t the tech support center mention that on the phone when they set up the appointment?” I ask.

“Why didn’t the guy who popped in a week ago to do something in preparation for the installation mention it?” I also ask.

Shrug, shrug, “I don’t know. Call us when you have the plywood installed.”

This still isn’t the disaster portion of the installation; it’s just the inconvenience portion. A few days later the plywood is installed and a week after that the techs come out and hang the equipment on the wall.

Success. Well, no.

They don’t actually attach it to the office network. We have to have our outside tech guy come in and do that - however, the billing for the service starts immediately.

“Why didn’t you tell me I’d have to bring in my tech guy to install everything? I would have had him here at the same time as you guys to make sure everything is working.” I say.
Shrug, shrug, “I don’t know.”

We’re not exactly at the point where this has turned into a disaster yet… but we’re getting very close.

A couple days later, my tech guy comes in and hooks us all up to the internet.
Hooray. Well, no.

Their 50/20mbps doesn’t feel much different than the 1.5/1.5mbps service we had before the Verizon Fios.

Now, we’re stepping our toe into the disaster pond.

In addition to not having great internet service, our voicemail and call forwarding system on the phones (which is part of the Fios installation, as we came to find out) are essentially wiped out. The phone rings and nothing rolls-over to voicemail nor to another line, as its supposed to, as we have had it set up for the past fifteen years.

Now, we’re drowning the disaster.

Everyday - and I mean, everyday - I am on the phone with Verizon for a minimum of two hours and on some days, as much as five, trying to get our voicemail service back, and trying to get the internet service somewhat close to the level that we’re paying for.

No one - and I mean, no one - at Verizon seems to know what to do, and where to send me. I am sent to the Fios tech center, the business center, the High Value Clients center (this is the one I think is the funniest - pity the non-High Value Clients), the residential service, the business service. I am sent to sales; I am sent to tech support; I am sent to Fios tech support; and one individual even sent me to directory assistance, and another sent me to a number that is no longer in service.

For two-and-a-half weeks I heard every imaginable excuse as to why our service wasn’t working, but no one would come out and solve the problem.

“Oh, you have more than one computer on the network, you can’t expect top speeds,” one rep told me. “But, this is a business service,” I say, “don’t you usually expect more than one person using the service in a business.”

“It’s new, we’re working out the bugs.” That was a common explanation. “Could I get a discount until the bugs are fixed.” Ha. Ha.

“Oh, you never said you wanted to to continue your message notification and roll-over on your phones,” I was chastised. “We’ve had it for 15 years. Don’t you think you should have asked before you changed our service.”

“You have both MACs and PCs on the network. That’ll show it down.” Oh, rip it out, I say, but then they realized that wasn’t the problem.

Easily, 40 hours of my time was spent arguing with the Verizon people about getting the Fios to work as promised.

After much screaming - and I mean, screaming - finally, a district manager comes out with a tech guy and they fix the internet service so that we’re getting a reasonable approximation of what we ordered, and some guy named Mike in New Jersey got our voicemails working properly.

Two-and-a-half-weeks, 40 hours of aggravation.

I must have spoken to 50 people during that time, heard hours and hours of their stupid on-hold music, and been apologized to probably 100 times (after being asked if they provided “good service” to me today.)

The Fios is finally in and it’s working, but here’s a funny postscript.

Just as they finished the installation, some changes in our business necessitated that we eliminate three voicemails to save monthly expenses. So I called Verizon and say, I know I signed a three year contract, but I was patient with you during the weeks of installation, can you do me a favor and drop the 25% penalty.

“No,” Verizon says.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Breaking an Employee's Heart

2008-11-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Breaking an Employee's Heart

How do you tell a good employee that his/her capabilities just aren’t what he/she thinks they are?

Everyone has this image of themselves, ascribing to themselves all sorts of capabilities and qualities. People get so invested in their images, that it would break their hearts if they found out they weren’t as good as they thought they were.

The director of my company’s foreign language translation services is a wonderful linguist. He, literally, takes every word he writes very seriously, and thinks carefully before he speaks or writes a sentence. (As you can imagine, that makes meetings agonizingly long.)
He’s a wonderful employee and I couldn’t have started the company without him.
BUT, he’s not a people-person. He’s more like an engineer that sits in front of a computer monitor all day and analyzes the data on the screen - occasionally raising his hand to the keyboard to change “then” to “than” or “too” to “two.”

Fortunately, everyone he supervises, is just like him. They all sit in front their monitors, staring as words roll up the screen. Occasionally, a lonely voice will call out, “What’s the Spanish equivalent for ‘A penny for your thoughts?’” or “How do you say isosceles triangle in Vietnamese?”

As an aside I have to say, that everyone in that department prefers to work with the lights off, and the only illumination in their long and narrow office is from the computers. So, when you enter, all you see is this gauntlet of computer monitors with shadowy figures nodding their heads when they satisfyingly insert just the right word into that Spanish, or Chinese or Russian sentence. I call it, “The Dark Side,” and I don’t go over there often.

So, can you imagine my surprise when he and I are sitting at Starbucks going over projects, and he suddenly chimes in with, “I appreciate the fact that you’ve given me the opportunity to rise from proofreader to the head of the Translation Department, however, I’ve basically been doing the same job for 15 years and I’m bored out of my mind. I’d like to transfer to sales.”
And, he reveals that, unbeknownst to me, he’s been taking sales training classes at the local adult education school, and the teacher says he has lots of potential.

In response, I hem-and-haw, and squirm and mumble.

In Dr. Spock-like fashion, he lays out his argument for his being able to move into sales.

First, I’ve trusted him to head the Translation Department so I must have had faith in his ability to manage people. (I’m thinking, yes, people like you. But our clients aren’t like you.)

Second, his staff comes to him when they are they ill or have family commitments that will take them away from the office, which he interprets as people are willing to confide in him. (I interpret it as, they need time off from work and they have to ask if they don’t want to lose their jobs.)

Third, he conducts the annual performance reviews for his department, and he says that the discussions are always “meaningful,” again proving that he has strong interpersonal skills. (I hate to burst his bubble and tell him that most conversations about money are meaningful.)

Anyway, I’m forced to make some vague commitment about including him in client meetings, and that satisfies him for the moment. I’m hoping the whole subject is forgotten, but like a child, he can’t let it go.

Around then, a client calls because they’re not happy with our services and are thinking about switching to another translation company. Basically, it’s a small advertising agency populated with Gen-Yers and they don’t think our translations are “trendy” or “cool.”

So, I figure, this is it. I’ll give him a chance to meet a client, and at the same time, they’ll see how serious we are about the quality of our work. All will end well, and it’s a win-win situation all around.

Well, the meeting is a disaster. The trendy and cool Gen-Yers who head up the ad agency can’t relate to my Engineer of Words, and they give their business to a competitor. I think, “that’s the way it goes, we gave it a shot.” Unfortunately, he blames himselfs and retreats into his corner of the Dark Side, rarely to be seen again.

My win-win situation turns into lose-lose.

And I think to myself, maybe if I had just been honest with him, I’d still have a committed employee and an ad agency for a client.

Mon dieu.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

It was a bad meeting with the client - real bad.

2008-07-21T13:05:00.001-07:00

It was a bad meeting with the client - real bad.

They summoned me to their offices (at my own expense) under the guise of a planning meeting and when I got there it was obvious that the only planning being done was how to force me to reduce my rates.

Their business had slowed down and they’re looking everywhere to cut costs. I can appreciate that. Probably every business in the country is under the same pressure.

Had they said, “We’re in this together, so how do we cut costs?” I probably wold have made half a dozen suggestions, even though it meant I had to cut my own revenue.

But what they said was, “We want to reduce costs. We’ve interviewed seven of your competitors and they’re all willing to do the same job as you for less. Are you going to lower your prices to match theirs or do we shift the business to one of them?”

Of course, I had to agree to the cut. There was no negotiating with these guys. In fact, even after I agreed, they moved a big piece of their business to one of my competitors anyway.

For all the seminars, videos, and business books that say, “Make your employees and your vendors partners,” I don’t think the message has truly penetrated the management of large corporations.

First, let me repeat what has been said a thousand times, as a small business entrepreneur you want everybody - your employees, your vendors, your subcontractors - working on your behalf. You want everyone you do business with, recommending you to other businesses that they come in contact with.

Last year, we got a $45,000 piece of business on the recommendation of someone we interviewed for a job, but didn’t hire. We had a wonderful conversation, but he didn’t have anything for her, and there was no reason to ever believe our paths would cross again.

The second lesson from this is captured in that old cliche, what comes around goes around.

Turns out, the other translation service that my client decided to use, made some serious errors and almost cost them an important client of theirs, so they had to turn to us to re-do the work. In the old days, we wouldn’t have charged them, or at worst, charged them actual costs. Today, we charged them our full rate, so it cost them thousands of dollars.

In the past, we used to throw in lots of little things with our services, now we’ve eliminated them or charge them for the service, and when they call to ask us to do them a favor, we just refer to the contract pricing that they forced us to sign and say those are the rates.

Even though we’re not losing as much as I thought we would under the contract, it’s not a good relationship and that’s not healthy. There’s a certain tension between us now, and even though our rates are less than they used to be, they criticize us for over charging them, and some even accuse us of “stealing” from them.

This isn’t a good way to do business, but we’re “stuck with each other” for now, so we coexist. But what used to be a good relationship has turned into a negative one - actually, it’s even worse than that, it’s a real lose-lose situation.

I’m not investing in the personnel and technology that I normally would have since everyday I walk into the office expecting them to invoke the 90-day termination clause in our agreement. They’re complaining that they’re not getting the service they used to. I tell them that they’re not paying for that level of service any more. They threaten to take their business to another firm. And down and down it goes.

The irony is that all they had to do is come to me as a partner and say, “We need your help.” I probably would have offered discounts - maybe not as deep as they demanded - but we would have still been throwing in those freebies. We would still be attempting to grow the business together.

Even with a less income, it still could have been a win-win situation.

I have to laugh at American Express.

2008-07-20T08:31:00.001-07:00

I have to laugh at American Express.

They’re constantly on the television with commercials touting their small business credit cards, and every month I receive several direct mail pieces from them telling me how they help small businesses grow. Go to their website and they have small business forums and directories, and they say they have small business events (though, I don’t recall ever being invited to one).

You would think they cared about small businesses based on their marketing - but I guess the rest of the company hasn’t gotten the message - and that’s why I have to laugh.

On at least eight occasions in the last two years I have tried to contact American Express to offer my services to them, and to say that I was rebuffed would be kind - I was ignored.

They have these incredible barriers higher than the walls of the ancient city of Troy to prevent you from actually getting to someone to talk to, and if you find a name and address thanks to the internet, you get no - zero - response.

Buried deep on their website is - supposedly - a place to submit proposals to them online. I must have tried that ten times over a two month period and it never seemed to be working. Once you went through the process of filling out the online form and pressed the send button, a window always popped up that said comeback later. It’s pretty obvious what they meant is don’t come back - ever.

I’m not feeling the love from American Express.

I’m a small business entrepreneur and I’ve been a member with my personal card since 1978, and my corporate card since 1991. I’ve had Green, Gold, Platinum, Blue, Plum (no Black) and Delta American Express Cards, yet I can’t get any manager at any level to return my calls, respond to my emails, or answer my correspondence, when I contact them about offering my company’s services to them.

For example, I wanted to be one of those companies that get listed as offering discounts to members in the monthly statement. Got no response to that one.

I have a foreign language translation company and somewhere on their website they say they provide this service to global travelers (I think just those folks with the Black card), so I contacted them to tell them about our capabilities. Got no response to that one.

I already mentioned the online proposal process (or non-process) and correspondence I sent to senior executives whose names I picked off the internet have never been answered.

To be fair to American Express, they’re not alone in ignoring the small businesses they claim to represent. All the credit card companies are much the same. However, American Express offers my type of service to their members (and the other credit card companies don’t), so you would think they’d be a little more open to speaking with small businesses.

And to be fair to the credit card companies, lots of large corporations in many categories don’t want to be fair in dealing with small businesses even though they want to sell to them.

I got a call from a publisher of business books (including those focused on small businesses) in the New York area, and they wanted to meet to discuss translating some of their materials into Spanish. If I was interested in coming to a meeting, I could fly out from California at my own expense - which I did.

Because this initiative was so important to them, there were over a dozen people at the meeting and they flew in product managers from London, Miami and Chicago. That turned into the first of three trips back to their offices (all of which I paid for out of my own pocket) and 18 months of discussions about products, deliverables, etc. In fact, their foot dragging was so slow that now, in order for me to complete the project on time, I would have to incur rush charges.

Finally, I received the agreement from their attorneys and I noticed a funny clause that was never discussed in any meeting or email. They only make payments to vendors in my category twice a year, and the soonest one could receive payment was 90-days after completion of the project. Looking at the calendar, it meant that I wouldn’t be paid for my company’s work for 18 months after we finished the project. I would incur $70,000 worth of expenses and they wouldn’t pay me for 18 months.

Obviously, I had to back out of the deal and they had some very harsh words for me. They kept telling me how much they invested based on my promises of commitment; that they had already printed the promotional material and now they would have to re-print.

So I asked them for some payment in advance, and to that they responded, “We don’t do that kind of thing.”

Anyway, I’m not certain why large corporations feel that small businesses are just there to be taken advantage of, but many do. But why I have to laugh at American Express is that they think they’re fooling us and making us small businesses think they really care about us.

You don’t lose a sale, you lose a client (if you're lucky).

2008-07-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

You don’t lose a sale, you lose a client (if you're lucky).

I just had a strange experience at the Verizon wireless store in my neighborhood.

I bought a phone for my wife a week ago to take advantage of a special $50 rebate. Since the time to send in for the rebate was near, I cut out the bar code from the box, filled out the form, but didn’t get to mail it. A day later, my wife noticed some minor scratches on the phone, and since it was new and we had it less than the 15 days in which they said we’re allowed to return it, we went back to the store.

Forget the promises of being able to return the phone for any reason that they told us when we were in the store, now we’re into the fine print of the contract we signed.

Not only wouldn’t they replace it, but they accused my wife of making the scratches. (“You’ve must have done something to the phone because I had it for a year and it never scratched.”)

When I reminded them that I was told I could return it for any reason in 15 days, they said their unlimited guarantee didn’t apply to damage to the phone. Besides, since I had already cut the bar code out of the box, I couldn’t return it under any circumstances.

Before I continue, let me be fair to Verizon and say that this wasn’t a corporate store, but an authorized dealer - however, you wouldn’t know it when you walked into the store since it was a perfect replica of the company-owned store in the local mall.

When I got home I immediately called Verizon to complain and asked them to replace the phone.

Now, here’s where I do fault Verizon.

They explained that since this was not a company owned store, they they were powerless to intervene and could do nothing. Authorized dealers can establish their own terms and conditions

As you can imagine, I was quite annoyed. I walked into a Verizon store and expected Verizon treatment. There was no sign as you walked in that said, “Not a Verizon store. Their policies and service practices don’t apply to us.”

To me, the consumer, an authorized dealer should be required to adhere to the rules and regulations of the company they represent and that company shouldn’t be powerless to exercise control over them.

McDonald’s didn’t get to be a worldwide company because they they each of their thousands of locations act like independent restaurants. At McDonald’s a franchisee tows the mark or loses the franchise.

This column is not meant to be a vent for my frustrations (though I feel better having written this down), but rather a look at the world around and see what lessons can be drawn for the small business entrepreneur.

The first lesson to be learned from this is that you don’t lose a sale, you lose a client - and can you really afford that.

Obviously, the argument over this $125 phone means I won’t go back into this store, so they lost a customer. I’m certain they’re going to say, “So what” it’s just one customer, we’ll pick up a new one to compensate.

Actually, they have to pick up at least 20.

I have a family plan with four phones. You can bet I’ll share this story with my four Verizon-owning employees, each of which are on family plans. I’ll share the story with my Starbucks breakfast group, and as well as with friends and neighbors, should the subject come up.

Instead of trying to help solve this issue amicably, the Verizon authorized dealer has lost thousands of dollars of future business. If the people I tell, mention this to their friends and families, it’s thousands of dollars more.

Quite honestly, if that’s all they lose they’re lucky.

Later today I’m going to post a warning about going into a Verizon authorized dealer instead of a company owned store on a local area blog. Maybe no one will read it, maybe a thousand people will. The point is, in the age of the internet, tiny local incidents can explode into national news in minutes.

All the manager of the authorized dealer had to do is say, “We can’t take the phone back, BUT let me see if I can get a replacement part. I’ll call you later this week.” I would have walked out of the store smiling. But telling my wife, “You must have done something,” is a sure way of getting your name on a consumer blog.

The second lesson of this incident is, always have a good comeback line.

Verizon is one of those companies that - annoyingly - begins every conversation with “How can I provide you excellent service today,” and ends the conversation with, “Did I provide you excellent service and resolve the issue that you called us about?”

Someone should give the Verizon customer service personnel a script for those occasions when the customer says, “No!” (BTW, insincerely saying “I’m sorry” is not a good response.)

The U.S. Postal Service just raised their rates... again.

2008-07-19T16:25:00.001-07:00

The U.S. Postal Service just raised their rates... again.

From a business perspective, they’re a great lesson in what not to do when losing customers and losing money.

Every penny increase in postage drives more and more users away from their service to electronic messaging. I know that my company, several years ago when first class stamps cost less, spent $25,000 on postage for marketing purposes, and now we hardly spend anything. Like many others, we’ve gone almost completely to email and other internet strategies for delivery of marketing materials and electronic products, In 2007, we spent less than $3,000 on postage for all purposes.

Just think about your business. Imagine if you had competition from a dozen companies that deliver the same product or service as you do, but they charge one percent or two percent of what you do - would the first thing you do is raise your rates because your revenue is down.

In the face of all the competition from emails, electronic banking, downloaded newsletters, software and ebooks, etc., you would think that the postal service would want to LOWER rates in order to attract business back to their services. The more they raise their rates the more people transition to electronic transfer of information.

On top of that, they now make using their service more difficult. For security reasons, they now limit the size of packages that you can drop into the corner mailbox to 13 ounces. Which means that if you have a package or envelope filled with documents or samples, you have to go to the post office and hand it to a clerk. Among other things, we publish educational and healthcare materials, and we do everything we can to encourage electronic transfer of the files, or at worst, we try to send materials on CD’s. Who wants to drive to the post office and stand in line, a process that can take an hour, just to mail a $24.95 book. Even when people order hardcopies, we turn to UPS or Fedex Ground. It’s a bit more expensive than the post office, but they pick up, and when you factor in an hour of an employee’s time, it ends up saving money.

It’s almost as if the postal service refuses to acknowledge the internet and is still operating with a monopoly mindset. No one has told them that they don’t have a monopoly anymore.

What would you do if you were selling an anachronistic service that faced low-priced competition at every turn?

Here are a couple of suggestions, free of charge, that I would like to offer the Postmaster General. If you have any, please send them to me at jack@thetranslationstation.com so I can share them with others (there could be good ideas for all of us) and I’ll forward them on to the Postmaster General.

First, the Postmaster General should ask Congress to create new holidays or occasions that would inspire people to mail greeting cards.

A look at the calendar shows that in December there is Christmas and New Year's, and in February there is Valentine's Day. In April there is the income tax filing deadline (which should require no postage, but that's another subject) and in May there is Mother's Day. All these are high volume postage days. Even if we count June, which has the low volume Father's Day and Graduation Day, it’s pretty obvious that there are considerable gaps in the calendar perfect for the scheduling of mail-oriented occasions.

For example, the post office can encourage people to mail edible cards to friends with dogs and cats on the pets’ birthdays. This is something they wouldn’t be able to do via the internet.

As another example, the Postal Service could encourage citizens and aliens alike to send Fourth of July cards to the descendents of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. And, in September, which is a particularly slow month for postage sales, the Postal Service could promote a Labor Day Card. On the first Monday in September everyone sends a greeting card to either the president of the AFL-CIO or some other union leader

Once they really get their marketing going, the Postal Service can develop several unique uses for the mail, such as:

“Mom I need more money cards” - sons and daughters in college could send special pre-printed, “reverse charges” cards home when their bank accounts are close to zero. Yes, this can be done over the internet, but you can’t get that ketchup stain (“Please help me. I only have enough money for ketchup.”) or tear-drop (“I thought I had enough money for the rest of the month. I feel so badly, but I’m desperate.”) across in an email

“Pro/Con cards” - On a monthly basis, the post office can print up a list of issues in front of Congress and the President, and just you go to the post office, fill them out, and send them to your representative (with a stamp that you purchased). The post office identifies the appropriate members of congress for your district so you don’t even need to spend time looking them up.

“I Hate/Love the Postal Service Day cards” - by circling the appropriate opinion, the Postal Service will have a report card to judge itself by (not to mention a bagful of used stamps).

Once they really get into the full swing of creative marketing, the Postal Service, in conjunction with their advertising agency, can develop a number of mail-oriented popular slogans to use in commercials and on billboards. Some possibilities might be "Send a resume a day and you'll be on your way," or "Reach out and write to someone who is computer challenged," or "Sealed with a kiss, but mailed with a stamp." The potential is infinite.

To be honest, I don’t know if any of these are really implementable, but I do know, that the management of every business would search every avenue for creative product and marketing ideas to build a business back up in the face of competition, and the one thing they wouldn’t do is that, such as raise rates, that’s guaranteed to chase customers to the competition.

***
Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

I admire Starbucks, and it’s not for the coffee

2008-07-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

I admire Starbucks, and it’s not for the coffee (though I’m there everyday having some), but it’s for their business acumen. Often, when I’m thinking about growing my business, I sit in a Starbucks with a pen and notepad, and look for ideas I can use.

I own a foreign language translation company and like so many other businesses, the internet and “the flat world” has made my product into a price sensitive commodity. When I started the business, in the pre-internet, round-world, days, translation was considered a profession, much like law and engineering. One had to be fairly well educated and specialized to perform the quality of foreign language translations that could be used in courtrooms, business meetings, international negotiations, and so on.

But with globalization and the ability of someone to get work done more cheaply on a distant continent, the trend has been to pay half the cost by sending the work overseas to some unknown, unseen provider. Sadly, the whole issue of quality, and insuring that the translator has appropriate qualifications to perform the task, seems to be irrelevant. Price, price, price is all that many (if not, most) are concerned about.

Starbucks went in the other direction. They took the ultimate commodity - coffee - and gave it an identity, which gave it a higher value, and they were able to charge a premium price. (They branded it, in marketing terms.)

Not only can you make a good cup of coffee in your own home (except mine, for some reason) for just pennies, but there are millions of places in this country where you can buy a cup of coffee for less than the price of Starbucks. Coffee is even available from vending machines at gas stations. And, while Starbucks brews a very good cup of coffee, the truth is, most people probably don’t discriminate that finely and will drink almost anything that’s dark and hot.

What’s even more remarkable, is that when they throw in some steamed milk or some foam into the cup, Starbucks charges two, three, even four times as much as the basic cup of coffee you can get elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not accusing Starbucks of defrauding the public. I admire how they gave a value to something that seemed to have very little value. They made drinking a cup of coffee a pleasurable experience, something people are willing to pay a premium for.

So, while I’m sipping my “venti drip, no room” I ask myself, how do I give value to my product? How did they do it? Can I use any of their ideas?

Without a doubt, Starbucks benefited from timing. The aging baby-boomers were shifting away from alcohol to non-alcohol beverages, and there’s been a general de-emphasis of alcohol in society as a whole. But, they were able to go beyond the general trend, they created an experience - a European cafe with an American twist. For just a bit more than the diner down the street, you can feel a bit richer, a bit more international, a bit more sophisticated - maybe even, a bit snobby.

And, as you look around the space, everything seems to support that experience: small cafe tables, scones and croissants, “grande” and “venti” drink sizes, and most important of all, international sounding drinks called Caffé Lattes, Macchiatos, Caffé Americanos, and so on.

As we’ve all read in the press lately, Starbucks has suffered some financial blows. As they themselves recognize, they strayed from their brand by offering Egg McMuffin-type sandwiches, and expanded into locations that took away from the core experience. They’re smart people, they’ll re-capture what they lost.

I haven’t come to any conclusions about my own business yet, but Starbucks certainly is an interesting model to follow.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Salary Reviews

2008-07-04T17:45:00.000-07:00

Salary Reviews

It’s that time of year again - time to give employees their performance and salary reviews.

I really hate this process, not because of the money, but because of the all the emotions and politics that go into it.

It seems simple enough in principle. Those employees that have gone above and beyond, should be more generously rewarded for helping the company grow. Those employees that “just did their jobs” should be getting raises in line with inflation, since they’re already getting paid what they’re worth. And, those employees that have underperformed should get nothing, or at best a token gesture, and hopefully they’ll see that the better they perform, the greater the reward.

Of course, it doesn’t work this way since ALL employees think they’re performing at exemplary levels. The ones who have never worked a minute of overtime, never missed a lunch, and taken every sick and vacation day, have this image of themselves as being incredibly hardworking. And, if they find out that others who have put in extra time and effort got more than they, there’s resentment in the office, difficult conversations behind closed doors (sometimes, lots of tears), and harsh emails being written back and forth.

I used to have a secretary that made mistakes in every - and I mean, every - letter, memo, report, etc., that she typed. When I brought it to her attention she criticized me for being too picky and could only remember errors in a couple of documents.

One of my managers I gave a very decent raise to, however, I gave someone else a slightly larger raise (percentage-wise) and I got a three page email complaining about how I don’t recognize her worth.

When I mentioned to one employee that I rarely see him putting in any extra effort, such as working overtime, he accused me of wanting to get “something for nothing.”

I once even overhead one employee say to another, “I should be getting $35,000 for this job and he’s only paying me $30,000, so if he thinks he’s going to get $35,000 worth of work from me, he’s crazy. He’s only going to get what he’s paying for.”

I wondered what the difference between $30,000 and $35,000 would be and I watched the employee for a while to see. Would he stop working at 3:30pm every day? Would he only answer four out of five phone calls? Would he correct less errors? I never really saw a difference, but at every review, I always wondered if he was purposely doing his job just a little worse than he was capable of.

I’ve read the articles about evaluating employees against goals and having frequent, informal performance reviews with them so the employee is not surprised by the formal, annual review. That sounds nice - sounds like it was written by an academic who never had a dozen or two employees, all of whom are bothered by the high cost of gas and food, increases in their rents or adjustable mortgages, the need to pay for activities in the schools that their children used to get for free, increases in healthcare deductibles, and so on.

Employees don’t look at their raises as a measure of the quality of performance, they look at it as a measure of the amounts in their checking accounts.

Performance and salaries reviews should be a positive experience for the company and the employees, but it never seems to come off that way. It’s hard to be honest with employees about their performance. It’s hard to use financial rewards as incentives to boost performance. And, it’s especially hard to soothe the feelings of those upset by the process.

I wonder if any of those academics every did a study of employee retention rates immediately after reviews.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Feeling Isolated

2008-07-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Feeling Isolated

Sometimes I feel very isolated, as if no one knows or cares that I struggle every day to make this business work.

I have a great staff, but very few are contemporaries, and even those are well aware of the boss/employee separation. Besides, even if there was someone I was close to on my staff, I couldn’t tell him/her about my frustrations with another employee, for fear it would leak out and be misinterpreted. I certainly couldn’t share with anyone my concerns about our financial situation every time things are tight or everyone will be putting their resumes on the internet. Even when things are going badly with a client and I want to express my doubts about a continuing relationship to my managers, I have to weigh my words carefully or there’ll be a panic among people with families who are afraid of layoffs.

Not being in a glamour industry like adventure travel or film-making (I own a foreign language translation company), few people really care to hear about my business at parties or when chatting across tables at Starbucks, and even friends and families don’t get excited when I explain the difficulties of translation from English into Spanish.

I often feel isolated from my family, too, when after dinner or on holidays, I have to go to my real or home office, and work on a project with a tight deadline, while everyone else is watching a movie together, or out celebrating the season. Sometimes, when I’m working on the computer at midnight, and the only light is the low level spotlight shining on the keyboard, I think to myself that I must be the only person in the country awake and working away, and either I’m doing something incredibly wrong, or that I must be incredibly important since I’m here working in the dark while everyone else is asleep.

For a while I was a member of a group of other businesspeople that met once or twice a month. After a while the group just faded away. While it was nice sharing common problems with others for a while, it became awfully redundant and other than a few tips, like the name of an insurance broker, it wasn’t very useful.

Probably the biggest sense of isolation I feel, is that no matter how many direct mail pieces I send, how many ads I run, how many times I re-design our website, the phone isn’t ringing off the hook and our inbox isn’t burning with incoming emails.

Sure, if we send out a few thousand pieces, we get a response or two, but I’m always hoping for some overwhelming response, something that will say, “The world knows you’re there and wants what you have to offer.” Instead, more often than not, I get the feeling that I’m just covering my costs for a mailing, and the world isn’t banging a path to our door.

After being in business seventeen years, you’d think word of mouth would have spread so much by now that I don’t even have to advertise, that everyday someone was calling me with a new project or two.

I’m probably being more negative than I should be. When I look over our client list, it’s quite impressive with its large government agencies and large corporations, and we’ve been in business seventeen years and never missed a payroll, so I guess things are moving along nicely.

It’s just that it doesn’t feel that way.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

How Much is an Employee Worth?

2008-07-04T17:35:00.001-07:00

How Much is an Employee Worth?

I have a problem with an employee. He does a good job, been with me for fifteen years, worth every penny I’m paying him... but not a penny more... and that’s my problem.

Every job within a company is worth only so much so what do you do when the person in it has become too expensive. We give raises once a year and we’re coming up to that period, and I don’t know what to do.

If I just give him enough to make up for inflation, it would be obvious, and an insult, especially since he’s a manager and he’ll know that people under him are getting bigger raises in dollar and/or percentage terms.

If I give him a raise in line with other managers, his compensation starts to become a burden to the company and either I have to reduce his department’s budget and everyone else takes a hit, or I take it from our already small advertising budget, or from our new equipment budget, or from somewhere else.

Obviously, I can’t tell everyone else in his department that their raises are smaller because of him since there would be a great deal of resentment, but I worry if any of those people will start looking elsewhere when they see that their raises are very modest.

An employee from his department left to take another job recently, so I used that occasion to bring up the concept of someone reaching the top of their pay scale, but I’m afraid my message was far too subtle because he clearly didn’t realize it pertained to him, too.

I thought of having a face-to-face talk with him about the situation, but I know he won’t appreciate the issue. He’s working to have money for his mortgage, his daughter’s college education, his normal living expenses, etc., and he’s concerned about those, not whether or not his compensation is disproportionate to the value he adds to the company.

One suggestion I’m thinking about is to give him the pool of money for the whole department and then tell him to divide it up as he deems appropriate. But, then I’m back to everyone else in the department subsidizing his raise at their own expense.

In the past, as his job was becoming a bit too routine for him, he asked if he could take on other responsibilities from other departments, and we tried to work together to make it happen. However, it never worked out and he always retreated to doing what he did well. Unfortunately, this means I can’t justify giving him a bigger raise based on the fact that he’s either saving the company money - or helping the company make more money - in another area of the business.

Maybe the government has the right idea - everyone is assigned to a grade level and you know what the top of that level is. Unless you can jump to the next level by taking on a new job, once you hit the ceiling, that’s it.

The government being so vast, there’s always job openings at the next level for someone to apply for, however, small businesses don’t have that luxury, and frequently, when an employee has no where else to go, that’s it.

If anyone has any good ideas out there, please email them to me at Jack@TheTranslationStation.com and I’ll share as many as I can with the other readers of this column.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

No Applause

2008-07-04T17:34:00.001-07:00

No Applause

We had a going away party for one of my managers. After being together for 15 years, he decided to become a police officer. It’s a little odd since he’s in his 40’s and has a wife and young daughter, but, as a naturalized citizen with an Asian heritage, he says he wants to pay back the country that been so good to him and his family.

In the short speech he made, he thanked this country for allowing him to purchase a townhome in a good neighborhood where they don’t have to fear for their safety. He thanked the country for allowing him to provide his daughter with an excellent education and the opportunity to go to college. And, he thanked this country for allowing him and his family to enjoy all the comforts of living in a middle-class community, surrounded by good friends and neighbors. It’s something that immigrants feel, he explained, that most who are born here take for granted.

I just thought it was curious that no where in his little speech did he thank me. He didn’t thank me for making sure that he never missed a pay check, even though he knew I was missing mine. He never thanked me for borrowing money from my credit cards and the equity line of credit on my house to make sure his healthcare coverage and 401K contributions were paid. He never thanked me for allowing him to take off from work (without being penalized salary) on those afternoons he had to volunteer at his daughter’s school, or to work from home on the days his daughter was sick. He never thanked me for not laying him off, or even cutting his hours, during the slow times. He never thanked me for sponsoring his work visas and paying the legal fees that allowed him to become a naturalized citizen. And, most of all, he never thanked me for giving a chance, and subsequently a career, to someone who, at the time, only had a few months left on his student visa, was heavily in debt with student loans, had no particular professional training, was engaged to be married to someone also from Asia, and couldn’t find a job anywhere else.

Like every other business owner, I’m in my own business because I want to be, and I don’t expect applause every time I walk into the room, but sometimes an employee’s lack of recognition is so overwhelming, I truly wonder why I bother. Maybe, I should just sell the business and go work in a large corporation, or just run a business that I can operate on my own.

It’s funny. At one point, I thought this employee was so valuable that I was going to give him a small piece of the company just to lock him in. Now, I can’t wait till he turns in his keys and walks out the door forever.

I’ve read so many management books and business magazine articles over the years telling me how to motivate employees, I wonder if anyone has written any articles for employees talking about how to motivate a boss. After all, what happens to them if I decide to just sell or close the business down.

My wife tells me that they show their appreciation by the work that they do, even staying late when necessary. Maybe it’s true, but today I feel that the only reason they work is for the money, and that their loyalty is as thin as a dollar bill.

I know on Monday it will all start over again. I won’t sell the business. Everyone will be at their computers and I’ll be reviewing resumes to replace the manager that left.

I also know that there won’t be any applause when I walk into the office, but wouldn’t it be nice every now and then.

***
Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com
Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

How Do You Get Your Employees to Care?

2008-07-04T17:21:00.002-07:00

HOW DO YOU GET EMPLOYEES TO CARE?

An interesting thing happened in the office the other day. I walked past the counter where we leave the packages for UPS and Fedex, and I noticed that a box was being sent to a client via Fedex overnight delivery. We’re in Los Angeles and the package is going to Newport Beach - 40 miles away.

So, I said to the employee, how come you’re not sending it by Fedex ground, sine it’ll still get there tomorrow and cost twenty dollars less. She laughed - you know that “I don’t care” kind of laugh - and said she wanted to make sure it got there.

I asked her to re-direct the package via Fedex ground, which she did, but took my request as a personal insult to her attempts at being efficient.

This made me wonder, how do you get employees to care?

How do you get them to be concerned about saving the company money? About re-stocking returned materials in good condition so they could be used or sold again? About not sending damaged products out to clients because finding good quality products may mean having to go to the storage unit?

How do you get employees to care enough?

Please, anyone with a good idea, write to me at Jack@TheTranslationStation.com and I’ll share as many ideas as I can with the other readers of this blog.

I have to say, I’m fortunate to have a few employees who treat the company as their own, and I’m often surprised at how dedicated they are. I get emails at midnight and on weekends from them, and I never have to ask them to stay late if something has to be done after normal working hours.

But most of my employees just seem to be there doing their jobs, not using a lot of imagination or creativity. If a piece of paper is on the floor, they’ll just leave it there and let the cleaning crew pick it up. If a cup of coffee is left in the coffee room, it’ll have to grow mold before they would consider throwing it out. And, if given the option between sending something by regular mail which would require swinging by the post office two blocks or by UPS/Fedex, who comes to pick it up but charges significantly more, there would be no hesitation to choose the latter.

I’ve tried raises based on performance, bonuses based on savings, cash incentives, and so on, and nothing seems to work. No matter which strategy I used, there were people who felt unrecognized and unappreciated.

For a while I tried the “power of positive reinforcement,” praising the dedicated employees. That didn’t really work too well either. After a while, the employees with a less devoted attitude began to feel as if their contributions were being ignored, and that I was favoring some employees over others.

I’ve come to realize that employees, no matter how good or bad they’re doing, all think they were doing stupendous jobs. One employee who always made typing errors and transposed telephone numbers, always had an excuse, and every excuse began with, “You know I don’t make these kind of errors. It must have been....”

Maybe - probably - it’s just a matter of who you hire in the first place, in which case, I’m wondering exactly what are the clues that I should look for when interviewing. If you have any thoughts about that, please send that to my email address as well.

Anyway, I stopped having lunches in the office since, not only did I have the pleasure of paying for them, but I was cleaning up after them, too.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com. Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Death Spiral

2008-07-04T17:21:00.001-07:00

DEATH SPIRAL

I’ve often compared small business to bowling. When something cataclysmic happens to one of those big guys upfront, it affects us little guys in the rear.

Well something cataclysmic did happen to my client’s client’s client - they lost a big government contract, so they did what most large corporations do, they squeezed their vendors, one of which happened to be my client’s client. So, in turn, they squeezed my client, and my client squeezed me.

Let me first say, I understand the upstream/downstream flow of business, and all my client had to do is lay out the situation, and we could have worked something out. But my client didn’t do that.

Since my client has a Wall Street background, the only way they know how to deal with problems is with a sledgehammer. They called me in, rattled off the names of seven competitors, and said unless I accepted the dramatically lower rates they dictated, they’ll take the business elsewhere. I had no choice, I had to agree.

The first thing that went, of course, was my salary, but that was hardly going to make up for the loss in revenue. So I started cutting services - reduced reporting, less travel, etc. But, the biggest effect on the services we provided was the elimination of the Management Supervisor who handled their business. Not only did they no longer had access to her, but they would have to absorb the many tasks she performed on their behalf.

This infuriated them and they demanded that she be put back in her position. I asked them, what did they expect me to do since you cut my revenue by 30%. They said, they expected the same level of service, and that I should squeeze my vendors. I replied that I wouldn’t do that, that I respected my vendors and treated them as partners.

Well, they didn’t care for the ethics lesson in addition to the cut in services, so they started sending some of their work to one of those seven competitors.

In light of the further reduction in revenue, I reduced my customer service staff further, and started outsourcing work overseas, which meant that our turnaround time suffered.

This tit-for-tat lasted over a year and everyday I walked in, I expected them to invoke the 90-day cancellation clause in our contract. It was a horrible period.

Because I walked into the office everyday believing we would be out of business in 90-days, I refused to upgrade our computers, but that meant the staff was struggling with slow machines running old software. I only hired employees that I didn’t mind firing and I started looking for my next business, and completely ignored this one.

Then one day, my client called and needed a big favor. The other vendor they were using had failed on an large project for an important client and they asked if we would take it over.

Of course, my first reaction was, “No way! This is what you wanted, so now you got it.”

But they were reaching out to us for help and as difficult as it would be to take over the project, this could be the first step in re-building the relationship.

At that moment I realized that we’ve been in a death spiral for the past year and the only loser in the tit-for-tat battle would have been us. They proved they could easily go to another vendor, but we couldn’t easily find another client.

At that moment I realized that “winning” just meant staying in business and survive to fight another day - and not being “right” about how business should be conducted.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com. Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Healthcare

2008-07-04T17:20:00.002-07:00

HEALTHCARE

I don’t understand why any small business owner - any business management, for that matter - is opposed to government-funded, universal healthcare, like the Canadians, Japanese, and Europeans have. I really believe this would be the single greatest gift the government can give to small businesses, short of eliminating all taxes completely. I even believe government-funded, universal healthcare would not only lift an onerous burden off the shoulders of small business, but equally as important, it would create an explosion of growth for all companies nationwide.

The opponents of universal healthcare have been effective in scaring voters by describing the huge tax increases that would follow if there was such a program. Well, as every business owner knows, we’re already paying a pretty hefty tax for providing healthcare, and I suspect a government-funded program would drastically reduce the expenses every owner is already paying.

Healthcare is one of the biggest expenses for any business and it is crippling American companies just as we’re all trying to compete globally. We’ve all heard that Starbucks spends more on health insurance than on coffee beans and General Motors spends more on health insurance than on metal - and we can all imagine how much healthier these companies would be, and how much more competitive they would be, if they could use that money for new product R&D, building new facilities, and expanding globally.

What opponents to government-funded, universal healthcare don’t see are the millions of small businesses struggling to pay their health insurance premiums. I do not know of a single small business, where the owner hasn’t had to make a choice between paying a health insurance premium or taking a salary, and I guarantee that virtually every business has had to borrow money at one time or another to pay it’s health insurance premiums.

In my particular case, the cost of healthcare for my thirteen employees and their twelve dependents is almost $40,000 per year. I desperately need to hire another person in my marketing department to help my company grow, but I can’t because the money I would be using for salary is going to health insurance premiums.

And, considering we’re spending $40,000 a year, the best we can offer employees is a minimum policy. Not only have I lost good candidates over the years because our healthcare benefits aren’t as good as larger corporations, but for the first time, a long term employee is leaving - actually taking a lower salary - because he needs better benefits for his family. I have another employee - someone in management - who has to leave early two days a week, because she works as a bartender in the evenings in order to pay for the additional healthcare coverage her family requires.

There’s no great benefit to my company for spending almost $40,000 per year on health insurance. In fact, under a government-funded plan, I would probably be spending a lot less than I am now, even with a personal tax increase. Maybe, I’d be able to take home a check every week, for a change.

Let me mention one last thing for the opponents of government-funded, universal healthcare to think about. Because the burden of healthcare costs (in addition to payroll taxes and worker’s comp) is so high, my small business, like many others, has outsourced work overseas. I bet if you asked workers if they’d rather pay higher taxes or be unemployed, most would rather be working.

I’m not certain at what point in our country’s history health insurance became the responsibility of the employer and not of the government. Whichever political party engineered that really tricked the people and did our competitors overseas a big favor.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Customer Focused Sales

2008-07-04T17:20:00.001-07:00

CUSTOMER FOCUSED SALES

One of the new products my company is now offering customers is workplace safety, Spanish/English posters. Seems like a good idea in this time of increasing diversity.

So, naturally, the first thing we did is buy a large format inkjet printer. Then we contacted the paper supplier to order several reams of 24” x 36” paper. That’s a standard size for posters and the printer has a paper draw that can accommodate that size.

But the paper supplier says, “Can’t do. The only large format, standard-size we carry is 25” x 37”.

The heck with them, I think, I’ll go to a competitor, and once I do, I find out that they, too, only carry the 25” x 37” size. As does the next, and the next.

Now I’m really annoyed and not sure if I’m more annoyed at the printer manufacturer or the paper suppliers. Couldn’t they have checked with each other before offering products for sale, after all, they’re both in the same industry.

Clearly, both the hardware and paper manufacturers decided upon sizes that were more convenient for them to produce, and they cared little about the my experience. If they cared about me, they would have developed products that facilitated my experience, rather than created a problem for me.

Now I feel I wasted money on the printer, the ink and the paper, and worse, I have orders that I can’t fill.

Then, I have to wonder, am I falling into the same trap as the vendors I’m complaining about. I’m offering the posters in one size, because that seemed doable - and profitable - to me. I never bothered to ask my customers what they wanted.

We have a number of books and forms that we offer only as downloads since it means we don’t have to have an inventory, but would my customers prefer hardcopy books that they can actually touch and write in. I don’t know, I never asked.

If you think about it, there is only one way to describe excellent service and that way is: let the customers decide on their own the definitions of what excellent service means to them.

If a customer says, “I want daily updates on the progress of my order,” that is excellent service to that customer. If a customer says, “Don’t bother me with progress reports, just let me know when to expect delivery,” that’s excellent service to that customer.

Each client decides how he/she wants to be treated, and ensuring that’s the way it’s done is the responsibility of management.

I’ll bet if you asked your sales department if they’re providing excellent service, undoubtedly they would say, “Yes.” But has anyone in your company ever asked current AND past clients AND non-clients their opinions? It’s probably safe to say that there are things your company can be doing better, and its the present, past and, hopefully, future clients that are best able to tell you what needs to be improved.

Anyone in the manufacturing knows that mass produced products are a thing of the past. When Henry Ford created the first assembly line, every car was exactly the same. Today, auto manufacturers are striving to develop the “3-day car” - any combination of accessories, colors, and materials delivered in three days.

Sales, like manufacturing, is a process that can be improved. Finding a way to satisfy each customer’s needs is the only way to secure the customer’s business.

As much as I like the guys who run the paper store, since I paid over $1,000 for the printer, I’m buying from whoever offers me 24” x 36” paper that I can use for my posters.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Feeling Unappreciated

2008-07-04T17:19:00.000-07:00

FEELING UNAPPRECIATED

2007 was a tough year. It ended with us only a bit down as compared to the previous year, but it was a struggle. We caught a break - three people left on their own (they all moved out of the city) so, we only had to lay off one person because of the slowdown in business, but truth be told, it was more for performance reasons than business.

2008 is looking like it’s going to be a bit of a struggle, too, so I’m not replacing anyone who left and distributing their tasks among the remaining employees.

So, at our management meeting last week, when the subject of human resources came up I hear all sorts of grumbling. “Morale is low.” “People resent having to take on the tasks of those who left without getting paid more.” “People want to know if there are going to be raises this year.” “Can we add dental insurance to our health plan?”

I have to admit, at this point, I don’t know what to say - especially to my three managers who have lived through the tough times with me.

First, I want to say, that I notice that no one is working overtime, missing their lunch breaks, or, heaven’s forbid, missing their afternoon breaks to Starbuck’s or Coffee Bean, so I’m not exactly feeling warm and cozy about paying people more because they’ve taken on more work. The obnoxious side of me wants to say, “I don’t remember anyone giving me refunds on their salary when they didn’t have a lot to do,” but I keep that one to myself.

Second, I’m wondering, does anyone care about my morale? Does anyone care if I’m happy in my job?

I don’t mean to pat myself on the back, because I’m not doing anything every other small business person isn’t doing.

But, I’m sitting there wondering, how dare you ask me these questions when you know that the only way we’ve survived the past year is that I’ve borrowed money on my credit cards and equity line of credit on my home? How dare you talk about raises and increases in benefits when you know I’ve cut my salary to the bone and I’m making as much as one of our entry level employees?

I’m not naive. I understand that everyone works for their own self-interest - that their lives aren’t as committed to this business as mine, but I’m shocked that no one appreciates that keeping me motivated is in their own self-interest. The day I say, this is too hard and I’m giving up, is the day they’re all on the street looking for a job in a tough economy.

I’m not asking for applause every time I walk into the office, or a big banner spread across my wall, “Thank you, Jack,” (though I have to admit both of those would be nice), but what I am asking for is a show of interest in the health of the company, and not just in oneself.

If working a few minutes overtime is required, just do it and don’t complain. If it’s necessary to miss lunch in order to get a project to a client on time, just do it. And, I certainly don’t appreciate people loudly broadcasting about their overtime or missed lunches. I know who’s working and who’s not. I see the time sheets; I get the calls from the angry clients; I see who’s there late and who isn’t.

So, what did I say to my managers after I heard their complaints?

“I’m doing the best I can. When I have it, I share it. When I don’t, I can’t.”

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com. Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein

Introduction to Blog

2008-07-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

INTRODUCTION TO BLOG

I know of no more noble profession than that of the small business entrepreneur. Despite the enormous challenges, the entrepreneur fights onward knowing that success means battling against overwhelming odds.

Having owned a small business for over two decades, and having met hundreds of other small business owners, I know of none that have gone without proper compensation for weeks, months, even years, in order to pay the salaries of their employees. I know of none that haven’t been working on Saturday nights, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, when others were celebrating. I know of none that haven’t canceled a vacation because of a company crisis. I know of none that haven’t gone without sleep, worrying about how to pay the bills. Most importantly, I know of none that haven’t thought about making their lives easier and just selling the business or locking the doors forever, but didn’t, because they wouldn’t let themselves be beaten by the forces attacking them.

Entrepreneurs don’t get the respect they deserve. They truly are leading the Charge of the Light Brigade. There are guns to the left of them - government regulations, taxes, insurances, immigration - there are guns to the right of them - worker's compensation, healthcare, benefits, interest rates, labor issues - and, most deadly of all, there are the guns in front of them - the competition and ambivalent corporations that callously march into the entrepreneur’s territory with overwhelming forces.

The entrepreneur is truly in a battle for the life of his or her business everyday. But The Light Brigade got passed the guns to the left of them, got passed the guns to the right of them, and smashed the through the barricades of the enemy that stood in front of them to win a great victory.

How did they do this? How did they survive and triumph in what poets and historians called The Valley of Death.

The guns that surrounded the valley were prepared to fight the enemy of the day, in the style of the day - slow moving armies marching forward towards their enemy. But The Light Brigade wasn’t the army of the day. They moved faster than the cannoneers could re-load their weapons; they moved faster than the observers could signal a change in position; and, they moved faster than the enemy could have imagined.

The entrepreneur who is going to survive needs to learn from The Light Brigade - to learn how to battle against foreign companies that drive prices down so much it makes staying in business questionable; against competitors that steal ideas and customers; against local governments that make staying in business a burden; against anyone or anything that would interfere with the existence and growth of the business.

Like other businesspeople, I have read many books written by Fortune 500 CEO’s. Not to take anything away from them, but they don’t live in our world. Small businesses can’t sell a few million shares when they need to raise money. For the small business entrepreneur, payroll is next week, rent is due in two weeks, and the charge cards are almost maxxed out.

Small businesses don’t have the luxury of time, don’t have the luxury of suffering enormous losses, and don’t have the army of Harvard Business School advisors. They have to rely on their own cunning and intelligence to survive and grow, and they have precious few resources to tap into to make it all happen.

This blog is written for entrepreneurs who push forward despite the challenges; who look forward to the future, and don’t dwell in the past; who fight for every job in the company during hard times; and who want to create something to be proud of.

***

Jack Bernstein is the author of seven books on business and president of, The Translation Station, a foreign language translation company. Send comments to him at: Jack@TheTranslationStation.com. Copyright 2008, Jack Bernstein