n his book “Small Business Aha Messages,” Jeff Shavitz offers perspectives and truisms to help small businesses sales and bottom-line profits.
1. Similar to leaving at 5 p.m., it’s funny to watch some employees always get to the office exactly at 9 a.m.
How many hours do you work each week? Is it 40 hours?
How can it always be 40? It can’t. It’s just about impossible. Maybe an employee arrives at 8:57 a.m. or leaves at 5:07 p.m.
It’s so important that you, as a business owner, track your employees’ time. I highly recommend a time clock to track your people. It’s the law to pay overtime for non-managerial personnel, and you must understand and classify your people as either exempt or non-exempt.
Too many small-business owners will unfortunately face legal issues and pay significant monetary fines because their people are not properly classified and they are sued for overtime violations. Do your homework and learn the differences, and put proper systems in place to control time management of people within your company.
2. Many people have different aspirations, interests and skill sets. This is good, or everyone would want to be the boss.
Here’s an interesting dilemma that I faced years ago. Our director of finance, who was responsible for payroll and commissions, came to me saying, “I can’t believe how much money John Smith (this is a made-up name) is earning each month for his commission payments.”
I told our finance director, “John works on 100 percent commission, and although you may only see him in the office a few hours per week, he built his client base over many years, maintains these relationships and deserves to make this money.” I then respectfully said, “If you would like to try working on full commission, take one to two months and try it. If you don’t like it, your job will be waiting for you.”
As you would guess, he didn’t. We all have different skill sets, and never forget that salespeople (especially commissioned salespeople) deserve to make a ton of money, as they are earning it every day.
Your job as the CEO is to find the best position within your company for your employees given their skill sets, earnings opportunities and their career aspirations.
3. Do you have a passion and/or hobby outside of work that you are really committed to? If not, find one!
Are you a workaholic, and is your whole life centered around work? We have all met lots of people, and I find workaholics and one-dimensional people so boring. Get a hobby, expand your interests beyond work and watch your life become so much more interesting, fun, and yes, your work-life balance will become “balanced.”
I also firmly believe people who have many interests (i.e. golf, dancing, cooking, gardening and so many other hobbies to consider) will meet other like-minded people, and these networking opportunities will help the growth of your business (as these new friends could become customers, strategic partners, vendors, etc). You are not finding hobbies for this reason, but it’s a natural outcome of getting involved in activities outside of work.