REPOST: The Two Biggest Money Problems That Can Ruin a Business Partnership

Alliances and partnerships can be an important path to growth for business. However, according to Robert J. Steinberger, 80 percent of business alliances make this relationship critical because of money. Don't let money matters destroy your relationship as this article asserts:

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The day you enter into a business partnership is much like the day you say “I do.” Both events create a contractual relationship that can be extremely costly to untangle, and most do need to be untangled.

San Diego-based attorney Robert J. Steinberger says 80 percent of business alliances fail for one of two reasons: “They are undercapitalized, or the parties involved cannot agree on how to run the business, including issues around money.”

I certainly didn’t expect to be on the wrong side of this stat. I co-founded a business I knew would be successful, but money matters tore the relationship apart. I assumed my partner and I both understood the responsibilities of equity ownership and the way distributions would be made. Then I realized she expected to be paid monthly, and as a percentage of revenue, not earnings. That was the beginning of the end.

Maybe it’s one partner wanting to purchase new equipment, while the other believes it’s a waste of money, or one using an increase in earnings to supersize lifestyle, while the other prefers to reinvest in the business. Whatever the case, varying opinions about money can sabotage the partner relationship, as well as the profitability—and, consequently, the value—of the business.

When you enter into a business partnership, you’re literally tying your fortune to that person. Therefore, it’s important to discuss your perspectives on money upfront. 

The two biggest monetary issues that sink partnerships are compensation and financial infidelity.

Disagreements over salaries can stall a business right out of the gate, so it’s important to get on the same page before anything is formalized.

“Discuss the expectations of the parties,” Steinberger says. “What type of personal overhead does each party have to have? Is each party willing to take less money out of the business to help it grow? From there, you can execute employment agreements, which provide for a base salary and allow for quarterly or semiannual distributions or commission income to be tied to performance.”

Financial infidelity is more difficult. Suspicions that your partner is stealing money from the business can be devastating. However, accusing your partner of the act, while failing to establish and document the allegations, could result in defamation claims and create a highly contentious relationship going forward. 

To avoid this scenario, create a process of checks and balances wherein one partner oversees the day-to-day accounting, while another is responsible for account reconciliations, including (but not limited to) banking, credit cards, trust accounts, accounts receivable and accounts payable.

You can also prevent fraud by requiring dual signatures on checks that exceed a specific amount and/or establishing limits on bank withdrawals or credit card transactions.

Most important: If you and your partner truly want to put your trust in one another, conduct comprehensive financial background checks. Poor credit scores, tax liens, judgments or bankruptcies are all red flags that need to be discussed before signing any agreement.

Bertrand Management Group is a business-consulting firm that helps clients develop strategies for precise business goals. To know more about the company, like this Facebook page.

Best of the best: Finding the perfect employee

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While perfection is subjective, there are many ideal traits that hiring managers look for when interviewing possible new employees. Regardless of the position they are eyeing, ideal employees share some common traits that employers should take note of. These qualities are:

Action-oriented. An ideal employee knows what he wants to do and works to get it accomplished. He will not sit idly and wait for opportunities to find him but rather he will get out there and make things happen. He is focused on achieving his goals, and this will reflect in the way he works.

Confident. Modesty is important, but confidence helps employees in communicating better. There is a fine line between being self-confident and being arrogant. An employee should know when to take the lead and when to stand down. He isn't all talk; he takes action. He doesn't shy away from challenges.

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Intelligent. A manager should hire someone who knows what he's doing, who makes decisions based on the situation, and who does the right thing. Intelligence isn't measured by the grade point average, but it's a good place to start.

Adaptable. A working environment can be toxic with stress levels high, people always running around the place, and deadlines looming darkly over the horizon. An ideal employee can quickly adapt to such environment and whatever role he has to play. He is capable of showing grace under pressure. Most importantly, he knows how to get along with his colleagues.
 

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REPOST: How To Keep Your Employees Motivated: 6 Tips For Creating Happier Employees

Having loyal and committed staff members can be a challenge to employers. It is important to keep in mind what works, and what doesn’t to motivated them to do their best. Fortunately, this article shares that employees can be motivated by many things other than money.

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This week’s post is especially intended for entrepreneurs, small business owners and managers. Every business owner and manager knows that motivated employees are more productive and also, they do more quality work. Therefore, you need to keep your employees motivated and make them feel excited to come to work every day.

There are many ways to keep your employees happy and motivated without raising their pay. Below you can find some of them:

• Create a Pleasant Work Environment: Make sure the office looks nice cosmetically. Having plants around the office will increase positive feelings as well as help reduce stress, lower blood pressure, noise level and humidity. Also, neutral tones and earth tones are the best for an office because these colors are calming and warm. In addition, a softer light is much better than fluorescent lighting.

• Recognize the Achievements of Your Employees: When your employees accomplish their goals or achieve something, take the time to appreciate them. Write an email or a personal thank you note for their accomplishments and you can even give them a small gift like a gift card or tickets to a sports game. If a team achieves something, you can reward them with a nice lunch.

• Coach Your Employees: Feedback is great for motivating your employees. Nobody likes to be micro-managed. Instead they prefer someone who will motivate them and lead them towards a goal. If you notice that the performance of one of your employees is weaker than others, give him/her constructive feedback so s/he can also improve her/himself. Let your employees know that you care for them.

• Encourage Training: Encourage your employees to learn new skills and go to training sessions. Motivate them to get professional certifications that will be helpful for their job.

• Be Clear in Your Communication: You always have to be transparent when communicating with your employees. Even if the news are bad, you should still clearly talk with your employees and explain them what is going on within the company. Create time to listen to your employees’ concerns and do your best to solve them. Keep an open channel of communication and get their feedback when necessary.

• Casual Fridays: If your company has a dress code for business, making Fridays a casual dress day will boost your employees’ morale and motivate them. You can use holidays to create theme days as well. For example, you can ask your employees to wear something orange on Halloween or green on St.Patrick’s Day. This will let them feel the spirit as well as create a more positive work environment. 

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REPOST: Why Bad People Make The Best Leaders

According to this article from Forbes, effective leaders are less like Santa Claus, but based on reality. Read more below:

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Want to build a great leader? Don’t start with a good person. Start with a bad person–then chisel, sandpaper and polish as necessary.

Most of the modern leadership development industry is based on a myth. It’s a feel-good myth, spread by consultants and academics and “gurus,” about how the best leaders are collaborative, compassionate, empathetic and free of most defects of character.

But it’s false. The best human beings are collaborative, compassionate, empathetic and free of most defects of character. But the best leaders usually are not.

By “best leaders,” I’m talking mainly about people who consistently show the ability to get things done—the ability to sell others on an idea, the ability to take them in new directions, the ability to talk their way out of a jam, the ability to come back from a setback, and so on.

When will we admit it? Effective leaders are less like Santa Claus handing out gifts, less like Mother Teresa blessing sick people, and more like Kobe Bryant coolly sticking a dagger into the heart of an opponent as he drops a three-point buzzer beater to win a tight game.

I saw a column in another publication this morning that captured the modern management myth in all its naïve purity. It was a listicle offering signs of bad leadership—and it included the usual suspects like lack of empathy, bossiness and lack of humility.

Yet then why do we hail the Steve Jobs and the Bill and Hillary Clintons of modernity and the Caesars of antiquity? Their management styles and personalities are often the opposite of what the gurus preach.

The key question is this: If your organization is looking for a strong leader who can really get things done, can you afford to take a chance on the idealized notion that the gurus preach? Or you do you have to admit that you may need someone who has rough and unpleasant edges?

Most management consultants have nice ideas about what it would look like to build the perfect leader from scratch, from warm and fuzzy emotions and kind ingredients. But the influential book Cradles of Eminence revealed years ago that most big-stage leaders had unhappy childhoods. That unhappiness fuels the desire to “make a dent in the universe,” to use the words of Steve Jobs. That unhappiness also fuels the nasty streak that lets them get things done—and that nasty streak is always a mixed blessing.

Also, these leaders’ legacies are always more complicated than we pretend. There are disappointments and hurt feelings and near-disasters along the way. Indeed, big-time leaders usually need a certain amount of luck to retire with their reputations intact.

To the extent that management consultants (like myself) have anything to offer to the discussion of leadership, it’s our ability to challenge strong leaders to build a little humanity into their leadership practice, for their own long-term happiness and for the well-being of their organizations. It’s our ability to remind them that being too determined to put a dent in the universe may well put a dent in the lives of people around them.

But ultimately to build a good leader, you perhaps have to build on a foundation of “bad” qualities—that classic nasty competitive streak, excessive risk-taking, dangerous stubbornness and so on. And then you try to add in the restraint, the wisdom, the compassion and the other qualities that keep leaders from racing off a cliff in their zeal.

That notion of leadership is quite different from what most management gurus are trying to sell you. But at least it’s based on reality, as revealed from ancient times to our own.

The Bertrand Management Group specializes in business coaching. To know more about its work, like this Facebook page.

Doing business: Does the plan include actually having a business plan?

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Among financial advisors, whether or not to develop a business plan is a much debated topic. Some analysts think that creating a plan and actually implementing it are two different concepts, and business owners should place more focus on the actual implementation rather than the design. From their perspective, too much time is spent crafting lengthy proposals that sound and look nice but have no real substance. Still, there is a great number of analysts who highly recommend building a business plan to new companies.

The importance of a business plan seems obvious, but there are more reasons it should be done. A few of them are the following:

Learning how to deal with displacement: Defined simply, displacement is understanding the "what-ifs" of the plan. This is where the business owner takes into account the effects of pursuing action A compared to action B; and knowing that by doing action A, actions C and D will not be done. There is a certain amount of forecasting required here, and this cause-and-effect analysis is crucial to any developing business.

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Understanding tax obligations: Business plans are very detailed and include such information as the number of expected employees, targeted business alliances, etc. These proposals require a basic understanding of tax.

The important thing to remember is that business plans are just that, plans. They should be used to guide and set specific objectives for the company. There is always the danger of overthinking and there are plans that are not implemented because of too much detail. However, this should not prevent companies from starting one. It is still generally believed that caution is better than just blindly running the race.

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Bertrand Management Group has helped hundreds of businesses achieve structure through proper business planning. Learn more about sound business plans by visiting this Facebook page.

REPOST: 5 Tips to Supporting a Connected Workforce

With the pervasive effect of technology today, experts from Asure Software advises that companies utilize this in order to maximize employee mobility. Read more tips from this article featured on Mobile Enterprise.

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Managers and business leaders who still rely on spreadsheets, forms and manual process (despite the pervasive use of smartphones, tablets, laptops etc.) may need help to realize how to enhance workforce agility, productivity and engagement—while optimizing their organization's workforce spend and improving profits. Asure Software offers 5 tips to better mobility.

"Progressive organizations are seeing many strategic operational advantages, even imperatives, to leverage technologies in new and better ways for enhanced workforce agility and productivity, while enabling managers and business leaders to track employees more effectively, protect profit loss related to time fraud, and accurately plan and manage staffing," said Steven Rodriguez, Asure Software COO, who outlined these tips:

1. Automate processes: Timecards, paper timesheets submitted to supervisors in-person or via fax, work schedules posted on bulletin boards, PTO forms left in a manager’s in-box—these are all things of the past. Today's user-friendly TLM systems consolidate these processes online, eliminating issues with illegible entries, lost or misplaced forms, data re-entry errors and duplication of efforts, and the risk of manual errors that can occur in this process, and help organizations manage regulatory compliance requirements that are prone to costly errors. And, all data is processed and reported in real-time, eliminating delays and guesswork.

2. Leverage employees’ personal technologies: Most workers are highly connected to technology 24x7 via their own mobile devices, meaning nearly all are "agile workers" to varying degrees. Enabling them to access work systems via their own familiar technologies helps to enhance their engagement and work satisfaction. Organizations can leverage employees' connectivity and help to make their lives easier and more efficient by enabling them to conduct self-service tasks online, such as checking PTO balances, submitting schedule availability or timesheets, searching and signing up for extra shifts, etc. at their convenience.

3. Move to the cloud: Cloud-based TLM solutions free employees from the office walls and work, enabling them to access scheduling systems at their convenience with their own technologies. Using the Cloud also ensures that all employees throughout the organization, regardless of their location, are using the same technology—a key benefit for organization whose employees are increasingly mobile and global. For HR and payroll managers, the Cloud's benefits also include assurance that technology is always current and less reliance on over-stretched corporate IT staff.

4. Explore emerging biometric and geolocation technologies: TLM mobile apps make it convenient and fast for mobile workers and those whose work involves time off-site to log their time and location by enabling their mobile devices to function as a timeclock fueled by selfies. Facial recognition and geolocation technologies combine to quickly verify the user’s identity and location, enabling supervisors to ensure the right people are in the right place at the right time, and helping the organization to prevent time fraud—which can account for up to five percent of payroll costs.

5. Optimize Scheduling: TLM scheduling systems now offer many useful functionalities that spreadsheets can’t even touch, empowering employees to better track and manage their schedules. For instance, employees who want to pick up extra hours can go online to look for open shifts and bid on them. Supervisors have visual dashboards to quickly check availabilities, as well as robust data to optimize staffing and reallocate staff, as needed. If they have shift spot to fill quickly they can push out notices to employees who are eligible to cover.

"Traditional paper-based and manual time and labor tools are cumbersome, error-prone and do not provide the conveniences, efficiencies and flexibilities that workers have come to expect with today's technologies," said Rodriguez. "Most workers have and use their own technologies to plan and organize their lives, and they appreciate and quickly adapt to solutions that enable them to use their own familiar technologies."


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Five ways to empower workers for improved productivity and job performance

Employee empowerment is a term that's often tossed around in management circles, but what does it really mean?

Employee empowerment can mean many things, depending on the organization's culture. Generally, employee empowerment is defined as the process of giving employees the means to make their own decisions regarding their work and the ability to share suggestions and ideas on their work, while ensuring that the choices they make are in line with the company's policies and goals.

The following are five ways for business leaders and executives to empower their workers:


Allow employees to make decisions regarding their work

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Placing decision-making rights in the hands of those who have the most knowledge and the best insight both empowers workers and improves organizational results. However, managers should stress the importance of accountability. This can be accomplished by letting workers know when workers are not meeting their goals and the consequences of wrong decisions.


Encourage creative thinking and idea sharing

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One way is to arrange group brainstorming sessions wherein everyone has a chance to voice out their ideas.


Allow flexibility when possible

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Telecommute options and flexible working hours when possible give employees greater autonomy and free up time for more important tasks.


Clearly explain job roles and expectations

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Workers whose roles are clearly defined can better focus on their own work and are less likely to expend valuable time negotiating roles, avoiding disputes, and protecting turf.


Enforce an open-door policy

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Empowered workers require more than monetary compensation for their hard work. They want to feel that their participation in company efforts matters. An open-door policy lets workers know that their leaders appreciate them and value their contributions to the company.

The benefits of employee empowerment are numerous. Empowered employees feel comfortable with thinking out of the box, asking questions, and sharing new ideas, all of which are critical in preventing organizational stagnation and ensuring that the company stays ahead of the competition. Empowered employees feel more invested in the future of the company they're working for and take pride in their contribution to its success. Another benefit is increased employee satisfaction, which in turn leads to higher levels of loyalty, decreasing turnover rates, and translating to higher productivity and better job performance.

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