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STABILIZE STRESS
There are some who would say, "there's good stress and then
there's bad stress". That's sort of like saying, "there are
good heart attacks and then there are bad heart attacks".By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore Stress is a killer. Maybe there is some positive benefit to the stresses that will enhance our performance. But, for the most part, stress is a negative, keeping us from performing at peak levels, damaging our daily productivity, and decreasing the chances of our longevity. Many blame stress on external forces. "We are living in stressful times." ,"This is a stressful job.", "My boss (husband, wife, co-worker, customer, client, kid, etc.) is really stressing me out!"
FIVE BLOCKS TO EMPLOYEES' PRODUCTIVITY By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore Many factors, separately and in combination with others, will build walls to block employees' productivity. Most people intuitively and instinctively want to be productive. It makes sense. They will get more from life and so will their employer. My experience, after eighteen years of speaking about Personal Productivity, has shown me five major blocks to employees' productivity.
Improper selection. When labor markets are tight companies may be tempted to
hire anyone with a warm body and a pulse to fill a slot rather than pay an
adequate amount of money to recruit the right individual. No matter how
tight a labor market is, there are always qualified people available if the
compensation is fair. If you are baking a cake and you use the wrong
ingredients, no matter what the reason, you will not produce the cake you
desire.
TOP FIVE TIME MANAGEMENT MISTAKES By: Dr. Donald E. Wetmore In my thirty years as a Time Management speaker and consultant, I have observed a lot of what we can, and should not do, to increase our daily result. Time manage-ment is not necessarily working "harder", but rather, "smarter".
And to accomplish significantly more in our days, we need not increase
our efforts. As an example, in a horse race, the first horse may earn a
$50,000 purse and the second horse may earn a $25,000 purse. The first horse
gets twice as much money as the second horse. It isn't because it ran twice as
far or twice as fast, it was only a "nose ahead" of the competition. One thing that I have noticed with new businesses, is the common questions: What do I charge? The easiest way is find this out is to do a little research. First, if they can get it better and/or cheaper somewhere else, then take that into consideration. If you offer a niche(something that little or no other people are providing), then you can consider increasing your cost. Remember, if you sell your services too high, the customer may search around for a better deal. If your sell your services to cheap, then the customer may be concerned with quality. Although cheaper can be an advantage if you sell your services slightly under the competition. If you services are equal or better, you will have the upper hand. If you are able to create a portfolio, DO IT. If you have nothing in your portfolio, try doing a few services for free to give your customers some examples. If your service is not something you can put into a porfolio, consider gathering some testimonials from willing customers to create a brochure for potential customers. As for what to charge..take your overhead and add what you would like to profit from...that would be your price. If your services have no direct over head, then the best way to price yourself, is to look your direct competitors.
Well, if there is one thing that I like, it is FREE stuff. As you can see, I got some nifty tools for the E-zine, and I am perfectly happy with them. The best thing about these things is that I didn't have to install ANYTHING onto my server! Everything runs dynamically from the sites that provide the service. The site tracker can even list which key words the search engines are directing at your sites! There are many different sites, but I chose a few to list. Most of them do not offer any option to not display their company names, but the site tracking sites do offer an option for a small monthly fee. Myself, I would not display banners on my clients sites, so I would fork out the 5 or 6 bucks a month. But if you want to put these cool tools on your site, then GO FOR IT!
Super Stats Site Tracker Free Guestbook Dream Book Free Polls MyComputer Free Email to Fax EFax Free Forum Brave Net Free Search Engine MyComputer Feeling a bit lonely? I work with a small team, and sometimes it is good to be around other that are like yourself. It is always inspiring to have other designers or advertisers around you to inspire you as well as make you a competitive twit. (very important sometimes) There are many different organizations available to fit each individuals careers. Some even give out prestigious awards, which can bring more business to you. Organzations like your local Chamber of Commerce can be of great help, provided that it isn't already flooded with your competitors. Although there are many wonderful associations and guilds out there, most of the good ones have some sort of annual fee that they require from their members. You may get that back in business, or you may not. Some organizations alow you to visit a meeting to see if you are interested in joining. Use that to your advantage, and don't spend money on organzations that you won't be getting anything from the membership. Most of the organzations network within themselves, and can be a great benefit to you. Even joining a general Business Networking Association can bring you business, and a great resource to your company. The street goes both ways, and you may find a firm that can be of assistance to you. Check out the Graphic Artists Guild Get organized! No matter how organized you think that you are, you can always be more organized. If you live in a mess, your business will also be in a mess. If you are a business owner, then you know how waves of work can come in. Sometimes you feel like you are drowning, and work until your eyes fall out trying to get it all done. Then, after you pull out all your hair, things drop to a dead halt. Maybe it is the weather, maybe it is the changing of the tides? What happened? So, you let things slide a little when you have extra time. You sleep in a little later, and you can actually quit working earlier! Just as your hair starts to grow back, BAM!, you get hit again and your arms are flailing around in panic. You are a disorganized person. I must admit, I am only delivering this advise because I was a victim to the disorganization bug. I consider myself pretty organized, but not many people understand what a wave of work is. When you have a steady job, it is similar, but you don't have to worry about getting paid. Your bosses do. They get waves of work as well, but they probably don't worry about it as much as the new business owner does. If you are a business owner and you haven't had this experience, then please call me, I need to look into a different career.
Tip of the Month: Owning a business can be like having triplets. I don't have any children, but I suppose it can be as stressful. Not only do you have to worry about a steady paycheck, but being responsible for all of the other annoying parts of a business is a whole different animal. After waking up in the middle of the night with your first anxeity attack, you come to realize you can't do everything and be successful at the same time. You may want to have your hands in all of the pots, but be careful. When you do that, you can also get to the point where you never accomplish anything. I will use my business for an example. I run Lunar Graphics, I have to maintain all of my clients, partners and sub-contractors. That in itself is a huge project. Then I have to do payroll, billing and collections. I despise that the most I think. Next comes marketing, sales and recruiting. Oh, and don't forget the e-zine. I get to be the designer, author and editor. Whew. That is a whole lot of hats. Then again, that comes with being prez. Oh wait, do I have a personal life left? If you can find some people to help you out in some of these areas, by all means do! I don't do my taxes, maintain my network or do all of the graphics projects. I have partners and contractors that I can delegate the work to. If you have a team of people you will be less stressed, and you will be much more successful. The anxiety attacks will still come, but not as often.
Tip of the Month:
Starting a home-based business can be a real fun event. You can walk around in a t-shirt, flannel pants and fuzzy slippers. You can take the day off if you feel like it. You can scream at the monitor and jam to your favorite music....well, that about covers the good parts. Get ready for the BAD. Your friends consider your job "not real". Your friends call you during the day all day, because their job allows them to sit and piddle on the phone. ANY house work you have calls (and CALLS) your name out, wanting to be completed. Your pet stares at you continuously to play with it.(you are home aren't you) Your mother has no qualms about calling you at work anymore. Taxes, oh I could go on about that for hours. No simple W2's anymore. Oh, no, not that easy! Oh, and you now are the bookkeeper, secretary, sales manager, marketing director, and what ever you are going into business for, that too. In fact you will be doing what you like the least. Then there is the worry of money. Do you need a loan? investors? how about a steady income? Can you handle clients not paying the bills on time? clients not paying their bills at ALL? Did I mention that your mother calls non stop? All this for fuzzy slippers? NO. There is always the personal satisfaction of success. It takes a lot of work, and a very strong person to succeed at starting a business. If you don't have 80 hours a week to dedicate to your business, don't quit your day job.
Tip of the Month: Starting that biz on the side can be really rough. You can take any plugs you can get. Web designers- if you do any work for someone, especially if it is for free, make sure to get your name somewhere on that site. Even if it is hidden in the code, make sure your web address and/or email is available! Don't just stick a logo up either, make it small enough to not annoy your client, but don't forget that "alt" tag is your friend(= Search engines can pick that up, and get you one more plug over the internet. Try putting up to ten words in there. So when a users with the PC's can move the mouse over the image and see the text as well. Graphic Designers- If you don't do the web thing, at least get that portfolio up on the web. It can be as easy as 1,2,3 but you HAVE to be careful to put copyright notices on your site. Even if it is automatically Copyright, you have to consider those who don't know that. You may want to put that under every image, if it is in a gallery, but most of the time, you can stick it at the bottom. If you do work for someone, ask them to stick up a flier, or place your biz cards somewhere. Better yet, make them wear a t-shirt with your name and number on it. It isn't too much to ask is it???
Tip of the Month:
Ack! It is that time again. Mr. Tax Guy coming to take all your money! Well, be prepared for that awful evil auditor! Make sure to have all of your records for the last five years, at least!...jail is a pretty scary place! It is a good idea to seal all of your tax forms and receipts in a manilla folder, and if you can, put them in a safety deposit box.If you are starting a new biz, make sure the first thing you do is get a good accountant! It is tax deductible, and wow, can it save your butt in the end. Check out these links for Tax Goodies
Tip of the Month:
Thinking about starting your own business aside from your full time job? Check out our marketing section for tips, tactics, and online ideas to get your site more hits than ever. Tip of the Month: Make sure to double check your meta tags to be sure they don't have any duplicates in them. Some search engine spiders will stop reading them if they see a word twice.
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