7 Ways To Kick Out Negative Effects Of Work Burnout From Your Life

At some time in their career, many people reach to the point of burnout with their jobs. While some consider quitting the job, it is not an option for many especially those who have no other job vacancy waiting for them. In order to identify work burnout before you start dealing with the problem, take a look at common symptoms that indicate the need to tackle a total burnout situation at workplace:

  • Emotional and physical fatigue
  • Decreasing health conditions
  • Frustrations
  • Reduced efficiency
  • Resentful behavior
  • Lack of motivation

All these are the most common symptoms among those who are experiencing burnout at jobs. If you can relate yourself to any or all of these symptoms, take an action to help yourself today before it gets too late. Following is a list of few measures that you can adopt to make things better at workplace:

  1. Find Out The Root Cause

Diagnosis is always essential before you take any medications. Similarly, you cannot cure burnout at workplace unless you figure out the real reason behind the problems. Take help from colleagues at work who understand your situation or are experiencing the same for helping your figure out, and suggest appropriate measures to cope up with troubles if you are unable to identify the root cause on your own.

  1. Take Vacation

Sometimes all you need to forget and resolve problems at work is a vacation. Hectic daily routines, tight project schedules and long meeting with the clients often become overwhelming and make you tired and frustrated. Take time out from your busy schedule, and plan a vacation with family or friends to unwind and refresh yourself. If you have no time or no finances to plan lavish vacations, visit a nearby location or simply book a resort in the nearby town to get some relaxing time away from work.

  1. Stress Management Programs

Stress management programs are a taboo for some people with issues but definitely one of the best remedies to cure workplace burnout and relieve stress. While sometimes people feel more comfortable with taking help from counselors who can help an individual with particular issues, group counseling or stress management courses can also be an option to meet others with same problems and learn tricks for quick stress management.

  1. Accept The Unchangeable

Change what is in your hands, and accept what you cannot change. This is one golden principle everybody who wants to avoid workplace conflicts and workload stress must follow. If you do not like your boss or any co-worker due to their working habits or any personal reason, realize that changing somebody’s behavior is beyond your ability. So,alter your behavior to make situation better at work instead of exhausting yourself out in efforts to change others.

  1. Develop New Hobbies

Developing new hobbies is a great way to relax and refresh your mind when you get home from work. If nothing can be changed at work, try to spice up your personal life by adding new interests and hobbies so that you have something to look forward to in your daily tiring routines.

  1. Figure Out When To Say No

Learning to say No should be developed from early life. For instance, in the colleges when you can’t do the project due to any circumstances you should realize the weaknesses say no to it and get help instead like essay writing help with essays. Likewise in companies, many employees fear bad performance reviews and therefore, develop a tendency to say yes to every task they are asked to do at work. While sometimes this fear can be true, the best option would be to politely inform your boss about your job description and how extra work might affect your health, performance and personal life if you really want to avoid stress.

  1. Get A New Job

Winners never give up. However, if everything else fails, switch the job instead of losing your hope on a good career ahead. It is a bad idea to decide in a burst of anger or emotional moment to quit any job. Be wise, and take your time to make the decision by weighing pros and cons of quitting.

Maintaining good health is equally important as successful careers. So, make sure to adopt all the measures you can to improve your health, mood and personal life while pursuing a successful career at workplace.

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Tailored Payroll: Reward Your Staff Tax Free

This year you may consider rewarding your employees for their work. As an employer you can provide an employee with a small benefit with a value not exceeding €250 Tax Free. PAYE, PRSI and USC need not be applied to that benefit. This can only be given to an employee once in the income tax year. Where a benefit exceeds €250 in value, the full value of the benefit is liable to PAYE, PRSI and USC.

Monetary benefits e.g. cash, cheques, credit transfer etc.; do not qualify under the small benefit exemption. However, you can give a voucher up to the value of €250 which does qualify under the scheme. The small benefit exemption does not apply to the numerous values of benefits. It applies to a single benefit only.

As a Tailored Payroll client we keep you up to date on how you can save Tax in your payroll. Contact us today for a competitive price and you can continue to make savings on your payroll while remaining compliant. Our flexible service includes:

  • PAYE,PRSI and USC Calculations
  • Registration of Employer with Revenue
  • All employer Revenue submissions to include: P30’s,P45’s, P35, P60’s and registration of new employees
  • We provide email Payslips and P60s to employees
  • Creation of Bank file for payment to employees
  • No hidden costs

For more information about this business visit their website or email to payroll@tailoredpayroll.ie. Tailored Payroll is part of Use SBC as a channel initiative. If you want your business to be featured, click here.

 

 

 

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Boost Your Business Sales with Video Meetings

With video conferencing technologies that offer quick connections, along with systems that are simple to install and easy to use, there’s simply no reason why your business sales should suffer in this day and age. Take advantage of web based solutions like Blue Jeans to get this done. From getting quick feedback on design and changes to learning how to pull off the perfect sales meeting with video conferencing technology, Blue Jeans has you covered.

Brainstorm with Key People

To survive, a business must have continuous growth. One way to keep this going is to ensure open lines of communication among members of your top management committee. However, in view of recent economic downturns, spending too much on travel costs just to bring your people together might end up hurting, rather than helping along, your bottom line.

However, there’s no mistaking the business value of face to face interaction, an observation noted in an article published by the Tech Radar, dated May of last year. This is one reason for the rising demand for unified communication platforms in the market. Users, a great many of which are millennials entering the workforce, demand an integrated system, one that combines social media messaging, emails and instant messaging with web conferencing. It’s a dinosaur of a system, packing a lot of features and all of them useful, all of them designed to encourage collaboration and engagement.

Physically absent, mentally present

Foremost among these is the high definition video conferencing capability. Given the fine video quality possible, management teams no longer have to travel through miles just to get to a meeting. These meetings can now happen online, via video. Here, they can spend the next few hours brainstorming ideas involving marketing strategies, campaign initiatives, process updates and system modifications all without leaving the office, their state or country. With regular meetings, top management executives and managers now have more time to iron out problems in their sales-model or any other point of the sales funnel.

Rapid Feedback in Teams

Meetings provide one of the best venues for asking and giving feedback. But how do you go about making that happen when half of your team works on the east and the other half on the west? That’s another way video conferencing rides to the rescue of businesses.

An article from Mashable, published last 2011, notes how immediate feedback is one of the best advantages that users can get from video conferencing. That’s an accurate observation. Faster feedback means speedier turn-around times for plans, initiatives and product designs.

Collaboration determines solutions

In terms of improving your sales, allowing all team members to discuss the matter via video conferencing is convenient and cost-effective. Remote and offsite teams can also join in on the process. For instance, try presenting the company’s sales model to the teams. Then ask for feedback. Then keep those comments in mind when you work on the next set of changes for the plan. Repeat the process until you get it right—or until your sales improve.

Picking the technology that works best

Doing this by email and instant messaging, though possible, isn’t really that convenient. Too many people in a group could lead to cumbersome, bulky chat conversations that do nothing to generate value. Also, consider the time it takes to write than to talk about changes or explain minute modifications. Video is faster than email and text messaging in this regard.

There’s also the matter of body language and facial cues to consider. Since debates are going to be inevitable, it’s easier to gauge a coworker’s feelings involving a particular revision in video rather than in text. Words can sometimes come off as abrupt, terse, or worse, angry. Via video conferencing, it’s much easier for everyone to explain and discuss changes, without worrying about being misread or misunderstood.

Build Consumer Engagement with Videos

This is one way to keep track of your customers. Try to check up on your clients on a regular basis. Sending them promotional content through email, instant messaging channels and social media platforms are all earmarks of a good marketing plan.

However, checking up on them by way of live videos—and not just sending them pre-recorded ones—goes a long way to ensuring and sustaining brand recall. You could also ask them for feedback, comments and suggestions via video. Try sending them birthday and holiday greetings, too.

That’s taking your marketing and business model a notch further. With video conferencing, you’re securing consumer engagement. After all, people pay more attention to someone when they can see who it is they’re talking to, rather than to a letter, email or text.

Adapt video conferencing into your marketing plans, put these plans into practice and watch your sales figures climb.

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Small Business Lessons from Hillary Clinton’s BYOD Fiasco

Bring your own device (BYOD) policies have landed front row center in the headlines, though not in the most direct way. In this case, the fervor over Hillary Clinton’s emails has lead to a lot of discussion surrounding BYOD and the best practices companies and organizations should adopt. For those not up to date with the news, the controversy surrounds the former Secretary of State choosing to use a personal email server for all her emails whether they were personal or related to her governmental duties. It was later discovered that she deleted a good portion of her emails, prompting further investigation and more questions. So why pursue these actions regarding her emails? Clinton claims it was for convenience since she didn’t want to carry around multiple devices. She also claims she deleted certain emails out of concern for her privacy. Political opponents have disputed these claims, but that’s not the point of this article.

What most small businesses can take away from this fiasco are lessons about how best to adopt BYOD and the common mistakes to avoid.

Make BYOD Policies Clear and Concise

Any organization adopting a BYOD policy usually has to create a shift in the organization’s culture. That requires setting out policies that outline the proper use of personal devices while at work. Moving to a BYOD policy normally requires an adjustment period, and that time can be made much smoother should the adopted policy be clear and easy-to-understand. In the Clinton case, the exact policies of the State Department may have been hard to follow, leading to confusion over what was appropriate for proper business use. Organizations should be careful not to make this mistake. They need to determine if personal emails are appropriate to use for work purposes. They also need to explain how personal devices should be handled in the office or on the road. The easier it is to understand a BYOD policy, the fewer problems will arise.

Divide Personal Data From Business Data

When using a personal smartphone or tablet at work as part of a BYOD policy, it’s easy to combine data between someone’s personal and professional life. For reasons of security and privacy, an employee’s personal data should always be segregated from the business data on the device. This not only helps in avoiding confusion, but it ensures that the organization cannot access data considered to be private and sensitive. Dividing data also makes it easier for businesses to protect and archive data, a feature that seemed to be sorely lacking in the Clinton case. The segregation of data makes data management easier on the whole and allows for data containerization, allowing the device user to set who has access to what information. That would make deleting emails for privacy reasons unnecessary, which would have eliminated one of the more controversial points of the Clinton email mess.

Business Applications Should be Easy-to-Use

Many organizations adopt bring your own device as a way to help employees be more productive, but all those productivity gains mean little if the approved business applications make the work more difficult. Any new policy that complicates matters more than they were before is simply inviting more trouble. If acceptable business apps make little difference for an employee, they’ll more likely look for other ways to achieve better productivity, which could put data at risk. Companies should make sure any approved business apps work well with the employee’s preferred device, thereby avoiding conflict and more violated rules.

The lessons from the Hillary Clinton email scandal are a good way for organizations of any type to learn what some common BYOD mistakes are. A company may not have the same high profile as the State Department, but the security surrounding simple things like email is still of vital importance when using personal devices. The issues raised in the fiasco can serve as a good starting point for organizations to discuss what works with their own BYOD policies and what can change. With clearer rules designed to address the demands of employees, many of the problems encountered in the Clinton email situation can be avoided, and the benefits of BYOD can come to the forefront.

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Four Essential Ways for Small Businesses to Boost Sales through Digital Marketing

When it comes to increasing sales, nothing can compare to the power of the internet. Whether you have a local place of business or an online global presence, there is no better way to reach millions of people, literally overnight. Small businesses looking to boost sales should really investigate how to accomplish that through digital marketing. Here are four essential ways for small businesses to boost sales through digital marketing.

1) Go Mobile

Recent statistics indicate that more people shop from their mobile devices than they do from their home PCs. In fact, it is such a huge portion of the market that Google even changed their algorithms to better serve mobile searchers. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, now is the time to act. Make sure your online marketing is mobile friendly. Not only will you rank better with the search giant, but you will reach a significant portion of your market that you would have otherwise missed out on.

2) Online Discounts & Vouchers

Another great way to boost sales online through digital marketing is to advertise great savings with online discounts and vouchers not available at physical locations. People love a bargain and when they feel like they are getting a product at a saving they wouldn’t get at their local retailer, they will jump on the chance to save money. You can even find out which discounts and vouchers to offer with online tools that show in real time UK retail spending trends. This is perhaps the best way to boost sales based on buying trends.

3) Social Media

It has become almost cliché to hear marketers saying “We are social creatures.” But, in reality, that is exactly what we are. Marketing experts tell us that people will spend more money with someone they trust than from some unknown person or entity. In other words, they aren’t really spending money as much on your product as they are on you. If they trust you after having built a relationship through social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) they may even pay more for your goods than they would at another shop. Why? Again, the trust factor. Social media is great for establishing trust and if you don’t employ this as part of your digital marketing, you are losing a huge portion of the buying public.

4) Pictures, Videos and Infographics

Finally, people want to see what they are buying. Use pictures, videos and infographics to display products and to show why a consumer should buy them. Many innovative ecommerce sites have gone to 360 panoramic views of products so that viewers can see all sides in one shot. This is especially important in the fashion industry as the shopper can see both the front and the back of a garment as opposed to a stock shot of that item in a box.

Again, whether you are looking to build foot traffic in a physical location or to increase online sales, there is nothing like the broad and rapid reach of the information superhighway, the internet. Use these four essential ways to boost sales and you will see just how quickly digital marketing campaigns can make a difference.

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Beware Internal Communication: Aggressive Emails Lead to Unfair Dismissal Claim

A recent determination by the Employment Appeals Tribunal has awarded an employee compensation of €12,500 after finding she was constructively dismissed from her employment. The decision was primarily based on aggressive emails and the fractious relationship the employee had with her General Manager. The case is a prime example of the importance of maintaining positive working relationships and communicating in a professional manner.

Schonfeld -v- West Wood Club Clontarf Limited (UD 1013/2013)

This case concerned an employee, who was the manager of the company’s “fitzone”, who went on maternity leave in May 2010. During the employee’s period of leave a new General Manager was appointed in September 2010. Prior to her return from leave, the employee was notified that her fitzone position no longer existed in isolation and that ultimately she would be required to undertake childcare work also. In addition, it was explained that the employee’s hours would need to “change dramatically”.

Foul Language and Unreasonable

The employee stated that when she returned to the work that she had issues with the General Manager’s reasonableness and that “the general manager constantly screamed at her while gesticulating with her hands in front of the claimant’s face, as well as raising her voice and using foul language… The general manager had screamed and gesticulated at the claimant … to the point that the claimant began to hyperventilate”. The employee stated that when she approached the General Manager to seek a way that they could work together on a proper level that the General Manager responded that this could never happen as the employee was “a f***ing drama queen”.

The General Manager admitted to the EAT that she had sent emails to the employee when in a frustrated state and that “some of the language used was inappropriate”.

Resigning without Lodging a Formal Grievance

The employee ultimately began to seek alternative employment but despite the lack of available job opportunities she resigned anyway. The employee did not lodge any formal grievances prior to resigning and this is worth noting as quite often this is fatal to a claim of constructive dismissal. This concept is similar to that of an employer dismissing an employee; unless the employer does so via internal disciplinary procedures then the employer is unlikely to be able to justify the dismissal. Similarly, if an employee resigns without exhausting the internal grievance procedure then they will find it difficult to justify a constructive dismissal claim. This can be seen in the EAT cases of Keogh -v- Green Isle Foods (UD516/2007) and Clifford -v- Maritrade Ltd (UD27/2000) where the EAT rejected the employee’s claims of constructive dismissal as they had not exhausted internal grievance processes prior to resigning and thus they had not exhausted all avenues.

However, this did not prove fatal to Schonfeld’s claim as the grievance procedure, due to the lack of a relevant HR manager, required her to lodge her grievance to her General Manager, the very same person she had the grievance with.

EAT Decision

The EAT determined that the employee had been constructively dismissed and awarded the employee €12,500 compensation. The EAT outlined that a significant factor in this decision was that “some of the emails sent by that manager to the claimant were aggressive and offensive. That style of communication was compounded by some of her verbal airings with her.”

Conclusion and Learning Points

This case demonstrates the importance of ensuring that all internal communications, written and verbal are of an appropriate and professional tone and nature, and that any performance issues with employees are dealt with in an objective and non-personal manner, preferably through face to face communication. It also demonstrates the importance of having a clear internal grievance, bullying and harassment policy in which employees can have faith in the integrity and independence of the process, especially in the instance that they need to make a complaint against an employee high up or at the top of the organisation.

Peninsula would recommend, based on the above, that employers consider the following questions in respect of their own businesses:

  • Have you got a clear Grievance process in place?
  • Are your employees aware of whom they can report a grievance, particularly where their grievance is against their line manager?
  • Have you got a bullying/harassment/dignity at work policy in place?
  • Have your managers received appropriate training in terms of people management?
  • Have you got a clear Email Policy in place?

If you have any questions in respect of the above article then please do not hesitate to contact Peninsula on 1890 252 923

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Small Business Mentoring: 9 Factors to Consider When Looking for the Right Mentor

To get ahead in life, everyone needs advice and help. Ask even the most successful individuals in the world how they got to where they are. Most likely, you will establish that they have at least one mentor who guided them along the way. In this post we’ll look at small business mentoring and the factors to take into account when looking for the perfect mentor.

Whether you are on the receiving or giving end of investment advice, energy, or time, it is extremely important to view mentoring for exactly what it is – a totally priceless gift. This is according to the CEO of Avention, a business information and sales enablement solutions provider based in Massachusetts.

Do you want a good mentor who will help you get to a higher level in both your personal and career life? Today, so many life coaches exist. So how do you separate the chuff from wheat? Here are nine factors you should consider when looking for an inspiring and incredible mentor:

Always know that praise is not necessarily part of the entire deal

Sadly, most people who claim to want a mentor only want strokes and attention. This is not the kind of constructive feedback that results in professional and personal growth. According to the CEO of Avention, if you study the lives of the best entrepreneurs, greatest athletes, as well as investors, they all enthusiastically accepted coaching and advice or had great mentors. He continues to add that, to him, those types of individuals, their curiosity, self-awareness and desire to grow and become better inspired them to seek mentors.

Do not entertain silence – remember silence breeds failure

Excellent mentors help you grow through open and frank conversations regardless of how hard they might be. For example, mentoring mentors provide constructive feedback repeatedly so that no employee ought to be surprised when time for a performance appraisal comes. Avention CEO says that typically, many people that are surprised by their own appraisals are most likely to be poor or weak managers.

Active empathy and listening builds relationships

One thing you should always know is that a relationship is exactly what maintains a mentor-mentee relationship. Once this relationship becomes obligatory, the utmost benefit to both individuals rapidly dissipates. According to Avention CEO, over time, relationships usually diminish because of lack of being true to each other.

Always opt for a mentor you admire and desire to emulate

One of the worst ideas when it comes to choosing a mentor is aligning yourself with an adviser all because of her or his title or for political gain. So you don’t have a wise individual who you admire? Well, the best place to start is hanging out in an incubator or industry events. Widen your pool of associations. Go to any form of venture capital gathering that you can manage. Use LinkedIn and try to gather and garner as many introductions and connections as possible.

Bluntness

Some call it forthrightness, which is agreeable. Your mentor should not act or talk like a politician. When you are in trouble, you need someone to give you strong and cutting blunt advice on exactly what you might not be doing correctly.

Additionally, your mentor should have the audacity to tell you everything like it is. If you notice that he or she cannot do this, then avoid him or her like a plague.

Choose a mentor who allows you to have a vision for your future

In addition to providing advice in the present, your mentor should also offer the required support and scaffolding to allow you to envision your future. Most often, it is very hard to envision the next phase of your life when working so hard in the present. Moreover, at times, after you have completed your PhD, it can be quite difficult to envision what your life will be like. The same applies to any level of education.

Choose a mentor of any sex, but the same sex is much better

Although it is highly preferred that you choose a mentor of the same sex, it is still okay to opt for a mentor of the opposite sex. Man-to-man mentorship, for instance, is brilliant because men can talk about personal issues that affect them without feeling weird. Unless your prospective mentor of the opposite sex boasts of the specific skills necessary for your mentorship, it is advisable to stick to one who is of the same sex. This will benefit you big time in the long run.

He or she should be totally honest

Honesty is one of the most important aspects your mentor should possess. Besides being honest as the mentee, ensure that your mentor is honest as well. It is highly advisable that he or she be more than frank on any issue. Your mentor should be bold to tell you when you are doing things the wrong way. Positive criticism is of utmost importance. It helps you grow and build your confidence. In the end, you become stronger.

He or she should be time efficient

Most, if not all, mentors hold very senior positions. Consequently, they are super busy. They are great at utilizing every single second of their days. Do you want to be efficient at managing time? Well, you need a mentor who is great at time management. Time efficient mentors will share with you the strategies needed to help you become better at managing time. In addition to efficiency at time management, you should look for some small underlying behaviors. Some behaviors, small as they are, might make such a huge difference between your failure and success.

That being said, your success is always your prerogative. You are the driver of your success. Do not sit and wait for a mentor to suggest action plans for you. Get out of your comfort zone and make excellent use of all resources at your disposal – your mentor included. This way, achieving success will be more than possible. There is no doubt about that.

Bio
Charlie Brown is one of the contributors of a leading financial website. Talk to him today if you need help regarding national debt reviews.

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Avoid Making These 4 Common Startup Mistakes

If you’re planning to start a business, you’ll find there are way too many opportunities to learn the hard way. Inexperienced entrepreneurs end up hurting themselves financially when they start a business and fail to avoid common mistakes.

Experience is a great teacher. And someone else’s experience is an even better teacher. One way you can avoid unforced errors in business is to learn from the painful lessons of other business owners.

Here are some common startup mistakes.

1. A Failure to Understand Your Clients

If you’re considering a business-to-business (B2B) operation, be certain you’ve walked a country mile in your potential client’s shoes before you start dispensing advice about how to travel.

You might think you’ve found the perfect market. You might believe you understand exactly what people in a certain line of work truly need. But unless you’ve been in that line of work, you should think again.

Zach Clayton is the owner of Three Ships, a digital marketing company. He says he spent way too much time showing clients detailed reports about how his company delivered a strong return on investment (ROI).

One day, a client company offered him a role as an interim chief marketing officer.

“I had no idea how hectic and overwhelming that job actually is. You’re in marathon management meetings. You’re arguing with the head of sales about the right lead goals. You’re hiring a new PR firm for the West Coast,” he says. “I realized clients were too busy solving other problems to go three levels deep on understanding all the technical work we do.”

Now, he operates with clients on much simpler terms.

2. Allowing the Perfect to Become the Enemy of the Good

Not every project is going to launch perfectly. Accept that while you’re new at this.

Entrepreneurs struggling for a first-class level of presentation in a new release or product launch often allow themselves to say no to something that is good, but not perfect.

Sure, your brand name is on the product and you certainly want to leave a good impression. However, you’re also faced with competition. Some of your competitors in the same space may capture market share because they don’t allow themselves to be caught up in perfection.

If you have a great product, go ahead and release it. If there are some wrinkles that can be ironed out, do so in a way concurrent with your launch. Don’t lose money because you’re stuck on absolute perfection.

3. A Failure to Prepare for the Regulatory Environment

Strictly speaking, your business will have two sets of enemies. The first set of enemies will be your competition. The second set of enemies will be the various regulatory agencies that insist on forcing you to spend money to comply with current laws.

Many entrepreneurs go into business fully aware of the first set of enemies and are ready to tackle them. But many forget about the second set of enemies and end up paying costly fines or, worse, being shut down for a while.

Hire a good attorney to be sure your business is compliant with prevailing regulations. This is one area where you must be proactive. You simply can’t afford to wait until something bad happens and then hope to fix it after the fact.

If necessary, seek the proper training for your employees so they can perform their jobs in line with government standards, and able to maintain OSHA compliance.

4. Being Too Stingy

It’s easy to fall into the “cutting corners at any cost” trap, especially when you’re first starting out and want to stretch each dollar as far as it will go.

The old adage about it taking money to make money is still valid. You have to spend money to earn money. Get used to the idea.

That’s why you should seriously consider opting for a “go big or go home” strategy when it comes to new purchases. Sure, you can buy refurbished equipment and second-hand, lower quality hardware and still launch your business effectively.

But you should also think about the future cost. If that equipment depreciates faster and needs to be replaced sooner than higher quality equipment, have you really saved any money?

Also, what’s the opportunity cost associated with the extra effort required to ensure older equipment functions properly?

In many cases, your best choice is high quality. That doesn’t mean you need to spend an extra 50% just for a brand name, but you want to ensure that you’re getting a great product for the money. Many entrepreneurs don’t do that, and regret it later.

Starting a business can be a wonderful, fulfilling experience. Be sure you do it right and avoid some of the common mistakes made by your fellow entrepreneurs.

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[Event] Business Matchmaker, The Helix, May 7th

Many companies have said to me that once they have got over the setup phase they know they need to think about where to next? – how can they be innovative? how can they bring R&D into their business?

One way to start looking at this is by working with a university and leveraging their expertise to bring you along that path. It can however, be difficult to get access to the right expertise and it can be a bit daunting to navigate complex university environments.

To address this Dublin City Universtiy wants to help companies to see how it all works. We want companies to come and have an informal chat about their business and their ideas directly with researchers to see where the conversation takes them. Companies can also find out about the best mechanisms to fund R&D in their business through access to Irish state and European funding.

If this is of interest you should come along to our Business Matchmaker Event in The Helix on May 7th. Register your company online and tell us a bit about your company and if you have any particular area you would like to discuss. A matchmaking facility will be available where you can request to meet specific researchers or they can request to meet you.

It’s a FREE no obligation conversation that may yield results now or in the future for you.

www.b2match.eu/dcubusinessmatchmaker

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Mindfulness for Business People

Mindfulness is the new (jack) black in business. It is everywhere. And not just as part of personal or self development, but as part of the DNA of businesses. We doing quite some work on briefing companies about happy, mindful staff with a sense of purpose. It makes perfect business sense. Happy staff is 25% more productive.

Focus on self development

There are lots of books on being mindful as a person. From “The secret” to “The Celestine Prophecy” or from “The road less traveled” to “The monk who sold his Ferrari”. Not much in business books. Maybe “Coherence” or “Reinventing organisations”, but nothing that crosses the self development chasm to business development.

The old masters

We have always found that in those cases the old masters are worth studying. Management theory is only 50 years old and Drucker is still the godfather.

Mindfulness is a lot older then management theory. It is part of every religion and was part of ancient cultures as a way of life. The first person who brought this all together in a book was Jack Black. Another old master and also ahead of his time.

Coming to Dublin

And he is coming to Dublin too. On the 11th of June. Talking about mindfulness and business. So we decided to look at his first book, which is “Mindstore, the classic personal development programme”.

Read it

If you are into personal development, you should read it. If you are a start up, you should read it. If you are an owner manager of a small business you should read it. Everything that is now fashionable and “new” is in that book.

Balance

A balanced view on your life. Family life, social life, health, personal development, attitude, career, finance and spiritual life. His theories and advice is not confirmed by neuroscience. You are what you think. PMA is important. You are limited by your beliefs. The need to manage stress. The importance of setting goals. The importance of writing them down (only 4% does). The need to use all parts of your brain (dualbrain).

Mindfulness for business people

The need to avoid being managed by the hypothalamus. Apparently we come with 20,000 inbuilt programmes when we are born. All based on evolution and social biology. A lot are no longer that relevant. The programming in the schools (way before Ken Robinson identified this) doesn’t help either. The trick is to start doing some of your own programming. Your brain is a bio computer.

Start with attitude

It needs to be positive. So you ban negative words (and people) and you keep smiling. The mind can only hold one thought at the time. So negative thought can always be replaced. And neuroscience will tell you that it does wonders.

Quantum physics

If you belief that the mind is a quantum machine with decides on what your reality is going to be, you can see how powerful it could be. Suggest you read “The future of the mind”. Predicting Mindtech as a hotspot.

Vision

The importance of a vision. A powerful one. Forget achievable and realistic. You need to dream. Making is as visual and detailed a possible. Burning it into your brain (like burning a CD). Burning the pathways. The same way your create habits.

Vision is more important then planning. But you need to commit to that vision. Belief it. Helping your quantum computer to make it happen. You are what you think. Our thought become our realities. You are creating future history. And it become part of the programming of your bio computer.

The software to programme your brain

He gives you the software as well. The meditation techniques. The mental structures. Literally. He helps you to build a mental house space where you can apply a whole range of techniques. A mental house with a shower, a library, an editing suite, a sleeping room and anything else you can imagine. As the metaphor for relaxation, the re-energising, the mental cleansing, the affirmation and PMA, the visioning, the remembering and the dreaming.

No short cuts

The point is the burning. It has to become a routine. You need to practice and maintain your mental house. There are no short cuts. You need to take the time to do it. Regularly. The way you would exercise your body. Bruce Lee said “Knowing is not enough we must apply, willing is not enough we must do.”

There is one short cut, the famous tip of your tongue at the back of your from teeth. To bring you in a better mental state almost immediately.

It all works

I am interested to find out how this will work in a business context. Being mindful together as a team? Collective business consciousness? Inter-connectedness with communal wisdom? Business 5.0? Brainstorming in alpha waves? It sounds weird. But so did Mindstore over 20 years ago. Can’t wait to find out. You can book your place here.

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