I’m not sending Christmas Cards

That’s not entirely true. I’m not sending actual physical Christmas cards to any of my friends or out-of-state family this year. Those that have email (and these days – EVERYONE does) – you’ll get a “green” card (i.e., an electronic Christmas wish).

I did buy 2 boxes of Christmas cards this year to supplement the ones that I had left over from last year. And I am sending those to some very deserving people.

I saw on Facebook tonight a post about sending a Christmas card to a recovering soldier at Walter Reed. I looked at my boxes of Christmas cards and the ones I had left over and though, “I’m going to take this a step further.”

THEY’RE getting my Christmas cards this year. The two boxes of 24 (48) and the 18 left over from last year are being addressed to: A Recovering Soldier, c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave., NW, Washington DC 20307.

I encourage you to send at least one of your Christmas cards to a Recovering Soldier this year. This is the least we can do for these brave men and women that sacrificed a lot to ensure the freedoms we enjoy every year.

Its a small gesture – but I bet it’ll make you feel so much better.

If you want to go a step further, enclose a postage-paid envelope in there with a note to use it to send a letter to someone they love and miss.

“E” is for Education

I try not to get too political because if I climb up on my soapbox about issues I’m passionate about, it’ll take more than a ladder to get me down. You know that beanstalk that Jack had to climb to get to the Giant? Yeah … that’s nothing.

But I have to talk about the importance of education and how early it starts. Education starts in the womb. We weren’t ones that put headphones on my belly and played tapes of Stephen Hawking, or something like that for either of my kids. However – with Danielle, we did play classical music in her room at all hours of the day and night. As a result – she’s got a great math capacity. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she does. With Jack, we’ve never baby-talked him (we never did that to Danielle, either) and I think he took to the vocabulary a lot faster and easier than Danielle ever did.

We specifically live in a city with terrific schools. Yes, the property taxes are out of this world, but we figure to get these great schools – its worth it.

But property taxes is not the only thing that plays into the public education that our children should be enjoying. The budget for schools in the state of Michigan is a many-layered beast which should not be as extensive and troublesome as it is. The budget for schools that fall in a certain category in this state have been slashed in the millions of dollars.

What that means is there will be teachers and staff laid off, services will be deleted or reduces, fees for special events will go up, class sizes will increase, and the overall quality will go down.

Laying off staff and teachers will strain the already slim resources due to the already-strained budget. When teachers are laid off, what do you do with those students? They have to go somewhere, so that means class sizes are going to increase. When class sizes are larger, the teachers are under more strain to be able to teach each student the way they need to be taught. Kids are going to start falling through the cracks – and do you know what the next complaint is going to be? Yep – class sizes need to be smaller.

So what can be done about this? First off, the schools need to tighten their belts like every other industry in the state has had to do. No one else has gotten a pay raise, their benefits have been cut, or at the very least reduced, and when employees leave, they have had to take up the slack of that missing worker. Schools have continued to operate in the same way that has brought us here.

What can the government do about it? Stop giving tax breaks to industries! Yes, we understand that it’s an incentive to get businesses in to an area, but that does nothing to help out the tax base. When we have more tax dollars coming in from businesses, the education of the children (potential future employees) will be better, thereby keeping that talent and that future earning capacity in the state and the community.

Come on businesses and government – get it right!

“D” is for Delegate!

Delegate, Don’t Procrastinate!

Have you heard that a lot? Have you thought that a lot? Have people around you been telling you that you need to delegate some stuff so you have a life?

If you’re an owner of a company, or an executive, you’ve probably got a lot on your plate, and sometimes you’re not sure how you’re going to get everything done. You’ve gotten so used to just doing it all, you’ve forgotten that there are other people out there that can do things for you, and they specialize in doing these things. When they do these things (more on these “thing” in a bit), it’ll leave you to take care of that business you’ve been building.

So what “things” take up a lot of time for you?

• Email: How much time you spend weeding through your emails before you can actually get to the business of working on your business, rather than in it.
• Confirming Appointments: Do you really need to do that? most of the time, no. Yet if you don’t have a dedicated assistant, you’re probably finding that you’re doing the confirming. Or – if you’re not confirming your appointments, how many times do you find yourself having them cancel at the last minute or the person you’re to meet with just doesn’t show up.
• Preparing Correspondence: Even in this advent of the technical age, preparing an email response is the norm rather than the exception in business correspondence. Many times deals are made through email and electronic signatures are acceptable. But do you really need to be the one that does the preparation of the documents, creating the attachments that need to go with it and ensuring that it gets delivered to the party that needs it.
• Research: Yes, sometimes when you’re researching something you get ideas for other ways you can take the research, but many times that’s just an avoidance tactic. When you can assign research for a particular issue to someone else, you’ll get a more targeted approach to the end result.

Is there more that you could delegate? Absolutely! But these seem to be the top 4 that are the biggest drains of time for busy small business owners. When they assign these tasks to an assistant – whether virtual or in office – they find that their time is better managed and they’re less stressed.

Let’s examine my client “L”: She owns a boutique law firm with three attorneys – including herself – and two in-office assistants. Now, its common for two attorneys to share an assistant, but because of the quality of service she and the firm gave to their clients, they were finding themselves working much harder and being more and more stressed about having the time to do it all – and do it at the level they’d been doing it.

“L” was referred to me by another one of my clients because she said that she was beginning to feel overwhelmed and she was afraid that the rest of the staff was feeling it, too. After we talked, she agreed to let me take over confirming her calendar for her for a couple of weeks. Since then, I’ve also taken over preparing the hearing files for all attorneys on staff, handling the calender for all attorneys and when someone is out, I pitch in and help in whatever way I can by preparing documents, speaking with clients, etc.

When you realize that delegation is not about letting go of control, but rather gaining control over portions of your life that’s gotten out of control – you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

If you’d like to take a short survey to find out what you can delegate – email me and I’ll send it to you and together we can talk about how you can get some more control of your day!