August 12, 2013 · 10:39 am

Weddings

We’re going to a wedding this weekend.

Wedding Bells

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know you’re getting up there in years when it’s no longer your friends that are getting married but their adult children, which is the case here. Having been married for 35 years my own wedding is a distant memory but I do recall a few things about the day that I think have some business implications as well. Pretty romantic, huh?

One thing I remember was a sense of great optimism.  We were making a statement about our belief in our relationship and how we were better together than we would be as individuals.  Attacking life together was going to advantage us and pooling our emotional and financial resources (which were pretty limited at that point) would give us a leg up.  I don’t think we thought about it in those kind of terms exactly, but we knew it was the right thing to do.

What we didn’t know was the work involved.  Anyone who tells you that a marriage is an easy walk in the park probably hasn’t been married or for very long.  The stress of every day life can test not only the partnership bond but also the very concept of being together in the first place.   Making it work can be hard but it’s been tremendously rewarding.

New businesses are the same.  You have a great idea.  You think you can add resources, gear up, and do something better than anyone else is doing it – solve a problem with a product or provide a service.  You take on partners – investors, other workers, even the people who pay the bills – clients or customers.  Easy right?

Ha!  No sane business person will describe it as easy.  It’s a lot of work and unfortunately the business failure rate is almost as high as the divorce rate.  How the partnership deals with adversity and ever-changing conditions shows a lot.  Is there honest dialog or a lot of shouting?  Are you working on the problem together or are people retreating into their safe shells while things fail around them?

I love weddings, maybe because I’m an optimist at heart.  I love young businesses too – I work with a few in my practice.  The key to both is a commitment to work together to solve the mysteries that are life and business.  So far, so good for me.  You?

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August 9, 2013 · 10:15 am

Espagnole

Let’s get a little technical for our Foodie Friday fun this week. No, not technical in the technology sense. It’s our food day, after all. I’ve written before about the Mother Sauces (there will be a quiz!) and for some reason one of them – Espagnole – popped back into my head yesterday while I was out doing an errand. Kind of weird, I know, but stay with me.

The other four mother sauces are ones I suspect any of you who cook use on a fairly regular basis. It’s hard to cook Italian food without a tomato sauce being involved. Bechamel is the basis for so many things, from mac and cheese to Moussaka. Hollandaise is used as is (mmm…eggs Benedict…).  I’d argue that Veloute is more widely used as well even if people don’t know what it is.

Espagnole, which is a brown sauce generally reduced several times and is meat based, is sort of the quiet fifth wheel.  It’s not glamorous.  It’s not easy to make and is generally not used as a sauce by itself.  It’s the basis for other sauces (hence a mother sauce) and its deep flavor, brought on by hours of cooking, is part of what distinguishes a professional kitchen from what the rest of us do in the home.  It needs a lot of attention – frequent skimming of fat, for example – to get it right.  Once you have it, however, many other wonderful things are possible.  Which, of course, is how I got on the subject and the business point.

I was thinking about a friend who is having some trouble in his job.   He’s quietly efficient and the firm is much better off with him there.  The word that popped into my head was…well you can guess.  We all know people who are the Espagnoles (is that a word?) of our businesses.  They are there in the background and they’re easy to overlook.  Without them, a lot of other things are impossible, or least don’t turn out as well (try a mushroom sauce made with a great Espagnole – you’ll know!).  Just as Espagnole is given equal billing as a mother sauce, we need to recognize the contributions of the quiet ones or the ones in the less glamorous jobs.   It’s their Umami that gives our businesses depth even if we have to build on their solid foundation to form the ultimate product.

Do you know someone like that – an Espagnole?

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August 8, 2013 · 9:36 am

Wising Up

Social media has been a fact of many people’s lives for at least 5 years now.  For many on the younger end of the age spectrum it’s been more like 10 years.  Social channels have gone from being something one did with a generally small circle of real life friends to being a central communications tool in many users’ lives.  We’ve morphed from “what ever happened to…” into way too much information about people who are only marginally important to us.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

One group of people who have learned to use social media exceptionally well in hiring are prospective employers and recruiters.  Unfortunately, what they often find does way more harm than good.  What’s funny and cute to your frat bothers can seem juvenile to anyone looking for a candidate they can groom for the next few years.

Maybe they’re wising up, however.  According to a new survey from FindLaw.com, the legal information website, more than a quarter of young social media users think that something they posted could come back to haunt them.

The survey found that 29 percent of users of Facebook and other social media between the ages of 18 and 34 have posted a photo, comment or other personal information that they fear could someday either cause a prospective employer to turn them down for a job, or a current employer to fire them if they were to see it. The survey covered Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and other popular social media.

A form of “day-after remorse” seems to be evident. Close to the same percentage of young social media users – 21 percent – say that they have removed or taken down a photo or other social media posting because they feared it could lead to repercussions with an employer.

Users are taking other precautions as well. The same survey found that 82 percent of young social media users say that they pay at least some attention to their privacy settings. Only six percent said that they pay no attention and only use the default settings when using social media.

We all know what can happen when businesses and brands aren’t careful about what they post.  Your personal brand needs to be handled the same way.  Assume everything you post will be seen (in the worst possible light, by the way) by prospective employers as well as your current boss.  Learn about your privacy settings and change them.   If you’d be embarrassed for your mom to see something, it probably doesn’t belong in a place where she can find it.

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