Sugartown, Louisiana might not be the first place you think of when trying to list the most likely places to gather sage business advice……but then, you don’t know my Daddy! As a honor graduate of the school of hard knocks, Daddy taught me things that were never mentioned in my MBA courses.
Dad Said: You have to charge your friends, because your enemies won’t do business with you!
Over the years I have run across many professionals who worked very hard, but just could not seem to get their businesses off the ground. When pressed, they admitted that a lot of their time was spent working for friends and family (including the most distant of cousins) for free or substantially reduced fees. They often moaned, “I can’t charge my best friend’s third cousin twice removed! That wouldn’t be nice!”
I would have fallen victim to this syndrome myself if my father had not made his position clear in the early days of my accounting practice. Mom told me that she was tired of preparing their taxes and that from that point forward I was going to be their CPA. Since my parents had paid for all of my education, I quickly volunteered to do all of their accounting work at no charge. Mom said no but I insisted. Then Daddy stepped in with his bombshell “If you don’t charge us, we’ll go to someone else!” I caved immediately and completely. I absolutely was NOT going to suffer the embarrassment of my parents using some other CPA! I charged them.
I did not recognize the significance of charging them until sometime later when a “friend” jokingly (?) suggested that I should not charge them since we were buddies. I was able to laughingly and TRUTHFULLY say “Buddy, I charge my own parents”. I had variations of that conversations more times than I care to admit. However, I never had to have it twice with the same person.
Just for the record, Daddy routinely griped about the bill.
Dad Said: The cheapest alternative is not always the least expensive!
My dad made his living with his hands. He worked in the maintenance department at the paper mill. He also farmed, which required him to keep up various pieces of equipment such as tractors, trucks, hay balers, and hay rakes not to mention building barns, buildings and fences. All of this required tools and lots of them. In the beginning Daddy had to purchase what his limited funds would allow. Many times he sacrificed hunks of flesh due to cheap tools he appropriately referred to as “knuckle busters”. As his financial circumstances improved the quality of tools he bought improved as well. Over time his expenditures on tools decreased because with the increased quality came increased longevity of the tools, not to mention reduced damage to his hands. Cheap is not always inexpensive! You don’t have to use excel to figure that out!
In my own experience I have seen many instances of people losing massive amounts of productive time due to inadequate equipment. During one busy tax season, I spent over an hour trying to make the firm’s antiquated and persnickety fax machine send a fax to a client. I still wonder how much productive time the firm lost that year because the partners didn’t want to spend $200 on a fax machine that worked. When I had my own firm, one of my staff members commented that the fax machine didn’t want to play nice! I had a new one in place the next day. A small expenditure kept us from wasting valuable time. It also improved the morale of that particular employee. Two big wins with one small purchase. It’s hard to beat that.
Dad said: If you can do something about the problem…do it, if you can’t…don’t worry about it
This admonition is pretty self explanatory, but is often hard to do. Many business owners and executives seem to get themselves all knotted up about situations they cannot change. Furthermore, they second guess themselves on decisions they have already made. What a waste of productive time and energy! In one of his books, business guru Brian Tracy urges his readers to write down the worst thing that can happen if a particular course of action is taken. Generally, the action of writing down the worst case scenario diminishes its perceived size. If the decision maker decides he can live with the worst possible outcome, then he is free to move forward without worry, therefore significantly reducing the likelihood of that bad outcome. So…write it down…cut it down… move on.