How many of you have worked for your friends? If not friends, at least close acquaintances? How odd is it to do the work and then sit around and wonder if they are going to compensate you? We have all been through it. You sit there and begin to think:

• Do they value me less because I am a friend?
• Do they think that because we are friends that they don’t need to compensate me?
• Do they feel odd about offering compensation?
• Do you feel odd about asking for compensation?
• Does your friend even think your abilities were worth compensating?
• Does your friend think that your abilities are so stellar that they can’t afford to compensate you?
• Does your friend think that because you are doing well financially that you don’t need compensation?

You can see that this list can go on and on. Let me help you out with this dilemma. First let me squash some misconceptions. If you provide a service or product of value, you deserve to be compensated. This is regardless of who it is. And just because you are doing well financially does not mean that you do not deserve or require compensation. That is not for the other person to decide.

So, how do you avoid this pitfall? Discuss it upfront. If you have a friend or acquaintance that asks you to do a service for them, explain your rates up front. You should do this even if you are trading services with each other. There should be a value amount attached to it. If your friend gets offended, they weren’t your friend. They would not expect other people to do it for nothing. why would they ask you to do it for nothing. If anything, it should be reversed. Your friend cares for and values you so much that they want to pay you more than fair wages because they know that you will go above and beyond for them. If you do not negotiate things up front, it will put a strain on your relationship. Each time that I have neglected to follow these words of advice I have regretted it and journeyed down the path of “what ifs.”

By the same token, if you ask a friend to do a service, ask them what their rate is. If they say something like, “don’t worry about it.” Simply respond that you would pay a complete stranger for this service and the least you could do was pay your own friend. Compensation between friends is a show of respect for their value. Neglect to compensate and you devalue their contributions.

Remember, compensation does not have to be monetary. I have traded for meals, repairs, professional services and more. But I always attach a value to what they provide and do the same in return. Compensate your friends and allow them to compensate you. You will have a stronger friendship. Don’t heed these words and you will surely end up on the “what if” path of life.

This week’s motivational phrase is:

If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd – Edward de Bono

I have stated this before and will reiterate it again, do not wait for opportunity to find you. Seek out opportunity on your own. If you do not find it, then create your own opportunity or be relegated to join the rest of the sheep in the crowd.

Throughout my years as an entrepreneur and businessman (there are differences), I have noticed two things that can easily make your life as an entrepreneur easier. If you are just starting your career as an entrepreneur, follow these two tips and your life will be much easier. If you have been an entrepreneur for a while and still do not abide by these tips, don’t fret. You can change. You have the ability. I know you do simply because that is one things entrepreneurs do. They enact change. The more hardened may just take a little longer.

The first one is to cover your personal expenses. I know that this may sound like an obvious point. But, truly many entrepreneurs do not follow this. You will hear other experts tell you to “pay yourself first.” That if you pay yourself first that you will somehow be able to pay all others. Or to pay yourself first because you are the most important person in the equation. I am not disputing either of these or the “pay yourself first” mentality. I find it to be valid. My perception of it is to cover your personal monthly expenses first. If you allocate enough revenue to you personally to cover your personal basic necessities, you will have a big load withdrawn from your shoulders. When you are worrying about paying your own bills, you do not perform at 100%. This only compounds your problem. You are short on covering your own bills and your stress causes you to under-perform at a time when you need to perform at your best. This is a recipe for a melt down. Simply add your monthly expenses up plus 10% and adjust your business to be able to perform at a level to generate this level of revenue for you. The 10% is for you to enjoy. Working all the time without taking time to enjoy life will lead to you hating your business. Do not give yourself pay raises until your expenses are covered and all long term debt is paid off.

The second tip is to only chase one rabbit. I am sure you have heard this phrase many different ways: too many irons in the fire, concentrate on one thing at a time, etc. But my preferred version is borrowed from a friend of mine (Dan Vega from Blue Star Business Institute). He says, “if you chase two rabbits you won’t catch any.” This is so true. Take it from a rabbit chaser extraordinaire. Chasing multiple rabbits normally comes in one of two forms. Either you try to add as many products and/or services as you can to your business or you strive after multiple opportunities at once (more than one venture). First of all, adding every service and/or product to your list of offerings will not generally bring you in more revenue. You are competing with too many other businesses that offer the same or similar product. Also, once you start down that path you begin to have product or service creep.

For example, let’s say that you own an automotive repair shop. You repair the mechanical parts of cars. You may be tempted to begin offering radios and cd players for sale. Then you will offer the installation. After that you will begin to offer repair of sound systems. People may ask you to begin to sell their music. Now you have an automotive repair, car stereo installation, sales and repair, music store. You are now competing with everyone from the other automotive repair places to anyone who sells car radios, repairs car radios, installs car radios, and sells music. Instead, you should have gone the other way. Rather than run an automotive repair shop, narrow the focus to what you are best at performing quickly. Hopefully this will translate into your highest profit item or service. Instead of repairing the whole car, specialize in brakes and exhaust. You just narrowed your competition tremendously. Just don’t take it overboard and only repair the front brakes on 1960 Ford Galaxies. Unless that is the only car in your town, that is too narrow.

It takes a certain talent to be able to juggle multiple entities or manage multiple, unrelated ventures at once. You may have a business with a tight focus, your personal expenses are covered and you are whacking away at your long term debt. Others will see your success and the opportunities will begin to flood in. You will be offered to be partners in this business or that business or a network marketing opportunity or some other business venture. Do not proceed unless your current business is on auto-pilot. This means you can walk away anytime you want and the business will maintain the same or higher revenue stream and profitability level. If you can’t do this, do not venture. I learned this the hard way. I was partners in seven different startups and involved in 4 other unrelated ventures. I was mediocre at them all at best. I was spread too thin. So, I made the hard decision that most entrepreneurs don’t want to make. I turned down all of the ventures, sold off my portion in some of the companies, put others in an inactive state and actively worked on one because one was already on auto-pilot. You see, most entrepreneurs don’t want to turn down an opportunity for fear of missing out our not having opportunity return. The fear is unfounded. If your ship does not come in, swim out to it. You can make your own opportunity and you can do it in your own company. I am not advocating not being involved in other ventures, just make sure the one you are working on is on auto-pilot before you do.

That’s it. It is truly that simple of a concept. They are easy to write, easy to understand and easy to do if you have not already been set in your ways. If you have been set in your ways, some of you are probably thinking, “that’s impossible” or “he doesn’t know me and what I can do.” It is possible and I know human nature. No matter how set in your ways you are or what habits you have formed, you can change your entrepreneurial life dramatically by following these two simple tips. If you need assistance, contact me. I’ll help you correct your course.

This week’s motivational phrase is:

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own. You can’t clear your own fields while you’re counting the rocks on your neighbor’s farm – Cicero.

Truly, you cannot begin to clean up your own company or even your own life, for that matter, when you are constantly and consistently concentrating on the faults in the lives of all of those around you. Work on your own life and fix your own path before concentrating on the lives and paths of others, whether to be helpful or hurtful. How can you cast dispersions when you have fault in yourself? How can you help others when you do not even help yourself? Concentrate on you, for you are your most valuable asset from which you can see the greatest and longest return.

After writing the post “The Backwards Bookstore” I contacted both Borders and Barnes & Noble. In my correspondence I simply referred them to the post to allow them to draw their own conclusions. their responses were pretty much as I predicted. Here is the response I received from Barnes and Noble:

Dear Member,

Thank you for inquiring about your Barnes & Noble Membership. We’ve changed our communication policy to further strengthen the privacy and security needs of our customers.

To respond to your request, we must ask you to reply to this email with all of the following information:

-Member name
-Member mailing address
-Barnes & Noble Membership number

If you do not have your Membership number available, please provide one of the following:

-Phone number
-Last four digits of the credit card #
-Last store in which your Membership was used.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,

Diane
Customer Service Representative
Barnes and Noble Membership Services

I received a form letter prior to this one stating the usual “thank you for contacting us.” then I received the above which completely side stepped any of my points or commentary. Instead, they concentrated on the word membership and would not engage in correspondence unless I provided them with additional details. Contrast the above response with the one I received from Borders:

Dear Chase,

Thank you for your wonderful comments praising the staff of our Springfield – Borders store. Your comments have been forwarded to the General Manager for the store and the District Manager for the area, respectively. They will have the pleasure of congratulating the store staff for truly going the extra mile.

We are always excited to hear when a customer has had a particularly positive experience in one of our stores – this is the kind of feedback that keeps everyone striving to do their best. Customer service is one of our top priorities and we are happy to hear that we have employees who seem to more than exemplify the term!

Once again, thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We look forward to seeing you at one of our Borders locations soon!

Sincerely,
Ashley
Borders Customer Care
http://www.borders.com

As you can see, they used my first name and you can tell that they read the entire post. Companies that truly care about client service go to these lengths. I applaud Borders for their efforts and this simply reinforces the statements made in my previous post as well as my subsequent decision to patronize Borders over Barnes & Noble.