Business Coaching

Steven Slater, the now famous, ex-Jet Blue steward.

By now we’ve all heard of Steven Slater. For those of you who might have been out of the country or in a coma last week, Slater was the excitable Jet Blue flight attendant who flipped out after getting into a verbal altercation with a passenger following a flight from Pittsburgh to New York last week.

The story of Slater’s exit from the plane and the Jet Blue payroll has been rehashed over and over again, but it’s the aftermath that makes the story so interesting.

Since the incident Slater has become a star. He has a fan page on Facebook with nearly 200,000 fans and he is reportedly in negotiations for his own television show. The reported premise is that Slater will help people find unique ways to quit their jobs.

So what is it that has made Slater a star and what does the prevalent attitude surrounding the incident say about our society as a whole and for small businesses in general?

Slater, it seems, has struck a chord because Americans are tired of feeling like they have no control over their lives and, especially, their jobs. The problem economy that has plagued the United States for the last few years has played a big role in creating a populace that is nervous and unsure about the future.

When you couple that uncertainty with the fact that many employees have had to take on extra roles in their organization thanks to cutbacks, which leads to higher stress levels, less personal time and diminishing rewards, you have a recipe for disaster. The struggling economy has seemingly created a generation of American workers that are angry, and take out that anger on their employers through their customers.

Slater might have been upset with a woman who put too many bags in the overhead bin, but if that particular incident ever actually happened seems to be open for debate. Slater might have just had a bad day and made up the incident or they may have been another straw that broke his back.

No matter what the reason, his tirade could’ve hurt only his employer and himself. The anonymous woman he had the altercation with may or may not exist, but if anyone had been hurt, both Slater and Jet Blue would have been liable, with Jet Blue holding most of the liability.

Tension in the workplace is high these days and employees are not always equipped to deal with that tension productively. It’s actually something of a surprise that more Steven Slater type incidents don’t happen, considering the level of stress that most employees have to deal with and the lack of interest many businesses have shown in dealing with that stress and creating a tension-free environment in the workplace.

How do you ensure that your employees don’t flip out on your customers? What steps do you take to keep your organization as tension-free as possible?

Would you choose passion over a steady paycheck?

On Friday, we wrote about how hiring for jobs is up, but only in terms of temp jobs.

A whole other crop of people are saying to themselves, “Hey, if I can’t get a job doing what I love, I’m going to do just that, instead of wasting away and bouncing from temp job to temp job.”

With the unemployment rate apparently stuck at or near double digits, more people seem to be choosing a passion over a steady paycheck. Rather than waiting for companies to open up their payrolls, these people are taking matters into their own hands and defining their own jobs, going online to find each other, leverage each other’s capabilities and services, and learn faster by working together.

While this is a big risk, but these people realize that they’ll be far happier if they can find something they love doing and figure out creative ways to make a living from it. Focusing on work that offers greater meaning makes it easier to withstand the perils and roadblocks they will face as they leave the corporate fold.

Read the whole article over at Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Some temp jobs are better than others.

Good news! More U.S. companies are hiring.

Bad news: Many of these positions companies are hiring for are temporary.

While this isn’t uncommon for an economy in the early stages of recovery, it is frustrating not only to those looking for work, but also companies.

According to an article in this week’s Bloomberg BusinessWeek, iring of temp workers had been rising each month since October 2009, until they dipped in July by 5,600, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. From October to January, employees at staffing agencies like Manpower and Robert Half

Given the depth of the recession and concerns about a double-dip, companies are seeking more proof of customer demand before doing much permanent hiring. In a robust economy, the acceleration in orders at GE Transportation could have led to hiring full-time workers, says Stephan Koller, the company’s spokesman. Proof of sustained demand hasn’t yet appeared.

But like most things are moving in this recession, it will most likely be a long ways away until lower unemployment stats. The jobless rate won’t budge from 9.6 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. While growth in gross domestic product of about 3 percent is widely expected for 2010, Oppenheimer Funds corporate economist Brian Levitt says it would take at least 4 percent to make a dent in the unemployment rate.

Read more from the full article here.

BP CEO Tony Hayward is getting serious flack for not handling BP's situation well.

The BP oil spill is finally under control. The well is capped and oil is no longer gushing into the gulf. In fact, most of the oil has been cleaned up and most beaches on the gulf coast are clean and open for business.

Unfortunately, the beaches are too open. So open they are virtually empty and with just a few weeks left before summer travel season ends, businesses are struggling to make ends meet.

The extensive media coverage has been a double edged sword for residents of the gulf coast. The attention has ensured that BP worked as quickly and efficiently as possible in cleaning up the spill. On the other hand, all of that attention has kept tourists away, as most assumed that the beaches were virtually destroyed by the spill.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sure, there are tarballs, but for the most part, the cleanup has gone well and beaches all over the gulf coast look as pristine as they ever have. But there aren’t any tourists to enjoy those beaches.

In early spring, it looked like the area was poised for a big summer. But after the spill, things went south very quickly.

For example, in May and June, the Inn on Destin Harbor lost $102,000 worth of reservations, and it didn’t get better in July. The Inn usually expects 90% occupancy in July, but this year, the occupancy was off by over 30% and they’ve had to cut their prices to fill rooms.

That is the story for businesses throughout the gulf coast, which, like most tourism communities, rely on seasonal visitors to make enough money to get through the rest of the year.

The BP spill and its aftermath should serve as a wakeup call to communities that rely on tourism throughout the United States.

Communities and businesses that count on tourists need to find different streams of revenue and seek ways to draw visitors no matter what happens.

What can your community take ensure you aren’t adversely affected by the forces of nature? What steps have you taken so your business can weather adversity?

A quick way to an SEO ranking is fresh, updated content on your website.

Did you know a website won’t even show up in searches unless there are at least 10 pages on it?

Not many people do. This is why, with search engine optimization, it’s important to put content up on your website, update it fairly often, and, if you’re trying to build an SEO ranking quick, do it quick!

But how?

ActionCOACH’s Social Media blog has some quick and easy tips. Read more here.

GameStop is trying to stay in the video game market by using social media.

Video games are no longer individual time killers, they are social media drivers. People don’t buy games at the store and play them alone or with friends sitting next to them on the couch, the trend now is to play online with thousands of opponents available.

Because of this change in the way games are played, the model for selling video games has also changed. The days of the game store, like GameStop is passing as gamers choose the ease of downloads over the visit to a brick and mortar shop. So what does this trend signal for small businesses as a whole in the ever growing social media age?

The most important thing for any business to remember is to stay on top of trends and take advantage of new opportunities that come your way. How is GameStop trying to fight off the competition in an industry built on trends?

GameStop has been an industry leader in game sales over the years for a number of reasons, one of the most important being its used game program, which allows gamers cash or store credit for old games to use toward the purchase of other games.

One of GameStop’s biggest competitors, Best Buy, recently instituted its own used game program, but took it one step farther by issuing gift cards that can be used in any Best Buy store toward any item, not just games or gaming consoles. Game developers are also challenging stores by expanding their digital content, providing add-ons or expansion packs to keep their games relevant and new so people won’t want to return them.

But the crowded used game market is not the only challenge facing GameStop. The very nature of video games is changing.

Social platforms like Facebook have their own games, while just using some social media platforms like FourSquare feel like a game by itself.

These factors led to sales of games for PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 and popular handheld consoles falling 15% to $531 million in June, another reason companies like GameStop are feeling the pinch.

Gamestop hopes old-fashioned methods can keep them in the black. “We are a specialty retailer that focuses on gaming,” senior vice-president for merchandising Bob Mackenzie told Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “people really value coming in and talking to our associates.” But is that enough to keep GameStop afloat?

Today, buying a game is as easy as downloading it from the comfort of your living room and there are more kinds of games than ever before. Buying habits that have been set for years are changing. Can GameStop use old-fashioned customer service and value to keep their business strong? How can your business stay ahead of trends and turn challenges into opportunities?

WePay cofounders went after their dreams of starting a start-up.

If you’re a recent college grad with

Rich Aberman and Bill Clerico faced a tough decision as they approached the end of their senior year at Boston College. Start an innovative online-payment processing company, or start a new job and grad school?

They decided to take the latter option –Aberman set out for law school at New York University and Clerico took a job as an investment banker at Jefferies — and they promised themselves that, one day, they’d start their business. But they soon saw themselves getting sucked into their day jobs, with little time left to “really start on” their entrepreneurial ambitions.

“It only gets harder to start a company as time goes on,” Aberman, 25, told Entrepreneur.com. “As you get used to a salary, you start getting comfortable with a certain lifestyle, which becomes hard to leave for the uncertainty of being an entrepreneur.”

WePay launched March 30, which allows individuals and groups all over the world to establish an account and collect money in a variety of ways–from paper checks to credit cards–and then use a debit card to spend the money in the account. They already have several thousand users, ranging from sports teams to fraternities to groups of roommates managing rent and utilities. WePay collects transaction fees ranging from 50 cents for bank account payments to 3.5 percent of credit-card payments for each payment received; outgoing transactions are free.

Aberman and Clerico were able to get their college business idea back on track after a minor detour, but they strongly recommend starting right out of college.

“You have the degree under your belt, and you haven’t tied yourself into a particular lifestyle or career path,” Aberman says. “If you take a risk, and it fails, the worst that happens is that you have a unique experience that you can use as an impressive factor to get you into graduate school or to rock a job interview.”

Adds Clerico, “If you wait until you work for a few years or go to graduate school, you are just piling on reasons not to take the risk, and you reduce the chances that you ever will.”

What do you experienced entrepreneurs out there think…is it better to get started with a start-up sooner rather than later?

Mark Schmelder of Cimbrian, a marketing technology company in Pennsylvania, was experiencing rapid growth, but the company was unable to handle the growth because it lacked organization. Since working with ActionCOACH Jeff Witmer, the business has become more streamlined. Cimbrian has increased its earning ability and profitability. Working with an ActionCOACH has allowed Mark to find the perfect balance between his business and personal life — just watch the testimonial above!

This past year has been rough on small businesses.

Recently, it seemed like economically, things might be looking up for small business…but we may have spoken too soon.

It’s no secret that times are tough for small businesses but the semi- annual mid-year economic report from the National Small Business Association released at the end of July show just how difficult this year has been.

The report, which surveyed 400 small business owners in varying fields found that only 11% have hired workers in the past year, 25% have cut jobs and 41% say they are unable to secure adequate financing.

These numbers are obviously not very promising for our economy when it comes to job creation. It takes a 5% increase in GDP to create enough jobs to lower unemployment by just one percentage point.

“Given the direct correlation between access to capital and job growth, unless small-business owners are able to secure financing, we will continue to see high unemployment,” Todd McCracken, President of the NSBA said.

Other numbers were equally bleak. Almost three quarters of respondents said economic uncertainty was their top concern, up from 64% in December. Almost half, 44% don’t expect any growth opportunities in the coming year and 45% believe the economy is worse now than it was a year ago. Just 59% of those who responded felt confident about the future of their business, down from 61% in December.

But all was not bad — only 25% predicted decreases in revenue for the next 12 months, down from 31% in December. There were also more businesses reporting higher revenue since the last survey in December, 26% this month, compared with 22% at the end of last year.

To view the National Small Business Association survey, click here: http://nsba.biz/

Do you see these numbers reflected in your business? Are things turning for the better or are we headed for a double-dip recession? Tell us what you think.

The "Will it Blend?" series is entertaining and promotes BlendTec.

…when it comes to social media marketing.

Debate might still be going on as to whether CEOs should be fluent in social media or not, but there’s a new platform CEOs might be taking advantage of now: web video.

Video is a great tool to leverage to promote business — it’s engaging, it gives the chance for CEOs to talk and sell their business, and besides being informative, the most successful web videos are fun and entertaining. For example, Tom Dickson, founder and CEO of BlendTec, has a popular YouTube series, “Will it Blend?” where he puts any imaginable product, including an iPhone 4 and vuvuzela, into a BlendTec blender to see if…you guessed it: if it blends.

See more CEOs who are leveraging web videos here.