Category: Tips

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Independent Contractors Are Not Employees – Make Sure You Differentiate Them

My firm has one employee and eight independent contractors. It is important for your business just like mine, that you clearly differentiate how you work with, manage, and treat each separate group of team members.

The IRS has very specific guidelines on when an Independent Contractor is really an employee. If you are hoping that a contract stating that they are an Independent Contractor is all you need, guess again. I work with all types of Independent Contractors, those that are super organized and are working with several clients and I just happen to be one of their customers, and others that seem so needy and inexperienced that I have to be really careful to not cross the line and provide support services that may be misconstrued as potentially treating them really as an employee.

The bottom-line is that an Independent Contractor is a business entity that you have hired for a project. They need to be totally self sufficient and running their own processes and services where you are just one customer in their queue.

I have to say from my experience that there are plenty of Independent Contractors out there in my industry who don’t get that, they really want to be treated like employees. As a business owner you have to “man up” and make Independent Contractors be what they are supposed to be – independent – by not slipping into providing support or training which may get YOU into trouble just by being nice.

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Dealing with Negative Reviews in a Good Way

Anyone who has been in business for a while has certainly had a bad review at some point or another. The review may have been warranted or may have been unfair. What really doesn’t matter is if the review is true, but how you handle it.

Here are two excellent articles to check out for two different ways to handle negative reviews:

The Startling Secret to Getting Positive Reviews for Your Business

Three Tips to Handle Online Negative Publicity

Both articles are easy and fast reading. Here are my tips to add to the topic:

  1. Don’t respond immediately to a review when you are upset or angry. This will do more harm than good.
  2. Think about if the review has some truth. Do you need to change what you are doing to be better?
  3. Decide if you have to respond at all. This is a hard one, sometimes to rise graciously above a bad review is the best path and in other cases to address it head-on is better. Chat with some other business owners you trust to help you decide based on your situation and the review.

Actively start working on a regular basis to get good reviews and post them on your website. You want to make sure that there is a balance of reviews about your business online. Posting good reviews on your website is a great way to start.

I never recommend creating fake reviews. This can get you in more trouble than you need. If you are having trouble getting reviews, try a third party service who will contact your customers for you and even help them write the review about your firm.

If you do get a negative review, address, deal with it, and put it behind you. It is important to realize that you will not be able to please or service every person to their own satisfaction over the years you are in business. Do the best you can, and keep a mind-set of excellence in all you do.

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Why Use Go To My PC When You Can Use Live Mesh

On my last vacation, I decided to try Go To My PC as a way to keep on top of my email churn. It is not uncommon for me to have over 1,400 emails on my return from a week’s vacation. I ran www.GoToMyPC.com through its paces and actually liked the product. The problem was I could not rationalize spending $10 a month when I only needed several week’s access a year.

After research, I found that there was a way for me to access my PC at home when I travel that’s free! It’s called Windows Live Mesh. I already used Live Mesh to sync files on my laptop and other computers, but did not realize that Live Mesh also allows me to access my home computer while traveling.

Here’s how you set it up.

  1. Get Windows Live Mesh here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-live/essentials-home?SignedIn=1 You’ll get it as part of the Windows Live Essentials.
  2. Install Live Essentials on your desktop and your laptop.
  3. Following the instructions in Mesh, sync the two computers as you desire. For me, I simply sync one folder and sync my favorites in Internet Explorer.
  4. When you travel turn on remote access which is on the top of the page on the left on the computer you want to access remotely.
  5. When you travel access over the Internet your Live Mesh account and click to access your previously set up computer.

That’s it, you’ll log in as if you are in a remote desktop setting. Have full access to all programs on your home PC. You’ll just need to make sure that your home PC is on, that’s all.

Easy, simple to set up, and best of all it’s free!

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What Social Media is NOT

My firm is actively involved in social media, not only for my own business, but as a content provider. From my experience I have found that clients typically misunderstand the purpose and have different expectations about using social media to promote their business.

Social Media is NOT:

  1. A platform for you to have every status update be a commercial about your services and products.
  2. One sided and all about you the business.
  3. Where you dominate and set the conversation.
  4. A sales lead generation platform.
  5. An after thought where you may post or update your profiles once a week or once a month.
  6. A self propelling site. Build it and they will join should not be your mantra.

Social Media IS:

  1. A great information exchange opportunity.
  2. Where you can soft-sell your services once you have established credibility.
  3. Enjoyable due to the richness of interaction with followers and fans.
  4. Can bring you business and networking opportunities.
  5. Consider it a public relations and branding tool.
  6. A marketing endeavor that should have a goal and purpose in your overall plan.
  7. Important as a part of your total online exposure.

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