Healthy Pays Off For Everyone

Like most of you reading this blog, I am a small business owner.  I purchase health insurance for two full-time people, both over 60, both in general good health and no recurring illnesses.  That's the good news...I am healthy.  The bad news I pay over $27,000 per year, plus a $4,000 deductible.  And, I think this is a good rate.  I switched companies this year and saved almost $6,000!

I have a good plan, with lots of coverages, including pharmacy and dental.  But, the best thing my new carrier gave me was a wonderful chart on the benefits of keeping employees healthy.  This is right from the carrier, based on solid, current data.

"Studies have shown that as employees become healthier, they also become more productive, and companies with highly effective health and productivity programs have cost increases that are:

• 5 times lower for sick leave
• 4.5 time lower for long-term disability
• 4 times lower for short-term disability
• 3.5 times lower for general health coverage

"In addition,these companies yield 20% more revenue per employee, demonstrate a 16% higher market value and deliver 57% higher shareholder returns."(*)

You will still get increases year over year, but your increases will be a lot less if your employees stay healthy.  Sounds so basic, you use less insurance, your costs are lower.  But the key here is to keep employees healthy.  Here are some tips:

• Encourage all employees to get flu shots.
• Most insurance policies pay for an annual physical without the deductible... check your policy and explain how important it is to go, even if you feel fine today.
• Quit smoking, help your employees quit.
• Encourage healthy life styles---have fruit around the office for snacks, not candy
• If you have room, put a treadmill in the office somewhere and encourage people to use it during the day.  Don't make people work through lunch; in good weather encourage walking teams.
• When you go out for lunch, avoid fast food.  It only takes five minutes longer to eat a salad than a couple of hot dogs.
• Don't encourage drinking of alcohol. 
• Eat your vegetables.  (Sounds like your Mother, doesn't it?)
• Quit smoking (It's worth repeating)
• Get mammograms and colonoscopies when you are scheduled.  Don't put this off.
• Pay for a gym membership for all employees who have been with you for a year, provided they go at least twice a week.  You can get this info from the gym.
• And the toughest one of all, loose weight.  Take it from one who knows.

Healthy employees result in lower turnover, which reduces your costs significantly, and improves productivity.  You and the employee both win.  I know you have heard this before, but maybe, this time you will do something about it.

(*)  This data is from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.

Sometimes It Is Just Too Easy

My blog is published on Tuesdays at US Glass News Network.  I start thinking about it on Saturday, and usually have it roughed out by Sunday.  Occasionally, my mind goes blank, (cut out the wise cracks), and Tuesday morning I am frantically looking for a topic.

But this week is just too easy.  There was a story on MSNBC about a Barbecue restaurant that wouldn't buy a phone directory listing from a local publisher.  In apparent retaliation, the salesman for the publisher made up a category called 'Carcass Removal', and listed the restaurant.  Here's the story: 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44459855/ns/business-small_business/


This story was picked up by Jay Leno and used in his monologue, asking would you go to a Barbecue Rib restaurant listed in the carcass removal section of the phone book?

The restaurant owner found out about it when people called asking to take away dead animals from their farms.  Read the story, you will feel that the suit by the Restaurant against the phone book company sure sounds valid.

The moral of the story?  Check your local phone book for the headings:

• We break your glass
• Shower doors that leak
• Safety glass that isn't
• Windows broken
• Guaranteed heat-loss insulating glass
• Used glass--cleaned up somewhat
• Glass wholesalers--we sell glass with a hole in it
• Bullet proof windshields for your motorcycle
• Partially tempered glass
• Picture frames with smudges on the inside

Got any more?  Drop me a note at paulbaseball@msn.com.

Have You Ever Whelmed A Customer?

Most people have, and when they do, they only do it once.

By the way, what is a 'whelmed' anyway?  When you deal with a customer, you can overwhelm them with good service and quality.  They will return to you again and again.  Or you can underwhelm them, with poor value and weak service.  You won't have to remember their name for their next visit to your showroom.  A simple, single whelm is when you do neither under or overwhelm your customer.  When you are just a ghost in their memory where you didn't stand out either good or bad.   The customer, when they need glass again, will always try someone different, because they are looking to be overwhelmed.  No question about it.

The simple key to success in our glass business, or any business, is repeat customers.  And you earn them by consistently doing your over whelming thing.  Be on time, leave the job site cleaner than you found it, clean the glass, be polite and neat in their home, stay quiet in their retail store or office.  These are overwhelming things to do.

Underwhelm your customers by showing up late, not calling early enough when you have to reschedule or doing the minimum amount of work you can.

Think about it...do you want to do just this one job for this customer, or do you want the next job and a couple of referrals as well?

A glazier once whelmed his client
He was lazier and defiant
His work was so bad
His clients were mad
And never became compliant

Where Were You On 9/11

There have only been three news-significant points in my life.  You know, it's when you remember exactly what you were doing when you heard the news.  For me, it was the assasination of John F. Kennedy, the moment Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon, and when the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

There is no joke at the end of this blog or moral to this story.  It is just what happened to me and my best friend, Chuck Kaplanek, who owned our company, Floral Glass.

We were in Houston, Texas, on Monday, September 10th, visiting a major fabricator, looking at a software system they had installed.  We were flying to Newark, NJ, Tuesday morning, visiting our plant in E. Rutherford, NJ where we would meet Chuck's son, Corey, who also worked in the business, and would drive us back to our homes on Long Island that evening.

Our hosts in Houston were extremely cordial.  Our original plan was to stay in Houston that evening, have dinner with the salesman, and then leave Tuesday morning.  Since we weren't completely sold on the system, we finished early, went to the airport, and got a flight to Atlanta with a connection to Newark, landing around 1:15 in the morning.  We took a cab to the hotel near our plant in East Rutherford.  Chuck and I both commented that the driver was crazy.  He was from the Middle East, and spoke little English, but what he did speak was his anger with everything American.  We don't know what caused his outbursts, but the half-hour drive scared both of us.  This petty fact means nothing if not for the events the next morning.

We had set up for Cory to pick us up at 10:00 am, allowing us to catch some sleep.

At 9:00 am the phone rang.  It was Cory on the line, saying turn on the TV and look out the window if I was on the New York City side of the hotel.  I was.  I looked out just as the fireball on the second tower erupted.  I still didn't know what was going on, but knew that it was something horrible.

I got dressed quickly and met Chuck in the lobby.  We both knew what was happening by then and were both upset.  The plant is only a half-mile from the hotel and we got there around 9:50.  Ten minutes later, someone from the plant screamed out, "look at the city!"  By the time we turned we saw a huge dust cloud and plenty of smoke coming from the towers.  We didn't know it was now singular.

The plant shut down and we all watched a small TV in the lunch room.  I wandered outside to see the city just as the second tower fell.  I saw the big antenna slide down out of sight.  I knew thousands of people just died.  I couldn't speak. 

We called the plant together.   All of us held hands, owner, and glass cutters alike, and many said a prayer. 

Chuck and I got home about 10:00 that night, thanks to Cory driving north about two hours to find a bridge over the Hudson River that was open.  Watching the news all day was frightening.  Chuck and I should have been in the air that morning at 8:00 am.  I still think of that.

Over the next couple of days the stories came in.  There was a student in Elaine's class who lost an Uncle, a firefighter.  We knew other families that had lost members.  We knew many of the first responders who went into the area for the rescue and recovery.

I will never forget that day.  I will never forget we should have been in the air that morning.  I will never forget 9/11.

What's Next?

We had an earthquake.

We had a hurricane.

What could possibly be next?  Here are some options on the next one-in-a-million events that may hit us on the East Coast:

• Congress could agree on something significant.
• The glass industry will rebound because Donald Trump declares Buy American on all projects.
• One solitary Republican will say something nice about President Obama.
• All tempered glass will be delivered on time on September 1, 2011.
• One lonely Democrat will say something nice about Michele Bachmann.
• In the month of September, 2011, no glass fabricators will go out of business, be merged, or change their name.
• The Mets will play above .500 ball for September
• You won't receive a single IG unit with a sticker inside during September

So, just when you think something can't happen, it may.  Be ready for anything in your business.  Remember when you said you didn't want to do board-up work anymore?  

Never say never.  What goes around comes around.  The sun will be shining tomorrow. And it is time for me to go do something productive. 

The Solution That Will Work For Every Glass Shop

So, this past week was not a good one in terms of the US economy.  We are all thinking, "What's next?"  I hereby offer every glass shop the answer to increasing sales and making millions.  Honest.  This Will Work!  Don't you trust me?

I am sitting at my desk working on a project for a consulting customer, and need to print a 28 page document.  Hit the print button, 19 pages come out, and the printer stops.  Look at the display panel, it says insert a black cartridge to continue printing.  I do that, and the wondrous little Hewlitt Packard (HP) printer continues to spit out paper.  And the light bulb clicks on over my head.

The printer cost me $199, four years ago and has worked flawlessly.  On the back of the scratch pad, I figure I have spent over $1100 on ink and $300 on paper in the four years.  HP is a firm of geniuses.  Sell the printer cheap, make a fortune on the ink.

So here is what every glass shop should do.  Drop the price on every piece of glass you sell.  Flat glass or auto.  Just about give it away.  But, tell the customer that they must clean this glass with your brand of glass cleaner and paper towel.  Otherwise, the glass won't work properly, if at all.

You are now out of the glass business, you are in the cleaning supplies business for glass.  You'll have to build a drive-through window just to sell glass cleaner and paper towels.  You will be shipping cleaner and towels everywhere.  Price won't matter.  Charge what you want for the paper towels, because your customers will have to buy from you or their glass won't work!

HP's sales last year were about $133 Billion.  It may take you a couple of years to get to that level of sales of cleaner and towels, so start quickly.  You trust me, don't you?

What Would You Do With $228.9 Million?

This is more than pocket change.  Its even enough to cover the increasing cost of gasoline for at least a couple of years.  This was the amount won in the Powerball lottery last week.  By one person.  I called him the other day, and offered myself up for adoption, telling him I was eight years old and homeless, with a big dog named Molly protecting me.  When I sent him my picture I hoped he wouldn't notice my gray hair and beard.  He offered to adopt Molly.

So, you own a glass shop and considering the times, you make a living.  A fair living, but certainly not fantastic.  What would you do with $228.9 million?

Would you keep working?  Would you give up your business?  Would you invest in the business?  Your chances of the millions are remote.  But what would you do?

Do you plan for the future years of your life.  If you don't, shame on you.  I have seen so many people keep on working because they don't know how to slow down.  Then they work themselves to death.  Start planning your exit from the business world by the time you are forty.  It may be ten years out, or twenty, it doesn't matter.  Run your business with this in mind.  Look at potential hires as possibilities to run your business, or maybe buy it down the road.

Do you run your business by making all the decisions?  Or do you train your staff to make decisions in your absence?  Once you leave the business, will it be able to stay afloat without your input?  Now you are probably not going to win the lottery, but you may break a leg and be away from work for a month.  Will your business be viable without you watching every thing?  If not, start giving responsibilities to others.  Get rid of all of your repetitive duties, except signing checks, letting people learn from you now, before that leg is in a cast.

Get some hobbies now.  Start picking up an occasional book that you would like to read.  Give yourself some emotional releases from work.  You will feel better about work and yourself if you allow yourself a little relaxation.  Set certain times of certain days that your phone is turned off.  If the problems at business do not involve someone being injured, or something that will cause legal issues, the call can wait an hour while you are at your child's little league game or visiting an old friend.

Think of all the taxes you would have to pay if you won the big lottery.  And all the people like me bothering you.  You are better off without $228.9 million. Sure.