Keepin’ It Simple

Small Biz Book – Post #8

Dang. I know it’s not good to hate myself, or anything for that matter (except black licorice, it’s okay to hate that). So, I’ll be less dramatic and just say damn, sometimes I get so disappointed in Me. For example, I love running. Well, to be exact, I always drag my feet to hop on the treadmill & during the act, it kind of sucks, but afterwards I feel awesome. Every.Single.Time. Yet, I still let weeks pass by without running because I choose other activities first (namely: making money, mommin’, sleeping, hanging with my dog, cleaning something, binge watching a series, etc.). Even though running would take less than 20 minutes and make my entire day feel better, I still squirm my way out of it.

Writing is no different. I love it. I have a happy flow after I publish a piece; I feel proud and peaceful to have tapped into my passion. I just read all of my (yep, the entire 7) small business blog posts and I loved them. I cracked myself up, sounded intelligent and only had to edit two mistakes. Yet, it’s been over 3 months since I’ve written a post & nearly 2 years since I’ve written about businesses. Why am I like this?

Author of Badass Habits, Jen Sincero, would definitely say the answer to that question has something to do with habits and my lack of prioritizing. I actually have devoted much time to this blog in my head for a few months now. When I got up to pee during the night and couldn’t get back to sleep but didn’t have the energy to actually get up-up and on my many drives here and there, I’ve considered the topic for this post ad nauseum. However, once I woke for the day or reached my destination, screen time for my own personal stuff wasn’t in the cards. So, yeah to this! I’m back in the game of communicating with humans through written words instead of solely voice conversations with no delete button.

I am not going to go back and delete anything I’ve written, but I do need to take a moment to amend some of my words and then eat a few. In How in the Hell do you find Good Help?, I wrote that a smart business practice is to implement a try-out period for potential candidates. It saves time on the front and back end of the employment process. (What company hasn’t spent gobs of time training a new hire, just for the person to realize they hate the job 3 weeks in? Just ask my daughter’s last employer!) I began a position as an Accounts Payable (AP) partner for a Fortune 500 company after I published that post and was pleased to find this practice in place in the form of one 8 hour day at $10 an hour. It took me just a few months to discover that the purpose of the practice (efficiency) could be tilted, twisted, tied up and lost along the way. Corporations have this super power of taking even the most simple task (like getting the mail…I’m not kidding here) and making it, well, very NOT simple.

Common sense tells us that the person trying out for a full time job needs money, being that he or she doesn’t currently have a form of income. Needless to say, the candidate wants the money from that try-out day like now. I feel sorry for the precious souls…

At the corporation, the process of this “efficient” try out day has turned into the following:

The most current W-9 has to be filled out correctly by the candidate (emphasis on that last word there). As of the time of this writing, the W-9 from October 2018 is the one to use, even though it looks just like the one from 2017-and you never know when an updated one is going to be released. The form must be clear, not a little faded, and all lines have to be filled out. It has to be signed. It has to be dated. The correct address must be used or that check isn’t showing up for half a year.
A “check request form” must also be completed by a company employee. This also has to have all lines filled out. I’m reminded of the mantra I used to tell my first graders: “leave no lines blank”. As straight-forward as that directive is, some adults must have missed a lot of test days in school.
The information from these two forms are entered electronically which then gets sent & approved by a General Manager (GM) and then sent on up to the corporate Vendor office.
After 1 to 10 days (depending on who is out of the office on PTO or Covid-related symptoms) the corporate Vendor office assigns a vendor # to the individual, which is then sent back to the location AP partner and written on the hardcopies.
The actual papers then get stamped and approved by the GM (yes, the same person from step 3).
These papers are scanned and sent up to the corporate AP partner.
This person may or may not enter the invoice correctly. If done correctly, our company pays these bills at a NET 30. If there are any mistakes along the way, months can (and have) passed for someone to receive an $80 check.

The end result of all of the red tape is more time being spent on near daily calls from the candidate, who may or may not have been hired, about their money. This process created the need for an addendum to What NOT to Do #2, concerning S.O.P.s and Procedures:

Small Biz What NOT to Do #8: Do not lose focus of the reason a procedure was initially created & don’t hesitate to update a practice that is no longer working.

When I job-shared a teaching position, my co-teacher and I would frequently remind ourselves to keep it simple. In all honesty, we would say “Keep It Simple Stupid” (K.I.S.S.) just because it was easy to remember & I am fond of Prince’s music. For some reason we would turn projects into some big, hairy thing. If we backed up for a second, we would see we had gotten ahead of ourselves. K.I.S.S. is What NOT to Do #8 in a positive light, but without the last S so there’s no derogatory self-put downs that I was trying to avoid at the beginning of this blog. So, tryout days = good, but consider an expense account that can pay this person, good or bad, on the spot and everyone can move along with their lives. (Namely, the AP person in the office, a.k.a. Me.)

And now on to those words I have to eat. I once said that I was “99% sure I didn’t want to run my own business.” I guess I left that 1% up for grabs since I’ve come to know myself over the last 45 trips around the sun. I want to be my own boss, but not necessarily someone else’s, and delegating is still not one of my strong points. But, it’s come to the point that the next natural step in my life is to cut the red tape frustration in my life, set my own schedule and make more money. (Duh, right?) I’ve already had freak out moments about my decision, but have consistently had confirmations about taking the Leap of Faith. I’ve also already almost broken my F Word cardinal rule and paid Family and Friends for help (which has panned out zero times, by the way).

I’m taking the Keep it Simple approach with this endeavor. I am passionate about a craft that I offer as a service. People that need the service pay me to complete the service, because they can’t do it or despise doing it or don’t have time to do it. I like money, so I complete the craft as quickly as possible while not diminishing the quality of the service. And repeat. For the record, I still want to publish a book or a few and live south of Indiana. The path of least resistance to get from here to there is painting, running, writing, meditating – maintaining my happy on the way to happy.

#9 Accepting $ ~ 6/27/22

#7 Time to Train ~ 4/18/20

#6 Spending $ ~ 11/28/19

#5 Make Them Stick ~ 9/2/19

#4 How in the Hell do you find Good Help? ~ 7/10/19

#3 The F Words in Business ~ 7/4/19

#2 From Problems to Procedures ~ 6/28/19

#1 Delegate, Dammit! ~ 6/21/19

Introduction ~ 6/17/19