There is nothing worse than paying an employee to Loose Business for you!

As crazy as this sounds it happens all the time, I would have to assume without the business owners knowledge. I guarantee at least 90% of my readers employee someone whose performance, behavior, personality, attitude or hygiene is costing them business.

The responsibility lies squarly on the shoulders of leadership. Management must know how its employees are impacting business for practical reasons like evaluations, training, pay raises, bonuses, benchmarking and of course termination.

The surest way to prevent employing someone who is a risk to offend your client base is to perform “on the job” type interviews. Once you get down to your short list of potential new staff - use their services yourself as if you were a client.

If you are hiring a new dog walker or groomer - take your own beloved pet to the potential new hire. Would you pay for her services? Do you feel like your pet is safe with this potential new employee. How comfortable was the dog? Notice if you felt at ease or anxious. Of course evaluate the actual job performance. How detailed was she? Did she check in with you to get feedback on the job as she was working with your dog?

Let some of your most trusted and even some of your toughest clients do the same. How do they rate your potential new employee?

I am writing this article after spending several hundred dollars at one of my favorite spa’s - and walking away completely disillusioned. If I were the kind of customer, like most of your customers, who walks away without complaining - you may never see me again and you would never even know why you lost my business.

If you don’t have a system in place to notice my spending has significantly dropped off you might not even know you’ve lost me as a customer because I might pop in now and again for an occasional quick product or service.

If you had a follow up system in place to elicit my feedback on the service of this new employee you very well might have heard back that I was horrified that the nail technician had dirt under her nails.

As it stands now, five days after my spa service, I am thinking of all the reasons I never want to go back to that spa…and the spa owner has no idea and probably never will.

Start pre-hiring practices as I described above and put systems in place to connect with your clients after their service and at regular intervals. Always monitor your clients monthly spend and track for patterns so that you know immediately if there are irregular spending habits.

These irregularities should be a trigger to contact your client and check for the causes. It may not be a problem with your services or staff. You may find that your clients’ needs have changed and you discover new opportunities to service your clients. Ways the customer might never have imagined and therefor, never looked to you for her pet care needs,

Monitoring your staff has extra benefits to the organization. When you manage under performing employees it shows the entire staff you value quality work. Leaving a poor employee to enjoy the same pay and benefits as your best employees de-values the great employees.

Manage your new hires as if you were the toughest client this employee would face. If you don’t, you may be paying your new staff to drive away business!

Michael said it himself, this topic is his most controversial – I can see why. His super secret, how I accomplished all of my success in life, time management strategy – taking 2 minute showers…will revolutionalize your life and your business!

Now, that is said a bit tongue in cheek. Michael doesn’t claim that the 2 minute shower is the reason for his success and he certainly makes a good point for the value of time management. By the time his article is complete and the time saved using his strategies is added up – there is an additional 589 hours each year.

Sounds great…but, I suspect the life of a multi-billionaire (you are a multi-billionaire aren’t you Michael?) is quite different than the life of most small business owners. Places we can save significant amounts of time differ greatly from what Michael has left to tweak in his hectic schedule.

Rather than blindly following the arbitrary two minute shower rule (Ladies – I can almost guarantee you that Michael is not including shaving time in that 2 minutes. If he is, I would hate to be nuzzling that knicked up face) – look for areas in your life where you have significant time saving opportunities.

We need to find the biggest time wasters in our own lives. Everyone has to look at themselves first. You will be making a very big mistake by simply taking the advice Michael offers without considering the impact of other, more likely time wasters first.

For example, while managing our phone and e-mail time makes sense for everyone of us…most of us don’t need to manage so much when we reply to email as Michael suggest, although I agree it is a great strategy if you are already that advanced in your time management.

Most small business owners have bigger time wasters than when and how long it takes them to reply to their e-mails. Most don’t have the 100’s or even 1000’s of business related e-mails requiring our personal response like he does.

More often we find dog business owners might spend 90 minutes a day on e-mail – but it is not productive to begin with. Much of the time is spent on non-business related tasks such as forwarding jokes.

To my shock and dismay, many of my clients and readers admit they don’t even use e-mail marketing in their businesses.

Some of you need to spend MORE time on e-mail!

If you are like so many people who waste hours every day on e-mail chatting with friends, forwarding jokes or following the latest get rich strategy that takes us away from our goals (but helps fulfill someone else’s goals who knows how to use e-mail marketing) you can afford to change the way you spend your e-mail time.

And I am certain Michael doesn’t waste time watching hours of television or chit chatting, okay, I really mean gossiping with friends, neighbors, vendors and colleagues.

We have plenty of places in our personal and business lives to save time and get more structure. Just don’t allow an arbitrary time limit, like a two minute shower, to push you into a schedule that creates stress and a rushed feeling to your day.

Find the low hanging fruit of time management in your own schedule. If you don’t know where those opportunities exist, may I suggest you keep a journal of your daily activities.

You may be shocked at the time you are wasting on mind numbing activities like television watching. If you aren’t shocked – maybe it would serve you to add the time up and figure your monthly or annual total time spent on your greatest time intensive activities.

If you are like most of my clients and you ever have the thought, “there isn’t enough time to get everything done” you will definitely be served by examining how you spend your time.

We talk a lot about becoming the CEO of your business rather than the manager here at Dog Business Daily. This is the first critical step to take to make the move.

If you are the person opening the doors at your doggy day care or standing behind the register - you can definitely find better ways to spend your time. Marketing your business is far more productive and a wiser investment in time that running the cash register.

If you are already very productive and good at delegating – you should still make it a regular habit to look at your activities and find ways to create more time.

I suspect regular examination of his time is the only reason Michael ever came to the realization that he could take a 2 minute shower. It wasn’t foremost in his mind – it was through deliberate consideration and examination.

Make sure your actions and activities are serving your life’s purpose. When they are, even a 30 minute shower can be an investment in yourself and your business. I personally find my shower a source of inspiration.

If I am able to quiet my mind – I will get some of my greatest ideas while showering. I do admit I will cut those particular showers short. The ideas in my head are so powerful and inspiring – I am prompted to take immediate and massive action on the them.

Inspired action is different than rushing through life. Rushing always moves us farther away from our goals. Allow yourself the time, through healthy time management strategies, to hear inspiration. Then do whatever you have to do to make the time to complete the goal that bubbled up out of inspiration.

Thanks Michael – I found inspiration in your article.

From a loyal subscriber, client and fan. If you would like to subscribe to Michael Masterson’s ETR, the most popular health, wealth and success e-zine on the net - click here.