With the onslaught of COVID 19, hundreds of thousands of workers were transferred quickly to working from home. Companies needed to maintain work efforts while at the same time complying with shut-down mandates.

This transition in a short period of time from office to at-home work is unique.  Future textbooks will no doubt be written on how to effectively migrate employees from office to home. For now, each institution has employed best practices available.

Across the United States, more and more government leaders are permitting businesses to reopen. However, reopening frequently comes with additional expense because of regulations.

For example, as restaurants reopen the establishment is required to maintain social distancing inside the business.  The difficulty restaurants face is understanding the economic viability of social distancing.  The regulation means you may only operate at 50% of capacity.

YouTube is a common medium for communicating all kinds of entertainment, comedy and business concepts. If you use YouTube in your business, I suggest you follow several key principles.

1. Never monetize your video by allowing advertising.

Very few YouTube postings earn $100 or more so you’re not likely to earn anything meaningful. Besides, you don’t want to distract anyone away from your video. You want viewers to immediately click through to your material.  Some of the longer videos now insert ads part way through. This is even more annoying to me and causes me to click off. Nothing should interfere with the focus and flow of your posted video. 

I keep backup toner because in my work I often need to print copies. I don’t want to email my file to the UPS store and pay extra money to print a file.  However, on occasion I have run out of toner.

What I did might help you in a pinch. Open your printer and take out your cartridge. While holding the cartridge securely, shake it vigorously up and down and sideways six or eight times. Then, place the cartridge back in your printer and print.

Frequently I have consulting clients who become concerned about too much competition in their industry. I share that 80% to 90% of competitors perform at C or worse, providing a good opportunity for anyone who’s willing to take the steps to excel.

For example, I tend eat out less for several reasons including my desire to eat healthy. However, my experience is that a lot of restaurant food isn’t particularly great and not a good value for the money you spend. Why should I spend $20 plus for dinner and tip when the meal isn’t that appetizing? If the manager or owner was objective about the quality served at customers’ tables, they would understand how it represents a good reason for the empty tables.

Recently I met with an Internet marketing company who worked by a monthly contract. The previous month there was clear communication about what I expected within the time allocated under the agreement. However, the work wasn’t done. The company had logged hours but a review of what they accomplished versus the time charged didn’t offer good value for the money. When I confronted the owner with this along with other past examples, the owner simply said, “Maybe we’re not the right company to serve you.” I agreed with him.  They didn’t accomplish the agreed upon work. They simply put in their time and promised to do better next time.  Not an acceptable answer.