Let’s say that you recognize the signs that you need to relax more. If not, just click the aforementioned link for some suggestions. So, how do most people relax? More specifically, how can businesspeople relax right now? Learning what others do can help you to practice relaxing more during the business day. While preparing a menu of relaxation suggestions for you, I became stressed by the overwhelming number of relaxation choices. How’s that for irony? While we won’t be able to go into a lot of depth here, I can share some ideas to get you relaxing today and tomorrow. Let’s say a negative situation has just emerged or a disgruntled employee has just left your office. How can you relax right now? Try these immediate relaxation techniques:

• Take a number of deep slow breaths.
• Laugh at something or at least stop and smile at something.
• Close your eyes and calm yourself.
• Listen to relaxing music.
• Walk around to change your environment – preferably outside.
• Call a friend.
• Stretch at work (in an appropriate way).
• State a positive thought or a positive affirmation to yourself.

On the lighter side of work breaks, imagine how our parents and grandparents took a break at work. Their questionable old-school work-break habits mostly involved one substance or another: cigarette breaks, for one. Or alcohol – can you imagine keeping a fifth of hard liquor in your desk and pouring a drink for yourself while taking a break at work? Visualize the horrified looks on the faces your coworkers, subordinates, and superiors, not to mention your possible escort from the building. Snack breaks can help, but not from a vending machine – while still common in manufacturing environments, trying to eat well from a vending machine is like trying to make money by playing the lottery. There’s also the coffee break. We take the taste of our coffee more seriously and pay proportionately more for it than our parents. And the cloud of cigarette smoke has dissipated above the heads of a group of coffee drinkers. Sometimes we get so busy that we have to plan for rest and relaxation or it doesn’t happen. Given that regular relaxation promotes long term good health, we should plan for relaxation more systematically in the future. What are some things that you can do to include relaxation, rejuvenation, and rest in your days and months ahead?

• Plan for breaks at 90-minute intervals, or in whatever time increment that you need to refresh to become more effective.
• Take lunch breaks. Try to avoid eating lunch in your workspace every day. Some planning may be needed here to have lunch with others.
• Plan for a restful vacation. Get those vacation times on the calendar, even if you are not traveling.
• Make sure you get sufficient sleep (and preparation for sleep) for your mind and body.
• Making plans with friends during the week or on the weekend is a fun way to rejuvenate.
• Get a massage – if you haven’t already, try it, use it, and love it!
• Eat healthier. Whatever eating healthier means for you, a quality diet should energize your body.
• Hobbies – remember those? Make sure you plan for hobbies that relax you.
• Cultivate your sense of humor – laughing is an underrated way to relieve stress and have some fun in your workdays ahead.

Our bodies and minds need to relax to perform optimally. We are not designed to perform constantly without rest. As businesspeople, sometimes we push ourselves harder than we push the people around us. Recognize the signs that you need to relax and give yourself a break. Consider some of the suggestions above for relaxing immediately. For me, it’s fun to think about how our parents and grandparents took breaks at work. I wonder what our children and grandchildren will say about us and our work-break habits. My guess is that they will laugh at us eating at our desks, ignoring work breaks, and skipping vacations. How will you relax better today and during the months ahead?   _{Copyright © John J. McAdam 2015. All Rights Reserved.}

Whether you’re operating a start-up or an established business, the small-business world can quickly become a minefield. Briefly, let’s review the more common types of business disasters faced by entrepreneurs and small business owners today.

• Neglecting your marketing and letting your new-customer pipeline run dry

If you enjoy the company of entrepreneurs, like I do, you will eventually hear complaints about the feast and famine nature of their business, particularly with solo entrepreneurs in service industries. The feast-and-famine cycle goes like this. Your business starts in a famine state, because you usually don’t have a large revenue stream from day one. You market your services for months and finally acquire a client. Then you work full time serving that client. You are now in a ‘feast’ state. Time passes and the client’s project ends. Wait a minute—you’ve stopped marketing! You spent all of your time serving your client instead of selling your services. Damn! The famine state returns. Again you market full time to acquire your next client. You eventually land a client, and the feast-and-famine cycle continues.

• Customer concentration risk

Simply put: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. By definition, if one of your customers represents more than 10 percent of your total revenue, then you have a customer concentration risk in your business. The higher the percentage of revenue that one customer represents, the greater the business continuity risk. You have to face the difficult question: what happens to your business when your largest customer disappears? Will you go out of business? How will you manage that scenario?

• Non-customer-based funding

I worry about start-up businesses that raise equity angel funding or take out a loan too early. You can keep raising equity funding like a start-up dot-com from the 1990s, but equity funding eventually ceases if you don’t make a profit. Alternatively, you can borrow money, but it must be paid back. What, then, is the long-term funding solution? Eventually customers are the only long-term source of funding for any business. Equity and debt should be treated like catalysts and timing solutions, respectively.

• Overly optimistic sales and marketing projections

Most of the business plans that I read contain overly optimistic sales projections based on their sales and marketing efforts. Be conservative with your expectations and you can avoid this disaster. Problems surface when we spend our money before earning our sales. While it’s true that you have to spend money to make money, you do not have to spend most of your money before making any money—or at least establishing a sales trend. Wouldn’t you rather under-promise and over-deliver?

• A lack of planning

I’m amazed at the number of people that I come across who are willing to risk their life savings on a small business without a business plan. This disaster is perhaps the easiest to avoid. If you need help getting started or focused on the most important parts of any business plan, try The One-Hour Business Plan, by yours truly. Even a business plan–phobic entrepreneur can spend one hour of writing time. Other planning resources can help as well. These are perhaps the most frequent yet avoidable disasters that I see today. How to avoid them? First, maintain your marketing, even during good times—the feast times. Next, you will need more than ten customers to eliminate customer concentration risk. However, continuing to spread your business across as many customers as possible will keep you open for business. Also, remember to fund your business through customers first. If customers don’t fund the business, eventually the business runs out of money and time. It’s sad, but worth remembering. While we entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch, creating overly optimistic sales goals and overspending is another avoidable disaster. Finally, plan something before you spend years of time and savings. These are the top avoidable business disasters that I see. How about you? _{^{Copyright John J. McAdam 2015. All Rights Reserved.}}

• Keep discussions work-related. Stay focused on the job. This sounds easy until you start listening to an employee with a serious problem. When the conversation gets too personal or veers off-topic, bring it back to the employee’s job. Perhaps you can make temporary accommodations to working hours, schedule, or work location.
• Be consistent and fair. While we like to think that a closed-door conversation is private, sometimes the employees on the other side of the door want to know what’s going on. Been there? However you decide to help the employee, remember that other employees will notice and precedents will be established.
• Provide referral resources if appropriate. Large employers sometimes have employee-assistance programs for those who need counseling. Small employers should know what local government programs and community services might be available to the employee and make referrals as appropriate.
• Do not ignore the employee if the situation recurs.  If you decide to ignore the problem, it might affect other employees, get worse, or result in employee turnover. While it can be tempting to ignore non-work-related problems, they do tend to get worse. It’s better to address the situation immediately.

How about you? Do you have any useful tips for us when employees bring their personal problems to work? Let us know if you do—and don’t forget to share this article with someone who might need it.

^{Copyright © John McAdam 2015. All Rights Reserved.}