Nathan Martin

Don’t read The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler if you’re happy with old-school methods of employer/employee relationships.  Mr. Semler shares new ideas that he has implemented in Semco, his $200+ million company.  Ideas that have kept turnover extremely low.

If you are open to new ideas and want to make your company a fun place to work, check this book out.  It’s a fun read.  You may not want to implement all Semler’s ideas, but just a couple could make your workplace more enjoyable.  The Seven-Day Weekend concept is about flexibility.  Time flexibility, career choice flexibility, decision-making flexibility.  Semler begins with the premise that employees are adults.  As adults they are capable of more responsibility than they are given in most organizations.

I can buy much of what he says in this book IF:

1.  You truly do hire adults…responsible people willing to use their brains.

2.  You lay out objectives and goals of the job clearly.

At any rate, pick this book up at your library and start reading.  You’ll know part way into the first chapter if it’s for you.

Don’t be thrown off by the bland cover and unimaginative title… Steve Chandler and Sam Beckford’s book is a fun fictional story about an entrepreneur and his daughter figuring out how to revive their restaurant from the brink of bankruptcy.  The Small Business Millionaire helped them achieve an unprecedented level of success in the business.  Throughout the process dad and daughter also found meaning and joy in their lives.

This quick read will give readers plenty of food for thought and some good reminders.  Here are some of the highlights I picked out:

• “Advertising is salesmanship in print.”  All salespeople should yield measurable results.
• DECIDE to make the business succeed.
• Sell the experience, not just a meal, book, or service.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
• People want to see you succeed.
• Win over your local market and watch word of mouth spread.

Go read The Small Business Millionaire.  I have more Chandler books to talk about in future posts.

I’ve spent some time this week checking out elance.com. I am reminded of a book I read listened to a couple years ago.  In many ways the world truly is flat…or at least flattening. Opportunities abound for knowledge workers to find work anywhere in the world.  The cool thing for a small business person is that he/she is not limited to the skills that are in his area(I’m thinking of my stomping grounds…rural Pennsylvania).  A bookkeeper in India can keep up with the accounting, someone in Kenya does market research, then marketing and SEO can be maximized from Illinois.  Another advantage for the small business person is that the web not only makes these services widely available, the many choices inevitably contain an agreeable price for both parties.

To read more about how to take advantage of our flattening world, be sure to check out The 4-Hour Workweek!