Maintain Your Mental Well-Being

This week the US government revised the food pyramid — that diagram that's been with us for decades that is supposed to remind people how to eat well. The model needed a revision, and the new version, called Choose My Plate, is a big improvement.

However, there's a different epidemic happening out there that's getting less attention, perhaps because it is less obvious than the epidemic of obesity we're experiencing. It seems we may be entering an era of an epidemic of overwhelm. A time when too many people's mental well-being is being stretched through multi-tasking, fragmented attention and information overload.

The trouble is, we are short on simple, clear information about good mental habits. Few people know about what it takes to have optimum mental health, and the implications of being out of balance. It is not taught in schools, or discussed in business. The issue just isn't on the table. Businesses schedule time as if the brain had unlimited resources, as if we could focus well all day long. Every week I talk to an organization who says that their biggest problem is simply the overwhelm their people are feeling. Without good information about the mind and brain, we may be stretching ourselves in ways that may have bigger implications than poor eating habits.

This platter has seven essential mental activities necessary for optimum mental health in daily life. These seven daily activities make up the full set of 'mental nutrition' that your brain needs to function at it's best. By engaging regularly in each of these servings, you enable your brain to coordinate and balance its activities, which strengthens your brain's internal connections and your connections with other people.

The seven essential mental activities are:

Focus Time. When we closely focus on tasks in a goal-oriented way, taking on challenges that make deep connections in the brain.

Play Time. When we allow ourselves to be spontaneous or creative, playfully enjoying novel experiences, which helps make new connections in the brain.

Connecting Time. When we connect with other people, ideally in person, richly activating the brain's social circuitry.

Physical Time. When we move our bodies, aerobically if possible, which strengthens the brain in many ways.

Time In. When we quietly reflect internally, focusing on sensations, images, feelings and thoughts, helping to better integrate the brain.

Down Time. When we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, which helps our brain recharge.

Sleep Time. When we give the brain the rest it needs to consolidate learning and recover from the experiences of the day.

We're not suggesting a specific recipe for a healthy mind, as each individual is different, and our needs change over time too. And we're not suggesting that business suddenly changes everything and reorganized all of work. The point is to become aware of the full spectrum of essential mental activities, and just like with essential nutrients, make sure that at least every few days we are nudging the right ingredients into our mental diet.

Just like you wouldn't eat only pizza every day for days on end, we shouldn't just live on focus time and little sleep. Mental wellness is all about giving your brain lots of opportunities to develop in different ways. In organizations, from a practical perspective, this means allowing people to work from home more, to be more flexible, to give people more autonomy.

In short, it is important to eat well, and we applaud the new healthy eating plate. However as a society we are sorely lacking in good information about what it takes to have a healthy mind. We hope that the healthy mind platter creates an appetite for increasing awareness of what we put into our minds too.

Re-Build to Sell

It's sad to say but many small business owners who come to me wanting to sell are in a crisis. They haven't kept up with the times and have outdated equipment and pricing that is below industry standards, and are up to their eyeballs in debt. One thing to keep in mind is that when you do something to enhance your service, it will have an impact on the eventual sale of your business.

Here are a few things to consider when getting your business ready to sell:

1. Equipment: If you were six months away from putting your service on the market than I would not recommend purchasing new equipment or upgrading your software. You will not make back your investment in that period of time. The buyer may also prefer a particular brand of equipment or may buy only your accounts. You would then have to sell your equipment on the used market, which usually brings only pennies on the dollar. If you are two to three years from selling and have old equipment, then by all means buy newer equipment. This enables you to keep up with your competition by offering the same or more enhanced services.

2. Rate increases: Annual rate increases are recommended. One of the most important formulas I use in evaluating a business is determining profitability, which comes down to rate structure. I recently sold a medical service for more than 14 times its monthly billing and the reason it sold for that multiple was the way the services were priced. It was very profitable, averaging $365 per client. The service had only 140 accounts but billed more than $50,000 per month, producing a net profit margin of more than 38 percent. Do not increase your rates just before selling your business to boost your monthly billing. A potential buyer will want to see a reasonable conversion history for the rate increase. I would also recommend switching to a 28-day billing structure. This will give you an additional one month's billing per year, which should increase cash flow along with your annual revenue.

3. Automate: One way to cut down on your biggest expense, labor, is to automate some of the message taking and delivering functions. By delivering messages via email, fax, voice mail, pager, or cell phone, it will free up the time it takes the operator to deliver the messages in person. Some services offer an automated attendant feature, giving the caller a choice of where the call should be directed with instructions that if they have an emergency, the caller should press zero for an agent.

4. Cut the fat: Get your business lean and mean. Cut out all frivolous expenses and cut the dead wood clients. If you have clients who are non-payers or who do not produce a profit for your company, get rid of them.

5. Financial record keeping: Buyers are interested in businesses with a good profit margin of at least 20 percent, advanced equipment with updated software, solid management in place, and a history of growth. One of the first items buyers ask for after reviewing your listing information is a current financial statement, along with at least one previous year's statement. This shows the prospective buyer how your business has grown financially in the past and its likely future growth trend.

6. Clean your financial history: Make sure that you have clear titles to your equipment and other assets, and that all your federal and state taxes are paid, along with being current on your payroll tax deposits. Buyers will do lien searches on you and your business, so if you have any skeletons in your closets, clean them up before placing your business on the market.

Of course location, cleanliness of the operation, and a reliable, well trained staff, all have something to do with how salable your telephone answering service will be, but the above points are critical to getting your business ready to sell.

Time to Leave But Don't Want to Let Go? Reinvest in Your Company.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

I was working with a client who had done an amazing job building his company but was toying with moving on. He had grown it to earn five times what it was making when he acquired it and added new products and loyal clients. No one customer made up more than 5% of the revenue, and the company had 50% repeat business. Sweet situation. Why sell?

The seller was bored and wanted a new challenge but knew if he kept the company a few more years, he could double it.

Solution--the seller decided to re-invest 20% of his proceeds from the sale back into the "new" company. The acquiring company had deeper pockets to build it to a much larger firm and had skill sets that would allow that growth to happen.

The seller now would be able to build another venture to hold his interest while he continues to increase equity in the business he built. This also, of course, gave the acquiring company comfort knowing the seller had enough confidence in the firm and the industry to put his money where his mouth is.