All You Can Meat

TempWorks Software CEO, Gregg Dourgarian, recently wrote about a road trip from Minnesota to New York visiting prospects and customers along his way and raved about a couple of restaurants such as Geisha in New York and Meritage in St. Paul. You can read his post here. Coincidently, I celebrated my wedding anniversary this weekend and managed to convince my wife, who isn't a huge steak person, to try a restraunt we haven't been to before for dinner. While we didn't travel to New York and I have never been to Meritage, we did go some place that definitely makes my top 10 list.

Fogo de Chão (fo-go dèe shoun) in Minneapolis, MN is a Southern-Brazillian style steakhouse where Gaúcho chefs bring skewers of meat (some 15 different cuts) ranging from top sirloin, bottom sirloin, filet mignon, beef ribs, leg of lamb, and so much more around from table to table and slice you off a piece any time you want. It was a very unique dining experience with absolutely delicious meats. I would dub this my second favorite steakhouse in the nation now and have given it the unofficial (a.k.a. "corny") slogan of "All you can meat."

Topping the list of my favorite steakhouses, though, is Las Vegas' Prime Steakhouse at the Bellagio. While it is a bit more formal than "All you can meat," they house some of the best food I have ever tasted. From their mushrooms to their perfectly prepared filet mignon, I challenge anyone to find a better quality of food from a restraunt in the United States. Prices are a little on the hefty side, but it is definitely worth throwing on business casual attire and treating yourself to a meal you won't soon forget.

As an honorary mention here, the ChopHouse & Brewery in Denver, CO is also worthy of a visit if you happen to find yourself in the area.

Paperless Payroll for the Unbanked

The unbanked -- the 8 million or so U.S. employees who for one reason or another can't maintain a bank account can still be included in this "green" revolution of ours and are an important part of our Paperless Staffing Initiative. And, it ends up saving employers money too! Staffing agencies are undoubtedly the employer of record for a disproportionately high figure of these unbanked workers, although I don't have any fancy facts to support that claim as I write this. So it would go to reason that staffing agencies also have the most to gain by transitioning their employees without direct deposit to a paycard system or stored value card.

Now I am not going to go into detail about how the whole pay card system works, but I do want to highlight a handful of the reasons why you should adopt a paycard system if you haven't already, and get you to do some research on this on your own:

• Provide a benefit to your employees that will keep them from jumping ship to a competitor.
• Save approximately $175/employee every year in administrative costs.
• Save the environment: more than just avoiding paper checks, but also eliminating delivery costs and greenhouse gas emissions.
• Get brand name recognition with custom-branded paycards -- your employees advertise for you.
• Eliminate paper nightmares such as check stub reprints (which can be done with WebCenter online), lost/stolen checks, toner, check stock, mis-numbered checks, etc.
  
• Prevent check fraud. Reduce the need for Positive Pay file processing.

Take a few minutes to explore your options... Happy googling.

Free Beer & Five-Minute Presentations

I come from a techie background and this includes more than my friends and coworkers. My mother, for example, works for a major player in healthcare in developing new technologies for their industry that take advantage of the boom of the social media revolultion. While talking about Search Engine Optimization, Twitter, Facebook, and topic specific social networking sites such as The Healthcare Scoop, she pointed me to an event called Ignite Minneapolis.

Basically, there are several of these events across the nation in which a bar or similar venue offers free beer to participants who listen to anyone who has something to say give a 5 minute presentation on their topic. Anything from How to Buy a New Car and Not Get Screwed to a topic which I am looking forward to watching, "Open Source Software Consolidation: The New Ritalin?" can be presented.

Each presenter gets 20 slides to do their speech, and each slide lasts for exactly 15 seconds. I'm thinking that events like this might actually show some potential for some savvy salespeople to get their message out to an audience without spending a dime. I'm tentatively planning on attending this one myself as it sounds like it could be very interesting.

Recession Survival in 2009

My wife has a habit of watching television programs that aren't on my top 10 list. As a matter of fact, she is addicted to Dr. Phil, Oprah, and other shows of that sort. The other day, she made me watch an episode of Oprah that she had conveniently DVR'd for me, to which I immediately rolled my eyes. I did, however, get hooked on it because of the topic. Oprah had a guest on her show named Suze Orman who is an internationally acclaimed financial advisor.

What caught me off-guard was the financial advice that Suze was giving American consumers. Things like:

"Pay only the minimum balance on your credit cards."

She was giving this non-standard financial advice to consumers so they can hopefully survive and possibly thrive in our recession. But if consumers are going to be trying to pay only what they are being forced to pay, then it won't be long before businesses won't be paying their bills unless you make them as well.

If a business doesn't pay their electricity bill, their service gets shut off. If they don't pay their rent bill, they get evicted. If they don't pay their phone bill, their communication lines are closed down. But what happens when they don't pay their staffing bill in a timely fashion? Usually.. not much. While the customer is profiting from your labor costs, you are forking the bill and not getting paid. Eventually, your cash flow dwindles to the point where you can't make payroll, pay your taxes, or pay your own occupancy costs and you could lose what you have devoted years of your life to--your business.

So how can you prevent this from happening? 

• Keep a close eye on your receivables and make sure your customers are paying the bill.
• Don't be afraid to cut them off if they don't pay their invoices, as it's not worth risking your entire business on a single customer.
  
• Outsource your receivables to have industry experts collect on your accounts. Make sure the money keeps flowing in!
• Secure invoice factoring or payroll funding so that you can get the cash up front and not have the cash flow worry.
• Do business with credit-worthy customers. It doesn't matter how great the profit margin is for you if the customer doesn't pay for your services!
• Maintain open communication with your customers after the sale. Not only does this help secure repeat business, but it also allows for open dialog regarding invoice disputes and payment inquiries without coming off as demanding.

Read more about Suze's thoughts on her website, www.suzeorman.com, or on Oprah's website.