GoFaxer Blog

Remember when you had that one employee who said to you, “Boss, we don’t need a fax machine anymore. Let’s switch to a fax to email service.” This is what great employees are for—finding great opportunities for your business growth and prosperity.

A recent article at Businessweek.com by Christine Comaford-Lynch offers some really sound advice about finding great employees. It’s easy, with a recession looming, to focus on money and business model issues, but don’t neglect the people. They’re likely to be most important element. And if you lose your top people during the downturn, you’ll never recover.

She suggests that an easy mistake is to mismatch people to the positions. Often, you’ve got a quality person that is under performing because they’re in the wrong position. Not because they aren’t quality. And you can’t afford to lose a quality employee. So always be evaluating whether you have everyone placed correctly.

Another thing she suggests is making sure you interview the people and not the resume. She does this by doing a really good screening phone conversation before the interview. She asks:

• The candidate’s career goals.
• What the person is really good at professionally.
• What he or she is not so good at, or not interested in doing.
• Who the candidate’s last five bosses were, what each boss would list as the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

These are just a few of many recommendations that she makes. I’d strongly advise that you read the whole article. It’s very valuable info.

One of my biggest complaints about many large businesses is their refusal to change and innovate, choosing instead to cling to their old fashioned technologies, controlling the market and insisting that consumers continue to purchase their antiquated products.

Take gasoline automobiles for example. The gas engine that we use now is essentially the same basic technology created over 100 years ago. Tradition may work for baseball, but there’s no reason that we shouldn’t have cars that are fundamentally better by now, if at least in terms of their fuel system.

The consequence is a industry that dramatically contributes to the polluting of the world. It also ties us to a natural resource with many negative political and economic consequences. Other fuel options have been shut down by political forces invested in keeping the status quo.

This would be like businesses hearing about fax to email technology but deciding to stick with their fax machines. Why would you stay with an old system that isn’t as good? But this is what’s been forced upon us by the auto industry.

So throw away your fax machine with pride. Buy a hybrid. Do what you can to tell producers that we live in a new millennium and expect products to match the times.

I read this interesting article by a Canadian who loves his work and claims that other do as well in his country. He say that most find workplace technology liberating, not imprisoning. If that’s the case he must love faxing by email.

Eric Beauchesnne, the psyched worker from the north says:

“The global survey of nearly 90,000 workers - including 5,000 in Canada - found an overwhelming 86% of employees in Canada liked or loved their job, 79% their company and an overwhelming 81% their boss.”

As for the workplace technology issue, the workers reported that they felt like phones, laptops, and other office electronics actually helped them find balance in their life.

So my question is this: these finding are surprising. But what the study doesn’t do is compare these findings with America. Maybe if we surveyed ourselves, we’d find about the same results.

I think that the whole, “I hate my job” syndrome common in America is more of a perceptions than a reality. I mean, didn’t we all choose our professions? It’s not as if we are forced to study and enter a certain vocation. We get to choose.

So one would expect that on the whole, most people would feel good about their decision. You’ll always have disgruntled everything. I don’t know. If not, maybe we need to go to Canada.

Every great company wants great press. If you’re sending aid to Guatemala, you want the world to know. If you’re saving the environment by sending faxes through email, you want the world to know. And if you’re hitting phenomenal growth rates, you want the world to know.

So how do you go about this thing called Public Relations. Well, I found a great website that might help small businesses start to think about the media and start connecting with it.

One thing the article suggests is that you need to be extremely respectful of the media. You can treat them the exact same way that you would a client or business associate.

I think something we think of media outlets as unreachable. We think that everyone who deals with big media distribution is on a celebrity level. But they really aren’t. They’re just ordinary people, like you and me. And they run a business. So treat them like you’re a business too, and you’ll be amazed at how responsive they can be.

One thing this article on this site talks about is the need for a media kit. This is a big subject that can’t be fully tackled here. You’ll want to do your homework on how to put one together and distribute it, but you should know about them. And you will want to use them.

Much has changed in the world since the Internet came on the scene. YouTube has replaced “America’s Funniest Home Video’s.” Fax to email has replaced fax machines. And website domains have replaced company names.

But I have to wonder if the whole desire for a domain has gotten a little silly. For example, msnbc.com reports that a British travel company paid $1.1 million dollars for the domain name cruises.co.uk. makeing this is the biggest price for a domain name in UK history.

But apparently this pales in comparison with “.com” domain acquisitions. Recently sex.com was purchased for $12 million dollars.

Some people really question whether a domain name is really that important. Your domain name can mean absolutely nothing, but have the best content and SEO site on the block, and get top billing on Google.

But as I said before, it’s getting to the point where you actually may want to have .com in the title of your company. It sounds techie. It sounds modern. It sounds fast. It sounds cutting edge.

My advice is this: If you can get a good domain name, great. But if you can’t, don’t sweat it. Most people use Google and other search engines to find the right content, not the domain name. I mean, as millions of profitable sites demonstrate, you don’t need to be sex.com to make it clear what you are all about.

I know your type. You’re tech savvy. Not an expert techie, but you understand what technology is out there and how to use it. When someone told you about sending faxes by email you were thrilled and ready to be an immediate user.

No doubt you felt the same way about PowerPoint, the universal software for presentations. But I’ve read a wonderful article by Carmine Gallo that you need to know about. He tells this story:

“In 2005 a Texas jury ordered drug giant Merck (MRK) to pay $253 million in damages . . . while the Merck lawyers bombarded the jurors with science and data, Lanier told an emotional story using visuals. I saw the slides. They contained few words and no bullet points.”

Is that right? No bullet points. Yes. In the art of PowerPoint, bullet points are the worst offense.

He makes a few other suggestions. Write your presentation out on a piece of paper first, then translate it into the software.

Eliminate anything extra. That includes lines, shapes, and symbols that might be distracting.

Use pictures. You know the old adage that a picture tells a thousand words. It’s still true. So stick with it.

Gallo points out that one doesn’t need to be a skilled artist to create really interesting presentations. Just don’t bore them. Keep them interested by keeping it simple.

I’m all about speed. I like to start a project and end it in a timely way. If my projects drag out over the course of days they enter a phase of development where it is infinitely harder to finish them. So when I start something I want it done and I want it done fast.

If you’re the same, you can understand how frustrating it can be to wait for someone else to respond to your phone call or email. You want to get a hold of them right away, discuss your business, and complete the darned task.

So here’s a bit of advice. The longer it takes for your message to get to your recipient, the longer it will take them to answer you back. If you send a fax through an old fashioned fax machine, they’ll get it within minutes. But their phone line might be tied up for a while. And the secretary might not put it on their desk right away.

I like to send it through email or fax to email. That way I know that they’ve gotten it within seconds. I then follow up with a phone call. If I don’t get them on the phone right away, I keep trying back until I catch them, let them know that I sent the document and that I need a response within a certain period of time.

It’s a simple bit of advice, but I’ve found it to be a fundamental key to execution.

Aside from looking for new innovations like online fax, small business owners are always looking for advice from the big guys. Jack Welch might exemplify the American business leader.

When I was first looking into the business world, trying to decide whether there was a place for me, I picked up legendary GE CEO Jack Welch’s book, “Jack: Straight From the Gut.” If you haven’t read this you need to go out this weekend, buy it, and read the entire thing from cover to cover.

Jack Welch might seem a little full of himself, but frankly, in terms of business, he sort of should be. He knows how to take a very big company and make it a monster. Consequently, you should probably know what he has to say about the subject if you’re running a small business of your own.

One of his central themes is setting stretch goals. He says that at GE they would set goals that reflected their dreams. These goals represented the highest possible result that they thought was reasonably possible.

The result was a company culture that never hit their goals but they always did far better than they would have without the goal. This culture was always ambitious, shooting for the moon and getting far better results than anyone else could have projected.

I think it’s safe to bet that email faxing is pretty much a given in most big businesses. But what’s new? What’s ground breaking? What’s the future that small businesses can look to as an example?

Well, perhaps what’s new is actually old, according to former Southwest Airlines CEO James Parker. He built a successful airline during a huge downturn in the industry from 2001 to 2004. He did so by building a company culture of customer service that generated high profits.

He says in an article at BusinessWeek.com that CEOs spend a lot of time building up their high potential executives but not nearly enough energy building their front line managers. He also emphasizes the importance of putting strong people into good environments. He says that if you put good people into a bad place, they can become bad employees.

He says that leadership is training, and that the majority of that training needs to go into the front line management. It usually goes into the top-level leadership, and then you fail to execute where you need it the most.

I’m a big fan of Southwest. They’re the cheapest to fly, but they’re also one of the best in terms of quality. I’ve never had them lose a bag. Their customer service has always been top notch. After a disastrous trip back from Europe several years ago on a failing airline, I concluded to always travel Southwest whenever I could.

You know, I don’t know how I would have been able to handle working in an office even just a few years ago. I love being able to work from wherever I want. I like being able to move around. I like to change my environment. It keeps me fresh and creative.

But in the olden days office workers were totally and completely stuck to an office if they wanted to be able to communicate quickly and efficiently throughout the world. You had to have access to a fax machine. You had to be close to a phone line.

But these days, with the entire world wired into the Internet, creating a virtual platform for international communication, you can find access to the Internet pretty much anywhere that you need. So who said you have to work in the office?

You want to work from home? That’s fine. You want to work at the airport on the way to Jamaica? Sure. You want to work from your favorite coffee shop? Go for it!

This might not work for some people. You might be the type who needs the structured environment of the office to get anything done. If that’s the case, go in peace my friends. But for those of us who like to work outside of the office, we’ll stay connected through email fax and instant messenger and we’ll be fine.