The Advantages of a Shelf Company

Some Things Get Better with Age

You’re feeling good, you’ve rolled out the business plan, you’re partners are in with you, and everybody’s jazzed because it’s time to incorporate and move into the next phase of owning a business. But wait a minute, your accountant advises you that based on your company’s current credit rating you’re not going to be able to secure the type of loan you’re going to need to get things up and running.

“Why not?” you ask.

“Well, in order to get the kind of loan you’re looking to secure from the bank, they want to make sure that your company has more of a history of good credit.”

“But we’re brand new. What do we do?”

The answer is: don’t panic.

One option that is worth investigating could be investing in the purchase of a “Shelf Corporation”. Also known as an “Aged Corporation”, a shelf corporation is a corporation that has been around for a while, but just hasn’t been doing very much of anything.

How it Works – The Delicate Art of Credit Chemistry

To say that a shelf corporation has been doing nothing would be misleading. Like a fine wine it has spent time in the cellar patiently waiting for its moment to be corked. Most shelf corporations were designed and setup with the sole purpose of being launched at a later date and what transpires between bottling and the moment it is poured can be profound when it comes to a balance sheet.

First, by purchasing a shelf corporation, the relationship your company establishes with the bank is like one between good old friends. Right away they can see that your company has been around for a while and that you have a good credit score which makes them more trusting of your ability to pay your loan.

Second, much of what was required to start a company has already been taken care of. All of the basic ingredients have been blended together and it’s simply a matter of customizing them to your needs. A lot of the red tape that can potentially delay a start up is already taken care of.

Third, even if you are effectively getting your business off the ground today, depending on the shelf company you buy, you can literally say you’ve been in business for as long as the business has been in existence. Contracts that you may wish to bid on may require that a bidding company need have been in business for a minimum amount of time which would have otherwise have excluded you from bidding on the contract. With the years of experience you’ve gained through the shelf company, no one need be the wiser.

Finally, you can even merge your existing company with your shelf company as a means to facilitate building business credit.

Things to Consider

Remember, a lot of the heavy lifting has already been done for you and there’s a cost that comes with that. Like a good scotch, the price goes up the longer it’s aged. Sure the cost of the shelf company may be higher, but it also has a longer established history and that can go a long way.

Also keep in mind that before it becomes yours, a shelf company is literally a product on a shelf. There are lots to choose from so it is still important to do your research and find one that’s right for you. Not all shelf companies are created equal either. It’s important to get detailed information about the shelf company before you buy one.

Many companies that offer standard business registration and incorporation services also offer shelf corporations as well, and can help guide you through the process of determining what’s right for you.

For more information on buying a shelf company, please visit CorporationCentre.ca.

Business Essentials: Project Management Software

Business Essentials: Project Management Software

Tech companies have been hard at work over the last decade finding ways to streamline their workflow. As a result, numerous companies have entered into the domain of developing software specifically designed to manage their various projects and they have addressed almost every growing concern under the sun. Project management software in this day and age is powerful, easy to use, ubiquitous, and cheap. Businesses are quite literally spoiled for choice in this area and, if your company is not currently using any project management software to coordinate your projects, it’s time to take a serious look at how one of any of the number of programs that are out there might add value to your company.

What’s out there?

Sometimes choice can be a difficult thing to handle. With so much choice out there, how do we know which program is going to be the right one for our business? How do we know that it will be able to do the things we need it to do? Basecamp, Asana, Microsoft Project, Smartsheet, what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, there is no difference – they are all designed to help you manage your projects in one way or another and all will perform many of the same functions. Where they differ is in how you interface with each program. One could choose blindly and accept that there will be a learning curve to understanding how the program operates. No matter which program you choose, eventually it will become an extension of how your business operates.

However, there are a couple of points worth investigating first:

Web-based or on-prem? – One thing you need to decide is whether or not you want to operate your project management software literally from within the building (or “on premises), or if you want your project management to be handled on the web. On-premises software has the advantage of typically being more robust than web-based software. However, companies more and more are trending toward web-based programs because they have been stripped down in order to be more easy to use and because it does not involve installing the program on every computer in the office. Instead, project members simply visit the relevant website.

Proprietary, GPL, or Open source? – What these three terms refer to is the type of license a program might use and defines what you are allowed to do with the software once you have it. Whether a program is free to use or not, project management software will most commonly use a proprietary license meaning that you agree to use the program the way it is simply to help you with your business. Other licenses may give you the freedom to tamper with the code and tailor the software to your company’s needs, but this does take some savvy and you’ll need a competent computer engineer.

How they work

As mentioned earlier, every project management software is initially designed to do more or less the same thing and most will cover all the essential components of what it takes to coordinate a project.

Communication – If a program does not allow for a team to communicate with each other, then it’s not of much use. Virtually all programs keep each project separate from one another so, when running more than one project at the same time, it’s easy to track what’s been discussed about which projects. It’s even possible to cherry pick who needs to know which pieces of information so that the right people get the necessary information while everybody else doesn’t have to feel bogged down by excessive communication that is not relevant to them.

Scheduling – Project management software also allows your company to set milestones and completion dates for aspects of a project. Anyone involved can then go to the calendar and see what tasks need to be completed, allowing them to better manage their own work.

File Sharing – Any project management software acts as the central hub where all the information regarding a specific project is located. It is open for all the people involved in the project to get their hands on. Relevant documents can easily be uploaded and shared for all to give their insight or make changes.

Although these represent the core of what most project management software will address, each program provides its own nuance, bells and whistles, and special features. How you decide to use these features is anybody’s guess but you’ll eventually find that there 101 ways to solve any number of problems right at your finger tips. 

Business Essentials: Building a Great Website

It wasn’t all that long ago that for a business to have a website seemed a novel thing. The tipping point has long past, and for a start up company to not prioritize their website as a major arm of their business seems sophomoric. The hurdles that confronted the early pioneers of website building (technical complexity, cost, technological limitations) have disappeared and there is now no excuse not to have a website. There is, however, one basic rule that has not changed – nor will it ever – and that is: the better and more effective you want your website to be, the greater the investment it will represent. Below are a few handy tips that will hopefully give you greater insight into what steps are involved in building your website and allay any concerns that it might represent.

The Anatomy of a Website

There are essentially two vital parts to any website that businesses need to consider: the code and the server.

The Code: Everything you see and read on the internet is nothing more than a series of binary codes – a seemingly endless stream of 1’s and 0’s. It’s like the DNA of your website. And as your DNA eventually becomes the you that others can see and interact with, so the code is what will become the part of your website that others see and interact with.

The Server: The code, in order to be seen and read by others, needs a place to be stored and easily accessed. The place where these codes are stored, or hosted, are on servers owned by companies that continuously allow the transfer of information. These hosting companies pay for their servers, and to transfer all those billions of bytes of information, and they make their money by your renting space for your website on their server in the form of a “domain”.

A website thus becomes a website when your code occupies the domain space that you have rented.

What You Pay For

Renting space with a hosting company is a piece of cake and can be done for as little as a few dollars a month. A simple Google search will likely bring up a myriad of companies that offer hosting with different options. Most have a help line that you can call and simply knowing a little bit about what you want your website to do will easily give them a sense of what option is best for you. Most often it comes down to whether or not you plan to have a lot of data-heavy bells and whistles like streaming audio and video. These things take up space, which means you may need to rent more server space.

Once you’ve rented the space, you need your space to have a name. This is how people will remember your website. Ideally, you’ll want your domain name to reflect the essentials of what your business is about and it should be snappy and easy to remember. Acquiring a domain name is somewhat of an art. It’s quite possible that your perfect domain name is something no one has yet thought of, at which point it’s easily acquired through your hosting company at no charge. However, if your perfect website name is owned it can be a challenge to acquire. There are entire companies that purchase domain names with the sole purpose of brokering them to people who want the name for their business. At this point you have to decide what the domain is worth to you. If someone has already beat you to it and has built a whole site around that domain name it might be best to explore other options. If it is available for purchase, then it all comes down to what you’re willing to pay.

The code you can also pay for, but most hosting sites now come with their own website builder which can handle the code for you. Although these website builders are rudimentary, they can easily handle a variety of different website formats and give the user several different style sheets to choose from. If you have time, building your own website can be fun.

WordPress

Stepping it up a notch, WordPress has become the gold standard in website design. WordPress takes a day to learn and a lifetime to master. Ultimately, it is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool for building websites. The program (or code, since technically it’s not a program) is free, but you’ll definitely be investing your time to learn how to use it. It can be as simple as downloading the code for a template, or completely building your own style sheet and code right from scratch. Scouring the web there all kinds of add-ons that are available that are simple enough to add to your website’s code and that can make your website all the more engaging to the visitor.

Website Design

Website design has become a niche all unto itself and there are plenty of companies and freelancers out in the marketplace who are happy to do the legwork of building the code for your website for you. This is essentially the code that you can pay for and although prices can vary substantially, so can the quality of the workmanship. Obviously, a more complicated website brings with it a heftier price tag. It’s standard practice for companies and freelancers to have a portfolio of designs so that you know what your getting into before you buy, but ultimately their job is to make your website as concise, easy to navigate, and engaging as possible.

Free Minute Book with Incorporation

This week, incorporate your business with CorporationCentre.ca and receive a FREE minute book ($75 value) with your incorporation order.

To receive this offer, use the promotional code CCINCMB7514* in your shopping cart when placing your incorporation order in any jurisdiction. Please ensure that the minute book option is checked before clicking the Order Now button.

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A corporate minute book is used to hold all the important documents related to your business to keep everything in one place in an organized and professional manner. A CorporationCentre.ca minute book is premium law firm quality with a hard cover and slip case for a 3 ring binder. It comes with the name of your corporation on a brass finished plaque on the spine, and corporate dividers.


*Promotional code is valid from February 17 to 21 2014.

The Art of Self-assessment

Self-assessment is an art, and knowing precisely who we are, where we’re at, and what we offer is an essential component to business management. Looking inward can be cathartic, it can be eye opening, and it can even be shocking. But no matter what, it has to be revealing and it has to be authentic. In the process of assessing ourselves, if the truth does not surface, even if it’s a hard truth to face, your business could soon find itself in peril. Of course, it’s hard, even seemingly impossible, to be incredible – to always be ahead of the business game and driving the market forward – but it should always be an ideal to strive toward. Most of the time every business out there is just trying to stay relevant and stay in the game – we want to find a niche, grab a slice, and build a life. A credible business that stays true to itself and that feels solid from sunrise to sunset is where the lion’s share of us to look to invest our time and energy - it’s how we earn our living; it’s how we eat. Done properly, a thorough self-assessment can be the difference between being a credible business and being an incredible business. On the other hand, an inauthentic self-assessment can be the difference between being credible and being eaten alive.

Leave your ego at the door

The story of how the artist suffered through countless years of having their work overlooked and receiving rejection after rejection before they eventually had their big breakthrough is so mainstream that it’s become cliché. Typically, the reason even some of the greatest artists, musicians, and writers suffered for so long isn’t because the world wasn’t ready, or that their work just hadn’t reached its audience, it’s because their work probably wasn’t very good. Inventors also go through hundreds of designs that fail miserably before they hit on the one that works, goes public, and then viral.

The roadblock that proves so difficult for these artists and inventors to overcome is their own conceptions of their real, or perceived, talent. In much the same way that a mother always believes her child is the most beautiful baby ever born, so an artist believes that their work is brilliant. It’s too crushing to the psyche to admit that what came from the most intimate part of us is ugly or worthless, so we end up living in denial instead of taking the positive out of negative criticism.

Harness the force of negative feedback

Anyone who has studied the ancient Chinese martial art of judo understands that the key to subduing your opponent is to use their own weight, and their own force, against them. This is how we have to begin to understand self-assessment from a business standpoint. If our work, or our product, is receiving negative feedback it’s important to make the distinction that it’s not as much about our clients pointing out our inadequacies, as it is about responding to what our clients are telling us they want. Every piece of negative feedback, whether about your product or service, or your competitors, is a window into what customers in your market are looking for. Isn’t business, after all, about meeting that demand?

The seldom-told story

Whereas the story of the struggling artist has become almost trite, there is another story that you don’t really ever hear about. It’s the story about the artist who after years and years of rejection eventually just gave up and was never heard of, ever. It’s not a story many people like telling, but the unfortunate reality is that it is by far the more common. Conventional wisdom tells us that what separates the successful artist from the one that got out of the game was a result of their superior talent. But in art, as in business, Darwinian principles rule where it is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the one most responsive to change. The successful artist, like a successful business, is able to tap into what their clientele is looking for by successfully internalizing the criticism they receive. After an objective self-assessment whose focus is on growth, one can then use any criticism to make positive strides forward and leap from being edible to credible, or even credible to incredible. 

How to Conduct a Meeting

Meetings, when properly directed, are a great way to get everyone on the same page, strategize, and brainstorm with the aim of moving the company in the right direction. If a meeting lacks the necessary focus, however, it can represent a colossal time-suck and a waste of everybody’s resources. It’s essential to have a clear picture of why a meeting is necessary and what needs to be accomplished. Below are a few “don’ts” and “dos” when it comes to taking the lead and conducting a great meeting.

DON’T conduct meetings every week for the sake of conducting a meeting – it can lead to so many annoying little problems like the anticipation of the dreaded weekly meeting, the didn’t-we-just-discuss-this-last-week feeling, or the incessant mulling over minutia. Not every decision in a company should be left to a democracy and it’s really only beneficial to call a meeting when one is deemed truly necessary.

DO include everyone - if you’ve decided that now is the time to have a meeting it should be because some kind of shift in direction is necessary. Sea changes can implicate the whole company and you might be surprised by who has big ideas. If wholesale changes are necessary, and you limit your company’s rebranding to the marketing team because you see it exclusively as a marketing issue, you’re effectively limiting your options moving forward.

DON’T make your meetings about one-on-ones – a meeting where everyone is gathered waiting for their turn to speak and explain what they do is likely to cause attendees to zone out. The key to a great meeting, and getting great ideas out, is to keep everyone engaged. Set aside time to have one-on-ones so that everyone can communicate what’s relevant about their particular position and then connect them with whoever they might need in other departments. Remember, meetings are about the big picture, not the details.

DO have a clear idea of what needs to be accomplished – a meeting’s focus can be lost so easily by getting bogged down in details. It’s imperative that, when leading a team meeting, you know exactly where your team is at and where they should be by the end. It’s possible to know the answers without having the means to articulate it, so cluing in to what’s being shared in a meeting should be what allows you to formulate an expression of what you know is already there.

DON’T get sidetracked by things that are irrelevant – although it’s important to keep things lighthearted and fun, maintaining control over the direction of the meeting is essential to make progress. Meetings can suffer from too many questions or too much fine-tuning. Ideas discussed at meetings should be global, not particular. It’s important not to just gloss over the details, but keep in mind that the grandeur of an issue should reflect the size and duration of a meeting.

DO allow everyone a chance to shine  - although you’re in control and you make the decisions, a meeting can never be about you. You can communicate company values in an email, but you get feedback in a meeting. Having an open mind, ceding the floor and jumping in only to direct traffic, should be the leader’s role in any meeting.

Summary

Meetings aren’t the kind of thing you want built into the framework of your company but it’s important to have systems in place that keep you in contact with the various branches of your business. A constant stream of meetings can devalue their importance and, as a team leader, it’s important to distinguish between when everyone needs to be brought together and when it’s time to meet one-on-one. Meetings represent an opportunity to shake things up, keep everyone on their toes, and pull them out of the doldrums of the regular routine. Suddenly throwing everyone into a collaborative environment of equals often has an effect of stimulating out-of-the-box thinking and it can be surprising where the next great idea can come from.

The Employee-centric vs. Client-centric Debate

The early days of any new business venture represent an enormous challenge and transitioning from business plan to profitability involves a number of important steps and a great deal of investment. Laying the proper foundation for your business is essential to securing the long-term future for your company so having an insight into where you are going to focus your early investment will help shape what eventually defines your business. There are two major schools of thought here: the employee-centric approach and the client-centric approach. Both have their merits and which works for your business will come down to an analysis of which approach is most likely to make your company stronger in the long run based on the resources and capital that you have available.

Employee-centric Approach

Greatest investment: Capital

Best Marketing Feature: Cutting Edge

Clientele: High End

The idea behind the employee-centric approach is to create an environment where the people you hire have the best tools at their disposal so that they enjoy coming to work. The concept is that if the employee is happy they will be better able to service clients who will be happy in turn. In order to provide your employees with such an environment usually requires investing a lot of capital up front. This is the one drawback to this approach as, by having a high startup cost, you have immediately positioned your company to operate at a certain price point depending on the market for your service or product. You have reduced your potential pool of clients down to those that can afford to pay for your service or product, and you are now trusting that you will be able to market your company in such a way that attracts a high end clientele.

You will benefit from being able to provide your clients with the very latest technology in whatever you are offering, and reminding them through advertising and marketing campaigns that your company is on the cutting edge of the industry is essential to making your company viable. Investing big in your company through an employee-centric approach means going big the whole way. The investment is bigger so operating costs will be higher and, in order to turn some kind of profit, you will likely be asking your clients to pay more for your product or service than some of your competitors. By making such a demand of your clients, it is imperative that you consistently deliver the goods because the moment a client realizes that they can get the same quality product or service for cheaper, it’s their right to jump ship.

Client-centric Approach

Greatest Investment: Time

Best Marketing Feature: Value

Clientele: Anyone

In contrast to the employee-centric approach there is the client-centric approach which places a greater emphasis on customer relations and attempting do a lot with very little. Ever heard of someone building their business from the ground up? Well, that’s the idea here. In the client-centric approach there is a minimal amount invested in capital and, instead, a great amount of time invested in an effort to provide the client with what they are looking for and keeping them happy. Every customer is precious as they represent the lifeblood of the company and one dissatisfied customer could be the ruin of your business. A poor night’s sleep is justifiable if it gets the project delivered on time and on budget.

Although expectations might have to be tempered with limited resources available, the advantage here is that because your costs are lower you are able to attract clients who might be looking for the best rate in the market. This, in turn, easily becomes the strategy behind how to market your company to prospective clients. By offering the most competitive rates you attract clients with smaller budgets, but you can in turn offer your service or product to a wealthier clientele by being able to offer them value, thereby effectively opening your business to a wider pool of prospective clients.

Got Tax and Financial Stress? Here's How to Avoid It

There is one time of year we all dread. No, it's not going over to the in-laws for Thanksgiving. It's tax day. Whether you pay your business taxes on the due date or in advance this can be a stressful time of the year.

Depending on the circumstances, you could find yourself writing out a huge check to the government that wipes out your cash reserves. It's no wonder your blood pressure spikes and the headaches come on.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way.

Yes, you'll still have to pay taxes but there is no reason why you should stress out about this part of your business. First thing to understand - everyone is in the same boat. Beyond that there are some tactics you can adopt to help manage your small business finances and avoid getting on the government's bad side.

Make a Plan

A business's success is built on the back of meeting deadlines. That comes with shipping products to customers and paying the bills. It's important to have a well thought out plan for your entire business. This is not something that should be "kept in your head."

You should be using a written calendar that covers all your responsibilities both to customers and to the government. If you know a payment is approaching you won't feel burdened or surprised when it comes time to write the check.

It comes down to a matter of making priorities. And yes, there is an app for that!

Don't Do it Alone

Feelings of stress go hand in hand with feelings of being overwhelmed. When was the last time you asked for help? As a small business owner there are a lot of new aspects of your business you thought you wouldn't have to contend with. Sure, you knew you'd be paying the bills but keeping up with your company's Facebook page and generating original content for your website? Did you budget time for that? More importantly, do you know what you're doing when it comes to optimizing search engines and social media?

You don't have to become an expert because there are plenty of experts out there in cyber land willing to lend a hand. Even your kids could probably be a big help posting notices or even cleaning up around the office. Start asking for help and watch the stress melt away.

Take Time for Yourself

All work and no play? We've heard it before and it has meaning for the small business owner. The first few weeks or months of your start up will be grueling. No doubt about that. However, that doesn't mean running yourself into the ground. You certainly can't pay your tax bills that way. Leave some relaxation time for yourself and/or with your family every week. Schedule it like a business meeting and hold it with the same level of importance. You'll find that approaching your business after taking a "time out" won't be a struggle. 

A Tale of Two Independents – What’s in a Name?

Jerry and Steve each operate their own web services company. Strictly speaking they are each a company of just one and the bulk of their work involves coding, formatting, updating and maintaining the functionality of various websites. They are about the same age, have a similar education and work experience, and provide essentially the same services regarding each of their clients as completely separate contracts. The only real difference is that Jerry calls himself a freelance web developer whereas Steve has given himself the title of “Consultant” for his firm Omni-Global Web.

Candice, Rachel, and Tamara are the support staff for a new surgical clinic operating in a ritzy part of town and, with a particular budget, they’ve been asked to set up the website that will represent the clinic on the web. Since none of them have the requisite skillset to do the job themselves, they sit down and hash out what they are looking for and promptly place an ad seeking a Webmaster which outlines what the job entails and what demonstrable skills the applicants should have. Both Jerry and Steve apply with a concise and well thought out email along with links to various samples of their work. Jerry applies as himself, but Steve applies as Omni-Global Web and offers his own personal information merely as a point of contact. Both quote the same price.

When reviewing the various applicants, Candice, Rachel and Tamara describe their feelings about Jerry and Steve:

Candice (about Jerry): “I like his work, I’m just concerned that as a freelancer he may not be able to give our project the time and care that it requires. These Guys that work as agents for hire, I just find they’re grabbing at every job out there and don’t put their full effort into their contracts the way real professionals do.”

Rachel and Tamara feel that Candice makes a very compelling argument.

Tamara (about Steve and Omni-Global Web): “I’m really impressed. There’s something neat and tidy about this company’s work. I think they should be our first call and hopefully they’ll be willing to take us on.”

Rachel nods her head in agreement, and Candice assumes control grabbing the phone.

“Omni-Global Web! Steve speaking.”

“Hello Steve, my name is Candice and your company got in touch with us recently about providing us with services for our website and we were wondering if Omni-Global Web might still be able to help us out?”

“I imagine that will be possible, how about we set up a time to talk about what you need?”

Steve eventually got the job without any referral or previous business with anyone involved with the clinic, and Jerry never received so much as a phone call back. Even Steve will tell you that it wasn’t his finest work, but the clients were happy and they paid well and on time.

The Moral of the Story

The reason why Steve got the job (and subsequently paid) and Jerry didn’t is pretty simple, but says a lot about the people that hire contract workers and how they think.

First, Candice had a negative impression about what it means to be a freelancer, and her bias, no matter how unfounded, still earned merit with her peers as being valid. Second, the fact that it was a company, and not just an individual, planted the expectation in Tamara’s mind that there was a larger degree of legitimacy to the work coming from Steve. It didn’t matter who’s work was actually better, as both were capable of doing the job that was asked, but Steve and his title of consultant created a more acceptable framework in the minds of Candice, Rachel and Tamara. Lastly, the way Candice, Rachel and Tamara viewed how both Jerry and Steve might accept being offered the work was completely different. Candice had an image of Jerry attempting to gather up any work he could get as though, working for himself, he was just happy to have something to work on to pay the next few bills. When she finally called and spoke to Steve it was almost as though she hoped Steve would accept them as clients. To Candice, Rachel, and Tamara it would have been a privilege for Jerry to work for them, but with the way they viewed Steve it was a privilege for them to have him work on their website.

If you are a small business owner and you work for yourself it’s important to make these nuanced considerations to have any chance of competing in a market place where contractors are consistently bringing more and more diversified skills to the table. Never forget that how to market and promote one’s self is itself a skill, and the difference between freelancer and consultant, however slight in practice, can be profound in light of the expectation it creates in the minds of potential clients.

Slow Hire, Quick Fire

Anyone in charge of his or her own business who is not familiar with the term ‘slow hire, quick fire’ needs to let it sink in right away. On the surface it seems rather self-explanatory and just good common sense, but internalizing the mechanisms behind why this practice is so fundamentally important can often be overlooked. Below are a few key points to focus on when you may be forced to pull the trigger on any major personnel decision as well as a brief examination behind the rationale for each practice.

The Slow Hire

Every hiring decision is an investment. The idea needs to be that the return from their productivity exceeds the outlay to keep them on board – there is no point hiring someone who doesn’t make your company more valuable than it already is. Like a poker player sitting at the table, there is the old adage that you cannot lose what you don’t put in the middle. Hiring someone should feel like putting chips in the middle knowing that you can take down the hand. If you’re bluffing and praying for your card to land on the river you’ll find yourself short-stacked in no time.

Here are some points to consider before hiring:

1) Don’t let yourself feel pressured by time – A savvy manager will see the need coming down the road long before there is any urgency to actually hire someone. If you’re hiring someone just because you need someone right away there’s a strong possibility you’re not hiring the right fit for the position, but someone who is comfortable being the company silver medal.

2) If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t – It can sometimes feel like the only option available is hiring the least bad candidate. There is nothing wrong with holding out for something better. The right person is out there, and sometimes it’s just a matter of possessing enough resolve to wait it out until they come along.

3) Can someone become the right candidate? – Sometimes you might find yourself with candidates that don’t immediately possess the needed expertise or experience required to fill a position, but may possess certain intangibles, such as the right drive and motivation that can make them an asset to your company. Always keep in mind that it’s easier to train someone how to complete a particular task than it is to train him or her to care about what they’re doing.

The Quick Fire

If someone is dead weight, they’ve got to go. It’s fine to be patient with someone who is still developing the requisite competencies to do their job, but if someone doesn’t have the right attitude, or fails to demonstrate the proper level of motivation that you demand from your employees, don’t wait around hoping they will change. There are plenty of eager people who don’t need to constantly have carrots dangled in front of them who would probably do a great job if given the chance.

Here are some points to consider before firing:

1) Is it even a job that still needs doing? – It’s not uncommon for employees, brought on to complete a particular task, to hang around long after they’ve become redundant. It’s never easy, but explaining that their services are no longer required can sometimes make long-term sense and might be in the best interest of your company.

2) Are they spinning their wheels? – The guy who comes to work every day, does nothing, and collects his pay just the same as the guy who works his butt off, is an all too common occurrence in many work environments. It’s one thing to streamline one’s workflow to optimize productivity allowing for more free time, it’s another to create free time at the expense of productivity. And as great as it is to come to work feeling relaxed, it’s a wholly other thing to show up at work in order to relax.

3) Are they a vampire? – Sometimes what can hurt a company has little to do with the specific competencies of its respective employees and can come down to a single employee’s bad attitude. Nothing can be more damaging to team morale than one person putting his or herself ahead of everyone else. There is no place for someone who sucks the life out of your company.