In the UK, the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On” has become the money-spinning motto of the moment, emblazoned on tea towels, mugs and Twitter badges, often with slight changes to the meaning.It’s not exactly nostalgia, as the posters were actually seen by very few people during the War, since the dreaded Nazi invasion thankfully never took place.  But the posters may be capturing a more modern sentiment, as people soldier on in the face of today’s challenges.

It is sound advice, especially for anyone who is self-employed in today’s challenging business climate. I really try to work at being calm, because when things go wrong, adding tears or a tantrum into the mix just isn’t helpful at all. I decided when I was planning my juice café to do everything I could to foster a calm, relaxed atmosphere, and that meant no raised voices or tension. I’ve worked in so many places where there was an atmosphere of hierarchical tension, or even aggression, and apart from making it very unpleasant to work there, if you are dealing with customers they can really pick up on the tension.

Trying to keep calm usually seems to work. Anger and aggression can be contagious but calmness can be contagious, too. And I find that if I force myself to be calm when things go wrong, it makes the situation easier to deal with.

Only I don’t always succeed in this. On one occasion, when I’d got myself involved in what turned out to be a dodgy advertising deal with a rogue publisher, who tried to pursue me for escalating sums of money, I found myself getting apoplectic whenever his name was mentioned. It was like a volcanic rage erupting in me, and no matter what relaxation techniques I tried, I couldn’t think about it calmly. Luckily the situation was resolved quite easily in the end.

My sister offered to deliver a crate of freshly-squeezed juices to a regular customer one day when my staff were all on holiday. She phoned me from the location to say she’d dropped the lot. She was amazed when I calmly replied: “You poor thing. Don’t worry – come back and I’ll make some more.” She had been doing me a favour after all. And I’d done exactly the same thing myself a few weeks before. And in any case, if I’d had a big tantrum, torn my hair out and burst into tears, I would still have had to make all the juices again anyway.

Sometimes you have to muster all your inner reserves to remain calm under pressure. One Saturday during a local holiday when everyone seemed to have left town, the shop became unexpectedly busy. Stocks were starting to run low and I needed to go to the cash and carry, but the person I’d expected to come in to help me called in sick at the last minute, and everyone else was away. I was run off my feet.

Things had just started to quieten down a bit when a Spanish family of four came in and asked for four paninis, three of them with mozzarella and tomato. Once I’d started to make the paninis I realised I had no mozzarella left and only half a tomato. My sister had just popped in for a coffee, so I tiptoed over and asked her to go to the supermarket across the road to buy them for me. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, I struggled to thaw two of the paninis, which were still frozen. The other two had been overzealously wrapped in cling film, which I couldn’t seem to get off. There was no sign of my sister. One of the frozen paninis broke in half. My temper snapped – I took another Panini out of the freezer and angrily started to slice into it. I sliced into my finger instead.

Luckily my sister had at last arrived back from the supermarket, having been delayed by an enormous queue due to a local event. I motioned for her to come through to the kitchen as the Spanish family waited patiently. Even more luckily, my sister is a doctor. With my bleeding finger wrapped in a kitchen towel, I showed her how to make up the paninis. The Spanish family were very patient and pleasant, and I gave them a big discount.

So remember –

Keep Calm

and

Don’t Chop Your Fingers Off

The event will be held on December 1, 2012 from 1:00 – 4:00 PM at with music by Ken Wheaton, and some of the most amazing appetizers available anywhere on the planet.

Along with author Wade Fransson, who will read selections, answer questions and sign books, SOOP will also be introducing two other new authors, Jill Renner,  and Eric Mondschein.  Jill and Eric  will each read selections from their respective books, Your River of Life and Life at 12 College Road, scheduled for publication in early 2013.

The People of the Sign is available with free shipping from Amazon.com, and copies will be also be available for purchase at Lilliana’s.  $3.00 per copy will be donated to fund a children’s playground at the Madison Community Montessori School.  Other signing events are scheduled in the Madison Area after the launch.  Feel free to email SOOP@GoHuman.com with any questions or comments.

There is also a contest titled “Seek and You Shall Find!”.  Promotional posters are located at prominent Madison, Middleton and surrounding area establishments.  Find one, snap a photo, post it on Facebook, and flag the location.  Tag one of the authors to let us know, and if you’re the first who has discovered that location, you’ll win a free copy of The People of the Sign.  And even if you are not the first, you’ll also be entered into a raffle drawing for other prizes.

We hope to see you there on December 1 @ Lilliana’s!

If a business is to have longevity, it will have to change and adapt with the times. But many small business owners are happy for their businesses to stay just the same, until they retire or someone buys them out, whichever comes first.

A newsagent near my café has had the same rubber ducks in the window since I can remember. Yes, rubber ducks. I don’t know if they’re for sale or to persuade customers that it’s a child-friendly store. Or maybe the owners have forgotten that the ducks are there. This newsagent has been in the same location, run by the same hardworking couple for more than 30 years. It attracts a lot of customers, but I suspect their margins are very low.

Trade must have been good in the early days, as the owners live in an expensive part of town and their three children were privately educated and all have good jobs. The owners often complain of tough trading conditions, and they blame the supermarkets. But they would not dream of making any major changes, and would certainly not take on any staff. “You can’t trust anyone,” they explain.

I’m not criticising the way they do business. They know what they’re doing. The owner was wise enough to purchase the premises 30 years ago (though he struggles to pay the business rates). They own another flat which they rent out. But newspapers are in decline and newsagents like these are disappearing. In a few years’ time they will probably go the way of the Bohemian boutiques that used to pepper the area, selling cheap eastern-style clothes. Some of these shops had been there since the 1970s, but they all disappeared within a short space of time, hit by the recession, the popularity of more fashionable cheap chain stores – and by the rise of the internet.

There’s an inherent risk with any change. Not everyone will like the change. Most businesses value their regular customers, and if their favourite product or service is delisted or altered, they might go elsewhere. But if another business starts offering a more alluring product or service, those regular customers will vanish. So it’s important to keep your offer interesting and to look at how the market is changing.

If I want to take a product off the menu, I usually tell any regular customers who like that product that I will make it especially for them. Then I might try to interest them in a new product by giving them a free sample of it.  They quickly forget about the old product.

I recently increased most of my prices, but I didn’t want to shock regular customers with the increase, so I put a couple of prominent signs in the window showing the new prices for certain items. The signs acted like adverts and although one or two schoolchildren stopped coming in, we suddenly got a lot of new customers asking for those products, despite the price increase.

I also changed the seating to give a more upmarket look. I think it makes people trust the quality of the food more and they also seem to spend a bit more. I have considered making more drastic changes, maybe even renaming my café, to distance it from rival cafés. I don’t think the time is right yet.

But such drastic changes can work. A couple of local restaurant owners recently closed their apparently very successful restaurants and opened them with different names and styles. One of them closed his traditionally Scottish restaurant and reopened it a few weeks later as a Vietnamese-style restaurant. The other one closed his long-established Italian-style restaurant, which was always packed full of customers, and reopened it as an American-style diner. The new venue seems to be doing well.

Maybe they just enjoy the challenge, or maybe they did it in order to stay one step ahead in an increasingly competitive marketplace. It’s a risky strategy, but as I said, if you want your business to have longevity, you have to embrace change, and that involves taking risks.

Recently, the ancient tradition of debt cancellation was given another plug here at GoHuman.  Now a group is taking ownership of this idea and is calling it Rolling Jubilee.

It’s a bold move and a brilliant one — as there is a lot going on with it.  Here are just a few highlights:

• The “Too Big To Fail” institutions were bailed out, rightly or wrongly, but those who were crushed by their near-death-experience were not.
• The world is still staggering under the burden of debt, as are many individuals.
• Debt can be bought for pennies on the dollar and when it is, it is usually with a profit motive, furthering a cycle that caused the bad debt in the first place.
• By retiring certain kinds of debt, not only are the individuals who are burdened by the debt history helped out, but so is the economy as a whole.
• There is a Biblical basis to this debt, so at least in America, this should even appeal to many who have been quick to label the unfortunate as “takers”.

I could go on, but the real beauty of this movement is its simplicity — all you need to do to participate is to make a small donation, which is magnified by the power of reverse leverage, and then spread the word.  Check out David Rees’s blog to learn more.  And then consider joining the movement – it’s one more way to Change the Way Your World Works.

The reason is that most of the rights we expect and take for granted as a consumer have been fought for over by consumers and their representatives over many years – but these hard-won consumer rights don’t always apply to businesses. And there is another reason why businesses might be more susceptible to certain shark practices than consumers. It’s widely known that small business owners in particular are often run off their feet, don’t have time to read the small print, and often don’t have the money to pay for legal assistance. These business owners can be easy targets for con artists, especially if caught off their guard.

But surely those nice people at My Lovely Electricity wouldn’t take advantage of decent, hardworking small business people in that way, I hear you say! Well, if that’s the case, why is it that sales people always seem to appear in my shop, clip-board in hand, at 1 o’clock, the start of the lunchtime rush, and always in pairs? Is it really just coincidence and not because they (or their bosses) are hoping I’ll be so stressed I will agree to a “verbal contract” or put my signature to something without properly thinking it through, just to get them out of the shop?

Is that why they always seem to travel in pairs – so that the quiet one at the back can be a witness to you making that crucial “verbal contract”?

It’s so important to be on your guard when signing a contract, especially as a business owner, because different rules and even laws can apply. Be polite to sales people, but firm. Don’t be rushed into signing, and insist on taking the paperwork away to check it before you sign. This is essential even for what seems like a small outlay, because otherwise it could turn out to be a much bigger outlay than you think.

It’s also important to check paperwork when it arrives in the post. This can be a bit of a nightmare as so much paperwork comes through the post. One tip if you’re very busy is to put everything in a single file for the month, and then file it properly later. That allows you to easily retrieve a document if you haven’t had time to file it properly, and it also means if you don’t have time to read something straight away you can allocate an hour when you read through everything in that month’s file.

Doing this saved me a lot of money last year. I was on a “rolling contract” with a fuel supplier. I hadn’t had time to consider the implications of this when I signed  the contract. It means that at the end of the term of the contract, if I don’t formally request that the contract is ended, the supplier can sign me up for a further contract term at a higher cost.

If I hadn’t sat down one day to read through the mail this supplier had sent me, I wouldn’t have noticed that I was about to be automatically signed up to the contract for another year at a price which was one third higher than the previous year’s price. I spotted this just in time before the deadline – which was actually three months before the contract was due to expire, and the week before Christmas. I contacted the supplier to cancel the contract, and the supplier immediately offered me a new price which was just slightly higher than the previous year and that undercut the competition.

Later, on a small business online forum, I read the tales of woe from small business owners who had failed to spot the price increase in their rolling contracts from the same supplier.

Remember – you’re a business person and you have to fight your own battles. And it often pays hard cash to read the small print.

I have just saved myself almost £180 ($290) because I refused to be intimidated by the telecoms company I had recently cancelled my contract with. The way they tried to intimidate me suggests that they often get away with these practices. After I cancelled my contract I heard nothing from them for a while, and then received a “bill reminder” for £100 ($161). I looked at my online account, but it said I had no outstanding bills. I phoned the company, and was told that someone would phone me back, but no one did. I forgot about it.

Then another “bill reminder” arrived – this time for £198 ($319). Once again, I looked at my online account – nothing to pay, it said. I phoned them again, and was told that it was an “early termination fee” for cancelling my five-year contract after only two years. However I had always believed I was on a two-year contract. Luckily I soon found a document that proved this was the case.

The company then told me that they had no record of my having phoned them to cancel my contract. This was three months after I had cancelled. They told me they would send me a bill to cover the past three months’ usage. Luckily I was able to find the email they had sent me three months earlier confirming that I was cancelling my contract.

This was very lucky in fact, as their representative on the phone would not allow me any time to go and look for this email, which I knew I had somewhere – he wanted to immediately put me through to another department where I would have to cancel my contract again. If I had agreed to this it would probably have been taken as an admission that I had not cancelled my contract three months earlier.

It just shows how these companies can and will take advantage of the fact that many hardworking, stressed-out small business owners might not always have all their paperwork to hand.

After all this I presented the company with a formal letter of complaint, detailing what had happened and asking them to send me a bill outlining all that they were asking me to pay, and most importantly, why. At last they sent me a properly itemised final bill – for £19.05 ($30), considerably less than the original £198 ($290) they were trying to get out of me!

One other thing – check your insurance premiums every time they come up for renewal. I cut £100 ($161) off my insurance bill this year by making a 10-minute phone call to change my policy, avoiding an increase of £70 ($113) for an “administration fee”. But for every business owner like me, who fights to get their bills down, there are lots of business owners who just pay up, and sometimes end up paying horrendous amounts, because it seems easier or they’re too busy to check the small print.

I know this to be true, because every time I consider signing a contract with a new company, I run a Google search on them first, and sometimes I also look them up on business forums. This often reveals horror stories from business owners who have been conned, sometimes out of huge amounts of money.

On the other hand, doing an internet search can also reveal very positive results. Almost a year ago I signed up with a fuel supplier that a few years back were widely condemned for misleading sales practices. By doing a bit of online research it became clear that they had made a big effort to change their ways. I have been with them for about 9 months now, and I’m very happy with them.

The best way to arm yourself against sharks is to take your time, don’t rush into deals, and keep your paperwork in order. And sign up with online business forums to get recommendations as well as warnings from other business owners.

Then we have one side saying “CUT EXPENSES” and the other side saying “RAISE TAXES” but no one seems to be saying the obvious statement which is:  “We are in deep financial doo-doo as a country so we are going to have to do BOTH!”  You can’t focus exclusively on only one side of the equation to the exclusion of the other, unless you want to play a perpetual game on a one-sided teeter totter.

When you own a business, it is your responsibility to bring in the revenue and grow this figure as much as possible from year to year.  It is also your responsibility to keep your expenses down, so you don’t waste money on non-productive uses of capital.  It is too easy, when revenues are coming in and increasing, to take your eye off the ball and let expenses rise at the same level as revenue.  Or, more than likely, even faster.

Once you have your fixed expenses covered (rent, payroll, utilities, loan payments, etc.) for the month, the remaining expenses are variable….which tend to go up and down with revenue.  What typically happens is when times are good, you can afford to take care of some of those nagging items that you had to postpone due to not having enough cash flow.  Maybe even a few more items that would be nice to have called “luxuries.”

You can justify these as business expenses because you want to spend this newfound money.  Let’s say something like season tickets to a professional sporting event which you justify by saying you’re going to entertain clients.  Although this may be true, and you can write this off as a business expense, you didn’t need this to get business before, so why do you need it now?

This becomes a fixed expense that adds to the bloat in an organization that causes your breakeven point to move higher.  Now you have a built-in fixed expense that more than likely does not produce any new revenue to offset the new expense, and you have to make sure you have enough revenue coming in to cover this additional expense each year.

Multiply this one expense by all the other expenses you decide to saddle your business with because times are good, and you have a recipe for a major disaster.  You will have to be diligent and watch your “expense creep” categories like a hawk.  There is also inflation to deal with which means that even if you do a great job of not adding any new expenses, you still have to contend with rising prices for expenses you have determined are necessary to run your business.

Add to this equation an unexpected economic downturn, and then you are faced with the reality that your revenues have dropped while expenses have not.  Math works the same whether you want it to or not….just like gravity.  Just like the Federal government, you can operate with a budget deficit for longer than you might think.  But at some point the natural law of “too little income and too many expenses” will kick in, and you will find yourself in a deep hole with a shovel.

If you are lucky, the hole will not be too deep so that you cannot climb out of it.  But if you keep digging, you will find yourself in a hole so deep that you cannot be rescued and your business will eventually fail.  It is one thing to be diligent about expenses when you have no money in the beginning.  By necessity, you have to do things on the cheap because you have no other option.

When you have money and are growing, many times people let their guard down and a period of high growth for a business can be even more dangerous than the early, difficult challenges of a new business.  Bankers know, for example, that too much growth can kill a business as readily as not enough growth, strange as that may seem.

Keep a lid on expenses and when times are good, build a reserve fund (something very few businesses have) to either take advantage of opportunities as they become available (maybe buy out a competitor that is strapped for cash or get a deal on deeply discounted inventory) or to survive a severe economic turn-down.  Only the strong will survive, long term.

I don’t think the world is ending, but in many ways the world as we know it is ending. I increasingly believe we are witnessing and participating in the end of capitalism, the system that has sustained us for as long as we can remember. But it’s not ending with an almighty crash – it’s just petering out. Maybe a different form of capitalism will take its place, but if so I think it will be one that would have been unrecognisable to us 10 years ago.

It’s often difficult to recognise something when you’re right in the middle of it. And it’s too easy to be subjective – the perspective from one part of the globe might be completely different in another. From my part of the globe, I see people saving their money, reluctant to make a purchase until they are certain they’re getting good value. The days of splashing your cash around are way behind us. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just something we have to learn to adapt to.

Not everyone is in a financial fix, although clearly increasing numbers of us are. Most people seem to be spending just a little bit less. This means businesses receive a bit less, and have to make cutbacks. Often these cutbacks involve staff, which means that more people have less money to spend – and the cycle goes on.

But some businesses seem to be thriving. The rental market is still buoyant, for certain types of property. I rent out a small flat, and I have no shortage of tenants. Small is the key word – it’s small and cheap, perfect for downsizing. I also rent out the parking space, and I’m astonished at how popular it has become. This is because it undercuts the local parking tariffs.

The irony is that sales of things I produce or create, even if they’re good quality and good value, are not doing so well. They sell, but the numbers sold do not increase. However, costs are increasing, and that’s partly because companies that provide fuel or services are seeing their customer numbers and takings fall as businesses go under, so they try to recoup their losses by increasing prices. My business insurance increased by £70 this year, due to “increased administration fees”. I shopped around and quickly found a deal that was £100 cheaper.

Some of the big gas and electricity providers in the UK recently announced price increases, despite making profits earlier in the year. The resulting public outcry was so strong that the issue has been debated in the House of Commons with some politicians even discussing the possibility of re-nationalising the residential energy supply.

The winners in all this are likely to be the small independent energy providers, who are usually priced out of the market. They have been getting some very good publicity recently, and consumers who would usually be too busy or too lazy to do more than grumble about the rising price of electricity may well be prompted into looking for real alternatives if the cost seems to be rising out of reach in a recession, at the beginning of a cold winter.

And that’s exactly why I think capitalism as we know it could be ending. People are being forced out of their old consumer comfort zones because of the recession, and sharing, exchanging, renting, hiring, and buying second-hand is starting to take the place of disposable consumerism. My hunch is that people are going to have to co-operate more whether they want to or not, because the alternatives will be increasingly unviable.

It doesn’t mean we’ll all become hippies overnight. We’ll still be consumers. But we’ll be looking out for well-made goods that will last longer or that we can sell on ebay once we tire of them. Most of us will start buying cheaper goods if we lose our job, get a pay-cut, or are just worried about the possibility of losing our income. But if the situation continues and we start to realise we are buying the same thing over and over again because it doesn’t last, that’s when we start to understand the value of quality goods. I think this process could benefit small independent quality producers who don’t have enormous overheads.

Who in 1995 would have predicted the way that the internet has taken over our lives 15 years later? I think in 15 years’ time, more of us will be running our own business, or co-owing a business or co-operative. Instead of madly rushing to buy the clothes, convenience foods, and drugs we need to survive in the working world, we’ll have more control over the way we live our lives. Instead of mad commuting back and forth, we’ll use transport to take us to where we really want to go.

I started writing this piece just over a week ago. Since then, I’ve noticed that a few other people are saying similar things, including this blogger and this one.

This short film was made over a year ago, and offers an interesting perspective on capitalism. It has been reported that UK retail chains are closing at the rate of 30 a day. Shops bucking the trend include discount stores, payday loan outlets, currency exchange outlets, convenience food shops, pawn brokers, and charity shops. This is partly because more people are making online purchases, which is another trend that allows small independent firms to benefit.

Finally, here is a link to an article about rulers in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt ordering public debt cancellations. Apparently they did this on four documented occasions in order to restore the social order and to ensure peace and stability.

I don’t think our governments are about to announce any major debt cancellations, yet already our social order is starting to fray at the edges. I am cautiously hopeful that the eventual result will be more fair and equitable ways of conducting business.

1. Follow your passion – do what you love
2. Never give up – learn from your setbacks
3. Be flexible – move your business in a new direction

I noticed that the idea of following your passion is under attack, as this link, illustrates.  This is not surprising in the wake of major global economic meltdown, with people hunkering down and minimizing their exposure to risk.  And certainly passion doesn’t overcome bad behavior and poor habits.  But even in good times, most entrepreneurs struggle to find ways to implement such advice in a way that leads to success. My last blog highlghted how I had to let my first business die, after some initial success.  Followers of GoHuman are aware that we’ve failed twice already, and have, as of yet, failed to achieve much success on our third effort.  Today I’d like to share early signs of success with my latest venture, Something or Other Publishing LLC (SOOP).

I was engaged to marry when I first joined what was to become Gohuman, and by the time it folded for the first time I was married, had moved to Wisconsin from California, and we were expecting a baby.  I wrote a short story about my transition, as a warmup to a book I had wanted to write.  I was so pleased with the result, that what had been a vague dream–to become an author–became a passion.

I pursued that passion – and night after night, when our baby daughter woke me up, I worked on my book.  Along the way, I decided to self-publish, established an LLC, executed contracts for print-on-demand, distribution, and engaged an editor and a graphic artist.  Months turned into years, with unexpected roadblocks, expenses, and discouraging delays.  Refusing to give up and learning along the way was critical.

Then a Serbian author asked me to help publish his work in English and it was time to apply the third lesson above.  I decided to turn my little self-publishing venture into an actual publishing company.  I added a second editor/proofreader, a book designer, and a publicist.  Expenses mounted, but excitement was building.  SOOP published Aleksander Veljic’s Genocide Revealed last January.  It took some time for interest to build, but the book reached the top 10 on Amazon.com in Hungarian history, and the top 20 in Austrian history.  It was mentioned by several media sources in Central Europe and drew the attention of influential people and organizations.  Now an exhibition in Israel is planned for December, with expenses paid for the author to attend.

And last week, on 10/12/12,  The People of the Sign was finally released.  It took almost 5 years to publish, but this last week alone has made it all worthwhile.  The People of the Sign began moving its way up the list of over seven million titles on Amazon.com, reaching the top 20,000 and the top 10 in Religion & Psychology.  The icing on the cake came yesterday, when my book was rated the #1 Hot New Release in that category, a position it holds again today.

What Next?

Who knows, but I’m passionate, I won’t give up, and I’m flexible

The People of the Sign is Amazon.com’s #1 Hot New Release in Religion & Psychology

In recent years, many have expressed their disagreement with government and how they mismanage things while having a hard time trusting the judgment of our country’s leaders. When we take a step back from all this, are we as individuals taking the necessary steps to have the leap of faith for what we are doing with our lives? Are businesses?

Lower wage earners in positions where there is little or no room to move ahead can find their attempts to be futile if they aren’t working smarter. Gohuman is one organization that is all about helping people invest their talents so they can advertise and match up with the individuals and businesses willing to pay for their services. This is one way to work smarter.

How do you find a talent or needed service in order to turn it into a small business with little or no start up costs? Start small. Maybe you can find the time in your schedule to be a dog walker or baby sitter. Or discover products you can buy at wholesale prices and then resell them at retail prices.

If you have never thought of yourself as a salesman/woman, why not try it? Are you associating the sales act with the man who sold vacuums coming to your door when you were growing up? Times have changed, and selling is easier than ever on the internet. Everywhere you look, there is another product or service being advertised on the Internet.

If you want to find your own direct sales business, go here. You can also access data on direct selling by going here.  Another great site for doing research before starting up a direct sales company can be found here.  These sites were so informative and helpful that I’ve recently started my own personal direct-sales business with a $99 kit. I am now a Pink Papaya pampering spa products and party consultant.  Check out my shop!

When our money source is tapped out, it enables us (or forces us) to become innovative. By stretching our dollars, we are also stretching our minds by looking for ways to become more creative with our talents. We all have innate talents; some of us have tapped into them, but many have not. Why is that?

Many times, we get caught up thinking we must be something for someone else, when really we are selling out who we are meant to be for someone else’s dream. Don’t dream someone else’s dream; live your own!

A few weeks ago, a couple came in and asked for French toast with maple syrup. I put some cheese in it, as I have some regular customers who always have it with cheese – I had forgotten that the cheese is not mentioned on the menu. It was only when the couple left and I went to take their plates away that I realised they had left most of it – and they had made a big effort to remove the cheese from the bits they had eaten. It was too late to apologise or offer them a refund, and they hadn’t complained. I was furious with myself and resolved to be more careful next time.

On the other hand, everyone makes mistakes, and this had happened at the end of a week when I had been working six long days completely on my own, as both of my staff had left and I hadn’t yet managed to find replacements.

I know I’m far too sensitive where my business is concerned, and I’m sure many other business owners know that feeling. Your business, especially if you’ve built it up from scratch, is in many ways like your baby, and no one likes their treasured little angel to be criticised!

That’s why, on a quiet morning when few customers come in, I sometimes experience feelings of anger, as if everyone is deliberately avoiding my café for some reason. Maybe someone’s soup wasn’t quite warm enough yesterday, and they’ve all been talking about it. These are, of course, totally irrational feelings, but I think it’s important to recognise those symptoms of being a bit too over-sensitive about your own business, and to practice adopting a cooler head.

I was reading an article about a much bigger and more established café than mine recently, in which the owner was quoted as saying: “Try not to take things too personally. There are quiet times in every business.” It’s so true. On several occasions when my café has felt far too quiet, I’ve gone out later and have found out that all the nearby cafes are deserted too –  maybe for some reason there are just not so many people about.

It’s important to get a sense of perspective. New businesses have a tendency to take over your life. I have a couple of action plans for when those feelings of irrational despair start to take hold. It nearly always happens when I’ve been working long hours and am feeling tired and stressed.

If a customer complains, whether I think they are right or wrong, I always do three things:

• smile and apologise

• offer them a refund or a replacement

• take action to avoid that situation happening again

I instruct my staff to do the same.

If I find myself sinking into a mood of anger or despair because things are going badly, I take measures to change my mood, usually by doing some sort of positive thinking exercise or reading something funny. I tell myself how lucky I am, because running a café is something that many people secretly dream of.

It’s so important to practice altering irrational negative feelings if your business is a public-facing one, because if you try to repress those feelings behind a strained smile people will pick up on it. Then they’ll try and leave as quickly as they can!

The last thing I want is to be like the small shop owners who greet your appearance with: “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you for ages!” Making the customer feel guilty is one way to ensure that they never come back.

My advice to those shop owners is this: overcome the emotions. Be friendly and focus on making the customer’s experience a pleasant one, and it will be pleasant for you too.