I was looking at this production today that had to literally hire hundreds of people to do some work. It definitely had money pumped into it and so you can assume that every department was carefree in terms of its spending. In this scenario all of the people they ended up hiring didn’t even need to do anything and got paid still. The reaction? Basically a “oh well, we budgeted it for it.”

I guess this is why even if you run a large company of sort where you have the money to hire a bunch of people to do things for you that you still need to be hands on with all of your finances and daily reporting. This is almost like the equivalent of paying for a monthly cable bill when you don’t even watch TV as you have to designate an “entertainment fund.”

When it comes to a budget I usually work with the money as a whole and then start to designate it into certain categories until it seems sustainable for whatever I am doing. I know a lot of people would say create all of the categories they think they need first and then start to distribute their funds.

I guess if it is like shopping for food what I would do is take that $200 and start to write down items that I want/need. As I am making the list and seeing the best prices the amount of money I have left really makes me think if I need something or not. This is opposed to say splitting the funds right away such as $50 would go to breakfast items, $50 for lunch items, $50 for fruits and vegetables, etc. I find with that method you are usually enticed too much to spend everything that you designated that way. As well, you are inclined to say “Oh well, I planned to spend $50 on this.” That’s why I personally avoid the blanket budget mentality.

What a surprise this was when I checked my blog comments today. As you all know, I was having trouble canceling that hosting account and had to initiate a chargeback. From the looks of it, the owner of the company replied to the post and mentioned that they have credited me back.

I thought the comment showed a lot of interesting business topics though. While maybe I interpreted it the wrong way, the comment came across to me as if he was trying to place the blame on me as to why that account wasn’t cancelled in a timely manner. In some ways I felt this way too because I specifically read a comment from another person where he felt the same was done to him.

Even if that wasn’t the case, that is one thing that is important I’d say in a customer service oriented business where it is important to try and not place the blame on the customer rather than helping them understand why the situation occurred in the first place. I am actually interested in hearing a reasoning for it as from what I read many have experienced the same. Hopefully that helps them too.

You know what the other thing I was thinking about too? Was action taken in crediting me back promptly a direct result of me contacting the company or because of the post I made in sharing my experience with others? I never actually did get a callback for the record. In general many times that is true where you will get a cold shoulder response from a business until the story is made public. Does that mean you should write about every little issue? Course not, but it’s an option I suppose.

So, glad I got my credit back. Actually, there is another service in that account that was to be renewed as well in the later months that I requested a cancellation for as well. Wouldn’t that be funny if I get charged for that in the coming months.

Past Post Reference:

Part 1
Possible Chargeback Initiation

Part 2
Credit Card Chargeback BlueFur Web Hosting

Part 3
Credit Card Chargeback BlueFur Web Hosting Part 2

I was watching that Kitchen nightmare show yesterday and there was an interesting theme that talked about how the general manager of the restaurant was ineffective in his role. The interesting comment was how he was being labeled as a person who was scamming and taking advantage of the owner of the restaurant by pretending that he didn’t do anything wrong. Of course, he was very defensive about that.

Most people that I have met are usually very open when they know that they have done a below par job and then somehow try to make up for it. It’s one of the main ways to grow as a person I’d say. At the same time, you can’t help but to have that feeling that you took something without equally giving back in those situations. The funny thing is for the people who don’t want to admit it, just like the above example, I usually see them get very defensive while trying to justify their actions in almost everyway.

I think it come down to appreciation. All the people that I have seen personally that do become extremely defensive in these types of scenario don’t really have the same level of appreciation for time and money as others. Of course than can be an extremely generalizing statement, but that has been true for the most part that I have seen. If you take a lot from someone, then you should give a lot too I’d say.

I was reading this fairly old article from a newspaper that caught my attention. Basically, it was talking about how there are tons of articles and advice on what you need to do to become successful in being self employed, but rarely does anyone talk about how once you get adapted and accustomed to making your own decisions and essentially calling all of the shots that you can ever go back. Therefore, if an entrepreneur ever tries to work as a regular employee again for whatever reason that they won’t last very long since they are accustomed to making say quick decisions on their own and being a risk taker.

I took such an interest in the article because I actually did this once before for fun and experience. Boy was it an interesting one I must say. At first I basically just wanted to have fun and I worked with everyone just fine. I must say though, at various times it drove me crazy to see decisions or directions being made that didn’t seem to be the best way to maximize profits or how people’s skills weren’t being fully utilized to make the best experience for the customers. I couldn’t help but to take initiative which ended up working better in everyway.

The real interesting part was when word started to get around that I wasn’t working there for money and it eventually became common knowledge that I was there for fun and experience. Here was the interesting part in terms of how my entrepreneurial mindset became a positive for one group and a negative for the other. The first management team, keep in mind this is a large company, embraced the fact that I had all of this experience and work ethic and tried to utilize it to its full ability by allowing me to make decisions that would help the store to become successful.

I guess you can say even though I didn’t have the title of say a manager that they had no doubts in trusting me with things that normally a regular employee cannot even go near. There was one example where we were kind of competing against a lot of other stores in terms of sales numbers for a particular category and I helped to lead them to victory where we came out ahead of everyone by a very ridiculous number that was something like 2 times the amount of all the other stores combined while showing a 3000% growth from the previous year. Literally, virtually every obstacle that came up I proved that it could be done when others said that it couldn’t and sure enough it was completed with success.

Now fast forward to when a different management team came in. Instead of embracing my skills and background, they took it as a sort of threat to their own job and wanted to limit my contribution as much as possible while undermining my accomplishments. At the same time, they feared that I could leave at anytime and so they would rather not risk having to rely on me in anyway. On top of that, this group in particular seemed to be selfless in terms of focusing more on profits than people and tried to do things such as not pay people overtime when they should have (I really cared for everyone’s well being too).

For this, my personality and work ethic created a lot of conflicts with the higher ups as I wasn’t afraid to address problems as they came up. The other employees seemed to have appreciated it while it created a headache for the people who were officially in charge. Overall, the store did worst as they persisted in continuing with their ways and to them I became an extreme challenge for them.

So from my little experiment and experience, the question about being able to adapt into say a regular employee environment has more to do with how effective the person is in trying to lead you. At the same time, if you are hiring someone with say that type of background and experience that you have to be prepared to be on the same level in terms of worth ethic and commitment to be the best as well.

It personally taught me a lot in terms of leadership too and re-affirmed my belief in taking care of people first in a work environment. Overall, it can work if the person is provided with the right responsibilities and direction. I must say though, at least it was fun overall and I got to meet a lot of new people.