Category: Business Ethos

All businesses need great staff members and a newly opened business is no exception.

Even if your new business has humble beginnings it is no excuse to not hire the best staff members you can get your hands on. It is even perhaps more of a reason to do so.

The reasons for this are straight forward. Depending on how well the business starts off will determine how well it will continue to run in the future. A great way of getting that rolling start is to hire people who are good at the job.

It can be difficult to find such employees though. After all you are a new business so how can anyone know the job before it existed?

This can be addressed by finding employees who are experienced in roles similar to the job offered. It does not take much training to take a very experienced waiter, and put him into a front of store role. The skills he learnt from his years of waiting service will be directly applicable to the job.

Managing a business requires an enormous amount of brain power. The list of requirements to run a business no matter what the size can be overwhelming and often times unexpected.

Taxes, Stock Checking, Payroll, Rotas and then there are the daily duties like cashing up and general management. This is just a small pool of examples all of which vary between businesses.

A method of keeping track of it all is to remain focused and to be mindful.

There is an ancient Zen saying;

“Master, how do you put enlightenment into action?  How do you practice it in everyday life?”

“By eating and sleeping,” replied the master.

“But Master, everybody sleeps and everybody eats.”

“But not everybody eats when they eat, and not everybody sleeps when they sleep.”

What it means is that people in general are preoccupied with more than one task, all the time, even when already working on a task.

The saying is encouraging mindfulness, which is the mental discipline of allowing your mind to only focus on what is currently happening in your life.

Applying Zen principles like this one can have a dramatic effect on your business and your own wellbeing, what have you got to lose in trying them?