Business is hard enough without taking bad advice.

By MARK RIFFEY for the Flathead Beacon

If you know people who have owned their own business for a long time (or maybe not so long), they’ll have lessons to pass on. What you’ll typically receive from these people is rarely (if ever) going to be bad advice. I suspect most of these folks will be happy to suggest things you shouldn’t do, as well as things they recommend doing.

Here’s the secret process to making this work for you: Find a business owner. Ask an open ended question, like “What do you think about (something)?” In the meantime, here’s some really bad business advice for you. You may detect a little sarcasm. Or a lot.

It’s OK to fall behind in bookkeeping. No one really keeps up with it anyway, right? Also, never get a bookkeeper, even if you think you might only need them part time. You can handle it.

Never guarantee your work. As long as you’ve been paid, the job is done. The consumer needs to do the legwork to figure out who does quality work and who doesn’t. They are expected to take on 100% of the risk of their shopping choices.

Ignore your customers once you get their money. If they want something, they’ll tell you. Until then, leave them alone until they show up with more money.

Customer service is a waste of money. Your customers are smart enough to figure out how to use your products and services. If they aren’t, they’ve already paid. The really stumped ones will pay again even if they haven’t figured it out.

Be difficult to do business with. It gets rid of the lazy customers and those who aren’t willing to cater to your way of doing things. Or maybe you should be easy to do business with. You decide.

Safety isn’t a big deal. If your existing folks get hurt, you can always find new people to take their place.

Internet security risks are overblown. All the hype about viruses and hackers and stuff is mostly made up to sell software that probably doesn’t do anything.

Never call references. There’s really no need to try and find out if a candidate is motivated, or lazy, or awesome, etc. Don’t call them. Just keep hiring people and replace the bad ones.  Calling them is a waste of time because it’s almost certain that their lawyer has advised them not to tell you anything. If they’re a smart person like you, they probably don’t have a lawyer and do it all themselves. Doesn’t matter. They still wouldn’t tell you because that airline magazine said don’t tell anyone anything if they call about former employees.

Try to be your own lawyer or CPA. Everyone thinks this is a good idea. I know all I need to know about lawyer-ing from that Law and Order show (Whomp-whomp). Accounting and the law is nothing more than math and stern letters.

Marketing is for losers. If your product or services are good enough, you shouldn’t need to waste time and money on advertising.

People don’t need to be trained. If they didn’t know what they were doing, we wouldn’t have hired them.

Salespeople rarely tell the truth. Even better, they rarely stick around for more than a few months, so it’s OK to pay them low commissions. Since they won’t be around long, it’s cool if they make up stories about your products and services as long as it closes a sale.

Foster a dog-eat-dog mentality among your employees. If they’re competing with each other, they’ll either get better or quit. They’ll also be too busy jockeying for position to spend any time getting together and causing trouble.

Never assume that your clients are smart. Presumably you’ve never suggested that your work is easy enough for your clients to do without you. If they were smart, you wouldn’t make so much money specializing in cleaning up the carnage caused by do it yourself clients.

Databases and customer relationship management is for people who can’t close.Relationships with customers are something for people who can’t sell.

When in doubt, use sarcasm. Seriously, though… All of the items above are obviously (I hope) sarcastic suggestions, so do the opposite. Business is hard enough without taking bad advice, particularly sarcastically bad advice.

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Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on LinkedIn or Twitter, or email him at mriffey@flatheadbeacon.com.