Maintaining an effective and friendly staff is one of the most complicated challenges I’ve encountered as a young entrepreneur. As Chief Operating Officer of AKT Enterprises, I oversee the coordination and collaboration of over sixty employees spread over five departments and three facilities. With an average employee age of twenty-four years old, the company falls victim to the many drawbacks of workplaces consisting of Generation Y employees.

As food for thought, here are a few published common pitfalls of hiring “Millennials,” as they’re called:

1. Heightened sense of entitlement
2. Take credit for good outcomes, point the blame for bad
3. Unrealistic expectations of the common workplace
4. I’m extremely proud of every single employee at AKT and acknowledge that we didn’t get here without making a few “bad hires” along the way.

The truth is, sometimes it’s more work to try to teach someone how to be a great employee than it is to take a gamble on bringing in someone new and training them up to speed.

Over time, I’ve naturally developed a few common categories for red flag situations. These red flags, more often than not, indicate the need for an immediate firing. Note that these are listed in no particular order, someone can possess more than one of these qualities and, please, forgive the names I chose.

1. The Supposedly-Qualified, Busy Body

When you interviewed this person, you couldn’t have been more excited– a perfect match, right? This person is constantly working hard, putting in extra hours and bringing up countless ideas without being forced to. Their analysis of problems is accurate and their proposed solutions all make sense to you.

This individual is incredible on paper, but you just can’t put your finger on why their magic isn’t working at your company.

The reality is that some people are just full of it. They know what you’re looking for and they know how make it appear that they’ve been working hard–just enough to keep you guessing where the problem in your company is. Trust me, this type of employee may be professional and intelligent, but they cause more problems than they fix.

2. The “Yes” Man (or Woman)

Through my experience, it takes a little while to figure out that you’ve hired a “Yes” man. Once you spend a few sleepless nights trying to pinpoint why certain things just aren’t getting done around the office and you get completely fed up with someone agreeing with you but never following through, you’ll realize you’ve hired one.

There is nothing worse than someone telling you what you want to hear all the time. It accomplishes nothing, unless your goal is to constantly waste time.

3. Captain “Just Enough”

It’s difficult to justify letting one of these people go. Why? Well, they do just enough work to fly under the radar. What most people don’t tell you is that there are more of these in your organization than you even realize.

I recently read a quote somewhere (most likely retweeted by my director of business development) that said most employees will stretch two hours worth of work into an eight hour day out of fear of–get this–looking like they’re slacking!

I am a huge advocate for a positive and effective work culture. Losing red flag employees does more than just save you money and produce better products, it’s a sigh of relief to your other employees.

Of the hundreds of random factoids my father emails me on a regular basis, he sent a gem recently. This one came in at 6AM and said, “Hire slowly, fire quickly.” I forwarded the email to everyone on my executive and admin staff that day. If you happen to realize that you’ve hired an employee that fits one of the types profiled above, I recommend you take that advice.

Who you work with is just as important as the work you do. While many young entrepreneurs fly solo, some of us choose to run our businesses with partners. As the Vice President and COO of AKT Enterprises, I have two primary business partners: Alex Tchekmeian, President and CEO, and Kevin Khandjian, CIO. Originally, our working relationships were not partnerships. My business affiliation with Alex began when he hired me as a freelance web designer. After we officially teamed up, we hired Kevin to program web sites on a freelance basis for us and eventually brought him in as a partner.

Regardless of the origins of a partnership, it’s important that you pay close attention to everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. A common misconception among young entrepreneurs is the assumption that equal partner contributions to the company means you all need to do the same amount of the same type of work. In reality, everyone is best suited for specific types of projects and interactions with clients and employees.

Throughout my career, I have started businesses on my own, with others and joined existing businesses. I’ve found that a business partner’s primary purpose can usually be categorized into one of three categories: skill set, connections and experience. The executive team at AKT is a good example of these individual qualities joining together to form solid leadership and management.

1. Skills and Background

AKT’s internal programming department really sets us apart from the competition. We can build systems in-house that would set most companies back hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Kevin’s advanced programming skills and technical background in web-based applications, coupled with my project management experience, help us make very important changes to business processes in many divisions of AKT, including manufacturing, human resources and customer service. These innovations and upgrades to our internal systems not only save money but keep us on the cutting edge of the merchandising and branding industries.

2. Connections and Negotiating

As one of Florida’s most active talent buyers, Alex honed his negotiating skills at the tender age of fourteen. Many of the lifelong contacts he made during this time gave AKT Enterprises the jumpstart it needed when we began to offer design, print and fulfillment services.

I’ve seen businesses with all the money in the world, the perfect image and the most incredible product concepts fail because of poor sales and negotiation strategies. Without a quality salesman (or some dumb luck), your business is most likely dead in the water.

3. Experience and Problem Solving

Those who know me would agree that I’m a pretty negative person—a “glass half empty” sort of guy. It’s in my nature to pick things apart and point out potential flaws and problems. My critical eye, combined with over a decade of marketing experience, has really helped round off the AKT Enterprises executive team by making sure all of our bases are covered.

The many mistakes I have made in my career have taught me to anticipate and address potential problems before they arise. This concept also helps when applied to sales: I can handle a client’s objections before they have a chance to bring them up.

Most successful young entrepreneurs get to where they are by being resourceful, intelligent and clever. My partners and I are no different. Day-to-day business management comes naturally to us, and we take a lot of what we have learned and accomplished for granted. It is important for us to remember that each of our distinct backgrounds make us ideal business partners and allow us to work through many problems as a team. I am very fortunate to have two incredibly compatible business partners–sadly, not everyone is as lucky as I am.

Most business advice blogs tend to be full of stale, common sense puffery. My goal, as a guest blogger for Young Entrepreneur, is to apply my knowledge and experiences to the discussion of many business-changing decisions young entrepreneurs make or don’t make. Many of these practices are often considered taboo, but I plan to break them down in a contemporary and honest way.

A typical managerial faux pas (coming in at a close second place to hiring your own family), is employing your friends. I’m sure almost all business owners would agree that hiring your friends only adds unnecessary complications to the already stressful and intricate management process. That being said, I recommend that you do hire your friends–but do so carefully. If you’re going to put your business, employees and customers at risk by hiring a friend, it’s important to understand how a relationship like it can affect all aspects of your business. If you are conscious of the following three factors, you may be able to maintain what I would consider the most acceptable employee-employer relationship you can have with a hired friend.

1. Qualifications

If you’re friends with someone, you should automatically assume that your evaluation of their skills, potential or work ethic is completely biased. I know you think you’re not like anyone else and your friend is the exception to the rule, but you’re not and he or she is not. Once you’ve come to terms with this, you can put yourself in a position to more accurately evaluate their performance and attempt to manage them.

2. Discipline

Punishing employees is hard enough. Reprimanding friends is even more difficult. Young entrepreneurs tend to have young friends–this means immaturity can ruin more than the professional side of your friendship.

3. Respect

Your relationship with your friend will absolutely cause issues in the workplace. Beyond the more straightforward issues you’re bound to experience (such as suspected favoritism and discipline problems), you should be concerned about your friend’s ability to take criticism or advice from you as an employer and not as a friend.

You certainly shouldn’t hire your friends, but I recommend you do, so you learn why you shouldn’t. Understanding why it doesn’t work is far more important to your business than making one or two bad HR decisions. If you’re aware of the associated risks and potential conflicts, you can minimize your exposure to the friend-related problems that every business owner experiences in these situations. I know plenty of business owners who have hired their friends and swear by the process – I consider them lucky and/or oblivious.

If you manage a team of 10 people, it’s quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors. If you manage an organization of 1,000 people it is quite impossible. At a certain size, your company will do things that are so bad that you never imagined that you’d be associated with that kind of incompetence. Seeing people fritter away money, waste each other’s time, and do sloppy work can make you feel bad. If you are the CEO, it may well make you sick.

And to rub salt into the wound and make matters worse, it’s your fault.

WINTER PARK, FL — Jared Mendelewicz, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of AKT Enterprises, was invited to become a guest blogger for YoungEntrepreneur.com, one of the largest online forum communities for entrepreneurs worldwide. YoungEntrepreneur.com members are comprised of established and aspiring entrepreneurs who are passionate about economic development and promoting the success of innovative and growth-oriented companies. Mendelewicz will share his unique perspective on many of the trials and tribulations facing young entrepreneurs today. His first post, which highlights the advantages and disadvantages of hiring friends as employees, is featured on the home page: http://bit.ly/cb9DtU

Kevin Devine – Splitting Up Christmas

Arrived at my parents’ summer house on Saturday evening.

Made some hot dogs and saw the sunset.

This is the view during the day time.

We went ziplining the next day at Hawksnest

The world’s tallest man being strapped in by the world’s shortest man.

Serious shit going on here.

The next day, we went on the Virginia Creeper trail. Yeah– it’s in Virginia. This is my version of trail mix.

I make this sport look good.

It would have been pretty serene if I wasn’t being swarmed with flies. Great.

The next day, we went kayaking on Watauga Lake. These legs went from pale to red in a matter of an hour or so.

Once you notice my dad in this photo, you’ll realize it doesn’t need a caption.

Epic final photo.

Just because some cute girl likes the same bizarro crap you do, doesn’t make her your soul mate.

But, it wasn’t your fate to BE with her.

You treat a hot girl like dirt and she’ll stick to you like mud.

You are so awesome, your room is so awesome, your phone is kick-ass, and you know what? I love you.

Sweetness can rot your teeth.

Yes, I am relieved to know I am not a golem.

Forget her? Other than numbers, she’s all I think about.

There there are many reasons, there are so many influences in my life, that are telling me, at times, quite literally, that I should come here and bring you these, but I’m doing this because I want you.

Download this song here: Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World

Come To Where I’m From

iTunes

As someone who spends a lot of my spare time surfing the internet for tattoo portfolios, I wanted to take some time to share the work of New York Adorned. They have locations in the city and in Brooklyn and their portfolio has a lot of really large, beautiful work. I particularly love the half-chest partial body suits they do, I LOVE THOSE.

I stumbled upon City And Colour randomly yesterday and really got into it. I recommend you do the same. City and Colour is Dallas Green (Alexisonfire).

Myspace – iTunes

iTunes

Brand New
The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me

iTunes

Bright Eyes
Fevers And Mirrors

iTunes

I had only a couple of his songs in my library before he began to dominate my Top 25 Most Played songs in iTunes. I’ve since downloaded his entire discography.

iTunes

Kind of Like Spitting

This is another artist discography I own. Unlike any artist I’ve ever been a fan of, I frequently listen through the entire discography in a work day. KOLS is no more, though he still makes music under another moniker.

iTunes

Nada Surf

Beyond their über hit in the nineties, I was turned onto their lesser-known music around the same time as Kind of Like Spitting (three or four years ago).  Their sound changes from record to record and it definitely took some getting used to each time, but I can’t stop listening to their CDs.

iTunes

After tinkering for a little longer, I saw I could rotate the canvas using two fingers on the trackpad. Still, I hate this feature and it annoyed the hell out of me.

A few weeks later, I googled around and found an Adobe-issued plugin that disables the feature for trackpad users. Here is a link to the Adobe download page:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4337

Once downloaded, move the plugin to your Adobe Photoshop CS4 install directory plugins folder and restart photoshop. Works like a charm.

Booya. Damn, I hated that feature.

If anyone else is experiencing this, please comment and let me know if Apple/AT&T can do anything about this. This is becoming extremely frustrating. I am right next to a window and I’ve receive three voicemails from people trying to reach me this morning! This seems to be an intermittent problem.

1.  Hard drive failure
2. Light to medium flickering backlight
3. Light flickering backlight
4. Cracked wrist support edge plastic

Each time I brought the computer in for these issues, the Genius (tech support) immediately smiled and admitted my machine for warranty-covered repair. Always renew your Apple Care. If you stumbled upon this blog and have not renewed it, consider it a lesson learned. Just go a few days before your computer’s one year birthday and spend the money to renew. Mine has paid for itself more than three times by now. 

After reading around online, I ended up attempting a restore, which lost a bunch of data the first time around.  It did fix the problem, so I didn’t really care that much.  The other day the same problem happened- so I pushed off restoring because I didn’t want to deal with it, let alone lose any data.

I had recently purchased software called MegaPhone for iPhone and iPod Touch which helps you retrieve photos and other content from an otherwise inaccessible iPhone or iPod touch.  Using this software, I was able to view all data files on my iPhone and navigate to the /DCIM folder and deleted all three folders within the directory.  This immediately fixed the poroblem and I was able to re-sync my old photos.

As you can see in my previous post, the software is relatively inexpensive and has saved my ass more than $20 worth since I purchased it.

I don’t know about anyone else, but Facebook, in and of itself, really helped me get in touch with people from high school, middle school and even elementary school who I never would have spoken to again.

Over the years, Facebook has not only allowed us all to reconnect with these people via messages and wall posts, but they even created a semi-creepy news feed feature for us to spy on our friends!

With the release of Facebook Chat, Facebook has turned our grade school and college acquaintances into real people, online RIGHT NOW. You’re not only looking at news feeds anymore, you’re looking at these people real-time!

Many of my Facebook friends aren’t my friends in real life or on AOL Instant Messenger, so seeing them online and being able to chat with them truly brings my online network to an entirely new level.

Before I get too into this, I’d like to make it clear that my iTunes was configured to sync the last 12 months of iPhoto pictures. Facing almost three months of missing photos, I was determined to find a way to access the missing photos on my iPhone.

I spent a while googling for solutions and it took me a few pages to find my solution:

MegaPhone for iPhone and iPod Touch lets you access photos, music, notes and other data from your iPhone and iPod Touch. You can not only easily drag and drop photos, galleries and notes, but you can recover your music quickly and easily.

For anyone who experiences the following related problems, I hope you can find this software useful if you want to:

• Restore photos from your iPhone or iPod Touch
• Restore music from your iPhone or iPod Touch
• Restore notes from your iPhone or iPod Touch
• View or export your call or SMS history from your iPhone
• Store files on your iPhone or iPod Touch

Click here to download MegaPhone for iPhone and iPod Touch

Update @ 2:30 PM – Taking it for a “Genius” appointment tonight, I’ll also be bringing my Black Macbook with a flickering backlight and/or dimmer- should be fun!

Update @ 9:22 PM – Met with the Geniuses- apparently it’s a common problem with the vibrating mechanism. They ordered me a replacement and will swap my phone out for free. Also, they ordered a new inverter cable and inverter “board” for my Macbook to fix the flickering back light.

Update @ 11:38 PM Wednesday the 12th – iPhone replaced at another Apple store that had an 8GB in stock. It’s nice not to have vibration instead of buzzing.

Update @ 12:32 AM Monday the 17th – So, for all of those people who have stumbled onto this blog because of the weird rattling, vibration plastic iPhone noise, rest assured that Apple representatives know EXACTLY what this is. As soon as I told them my problem, they shook their heads, laughed and held the iPhone to their ear and shook it. It was only moments after that, when they grabbed another iPhone from the back and swapped ‘em out.