Staying Cool On The Job

On a recent Thursday at 6 a.m., Daniel Gonzalez, head of Hogan and Hartson's international arbitration and litigation practice, landed at Reagan International Airport in Washington, D.C., capping off a three-day business trip to Argentina. Up next: an early afternoon meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Between his major commitments, he juggled bits of 15 other cases. Talk about pressure.

How do Gonzalez and other stressed-out high-performers like him keep from cracking?

For many, relieving stress is about maintaining control--or at least some semblance of it. When Gonzalez travels--between 30 and 40 weeks a year, bouncing between Latin America, Europe, Asia and United States--he uses both a laptop and Blackberry to impose a little order. "I know I can be responsive no matter where in the world I am at any given time," he says.
In Pictures: Ten Star Athletes On Staying Cool Under Pressure

Indeed, most scientific research shows job-related stress is most severe when people have high demands and little control, or perceived control, over the forces at play. A production-line worker may have a very defined, repetitive, 9-hour job but still be swamped with stress because the fate of his job is far beyond his control. The greater your feeling of control, the lower your overall work-related stress level will be, says Peter Schnall, director of the Center for Social Epidemiology at the University of California, Irvine.

Eventually, though, the long hours will get to you. Based on data from a 2001 California Health Interview Survey, Schall's research indicated people who worked 51 or more hours per week were 29% more likely to develop hypertension, versus 14% of workers that put in 40 hours a week. Such stress can also lead to heart disease and depression.

The cost of all work-related stress is squishy, but no doubt high. The American Institute of Stress estimates stress costs U.S. corporations $300 billion annually in health care costs, turnover and absenteeism. A survey by the same institute also reports more than one in four workers say they take a "mental-health day" at least once a year, specifically because of work-related stress.

The first step to wrestling with job stress is to nail down what specifically is stressing you out. "People tend to experience stress in a generalized way," says Russ Newman, executive director of the American Psychological Association. "There are going to be particular causes and triggers, but unless you take the time to look at them, you're not aware of what you're dealing with."

Sometimes those triggers are hard to pinpoint. One trick: When stress hits, put down the circumstances on paper, says Dr. Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress. That way, you can go back to your notes in a calmer moment and nail down on the source of your stress.

Once you figure out what's eating you, take some quick, smart steps to unwind, says Newman. And by that he means exercising or taking incremental breaks, not chain-smoking or binge drinking.

Next, divide the stress triggers into two categories: those you can control and those you generally can't. Obviously, knock out the ones you can control first.

As for the ones you can't, try to mollify their effects. Some things that seem out of your control may not be. It's helpful to work through these issues with an outsider, like your spouse or a friend, to gain perspective, says Rosch. If the source of your stress is truly immutable, think about changing how you experience it.

Take commuting: If driving to work for hours each day causes stress, and it's impossible to move or work from home, Rosch suggests buying a set of books on tape. Changing the experience--and thereby giving yourself more control over the situation--can lower your stress.

Another way to beat stress: Root out inefficiencies. Matt Grawitch, a professor at St. Louis University who studies work stress, saw this first-hand on a recent consulting assignment at a local hospital. In one wing, the nurses printed patient charts from one of two stations at opposite ends of the hallway. For some reason, when nurses printed charts, it was impossible to specify which printer to use, and thus where the charts would emerge. "The nurses were wasting hours a day walking to the wrong printer and walking back to the right one," he says. Result: A boatload of unnecessary stress.

Planning can also nip stress in the bud. Gonzalez says he carefully prioritizes his tasks, deciding what is possible to get done in a given week and what isn't. In any system operating near capacity, hiccups create greater problems than those with at least a modicum of slack. "Planning allows me the variable of the unknown, and to accomplish things under the highest-stress situations when emergencies come up," says Gonzalez.

And when in doubt, try a little humor, says Lloyd Greif, the founder of the Los Angeles-based mergers and acquisition firm Greif & Co. (His firm's motto: T.I.G, or "Trust in Greif.") "As an investment banker, you surround yourself with 'type As'," he says. "When things get the most stressful in the boardroom, I'm always going to say something off-the-wall to break the tension. Otherwise, the mood is going to be such that it's tough to get things done." 'Off-the-wall' comments include addressing one of his clients as 'Mutley,' because, Greif says, the guy laughed like the old Hannah-Barbera cartoon dog.

Dr. Rosch says different people experience stress very differently. He compares stress levels to people's experiences on a rollercoaster. Some people panic, while others love the thrill. And still others are adept at using one to diffuse the other.
Top athletes do this well. Jermaine O'Neal, forward for the Indiana Pacers basketball team and six-time NBA All-Star, puts it this way: "Pressure in sports is nothing. That's the job. When the stage is bigger--the playoffs, for example--that just makes it more exciting. It's like being a kid the night before Christmas. Okay, maybe you do get a little tighter shooting a free throw at the end of a game on the road, with fans going crazy behind the backboard. But you know you've practiced that shot to win. So when you get that opportunity, that's just fun."

One last word on stress: If you're going to vent, do it with caution. Venting should be cathartic--not a way to keep reliving the same stress. "If you go down the hall to vent to an associate, that's okay," says St. Louis University's Grawitch. "But if the next step is to go upstairs and vent to someone else, then you're holding onto the incident, and it can become very disruptive."

How Athletes Score (Or Don't) As Restaurateurs

During his seven years in the NFL, runningback Amos Zereoue wowed his teammates by whipping up Kedjenou, a spicy chicken stew which is a staple of his homeland, Africa's Ivory Coast.

Now retired at 31, "Famous Amos" is trying to tempt the masses with Zereoue, a new French/African restaurant near midtown Manhattan--and he's taken a beating along the way. "[Cooking for your friends] is pleasure, the other is business," says Zereoue. "It's a lot of work, headaches and stress."

After years of being cheered on, jeered at and banged up, plenty of professional athletes with brand power to spare try their hand at the restaurant business. Yet it takes more than a marquee name and reverent fans to run a winning eatery. Roughly six out of 10 restaurants close within three years, according to a survey of 2,439 restaurants by professors at Ohio State University.
In Pictures: How Athletes Score In The Restaurant Biz

And while athletes may have more money to throw at a new concept than most restaurateurs, the battlefield is littered with losers. Basketball stars Larry Bird and Shane Battier jumped in and out of their own ventures, as did pro footballers Jim McMahon, Johnny Unitas and Lawrence Taylor.

"It's the dumbest thing anybody could do to think they could operate a restaurant as an athlete," says Joe Theismann, former Pro Bowl quarterback with the Washington Redskins, who has invested in five restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area since 1975. "Even if you understand the food business and have worked in a restaurant, it's an ever-changing business that presents new challenges every day."

Zereoue tried tackling the restaurant business much like he played football--by plowing right into it: "Once I found the place [formerly a French bistro] and started paying rent, I closed down for about two to three days, put on new paint and then I was up and running."

Not for long. Sixteen months after opening in July 2006, Zereoue is quick to cite his missteps--from poor marketing and uninspired renovation to lack of training and lax oversight. He even had to close down twice for retooling. "I basically just went all out at the beginning," he says. "I thought that just by buying the best of everything--ingredients, drinks--the place would be successful."

Zereoue's problems started just a few weeks after the doors opened. It was a hot summer, and the air conditioning kept crashing. The phones were on the fritz, too, making it hard to take reservations. He shut down for a week.

A few months later, Zereoue closed its doors again--this time for a thorough overhaul. Among other things, Zereoue redid the walls and overhead lighting; bought new kitchen equipment and tables; and reupholstered the bar stools. He also rearranged the space so the bar felt separate from the dining area, creating a more intimate setting. The month and a half of work ran up "tens of thousands of dollars" in costs beyond Zereoue's initial (undisclosed) investment.

But he still wasn't done. Advertisements on OpenTable.com, a restaurant reservation site, weren't gaining traction; nor were the ads in the New York Knicks' game booklets and local newspapers. Finally, two months ago, Zereoue brought on Casimir Andoh as general manager, a restaurant veteran who has worked for the likes of Jean Georges, to get things on track and generate some buzz.

Andoh has a three-pronged marketing approach. Earlier this month he sent out some 10,000 postcards to neighborhood residents and businesses, inviting them to an open bar from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. each night that week. ("We're not spending a penny, because we have connections with the liquor companies," he says.) Next up: a party for all the concierges at Manhattan's major hotels, and after that, a night for all the U.N. ambassadors.

While Zereoue has clearly made progress, it's too early to tell if his restaurant will be a hit--or if it is, whether it will have staying power. Here are a few more tips from ex-athletes and their advisers who have scored in the restaurant biz:
Learn The Business From The Inside

Rusty Staub, first-baseman and right fielder for multiple Major League Baseball teams from 1963 to 1985, and former owner of two Manhattan restaurants: When I got injured in 1972, I had to stay in New York and train. I decided to have fun on the side by working under different chefs in the city. By the time I had opened up my restaurant, I had spent over 1,500 hours in the kitchen. It was an incredible basis for my ideas of what I wanted to accomplish.
Serve The Right Niche

John Whitehead, managing director, Brett Favre's Steakhouse, owned by current Green Bay Packer quarterback Brett Favre: We started with two concepts. We were trying to be a Cajun sports bar [to incorporate Favre's southern background] and a high-end steakhouse. We shot somewhere in between. Eventually we learned that the Midwestern palate is not a Cajun palate. Five years ago, we upgraded our whole profile--everything from the quality of meat to the wine list to the table presentation--to become a high-end steakhouse. Since then, our sales have grown between 10% and 15% each year.
Have Patience

Tom Moxley, managing director of Elway's, owned by former Denver Broncos quarterback John Elway: We knew that, at the beginning, the business would be bumpy. It takes a while to get all the costs and controls in line--it took us millions of dollars to get started--and you have to be patient. If your investors don't know the business, and expectations are out of line, they'll put inordinate pressure to make money from the get-go, which is not what a new business needs. Most restaurants fail because they're undercapitalized.

Despite the risks of owning of restaurant, some athletes say there's something addictive about it. "Being in the restaurant business is like having malaria," says Staub of the urge to own a restaurant. "You never know when it's going to rear its ugly head again."
http://topenterpreneur.blogspot.com/2007/12/mismatch-you-cant-afford.html

How To Find The Best Deal On Health Insurance

The numbers are enough to scare you sick. Some 60% of companies now offer health benefits, down from 69% in 2000, according to the 2007 annual health benefits survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Small businesses are even less generous: Just 45% of companies with three to nine workers offer health benefits. Total number of uninsured Americans: roughly 47 million, or 16% of the U.S. population.

Buying insurance as an "individual" is nothing less than a nightmare. For starters, employees of firms that offer health insurance can use pretax dollars to purchase it; individuals can't (at least not yet). Worse, individual buyers are entitled to fewer protections than employees of large firms. In most states, insurance carriers can deny coverage to individuals with a preexisting condition like cancer or diabetes. And for the fortunate few who can afford to buy insurance on their own, there's a labyrinth of options and loopholes to navigate when choosing a policy.

But make no mistake: Traversing this territory is worth the effort. The consequences of choosing the wrong policy at the wrong price are just too large.

In Pictures: Affordable Health Insurance In Six Steps

Good data on the individual health-care market are fragmented at best. A 2004 survey by America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group of health-benefit providers, pegged the average premium cost at $2,268 for a single person, and $4,424 for a family of three.

To put those figures in context: The median income in the U.S. that year was $44,389--or around $38,000 after taxes. Assuming that the median income of individual health-insurance buyers was roughly the same as the median income of those covered by employer-based plans, health-insurance premiums for individual-insurance buyers gobbled between 6% and 12% of after-tax household income. Big money.

And that's just the premiums. Health-care costs also include payments to cover deductibles (the amount you pay for treatment before the insurance kicks in) and co-payments to doctors and hospitals--meaning that the overall health bill takes an even bigger bite out of household income. For people buying insurance in the individual market, these additional out-of-pocket costs tend to run higher than for those covered under employer plans, says Kevin Lucia, assistant professor at Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute.

A big reason for the discrepancy between the individual market and the employer-based market: Insurers figure there's adverse selection in the individual market. People are more likely to buy health insurance when they're sick, or think they will get sick, and that makes them a higher risk.

In many cases, individual insurance buyers don't have any options--expensive or otherwise. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, employer-sponsored health plans can't discriminate against employees with pre-existing conditions; by contrast, the individual health-insurance market follows state laws, which generally offer fewer protections.

In 45 states, individuals can be denied coverage by insurers due to previous health problems. (New York, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey and Massachusetts are the exceptions; a few other states are forced to provide insurance for "unhealthy individuals" but the rates, not surprisingly, are steep.) If insurers do offer a policy, many can choose to "rider out" any medical costs related to the existing disease.

One morsel of good news: More carriers are targeting individual insurance buyers. "The big insurers--Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, Cigna and Humana--have come into this market very aggressively over the last few years," says Bob Hurley, vice president of health-carrier relationships at Mountain View, Calif.-based eHealth (nasdaq: EHTH - news - people ), a search engine that compares health plans offered throughout the U.S.

Of course, with more choice comes more complexity: "Individual insurance is very market-specific," says Hurley. "Where you live ultimately determines how many policies are available to you."

While we can't spit out a one-size-fits-all list of the cheapest health-insurance plans, we can offer a step-by-step process for finding the best deal in your market.

Fist step: Understand your state's rules governing individual insurance. The regulations cover a myriad of issues--from "guaranteed" coverage for all applicants (regardless of health condition) to pooling micro-businesses with individuals in order to reduce costs. (One caveat on "guaranteed" coverage: It comes at a price, and with few plan options.) Understanding these rules will help you navigate your policy options later on. One useful resource is healthinsuranceinfo.net, run by Georgetown's University Health Policy Institute; another is your state's Department of Health Insurance.

Next, lay out your options. Here is where the work comes in, but again, it's worth your time. Three key sources of information include Web engines like eHealthinsurance.com; insurance brokers who work with multiple carriers; and the carriers themselves. You can find carrier names on your state's Department of Health Insurance site.

To winnow the options, decide what you can afford and what level of coverage you are willing to pay for. Low monthly premiums tend to come with higher deductibles or co-payments to doctors and hospitals.

Compare two policies--one with a $200 monthly premium and a $5,000 deductible, the other with a $400 premium and a $1,000 deductible. While the first policy will save you $2,400 a year in premiums, you could end up spending an additional $4,000 to cover your deductible. Net loss: $1,600.

But premiums and deductibles are only a small part of the story--and cheaper is not always better. Beware policies with ultra-cheap rates, such as "discount cards" that offer 25% off doctors' visits and prescriptions. Very cheap but limited Association Health Plans (that cover, say, a group of scuba instructors) have their own catches. Then there are the "policies" that cover a specific health issue (say, accidents or specific cancers), but not much else.

You should also consider variables like prescription drug benefits and the number of allowable doctor visits or hospital stays per year. eHealthinsurance.com allows users to compare up to four plans at a time, across some 25 categories and exceptions. Another bear trap: switching costs. If you enter a plan in good health, but are later diagnosed with an illness, it will most likely be impossible to switch to more comprehensive coverage down the road.

"It's very hard to make calculations on what type of plan to purchase," says Linda Blumberg, a health-policy analyst at the Urban Institute. "The nature of this market is that if you go with more trimmed-down coverage now, you run the risks of limiting your options down the road." In some states, it's possible to purchase cheap, temporary coverage--a so-called "stop gap" plan--for a year, but it can't be renewed.

Finally, be honest and careful with all paperwork. The minute you apply for insurance, carriers have the right to dig through your medical records. Remember: The less insurance carriers pay out, the more money they make--so they're looking for those mistakes.

Says Blumberg: "Even if you make an honest mistake or put down something that's a little off, you can get denied coverage."

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2007/12/06/unitedhealthcare-aetna-signa-ent-hr-cx_mf_1206healthinsurance.html

A Mismatch You Can't Afford

My real education began the day I got out of school. I bought my first vehicle, a used 1978 Volvo sedan. The only thing uglier than its yellow color was the way I financed it.

I took out a car loan, amortized over five years. As fate would have it, the vehicle lasted about three years, so I ended up having to make two years of additional payments on a worthless asset.

This embarrassing example (yes, I majored in finance) reaches to the heart of an oft-broken rule when financing a business: Always match the timing of the cash inflows generated by your assets and the cash outflows needed to service your liabilities.

If that sounds painfully obvious, consider the pickle huge financial institutions like Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ), SunTrust and others have gotten into over this very issue.

As you may have read, these companies set up off-balance-sheet entities called "structured investment vehicles" (SIVs) to keep billions of loans off their books, making their return on equity and debt-to-capital ratios look better to investors and rating agencies, among other benefits. Lately, though, the securities in those SIVs--specifically, pools of risky mortgages--have started to blow up. Big time.

A major reason for the meltdown has to do with the timing of the cash flows within these SIVs. In basic terms, an SIV "borrows short" and "lends long." It borrows by issuing commercial paper--short-term obligations that have to be paid off in three to nine months. It invests (lends) by buying mortgage-backed securities and other instruments, which pay off over a longer period and carry more risk.

The mismatch: You expect cash flows tomorrow, but you owe money today. (This is the opposite of my car-purchase example, in which I borrowed long and invested short).

SIVs work as long as they can keep issuing short-term debt to fund purchases of those longer-term assets (mortgage-backed securities). And they can only do that if the market expects homeowners to keep making their monthly mortgage payments. If it doesn't--and short-term lenders get spooked--credit dries up and the gears grind to a halt.

Unfortunately, that's what has happened. If the banks had followed the asset-liability matching rule and borrowed over a longer term, they would not have gotten nearly as squeezed by those short-term obligations.

Here's how the matching rule should work. Take inventory. If you intend to make a living, you have to convert inventory into cash--as many times a year as possible.

Inventory is a short-term asset, which means you should use a short-term strategy to finance it--say, a line of credit or a short-term loan.

On the flipside, if you want to finance long-term fixed assets like property and equipment, then borrow over the long term. Using cash is the equivalent of borrowing very short and investing long--a mismatch.

Why do so many people flout the asset-liability matching rule? Instant gratification is a big reason.

Go back to the Volvo example. I borrowed long and invested short because I wanted to reduce my cash payments in the short term. Same thing goes for home mortgages. Some buyers put so little down they don't even cover their interest payments, let alone chip away at the principal. Result: Loan balances actually go up over time, not down.

Bottom line: When it comes to managing a balance sheet, timing is everything.

Brian Hamilton is the chief executive and co-founder of Sageworks, the developer of ProfitCents, a software application that enhances financial analysis and communication for financial professionals.