No small business owner likes to receive a letter from the Internal Revenue Service – trust me. Such letters inspire dread. Though they occasionally include a good surprise, such as a refund of an over payment, more often they are “not good.” Melissa and I recently received such a letter informing us that, because we […]
Author Archive | David Fauss
It’s Later Than You Think. Yes it Is!
Some time ago, David and I wrote a post about something my mom used to say, “Enjoy yourself. It’s later than you think.”(https://magnus.lisawhitsell.com/2019/03/its-later-than-you-think/) This post is a follow up and serves as a reminder that it really IS later than you think. And, for that matter, it really is later than I think too! A […]
Colossal Failures at American Express and Chase
Over the past 2 months, I’ve been battling American Express to get them to correct a colossal mistake THEY made, but for which they blamed us/me and penalized us accordingly. To be fair to American Express, Chase Bank also failed during this time period, but not as badly as American Express. The issue common to […]
Know What You Don’t Know
Many years ago, a college professor of mine told me that knowing what you don’t know (or that you don’t know something) is an important sign of intelligence. It was an enlightening discussion and I think I’ve mentioned this in another post. But, it bears further discussion because we seem to live in a world […]
Fine System
When one’s business partner is also one’s spouse, there is a natural tendency to have work discussions at home or on other personal time. It is often difficult to “be off the clock” when there are issues at work that demand the attention of the small business person at all hours of the day, on […]
Melissa has made out better than I have in collecting fines, even if I have been entrapped on an occasion or two. I mean, I can’t help it when someone calls me on my cell phone, right? When we first met I was a freelance photographer and on call for clients. She did not always […]
Travel Patterns, Routines, & Variations
The work we do as trial consultants involves traveling nationwide – wherever the cases may be. Traveling presents many challenges and is physically tiring. Developing some patterns to bring methods to the madness helps with these challenges. For example, we long ago established some routines or standard operating procedures (SOPs) when it comes to travel […]
Speaking as the person for whom the travel arrangements are usually made, the essentials involved in doing things the same way, from trip to trip, airport to airport, rental car, to rental car, etc. is one less thing for the weary traveler to worry about. If I can arrive to an airport, tired (and probably […]
Differing Expertise
My husband and I have been married for longer than we have worked together. Many of our family members, friends, and clients (many of whom have become our friends) have asked us, “how do you work together and stay married?’; “doesn’t working together and being married cause a lot of power struggles and other problems?”: […]
What Melissa said does not mean it doesn’t work for life and work partners to have the same expertise. Certainly we know attorneys (some of them our clients) who are married and of couples in other professions with the same training who work together just fine. The point is, we have one less point of […]