About

What’s Biznicillin?

Biznicillin (ˈbiz-nə-ˈsi-lən) is training, coaching, and consulting designed to help you take over the world.

Why?

Too many years of watching businesses (big and small) do things the wrong way: ignoring problems until they become four-alarm fires, blaming instead of finding solutions, snatching time sucks from the jaws of efficiency, wasting time, wasting people, wasting effort. I could go on, but I won’t. Because it hurts my brain.

Who?

That’d be me.

No, I'm not dead. Just pale.

I’m Kathleen Jaffe, and I’m your hostess, business health coach, and all around moderately cool chick. Unless you’re my son, in which case I’m not cool at all. But I am your mother, and you need to do your homework and brush your teeth right now, mister!

I’ve been paid to train people, write, develop business systems, and… I’ll spare you the boring details in favor of the condensed version: I’ve had four related-but-not-identical careers, including a stint at the lofty rung (hee!) of middle management in a Fortune 50 company. Which nearly killed me. Really.

Other pertinent tidbits of information: I can sing like the Chipmunks (without requiring helium, thank-you-very-much, and yes, I’ll do it on command). I can bake Italian bread as good as that you’ll find on Arthur Ave. in the Bronx (so sayeth my very Italian, Yonkers-living former sister-in-law). I read obsessively, and buy books like other women buy shoes. I am often politically incorrect and have a finely honed sense of sarcasm. I play several musical instruments. I used to sing professionally (now I sing only in my car, for the most part). I am also a Mets fan. You’re allowed to mock me for that, but please do it when I’m not looking.

What do you do?

I cure and prevent Business Transmitted Diseases (BTDs).

BTDs are real, yo. And they destroy businesses every day. Your business might already be suffering from such dreaded diseases as:

• Executitis
• Documentia
• Investimania
• Efficiensanity
• Delegaphobia
• Spontaneous Business Combustion

Okay, but what do you do?

How about some examples?

Problem: Your business is doing really well, and you’re starting to get overwhelmed. You aren’t sure where to start to fix it.

What I’ll do: Identify what’s causing the crazy overwhelm, figure out your options, and then help you implement the best course of action to send the crazy away..

What’s in it for you: Less time spent flailing around like a “How Not to Dance” video. More time to do your thing.

~~~~~

Problem: You want to hire some minions to do your bidding, but you aren’t sure which minions to hire or what to do with them.

What I’ll do: Analyze your work, identify what type of minion you should hire, and then work with you to find ‘em, hire ‘em, and get ‘em minioning.

What’s in it for you: Hiring the right person to do the right job. The first time. And getting them functional quickly so you don’t waste money while they learn their way around your biz.

~~~~~

Problem: You have minions. You’ve never had minions before, and your only examples of managing people have been corporate boss-types who were assholes.

What I’ll do: Teach you how to delegate, how to deal with performance problems, and how to make it easy for your minions to kick ass.

What’s in it for you: Successful minions are happy minions, and happy minions mean less turnover and a healthier business.

~~~~~

Problem: Your business is in a downward spiral. Your customers are dissatisfied, your profit is dwindling, and you don’t know how to fix it.

What I’ll do: I’ll figure out what’s causing the problem, then stop the bleeding. Once the crisis is over, we’ll lock that down by figuring out how to prevent it from happening again.

What’s in it for you: Continuous improvement, baby! Less stress, more visiting your happy place. Happier customers. More profit.

~~~~~

Problem: You have a brand new, bouncing baby business. And while you’re great at doing your thing, you’re not so much great with the details of running a business.

What I’ll do: Work with you to design policies, procedures, and business operations processes that fit your business.

What’s in it for you: Better organization. Less chaos. A roadmap to follow as you grow your business.

Ever try to proofread your own writing? It’s nearly impossible, because we tend to see what we expect to see rather than what we actually wrote. For the same reason, it’s difficult to look at your business and see the possible fail monsters just waiting to gobble you up. I help you make your business better by helping you find the stuff that can go wrong, then preventing it; I’m a business prophylactic, if you will.

Should I hire you?

• Are you a solopreneur, entrepreneur, or fledgling empire builder?
• Do you want to build a business that is healthy, strong, and will last long enough to keep you in computer games and bon bons until you shuffle off this mortal coil?
• Do you have a sense of humor?
• Do you want a business health consultant who tells you the truth, even if the truth isn’t what you want to hear?
• Do you want to change the world, or at least part of it?

If you answered yes to most of those questions, then you’re my kind of people. We should talk.

Are you all about the profit? Yeah, I know you want to make money, but are you really all about the profit, no matter the cost? If you are, then I wish you well, but we’re not right for each other. There are scadzillions of consultants who will happily take your money, but I’m not one of them.

The same applies if you’re an enormous corporation. Don’t be hurt. It’s not you; you’re lovely. It’s me. Really. Besides, if you really are an enormous corporation, you probably already have people like me on staff. Don’t get me wrong: you’re welcome to stick around. Read the blog, add comments, and join the conversation. Hopefully we can learn some valuable stuff from each other. But you probably won’t want to hire me, and that’s cool.

What don’t you do?

Have you ever read the list of adverse effects from most broad-spectrum antibiotics? Terrifying! This tells you it’s a really bad idea to use Vancomycin to treat your kid’s ear infection. You have to use the best medication for that particular illness. The same is true of consultants: any business that tries to do every possible kind of work for every possible kind of customer probably won’t do any of ‘em really well.

• I am not a marketing or sales expert – not by a wide margin. I can answer questions about the basics, but I leave the heavy hitting to the experts.
• I do not do graphic design. If I did it, it wouldn’t be pretty.
• I do not design web pages. Once upon a time, I knew a little php, but I’m SO out of practice.

While we’re at it, let me tell you a few things I won’t do:

• I won’t waste your time with endless meetings to talk about planning and strategy.
• I won’t speak in tongues. I might occasionally toss out a buzzword (after all, you can take the girl out of the Fortune 500, but you can’t take the Fortune 500 out of the girl), but for the most part you’ll get plain, simple, easy-to-understand English.
• I won’t try to convince you that you need to hire me as a pseudo-employee for six months in order to achieve your goals.
• I won’t take your money unless I’m damn sure I can help you.

Have questions? Email me at kathleen[dot]jaffe[at]biznicillin[dot]com. Make that look like a real email address, and you’re good to go.

Want a free assessment of what’s happening with your biz? Check out my Diagnostic assessment.

Want to hire me? Hie thee to the Formulary.

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