After nearly a decade of working for newspapers and like, I started a new life as a marketing executive for a small manufacturing company. As with most small companies, I found myself taking on a variety of tasks, including billing, customer service, inventory and shipping.

The lessons I've learned working for this company, I applied to my editing and Web design business with great success. Here's what I've learned:

* You can set your own terms. You can decide if you will be paid upon receipt, in 15 days or 30 days. Make your terms clear and print them on your written bid and on your invoices. It was liberating to know that I no longer had to wait and keep asking my client when check would be sent out. Nor was I held hostage to smaller companies that considered my invoice a lower priority than their other bills.

* A credit check can be your best friend. Before a manufacturer will give a new client it's best terms (usually Net 30 or Net 45), it will run a credit check. Think about it, when you tell a client they don't have to pay you for 30 days, it's same as offering a line of credit. But what do us writers do? We run to our message boards and ask other writers if they have ever worked with this particular client before. Make a simple form with your logo and call and check references yourself. It may take an hour or two of work, but avoiding one bad credit risk will save you hours more. (It can save a lot of money, too!)

EFFECT ON CONCENTRATION

Indoor Air Quality has been shown to have a dramatic affect on concentration of people within an office setting. One such study of clerical workers, which appeared in Indoor Air 99: The Eighth International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, showed IAQ effecting typing speed by 6.5 percent, typing errors by 5 percent, basic math by 3.8 percent and scores on reasoning and logic tests by 3 to 4 percent.

"Scent is an important indicator of good air quality," said Mark Wincent, director of development for Sparks Technology, Inc. "Usually indoor air quality issues are first identified through complaints of a stale or stuffy odor."

Ambient odors can also have an effect on concentration and memory tasks. In fact, memory for odor is markedly resistant to time, easily accessed and tends to be characterized by a high degree of emotion, clarity and vividness. Memory recall tends to be better when subject is exposed to same odor at encoding and at recall than in a situation that had no odors.

"We understand power that scent has on cognitive ability," said Wincent, adding that, as a filter company, Sparks is concerned with removing smells, not adding them. "Scents can also be associated with negative memories. A building owner has no way of knowing what type of memories a buildings' occupants associate with specific smells."

EFFECT ON EMOTION