How to Build Awareness of Your Online Service

How to Build Awareness of Your Online Service: "To attract users to a new social network, prepare to show them why it beats the competition. Then determine where your consumers hang out online and reach out to them there"

From Inspiration to Incorporated: Writing a Business Plan

From Inspiration to Incorporated: Writing a Business Plan: "When Sarah Prevette founded Upinion, her first start-up company, she admits that she “got caught up” in what she thought was an amazing idea:  a pop culture opinion-sharing website for teens.  “I thought it was going to be the next big thing,” she says.  “I thought people would just flock to it, and that certainly wasn’t the case.”"

Building the Team You Need to Drive Change

Building the Team You Need to Drive Change: "Major organizational change is not something that can be driven from the top down by the CEO alone. It requires a team of people powerful and accountable enough to give credibility to the fact that the change is essential. This team, which we call a guiding coalition, must have the right composition, level of trust, and a shared objective. The guiding coalition is different in every organization, but in the video below I explain what you should consider when building your own, and what kinds of people to look for to make it as powerful as possible.  "

Three Ways to Prepare for a Business Launch

Three Ways to Prepare for a Business Launch: "From showcasing expertise to soliciting feedback and offering free samples, consider these tested strategies for startup success."

5 Ways to Disaster Proof Your Finances

5 Ways to Disaster Proof Your Finances: "I’ve never experienced a tornado but I have experienced the earth shake violently under me during an earthquake in California and I felt, in an eerie way, like I was surfing on land.  Watching the news reports of the devastation of the tornadoes in the Midwest this past week made me appreciate the tremendous uncontrollable force of nature.  The devastation in Missouri was so sudden and overwhelming, it almost seems like it was pointless to prepare.  The emergency flashlight and the gallons of water stored in the basement just seem so minor in the wake of this disaster and it didn’t help the people whose homes were destroyed in an instant.  What we won’t see on the news are the people of the town quietly rebuilding their lives.  Those who have prepared financially will have a much easier time."

7 Ways To Save Time With Google

7 Ways To Save Time With Google: "Google made its name as a search engine. Then, with the advent of Gmail and Gchat, it made a huge splash in the email world with its popular, sleek interface."

Apple & The Halo Effect: Eight Valuable Team Practices

Apple & The Halo Effect: Eight Valuable Team Practices: "The Halo Effect is pervasive in business writing: a firm makes a lot of money in the marketplace and then writers rush to endow the firm with every kind of virtue and competence. The firm can do no wrong, until its profits falter and suddenly the same writers can see no virtue or competence in the very same firm. Cisco might be seen as an example of the phenomenon, and Google may be heading down this path. Phil Rosenzweig’s interesting book, The Halo Effect gives many examples.
Apple isn't perfect
As I have been commending Apple in these pages, am I succumbing to the Halo Effect?"

Five Leadership Lessons With A Gutsy Twist

Five Leadership Lessons With A Gutsy Twist: "By Sylvia Lafair"

Five Steps for Finding an Ideal Mentor

Five Steps for Finding an Ideal Mentor: "Here's how to nab the right mentor and get the most out of the relationship. Plus, five resources to help you start your search."

The First 3 Stages of Starting a Business

The First 3 Stages of Starting a Business: "Starting a business is a big deal—a big, exciting deal that comes with an endless to-do list and a steep learning curve. And as a new entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the process, overwhelmed by the details, and lose focus of the big picture. You can make a whole business out of setting up your business, but too much detailed planning can seriously get in the way of really getting started!"

Ron Conway's Data On What Makes Successful Entrepreneurs

Ron Conway's Data On What Makes Successful Entrepreneurs: "Ron Conway and David Lee of seed investing firm SV Angel have surveyed about 300 of their current and past portfolio companies and show some interesting data."

Ten Learning Steps from Entrepreneur to Manager

Ten Learning Steps from Entrepreneur to Manager: "Entrepreneurs often have formidable technical expertise, key to developing a new product or service, but a great naïveté in management skills. They run into difficulty when their business reaches the $1-2 million annual sales range, or their employee count exceeds 5-10. It’s here that entrepreneurs must shift their thinking from tactical and operational, to strategic and managerial."

Employee ownership: Smarter ways to share

Employee ownership: Smarter ways to share: "Employee ownership can deliver great returns — or be more trouble than it’s worth."

How to make Twitter work better for your business

How to make Twitter work better for your business: "Seven deadly tweeting sins you're probably committing."

Surveys: Tips for success

Surveys: Tips for success: "Badly executed surveys will give you reams of useless data. Follow these tips for a successful poll."

The 5 winning strategies of high-growth companies

The 5 winning strategies of high-growth companies: "Get bigger, faster by taking the same simple approaches that deliver superior returns for the PROFIT 200."

The new way to lead

The new way to lead: "In the past 20 years, nothing has changed as much in business as effective leadership. Do you exhibit its seven key traits?"

Great Ideas: 5 keys to better work/life balance

Great Ideas: 5 keys to better work/life balance: "Balancing your work and personal lives can seem like a goal that is highly appealing yet impossible to achieve. And perhaps perfect balance is, in fact, unattainable."

The right behaviours to help execute your strategy

The right behaviours to help execute your strategy: "Seven ways to sustain momentum and support the execution of your strategy."

Great Ideas: Top 3 ways to thrill your customers

Great Ideas: Top 3 ways to thrill your customers: "In today’s competitive business landscape, you’re bound to mediocrity if your customers merely like you."

Build successes by encouraging failures

Build successes by encouraging failures: "Don't view failure as an end. Instead, consider it one of the means to success."

Don't Overlook Customer Service Basics

Don't Overlook Customer Service Basics: "To compete with Web retailers, Micah Solomon recommends that small storefronts focus on first impressions, prepare scripts, and fulfill orders quickly"

How Pricing Can Power a Turnaround

How Pricing Can Power a Turnaround: "A small business overhauls its fee model to woo customers and make a comeback."

Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment

Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment: "Getting Sales and marketing to effectively team is the lament of just about every CEO. Achieving alignment goes beyond just getting these two groups to get along; growth depends on them working productively together. If sales and marketing are at odds it impacts the whole business, most notably revenue, customer satisfaction and company productivity. Add to that the reality that discord between these two groups damages the company's culture, it's easy to see why alignment is on the top of every CEO's agenda."

Seven Ways to Make Your Customers Love You

Seven Ways to Make Your Customers Love You: "With so much emphasis placed on finding customers today, business owners often lose sight of keeping the ones they have. Here are a few surefire ways to stem those losses."

Great Ideas: 3 keys to avoiding procrastination

Great Ideas: 3 keys to avoiding procrastination: "You’re not alone if you tend to procrastinate. In fact, 95% of us do, according to Piers Steel, a professor at the Haskayne School of Business in Calgary who specializes in motivation and procrastination."

Questions to Riddle Before You Start a Business

Questions to Riddle Before You Start a Business: "Determine how long you can survive with little income. Then set a time frame for turning your idea into a product or service people will pay for"

How To Go Global With Your Small Business

How To Go Global With Your Small Business: "The phrase “going global” is being tossed around almost as much as Charlie Sheen used to tweet #winning, but despite how pervasive the phrase has become, there are few small business owners who really understand what it actually takes."

5 Salary Negotiation Tips that Work!

5 Salary Negotiation Tips that Work!: "Once you’ve proven yourself well qualified for a job during the interview process, you have to start asking yourself the tough questions. Do you have a strong desire to work for this company? What if they don’t offer quite as much money as you’d like? Is there a way to ask for a higher salary without alienating the employer?"

Five Creativity Exercises to Find Your Passion

Five Creativity Exercises to Find Your Passion: "Want to start a business, but not sure what to pursue? Here's how to discover what you love."

Seven Signs of a Customer-Focused CEO

Seven Signs of a Customer-Focused CEO: "This is a guest post from James Slavet of venture firm Greylock Partners, an investor in LinkedIn, Pandora, Redfin and One Kings Lane. The author is on the board of Redfin."

Avoid international marketing mishaps

Avoid international marketing mishaps: "When it comes to approaching foreign markets, it's the little things that can trip you up."

Four tips to kick-start your B2B PR efforts

Four tips to kick-start your B2B PR efforts: "The trick to getting other people to tell your story for you is knowing whom to approach and what to say."

How Real-Time Marketing Technology Can Transform Your Business

How Real-Time Marketing Technology Can Transform Your Business: "Market research used to be a calming activity, like a relaxing game of golf. You would see some trend in the market and commission a survey or some other form of research. A couple of months or more would go by as you played a few more holes. Then you would get an answer. No rush. No hurry. No worry about how much the market changed between the time of your insight until the time you answered your question."

Great Ideas: 3 essentials for a winning website

Great Ideas: 3 essentials for a winning website: "Your website is likely your company’s most visible—and important—marketing tool. But is it turning people off? Recent statistics suggest that people will form an opinion of a website within seven seconds of visiting it; if they don’t like what they see, they’ll leave."

Top productivity tips for really busy people

Top productivity tips for really busy people: "Fast efficiency boosters you can put into practice today."

Six Keys to Managing Your Reputation on the Web

Six Keys to Managing Your Reputation on the Web: "Every startup fears that one angry and unfair customer who can jeopardize the business by a SCREAMING post on Ripoff Report, Yelp, or one of the hundreds of other consumer complaint and review sites on the Internet. Most entrepreneurs don’t even know how to keep track of what people are saying about them on the web, much less how to respond or remove it."

Presentation Flow: A Fluid Delivery Gets Results

Presentation Flow: A Fluid Delivery Gets Results: "Most of us don’t give business presentations for the fun of it. We present because there is a specific end goal-whether it’s winning a big account, receiving investor funding, or training internal staff. But you can’t achieve this goal unless you can successfully get your information across to the audience by convincing them that your solution is the right answer."

The "Vow"- and 7 questions to help you avoid using credit cards

The "Vow"- and 7 questions to help you avoid using credit cards: "At times I feel like I’ve taken a vow of sorts. And this vow guides me, irritates me and gives me amazing freedom, often all at the same time. This vow, this guiding principle if you will, allows me to live my life without a lot of financial guilt or confusion. It gives me the peace of mind to know I am slowly but surely building my future while living a balanced life in the present moment."

Seven Cringe-Worthy Business-Plan Mistakes

Seven Cringe-Worthy Business-Plan Mistakes: "Follow these tips to dodge some of the most common planning pitfalls."

Four Basic Things You Need To Know Before Buying A House

Four Basic Things You Need To Know Before Buying A House: "This post provided by Money-Rates.com."

Five mistaken beliefs business leaders have about innovation

Five mistaken beliefs business leaders have about innovation: "The vast majority of companies want to be innovative, coming up with new products, business models and better ways of doing things. However, innovation is not so easy to achieve. A CEO cannot just order it, and so it will be. You have to carefully manage an organization so that, over time, innovations will emerge. And CEOs often make a number of common mistakes, which hamper rather than induce such processes."

Leadership: How to say "no" while also inspiring people

Leadership: How to say "no" while also inspiring people: "Leadership is all about focusing energy on achieving an important goal. In achieving focus, leadership is implicitly saying “no” to all the other less-important things that might be attempted at this time. In this sense, “saying no” to trivia and distractions is the essence of leadership. For instance, Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs says no many times
A big part of Steve Jobs’ success has been to shed all the good ideas that don’t make the final cut. Carmine Gallo in an interesting article, “Steve Jobs: Get Rid Of the Crappy Stuff” writes: “Editing also leads to great product designs and effective communications. According to Steve Jobs, ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.’”"

The Innovation Secret: How to Repeatedly Innovate

The Innovation Secret: How to Repeatedly Innovate: "Most innovators don't know the secret of success. In my recent post, I quoted Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, when he stated that ““most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met have no idea about the reasons for their success. My success was a mystery to me then, and only a little less so now.” I asked the question: why does innovation see so hard. Let me explain a little now."

Every Entrepreneur Needs to Outwit the Devil

Every Entrepreneur Needs to Outwit the Devil: "“The devil in the details” is a quote that we have all heard, and clearly applies to startups, where success in the long run is all about execution. But for you as an entrepreneur trying to get started, the devil is really in your mind, where you must prevent drifting, and maintain that confidence, commitment, and passion, to achieve your business dream."

The 10 Ways to Future-Proof Your Career

The 10 Ways to Future-Proof Your Career: "With the publication of my new book The Shift: the future of work is already here - there has been much debate about what it really takes to craft a career that is likely to stand the test of time. In the book I talk a great deal about the [...]"

The Five Elements of the Best CSR Programs

The Five Elements of the Best CSR Programs: "This is a guest post written by Paul Klein, the founder of Impakt Corp., a Toronto-based advisory services firm that helps large companies align business and social outcomes."

Four Simple Ways to Find Customers

Four Simple Ways to Find Customers: "For new business owners, finding customers is job No. 1. Here's how to get the job done."

Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment

Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment: "Getting Sales and marketing to effectively team is the lament of just about every CEO. Achieving alignment goes beyond just getting these two groups to get along; growth depends on them working productively together. If sales and marketing are at odds it impacts the whole business, most notably revenue, customer satisfaction and company productivity. Add to that the reality that discord between these two groups damages the company's culture, it's easy to see why alignment is on the top of every CEO's agenda."

When Suze Orman Told Me to Abandon My Mortgage

When Suze Orman Told Me to Abandon My Mortgage: "Over the past two months, I've threatened to abandon my mortgage eleven times over such things as:"

Building a Culture of Trust -- Do Your Customers Trust You?

Building a Culture of Trust -- Do Your Customers Trust You?: "Over the last decade we’ve witnessed the downfall of many companies due to financial scandals and shady dealings (such as Enron and Arthur Anderson), watched citizens across America become enraged when it was exposed that financial institutions were handing out millions of dollars in management bonuses while they were in the middle of being bailed out by the government, and saw the resignation of the Siemens CEO due to contract bribery charges against the company. Why should women in business be concerned?"

Tips from the Trenches: Five Ways to Further Your Career

Tips from the Trenches: Five Ways to Further Your Career: "Over the last few months, my Be Your Own Best Publicist co-author Meryl Weinsaft Cooper and I have been asked to share our tips from the trenches at colleges such as Manhattan College, Montclair State, Rutgers (and soon Ithaca College) as well as to professional, creative and alumni organizations including Advertising Women of New York, New York Women in Communications and The Hired Guns."

7 Tips for Giving Effective Praise.

7 Tips for Giving Effective Praise.: "Gold-star junkie that I am, I was once grumbling to my mother about the fact that some extraordinarily praiseworthy effort on my part had gone unremarked. My mother wisely responded, "Most people probably don't get the appreciation they deserve." That's right, I realized -- for instance, my mother! Whom I certainly don't give enough praise for everything she does for me."