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The Blog - Where Business Collides with Human Nature

The 3 Biggest Sins of Building Business Relationships

Success…how bad do you want it?  My guess would be probably be pretty badly.  Business success is founded on the concept of building and maintaining relationships with other business people. 

Relationships hold a real value when it comes to business practices.  A recent network survey by the Referral Institute of over 12,000 business professionals from all over the world said that networking played a role in their successes -- and spent 6.3 hours every week in activities related to networking.  So what are some business relationship blunders you should avoid?  We recommend steering clear of these three big sins of building business relationships:

Topics: Networking Guerrilla Marketing Personal Branding Business Success Tips

What it Takes to Go Bigger

The challenge of creating a success for most is not in a lack of ability to tell a story.

In fact, they tell any story regardless of whether it is funny, big, impressive or even their own.  Before social media tools, everyone loved to talk about the new stuff they bought or the best restaurant in the world.

Topics: Funny Business Success Tips

5 Things You Need to Know About Starting a Business

An entrepreneur’s life is a windy, twisted road.  Starting a business is exciting but for the less experienced entrepreneur, there can be traps and pitfalls.  Here are five business success tips to keep your focused and give you hope.

Topics: Start a Business Startup Business Success Tips Buying a Business

Four Ways to Reduce Stress and Increase Bottom Line

The end of the year tends to bring on feelings of nostalgia and reflection in all areas of life. People make personal resolutions to lose weight and set professional goals meant to ultimately improve quality of life. Sole proprietors and small business owners often sit down with a  calculator and crunch numbers to find ways to save money and increase revenue in the coming year. While cutting costs on utilities, using smarter marketing techniques and improving efficiency are definite money savers, there are some intangible factors, like stress, that affect bottom line too.

Topics: Leadership Business Success Tips Personal Development

What to Look for When You Expand Your Business



Key Takeaways:

  • Expanding your company takes careful planning, research and consideration.
  • Only expand when your company is properly financed and you are emotionally prepared.
  • Expansion does not always mean more profits, but does bring more overhead.

A company that has achieved a limit to what they can manufacture, sell or service is not always in a position to expand. Before you expand your business, you must do a lot of research and consider everything possible. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), taking risks to grow or expand your company is not always a good idea if that risk moves the company away from its core.

Topics: Business Success Tips

How Entrepreneurs Can Handle Rejection: A Writer's Perspective

Guest blogger Marianna Ashley shares tips for entrepreneurs on how to handle rejection:

Topics: Business Success Tips Entrepreneur Failure

I Want to be a Fireman

Recently I met a man named Chris.

Topics: Paradigm Business Success Tips Personal Development

Speed to Market and Personalization

Is your small business not big enough?  Rely on speed.  Not rich enough?  Rely on personalization. Prioritize speed to market and personalization for all things related to marketing, service and delivering the product. 

It is impossible for an entrepreneur to win based on smarts, size and money.  There is always another business with more smarts, better research, a bigger team and more money. 

If you have speed to market and personalization top of mind, your competitors will find it difficult to compete. Many small businesses scaled quickly with speed to market and personalization but forgot the very thing that grew their brand and reputation.

Topics: Marketing Strategy Business Success Tips

The Unbelievable

Promising the unbelievable before delivering on said promise will leave potential buyers knowing you are pumped up, arrogant, over confident and probably out of touch with reality.  "Of course you will say that about your own product or service.  That is expected." 

Topics: Marketing Ideas Marketing Business Success Tips

Metrics, Scorecards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Mike Brice generously offered another contribution as a guest author and shares five principles to make metrics, scorecards and key perfomance indicators work in your company.  To create marketing plans which do not include metrics, scorecards and key performance indicators (KPI's) is a bit like rolling the bowling ball down the lane without keeping score: you get plenty tired and forget the point.

Mike has extensive business experience in high-tech, heavy manufacturing, aerospace, IT infrastructure and software development.

Topics: Business Success Tips

It's my fake birthday today on August 1st - Gotcha!

All day long there will be a long list of birthday wishes.  There have been a few very special people who have sent me an email card and I thank you. 

Unfortunately, it is my fake birthday (August 1st) and the automated tools will begin to send birthday wishes to me.  It will be interesting to see how many software systems pour out their hearts and bend over backwards to send me their best birthday wish.

Topics: Deep Thoughts Business Success Tips

4 Ways to Green Your Business

Change is never easy, but greening your business may be one wave easier to ride than being caught in its undertow.  Already many companies are coming under fire for being inconsiderate of the environment.  Others, like General Mills, Unilever, and even the Philadelphia Eagles are realizing that making one’s office or online business energy-efficient is about the most cost-effective thing they’ve done for the company.  As you can read in this article, countless companies are finding innovative ways to save money and the environment, but here are five easy ways to green your business to get you started.

Topics: Domain Names Business Success Tips