Category Archive

  Maintaining a successful small business is fraught with battles every day, that threaten to compromise what you’ve worked so hard to build, and it is enough to injure your confidence or even make you feel as if you need to change course. It’s just resistance, otherwise known as adversity, and it’s important to remember that it is something you can overcome.   Put It In Perspective When you are trying to expand, for example, and your investors won’t part with any more dough, no matter how lucrative you propose it to be, that’s not the end of the story for your expansion. You can come up with a more convincing proposal, sell it to other investors, and at the very least, continue to be successful at your company’s current size & scope and expand it later on. That’s just one example, but the point is that you can’t let …

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not operating at full capacity? It’s difficult to pin down what the reason for that is, and though there is sometimes an event or personal hardship that takes you down a notch, it usually happens gradually. You’re plugging along, putting out the daily fires, but you wake up one day and suddenly realize that you haven’t been getting as much done as you were before. There are a variety of things that may be holding you back, most of which are totally fixable. The Distracted Age More than ever, we all have to be aware of the many things that can distract us from our work these days, especially environmental and technological factors. We’re living in the Information Age, but we could well call it the Distracted Age. There are so many things that constantly vie for our attention, from political and …

Do your customers ever make you angry? It’s pretty much guaranteed that it will happen sometimes, which is why it’s imperative that you have a plan to manage it. Some CSRs have a talent for this, and some do not; so, if you’re not talented with the endless capacity for kindness, then this post will give you some tools not just to act the part of someone who is kind (which will come off as sarcastic and disingenuous, anyway), but to truly quell your anger when dealing with tough customers. Put Our Weapons Down It’s the solution to so many different problems, where it concerns people. When you put yourself in the position of the person with whom you’re speaking and try to see the situation through their eyes, it will disarm you most of the time. That’s when you can actually help them, which then makes them treat you …

  How much time do you spend thinking about the subject line of your emails before you send them out? Hopefully, you spend a good while thinking about it because it’s more important than the body of the email, by far.   Think of It as a Blog Post Headline Marketers these days are focusing a lot of their energy on blog content, written as well as video, and we all realize at this point that the headline of a post is one of the most crucial elements of the content, if not the most crucial. Within seconds, the headline is what will make the recipient decide to either click through, or ignore the post. Marketing emails are less popular now, but they are still used because they still convert. The subject line of an email is equally important.   Would You Click On It? We’ve harped on this many …

The dictionary literally defines luster as “a period of five years”. That’s one of its definitions, anyway, but the point is that it is temporary. When you open a new business that is well-planned out, there’s a good chance that you’ll have great success and hopefully, broad acceptance from the market. The challenge is that, for many small businesses, that initial period of massive popularity will be short-lived—probably a lot shorter than five years—after which the luster fades and revenue plateaus. This is extremely common, though, and it is a phenomenon that a company can overcome with the right strategy. Innovate The first and best way to overcome this obstacle is to continue to innovate. It’s really easy to keep on doing what brought you so much success in the first place, and whatever you’re already doing will bring you loyal customers who got in on the ground floor. But …

The idea, or interpretation of “resistance”, as it is used in this post, was originally authored by Steven Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. What is Resistance? For the purposes of this article, think of resistance as the invisible force that fights against you to keep you from completing your work, or to keep you from being generally productive. It takes many forms, and the greatest danger it poses is that, if you don’t actively watch out for it, resistance can destroy your focus, your work, and even your business. Take the following pieces of advice well to heart because this will keep it from beating you. 1. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff One of the worst things that can happen to you when you’re on a roll and blasting through a project is for some little distraction or irritant to interrupt your good vibes, like a phone …

  It’s easy to discount their generation because it’s the majority opinion that Millennials have an undue sense of entitlement and are not willing to work for success. To believe this is to buy into a stereotype as unfounded as the belief that women cannot excel as CEOs. Just about every person I have met who falls into the “Millennial” category is driven and hardworking when presented with a real job. They are not turning down work; they are finding that the positions of gainful employment are few and far between, but jobs in the service industry are plentiful. Millennials, if they’re not already working in a dead-end job in food service or retail, are not interested anymore in working at a company with no vision.   1— They’re hungry. You would do well to hire a Millennial. For the most part, they are far more likely to push for …

Generally speaking, it is counterproductive to limit the use of technology for a business, but at the same time, it is absolutely valid to limit your use of technology, personally, to increase productivity. It’s a big pill to swallow for most people today, but to put down technology such as your smartphone at times will actually help you, strange as it seems, to get more done because it’s not helping you as much as you think it is. This is why. Looking away from the screen breeds original ideas and creativity. One thing that is indispensable to a business of any kind is originality and creative ideas. Author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek points out in one of his most famous speeches that, as soon as we encounter any idle time or break in conversation, we go straight for our smartphones, instead of just simply looking around and thinking, or …