5 Reasons Your Team Doesn’t Trust You

  Do you get the feeling that your team is murmuring behind your back and cursing the ground you walk on? Well, you might just be paranoid; but you also may be doing things that you’re not even aware of which are driving a wedge between you and your staff. Honestly, if they all love you, then you’re probably doing something wrong. Nevertheless, you at least need them to trust and respect your leadership, which is why it’s good to do a self-check and see if any of these conditions apply to you.   You’re a Micromanager It’s a challenge for most of us, when in a position of authority, to resist the urge to micromanage employees. A business owner naturally wants to be sure that everything is getting done the way that it is supposed to get done, and it can be difficult to put that responsibility in the …

How to Handle Your Toughest Business Decisions

We all dread it; that day when we’re forced to choose one of two paths that each might lead to an unforeseeable future. Those choices are especially scary when it applies to your business, but even so, you can prepare yourself to respond skillfully when faced with a difficult decision. Take a Step Back When you have a significant decision to make, the first thing you’ll want to do is to gain perspective on it and separate yourself from the problem. When you’re too close to the choice, it can be difficult to distinguish clearly between the options. Try to look at the “big picture”, so to speak, and consider how this will affect your business as a whole. Seek Counsel There are definitely two schools of thought on how to approach business decisions, one of which may be a little more old-fashioned than the other. Some business owners believe …

Do You Communicate as Well as You Think You Do?

  We stress the value of communication in this blog, and there is good reason for that. It is, first of all, something to which people normally don’t give much thought; and secondly, everyone thinks they are good at it. The truth is that a significant portion of professionals, if not most, cannot effectively communicate in a variety of areas. This article will attempt to persuade you that communication is paramount for running a business and to illustrate why it is so important.   Text Speak Bottom line: Just don’t use text speak, even when you’re texting. Of course, you can say whatever you like when you’re sending personal text messages, but if it’s work-related, you’re better off just writing messages as if it were an email. The first problem with using text speak for work-related messages is that it makes you look unprofessional; the second is that it makes …

Why it’s Better to Be an Imitator than an Innovator

There is a problem that business owners have to face when they start a new business, and the problem is that they have to decide if it is worthwhile to introduce a brand new product to the market. We all want to be the innovator, but that carries with it some serious disadvantages which are not immediately apparent. You’re probably better off imitating an already established product, and we’ll explore the reasons for that in this post. Innovators don’t usually reap the real benefits. There is kind of cruel irony about creating an original product and selling it. Due to a variety of factors, selling something that has never been thought of before, brilliant as it may be, tends to consume more of the originator’s resources than it returns. The imitators who take the original idea and make their own version of it, after the heavy lifting has already been …

Customers You Shouldn’t Listen To

Why There Are Some Customers You Shouldn’t Listen To

Any respectable business is driven to listen to its customers—all of its customers, if possible—because that’s how you know what you should change about your product or service and what the shortcomings are that you need to address. The flipside of that coin is that it’s important to know which ones represent your customer base as a whole, and those who just have a unique need that doesn’t apply to everyone else. Therefore, not all of your customers’ feedback is relevant, generally speaking. The Silent Majority The people whom you really want to listen to are the ones who aren’t talking. Unless your product is really bad, in which case you’ll hear from everybody pretty quickly, it will be radio silence from the vast majority of your customers most of the time. The first reason is that if what you’re producing is successful and worth buying, then there is no …

Come Up with Business Name

How to Come Up with a Simple, Attractive Business Name

It’s possible that you have already lost or missed customers because of a difficult or confusing company name. At the very least, there are two main problems with a poorly-conceived name: It either makes it harder for your customers to find you, or it’s difficult to remember your business name. This is why you’re always better off taking some time to come up with a simple, concise, and memorable name for your business. A creative name is overrated; a unique name is not. Let’s be honest. Way too many businesses put all their energy into coming up with a name that sounds really cute when actually, unless you’re extremely clever and witty, they usually end up sounding pretty lame and not particularly memorable. It is far more important to focus on making your name memorable and simple than it is to make it clever. In the end, if the quality …

Insider Tricks for Using a Virtual Phone System

You know when you get a new stereo, and then months later, you figure out things that you didn’t even know it could do? It’s a lot better to know those tricks beforehand, which is why this article contains a variety of tricks and shortcuts that you can use with a virtual phone system to save yourself time, and unnecessary frustration. Route Multiple Menu Options to the Same Phone Not every business has a huge staff of people who are answering phones, wherein the standard structure of each department routing to a different person’s phone line does not apply. You may be the only person answering your phones, in fact, which means you will need a way to offer multiple options for different departments, using only one forwarding phone. All you have to do is simply set your single phone number as the forwarding number for all of the menu …

6 Signs that Your Business is Taking Over Your Life

  This is an article about not letting your work get the better of you; it’s about not losing yourself in your business, which can be detrimental to your well-being. Honestly, it is necessary sometimes to devote pretty much all of your time & energy to your business, at the expense of being involved in your own life. It’s when this becomes the norm and perpetuates itself as a permanent cycle that you should be concerned.   1. You literally only go home to sleep. This basically means that you spend just about your entire waking life at work. If it has gotten this extreme (which is not uncommon), then it’s time to seriously assess how your real life fits into your schedule.   2. Your family is sending you signals. When you have a family at home, they are your greatest allies because they have your back. So when …

The FCC and Your Phone Service: What You Need to Know

According to their official mission statement, the Federal Communications Commission is the government agency which “regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories.” The FCC, established in 1934, is subject to Congressional oversight and is “responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.” What does the FCC actually do? So that’s the official background of the agency; now, what is it that the FCC actually does—and how does it affect our phone service today? As you’ll see in this article, it is actually working behind the scenes of a number of different aspects of our daily communications. The FCC is the governing body that primarily makes sure that U.S. communications, including phone service of all types, meet a specific set of standards as it applies to various interests such as regulation, policing, infrastructure, …