When the leader doesn’t lead – a follower’s point of view

  Some bosses try to avoid conflict and confrontation at all costs because they don’t want to stir the pot. And what happens when they do that? They stir the pot. The staff gets resentful and bitter because they have no leader. What a great place to work! I know all about bad bosses because [...]

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Productivity tips for business owners

“Time is the darkest Angel” ~ Chicago street art As a business owner, your job is never “done”. There is always more to do. I don’t like to work all the time. I like spending time with my family and friends. So it’s imperative that I get as much done in the hours I choose [...]

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Focus today – succeed tomorrow

Nowadays it’s hard to focus in on work and get a lot done with all of life’s distractions. As a result, you add more things to the to-do list than you check off, you’re not as reliable to produce and make deadlines, and you can never keep up let alone get ahead. Brad Farris shares [...]

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Writing content that hits close to home for your readers

  I’m a somewhat new dog owner – about a year. So, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to taking care of a dog. For instance, when I took Thea (my Blue Tick Beagle) for her annual checkup a few weeks ago, I was astonished to learn that one milkbone to [...]

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Use an iPad for business? I say yes

  I got an iPad for Christmas, and despite the many pundits who told me that it wasn’t a business tool, I was determined to make it work. I’m a small business consultant, so most of my “work” is done in my client’s offices. I spend 60% – 80% of my time each week away [...]

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Pricing is about perceived value

Is your service wrapped in newspaper or a gold box? How do you set the stage to maximize the value that people will pay for your services?

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The importance of team celebration and accountability

  You built your strategic plan and been working on your key initiatives with your team. The next step is the most important part! If you’ve seen some success and your team has been working hard, you need to celebrate! Your employees need to know you really value and appreciate them. If you haven’t been [...]

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How to create a small business strategic plan

  Building a strategic plan will help you get a better control over the future of your small business. A strategic plan is taking a step back, look around at what’s going on in your business (and externally) so you can focus on a few key parts of your business. Brad Farris breaks strategic planning [...]

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What is small business strategic planning?

  When you first started your business, you probably had a decent idea of how you were going to be spending your time. You probably thought that you’d be spending the majority of your time doing what you love to do. But it turns out that your time is divided up doing a million other things, [...]

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Where is YOUR small business headed?

  We’re taking a look at technological, social, industrial and economic factors and how they will affect businesses in 2012 and beyond. We want to see what strategies small-business owners will choose in order to adapt to these external and internal factors impacting their business. To do this, we’ve put together a quick 5 minute [...]

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Strategic planning: Getting back to why you started your business in the first place

  You may not be a photographer, but I bet that when you started your business, you imagined your life would be like the chart on the left. But now it has gotten to look more and more like the one on the right. In fact, many of you are looking wistfully at the chart [...]

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Basecamp Classic vs. Basecamp Next – Pros & Cons

  37signals just launched Basecamp Next (referred to it as “BCX”), which is their newest platform of the online-based project management software. I’ve been using Basecamp for around four years now, and always been a huge fan of 37Signals products and their business model. I have to say, the launch of BCX was overdue, as [...]

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