Maximizing Staff Engagement and Productivity at Meetings

At one point or another, we’ve all had the pleasure of attending a painfully unproductive meeting. Most businesses have far too many meetings and we’re just not very effective at them. We may be ‘at work’ but we’re usually not achieving very much at these gatherings of weary-eyed mortals. The truth is, many meetings unnecessary…

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Bootstrapping Your Business: A Reality Check

Philip Soriano has trouble fitting into dress shirts. This, along with his fashion and business experience, informs his role as co-founder of Hugh & Crye, a menswear company. For the dreamers, starting a small business might feel like stepping out into an open prairie. Endless room for growth, no bosses in sight, unexplored trails to blaze.…

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Holiday Text Messages: Real Life Small Business Text Marketing

Are you a small business owner? Did you send out a Holiday Text Message to your list over the latest holiday weekend? If not, why not? As a small business owner, you must use every opportunity to communicate with your Prospects, Customers, and VIPs. As a business owner, the more you share and connect, the more…

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Having a System in Place for Your Business

Recently, the soccer coach of my son’s soccer team passed away. On top of being the coach of my son, he was the owner of a sportswear manufacturing and distributing business for 15 years. From meeting with his family members, he and the business were synonymous. There were other no systems in place. With no…

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The Marketer’s Guide to Preparing Early for Christmas

The holiday season is so much more than December 25th. To get the full advantage of the Christmas rush, marketers need to start thinking about and developing holiday campaigns now. As one of the busiest times of the year for businesses, it’s vital to get serious about marketing opportunities and get ahead of competitors as…

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What We Learned After Taking Our Online Store Offline

Andy Dunn, co-founder of men’s clothing brand Bonobos, deserves a lot of credit for making a bold statement seven years ago when he identified the opportunity for an online-only direct-to-consumer clothing brand that would disrupt the traditional brick-and-mortar model. It spurned a whole category of startups that followed the “Bonobos for X” model: for dress shoes, underwear,…

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7 Quick Tips for Beating the Hiring Crisis

It’s hard to exaggerate how tough it is to hire right now. Time to hire has been hovering around an all-time high, between 27 and 29 days. On top of that, there are more unfilled job positions than ever in the U.S., and unemployment claims are at a 42-year low. Just about everyone who wants…

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Soaring to Success: How to Build a Winning Small Business Team

When Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane assembled a contending Major League Baseball team, he gained lots of notoriety for signing players using a strategic analysis of their statistics that had never been done before. Mixing younger players with older veterans made the A’s a winning team. Building a small business team has lots of…

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What Do You Wish You’d Known Yesterday?

Wouldn’t it be great if there were no more digital or printed reports to tell us what happened in the past? I know. We need financial data for comparison, and to a degree—for planning. But we should be thinking of finding ways to make data available to us much earlier, when it is more meaningful…

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