Management
Why You Should Send More Conversational Emails to Your Employees
Wondering how to motivate employees? I bet you haven’t heard this one before…but you should email them more! Many company managers mistakenly believe that keeping emails short and direct is the best way to streamline communications and optimize productivity. In…
Management
How to Navigate Disagreeing with Your Boss
At least half of all working Americans spend more weekday hours interacting with their direct boss than with their spouse. Any time individuals spend that much time around one another, invested in a mutual goal—differences of opinion are bound to…
Customer Service, Management
Why You Should Try “Nudging” Customers
How can you get your customers or employees to do what you’d like them to, without “telling them what to do”? The latest research and management theories favor a technique called nudging. It attempts to affect how people think, instead…
Management, Marketing & Strategy
How to Write a Kickass Proposal (and Win More Business)
Writing a proposal is an art that any freelancer or small business must master. Whether you’re competing for work on sites like ELance or oDesk or submitting a proposal to a client offline, this is your opportunity to shine and…
Management, Money
Seven Sicknesses of Financial Management
Every business owner understands that cash flow is the lifeblood of his business. It follows that maintaining a healthy business means ensuring that cash flow is not interrupted because, interruption spells the death of the enterprise. Sound financial management is…
Customer Service, Management
How to Creatively Build Customer Relationships
In 2003, Zappos was a small 90-person company short on cash and struggling with hard fought growth. Today, this same business houses over 1,800 employees and generates over a billion dollars in merchandise sales, becoming one of the premier ecommerce…
Money
How to Prevent Business Credit Fraud
Chances are, you probably have some fancy security system installed within your office, perhaps even equipped with highly advanced video surveillance technology or a German Sheppard that John Dillinger wouldn’t even try to get past. You have created a fortress,…
Management
The Virtual Office: Best or Worst Idea Ever?
Thanks to technology, the office landscape is changing faster than ever. From outsourcing to cloud computing, new technology means you can stay in touch with work anywhere in the world. You can also see all the effects of work on…
Trends
Small Business Government Regulations: The 4 Do’s and Don’ts
The government is a big part of your financial picture. For example, we’ve talked a great deal about taxes, from politically-charged tax cuts to the best and worst states for small business taxes. However, just discussing taxes misses the other…