Holidays… aren’t they great. Not only are the holidays themselves enjoyable, but they can often be very beneficial for marketing your business. Halloween is no exception, especially if your business caters to children or parents in some regard.

Here are some ways your can take advantage of this ghoulish holiday:

Adapt Your Product
There are a lot of ways to show your product off for this or any other holiday. Add a Halloween twist to the packaging or, if you have some flexibility in your product, produce it in Halloween shapes and themes. Especially if you sell a food or candy product (gross out themes are very popular during this holiday), you want to take advantage of the holiday and be sure your customers know about your adaptations.

Continue reading : Marketing Strategies for Halloween »

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We all have regrets - it’s just a fact of life. But we learn from those experiences, much like the flourishing entrepreneurs interviewed in Entrepreneur.com’s article If They Could Turn Back Time. Kristin Edelhauser Chessman interviewed nine successful entrepreneurs and asked them, if they could do it all over again, what they would focus on more during the startup process.

Their feedback reveals important steps that everyone starting their own business should know.

Have startup funds available. Whether you save up to start your dream job or find investors, it’s best to have funds available for spending on marketing and supplies rather than limit your options in the beginning.

Continue reading : Learning From Experienced Entrepreneurs »

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Have you ever had a boss that wasn’t very articulate? He was often quiet and kept to himself. When he did have something to say, you often couldn’t follow due to his mumbling, incongruent sentences, or even elevated vocabulary. Oh, you nodded your head in agreement, but the conversation got you nowhere, and did nothing for your motivation.

As a leader, it’s important that you are able to communicate with your employees/followers in a way that is clear, concise and motivating.

A strong public address should do the following:

Continue reading : Leaders as Strong Public Speakers »

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Have you ever seen the NBC show My Name is Earl? It’s pretty funny and the concept is very interesting. If you haven’t, I’ll give you a brief explanation. Earl, the protagonist of the show, used to live a very jaded life. He had committed all sorts of crimes (typically robbery) and had done all sorts of bad things to people. At one point he gets a winning lottery ticket, worth $100,000, but loses it when he is hit by a car. While in the hospital, he hears of the concept of karma and decides that he lost the ticket because of all the bad things he’s done in his life.

So, Earl starts a list of atonements he must make, starting from childhood, and, as he begins to remedy his bad deeds, his karma turns around and the winning lottery ticket is returned to him. He continues to live out of a hotel and by small means, so that he can use his new money to help cross things off his list. Thus, the entire series centers around him making things up to people he hurt in the past.

Continue reading : What Goes Around Comes Back Around »

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It’s not a process many employers enjoy - placing a “help wanted” ad, filtering through resumes, conducting interviews. Hiring an employee can be an arduous task, to say the least. And, though there are many important things to consider when looking for the right candidate, many of which a specific to the position you’re trying to fill, employers often overlook one of the most important elements - compatibility.

I’m not speaking of whether or not you would get along with the person you’re looking to hire. You probably can get along with all sorts of people - most of us can. More specifically I’m referring to finding an employee that compliments your leadership style. To do that, you must first understand the two types of employees you will find.

Continue reading : Finding An Employee That Matches Your Leadership Style »

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It’s an unfortunate part of everyday life. People lie. Though we’d all like to believe that every business person out there is honest and trustworthy, that is just not the case. And the lies they tell can often have a severely negative effect - not just emotionally, but also in cost to our business.

I tend to be a trusting person. I give people the benefit of the doubt and assume, until proven otherwise, that they’re telling the truth. That may be a great policy in regard to friends and family, but when it comes to keeping my business up and running smoothly, I’d be better off to be skeptical and watch for the signs that someone may be pulling the wool over my eyes.

Fortunately, there are some indicators you can watch for that will clue you in to someone who may not be telling you everything:

Actions
There are many ways that our body language can reveal our inner thoughts. Someone who is shy or nervous will keep their head pointed toward the ground. Someone who is excited will move around quickly.

Continue reading : Discerning Truth From Lies »

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With the success of a company comes the success of a brand which can stand on its own. For example, the Coca-Cola brand is worth about $65 billion, McDonald’s is worth $29 billion and BMW, $21 billion. Those number are for the brand alone - that does not include the actual product, the patents or any other part of the business.

While most businesses will likely never reach the billion dollar range for the worth of their brand, there are some things you can do to make your brand better known and more strongly associated with the product/services your provide.

The Logo
This is where is all begins. Your logo will become the number one association with your product/service. When designing it, you need to consider the perception of the product you want the logo to convey. This can be done through colors, fonts, graphics . . . every aspect of your logo reveals part of what your product/service is. It should be something that is so closely associated with your product, that people can pick it out on store shelves, even if they couldn’t read the product name.

Continue reading : Establishing Your Brand »

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By now most everyone has had an opportunity to at least try our Nintendo’s latest great invention, the Wii. As a female, I am not much of a gamer. I have one computer game that I play maybe three or four times a year, and only a couple of games on our GameCube that I played either when I was excruciatingly board, or we had company and played together (Mario Cart).

But that has changed quite a bit since we purchased a Wii at the end of August. Before, my husband would have to persuade me to play a game with him, so we could spend quality time together doing what he enjoyed. But he has to do little persuading when it comes to the Wii. Even the goofy games, like those on Wii Play, are enjoyable. Between that and Wii Sports, the whole thing is absolutely fabulous for when we have company over.

You may be wondering, at this point, what any of that has to do with business practices. Well, frankly, I think that those behind the Wii at Nintendo are business geniuses. Let’s examine what they have done with the Wii franchise and what the Wii has done for their business:

Continue reading : Taking Business Ques from Nintendo »

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Have you ever been to a business meeting that, though the intention was to come up with great ideas for the progression of the business, turned out to be a total flop? Attendees were bored, few ideas were shared, and everyone left the meeting feeling like it was a waste of time? Obviously, such events are a very little benefit to the development of your business, and there are few ways you can remedy that . . .

Meeting Time Equals Play Time
In other words, make the meeting fun. Don’t let everyone go wild of course. It needs to be organized play time, so to speak. For example, start things off with a game. As a suggestion, I read how one business owner asked his employees to write down something no one else knew about them prior to the meeting. When the meeting started, he passed out the responses and the employees had to guess who belonged to each, providing a little fun and humor to get things moving. Another employer brings tinker toys and tangram puzzles to get cognitive juices flowing. Not only do such ideas make the meeting more enjoyable, but they help your employees to relax and be more comfortable around each other and you.

Continue reading : Brainstorming Motivation for Your Employees »

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In the U.K. the concept has become a normal way of life, and though it hasn’t wholly caught on here in the states, part-time ownership is slowly creeping into the market. What exactly am I referring to when I mention “part-time ownership?” Well, here are some examples of businesses that have tapped into the industry:

Flexcar provides a range of membership packages to people who only have need of a vehicle part-time. Members designate when they need a vehicle parked locally and, instead of paying $500-$800 a month to lease a vehicle they hardly use, they pay an average of $100-$200 a month to only use a car when they need one. The business initially targeted residential markets, such as Seattle, where many people walk to most outings anyway. But Flexcar soon discovered that there was a need among members of corporate world, as well as those who couldn’t afford to purchase a car of their own. Not to mention the environmentally friendly benefits of the business, by reducing gas emissions.

Continue reading : A Market in Part-Time Ownership »

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As I have discussed a number of times through the past couple of months, we all have visions, and the businesses we start often stem from those dreams for the future. Many visions require the support of others, especially financial investors, in order to press forward toward the goal. Because your vision is yours alone, you have to convince others of the value it has.

Here’s how you can start on the right track to getting investors and other support to come along for the ride:

Have a Passion
The vision you have must be something you’re passionate about. If you don’t have a full-fledged passion for it, it will be difficult to convince others that the investment of their time and finances will be worth while in the end. However, when you are passionate about your vision, and intend to pursue it even if you have to go it alone, people will recognize that and it will be easier for them to begin to see the value of your goal.

Find Allies
When looking for support (whether financial or otherwise), it is best to first seek out those that don’t need much convincing anyway. You will know the people in your immediate of friends and family who would be most likely to share your vision. But you will also need to take that a step further and reach out to other companies and organizations that would likely take little convincing. For example, if you want to start a specialty school for children with disabilities, do your research and find organizations that have already contributed to similar causes.

Continue reading : Getting Others On Board With Your Vision »

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High school drop-out rates continue to increase across our nation. According to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, nearly one in every three high school students in the class of 2006 did not graduate. Many of those drop outs come from minority groups in inner city schools, where poverty and crime are part of the life they know.

But the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a nonprofit organization out of New York, is doing what they can to change that. Though NFTE has been around for awhile (Steve Mariotti started working on the project in 1982), the benefits of the program continue to positively affect the lives of many kids across the nation.

Continue reading : Inner City Kids Learn About Entrepreneurship »

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Guy Kawasaki, the managing director of a venture capital firm, columnist with Entrepreneur Magazine and author of eight motivation books regarding business, says that schmoozing potential clients and investors is the best way to establish a business relationship. In his latest column, Get in Good, he provides the following tips for being a successful schmooze:

What’s the Point?
The ultimate goal of being a good schmooze is to do something for someone else. Granted, you probably have ulterior motives at play, but try not to let that be your entire focus. It should predominately be about helping others, so don’t be afraid to offer favors to your new business associates, and don’t expect anything in return. This, of course, is something I feel should be our goal in every aspect of our lives, not just in making new business acquaintances.

Go Public
Kawasaki believes that the best way to get in the door is to meet people in public at conventions, trade shows, seminars, networking events, etc. I agree that this is the best way to meet people and initially establish the business relationship. I do not agree with his statement that you can’t do so over e-mail or the telephone.

Continue reading : The 411 on Schmoozing »

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