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General Business

45 Posts tagged with the small_business_owner tag
Christopher Gardner Q & A: Lessons for Pursuing ‘Happyness’ in Business
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Apr 27, 2012

by Susan Caminiti. Christopher Gardner first made headlines with his best-selling memoir, The Pursuit of Happyness, the story of his homelessness, which was made into the movie of the same name starring Will Smith. Today, he is the CEO of Gardner Rich & Co., a Chicago-based brokerage firm and the author of Start Where You Are—Life Lessons in Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. Recently, business writer Susan Caminiti spoke with Gardner about the challenges of running your...
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6 Keys to Having a Better Work-Life Balance
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Apr 3, 2012

Recently, I have been involved in a big, new work project. You know the type –it gets your adrenaline flowing, requires creativity and discipline and takes up a lot of time and bandwidth. The kind of project that is both exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Did I mention that I am pretty tired? But unlike other times when I have faced similar deadlines on big projects, this time, while weary in a good way, I am not burnt-out like I may have been (OK, have been) in the past. The...
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6 Ways to Create a Better Culture for Your Business
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Mar 27, 2012

Recently, I was speaking with a client at a large tech firm about her business and she was explaining to me that she was very busy because they had recently bought a smaller business and she was part of the team that was working to integrate the two companies. The companies faced all sorts of challenges combining their two distinct forces – work overlap, communication, and geography – but guess what the biggest issue was? Culture. The smaller business was still in startup mode and did...
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How to Turn Resolutions into a Vision for Your Business
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Mar 13, 2012

What is it that separates the good small business from the great small business? Many things come into play: Innovation: Better businesses tend to be more willing to innovate and try new things.The team: When VCs invest in a startup, one of the most critical things they look at is the quality of the management team. Good ideas with a great team have a greater likelihood of getting funding than a great idea with a good team. But probably the most important thing when it comes to going...
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5 Ways to Conduct Business Research on the Cheap
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Feb 28, 2012

Is your big, new idea a winner or a loser and how do you know? As a small business owner, you probably have good business instincts, but the smart entrepreneur knows that gut instincts and a small sample are not the kind of research you can, literally or figuratively, take to the bank. Your idea may be a winner, or it might not.  The important thing is that you carefully analyze your idea, and the market, and make sure you are not the only one who thinks that it will work.  A hunch simply...
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4 Reasons Small Business Owners Should Use Podcasts
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 27, 2012

Podcasts may seem relatively outdated, even low tech, considering recent developments in multimedia marketing, such as apps. However, for small businesses, they are still an effective, low-cost means of communicating and building relationships with customers. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, a podcast is a prerecorded audio (and, increasingly, video) program that companies can create on subjects that reinforce your marketing message or increase your image as an expert in your industry....
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Four Ways to Test Your Company’s Mission Statement
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 24, 2012

While your small business may have a mission statement on the company website or in materials, have you thought about what exactly the statement should convey? Below are four important considerations about the purpose of a mission statement. Even though they are only a few sentences long, mission statements should express the value of your company and clarify what it offers. A mission statement has less to do with the daily ins and outs of your business and more to do with your customers’...
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Should You Embrace March Madness in the Office?
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Feb 21, 2012

Can you smell it? March Madness is in the air and we all know what that means: Folks fill out their brackets, watch games online and in the break room, chat about how they are doing and get less done. According to Gray & Christmas, a consulting firm specializing in workplace issues, about $1.7 billion is lost in productivity during March Madness. But figures like that assume people are busy little bees while at work, humming along, doing their job all day, consistently and persistently...
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8 Cost Efficient Ways to Reward Employees
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 20, 2012

While the current economic climate may not allow for more than cost-of-living-salary raises, there are many other ways to show employee appreciation. In fact, studies have shown that employee’s value praise, care and compassion more than getting paid more. If you’re looking for cost-effective or innovative ways to reward your staff, here are eight ideas to consider: Be a matchmaker.  If you’re unable to provide holiday bonuses, you might want to form a holiday savings program.  Employees can...
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11 Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 17, 2012

Some of the greatest entrepreneurs – such as  Steve Jobs –  have been very vocal about the mistakes and miscalculated business moves they made in their careers. Mistakes can be valuable as you drive your business forward. As Steve Jobs’ sister stated, “He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.”  While mistakes come in all shapes and sizes, they tend to fall into four...
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Top 10 Signs You Are a Good Boss
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Posted by: Steve Strauss, Feb 14, 2012

It is probably a safe bet to say that most folks who manage other people think that they are a good boss. After all, we have all had bad bosses, and no one likes working for a bad one, let alone thinking that they are the bad boss. As you may remember, I wrote “Top 10 Signs You Are a Bad Boss” in an earlier column, you can read that article here. The truth is, all bosses are not created equal. So which are you? Let’s find out. Here are the top 10 signs that you really are a good boss....
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6 Ways to Stimulate Staff Creativity
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 13, 2012

A one-size-fits-all approach typically does not work when it comes to stimulating staff creativity. Some may believe that a freewheeling, risk-taking, no-rules approach is best for inspiring great ideas. Others could argue that some parameters and protocols are necessary to keep ideas on track. Let’s take a look at the different approaches to stimulating creativity. Prior to thinking of creative ideas or business solutions, research in some or all of the following areas – customers’...
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 10 Dos and Don’ts for Maximizing Supply Chain Efficiency
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 10, 2012

Ineffectively managing your supply chain can result in serious losses for your small business. It could cause you to lose money and customers for the following reasons: poor inventory management, a missed delivery date and/or fulfillment issues (the closing of a business transaction between the business and the customer and everything that happens in between). In order to protect your small business, here are some dos and don’ts for maximizing supply chain efficiency:        Dos Do enlist...
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The Power of the Crowd: Is crowdsourcing right for your small business?
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 6, 2012

You may think you know the definition of crowdsourcing, but there are a lot of interpretations to its meaning. In the words of Northwestern University professor Jeff Howe, who coined the term, crowdsourcing is “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”   Regardless of how you define it, there is an argument to be made that crowdsourcing is...
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The Discipline Story: How to handle difficult employees
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Posted by: SBOC Team, Feb 3, 2012

It is normal for workplace issues to arise amongst colleagues – after all most Americans spend more time at work than any place else. When employees are having difficulty getting along with each other, or when they are having performance problems, small business owners may question how to handle the issues at hand. Companies of all sizes must manage employees that turn out to have difficult personality traits, are a poor fit for their current role or have trouble working with others....
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