Are you sabotaging your success? Sometimes the biggest barriers in business are the ones we create for ourselves. For example: It's just a business plan. It's just a blog post. It's just a speech. It's just a conference. It's just a tweet up. It's just a vendor....
Is your business sending out mixed messages? My condo building just completed a major redecorating project, in the process turning our lobby into a replica of a high-end, monochromatic coffee bar (sadly minus the barrista or the coffee). And that silly gas-powered...
His name was Matt, and I loved him. Matt was a trainer at Gold's Gym when I first met him. He said hi to everyone, and he'd go out of his way to correct your form or (in my case) nag me to switch up cardio machines more often. When I decided to get a trainer, I worked...
Saying "NO" is becoming a lost art in the business world. The losers are the people who ditch phone calls, avoid e-mails, and twist and turn themselves into pretzels rather than tell someone they don't have the job, the project, or five minutes of your time to hear or...
Are you celebrating failure? While business successes are great, we tend to learn far more from our failures. The stuff that goes wrong and makes for business case studies and lessons learned, and adjustments, innovation, and change. Ralph Heath's Celebrating Failure...
So why are businesses using social media? According to the State of Social Media for Business, the top goals for companies are branding and community. Rounding out the top five are increasing Web site traffic (hmm, I hope that's not really an end in itself),...
You couldn't have a GrowSmartBiz* conference in 2010 without talking about social media, innovation, and the role of buzz in your marketing arsenal. And the panel at last Friday's conference didn't disappoint, offering good insights and smart tips: Jason Falls...
At Friday's GrowSmartBiz* conference, SBA Deputy Administrator Marie Johns talked about her agency's "3Cs" and highlighted new legislative help for small business owners. Talking about the 3Cs, Johns said that the Small Business Administration focuses on: Contracting...
I'm a big fan of data-driven decision making. And data means data collection--which means asking smart questions of your employees, prospects, customers, and other key stakeholders. Ask the right questions and you get useful information that you can put into action to...
I was just looking over a short report on business-to-business marketing put out by MarketingProfs and Forrester Research. According to What Works in B2B Marketing 2010, the top three challenges facing marketers are lead generation, increasing product/service...