These first few months are crucial to setting a standard and expectation of performance. The best you ever see an employee is during the job interview then after they are hired it can easily slide downhill from there, unless you set clear expectations and standards. I highly recommend that each new employee be placed on…
You work hard, spend money, trying different advertising and marketing ideas to find just the right combination. All in an attempt to reach your customers and motivate them to do business with you. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t. So, what is an entrepreneur to do? Stop creating your own advertising and marketing plans, outsource…
A remote control CEO is a business owner who has made or wants to make the transition from hands-on to hands-free, lives a flexible lifestyle, and has structured their business so it works for them rather than them working for the business. This is one of the most common scenarios in which you might consider…
What is the performance trap? It’s viewing one’s self-worth, the worth of others, and everything about your business through the lens of short-term performance. Short-term performance is often out of our control. It can be cyclical and driven by chance rather than the merit of the company’s underlying performance. It’s essentially looking at value through…
When writing about business planning, I included a lot of information on one of the growing problems for small business owners—recruiting and retaining employees. When it comes to recruiting young people to work in your business, there are some things you need to be aware of and some things you may need to tweak from…
Moving a retail store to a new location has become increasingly common as companies look to respond to a changing retail landscape. Many businesses and brands continue to overachieve and may be looking, suddenly, to expand into a bigger location. Other retailers decide a move is necessary for external factors…Consumer behavior, foot traffic patterns, and…
Entrepreneurs are the luckiest people on the face of the earth. We have the opportunity to create our future exactly as we want it. Literally, everything an entrepreneur does moves him/her closer to or further away from their future lifestyle and a dream fulfilled. It all begins with self-awareness and belief in one’s self. Lifestyle…
These days, the internet has made telecommuting a possibility for those who prefer to work at home, whether because of family or purely for the comfort of it. If you wish to make working at home a great experience, you have to start with setting up a great home office. Here are some tips on…
Buy-outs can happen for dozens of reasons. Perhaps a CEO is retiring and wants to put the company in new hands. Maybe a company is approaching bankruptcy and a parent company swoops in to salvage the remains. Regardless, a buy-out is a high-stress transition for any company of any size—even that 10-person tech start-up. While…
Losing key employees can be stressful for any business—no matter the size, scale, or age of the company. In some cases, losing a key employee can catalyze a transition in its own right. This is especially true for hires who have been involved in the process of creating and shifting the direction of a business;…
