strategy
Clearly define your company’s business vision
Business owners need to understand the importance of making sure that management teams agree on the company’s vision and establish clear goals and objectives for the upcoming six months, 12 months, and two years, and creating a plan to make these goals happen. Factors to be considered include internal and external challenges. Full article.
What Goliath can teach David about innovation
Just as large companies can learn from small companies, the reverse is also true when it comes to innovation. Small companies may want to consider the following ideas as they strategize and consider new and innovative products and services. Topics for consideration include: Process is not a dirty word, money is not free, there is no guarantee of success from using processes, and considering co-creating with other competitors to save on costs for innovation. Full article.
Build Rapport Quickly
To small business owners, rapport-building skills are critical. There are several behaviors individuals can monitor that will provide them with the information needed to establish a rapport, including, observing body language such as mirroring movements and maintained eye contact. Full article.
Twitter seeks to widen appeal
Twitter is taking steps to broaden its appeal by making it easier to navigate the service and help users find interesting content. To accomplish this, Twitter is highlighting tweets from people from geographic regions. Full article.
Great leaders ask questions and listen
Communication is a very important skill, and research shows that it is crucial for leadership success. Great communicators do give compelling speeches, ask pointed questions to ensure that others understand, and then they listen carefully. Combining the three skills has tremendous impact. Full article.
Trumpet your values
Regardless of the choices business owners and managers make in their respective business, it’s important to maintain a unique identity and communicate a company’s values through multiple channels. Successful business owners understand that it’s not enough to sell a product; they need to trumpet—and live—their values as well. Full article.
The right way to found a start-up
Running and growing a company is the hard part of being in business. There are a few critical practices things that successful businesses utilize to help them both run and grow their companies, such as part-time commitment almost guarantees failure, having different backgrounds is incredibly useful while approaching business problems, strategic decisions, product design complexities, etc. and the importance of having people who are totally committed to success. Full article.
The Leadership mindset
Smart leaders understand that success comes from the reflected glory of your team. Being a leader changes everything. Before you are a leader, success is all about you. When you become a leader, your success as a leader will come not from what you do but from the reflected glory of your team. Full article.
Consider hiring a blogger to promote your business
Outsourcing all kinds of social media marketing—from writing a company blog to updating social media programs is becoming a viable option for small business owners. While, a well-written blog can be a useful and important tool for branding/personalizing a company, a poorly written blog could also produce the opposite effect. When considering outsourcing this effort, businesses need to ensure that anyone entrusted with this effort properly projects a company's "personality.” Full article.
It's not a one-person show
Smart business owners understand that, at some point in their business’ growth, they will need to hire employees. Key to this concept is figuring out how to first hire, then draw upon top talent knowledge to complement your own skill set, and then use the combined knowledge to refine and improve your product line. Full article.
