Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

I’ve recently had to deal with some delusional employees. In all three cases, they thought that they were top performers, worth double or more their current compensation. This, even though two of the three had been here for less than a year, and had average performance at best. But they had told themselves stories. In [...]

I’m a big believer in "first who, then what." (From the wonderful book Good to Great) This means that having great people in place is more important than having a super-duper strategy. Why? If you have a great strategy but you don’t have the people who can execute on that strategy, you’re out of luck. [...]

If we’re honest with ourselves, I think the answer to that question has to be …
Apparently - all the time!
Lila Cherri was on StartupNation Radio this weekend. She is also highlighted in a key move article on StartupNation.com with the article title of “Building a Business With Integrity”. Here’s a quote from that article:

That’s why [...]

Experience is highly over rated. So says the 2006 Stanford Business School Entrepreneurship Conference panel of recent graduates, venture capitalists, and established entrepreneurs.
I agree.
This character over skills argument applies to both the entrepreneurs who are starting a business (you don’t necessarily need to have experience in a business to be successful at it) and to [...]

No, I’m not talking about highly trained monkeys; I’m talking about college students.
Do you work with college students? If you don’t yet, you should consider it. They can be a free (or incredibly cheap) source of labor, and their mental faculties are generally well ahead of their professional skills, so most of them [...]

Once, I had to hire five people in two weeks. The first day, I interviewed about ten people. By the end of the day, I couldn’t remember which was which, or who said what. So on Day 2, I had a plan. I asked each person when the last time they [...]

OK, we’re putting the word out to help one of our community members–you can read her article in this week’s newsletter, actually… Linda Case.
Here’s her challenge and her request for help:
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Hello StartupNation. You guys were able to help me out once before and I am hoping you can help me again. I have been [...]

I was always told that once you leave a company to work for a competitor, you can’t return. Have times changed?
A couple years ago, a friend quit his job to work for the competition. Within a week, he was back at his original job. The first job paid less, but the new company [...]

Continuing on the theme of throwing scenarios at you that you respond to, here’s one that we (as business owners) have to be ready for…because it could happen when we least expect it…
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One of your key employees walks in to have a private talk with you. He has a serious situation he’s dealing with.
It’s a [...]

Do your employees make their own hours? This week, the subject of “Flex-Time” kept popping up on my computer. USA Today said the practice of flexible hours and allowing your employees to work at home has stalled. Major companies aren’t offering the option, and many employees fear that having such an arrangement [...]