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

Recently, I was contacted by a PR firm (Attention) and asked if I would profile Blake Mycoskie on my blog(s). I’m ashamed to say how long it’s taken me to turn this piece around, however seeing the latest ATT commercial featuring Blake after a long day of meetings (at my day job) shamed me into finishing. My [...]

The love affair started about ten years ago. I was flipping through the channels on late night television and stumbled across one of Felix Trinidad’s early fights. He was an amazing athlete full of unwavering determination, brute physicality, and an innate ability for overcoming obstacles. It was no secret that he would often get knocked [...]

Brand monitoring is essentially the process of researching mentions of your brand including its name, officers, products, and more.  This is a vital part of branding for many reasons.  It can help you find brand evangelists, join conversations with prospects, correct misinformation, find opportunities for free publicity, police your trademark, or even find ideas for [...]

In the late 60’s Andy Warhol proclaimed his belief that everyone was destined for at least 15 minutes of fame.  While the definition of “fame” may be up for interpretation, the prediction does hold some truth.  It also begs a question for companies.  Will your brand be ready?  If yes, your 15 minutes could easily [...]

Thought I’d share some internal information about StartupNation and its performance as derived from Google Analytics over the year gone by. I figured, you, our coveted members and new visitors, deserve complete transparency. So here goes, in the form of a 2008 vs. 2007 comparison:
2008 vs. 2007, and % change
    1) Number of Visits: 2,292,027 vs. 1,663,118, [...]

My prediction? Some of the most exciting businesses of the next few years are going to be born in 2009 and grown from 2008 toil. It’s my strong view that the economic duress we’re all under as entrepreneurs is going to make us smarter, scrappier, more effective and ultimately far more successful.
To help you along [...]

As an example of systems-thinking, and at the risk of an awful pun, reaching for a piece of toilet paper is the bottom line. Â
Toilet paper is a mandatory accessory. It may be the one thing that all of us have used daily for all our lives. As an illustration of a system that is ubiquitous, [...]

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a renowned historian who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her book on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. More recently she authored Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.
Mixing in her observations on both Presidents and their extraordinary leadership skills, she recently wrote an article that was published in [...]

For years, a nagging problem in my small business, Centratel, was the time and effort it took to pay the monthly bills. The process did nothing for the bottom line and each month required 10 to 14 hours of my time to process 60-80 payables to various vendors. I wrote the checks, entered the transactions [...]

Not too long ago I participated in Cycle Oregon, a weeklong bicycle tour. Seventeen hundred riders pedaled an average of 75 miles each day through remote eastern Oregon. At night we camped in ad hoc tent cities planted at various locations along the route: rural high school football fields, small town parks, or wheat fields. [...]