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

My team visited Scottsdale, Arizona last week as exhibitor and sponsor of the Women Entrepreneurs’ Boot Camp.  We had a chance to sit down with organizer, Susan Ratliff, and discussed key marketing tips and business tactics for beating the recession in 2009 and I thought I’d share some of her insights.
Susan happens to be an [...]

Simple question: Does having a social agenda — a “cause” — attached to your business ultimately help you become more profitable (in a financial sense strictly)?

Vote and comment in this simple Poll at StartupNation.

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, [...]

As 2009 gets under way it’s painfully obvious that the economy is still struggling.  Sales are continuing their downward trend, unemployment is rising, and many Americans are still having trouble paying their mortgage.  After struggling through 2008, the average consumer is facing the New Year at a financial rock bottom.  The best indicator of this [...]

�
While the world focuses on economic news, it can be easy to turn inward and worry about your career and paying bills. You are probably working more hours and dealing with more stress each day.
I know I was starting to feel major burnout too, and I finally decided to spend the weekend scuba diving.
At first, [...]

Late last year (as if it was so long ago) I attended a keynote presentation featuring Larry Brilliant of Google.org and Malcolm Gladwell author of The Tipping Point. Larry Brilliant shared his inspirational story of leading the first organization of doctors to rid the world of smallpox and how it eventually lead him to his [...]

This has become my new mantra and quite honestly, I wish I would have seen the light a little earlier.  However, as a small business owner swamped with trying to make sales, market the business, oversee the day-to-day operations, and oh yeah- create the product, I just never saw where “having lunch” had a worthy [...]

Here’s an excerpt from Sam Carpenter’s book Work The System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less…       

Eight years ago, in the depths of my workplace chaos, I was also dealing with a very sick body and an exhausted mind. I was delirious during the day and couldn’t sleep at night. My doctor had [...]

Among the constant influx of bad news I came across an article from Forbes singing the praises of emerging designers.  While this article talks mainly about fashion designers, I believe it can translate to other industries as well.  The bottom line is that retailers are looking for new ideas to excite and motivate their customers [...]

In my small business, Centratel, each of our half-dozen key management people has had several years of on-the-job experience. Training managers to operate a telephone answering service is a long, drawn-out affair because it is necessary to understand a myriad of technical details and random facts. The introduction of documentation speeds up this training process, but [...]