Why Your Business Should Never Say Merry Christmas
I remember the first time I received a greeting card in the mail that said “Happy Holidays” instead of Merry Christmas. I was taken back a bit, but this was 2007. The card was from a large audit firm and I thought that it was strange that they were being so “politically correct.” I had always said Merry Christmas in the past, and I was going to continue doing the same. I was in the Christmas spirit and wanted to project my excitement and wish the same excitement for others.
So my card to the audit firm proudly exclaimed “Merry Christmas.”
But this year, I am not saying Merry Christmas - I have decided to say Happy Holidays instead. And my reason for this is fairly obvious.
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The Importance of Innovation in Business
I love small businesses - I advise them and have started a couple of them - but I have to admit, owning a business today is harder than ever before.
A successful business recipe used to consist of the following:
hard work + a fair price + good customer service = successful business
Now, that recipe is no longer enough. Today, we need...
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Well, That Didn't Work.
I want to share with you an experience I had in trying to market one of my blog articles - an experience that failed miserably.
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Productivity in the Workplace Series: E-mail Productivity Tips
E-mail can be one of the biggest distractions to a modern business. Yet, e-mail is one of the most effective forms of communication. Instead of calling 15 people to fill them in on the same thing, one e-mail can be sent to all of them with a single click. For this reason, e-mail is one of the most popular forms of communication in the modern business.
But it comes at a price. A price in the form of a loss of productivity.
As I have currently been writing a series on productivity in the workplace, this article will specifically focus on e-mail productivity and how to save
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Productivity in the Workplace
Early in my working career, I worked in sales in a cubicle environment. Everyday, I found myself struggling to increase my productivity. You see, I was in a department that was new and understood that, while our sales were difficult to come by, they were vital to the longevity of our newly developed department.
Since our department was somewhat of an experiment, there were only about eight of us in total. This meant that we sat next to one of the more established departments which was a high producer for the company. The interesting thing about this seating arrangement was that the established department was able to make twice as many sales with less effort than our department.
As I worked on increasing my productivity every day, I watched team members of the established department sit back and often
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Reader Survey
I need your help. I want to know how to make my site better. I want it to be more relevant to you, my reader.
Can you take a quick minute or two and answer these questions for me?
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Getting Things Done as a Recovering Perfectionist
As a recovering perfectionist, my tendency is to want to master something before I share it and find myself in a place of vulnerability. For this reason, perfectionism is both one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses. It is a strength as I prefer to offer quality work. It is a weakness because I often work on things that never get finished as I fear they won’t be able to find perfection.
And then I heard someone say: “If you aren’t embarrassed
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Innovating Litterbox Smell Solutions
As a business owner, I love innovation because it provides a competitive advantage. As a consumer, I look toward innovation to solve problems. As a cat owner, well...
Growing up, we had always been a dog family. But my wife came from a cat family. So when my two and half year old daughter found a stray kitten, I became a cat person. And as a cat person, I quickly learned that I needed to look for letterbox smell solutions.
As a dog owner, I had always been accustom to having any animal dirty business conducted outdoors. Yes, cleaning up the fenced in yard was not a desirable job, but it was better than what I was now facing as a cat owner: cat dirty business is done inside. So my I knew we had to find a solution.
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Thank You
My readers are amazing. I am so thankful for each of you and all of the support you show me. You are the motivation for me to continue writing and blogging.
This last week, I put on two seminars in Illinois and was reminded of something: diligence matters more than preparation or even execution.
When I teach seminars, I get a survey from every attendee. Because of this, I often
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The Best Way to Increase Productivity in the Workplace
The best way to increase productivity in the workplace is to take away all irrelevant decisions. As humans, we only have so many decisions we can make in a day before we become overwhelmed and burned out. Even the smallest decisions take an output from our energy stores. So why not eliminate all small, non-critical decisions?
Mark Zuckerburg recently explained that he wears the same shirt most days because
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Understanding What A Sales Process Is - Dissecting The Sales Funnel
A sales process is an intentional strategy used to convert prospects into paying customers. This is often accomplished by designing a “sales funnel” where customers are given a clear path which walks them step-by-step toward becoming an ideal customer.
But a sales process is more than just a packaged guide that points toward the cash register - it is something that is big, clunky, and complex, but still needs to be beautifully designed. To fully answer the question of what is a sales process, I would like to share with you one of my recent experiences.
I found myself somewhere I never expected to be - I was at a Taekwondo tournament watching my son compete on a regional level.
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Three Pricing Strategies - The Only Three You'll Ever Need
Pricing is something that every business must consider. Quickly pricing products without much research or consideration can help to get a product to market in a short period of time. But pricing is one of the most important elements of a successful business. And for that reason, pricing should not be a quick, haphazard process - it should be an intentional strategy.
While there are many pricing variations, there are three pricing strategies that provide the foundation for the majority of the others. As a business owner, you can easily hack your product pricing by following one or more of these three pricing strategies:
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