Early one morning, Robert awoke, made his wife of 41 years some banana bread, took out the garbage and called to cancel a doctors appointment scheduled for the next day. He wrote a note to remind his wife to pick up the dry cleaning. All things considered, it seemed like a normal day. Robert had ?re...

Now that you have invested your time, energy and money in buying a franchise, how do you work within the system? How do you take advantage of all your franchisor has to offer? How do you deal with your counterparts, other franchisees? In this chapter, I will give you tips that will help you thrive...

For the last 10 years or so, I have been financially burnt so many times I can?t even imagine where to start. Being a specialist professional in my field of practice, I barely had the time to spend with my young family, let alone learning how to invest my money for a reasonable return. My JOB ( Just...

Most small businesses will not even try to advertise on television. It?s too expensive and the audience is too broad. The ads on television are not targeted enough. Think back to the last time your entire family was gathered around a television set. It was fun family time, but think of how different...

Technical Writing in India: Is it as good as anywhere else? Technical Writing generally translates to a piece of writing that conjures up an image in the mind of a layman about any device or software application. In other words, the job profile of a technical writer involves writing and designing us...

It has taken me decades ? literally ? to finally pick up another C.S. Lewis book and read it. In high school I read Lewis? book, ?That Hideous Strength? and completely missed Lewis? message. One decade later I read Lewis? ?Mere Christianity? and fully understood what Lewis was saying. With The Lion,...

Trade Show attendees beg - do not sell me, persuade me. They plea - Do not force me to buy something I will be sorry about later. Be Gentle with Your Influence. Here are NINE KEY WORDS to get the ball rolling.... We all have something in our past we believe someone ?sold? us. It might have been a...

As youngsters, many of us were taught basic telephone etiquette. These lessons taught us the basic components of conducting a phone conversation - politeness, attentiveness, respect, and common courtesy. Unfortunately, it seems these lessons have been forgotten by many of today?s companies. For ma...

The bad things starts with the letter ?O??.like Obstacles, Obstruction, Obscene?.overly-poor? There?s bound to obstructions and obstacles in everything that we do in life. Like riding a bicycle. We get a few scrapes and bruises and think that we?re never going to ride a bike ever again. We try to bl...

You make the decision to go into business and for some time work from home or in leased premises and your business starts to grow. Like all businesses you experience growing pains. Cash Flow is sometimes tight, customers come in ebbs and flows but you continue to make progress. You win a few major c...

Stay at home jobs and stay at home work of all kinds have become the hottest employment trends of the 21st century. Outsourcing work to stay at home workers has become especially attractive to employers who are looking for an effective way to cut business costs and still provide quality products an...

Awareness and Mastery ?Two Essential Keys To a Successful Small Business At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path." ~ George Leonard US pioneer in human potential We often hear managers complaining that their employees aren?t productive, don?t listen and just can?t...

Managing cash flow is every small business owner?s most important function. Avoid these seven deadly mistakes to make sure you aren?t creating cash flow problems in your coaching practice. 1. Using the ?Fly By The Seat of Your Pants? Accounting Method. When tax time rolls around do you find yourself...

If you do any significant amount of driving, a simple thing you can do to increase your productivity is to listen to audio programs in your car. If your commute time to work is 45 - 60 minutes each way, you can easily listen to at least 1 book each week. Over the course of a year, that can add up ...

Part one looked at telesales, yellow pages and other directories, using mailing lists and advertising in local papers and journals. In this article I will be considering direct selling techniques, leaflet drops and internet advertising. 1. Direct Approach You could simply cold call on a company and ...

Researching information for a recent business plan, I came across an interesting number of 54,000. What is the big deal about that? Over 54,000 new restaurant business licenses were applied for in the last twelve months nationally. That is over 4,500 new restaurant licenses every month, or 90 licens...

How many articles have you read with titles like "Ten Steps to Developing Self Confidence"? Well I`m sure more than you can count. What does this say about this strategic approach to the issue of enhancing Self Confidence? Well I`ll leave the answer to that question for you to sort out. In this arti...

Introduction There are two ways to submit to magazine editors. One is to send the finished article without it being requested. This is referred to as an unsolicited manuscript. Most editors dislike reading lengthy manuscripts, and many magazines specify that they do not accept unsolicited manuscript...

Competition in the past has embodied such beliefs of ?kill or get killed? which has fostered paranoia with many individuals and companies. Our competitive thinking has been to: defend, hoard, knock off competition, defame and win at any cost. A view propagated by Intel?s Andy Grove that, ?only th...

You are definitely not alone. Every successful marketer has stood in your shoes feeling totally confused and not knowing in which direction to turn. Anyone new to the Internet suffers from ?information overload? a seriously perplexing condition and one only overcome by choosing the direction that ...

Starting a home-based business is only the beginning of a home-based career. The real headache of the business starts after the business is started. It is difficult to figure out how to attract new customers to make the business successful. There are many leads generating systems available that help...

You`ve found your new MLM product or service, it`s a product you can market with confidence, you`ve looked at the main website, it has extensive marketing plans and support to help you start the process of becoming a successful Internet Marketer. So why wait, join up quick and get started. But as w...

How many times have you checked your e-mail lately? How many times have you rearranged your desk? Perhaps you`ve decided to make a few phone calls to friends you haven`t talked to in a while? Everyone has something called "The Comfort Zone." It`s only human for us to do whatever we can to stay in T...

Everybody dreams about it - having a leisurely cup of coffee on a lazy morning, enjoying life as your home-based business continues to bring in the big bucks. Well? I hate to burst your bubble, but this home-based business thing is HARD WORK, so before you hang up your tie and high heels, here are a...

I have a dear friend who is a medical doctor. I once mentioned to his secretary that it seemed to me that his ex-wife had really taken him to the cleaners in their divorce. His secretary very quickly and forcefully admonished me and explained that his ex-wife was the reason for his great wealth. ...

If you watched the movie "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", you probably wondered about two little details: why does a wardrobe lead into the magical land of Narnia, and why does Lucy find a lantern in the middle of a forest? "The Magician"s Nephew" answers these questions (though I will not gi...

Award winning author John Roynesdal, is a retired English teacher who has written for more than 15 years and produced 3 books for his Phillip Michael Carnegie Mystery series. Throughout the series, John focuses on issues that prevail on mankind: greed, prejudice, poverty, dysfunctional families...

In one of my past magazine jobs my office was next to that of the book editor. He would get boxes and boxes of books daily. There was a separate room devoted to storing these books, but that still didn`t keep them from piling up in his office. Whenever he returned from vacation he practically had to...

Activities - such as sports, creative projects, reading, work, TV, meditation - can be a wonderful way to relax, express yourself, or connect to yourself. Or they can be an addiction. How can you know the difference?

• Angie would surf the channels whenever she felt stressed or alone.
• Kar...

There are powerful strategies that business owners can use to dramatically improve their sales, income and bottom line. In a brand new book, ?Become the Squeaky Wheel? by Michelle Dunn, she describes these strategies at length. With her ideas in hand, business owners can hone their credit polices a...

Most people will agree that goal setting is an important strategy in obtaining what we desire. If you don`t set goals you will not know what to look for to determine whether an achivement was truly a success or not. The sad thing is that only a very small part of those who understand the need for s...

Correct me if I am wrong, but there is nothing more powerful in a business-to-business sales letter than a credible testimonial from a person in your prospect?s peer group. Testimonials are valuable because they say what you cannot. If you say it, you?re boasting. If a satisfied client says it, the...

The Franchise Group at the Federal Trade Commission in all their ego and glory has proclaimed that franchise disclosure laws are ?Cost Effective.? I hate to break it to the FTC, but your comments and court are completely naked. The folks at the FTC are wearing no clothes. In a recent franchise repor...

Business owners rarely go into business to deal with the financial aspects of running a business. It?s easy to understand why! You are passionate about the products or services you provide and want to focus your time there. The financial aspect usually falls to the bottom of the ?desired responsibil...

A little creativity can go a long way toward helping you make money doing things you enjoy. Take a look at some of the suggestions here, then think about ways you can get paid to do what you love to do. Get paid to shop - Mystery shopping is a great way to make money in your spare time by providing ...

"I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me." -- Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud. When aspiring writers tell...

Visual processing is the most important way for gathering information for all human beings. A good design or graphics work is remembered for ages and that is what drives the multinational companies to spend millions of dollars on developing their logo and other branding material. They would go to an...

I?d admit, for marketer, this headline is mundane. Couldn?t I have come up with a more motivating one? No and here?s why...forecasting and budgeting is essential and there is no reason to candy-coat the absolute importance of it for starting or maintaining a paid search campaign. I contend that ...

A certified proofreader is one that has taken a few courses and learned the proper way to do proof reading work. It is essential that individuals who want to become proof readers, have qualifications that can help them to prepare work that is of high quality. There are many different things that y...

The American Civil War took place in 1861 to 1865 in the southern United States; also in eastern, central and southwestern regions. The outcome of this bloody civil battle was the defeat of the seceding CSA. The primary leaders in the War were the well known Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Bot...

Every day is critical when you are in the business of sales. That lead you receive today could very easily be gone tomorrow. It is very important to act on your lead the very second you get it, not an hour later, or a few days later. The second it is in one hand, the next hand should be dialing ...

President George W. Bush has unofficially won his re-election bid defeating Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry. The election was close, no doubt, but it was by no means a re-run of the 2000 election drama. Because this time, Bush bagged a convincing victory by winning both Electoral College an...

Creative Writing Tips ? The writer, who doesn?t have the time to plot, always finds the time to rewrite. Sound familiar? I?ve been guilty of this too, back in the early days of my writing apprenticeship. I was so eager to get stuck into writing my story that I wouldn?t bother with plotting. Pl...

One of the nice things about being an author is that we can break any rule we want. (I just did.) It`s part of our job description. Language changes through usage -- definitions, spelling, grammar -- and authors can help it do this. But on the other hand, we have to have some sort of agreement on th...

Typically it is said that when you open up a new venture, it takes fro 2 to 5 years of steady growth before you can call it a success. All things considered, this is true and because it is true, it is all the more important to do everything correctly, right from the start! So here are 7 guidelines...

The traditional print media newsletter is still useful even in the rapidly changing age of the Internet and IT. Its uses are so multi-faceted that it can cover just about anything ? from the company?s profile to promotions, home-order system and contests. Before the Internet homepage became so commo...

There is a psychological nuisance so powerful that can deflate the drive, self-esteem, and human spirit of many aspiring Writers of any age. These Writers are faced with an obstacle that make them stop, think twice and question their right to be a part of a respected community. This even leads them ...

If the media were to call you today for an interview, would you know what to do or say? That question was posed during a recent conference on small-business ownership and micro enterprise creation, which was held here in Paris. I watched the reactions around the room, and it occurred to me that for ...

7:00 a.m., the silence in the house is broken by my child`s call to me, from another room, "Mom, please take care of my Opie eye!" Huh?...  My mind is spinning trying to process this information, what sort of illness is Opie eye? Is it a variation of Pink eye? What is the cure? What is the c...

Cover Letters :: Are you telling them what they want to know? Let`s face it. Recruiters (or employers) are smarter than we think. Bigger organizations pay a hefty salary to their HR department to filter out and sieve through hundreds and thousands of resumes. The idea is to build an organization ...