Train It, Don’t Strain It: Strengthen Your Willpower | Page 19

December 30, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

You’re not born with pre-determined willpower settings. Roy Baumeister and John Tierney explain that there are things you can do to build it – just remember to have a rest day now and then.

Don’t think that some people are born with more willpower than others. Like good, solid quads, how strong your willpower is actually depends much more on your training regime.

As Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney explain in Willpower, you can work out your willpower just by changing your behavior even slightly and then sticking to it. For example, you might try saying “yes” and “no” instead of “yeah” and “nope” for two weeks. Even sticking to such a small change can improve self-control in other areas of your life. Here’s why:

United and Orbitz are suing a 22-year-old who exposed cheap airfare hack | Mashable.com

December 30, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

United Airlines and Orbitz are suing a 22-year-old website founder who has made it easier for travelers to find “hidden city” tickets, which can offer big discounts on airfares.

“Hidden city” ticketing is the practice of booking a one-way plane ticket from one city to another, and then getting off the plane on a layover before the final destination. It may seem counterintuitive, but booking the longer flight can sometimes be cheaper because of the convoluted mess that is airline pricing.

It’s not illegal — but that doesn’t mean airlines and booking sites want people to do it.

Videos Your Small Business Must Have in the Coming Year | Small Biz Trends

December 29, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Video is so important. Unfortunately, there are many business owners who feel that video is not for them or they simply haven’t taken the time to create them.

You can use your smartphone to do a simple video, buy a cheap video camera or invest in a professional one that might cost about $1,000 or so.

“The business benefits of using video to increase discovery, traffic, engagement and conversion are widely documented,” said Brad Jefferson, CEO of Animoto. “But we were curious about whether consumers actually find business videos helpful. The data shows that there’s a real power in business videos to help people make confident shopping decisions. Further, consumers develop a more positive impression of companies that use video and even find such companies to be more trustworthy. Businesses that don’t embrace video are overlooking a valuable way to reach their customers and will struggle to keep up with the competition.”

Read the press release from Animoto on small business video here. Animoto, says that small businesses must have three types of video:

Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins To All Advertisers Following Success Of Beta Program | TechCrunch

December 29, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After years of questions about how it will make revenue, Pinterest’s roadmap to monetization is becoming more clear. The company announced today that its Promoted Pins program, which it made available in beta to certain brands eight months ago, has performed “just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins,” and it will make the program available to all advertisers on January 1.

Pinterest claims that brands who participated in the Promoted Pins beta program saw a 30 percent increase in “earned media” — or the amount of people who save a Promoted Pin to one of the boards. Promoted Pins are repinned an average of 11 times, the same as a normal pin made by one of the site’s users. Furthermore, Promoted Pins continued to get more pins in the month after a campaign, or a 5 percent increase in earned media.

On Target: How to Identify, Attract and Keep Your Ideal Customer | American Express

December 29, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Help keep your sales flowing by marketing to the right customers in the

right way.

NOVEMBER 12, 2014 One of the biggest concerns of running a small business is finding new prospects to keep your sales pipelines full. You can panic if you have no systematic plan on how to identify who your perfect customer is, where to find them and how to nurture them to a sale.

So how can you identify, target and nurture your new prospects until they become your ideal customers?

At This Startup, Everyone Can Read Each Other’s Email | WIRED

December 26, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After the Sony mega-hack, protecting email privacy may seem paramount. But at digital payments startup Stripe, email isn’t kept all that private in the first place.

Recently, Stripe openly detailed the internal system it uses to achieve what it calls “email transparency,” saying “almost all” messages inside the company can be read by all employees. Private emails at Stripe aren’t forbidden. But they are the exception.

No, these emails can’t be read by people outside the company. But it shows that privacy isn’t always as important as we think it is. Stripe’s system is part of wide-ranging effort to build services that seek to make our communications more public, not less—an effort that includes everything from familiar consumer services like Facebook to business tools offered by the likes of Slack and GitHub.

As far as the technology goes, open email at Stripe isn’t that complicated. Employees are asked to CC any work-related emails to topic-specific mailing list archives managed through Google Groups. Project lists are the most common, but categories range from individual countries to a “crazyideas@” list. Via the lists, all email becomes public and searchable inside the company. Stripe now has 428 lists in all.

Startup Business Forecasts Are Not Black Magic, Just Smart Business | Entrepreneur

December 26, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Most aspiring entrepreneurs understand that you can’t build a business if you won’t commit to delivering a product or service, but many are hesitant or refuse to commit to any financial forecasts. Yet every business requires revenue and volumes, as certainly as it requires a product to sell. Thus, financial projections for up to five years are a necessary element in every business plan.

External investors will demand a financial forecast, but it’s equally valuable to you, even if bootstrapping. How else will you be able to convince yourself and your team that your business is viable? You need these projections to set internal goals and milestones, and to measure your progress toward reasonable success objectives.

Best Promotional Products for Trade Shows | BusinessTips.com

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Promotional products are one of the best ways to attract visitors to your trade show booth. Choosing the right promotional products that match your brand’s message and are useful to your customers will be worth your investment and bring you a high return on your investment. Studies have shown that branded giveaways really do work to help improve sentiment towards your company and help recipients remember to buy from you. The key is finding the right promotional products to giveaway at trade shows that will not only make it home with attendees, but will be kept for a long time. The most effective promotional products are kept for upwards of 3 or 4 years. Here are some of the top promotional products for trade shows that you can make your own with your own branding, name, logo, colors, and messaging.

Unilever lays an egg: Drops Just Mayo lawsuit | Money CNN

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Unilever takes its mayonnaise very seriously. But this time, the global food giant appears to have egg on its face.

In October, Unilever filed a lawsuit against Hampton Creek, a San Francisco start-up that makes an egg-free mayonnaise substitute called Just Mayo.Unilever (UL) owns Hellman’s mayonnaise and Best Foods, and accused Hampton Creek of false advertising and unfair competition.Unilever dropped the lawsuit Thursday. The company didn’t give a reason why.

The lawsuit claimed that Just Mayo does not meet the legal definition of mayonnaise since it isn’t made with eggs. Unilever also took issue with the Just Mayo label, which contains an image of an egg, and said the vegan sandwich spread was inferior in taste and “performance” to Best Foods and Hellman’s mayo.Critics started a petition on Change.org calling on Unilever to “stop bullying sustainable food companies.” The petition received more than 112,000 signatures.

3 Common Millennial Misconceptions in the Workplace | Business News Daily

December 23, 2014December 22, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Think you’ve got your millennial employees figured out? You may not know them as well as you think.

Last month, Bentley University released the results of “Millennial Mind Goes to Work,” a survey that polled more than 1,000 U.S. millennials ages 18 to 34 on their attitudes about career and workplace issues. The statistics revealed nuances of many of the assumptions older generations have made about Generation Y, such as their obsession with technology and propensity for job hopping.

The study, which was conducted as part of the school’s millennial workforce preparedness program called PreparedU, reinforces the fact that millennials have been mischaracterized by employers in many instances, said Bentley University President Gloria Larson.