16 Creative Ways to Get Press Coverage for Your Small Business | AllBusiness.com

October 23, 2019October 20, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Richard Branson once said: “A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.” In other words, press coverage is priceless, but where do you start? To find out more, we asked 16 marketing experts and entrepreneurs to share interesting and cost-effective ways to get media coverage.

1. Develop a proactive PR strategy

“Proactive pitching is essential—the best way to do this is to find trends company leaders can tie into or speak on. Is the company owned by a mom who balances work and family life? Does the company have a diverse and fun culture? Does the company offer perks and benefits outside of the norm? Those are trends that don’t tie to news but are newsworthy.

What Are You Really Selling | Management Consulting Connection

October 22, 2019October 20, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’re a self-employed professional, you know what you’re selling, right?

Management development programs, executive coaching services, communication skills training, financial planning, etc.

Right?

No, wrong. Those are your services, but that is not what you are selling and not what your clients are buying.

How to Help an Employee With an Addiction | Business.com

October 22, 2019October 20, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Addiction signals the employee is experiencing something difficult in their personal life. It’s a symptom, not the cause of their problems. It’s important that you, as the employer, treat it this way.

Addiction can strike anyone at any place, and it’s nothing to joke about. It can completely ruin a person’s life, and even when it doesn’t go that far, it can still have a devastating effect for a long time.

The Importance of Restorative Sleep to Entrepreneurial Success | The Startup Magazine

October 21, 2019October 20, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

No one can experience entrepreneurial success without a lot of hard work. Unfortunately, that ideal has gone so far as to make start-up business owners feel like they must sacrifice the quantity and quality of their sleep to remain competitive. Sleep deprivation even feels like a badge of honor for some entrepreneurs to show how truly dedicated they are to growing their business. As more information about the importance of restorative sleep comes to light, business owners are heeding the advice and learning they can be more productive when well-rested than when continually skimping on sleep.

The Harvard Business Review Sleep Study

In July 2019, the Harvard Business Review published a study on entrepreneurs and sleep quality in the Journal of Business Venturing. The study, which had 784 participants, found that business owners who routinely don’t get enough quality sleep struggle to analyze business opportunities as effectively as their counterparts who do get enough sleep. They also tended to make more mistakes and be less effective in managing others.

8 Women Entrepreneurs on What They Wish They’d Done Differently | Entrepreneur

October 16, 2019October 13, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

We asked eight of the entrepreneurs featured on our 100 Powerful Women list: If you could go back and change one business decision you made, what would it be?

“The most valuable use of my time was when I invested in recruiting and retaining great people. If I could go back, I’d literally double down: double the time I spent making sure we have and keep the incredible people that help our business be successful and grow.”

— Katrina Lake; Founder and CEO, Stitch Fix, the $2 billion personal styling service

Pino electricity-free, hand-cranked kitchen appliance | New Atlas

October 15, 2019October 13, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

German eco-social design student Manuel Immler has recently completed an electricity-free kitchen appliance prototype that features a hand-powered crank drive. Dubbed Pino, the simple yet effective kitchen appliance is designed to enable electricity-free, human-powered kitchen tasks, such as whisking, beating, mixing and grinding.

The masters project was inspired by Immler’s desire to create a sustainable and responsible design that helps reverse the negative impact commercial production has on the planet.

How to Learn to Let Go of What You Can’t Control | Life hack

October 11, 2019October 8, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A friend of mine once told me, “Almost everything in my life that I’ve had to let go of has scratch marks on it.” His point was that he found it very difficult to let go of things he couldn’t control. I’m sure many of you can relate to that.

Most of us don’t want to let go of things we like. So we hang on until they’re forcibly taken away, and even then, we still hold on mentally and emotionally. What we may not realize is that holding on can wreak havoc in our lives.

Holding on to things we can’t control can cause us a great deal of stress and unhappiness. It also keeps us stuck in the past, and keeps us from growing and living our lives freely. If we want to be happy and free, then we need to learn to let go.

8 Ways To Make Your Money Greener | Forbes

October 10, 2019October 7, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg grabbed headlines in the U.S. last month when she traveled to the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in a sailboat and then accused adults of having stolen her generation’s hopes and dreams with their inaction on climate change. But in her home country, Thunberg and her movement already seem to be having an effect on the habits of adults; domestic air travel is falling in Sweden as she’s become the face of a push to reduce air travel.

Even if you’re not ready to cut back on flying, there are other ways you can have a personal and positive impact on the environment. One of the most obvious is with your money—how you bank it, invest it, spend it and share it. Here are eight ways to make your money greener (or promote other causes you deem worthy).

LG’s Spherical Ice Cubes | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

October 8, 2019October 6, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s natural to want some of those groovy whiskey glasses that Harrison Ford’s character Rick Deckard keeps pushing on his replicant girlfriend Rachel in Blade Runner. Though they’re not cheap, and there are about a million knockoffs out there, we can’t thing of anything better to put LG’s new “ice sphere” ice cubes in — alongside a dash of something potent.

LG’s InstaView Door-in-Door refrigerators have been out for a little while and now the company has pushed through an upgrade that enables them to make something called “Craft Ice.” Most of us are still cracking ice cube trays filled with traditional square cubes (unless you’re in the U.K. or the EU, where they sell a bizarre alternative that uses plastic bags with weird pockets that would eventually make something resembling an ice cube.)