5 Things to Do to Fight Business Security Risks | Getentrepreneurial

June 3, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Business security has come into the spotlight in the past few years, mainly due to high profile security breaches like the ones at Sony, Ashley Madison and Kaspersky Lab. Small businesses are routinely targeted by cyber criminals, due to the unsophisticated security systems that they have in place, making it easy for the attackers to steal money, data, and other business information.

Security breach compromises sensitive business data and, in many instances, lead to complete destruction of data. When credit card or financial information is stolen, it makes millions of your users or customers highly vulnerable to fraud. Digital natives place a lot of importance on how companies deal with cyber security, and prefer to do business with brands that will value and protect their personal information.

C-suite executives need to be aware of the cyber security risks that businesses face, and should have a sound plan to tackle them.

Here are a few of the top business security risks, and the ways in which you can deal with them.

The Importance of Manual Link Building: Why It Can’t Be Automated | HigherVisibility

June 1, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

There are certain goals that always seem to stay on the priority lists of brands and businesses. Drive traffic? Definitely. Grow the brand? A must. Develop relationships with consumers and other businesses? Absolutely. All of these factors are crucial to any given brand’s success and long-term achievement, and finding ways to address all of these goals is a necessity.

One of the most fundamental and widely performed strategies used to work on such goals is link building. A practice known to fuel site traffic, link building tends to be used by brands and businesses to leave a trail of bread crumbs across the internet leading back to their own page. While that’s not necessarily a bad way of looking at the SEO practice, it does take away from the emphasis that should be placed on the importance of manual link building with quality in mind.

The Importance of Logistic Efficiency for Startups | Cool Business Ideas

May 31, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Starting up a business is difficult, and there are enormous challenges that any new entrepreneur faces. There’s competition from other businesses, learning how to manage growth, finding and vetting the right talent, and keeping up with ever changing markets. To be successful, one must also avoid common traps like failing to define a focus, not having enough funding, getting outmaneuvered by rivals, falling victim to internal company politics, being overly dependent on one specialization, not managing expectations, and an inability to bounce back from setbacks. It’s important to capitalize on any and every available advantage you have for your company to stay ahead.

We’ve previously talked about how reinvesting profits can be a good idea. Did you know that improving logistical efficiency is another great practice that can put your start-up in a more advantageous position? If you didn’t already know, marketing logistics, which concerns the movements of vital information and products, is a key to customer satisfaction that has implications across all facets of a business. How can it improve yours?

3 Ways Emerging Entrepreneurs Run Financially Sound Businesses | Entrepreneur

May 31, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Securing funding is a major feat for any brand and requires a great deal of planning and expertise. However, the real value comes from turning that initial support into long-term growth — transforming a spark into a sustainable fire. Without financial stability, eCommerce brands lack the foundation to tackle key business endeavors like evolving product lines, expanding geographic storefronts or making new investments into shipping and packaging that enhance the customer experience.

This is particularly true for emerging businesses transitioning from angel or first-round funding sources into companies with verified equity. These brands are no longer simply selling an idea but must be able to back their entire business model with a concrete financial plan.

Do You Know the 3 Rs of Financial Reporting? | All Business

May 27, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I’m going to let you in on a secret: The best businesses—those that really boost the wealth and happiness of the business owner—are not built on intuition or luck.

As much as we would like to think that great entrepreneurs have some kind of special gift, the best among us simply know how to create and use meaningful financial reporting, and use it to make decisions that improve our businesses. With a good eye on the numbers and some careful analysis, any business owner can see what is going right and what is going wrong.

But running a business “by the numbers” means that your financial reports needs be built on the 3 R’s: Reliability, Readability, and Regularity:

7 Reasons Smart, Hardworking People Struggle To Find Success | Lifehack

May 25, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Think back to when you were in high school, when things were simpler. Do you remember that person who stood out amongst the class? That person everyone thought would change the world one day? They got straight A’s on their report card and were praised all the time. People would talk about the things that person would go on to do one day.

Fast forward a decade or two to the present day. You haven’t seen anything spectacular the person has done. In fact, you haven’t heard anything at all.

What happened?

Maybe you know someone like this. Or…maybe you are that person.

I used to think that intelligence and a strong work ethic were all you needed to be successful. But it turns out that’s not always true. Both are important, but they aren’t a guarantee for success in life. A number of other factors come into play.

Here are seven reasons smart, hardworking people can’t find success:

It’s all in a name… | The Startup Magazine

May 25, 2016May 25, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Your domain name is your identity on the web. It is the starting point of your journey online, but more importantly it is the go-to destination for all your traffic – and therefore it needs to be the right one to showcase your business. Choosing your domain name is a decision not to be taken lightly. You want to make sure you choose one that reflects your business or venture, so people instantly know they have found the right website. But you also need to ask yourself how easy it is to find and to promote.

To make the decision process just that little bit easier, we’ve put together a few key points for you to consider when choosing your domain name:

Wake Up And Smell The Coffee: Employment Is Over | Forbes

May 24, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Alan was a clever guy who came to a job-search workshop we presented. He told jokes and cracked everyone up.

He said “Working at my former employer was like being a prairie dog living in a prairie dog village where life was happy and gay. The only problem for the prairie dogs was that right next door to the prairie dog village lived an erratic and violent farmer with a shotgun who every so often would lean over the fence, take some shots and pick off a bunch of prairie dogs. You never knew when it was going to happen.”

Alan stayed at his ex-employer for six years and survived eight layoffs. He finally got whacked in the ninth round.

“It was only when I got laid off that I realized how much stress I had been experiencing, but ignoring,” said Alan.

“Because of the crazed-farmer-with-a-shotgun dynamic in my old company, everybody was under huge stress. It didn’t matter what your job title was or how well you hit your targets. If they decided to change the strategic plan one day, you were still toast.”

Alan put his finger on the most significant change that has occurred in the working world since I started working in 1979.

Teamhacking 102: Best Management Tips for New Leaders | Page 19

May 24, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This week, we’ll show you how to empower your employees to promote constructive workplace debate, how to organize your team to play to each worker’s strengths, and much more. Let’s get to it!

1. Create safe conversations by showing people that you respect them and their interests.

From Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler: We’ve all seen how an otherwise rational conversation can quickly go off the rails when people feel threatened. So what steps can we take to keep the atmosphere in a conversation safe?

A safe atmosphere hinges on two key conditions: a feeling of mutual respect, and a common purpose.

Converting Leads Into Customers: Create a Sales Funnel for Your Business | Getentrepreneurial.com

May 20, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The sales process is a long road dotted with pitfalls and junctions that can lead potential customers astray. Sales representatives cannot cover every step of the way, but they can pull together a map, and put visible signs to direct people. Namely, sales funnel prevents the sale pipelines from becoming clogged, which is why many online businesses take advantage of this model. In fact, internet marketing has embraced these techniques as they show great promise in terms of establishing sale relationships with buyers in the long term.