3 Strategies to Grow Your Business with Gratitude | Getentrepreneurial

July 30, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

You’re increasing your sales. Your team is more productive. You get out of the office earlier to do what you love with those you love…

…and yet there’s something missing. You struggle to keep all the business plates spinning simultaneously. It’s exhausting most days. Your family and friends ask, “Are you okay?”

The missing something is Gratitude.

Here are 3 Strategies to Grow Your Business with Gratitude:

Gratitude Focuses on the Positive

You see what you look for.

Is your default zoom set on what’s wrong with your business? That’s exhausting.

Of course all of our companies have room for improvement. Systems and strategies can be tweaked for greater efficiency. If that’s all you see when you look at your business, you completely miss what’s working positively.

Why Local Reviews Are Becoming a Best Online Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses | All Business

July 29, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Among the relatively newer tactics to emerge in the online marketing world are ones that work on both an SEO and a social level—all while promising their own, independent benefits.

Local reviews are exactly what they sound like—reviews of your business written and posted by real customers on third-party directory or review sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor. Cultivating these local reviews by giving stellar service and making your presence on these review sites known (as directly soliciting reviews is a violation of most directory sites’ terms of service) holds numerous benefits for your business, and is becoming one of the most successful and most important online marketing strategies today.

So what is it that makes local reviews such an important and useful strategy?

How College Loan Relief Firms Prey On Desperate Borrowers | Forbes

July 29, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In February 2014 Kim Kotary was living in Queens, N.Y., working 25 hours a week in three part-time jobs at nonprofits and as a freelance crafts teacher and designer, and worrying how she’d ever pay off the $20,000 she borrowed to earn a master’s from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology back in 2002. So when she heard a radio ad offering information about how those working for nonprofits could get student debt forgiven, she called the 800 number. A phone rep told her Broadsword Student Advantage could get her monthly payments suspended, based on her poverty-level income, and help her apply to get her debt forgiven after ten years.

Kotary agreed to pay Broadsword $500 and signed its forms online, without, she admits, reading them closely. On top of the $500, Affordable Life Plans, a Securities & Exchange Commission-registered investment adviser, started taking $29.95 a month from her bank account. Then, last August, Kotary lost her main part-time nonprofit gig. Finally, this past March, after 13 months of paying, she discovered she wouldn’t be eligible for the debt forgiveness unless she worked 30 hours a week in the not-for-profit sector, and that she could have applied for forgiveness herself, for free, at http://www.studentloans.gov. “When I found out it was free, it really pissed me off,” says Kotary, 43, who has stopped the monthly payments. “I was told that they could help me save more than they charged me for the services.”

Proceed with Caution When Employment Involves Immigration | Payroll Link

July 28, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Discrimination in employment practices can land your business in legal hot water, even if it’s not intentional. What matters is the result of certain actions. In broad terms, discrimination is defined as changes in an employment practice — such as recruitment, hiring, job assignment or promotions — that have the “purpose or effect of denying employment or promotional opportunities to a class of individuals,” stated the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). It’s important to note that by this definition, the employer’s intention may be irrelevant if the “effect” is discrimination.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the U.S. Attorney General has authority to bring suit against an employer “where there is reason to believe that a pattern or practice of discrimination exists.” Authority to prosecute employers also resides in anti-discrimination provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

Here’s a recent example to illustrate this concept. In June, the DOJ settled an “immigration-related discrimination claim” against a major national retailer. According to a DOJ announcement, the retailer had “required a non-U.S. citizen, but not similarly-situated U.S. citizens, to produce specific documentary proof of her immigration status for the purpose of verifying her employment eligibility.” In other words, additional documentation was required of this applicant compared to others.

3 Dumb Rules That Make Employees Less Productive | Inc.com

July 28, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Like a strict parent, a strict boss is probably motivated by love. You cherish the business you worked so hard for and you won’t let a little bit of grumbling among employees keep you from running a tight ship. Your team might not like the rules your lay down to keep them productive and on-task, but these guide rails mean your business runs smoothly and efficiently.

That might be the thinking of the control freak boss, but according to a recent LinkedIn Influencer post from author and President of TalentSmart Dr. Travis Bradberry, despite your good intentions, your strict rules are probably making your team less productive, not more.

“As my company has grown, so has our difficulty maintaining standards. There have been many instances where someone crossed a line, and we were tempted to respond with a new rule that applied to everyone. But that’s where most companies blow it,” he writes. “In just about every instance, upon closer inspection, we realized that establishing a new rule would be a passive and morale-killing way to address the problem. The vast majority of the time, the problem needs to be handled one-on-one by the employee’s manager.”

So what are the most common counter-productive rules from management that employees hate and which end up only reducing the amount they get done? Bradberry offers a long list, including:

Top 5 Most Common Errors in Small Business Employee Handbooks | SOOFI

July 28, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Employee Handbooks are an integral part of every small business’s “CYA” arsenal. They are intended to provide objective standards for employee conduct, expectations, and disciplinary procedures.

However, the overwhelming majority of small businesses tend to rely on publicly available online forms or policies borrowed from fellow business owners to prepare their employee handbooks, whether out of necessity, preference, or convenience.

In states like California where employment and labor laws are constantly being added or amended, it is worthwhile to review your company’s employee handbook from time to time to assess whether they are adequate or create unnecessary risk that, with a few tweaks and modifications, could be mitigated. Complying with labor laws is a lot like keeping good dental hygiene: an unpleasant and frequent annoyance but one for which an once of prevention is worth a thousand pounds of cure. Here is some guidance on the most common errors or mistakes in small business employee handbooks:

5 Gorgeous Hospitals That Show How Good Design Can Improve Patients’ Lives | Co.Exist

July 27, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve ever been wheeled into an ER room on a stretcher and spent hours staring at a windowless gray wall, you’re already aware that traditional hospitals haven’t exactly been designed to be comforting. But that’s changing. Forward-thinking hospitals are realizing that good design that improve patients’ mood can actually help people get well faster.

“In the past, the design of health care facilities was focused more on supporting the patient care team than the actual patient,” says Scott Habjan, associate director at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who served as jury chair for the recent AIA National Healthcare Design Awards. The winning designs all give patients more attention, based on research that shows the physical environment can help patients feel less stressed, take less pain medicine, and improve more quickly.

“Qualities like natural light, views to nature, and quiet and clean patient rooms all contribute to a positive patient experience,” Habjan says. “Planning that keeps caregivers closer to the patient and environments that give them a sense of control serve to support the healing process. Conversely, facilities designed without the patient in mind can be particularly stressful and depressing to someone already in a vulnerable state.”

Read about a few of the award winners to see examples of facilities thinking differently:

7 Mistakes to Avoid When Making Direct Investments | Axial

July 22, 2015 ~ CBPS ~ Leave a comment

As the number of family offices that pursue direct investments in private companies increases, so too do the number of misguided deals. Over the years we’ve heard plenty of examples from family offices where the direct investments they made were tremendously successes, but also where there were lessons to be learned. In the spirit of passing on that knowledge, we have compiled a few common mistakes made in direct investing

Holacracy, Explained: An Illustrated Guide to Management-Free Organizations | Page19

July 21, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Have you heard about Holacracy? If you’re watching the startup and tech scene, then there’s a pretty good chance you have.

Holacracy is a management-free way to run a company. It’s been around for a few years, but it may have come to your attention just recently when its inventor, Brian Robertson, released a book on the concept. Another place you might have recently heard about Holacracy is in the media when Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, asked his employees to either fully buy in to the company’s holacracy initiative or take their leave (along with a nice little bonus to sweeten the exit).

Even before all the media buzz, we at Blinkist were fascinated with Holacracy. In fact, it led us to develop our own, lighter approach called Blinkracy and roll it out through our team.

One thing that we noticed along the way is that there’s a huge breach between how simple and efficient Holacracy can make work and how not simple it is to understand. Holacracy is a beautiful concept that makes organizations more effective and much better places to work. However, the mass of holacracy-only lingo makes the adoption curve high.

10 Time Wasting Tasks You Can Automate in 30 Minutes | Small Biz Trends

July 20, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Time is one of the most precious assets to business owners. But with so many time wasting tasks on your to-do list, you need to take control of your work or it will take control of you. Luckily, technology can help.

Here are 10 common time wasting tasks to automate to free up time:

Sorting Emails

Before you get around to responding to emails, it helps to organize them. One of the best efficiency moves you can make is to use the label, tag and/or folder functions in your email program. That way, you can tackle important emails first, and less important ones later (or maybe never). It also helps you to “batch” emails for efficiency.