These 3 Tricks Can Actually Help You Get Smarter | Page19

July 3, 2015July 2, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

What if all you had to do to become smarter was play a quirky little game, like Angry Birds? Or pick up an instrument? It may be no more complicated than that! Here are three scientifically proven ways you can up your intelligence.

What would you do with a few extra IQ points? What new plans would you be able to put into action? What creative solutions could you come up with? We’d all love to be just a bit brainier, wouldn’t we? And that’s precisely what Dan Hurley’s new book, Smarter, is all about. In his exploration of fluid intelligence, he’s come upon three tried-and-true ways that anyone can start improving his brain.

Tips for Moving Your Startup From Home to an Office | Getentrepreneurial.com

July 3, 2015July 2, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When you started your company you had dreams of growth, but couldn’t actually picture them coming true. Then, they did. You experienced growth, and you brought on a few team members. You experienced more growth and saw profits start to grow. Soon, you were excited; you realized that this was it: Your startup was becoming a legitimate company.

Along with that growth and opportunity came another potentially exciting – yet stressful – endeavor: the need for office space. Suddenly your home office wasn’t cutting it; you needed a physical location with a sign out front to announce that you’ve made it. If you’re at that point, congratulations; you’ve accomplished something great. Follow the tips below to move your startup from your home to an office.

Use Stay Interviews to Keep Your Best People on Board | Payroll Link

June 30, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

What Exactly is a Stay Interview?

It’s the opposite of an exit interview, in which you try to determine the factors that led to a worker’s decision to leave your employ. Ideally this type of preemptive measure will cut down on the number of talented employees lost.

A stay interview, conducted periodically, is distinct from a performance review. Its basic goal is to determine why the employee continues to work for you, so that you can, within reason, keep those factors alive.

Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents? | Live Science

June 29, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. What’s surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen’s English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.

Traditional English, whether spoken in the British Isles or the American colonies, was largely “rhotic.” Rhotic speakers pronounce the “R” sound in such words as “hard” and “winter,” while non-rhotic speakers do not. Today, however, non-rhotic speech is common throughout most of Britain. For example, most modern Brits would tell you it’s been a “hahd wintuh.”

8 Advantages of Being a Small Business Owner Now | Small Biz Trends

June 29, 2015June 29, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The past few years have seen an opportunistic and favorable business environment and it looks like thankfully it is poised to continue.

Here are the advantages of being a small business owner … now.

Technology Tools

In no other time has technology made it easier for us to do business, communicate and grow on such an efficient and far reaching scale. The Web, email marketing, social media, plug-ins and apps allow us to organize and focus communication. and to help people in ways that save us time and energy and improve efficiency.

The cloud offers front end management of tasks, while many small service companies still juggle paper spreadsheets and calendars to stay organized.

What These 4 Data Breaches Can Tell Us About Security | All Business

June 26, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes, and anyone can fail — especially in the business world.

IBM’s “2015 Cost of Data Breach Study” shows that the average total cost of a data breach is $3.8 million, representing a 23 percent increase since 2013. The cost for each lost or stolen record increased 6 percent, from a consolidated average of $145 to $154.

Several companies also have been sued for their negligence in preventing these attacks. Data breaches are huge failures, but taking a look at these four big ones can teach us a thing or two about how to better secure our data.

The Chain Breaker: A Dairy Queen Like No Other | Serious Eats

June 25, 2015 ~ CBPS ~ Leave a comment

When the DeLeons took over, the original 1949 contract transferred, meaning the Moorhead DQ doesn’t have to adhere to many strict company rules. Had they signed a newer contract, they would have had no choice but to discontinue their barbecue sandwiches and Polish dogs and launch a full Orange Julius menu like many newer DQ franchises. Thanks to their old-school contract, the Moorhead DQ still pays the original 1949 royalties rate on Dairy Queen treats that they order from the corporate warehouse. Perhaps most importantly, DeLeon is able to source ingredients from outside providers and still make many desserts in-house.

Trivia Tuesday: Which came first? Apple or Microsoft? | Neowin.net

June 25, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

This is perhaps one of the biggest tech rivalries in the world, but the question I’m exploring today is which company came first? Which was the first to release an operating system? The first to release a tablet PC or smartphone? The first to create a billionaire?

The question of when the companies were founded is a pretty easy one. Microsoft came first, founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico on April 4, 1975. Apple followed nearly exactly a year later on April 1, 1976 in Cupertino, California.

The interesting thing, though, is Apple was technically the first company out of the two to release an operating system that used a graphical user interface (GUI). On January 24, 1984, the guys behind Apple released “Mac System Software 1.0” on their original Macintosh commercial computer. This was almost two years before Microsoft released their extension of MS-DOS on November 20, 1985: Windows 1.0. It also wasn’t particularly successful.

The 10 Commandments of Business from Jim Collins | Page19

June 24, 2015June 25, 2015 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

1. Find your Hedgehog concept. — Good to Great

Imagine a fox hunting a hedgehog. The fox is crafty and invents a battery of complex tactics to get at the smaller creature, yet despite all of its cunning, the fox never wins. The hedgehog has a simple, foolproof parry to any attack: it curls up and becomes an unbreachable spiked ball.

According to Collins, good-to-great companies find their own Hedgehog concept—something simple, clear, and fail-proof—by asking themselves three key questions:

What can we be the best in the world at?

What can we be passionate about?

What is the key economic indicator we should concentrate on?

Collins found that after an average of 4 years’ iteration and debate, good-to-great companies discovered their own Hedgehog concept at the intersection of these questions. After that point, every decision in the company was made in line with it, and success followed.

Take the example of drugstore chain, Walgreens. The Walgreens Hedgehog concept was to be the best, most convenient drugstore with a high customer profit per visit. By pursuing it relentlessly, Walgreens outperformed the general stock market by a factor of 7. By contrast, their competitor, Eckerd Pharmacy, lacked a simple Hedgehog concept and grew sporadically in several misguided directions, eventually ceasing to exist as an independent company.