7 Ways for Businesses to Leverage Customer Surveys to Their Advantage | Inc.com

August 21, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Surveys can benefit your company, your current customers, your potential customers, and the industry as a whole through usable information that might otherwise be lost.

Among the many techniques businesses use to engage customers and improve services, few remain as effective as the customer survey, according to GetResponseblogger Pam Neely.

What do customer surveys have to offer?

Measurement and analysis of customer satisfaction (or, in some cases, dissatisfaction). Companies can render a sample set of this information by reviewing sites such as Yelp or Angie’s List, perusing blog comments, and checking out social media commentary–and they should.

Beyond this, customer surveys offer a business the opportunity to choose which information it seeks. Many customers, especially the unhappy sort, will express their chagrin without quantifying it or explaining why they’re dissatisfied with your product or service.

Surveys offer specifics and the opportunity for subsequent synthesis by company personnel and marketers.

Nine Strategies for Fixing Common Budget Problems | The Simple Dollar

August 20, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Budgets are an amazing tool for getting a clear picture of your financial situation and for planning for the future. They make it possible to see, in one overall place, the exact state of your monthly spending. You know where every dime is going. You know why every dime is going there. You can also see exactly where your financial situation is headed if you stick to that budget.

Sarah and I used a very tight budget during the first few years of our financial turnaround. It provided us with a very specific plan for how we should spend our money, how much we could put towards debt every month, and so on. Along with our debt repayment plan, our budget paved the way to debt freedom.

We still budget, but it’s not as tight as it once was. Mostly, we use it as a guideline and as a way to model our expenses and savings into the future. Of course, budgeting isn’t always that easy. It can be a challenge – particularly at first – and there are many potential pitfalls along the way. Here are nine of the steepest challenges we’ve faced while budgeting and the solutions we use to make sure that they don’t happen again.

Shy People Tend to Have This Coveted Leadership Skill | Entrepreneur.com

August 19, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

So, you’re never first to raise your hand during meetings and you’re uncomfortable schmoozing with strangers at networking events. Does that mean you’re doomed to fail in the business world?

Not even close, shy one.

Those on the quiet side tend to be good listeners, giving them a serious edge over their more talkative, sometimes oversharing counterparts, says etiquette coach Jacqueline Whitmore, founder of The Protocol School of Palm Beach.

Clean Energy From Paper Waste | Inhabitat

August 19, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The turn-of-the-century Legion House is located in the heart of Sydney CBD and has operated as a women’s hostel for the last 60 years. Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp was commissioned to redevelop a larger area that includes the building, which has been converted into a zero carbon structure that received the 6-Star Green Star Office certification. Because of the building’s location, which receives almost no sun during the day, the architects decided to opt for biomass gasification technology in order to create renewable energy on site.

Legion House can use commercial paper waste generated from the adjacent office tower through shredding and compressing this waste to form paper briquettes, which can be used in the gasification plant. Surplus power created by its independent system is to be supplied to the 50-storey commercial office tower on the site.

Looking Ahead To Windows 9 | TechCrunch

August 18, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A preview of Windows 9 will be made available in either September or October, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. That timeline keeps ‘Threshold’ — Windows 9’s code name — out into the public market as a finished product likely in early 2015.

The Windows 8 era isn’t merely closing, it’s racing to an end.

Last weekend I posited that as Windows 9 appears to be galloping to market, it’s a decent time to start saying goodbye to Windows 8. Now that Foley has revealed that Windows 9’s preview should be open to the public, for a good-sized chunk of the computing world Windows 8 is all but over — they will be able to quickly scoot over to the new code, provided that the preview isn’t too buggy.

Lessons Learned The Hard Way About Running A Virtual Company | Forbes.com

August 18, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The explosion of the virtual business model is rapidly gaining awareness. While the image of a virtual company tempts many entrepreneurs, they must also understand it is a model that – like any business model – involves both pros and cons.

When I started Varsity Tutors in 2007, I had no funding and no outside investors – to put it bluntly, I was a broke college student. Any dollar I saved was another dollar to put toward the growth of this company, so I opted for a virtual business model. Varsity Tutors ultimately succeeded, but it did not reach its current state without weathering its fair share of challenges associated with operating a virtual business. In retrospect, I could have avoided many pitfalls had I been able to learn from someone who had already been through it.

3 Lessons I Learned From Firing Someone | The Muse

August 18, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

As a manager, I’ve always dreaded saying the words, “Can I talk to you in my office?”—probably even more than the employee who’s on the other side of the request. The phrase is eerily similar to the relationship-ending “We need to talk”—as soon as those words come out, you know the conversation isn’t going to be a good one.

So, when I used that exact phrase to begin a tough conversation with one of my employees, he instantly knew something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t; I was terminating his employment. It was my first time firing an employee—and as I delivered the news and watched him leave the building, I didn’t feel the way I thought I would. In fact, I learned three unexpected lessons that day, and it’s influenced the way I’ve managed my team ever since.

Ferguson’s New Leader Becomes a Hometown Hero Overnight | Mashable.com

August 15, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A captain in the Missouri highway patrol catapulted to local fame on Thursday after he and officers under his command rolled into Ferguson to take over the security for local protests.

Gov. Jay Nixon ordered Capt. Ron Johnson and the patrol to take the reins from a St. Louis County police force that had responded to protesters this week by wielding assault rifles, firing tear gas and patrolling the streets in military-style vehicles. Unrest in Ferguson began after Darren Wilson, a local police officer, shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was unarmed, on Aug. 9.

Photos taken during the six days of demonstrations — the most violent night was on Wednesday when police fired smoke grenades and tear gas into a crowd — of standoffs between police and citizens in Ferguson often seemed eerily similar to war zone photography.

How Entrepreneurs Can Manage Their Personal Finances | Allbusiness.com

August 15, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Compared to other workers, entrepreneurs tend to enjoy an advantage in financial literacy. The know-how required to invest, organize, and save funds for a business often applies well to personal finance management, so these individuals run a “tighter ship” at home.

But this isn’t always the case. Business owners can lose their way financially by going to one of two extremes: Tying their personal finances too closely to their business resources, or running their personal finances quite differently from how they manage company money.

An unbalanced approach in either direction can lead to financial difficulties in the form of squeezed budgets and damaged credit. On the other hand, entrepreneurs who can strike a middle ground between these extremes enjoy greater financial security and success in their business and personal lives.

11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business | Medium.com

August 14, 2014August 13, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people like to fool you and say that you’re not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That’s what I learned from selling crack. -Snoop Dogg

My name is Stephanie St.Claire, and I am an unfunded entrepreneur. I’ve been in business for 4 years, after engaging in my own personal and tenuous renaissance uh…divorce and rediscovering my Divine Core Purpose. In other words, I grew a pair of ladyballs and started living the life I always wanted to while making money doing it.

But there was a LOT to learn, and some of those things weren’t covered in Who Moved My Cheese. Throw these 4 rockstars into a blender, and you’ll have a composite sketch of me in the first three months of my business:

Glitter was literally shooting out of my eye sockets as I quit my PR firm job and started my own business. Full of optimism, living in New York City, and surrounded by a tribe of friends who were also launching businesses, art, and gigs, I felt it was the perfect time to make the bold move to entrepreneurship. I was now officially Living My Dream and Working For Myself which meant that I was In Charge of My Financial Destiny and Captain of My Promising Future.