Some people are always late. You probably know someone who just never shows up when you want them to, armed with an excuse when they finally appear 20 minutes later.
Maybe it’s you who has the problem, and no matter how many alarms and reminders you set, you just can’t help but leave the house after the time you were supposed to be at an agreed location.
Plenty of research has gone into trying to figure out why some of us are like this.
Here’s a story of two Christmas parties. The first, a lavish shindig thrown by Atlantis Creative Group, a strategic marketing company in Toronto, featured a red carpet, limousines and, if you can believe it, a live tiger. The second, held the following year, after Atlantis had been sold, couldn’t match the glitz.
“I thought, How can we have the same effect without the big budget?” says then CEO Paul Marchildon (now an independent “leisureologist” specializing in employee satisfaction). His solution: to have his staff create a Christmas celebration at the local YMCA for single moms with young kids. Atlantis brought a tree, a Santa Claus, presents and a whole team of motivated employees who, it turned out, much preferred the experience to a swank soiree.
YOUR HEART THUMPS, then catches. Your breath shortens. Beads of sweat emerge at your temples. Your eyes scan back and forth over the airplane-shaped diagram. Surely there must be at least one solitary aisle or window seat available. The world can’t be so cruel as to wedge you into the middle.
But if Molon Labe Designs gets its way, that panic could give way to placidity. The upstart Colorado aviation design firm wants to kill the middle seat’s middle child reputation. Its “stagger seat” concept sits slightly below and behind its neighbors, so it can be three inches wider than its window- and aisle-adjacent companions. It has its own armrests.
Alberta is one of the largest honey producing regions in the world with over 600,000 colonies of bees divided amongst 7,000 beekeepers. Yet Eliese Watson, a native of the prairies, says that modern day residents of Calgary have lost touch with the surrounding agricultural lifestyle.
Bees, she says, are an easy way for urbanites to reconnect with nature. That’s why in 2010, she started an urban beekeeping company, ABC Apiaries, with a $5,000 grant. Seven years later, she has 60 colonies, and produces over 2,000 pounds of honey in a year. But it’s not the traditional honey production; her hives are scattered throughout the city, on rooftops, in urban spaces, and in backyards.
“In my head, it’s like a non-profit, where we just focus on getting people comfortable with beekeeping and urban hives. But I run it as a company,” she says, seated at one of Calgary’s hippest coffee shops.
Tax season is complicated enough without your having to worry about retirement planning. But if you want to maximize your future spending money, this is exactly the right time to review the taxes you’re paying–or not paying–on what you’re saving.
Just ask Phil Holthouse, co-founder of Los Angeles accounting firm Holthouse Carlin & Van Trigt. You should never “let the tax tail wag the investment dog,” he says, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the issue, either. “No one wants to pay more than the law requires, but a lot of people do,” he says.
Structuring your retirement accounts with taxes in mind can land you hundreds of thousands of dollars more in spending power. And it can ensure that you have the right amount of money at the right point in your retirement
Your site is performing, and you are succeeding in bringing traffic to your site – kudos to you! But wait, then you notice they are dropping off…
This is not a problem that you are alone in experiencing; it’s reported that nearly 68% of online shopping carts are abandoned. In fact, in some cases – they don’t even put items in the cart before they leave; two years ago, the dismal figure of international shoppers that made it to the court was 5.31%.
Just like humans, websites to have issues with abandonment, but there are three underused strategies you can use to retrieve and convert these customers while keeping one step ahead of the competition.
Two years ago, restauranteur Marc Roth didn’t know anything about making ice cream.
Today he’s the founder of A La Mode, a completely nut-free, egg-free and sesame-free ice cream that has generated sales of $2 million.
The brand, which has a successful shop in New York City, is already in more than 1,450 stores around the country.
Restaurants are Roth’s passion. By 35, he had launched and sold three of them in New York. Roth’s WestSide Steakhouse was his last one, and it was pivotal because it allowed him to expand as an entrepreneur.
With college graduation just around the corner, the job market is about to be flooded with entry-level talent looking for full-time jobs and internships. For employers, taking advantage of the influx of newly minted professionals can be as simple as having a good campus recruiting strategy in place.
“College recruiting is a smart, predictable, scalable way to bring talent into any organization,” said Tey Scott, director of talent acquisition at LinkedIn. “Smart companies know they need to invest in early-in-career talent to compete in the long term. In tech in particular, getting early-in-career technical talent in the door may be the difference between being able to scale their company fast enough to deliver on product road maps or not.”
Embracing technology is inevitable for every business. Using social technologies can terrifically improve business productivity.
“By using social technologies, companies can raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent”
Building interactive communities that share information and collaborate is a need of the hour for businesses of today. A community of employees and partners that is engaged and motivated will surely steer ahead faster.
Social enterprise technologies can be integrated with mobile, giving employees the freedom and the flexibility to execute tasks from anytime and anywhere. Data analytics further ensures that each employee can work on a set of tasks that are most important for the business at a particular time.
Social media influencers – like Instagram stars or YouTube celebs – often promote products they like, either as part of a brand relationship or as means of generating income through affiliate sales. Now, Amazon is looking to get in on this action as well. The company has quietly launched the “Amazon Influencer Program,” which is currently in beta testing as of a couple of days ago. Similar to the Amazon Affiliate program, the new program will offer influencers commission on products sold, but is not open to the public.
One of the key things that makes the new Influencer program different from Amazon Affiliates is its exclusivity.
