In the not-too-distant future, says Benzi Ronen, founder and CEO of Farmigo, consumers will use mobile phones to order non-perishables like toothpaste and toilet paper from Amazon and then buy their fresh food–from “humanely raised” lamb chops to “locally foraged” ramps–from his six-year-old online grocer based in Brooklyn, NY. Using technology and community-organizing techniques borrowed from the Obama campaign, he is building a network of Farmigo reps who are spreading the word throughout their neighborhoods and distributing food at weekly pick-ups. Farmigo operates only in New York, New Jersey and parts of northern California, but Ronen, 44, believes he can take his model to all 50 states. This interview has been edited and condensed.
2 Unusual Secrets To Keep Your Customers Happy | Page 19
Don’t be afraid to take action if a customer is holding you back. Here’s an argument for why you should cut ties with problem customers, and what you can do to keep the ones who are loyal.
As a business owner, you naturally love your customers – that is, all of them except that one bad apple who seems to be leading a grand mission to take you down. You plan and stress and lose sleep over the bad apple’s demands, and you even consider changing your policies for them. But here’s the truth: you should quit that relationship while you’re ahead.
“The customer is always right!” is a common expression you’ve heard many times over, and most often, it serves as a great mantra for conducting daily business operations. However, as Noah Fleming writes in Evergreen, all customers aren’t always right all the time. At some point, it becomes your responsibility to cut ties with the customer who is bringing you down.
Who The Smartphone Revolution Left Behind | TechCrunch
How many of us have been tempted to chuck our smartphones into the ocean while on vacation to stop the incessant buzzing of incoming emails and texts from interrupting what is supposed to be down time?
While many of us have become increasingly desperate to unplug – there’s even a growing industry of “digital detox” vacation spots – in our love-hate relationship with our smartphones, love ultimately conquers all.
We wouldn’t dream of cutting the cord for more than a day or two max. After all, mobile connectedness has become so critical to modern life that according to research by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, even people living on less than $2 a day reported owning a mobile phone – cutting back on food purchases if necessary.
Amazon Isn’t the Only One Killing It With Cloud Computing | WIRED
BEN URETSKY HAD a shoebox filled with $10,000 in cash.
He worked for a company that rented computer power from a data center in Brooklyn, New York, and this was a company where “cash was king.” “I was paid in cash, and I literally had a Nike shoebox where I would put the money away,” says Uretsky, who immigrated from Russia at the age of five and grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. “Don’t ask me why.”
The company was called Like Whoa, and it no longer exists. But with that $10,000, Ben Uretsky and his brother Moisey set up their own computers at a data center across the river in Lower Manhattan, hosting websites and other software for anyone who came knocking. When sending emails to customers, Moisey would hide behind a few fake names, just so their operation would seem bigger than it was.
The Best Cities to Work for an Entrepreneur | Inc.com
We’ve seen, and run, plenty of stories about which cities are the best to start and build a business. But how about the employees? What are the best cities in which to work at a small business?
WalletHub recently crunched those numbers, using a combination of factors meant to represent the environment for small businesses as well as a region’s overall economic environment. Overall, the South and West seem to host more businesses that are hospitable to their employees, while cities in the Northeast generally don’t appear in the rankings until much further down. At number 10, Boston was the highest-ranked city in the Northeast, well below Austin, Omaha, and Raleigh. San Francisco came in 23rd; San Jose was number 34.
The metro areas that ranked the best for their small business economic environments were:
How To Attract Talent To Your Small Business | Getentrepreneurial.com
It’s safe to say that to a large extent the success of a business depends on the talents involved in running its operations. In order for your small organization to expand, you’ll need both strong, responsible workers and individual talents that will help you push your business offer into the next level. Here are 5 smart tips on how to attract talented employees to a small business.
- Offer a wider responsibility scope
In smaller companies, employees wear many hats and have much more influence over company policies. And that’s something that should serve as your main selling point – talented employees are ambitious and when choosing between two opportunities, they’ll pick the one that offers a wider scope of responsibility.
When talking to prospective employees, make your expectations clear and delineate their daily tasks and long-term goals. If you spot a real talent, try to get to know this person to learn what their background and career goals are – only then you’ll know how to make an offer that is too good to be true.
Should Your Shop Purchase a .Agency Domain? | Adweek
This month, hundreds of new domain names went on sale for the first time—and quite a few famous people and businesses are going out of their way to make sure those websites won’t tarnish their brands. For example, when .nyc debuted last year, lawyers for former Mayor Michael Bloomberg bought everything from BloombergBlows.nyc to MikeIsTooShort.nyc.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers “released” these new domains after hundreds of parties argued the online community needed more options and submitted their own requests over a period of several years.
In addition to jokes like .sucks and .ninja and practical entries like .technology, one new domain seems designed for the advertising industry: .agency. But should advertising shops invest in the new domain?
What Is Generation Z, And What Does It Want? | Co.Exist
Poor Generation Z. The oldest members of this cohort are barely 18 and they’re already getting a bad rap. Media and market research companies have labeled them “screen addicts” with the attention span of a gnat. And the pressure: They only have the weight of saving the world and fixing our past mistakes on their small shoulders.
Really?
While generational research is an inherently messy process—older generations study “the kids” to figure them out—much of the recent research is awash in normative preconceptions, biases, and stereotypes. Gen Z deserves a fairer shake, and the rest of us need a more nuanced conversation: This group makes up a quarter of the U.S. population and by 2020 will account for 40% of all consumers. Understanding them will be critical to companies wanting to succeed in the next decade and beyond.
My firm Altitude set out to dig below the surface to understand not only what Gen Z were doing but why—in their own words. We worked with over a dozen 16- to 18-year-olds with diverse backgrounds from across the country through a series of in-depth discussions, video diaries, and daily interactive exercises designed to provide a glimpse into their lives. Our goal was to view the world through their eyes.
What we learned was surprising.
5 Crisis-Mode Moves to Save Your Google Ranking | Entrepreneur
Usually, April 15 is the red-letter day on a business’ spring calendar. But this year, all eyes were on April 21, when Google’s new algorithm update — designed to provide a better search experience for mobile users — moved mobile optimization from nicety to necessity.
What does this mean? Basically, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you can expect your search-engine rankings, and ultimately your web traffic, to take a hit. Mobilegeddon is upon us.
Now that the big day has come and gone, you may be suffering from the fallout. To help, we’ve identified five quick crisis-mode moves that can help you fix your most egregious mobile mistakes.
Why Fructose-Laden Drinks May Leave You Wanting More | Live Science
The type of sugar in your drink may affect how much food you want to eat, according to a new study. Researchers found that people wanted to eat more high-calorie foods when they had a drink containing fructose, compared with when their drink contained glucose.
In the study, 24 people were given drinks sweetened with 75 grams of fructose on one day, and the same amount of glucose in a drink on another day. The researchers also showed the people images of high-calorie foods that included candy, cookies, pizza and burgers, and asked the participants to rate how hungry they were and how much they wanted to eat each food.
After consuming fructose, the participants reported feeling hungrier and expressed a greater desire to eat the foods pictured than when they consumed glucose.
