6 Tips to Honing the Perfect Elevator Pitch | Allbusiness.com

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An elevator pitch is a concise, carefully planned, and well-practiced description of your business that you could pitch to someone you meet in an “elevator.” Small business owners and managers should have an elevator pitch prepared to sell their products and services at any opportunity. A good elevator pitch should quickly grab the interest of the person you are talking to in the first couple of sentences. It should be short and show your passion and enthusiasm for what you are pitching. Typically, it should end by asking for an appointment or referral.

Follow these six tips to develop a strong, successful elevator pitch to attract customers wherever you might meet them:

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The Mobile Email App That Wants to Make Your PC Obsolete | WIRED

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You know the feeling. You’re on a bus or sitting outside a coffee shop or walking down the street, reading and responding to email after email on your smartphone, and then you reach the point where your smartphone just doesn’t cut it. “I’ll deal with this when I get back to a real computer,” you tell yourself.

Javier Soltero wants to fix that. “There’s a category of email you simply don’t deal with on your phone,” says the 39-year-old engineer and serial entrepreneur, and with his new company, Acompli, a startup based in San Francisco, he aims to close this hole in your mobile life. The company offers a new kind of mobile email app designed to “get you closer to the actions and information you need.”

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Should You Let You Employees Work From Home? | Getentrepreneurial.com

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In May 2013, the Trades Union Congress revealed that 13% more people in the United Kingdom were working from home than was the case five years previously. In the United States, the Telework Research Network revealed in February 2013 that one in five American workers were based at home for at least one day per week, and forecast a 63% increase in home working over the next five years. But is it a good idea to let staff work from home?

Reasons why home working may be good

Increased productivity

Many people who have worked from home have reported that they get a lot more done than if they were at work. At home, there are no distractions from work-related phone calls and interruptions from colleagues. At home, people can also control the heating or ventilation to their satisfaction.

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Instagram Ads Are Getting Instant Recall | Adweek

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Instagram ads, just six months old and limited to a select group of 15 brands, are already showing promising results, according to exclusive data given to Adweek by the social photo-sharing site. Internal performance figures on ad partners Taco Bell, Ben & Jerry’s and Hollister provide a peek under the hood of how this platform will fare when it goes wide in late spring. More ads are on the way, thanks to Instagram’s $40 million megadeal with Omnicom.

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7 Baffling Office Mysteries, Solved by Science | Mashable

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Mysteries aren’t exclusive to the Bermuda Triangle or the Loch Ness Monster. If you think about it, there are puzzling aspects of life we overlook each and every day. These mysteries can be found in even the most mundane of places — the office.

We delved into the science behind your home away from home. Why is it so hard to resist those free donuts? What’s the psychology behind the work crush? What’s the deal with coffee only staining your favorite mug at the level of the brew?

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3 Marriage-Saving Approaches to Take if Your Spouse’s Spending is Out of Control | The Simple Dollar

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Approach your spouse with love, not anger. If you are actually angry about your spouse’s financial choices, you’re not in the right mindset to sit down and talk about things. Anger will solve nothing. It merely turns the discussion into an “I’m right and you’re wrong” competition.

Set goals together, watch the progress, and hold each other accountable. If you have different goals for the future, it’s going to be hard to make progress. Instead, you need to find goals that you share. What do you both want to achieve?

Regardless of your situation, a successful marriage requires commitment from both partners. If you’re not both willing to take steps and work hard to save the marriage, it’s not going to work. This does not mean simply giving in to all of the wishes of your partner. It means finding common ground that you’re both happy with.

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Fight over Solar Power Returns to White House Roof [Video] | Scientific American Blog Network

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The sunshine that warms Washington, D.C. is once again generating electricity for the White House. After an absence of nearly 30 years, the Obama administration has announced that a 6.3 kilowatt photovoltaic installation of the “typical size for an American house,” is back on the White House roof and generating power.

white-house-solar-panels-screen-grab

The Obama administration had announced in 2010 plans to add solar but red tape and the White House’s status as a historic and working government building slowed progress. “It’s a really important message that solar is here,” said Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz in a video highlighting the now complete installation. “We are doing it. We can do a lot more. I am very bullish on the future of solar as a key part of our clean energy future.”

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