Home Wealth Project
Extensive Research On How To Build Wealth From The Comfort Of Your Own Home.
Extensive Research On How To Build Wealth From The Comfort Of Your Own Home.
Mar 10th
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Twitter has just flipped the switch on geolocation within Twitter.com. Now at least some users can pull up location-based information from individual… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Mar 10th
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This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space, and beyond. Have… |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Mar 10th
This post headline (but personal and business value) really resonated with me today as I reflected on an experience we had eating at a great, new Thai restuarant we found.
We were finishing up our lunch and the sweet lady who took our order came over to give us our credit card receipts. When she saw one of us going to put a tip on it, she said (maybe paraphrased a bit, by the way):
Oh, don’t put a tip. They don’t give it to us. And I don’t want you to spend any more than you have to.
We were all kind of shocked. One of us commented after that that we WANTED to tip HER because she was really great to us before that comment but now didn’t know how to now.
With several of our team there, it really reminded me of a key value I like to instill in and through our team:
Invest in people … and they will invest in you
Then I thought back to a coffee meeting I had earlier that week with one of my great friends and mentors, Ray Griffin. We were talking about our roles in leadership in our respective organizations and the challenges that come with it. (Ray is in pastoral leadership at Quail Springs Baptist Church, where I serve.)
He shared this paraphrased quote to me he had found in something he was reading recently …
You can either light a fire underneath people or you can light a fire within them
We both agreed that lighting a fire WITHIN people was integral to our leadership values and practice.
Any boss can light a fire underneath people. It’s the fastest and easiest thing to do.
I can march in our office and demand things. I can threaten or coerce our team to do darn near anything I want. But ultimately we all know …. that ain’t getting us anywhere.
But … lighting a fire within people is truly powerful. Ultimately it is the best strategy and one I’ve tried hard to cultivate within our team. But I’ll tell you … it takes a LOT of time. It isn’t an instant solution. It’s isn’t an easy one either.
It takes time to learn how different people are motivated. How they are encouraged, how they learn, how they grow.
Here’s what I’ve learned … (Disclaimer: I don’t do these things perfectly every time and have made plenty of mistakes along the way.)
I firmly believe that doing all the above will help create a long-term, sustainable business that we all love and feel privileged to come to work to do every day … and that our customers support us with their pocketbook.
After two years of hard work (heartache, pain, tears, hard decisions), I’ve finally started to see the fruits of what we do. And most specifically seeing the fires within our team spread like wildfire through what we do.
Of course, like everything, we are a work in progress. We’re always refining what we do and how we interact. We’re all in the people business … and dealing with people is often messy. But I think of almost everything in our business as a test, an experiment. We don’t have 100 years of business behind us to help direct us. I’m glad we don’t because we’re creating a new culture together.
Every day, we are charting new ground … together.
But when I hear examples, like our sweet waitress, that reveal a fractured team anywhere, it makes me cringe.
Invest in people … and they will invest in you.
[Funny ... but after writing this, I think most, if not all of this, could equally be applied to our customer community. That's another post brewing.]
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View full post on Cory Miller | Adventures in Entrepreneurship
Mar 10th
I posted this eight years ago (!) but a reader asked for an encore.
…are we stuck in High School?
I had two brushes with higher education this week.
The first was at a speech I gave in New York. There were several
Harvard Business School students there, invited because of their
interest in marketing and exceptional promise (that’s what I was
told… I think they came because they had heard that Maury Rubin would
make a great lunch!).
Anyway, they asked for my advice in finding marketing jobs. When I
shared my views (go to a small company, work for the CEO, get a job
where you actually get to make mistakes and do something) one woman
professed to agree with me, but then explained, “But those companies
don’t interview on campus.”
Those companies don’t interview on campus. Hmmm. She has just spent
$100,000 in cash and another $150,000 in opportunity cost to get an
MBA, but…
The second occurred today at Yale. As I drove through the amazingly
beautiful campus, I passed the center for Asian Studies. It reminded me
of my days as an undergrad (at a lesser school, natch), browsing
through the catalog, realizing I could learn whatever I wanted. That
not only could I take classes but I could start a business, organize a
protest movement, live in a garret off campus, whatever. It was a
tremendous gift, this ability to choose.
Yet most of my classmates refused to choose. Instead, they treated
college like an extension of high school. They took the most mainstream
courses, did the minimum amount they needed to get an A, tried not to
get into “trouble” with the professor or face the uncertainty of the
unknowable. They were the ones who spent six hours a day in the
library, reading their textbooks.
The best part of college is that you could become whatever you
wanted to become, but most people just do what they think they must.
Is this a metaphor? Sure. But it’s a worthwhile one. You have more
freedom at work than you think (hey, you’re reading this on company
time!) but most people do nothing with that freedom but try to get an
A.
Do you work with people who are still in high school? Job seekers
only willing to interview with the folks who come on campus? Executives
who are trying to make their boss happy above all else? It’s pretty
clear that the thing that’s wrong with this system is high school, not
the rest of the world.
Cut class. Take a seminar on french literature. Interview off campus. Safe is risky.
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View full post on Seth’s Blog
Mar 10th
| Of course, everyone is pointing to this as the reason for… problem for HTC in the future, for the moment Android has the momentum in the market. |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Mar 10th
A lot of people want to be in business for themselves. It gives you a level of freedom that you generally don’t get to enjoy if you are working for someone else. I mean, let’s face it, if you are working for someone else you are lining their pockets with gold while you are eating dirt in most cases. Perhaps you want to go into business for yourself because it allows you a greater amount of freedom to decide when and where you are going to work and that gives you more time for the more important things in life like spending time with your family. But what are you going to do for a living so that you can make ends meet? Well if you are willing to live a simple life then you can get by on really working only about 20 hours a week more or less. I’ve done it for years. Here are some of the things that I’ve done to help pay the bills.
1. Start a cleaning business – Yes it might not be all that glamorous but it does pay well. I’ve done office cleaning and floors for grocery stores for years. The work is generally done at night so that is a consideration but it pays well and it gives you time to yourself while you are cleaning.
2. Work with apartment communities – Are you handy? If you are you can get some work helping out with the maintenance department at one of the local apartment communities. This pays well, depending on what you charge of course, and is a great way to earn some money. Generally you will have more work than what you can handle if you are good at what you do.
3. Wash some Windows – Window washing is enjoyable and profitable. If you land a few businesses with monthly accounts you can end up earning a fair amount of money. Try looking at some of the local car dealerships for work because they tend to have a lot of windows
Mar 10th
From marketing to startups, operations to policy that directly affects small business, the small business news roundup from Small Business Trends has it all. Here’s the latest installment of what we hope will become an indispensable part of your daily small business fix.
Seth Godin talks “Creative Value.” Learn more about what he had to say at the recent “Art of Marketing Conference” in Toronto. Biz Money Matters
How helpful is Facebook for B2B Marketing? Tom Pick thinks aloud on the subject with some illuminating results. Webbiquity
Mobile marketing tips for retail. Your customers are mobile. Are you ready? The Lunch Pail
What’s missing from most newsletter sign-up forms? The answer may surprise you. Travel Online Partners
How to outsource your CFO. Why hiring outside talent to manage your small business may be key to your success. Small Business CEO
What can a horrendous dry cleaning experience teach about customer service? Read Ken Kauffman’s post to find out. CFOwise
What are you waiting for? Innovate! Here’s a look at what’s stopping you and how to get over it. Open Forum Innovation
Hey, it’s tough out there. But here are ten tips to help you deal with it. America’s Best Business Practices
Big Brother strikes again. Soon online sellers too will be under greater IRS scrutiny. Auction Bytes
Way too much debt. Last time it was business owners and consumers caught with no more credit and too many bills to pay, but could a bubble be set to burst for Washington? National Review Online
Don’t forget those tax write-offs. There’s one particularly generous break that every small business should use. WSJ
10 businesses you can launch from home. See if one of them is right for you. Youngentrepreneurs.com
Are you a builder or a salesman? When building a company, you can certainly go it alone, but you’d better have at least two skill sets in abundance. The Single Founder
Can big business really help entrepreneurs? Former employees turned small business owners share some thoughts with Goldman Sachs. NYTimes.com
Five must-reads for entrepreneurs. Recommendations for every small business owner’s permanent library. Youngentrepreneur.com
Small Business News March 10, 2010
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View full post on Small Business Trends