AUTHOR ARCHIVES :

The Fine Art of Farming Out Functions

In their earliest days of operation, most entrepreneurs take great pride in performing all their company’s tasks in-house, sometimes even personally doing everything. It’s a phase that provides important lessons for the owners and employees, but in time a successful business owner will reach a point where it’s no longer practical to do everything alone.

Car loaded with watermelons

This doesn’t necessarily apply to the physical process of producing a good; you can maintain a high level of efficiency and still take on the entire assembly process yourself.

In-house vs. outsourcing

Shipping is a different story. Owner delivery can work up to a certain volume, but when you can no longer put the day’s output in your SUV and drop off deliveries on the way home, you have a decision to make.…

Continue reading →

Pay Attention to The Little Things that Motivate your Team

Have you seen the movie The Internship? It stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as basically failed salesmen of an older generation that apply for an internship at Google. Along with a younger generation they learn the ropes of the internet world, but what stands out is the treatment of the interns and employees by the company itself.

The internship

Imagine a workplace where employees are happy, love to work, have fun on the job, and actually get the job done. This supposedly somewhat based on the truth movie shows a company that gives all of that to their employees, and they do it in the simplest ways.…

Continue reading →

Examples of Successful Scientific Startups

According to the NY Times, investors are beginning to take an interest in science, engineering, and clear-technology startups again. There was a long period of time during which investors “shied away” from science startups, but those days are over. It’s a new era of scientific funding, and in an effort to encourage those investments, here are a few scientific startups that prove it’s possible to earn money and help the world through technological and scientific achievement.

Science business

The Founders Fund and the Power of Social Media

Advanced coding has resulted in some of the best apps and social media technologies. The Founders Fund, a group of investors, smartly backed “social networks like Facebook and Yammer and the streaming-music service Spotify.”…

Continue reading →

Understanding the Agriculture Market

Everybody has to eat. There are carnivores, herbivores, and locavores, but whatever diet a consumer chooses, it will always come at least partly from a farm.

That seemingly perpetual demand can inspire people to investigate agricultural businesses as an investment or entrepreneurial opportunity. And it can be a very profitable sector, but there are a few insiders’ points that would-be investors should understand.

Farmer and his vegetables

To start off, not every farmer owns a farm, or at least not every acre that he or she farms. While the idyllic picture of the family farm sometimes holds true, the fact is that a large percentage of farmers are actually renting a big portion of the land they tend.…

Continue reading →

Great CEOs are Down on The Basics

There are hundreds of advice columns for CEOs, so let’s start this one with an acknowledgment of how CEOs got where they are in the first place.

Chief executives are bright, fact-based big-picture thinkers who have an innate ability to tune in to what other people are thinking, feeling and doing and to turn that instinct (and knowledge) to their company’s advantage. Those are the basic attributes.

Business woman and CEO

CEOs don’t overlook the small details, but they don’t get hung up on them, either. They are big-picture thinkers, which allows them to focus on long-term company goals.

In so many words, a company can hire all the detail-oriented people they need.…

Continue reading →

4 Things you Can Automate to Cut Business Costs

Automation isn’t just for large corporations, SME’s can leverage it to enjoy benefits as well. Both B2B and B2B companies can use automation to streamline business processes and reduce costs. Given most businesses are looking to do more with less, automation of business processes is rising in the enterprise ‘to do’ lists.

Entrepreneur using business software

If your staff, management, and other personnel are required to do repetitive, multiple tasks to conduct operations, it’s an indication that automation opportunities exist. The potential for long-term savings and human error minimization further supports the case for automation for SMEs.

Here are some areas that can be automated to save time in execution and reduce expenses:

1. 

…Continue reading →

Simple Investments That Can Keep Employees Happy

It’s inevitable: someday, your employee is going to feel like her job is too stressful, and she’s going to wonder if it’s worth holding onto. As a business owner or manager, you don’t want to lose good workers to stress, which is why it’s necessary to make your employees working environment comfortable.

Happy and motivated business team

There are many techniques for making an employee comfortable, and the strategy begins in the very first interview…

Keep it Simple

Before they’re ever hired, potential employees are scheduled for an interview. Some businesses participate in group interviews, others prefer one-on-one meetings. Group interviews can be intimidating to interviewees, but they may be necessary to employers.…

Continue reading →

Benefits to Choosing a Virtual Private Servers for Your Startup Business

Part of having a successful startup is ensuring that you have developed a strong web presence. In order to do this however, you must have a high quality website that draws the attention of your target audience. As such, one of the first steps to developing a company website would be to find the appropriate web hosting company.

Server rack

Since there are literally hundreds of web hosting services out there, having a few guidelines to compare to would be beneficial. Below are some factors you should consider when choosing the best web hosting service provider.

Know What Your Hosting Needs Are

Before you can determine which web hosting service would be ideal for you, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of what it is you need.…

Continue reading →

Captivate Business Conference Guests With Their Own Devices

There’s nothing worse than meticulously planning a meeting replete with carefully crafted PowerPoint slides, handouts, and a speech you worked on for weeks, only to look up and discover that everyone is playing Angry Birds and checking the weather on their devices. You want to storm out in disgust. But you have to soldier on.

Using a smartphone at a conference

This frustration is magnified tenfold for conference planners. Every detail is carefully plotted. Yet the only thing anyone talks about afterwards is the great party they were able to arrange on some social networking startup app during the boring speech about web design best practices.

There was a time when everyone hated their phone.…

Continue reading →

Supply Chain Management: Benefits to Outsourcing and What to Look For

Outsourcing… to many small business owners and startups, the term outsourcing essentially means expense. While it is true that outsourcing various tasks will result in some type of expense, in many instances, the return on investment makes the initial costs worthwhile.

Supply Chain Management

Though there are some responsibilities that can easily be handled in house, there are others that are best left to companies and professionals who have the experience and means to get the job done in a more effective manner – such as supply chain management. An experienced third-party logistics or 3PL provider can deliver the best distribution services so your customers are always satisfied and will always come back.…

Continue reading →