Professional Development

What gets your employees, contractors, or freelancers charged and ready to go? If you don’t know you should find out because the very success of your business could depend on it. And besides, why wouldn’t you want to work with a group of people who are raring to go, bringing you tons of customers, making you huge profits, and eagerly spreading your message?

So what can you do to keep the spark alive? Listen to what motivates them. Here are the top 5 things that motivate your closest allies:

Finding the right mentor can mean the difference between struggle and progress. Why reinvent the when wheel it comes to the ‘know-how’ of the ins and outs are for you particular profession, career or strategy. To get in the game find the best mentor that fits for you. Here’s what you need to pay attention to.

Every person has either experienced or witnessed when a business relationship has gone wrong. Most of the time it sneaks up on us without any warning. Like when your business partner says he is leaving because he found something better somewhere (and with someone) else. Or how about being accused of not working hard enough when you are already putting in 70 hour weeks?

But are there warning signs? Signs that were there all along but you just didn’t notice?

Here are 5 signs (alarms) that the business relationship you thought you had has gone wrong:

Being predictable is often considered a negative. It’s not. Being predictable can lead you to great success. For instance, if you discovered a formula that works, why not use it every time? Now, being predictable isn’t about staying the same year after year. It’s about knowing which behaviors to exercise once you’ve discovered their success at each stage of business growth.

The phrase ‘His name is mud” came from the story about a man named Samuel Mudd who was thought to be a co-conspirator in Abraham Lincoln’s assignation. His conviction was later overturned, but nonetheless, the phrase stuck with him and for more than a hundred years later.

There probably aren't many people on the planet who don't know about the upcoming nuptials of one of the most famous bachelors in the world. Getting married is a pretty big step in life for anyone, and doing it before the eyes of millions is thankfully not what the rest of us have to take on! Still, William and Kate are going to be in "business" a long time, and we can already see they are determined to color a little outside the lines and run their own show despite all the trappings of tradition around them.

Customer retention, relationship management, and how a business owner provides customer service is extremely important to the bottom line. Everyone knows it cost more money to find a new customer than to retain an existing one. So why not give it your all to satisfy your customer’s needs.

Every customer wants something. It doesn’t matter what it is, they want it yesterday. If you could know ahead of time what they wanted, that’d make life so much easier. So, instead of the typical Top 5, let’s do a Top Ten piece. Here it is – just for you!