Wayne Messick - EzineArticles.com Expert Author

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For three decades I've helped successful family businesses develop an atmosphere of shared goals and address the challenges characteristically faced when they are planning for the future of their business - beyond the current managing generation. I helped them identify what's important to the entire organization and the motivations of each party, uncovering the most urgent and most leverageable issues along the way. Successful people often find that their careers divide themselves into three ... [More]

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An Introduction to Farm Strategic Planning
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Farm strategic planning is easier today than ever before, which is a good thing because strategic planning is an important part of planning for succession. Software tools and easy to use templates, containing detailed framework and sample texts, will help even the novice farmer along with their advisers create professional looking plans with tables and charts.

Farm Succession Planning - Schedule Regular Meetings to Review Your Progress
[Finance:Estate-Plan-Trusts] The farm succession planning process, and it is indeed a process, generally begins when someone has convinced a member of the family to have that first family meeting. The idea, at least in the minds of a few is that this meeting will set in motion, like a snowball rolling down hill, the succession planning process with enough momentum to sweep aside any detractors.

Farm Succession Plans Almost Always Fail
[Finance:Estate-Plan-Trusts] During my career I have found that most succession plans fail. The plan itself might or might not have achieved the family's objectives for farm succession and transition to the next generation, but it ran out of gas before it was ever completed. It ran out of gas because there was no one in charge - no one without an axe to grind that is, who was willing to ask the hard questions and push for the answers - so the plans could actually be created and implemented based on good information.

Farm Succession When You Get "A Round Tuit"
[Finance:Estate-Plan-Trusts] For a farm succession plan to succeed there must be a timetable for specific actions to take place. Everyone involved must be able to see when certain benchmarks are reached. If there is no agreement on when certain elements of the process will be put in place - why should they believe you are really serious about farm succession planning this time either? Remember the first time you told someone that you'd do something, like clean the shed or wash the pickup, when you get around to it. And they whipped out a wooden coin that was stamped "Round Tuit" across it. Ok, so now you have the round tuit - when are you going to start on the shed?

Farm Succession and Planning Key - Write Everything Down
[Finance:Estate-Plan-Trusts] Farm succession and planning is such a never-ending process that what was said during your first conversation with your spouse or another family member can take place weeks even months before you share what was discussed with your advisers. If you don't write down what is said, in an order that makes accurate recall possible, your communications will be like those described by Lewis Carroll, "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant" in Alice in Wonderland.

Farm Succession Typically Requires You to Rethink Your Farm's Organizational Structure
[Finance:Estate-Plan-Trusts] When it comes to farm succession planning, aka passing down the farm or farm estate planning, there are seven keys - the most important of which is this. The farm's owners must be willing to redesign the farm business if they expect farm succession success. OK, each of the other six keys are the most important ones too. That's because they all depend upon and build on one another.

What Family Business Consultants Do
[Business:Consulting] Family business consultants can help families look at things from the outside in. Let's face it, we all want to take care of our families and we want to take care of our businesses - in part because a well cared for business will take care of us. On the one hand we have today's issues with the family to consider as well as this or that crisis at work. How can we figure out which is of greater significance right now - if one can be addressed? Family business consultants can help you ensure that your company thrives, supports your grandchildren and continues to operate with the same philosophy that you have created.

Farm Succession Planning is Passing Down the Farm, Right?
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Some of you got it right, passing down the farm is farm succession from the current generation of owners to the next, the folks who are going to be owning and running the farm in the 21st. Century. However, we found out the hard way that we are the only one's using the expression passing down the farm when we are talking about the process and strategies of management and ownership transition of the farm and business to the successor generation.

Farm Succession, Appoint a Planning Coordinator to Steer the Process
[Business:Strategic-Planning] If someone must be put in charge of the farm succession process who will keep mom and dad in the loop, keep the advisors moving forward, and keep an eye out for successful succession strategies being used by their peers for ideas that work - who should it be? The planning coordinator's job is to ask questions, assemble information, talk with everyone involved, etc.

Whole Life Vs Term - Business Insurance Agents Know What's Best For You
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] Of the many things that business insurance agents can do, one is to handle questions about whole life vs. term policies. This article looks at some of the differences between whole life and term - as well as discussing the vital role your business insurance agent plays in helping you make the best decisions possible, which is right for you when.

When it Comes to Farm Succession Planning, You Must Be Willing to Ask For Help
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Passing down the farm is a many faceted equation, and because it is unlikely that you have already been through it recently, it will require you to ask for help from those likely to know more than you. It includes elements of strategic planning, farm succession planning, and farm estate planning. Are you willing to set your ego aside and ask for help or not?

Farm Succession Involves Setting Critically Important Goals
[Business:Strategic-Planning] If there is one reason why farm succession planning should start sooner rather than later it's because the decisions made early on can have a dramatic impact on everyone involved. And if you sincerely want to treat your non-farm heirs fairly, give your successors a real chance to grow the business for their children and all the while keeping the existing farm intact - you need to think outside the box a little.

Farm Succession is a Process Not an Event
[Business:Strategic-Planning] That's right, farm succession is not an event, like going to the Dentist's office - something you probably do only when you have a tooth ache that has beaten out your usual remedies. Farm succession should be more of a lifestyle. It should start early, is adjusted often, and be constantly in focus.

What is the Key to Family Business Management Succession Planning?
[Business:Strategic-Planning] When it comes to family business management succession planning, and farm succession planning for that matter, there are lots of "keys" - virtually all of then claim to be the most important one. The truth is that there really is only one most important key to succession planning and it is not what you are probably thinking. Some may say it is getting good advice, or taking advantage of planning strategies, or figuring out what others are doing successfully, or slipping through some clever business management succession loophole. Or maybe it's having a conflict free atmosphere at the plant or developing better relationships at work. Well, you'd be wrong.

What a Business Strategic Development Plan Should Include
[Business:Strategic-Planning] A business strategic development plan serves as a framework for decision-making or for securing support and approval from partners, employees or stockholders. The plan itself can be as simple and straightforward as the organization wants it to be, based on the way it normally makes its decisions. The key is not what the plan itself looks like, rather how the conclusions are reached.

Are Farm Succession and Strategic Planning the Same Thing?
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Farm succession planning encompasses all those things you do to insure that the farm will live on successfully in the next generation - whether that is next year or twenty years from now. Strategic planning is a blueprint to follow - the measured steps you take along the way, plans which when they unfold will allow the pieces of the long term puzzle to fall into place effectively.

Farm Succession - The 7 Keys to Successfully Passing Down the Farm
[Business:Top7-or-10-Tips] As a farmer, what do you think of when the term "farm succession" is mentioned? Or as it is usually referred to, passing down the farm? If you are the senior generation on the farm you no doubt consider it differently that your son, daughter, son-in-law, etc. And I know you think about it differently than your spouse. One thing is likely to be true of everyone - you see it as an event, like buying a car of something, rather that the process it really is. A process that should have already started and will never be over. Do not despair because as the saying goes, "the best time to plant and oak tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is today" so forget about what you haven't done in the past and get on with it starting right now.

Web 2.0 Has Business Owners Blogging the Success Stories of Their Company
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Blogging] People want to read about other people. People who want to be more successful often learn from their contemporaries who are already successful. And truly successful people want to share their vision, to help others take advantage of what they had to learn the hard way.

Helpful Tips For Internet Conference Calls
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Most Internet conference calls that we've seen are limited to 150 or so participants. If you need or want to reach more people, you can schedule several conferences. Just don't schedule them too closely together, as the time may run longer than you expect. Some, especially those using Internet conference call services for marketing purposes, will have 2-3 calls set up during the same day/evening to accommodate more people as well as folks around the globe. The people who attend one of these calls are invited to a special follow up call a little later. This is a two step prospecting approach that really works - especially when there is some minimal charge for the second call. Even if it is $1.00 the result is a very high probability that a sale will be made to the folks who attend the follow up call.

A Look at Financial Retirement Planning
[Investing:Retirement-Planning] From the point of view of farm estate planners, financial retirement planning requires a concrete strategic and savings plan. In more traditional businesses employees and owners often use an IRA, 401K or other type of investment. When it comes to farmers and agribusiness owners the answer to the questions, how much do you need to save and where will it come from, brings different answers.

The Importance of Management Succession Planning
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Management succession planning is more important today than ever before. Global competition is fierce and succession planning mistakes a successful business could absorb only a few years ago can absorb the business completely - hardly leaving a wet spot. Not only is competition an issue of great contention - the business landscape in general has changed in so many ways, making effective succession planning far more difficult than it was just 10 years ago. Not more difficult from a technical perspective or for that matter even a taxation related point of view. But more challenging none the less.

Who Needs Family Business Consultants and Why?
[Business:Consulting] According to the results of a recent survey, most family-owned companies need family business consultants, primarily because of "succession planning" or actually the lack of it. And because the vast percentage of all companies, up and down every street in every town are considered "family owned", it means that the majority of all companies face the distinct likelihood of losing their life's work because they have not kept their eye on the ball when it comes to succession planning.

Strategic Planning For Business - A Few Suggestions
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Strategic planning for business growth is an absolute necessity if you want to succeed. You may not realize it but not planning is planning by default. The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the planning, or not, that you are doing right now.

When Marketing Professional Services - Don't Try to Be All Things to All People
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Years ago a friend of mine, a multiple lines insurance agent, had what he thought was the opportunity of a lifetime. There was a gas station in his community, on the busiest street in the neighborhood - that had gone out of business. The owner of the property could not find another oil company to lease it so he cleaned up the site and began trying to lease the building as a bakery, pizza shop, or small retailer, anyone really. It occurred to my friend that this would be an ideal location for his insurance agency.

Professional Partnering - The Key to Effective Growth For You and Your Clients
[Business:Consulting] If you have been serving business owners for very long you have come to some important conclusions. You only know what you know, you can only see what you see, and there are other professionals with blind spots in different places than you. Let's face it, if we all knew the same things - most of us would not be needed.

Are You Looking For Your Niche in All the Wrong Places?
[Business:Marketing] I've heard dozens and dozens of life insurance agents, coaches, and other professional solution providers complain that they have not been able to find their ideal niche. Is that a problem for you too? Have you been able to find that certain market where you are well accepted and where your results, profits, are the best and most reliable? Or are you still looking for just the right audience?

Marketing Professional Services - The Two Most Challenging Roadblocks to Your Success
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] Naturally, if you are trying to make a living selling your services, there are numerous roadblocks to your success. That has always been true and it always will be. Having a Twitter account and a zillion followers won't keep you from failing. And being there on the cutting edge marketing yourself via facebook.com won't either. If you have your message aligned with your target market, versus your competitors. If your value proposition is really a value and written in simple terms for your target audience. And if you actually deliver a valuable service, so that those who do buy it tell their friends.

Farm Accountants and Farm Accounting Software Work Perfectly Together
[Business:Accounting] Successful farm accountants wholeheartedly embrace farm accounting software because it makes them and their clients more effective. When someone, the farmer, the accountant, or their bookkeepers input the correct information correctly into the farm accounting software - something a cave man can be trained to do, the output is accurate and provides the farm accountant with the information they need to do their most important job.

Business Insurance Agents Are Master Communicators
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Business insurance agents never begin a discussion with 2 + 2 questions, or ask the business owner to drag out their Buy/Sell Agreement, ancient tax returns, corporate disability income policies, errors & omissions and liability coverages, or their life insurance. They know that 2+2 will always equal four. There will be lots of time to track down all the details, if they successfully win the battle for their prospect's trust. And they never ask questions that have no "yes" or "no" as possible answers.

When it Comes to Conflict in the Workplace - Hidden Behaviors Provide Early Warning Clues
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Is it possible that our behaviors are a tip off that conflict is present in our organization, undercover conflict, what I call "double secret" conflict? It's double secret because everyone goes around smiling at each other, even actually liking one another, playing on the softball team together - while at the same time they're just waiting for the right moment to submarine your plans, and sabotage your strategies.

Empathy, the Often Hidden Quality of Leadership and Business Management Success Stories
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] Historically we thought of successful leaders as General Patton types, with their chrome plated helmet with their riding crop slapping their tall shiny black boots. They were our leaders because we were told they were. Theirs was the "don't do what I do, do what I say do" model. Command and control were usually what we meant when we thought of our leaders. Leaders today have qualities we would not necessarily associate with leadership and business management - even though we have always been drawn to follow those who had them. One of these qualities is empathy, a genuine appreciation and understanding of the values of others.

Small Business Coaches Help Their Clients Identify What's POSSIBLE For the Business to Achieve!
[Self-Improvement:Coaching] Some things, no matter how much we want them to happen - are just not possible. Let's face it, if I could get on Oprah everything would be different. The results I want to achieve - no matter what they are, would be within my grasp if only I could get on Oprah, or ESPN, or on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.

How We Miscommunicate Makes Workplace Conflict Resolution More Difficult
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Conflict in workplace is often the result of simple miscommunications. If you remember the often quoted phrase from Lewis Carroll in his treatise on real life, Alice in Wonderland, "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant" then you know what it's like when something you said gets taken out of context and reinterpreted - creating conflict where none was intended.

What Does Stamina Have to Do With Leadership and Business Management?
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] Those responsible for leadership and business management within the organization must have strength, stamina to keep on keeping on in their continual battle against "good enough" and all the other momentum busting attitudes so prevalent in organizations today. When business is great no one wants to change what's working. When business is bad no one wants to make changes that might make things worse.

Small Business Accountants - Do They Have More Than One Role in Your Small Business?
[Business:Small-Business] For small businesses the roles of their business accountants depend on the size of their company. In the case of a very small company, the small business accountant may handle everything: payroll, internal auditing, taxes, keeping the books up to date, etc.

Small Business Coaches Help Their Clients Identify and Sort Their Top Priorities
[Business:Small-Business] Business owners typically have many goals for their business. They are likely to fall into long term, short term, intermediate term, and undefined term categories. They write them down in their notebooks and they look at them or not as time goes by. Some goals get met and others forgotten. Unfortunately the ones that get met are often those that are urgent - while those left behind are the ones that are really important to the success of the organization.

Workplace Conflict Resolution Begins With Identification of Unproductive Behavior
[Business:Productivity] When you think of conflict - what do you think of first, the cause or the effects? When you think about workplace conflict - what comes to your mind first - discomfort, embarrassment, tears, agitation, & frustration, or money being vacuumed right off your organization's bottom line?

Loyalty - The Key Quality of Business Leaders
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] In order to be a 21st century business leader you and all the other leaders in your organization must possess the essential qualities of leadership. And it is only through experience that these qualities will be born and nurtured until they become master skills.

Small Business Coaches Are Masters of the Business Succession Planning Process
[Business:Consulting] Small business coaches can help you eliminate the frustrations and disagreements that often result from a lack of shared goals. They do this by helping to uncover the hidden agendas and secret desires of the participants. The result is a sense of common purpose and direction that solves the typical situation where there are arguments from different perspectives.

Successful Farm Insurance Agents Know That Understanding Their Clients is the Key
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] When it comes to asking questions that get results, no one does it better than a successful farm insurance agent. They seem to have a special knack - you might even call it a philosophy of communication that gets their prospects - the farmers and business owners who depend on them, to open up and tell them about their hopes and fears for their family and their business.

When Farm Insurance Agents Bring Cash to the Funeral - The Farm Lives On
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Farm insurance agents understand better than all the rest of your farm or business advisors put together that cash money delivered at the death of a key person is often the only thing that keeps your enterprise alive. They also know that they are the only people likely to be delivering to the business right then - a time when so much money is going out.

Small Business Accountants More Than Any Other Advisor Tell it Like it Is!
[Business:Accounting] Often business owners find themselves investing in the wrong people - the wrong employees, the wrong vendors, the wrong business to business relationships, over and over again. They know something is missing, something is not right but they either do not have the courage or the time and energy to step back and take an objective look at what's going on - and then doing something about it.

Our Leadership and Business Management Heroes Inspire Us to Act
[Business:Management] Leaders, those worthy of being our leaders anyway, always take the responsibility and privilege of leading us seriously. They understand that well led employees will follow them willingly in whatever direction they believe the organization should go so they feel an internal responsibility to live up to our trust in them. As followers we trust them implicitly to consider our best interests when choosing a direction in which to lead us.

Global Conflict - Can it Be Resolved Using Workplace Conflict Resolution Strategies?
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Here we are in the 21st Century, a supposedly enlightened race who accept one another's differences and uniqueness - biological, temperamental, ethnic, etc. with open arms. And yet we see that around the world these very differences - those things about each of us that create such a richness and that should unite us into a more complete whole - are still being transformed into conflict and confrontation.

Successful Small Business Coaches ARE Different!
[Business:Small-Business] Why are some more successful than others? Why do some business coaches make three times, five times, even ten times what their counterparts make. How is it possible that small business coaches who look like they know the same stuff, have participated in the same business coach training, and seem to offer the same services be so far apart on the income scales?

Small Business Coaches Make Business Transition Planning Possible
[Business:Small-Business] Experts say there are four distinct phases in the life of a business. Transition planning then is the process of getting from one phase to the next as effectively and as efficiently as possible. Isn't this where small business coaches come in?

Small Business Accountants Know a Buy Sell Agreement is Not Enough
[Business:Accounting] True, a Buy Sell Agreement is an important document - one that will insure the continuation of your business and enable your family to receive the greatest return possible for your lifetime of work. If there is money behind it. If the cash isn't there a Buy Sell Agreement could end up being a disaster, because it could obligate your family, heirs, partners etc. to attempt the impossible - causing the entire enterprise to collapse along with your family's security.

Small Business Coaches - When Things Slow Down, Make More Money!
[Business:Consulting] Unless you are one of those small business coaches who is so popular and so successful that your business simply relies on people walking in the door, you should never suffer a slow down or decrease in new business. In fact is you are like most professionals, those whose success or failure depends upon them marketing and selling their services - you have a distinct advantage during the down times. This is your opportunity to shine for your clients and have a year that is 20% more profitable than last year.

Conflict in the Workplace? - How Much is it Costing Your Organization
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Conflict in the workplace, assuming it is an actual pitched battle between employees - fights on the loading dock for instance, or between supervisors who start malicious rumors about one another, is easy to see. Even so the dollar cost of such obvious conflict is rarely measured.

Three Ways to Pay Business Accountants That Work For the Accountant & the Client
[Business:Accounting] Often farmers and business owners feel, when it comes to some of their employees, hired hands, migrant workers, etc. that if they are not watching them - then their people are not working. We can all understand that. For many of us it is too easy to confuse activity with progress and we'd rather see our employees busy, even if it what they're doing is a waste of their time and our money.

Problem - Conflict in Workplace - Result - People Quit
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Did you know that 65% of voluntary terminations are the result of unresolved workplace conflict? Not the sort of workplace conflict that turns nice people into bar brawlers or food fight participants in the company cafeteria or neighborhood diner. I'm talking about "double secret" conflict - the most damaging kind.

Business Coaches - Ideal Business Historians For Main Street Companies
[Business:Consulting] That's right, business coaches are uniquely positioned and trained in the use of deep questioning techniques, making them ideally suited as historians who can help business owners and their advisors understand where the business came from - the first step in determining the right and best way forward into the rest of the 21st Century. Your businesses history is important to your advisors because it puts the current company and its structure into context.

Excellent Business Accountants Look For Soft Facts
[Business:Accounting] The type of small business accountant you should be looking for is one who wants to know what's important to you and your businesses future, not just what you've done in the past. Does that describe your business accountant or do you anticipate feeling threatened, talked down to - even before you get to their office.

Small Business Coaches As Business Planning Coordinators
[Business:Consulting] Small business coaches have become a critical member of the business planning team. In the 21st Century we will see their role expand exponentially in importance, especially among the members of successful family owned companies.

Experienced Farm Insurance Agents Understand the Problems Estate Taxes Can Cause
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] I know you think estate taxes are a thing of the past, especially for someone like you whose farm business is small and who could take advantage of the transfer at death of your entire estate to your spouse. I also know that if you are fifty years old or older you have seen such swings in estate and income tax policies that you know for sure - just because they are the way they are today, doesn't mean that's the way they'll be when your family will have to pay them.

Management Leadership Training Courses - Preparation and Expectation
[Business:Management] The real purpose of any well conceived and professionally delivered management leadership training course is to help managers and leaders at every level of the organization crystallize their internal and external values. The objective is to understand more clearly the difference between where each person sees themselves as going and where the collective organization sees the company itself going in its efforts to realize its true potential.

Farm Insurance Agents Understand Your Desire to Pass Down the Farm
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Most farmers dream of the day when they can sit on the front porch and watch their son or daughter working the farm. After all that's how it was for them wasn't it? They took over the place from their father or uncle just like they had taken it over from those who came before them.

Small Business Accountants - How Do Your Recognize the Right One For Your Business?
[Business:Accounting] Typically, from my experience, business owners like you who are looking for a new business accountant relationship are looking for someone to help navigate the complexities of current and future tax laws and the hard to understand tax regulations faced by all businesses and businesses like yours in particular. Aren't you looking for someone to provide tax planning advice so you can make the most of your day-to-day and long term efforts?

Management Leadership Training - Which Or Both? What Should You Look For?
[Business:Management] When selecting a management leadership training program look for trainers who speak to your employees and your companies needs rather than those of a Fortune 500 company. When considering a management leadership process look for one whose principles can be integrated by everyone until it becomes part of the culture of the organization.

Farm Insurance Agents and the Power of a Buy & Sell Agreement
[Insurance] If it turns out that your offspring are not interested in sunning your farm or business into the next generation you have two options. Option number one is for you to keep working forever (ok you may be able to find someone to rent it) until you simply wear out and die. At that point your widow (wives outlive husbands by an average of 10 years on the farm) can put it up for sale.

Characteristics of Exceptional Business Accountants
[Business:Accounting] In a nutshell exceptional business accountant are well trained, experienced accountants who work well with others. An accountant who is not a CPA yet who is willing to call in specialists whenever and wherever needed is more valuable to you and your business than a hot shot expert who suffers from the NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here) who is unwilling to admit to their limitations and actively seek advice from others on your behalf.

Fine Tune Your Corporate Focus With Management Leadership Training
[Business:Management] Before beginning a management leadership training process it's important to determine exactly where you want to be at the conclusion of the program. If you have investigated the various offerings available to your organization you know that management leadership training comes in various forms from outside experts to internal trainers to public seminars to DVDs.

Farm Insurance Agents Understand the Long Term Planning Options For Successful Farmers
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] If you are like most farmers you have essentially everything you and your family own tied up directly or indirectly in your farm business. I am not talking about whether or not you own it or the farm owns it or even if the farm corporation or partnership owns it.

Business Accountants Are Not Just Number Crunchers!
[Business:Accounting] If you do not interview perspective professionals - then you have to live with their results, and pay for their mistakes or decisions they make on your behalf without knowing you as well as they should when they are acting for you. And if you don't interview them you will never know if they are terminally afflicted with the NIH syndrome. The NIH syndrome will stifle the scope of knowledge available to you, cause you to miss opportunities, and live in fear that you are missing other important benefits available to business owners whose business accountants and other advisers are not infected by the NIH syndrome.

Farm Insurance Agents Help You Avoid the Estate Planning Alphabet of Doom!
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Successful farmers see their hard work pay off over the years, naturally making the farm their most important and valuable asset, as well as one that offers other benefits. The total family's financial security and steady income as well as your ability to be your own person - not having to answer to anybody else, and it provides you an identity and recognition in your community.

Farm Insurance Agents - Your Long Term Planning Partners
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] I know farm insurance agents who spend countless hours talking with you and your contemporaries about the importance of looking down the road 5, 10, 15, or more years into the future - in order to make clear the importance of acting now to protect what's already been created. The biggest mistake you can make is not listening to them, and continuing to treat the need for long term planning lightly.

Management Leadership Training - The Basic Elements
[Business:Management] In order for management leadership training to be effective it must first be discovered as a tool for the achievement of the organizations goals and objectives. That's necessary because change is often required for the training to have lasting results.

Farm Insurance Agents - A Vital Cog in the Financial Wheel
[Insurance:Agents-Marketers] Selecting the right farm insurance agent, as a confidant and collaborator in your future success, is a serious decision - but nevertheless one that may be a lot easier to do that you might suppose. Think about it, an insurance agent is the retail end of the entire insurance continuum. And like every industry for each agent in the field there are legions of highly trained experts on the speed dials back at the home office (where the insurance is manufactured).

A Critical Component in Family Business Success - Management Leadership Training
[Business:Management] Every expert says that leadership is the key core competency of 21st Century business leaders. By that I mean every expert that is selling leadership training. Since they are selling it, does that make them an expert or does it make their self-serving assertions about the important of leadership training untrue? Both? Or neither?

Important Concepts For Financial Planning in the 21st Century
[Finance:Personal-Finance] Your total return for each and every investment you make is directly and simply related to total necessary risk. Your financial professional should make that clear to you, especially in consideration of your tolerance for risk. Necessary risk is of course necessary (that's why they call it that) as it is at the heart of every investment. Three of the components of necessary risk are business (operating) risk, financial (leverage) risk, and tax interpretation risk. It is easy to see why we need advisors for this.

What Do Business Owners Want Internet Marketers to Do For Them?
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] Can you help them source complimentary products? Can you teach them how to use Internet marketing strategies, marketing that was previously for 100% online businesses and integrate it into their offline business? Can your strategies help them leverage their existing accounts with the web 2.0 strategies that are second nature to you - and that will mesmerize them, to grow the profitability of the customers they already have?

What is Unique That You Bring to Your Clients That They Put a Dollar Value On?
[Writing-and-Speaking:Copywriting] Everyday it seems that everything and every body get more and more alike. It seems that the only thing that really differentiates us from our competitors is the skill of our copywriters compared to theirs.

Eddie Rickenbacker Had a Six Word Formula For Success
[Self-Improvement:Success] If you've been paying attention (to American history) you already know that Eddie Rickenbacker was a successful race car driver before the became the most celebrated US Air Ace in during WW I. You might not know that after the war he would become an airline executive, a wartime advisor, and a famous and extremely successful industrialist. As a business leader of his time, like the Jack Welsh of the 1920's he was often quoted.

Are You Efficient Or Effective?
[Self-Improvement:Success] The more efficient I try to be the less effective I often am. According to the legendary Peter Drucker - as the story goes, efficiency is doing things right and effectiveness is doing the right things. That would mean then that maximum effectiveness, what I always strive for - sometimes more successfully than others, would be doing the right things right every time.

Position Yourself For Success With a Simple Strategic Success System
[Self-Improvement:Success] Every book that describes the secrets of personal success has a list containing 3-5 or ten keys, things you must do if you want to be successful. I am sure I have not read them all, but I have read enough of them to realize the truth. No one really knows what it takes to be successful or there would only be one book with a single list.

Setting Priorities, The Key to Your Success in Life and in Business
[Self-Improvement:Success] Everywhere you look everyone is say thing that they know the keys to success. Dig deeply in what they say and it all turns out to equal the same thing. It all comes down to the way you decide to spend your time. Are your actions taking you closer to or further away from your intended future?

Can You Stretch Time to Get More Done?
[Self-Improvement:Time-Management] If you had a time machine would you use it to see what the future will bring or to go back and do the important things you didn't do when you had the chance? Your success in life, your happiness, your health and your prospects for success will be largely determined by what you choose to do with your time.

Are You a Trusted Professional Advisor?
[Self-Improvement:Coaching] Do your clients trust you explicitly or do they often say, "We'll have to think it over" when you propose a solution or plan of action? Do your prospects trust you the very first time they meet you, or do you often hear "We want to check with some other..." before they are willing to commit to engaging your services?

Key Result Areas Every Leader Must Focus On
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] Effective leadership at every level of the company is the core competency for 21st Century success in business. There is a new leadership book being published about every 15 minutes. If you're already a leader you aren't going to be reading one of them. What's the point, you can only get distracted from what you are already doing right and second guess yourself.

Workplace Conflict - How Much is Conflict Costing Your Organization?
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Why does a dependable supervisor begin calling in sick, when you know they are not really ill, just before an important project is due for completion? Why is a valuable team leader always in a bad mood, snapping at her colleagues, coming in late, and leaving early - all of a sudden and for no reason at all? Why do you find yourself making decisions solely to keep the peace - to keep from upsetting fellow employees who always seem to be "having a bad day?"

Leadership - The Keys to 21st Century Business Leadership
[Business:Entrepreneurialism] Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage you'll ever have that will endure against all others. Are you then an effective, 21st Century leader? What would your people say about your leadership? Would they say that your leadership is the one key element that insures their long term success? And how much of your energy is being spent helping your subordinates become effective leaders?

Business Succession is the ONLY Success For Successful Businesses
[Business] If you are a business owner you are the one with the power, the authority, and the responsibility to yourself, your employees, and your family for the ultimate success or failure of your succession plan and the financial future of your family. If your advisors won't actively seek help of others, if they are determined to do "it" their way and you don't fire them, the possible tragedies to follow are your responsibility. You can blame whoever you want but that won't change the fact that it is your responsibility. Will the future be the time you'll be happy with the decisions you make today, or not? Who's in charge of your business succession process? Who is going to have to live with the outcome?

Business Owner - Are You Terrified of the Sharks You Can't See Coming?
[Business] If you are a the owner of a small business it's not hard to imagine yourself all alone in a tiny boat, rowing steadily across a calm lake. Everything seems fine - and yet you keep looking over your shoulder, when you know you should be focusing on the future, wondering if there is something you haven't thought of.

What Kind of a Coach Are You?
[Self-Improvement:Coaching] Most coaches I've met and whose web sites I've visited seem to be of the "coaches who coach coaches so that they can coach coaches" variety. No one seems to be coaching regular traditional mainstream businesses. Most coaches just seem to be coaching each other.

Peasant to Merchant to Peasant in Three Generations
[Business] About three thousand years ago a group of Chinese business owners were sitting around after their local businessman's group meeting. Their guest speaker that day was a very ancient and widely respected management consultant. It had been raining for days and the roads were a mess, so the ox cart that was picking him up to take him to the next village was running late. That gave the business owners a chance to pick his brains further.

Dominate Your Market Like Wyatt Earp Dominated His
[Business:Marketing] Do you spend as much time researching and understanding your business as you do that of your competitors? Do you have a strategic marketing and business development strategy or just goals you set and hope for the best? Wyatt Earp, who knew a little bit about market domination said that you must take the time to aim, before shooting from the hip.

Your Company's Strategic Marketing Team
[Business:Marketing] I know you don't have a strategic marketing team. I know everybody in your organization is too busy doing what must be done today to attend one more meeting or be happy about being put on another committee. In fact, even if you thought a strategic marketing team made sense - you wouldn't know how to put one together. And you aren't likely to find anyone around the company who knows much more about it than you.

Strategic Business Growth - Five Golden Rules of Business Success
[Business:Marketing] Your success will be the result of your willingness to focus on the most profitable things your organization does, continually projecting a focused message to your market place, and a price that demonstrates value to your customers and prospects. Stay alert for changes inside and outside the company, find ways to adapt to take competitive advantage of tiny fluctuations in your market. And finally, get input from everybody, creating internal and external peer groups that will expand the thinking and experiences possible - since you will no longer be limited only to what you and a few people in your company already know.

Tell Him We're Not Interested!
[Business:Entrepreneurialism] From time to time I am asked by business advisors, senior level managers, and successors in privately held or family owned companies, if I have any special insights that will magically get the owners of their company to lighten up. Why aren't they willing to delegate some of their authority, upgrade their technology to take advantage of cutting edge strategies the younger generation and their advocates are all fired up about, and give everyone a little slack - so they feel empowered to make decisions on their own once in a while?

Finding Your Competitive Edge
[Business:Entrepreneurialism] Your company's long term success depends on where you are in the mind of your customers, whether you think they have the right impression of your organization or not. When your customers and potential customers measure you, based on their perception of what makes a company worthy of their patronage - you had better measure up or you will be left out.

Is Sarah Palin Qualified to Be Vice President Or Not?
[News-and-Society:Politics] Since she was picked by John McCain to be his vice presidential running mate the media has jumped all over her, relentlessly. Most of their attacks were rude, personal, vitriolic slams out of bounds where common courtesy is concerned, but we really shouldn't be surprised by that.

Is Your Company's Future a Dream Or a Nightmare?
[Business] If you're in business you've had this nightmare or a version of it more than once. You're in a tiny boat on a fast moving river rushing over submerged boulders in ice cold water.

Nichemanship - Is Nichemanship Still a Critical Component of Business Success?
[Business:Marketing] What exactly is nichemanship and is it still relevant to organizations and individuals attempting to develop or refine their strategic marketing plans and actions? According to an online marketing directory, nichemanship is a term used to refer to the art of skillful selection of market segments in which a firm can compete effectively.

Three Keys to Strategic Marketing
[Business:Marketing] A primary key to success is the value of your uniqueness. What is it about your organization that separates you from your competitors in your marketplace?

Mastermind Groups in the 21st Century
[Business] The mastermind principle, as originally conceived by Napoleon Hill, is about the power of a "third mind" made possible through regular collaboration. That's when a small group of co-equal colleagues and contemporaries share experiences and insights that create "Ah ha" moments for each of them. In a real mastermind group there are no professional organizers.

Conflict Resolution Made Easy
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Nothing seems more universal than conflict. And nothing seems more difficult to productively address, until now.

The Best Way To Access Optimal Leadership Development!
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Quite a headline, but, in fact, surrounding yourself with other business leaders who take the art of leading as seriously as you do will drive you toward certain business success. Some leadership abilities are innate; some people were born to be leaders.

Do You Call Yourself A Leader? Do Your People Call You THEIR Leader?
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Leaders, in order to be effective, must inspire confidence in order to have followers. Unless leaders have followers they aren't leading anybody are they? Effective leaders are those who inspire confidence in their followers because they consistently lead them and the organization in the right direction. How do leaders know what the right decisions are, that will lead their people in the right direction?

Succession Planning And Business Organization
[Business:Strategic-Planning] A succession and estate planning lawyer told me a long time ago that "businesses are organized the way they were organized originally." This succession and estate planning lawyer had been working with successful business owners and farmers for over two decades by then. I was young and didn't understand what he meant when said that one of the greatest stumbling blocks for success when it comes to succession and business estate planning - was the way the business was originally organized many years before.

Strategic Planning Calls for Peer Support and Advice
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Strategic planning: of course it's something that you should be doing for the good of your company, but actually taking the time and dedicating the resources to make it happen is often difficult. It's like daily exercise - you know you would feel better if you fit it into your schedule and you know that it's good for you, but somehow you just don't get around to it.

Sales Training Resources via Free Article Search Engine
[Business:Sales-Training] If you expect to succeed at sales you need to find or develop a style that fits your personality. Stop begging for their business, stop wasting your time with people who don't want what you're selling, and invest your valuable time disqualifying the people who don't fit your well developed picture of what a client looks like.

Internet Search, Like Politics, Is Local
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Search-Engine-Marketing] The value of a local search strategy is that most local searchers are getting ready to buy! If you've got even a small ad budget - local search fees could be well worth the investment. Inside you'll learn three important local search marketing lessons.

Speakers - You'll Be Remembered By What You Do, Not By What You Say
[Business:Presentation] When called upon to speak to a group, it's more important to deliver on the audience's expectations than on yours. What does the audience want? What do you have to do to get invited back? Here is how three speakers on the same panel left three distinctly different impressions on their audience.

Email Mistakes That Destroy Customer Trust
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Email-Marketing] Are poor email practices killing your company's marketing and customer service efforts? Inside are three experiences that ruined my opinion of companies I was planning to or already doing business with. Don't make these mistakes.

Word Of Mouth Marketing - 3 Simple Tactics Will Guarantee Your Word Of Mouth Marketing Success
[Business:Marketing] When it comes to word of mouth marketing, the most powerful tactics are the simplest to implement. Inside you'll see how the leading producers in your industry leverage the word of mouth process and how you can too!

Trade Shows and Trade Show Exhibits - How To Get The Most Out Of Your Next Tradeshow
[Business] Do you want to make your next trade show experience more productive? Do you want to spend time only with vendors who have what you want and need? Inside you'll learn how to be a more effective trade show visitor and a more profitable trade show exhibitor.

Search Engine Strategies, Danny Sullivan, And The Velocity of Trust
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Search-Engine-Marketing] Do you want to rank #1 on Google for your keywords? Danny Sullivan search engine optimization expert tells you how you can do it and how twenty percent of your search engine activities are likely to yield eighty percent of your results. Here's Danny at the Search Engine Strategies event in New York City.

The Three Worst Marketing Mistakes You Can Make
[Business:Marketing] Marketing is what we do that puts us in a position to make a sale. Good marketing makes selling easier. Bad marketing may make selling impossible.

Life Insurance For A Successful Business Owner, Life Insurance is ALWAYS The Answer
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] The question is, "what is the most effective way of adding cash to your business, at the most and often the most unexpected time?"

Business Coaches Make More Money Optimizing Their Relationships
[Business:Solo-Professionals] To succeed, financially, as a business coach you really must optimize every relationship you have with your prospects and your clients.

Strategic Planning - The Three Key Elements Of Business Strategic Planning
[Business:Strategic-Planning] For businesses strategic planning is a concept, a mind set and a process. It is looking down the road at what's around the bend. When everyone around your place is focusing on what's coming you will all recognize it in time to take advantage of it.

The Most Powerful Sales and Marketing Strategy Ever
[Business:Solo-Professionals] Accidentally I hit upon a process that I've used for over a dozen years that has resulted in virtually all of our most profitable clients.

More Web Site Visitors Using Cheap Reports To Attract Web Site Traffic
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] Recently we began using a cheap report to drive traffic, introduce our services to people who have never heard of us, and build our house-list database of e-mail addresses. While we have been online for years and are well established in the search engines the traffic increase resulting from the cheap reports project has dominated since the day we launched it.

The Amazing Story of Life Insurance Settlements and Whether or Not They Are Right For You
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] Now if you want to surrender your life insurance policy for its cash value there is another range of options provided by a secondary market in life insurance policies, compared to just cashing in the whole life insurance policy directly with the company that sold it to him in the first place.

What Your Life Insurance Company Doesn't Want You To Know About Life Insurance Company Performance!
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] The reason people ask this question is often because they are being told by that the life insurance company where they already have a policy or the life insurance company they are considering buying a policy from is not performing as well as the one the representative they are talking to is trying to get them to buy a life insurance policy from.

Keyman, Keywoman, or Keyperson Life Insurance: It's Vitally Important To Your Family & Your Business
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] Key man life insurance, or as it is more politically correctly known, key person life insurance can mean the difference between long term success or failure of your company, your family, and your dream.

What Everyone Should Know About Term Life Insurance
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] Term life insurance is like wetting the bed, it provides instant relief but sooner or later you are going to have to get up and do something about it. I remember the first time heard that expression. Now that thirty years have passed I understand what he meant.

It's Not The Conflict You Know About That's Killing Your Profits
[Business:Strategic-Planning] As business owners we are often trapped by the unintended results of untested assumptions. After all we've been in business a while, maybe a long while, and we've been successful so far. Often that only means we've guessed right about trends, our competitors, what products to stock etc. - more often than we've been wrong. What's the expression, "It's better to be lucky that good?"

How Much is Workplace Conflict Costing Your Company
[Business:Workplace-Communication] In the end you can come up with an amount of money, the ACTUAL HARD DOLLAR COST of workplace conflict in your organization, that is overwhelming. So overwhelming in fact that many business owners will decide not to believe the numbers.

Internet Marketing is BOTH an Art and a Science
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] In fact the most effective Internet marketers combine the art and the science better than the unsuccessful marketers - because it takes both to achieve optimum results. And that is why we collected several hundred articles by experts from both camps.

Business Coaches, Avoid Failure and Achieve Real Success
[Business:Solo-Professionals] To achieve and retain success you must make your current services more valuable, more effective, and cause more people to be interested in how you can add value to their lives. That's how you eliminate competition in advance. Then you will want to expand your profitable offerings to reach a more extensive audience.

Will a B2B Peer Group Help You Grow Your Business
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Napoleon Hill coined the concept, although I am quite sure it had been around forever, of the "mastermind alliance" in his powerful book "Think And Grow Rich" because he believed from his own experience that a group of like-minded, achievement oriented individuals could dramatically leverage each other's success.

What's the Formula For a Successful Career as a Business Advisor
[Business:Solo-Professionals] Successful professionals serving business owners have one thing in common. They take the time to understand the owner's and the family's problems and concerns on every level, not just from their own professional perspective, in order to help make decisions that will directly impact the success or failure of the enterprise.

Brooklyn Industries, a Family Business With Style
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Like many entrepreneurs she and her husband, starting the business in a tiny Brooklyn apartment with a single idea for turning their art into handbags, had expanded from the original concept of the business founded in the mid 90's to one that in 2001 required a radical makeover. For business owners this sort of thing is usually forced on them, by the economy, the bank, etc. Otherwise they keep on doing what they are doing until the money runs out.

Leverage The Power of Your Peers
[Business:Strategic-Planning] It seems like we all learn better in groups. In school, from kindergarten to graduate school, you worked on projects in teams or groups. You always seemed to learn more from your peers than when you listened to an instructor droning on about a particular subject.

Business Coaches: Niche By Topic Not Industry
[Business:Solo-Professionals] Was there a business development strategy he could use that would be more efficient, more effective? It occurred to him that the services he had been providing to the automotive manufacturers were also used by every other manufacturing company - no matter what they were making, in every industry.

Is Workplace Conflict Destructive or Creative?
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Whenever you work with people, conflict is inevitable. The tension created by daily conflict either results in wasted time, decreased productivity, and poor decisions or the sort of internal competition that pushes each individual to do their best, if for no other reason that convince their coworkers that they can do it.

Family Businesses Are BIG Business: Not Just "Mom and Pop"
[Business:Solo-Professionals] Far too often, when people hear the phrase "Family Business," they immediately conjure up the image of a little Mom-and-Pop grocery, shoe repair shop, or news stand. Perhaps they think of family businesses as quaint reminders of an era passed, or see them as heroic little David's fighting the corporate Goliaths. That's just not so!

The Number One Key for Business Success in the 21st Century
[Business:Strategic-Planning] The number one key for business success in the 21st Century is the same as it was at the beginning of recorded business history, it's just easier to achieve now that information is more abundant than ever and high speed Internet connections make it accessible. But just because it's available and does not mean we all take advantage of it.

Don't Get Sucked in By the AdSense Hype
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] When we began updating our company's Internet marketing strategy, we figured - based on all the hype, that we should consider integrating Google's AdSense contextual advertising into it.After all we've got a lot of original content, some of which has been getting a fair amount or traffic since 1999. Would AdSense help us further monitize that?

Winter Time is Meeting Time: Find Next Years's Clients Where They Congregate
[Business:Solo-Professionals] For those of you who are serious about maximizing your effectiveness (more money, client confidence, and enhanced self-image, here is everything you need to know.

Britney Spears, General Hospital, and Ben Matlock: Understanding Psychographic Marketing
[Business:Marketing] From start-up to exit strategy, companies follow a predictable development path.

B2B Email Marketing: Still THE Killer App!
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Email-Marketing] Email marketing is far from dead, no matter what the so-called experts say. In fact recent software applications are putting the power of Fortune 500 companies in the hands of Main Street businesses - leveling the playing field at last.

Politics and the 80/20 Principle
[News-and-Society:Politics] The founding fathers, recognizing that our country was too big - even then, for everybody to sit around a big table in Philadelphia, established a representative democracy. We, the people, elect folks to represent us.

AD:Tech The 10th Annual is Over - What Was In It For Main Street?
[Business:Advertising] There were over two dozen break-out sessions during the 2 1/2 days and we did our best to cover them. The panels in each session were made up of marque companies like CNN, AOL, and Frito Lay as well as one person entrepreneurs and everything in between. As always there were actionable strategies from every quarter.

Just Bagels
[Business:Strategic-Planning] After hearing first hand the story of Just Bagels as recounted by one of the founders, Clifford Nordguist, I will never again think of my daily breakfast as, "just bagels."

Over 300 Life Insurance Articles: How Much? What Kind? and Why?
[Insurance:Life-Annuities] How much and what kind of life insurance do you need? What is right for you today? How can you figure that out on your own - so you won't fall prey to sales people who are better prepared at selling what they have than you are at buying what you need?

The Common Denominator of Success in Work Clothes: G&L Clothes & Carhartt
[Shopping-and-Product-Reviews:Fashion-Style] Behind their website is a real clothing store with a sales staff of real people. G&L Clothing has been serving customers in downtown Des Moines, Iowa for almost 90 years.

High Probability Sales Training and Fifty Additional Sales Training Articles
[Business:Sales-Training] The two main reasons I hear for not providing more sales training are that it costs money and takes time. If managers spent as much time, energy, and money developing sales training programs as they do dealing with under performing sales people... The potential for high earnings combined with the opportunity for personal growth and sales training are yours when you provide sales training for your people. The benefits of sales training are very substantial to everyone.

ClickZ Email Marketing Conference: Strategic Partnerships
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Email-Marketing] We've all seen examples of how successful strategic partnerships work, leveraging the contacts and resources of every partner, for the benefit of all by generating business and defeating competitors that would have been impossible alone.

Will Writing a Book Enhance Your Career?
[Writing-and-Speaking:Writing] Everyone says that writing a book will enhance your career, making getting new customers a snap, and make you a boatload of money (plus Oprah). What a bunch of baloney. Read the statistics. The people who promote the idea of writing a book as a ticket to the big time, must think we're stupid or something.

ClickZ Email Marketing Conference: Your Email Must Have Relevant Content
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Email-Marketing] For years I have worked as a translator between the online world an Main Street. I have consistently tried to point out to online marketers - that they need to make their copy relevant to the mainstream business community. That their message should not be written for their (the marketer's) colleagues to read, but for people with traditional businesses to understand and see the values in, for them.

How To Save Time, Money, and Frustration - Solving Problems and Developing Skills With Your Peers
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Member of professionally facilitated peer groups broaden their understanding of and problem-solving skills in the operations of an entire industry, instead of just their unique and specialized functions. This strengthens their skill sets and creates additional areas of expertise for both new and seasoned executives, as they share ideas and problem-solving solutions covering a myriad of business challenges.

Learn, Teach, Market, and Sell Business Owners
[Business:Change-Management] Business reality demands that you are conversant in the language of business - or your credibility will suffer, and you may not be hired in favor of someone who can "talk the talk".

A Leadership Model for the Times
[Business:Management] In the 21st Century, more and more organizational leaders have come to understand that happy, respected employees, empowered by their managers to meet and exceed customer expectations, provide the best service and feel more personally fulfilled by their work.

A Synergy of Business Strengths
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Internet-Marketing] Often two organizations produce a sum much greater than the efforts that either organization can accomplish on its own.

Start-up to Exit Strategy - Companies Follow a Predictable Development Path
[Business:Strategic-Planning] No matter which stage of development your client's company is in - there are issues requiring your services. You can help them see around the corner ahead.

Develop Your Benefit Statement, Enlist a Cadre of Fans to Promote You
[Business:Marketing] Before you spend another minute marketing yourself - determine exactly who you want to do business with. Will Rogers is quoted as saying that, "it doesn't matter that you're making good time, when you're heading in the wrong direction".

How Can a Drug Store Founded in 1838 Survive in The 21st.Century?
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Ecommerce] When my daughter and I meet for lunch in Greenwich Village, we always pass by Bigelow's Apothecary. I asked her if she shopped there, and she remarked that their Alchemy mascara is the best ever. (I had to take her word for it.) I spoke with Bigelow's current proprietor, Ian Ginsberg, and the Bigelow's story is both a fascinating piece of New York nostalgia, and a demonstration of the importance of change in business.

Identify Your Ideal Clients and How To Reach Them
[Business:Networking] If you expect to succeed as a professional solution provider - coach, consultant, etc., you first have to last. Just last long enough and you'll be the only person who got started when you did, who is still around.

A Family Company is Delivering Its Peanut Butter Meltaways Through Cyberspace!
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Ecommerce] The sweet taste of success! Blair Candy Company, a third generation family business, has taken their company from Altoona to Fargo - through cyberspace.

Search Engine Strategies, Much Ado About Nothing or Something?
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] After three days of search engine immersion therapy last month at the Search Engine Strategies event in NYC followed by three weeks to work it all out, the answer is clear, it is both! If you are an Internet entrepreneurs, you already know this stuff. You are already tweaking your Web sites constantly, you are jumping on and off the latest sure-fire bandwagons, attending seminars and conference calls all the time.

A Business Owner Asks, "How Do We Get to Disney World?"
[Business:Strategic-Planning] "Let's go to Disney World!" is the shout heard by millions of parents each year. "But how we get there?" parents often cry a few weeks before the trip. Planning for the long-range success of your business can be boiled down to the same three step exercise you use to map out your trip to see Mickey.

Woman Owned Company is Covering Los Angeles and Beyond
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Ecommerce] Nathan Kimmel's business began in his garage and grew through hard work and a reputation for quality. His spirit of entrepreneurship, and his simple philosophy of how to do business, live on in his daughter Carol, who has taken this family business out of the garage and into cyberspace.

You Can't Sell Antique Appliances on The Internet, Can You?
[Business:Marketing] When John Jowers went to work at his father's appliance company, he never thought it would lead to a sideline business restoring antique refrigerators. But now their "cool" appliances are doing a hot business on the web.

Junior's Cheesecakes, From Brooklyn to San Francisco Through Cyberspace
[Business:Entrepreneurialism] Junior’s, The World’s Most Fabulous Cheesecake, is a household name in New York City. For over 50 years, they have been selling its desserts from its flagship store in downtown Brooklyn, and recently in Manhattan's Grand Central Station. True connoisseurs can also get a piece of the action even if they’re far from the Big Apple.

Heather's Tips for Optimizing Your Web Site's Positioning
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] Heather Lloyd-Martin's presentation about successful search engine copywriting was held on the second day of the 2006 Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. By then I had concluded that I would focus my comments (in all my stories) on the needs of mainstream established companies-since those are the people I know the most about. We have many many articles written for others, such as Internet entrepreneurs, in the Selected Newsletter Articles section of our web site.

Not With MY Money You Aren't!
[Business:Marketing] Millions and millions of dollars have been spent by advertisers, exhorting businesses to get web sites. During the dot-com boom, the media jumped on the Internet bandwagon as well. And there are success stories. Yet fewer than half of the businesses up and down main Street have taken their advice seriously. Why not? The answer will surprise you - until you think about it

21st Century Leadership Empowers Leaders at Every Level
[Self-Improvement:Empowerment] Historically a new-hire moved from learning the required tasks of their particular job to eventually understanding the goals, strengths, and weaknesses of the business in an orderly way - often having as much to do with their getting older as with their getting better, smarter, or more capable.

Whatever You Do, Don't Look Toward The House!
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Family businesses certainly create challenges unheard of in other businesses: past histories and emotional needs often further confuse already difficult issues, as I found out when I began consulting for Betty and Ed.

We Can't Talk Here!
[Business:Strategic-Planning] Here is a business successor who defines the expression "the man in the middle." Literally working between his dad and his uncle, separated by a glass and metal partition for the past decade he has heard and seen a lot about what they will not talk to him about.

You're the Expert, You Fire Him!
[Business:Change-Management] Family businesses are always a challenge. Despite our best intentions, baser emotions often rear their ugly heads, distracting us from what's truly important. One of those emotions is entitlement. In this article, I'm sharing a story about one family and their struggle with entitlement in their business.

2006 New York City Search Engine Strategies Event
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] The Search Engine Strategies event provided us with fodder for a series of articles to help business owners increase their market share, extend their marketing reach, and dramatically expand their geographical reach into new sources and new markets. Search engine optimization allows a company's web site to defeat time and distance to maximize the company's potential.