Steve Schlagel's Small Business Blog

It is STILL About Your USP!

June 29, 2010

Share Brand this. Brand that. Personal branding. Brand development. Brand research. Brand awareness. YOUR small business isn’t Apple, it isn’t Levi’s and it isn’t Coke. You have to stand out in ways that don’t use old-school advertising and before you even start marketing you must know what makes your business unique? Do you accommodate customers [...]

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Who’s Your Banker?

June 28, 2010

Share Watching the banking industry over the last 20 years is a bit like watching Pac-Man. One big bank eats another bank and is then eaten by a larger bank. We’ve all seen familiar names vanish over the last 20 years and new ones rise quickly only to crumble before our eyes. Small business owners [...]

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Lifestyle Design: Do You Know What You Want?

June 24, 2010

Share Lifestyle design is a new catch-all term for building a life and business/career, free from traditional constraints, unless, of course, traditional is your lifestyle of choice. Tim Ferriss is probably best known for coining the term in The 4-Hour Work Week, but it has spread rapidly through cyberspace. Clearly, if you don’t know what [...]

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Telecommuting: Is it Feasible for Your Business?

June 17, 2010

Share Telecommuting makes good business sense in many ways, including for small businesses. Despite this many aren’t allowing telecommuting…yet. While there are many positives, there are some legitimate concerns. Doing your homework ahead of time is crucial. Review your liability with your insurance agent in case someone is hurt working while at home. If the [...]

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Employee Retention Strategies for Small Businesses

June 11, 2010

Share It’s been an employer’s world for awhile now. Employee retention, especially of key talent, has not been a strong focus for the last two years because most employees held tight to their jobs due to economic uncertainty. However, the numbers are beginning to improve and employment experts expect that larger numbers of employees will [...]

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Newsletters that Get Opened

June 10, 2010

Share I subscribe to several newsletters. One of my favorites is Early To Rise. Newsletters are a great way to interact with your customers and to maintain interest in you or your company. You can use these to advertise promotions, to highlight new products and/or to offer usable content (tips, how-to’s, etc.) to your readers. [...]

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Customer Service & HR Lessons via Zappos.com

June 7, 2010

Share This weekend I watched a piece on Zappos.com on CBS Sunday Morning. For anyone unfamiliar with Zappos and their young CEO Tony Hsieh, spend some time on Google. Hsieh is a popular keynote speak and his company has become well known for leading the pack in two key areas: customer service and employee engagement. [...]

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10 Tips to Ease Your Public Speaking Pain

June 4, 2010

Share Becoming comfortable with public speaking takes time. Most small business owners and other professionals are called upon at some point to do some sort of presentation or other public speaking. Polls generally show that more people are afraid of public speaking than dying! If this is you, here’s some quick help to take some of the [...]

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In Your Small Business, It’s All About Sales

June 3, 2010

Share When you are in business for yourself, either with a brick and mortar store, e-commerce or as a solo proprietor of some sort, almost every task you engage in, at its core, is about sales. Without sales, whether of goods or services, you are out of business. How you treat your employees is about [...]

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What in the World Should We Blog About?

June 1, 2010

Share When you start a small business blog that centers around your business, you can stumble and falter when it comes to knowing what to write about. One of the secrets to a lively blog that develops your search engine ranking is consistency. But that can be problematic when you have no idea what to write [...]

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