5 Steps to Make Business Partnerships Work. According to Robbinex Inc, a firm specializing in the sale of mid-sized privately-held companies, the majority of business partnerships don’t make it past 3 ½ years.
Having been involved in business partnerships in one form or another for more than 10 years, I can tell you, like everything else in business, there’s a right way (that increases your chances of success) and a wrong way (that decreases your chances of success) to go about making business partnerships and relationships work. The wrong way is to jump in blindly head first hoping the concrete pool has been filled with water.
Sometimes you get lucky. Other times … ouch! Evan Lowenstein's Stageit, a Live Music Site. A dozen years ago, Evan Lowenstein had a brief flirtation with fame when he and his twin brother landed the song Crazy for This Girl on the teen-angst TV drama Dawson’s Creek.
(It peaked at No. 15 on Billboard’s Hot 100.) Five Steps to Turn Wasteful Meetings into Drivers of Success. Third Shifts Return to the U.S. Auto Industry. Venus Walker gets her two teenage kids settled in each night and then heads to her job at General Motors’ (GM) metal-stamping plant in Lordstown, Ohio, about 60 miles southeast of Cleveland.
She gets home in time to see them off to school. Walker, 51, is one of thousands of autoworkers in the U.S. benefiting from the return of a third shift at factories—often from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. For the first time since the car industry’s collapse in 2009, many plants are running 24 hours a day. At the nadir, some plants ran only one eight-hour shift. U.S. auto plants this year may operate at about 81 percent capacity after falling as low as 49 percent in 2009, according to estimates from researcher IHS Automotive. The new third shifts, adding more than 4,300 jobs in four states for GM alone, increase payroll-tax revenue and demand at odd hours for everything from day care and dentistry to food and financial services.
Woman accused of falsifying W-2 forms pleads guilty to federal charge. Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2012 > February > 15 > Entry By Lou Grieco | Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 10:35 AM DAYTON — A Dayton woman accused of preparing and selling falsified W-2 forms pleaded guilty Monday to one count of aiding and abetting in making false claims for income tax refunds.
Shakira Bibbs, 33, appeared before U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice. During January and February 2009 Bibbs helped several people submit false and fraudulent claims for income tax refunds to the IRS, totaling in excess of $30,000, according to court documents. Bibbs prepared false Forms W-2 that fraudulently inflated the personal income, as well as the amount of the federal income taxes allegedly paid to the IRS, for people in the Dayton area. 7 Marketing Examples Using Facebook Fan Pages. Though it’s important to register an account on multiple social media platforms, companies must do more than simply maintain a steady presence and gradually grow their followers.
Outgoing messages must be consistent yet diverse, and any opportunity for brand transparency allows clients and curious onlookers to not only get to know your product, but you as well. However, social media audiences are quickly bored by generic templates, and Facebook’s constantly changing algorithms are pushing companies to engage their fans in new ways, rather than just collecting them.
Fan Pages are the place to create a buzz about your brand and sustain it among your current and future followers…at a potentially exponential rate. I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs the following question: “What known brands are doing something incredibly innovative and out-of-the-box with their Facebook Fan Pages?” The U.S. Goes After Bribery, on a Budget. In 2007 the Justice Dept. issued a subpoena to Panalpina (PWTN:SW), a Swiss freight company with offices in 38 U.S. states.
Investigators suspected the company’s employees had paid bribes to African customs officials on behalf of its oil customers—a violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Watergate-era law prohibiting companies that operate in the U.S. from bribing foreign governments. Doritos Ad Meter winners each receive a $1 million bonus. Not only did the New York Giants beat the favored New England Patriots, two aspiring filmmakers bested some of Madison Avenue's top creative minds.
Each took a first-place finish in USA TODAY's ratings of the ads — one in the traditional electronic tracking of a consumer focus group's reactions during the game and the other in this year's first-ever social-media voting over two days for the winner of the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. The victorious ads — for Doritos — aired in the game after winning the chipmaker's sixth annual consumer-created Super Bowl ad contest. 9 Hot Facebook-Marketing Tips for Small Business. It's not that hard to market your brand on Facebook.
Some of the biggest brands in the world use these same tactics. February 13, 2012 With 845 million users and a new IPO, Facebook has become an increasingly useful tool for brands. It's important for companies to have a strong presence on the social network. Whether your brand is fully established or just starting out, launching a marketing campaign can seem overwhelming.
Ready to put your brand in front of the 845 million? How to Get a Real Education at College. Mark Zuckerberg's Letter to Investors: 'The Hacker Way' Mark Zuckerberg giving the keynote at SXSW conerence in 2009.
Credit: Jim Merithew/Wired.com On Wednesday, Facebook filed the prospectus for a $5 billion initial public offering. Here is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to potential investors. Apple Dominates PC Market By Destroying It. Resuscitating Sony: Why new CEO Kazuo Hirai has his work cut out for him. Sony has announced that former PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai will be taking over as both president and CEO of Japanese electronics giant Sony, replacing former CBS executive Howard Stringer as of April 1.
Although few industry watchers are surprised to see Hirai advance to the top position at Sony, he is doing so at a time when the once-unstoppable company is facing major challenges and dwindling prospects in almost all of its core markets, from video gaming and entertainment to home electronics and mobile devices. What kind of Sony is Hirai inheriting — and how can he hope to turn it around? Money talks. Crack this: How to pick strong passwords and keep them that way. If there’s one thing people associate with modern technology, it’s passwords. They’re everywhere, and most of us use them for dozens of things every day. Yet most people are shockingly indifferent about their password security.
College students face stiff competition for financial aid. If worries about paying for college disrupt your sleep, here's news that will keep you up until dawn: More students than ever are competing for a shrinking pool of financial aid. Several states have reduced scholarships or toughened eligibility criteria for financial aid. Eligibility for the maximum Pell grant, the largest source of federal financial aid, has also been tightened. Meanwhile, the number of families applying for financial aid has soared. More than 21 million families filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the 2010-11 academic year, last fall, up 49% from two years earlier. Log into Gmail on a PC via Your Smartphone. Google recently introduced a fun (and more secure) way to log into your Google account from a public terminal without entering your password into the PC, and instead using your smartphone and a QR code.
The method is similar to how Google sets up your handset for its two-step log-in process introduced in February 2011. Google's two-step authentication system requires you to enter your password as well as a unique short code generated by a trusted device (your smartphone) to access your account. Map Apps: The Race to Fill in the Blanks.
Visitors to the sprawling Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore., often grab one of the fold-up maps available at the entrances to the four-story, city-block-size store. Without one, locating a particular genre can be “daunting,” says Darin Sennett, the store’s director of strategic projects. Since April, tech-savvy customers can download a smartphone app instead. The Post-it Wars. A Money Man's Trials in Retailing.