Management & Team
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Entrepreneurs often are adept at combining a personal skill or interest with business savvy to create a new enterprise. But what happens when a person's area of expertise is a little, well, unusual? As in fire-eating and snake-charming type of wacky. The enterprising performers on this list have created businesses out of teaching their special talents to others. And as it turns out, the businesses behind these schools are growing. Revenues in the fine-arts schools category, which as unlikely as it may sound includes such training, are projected to increase by nearly 3 percent this year to $4.73 billion, says industry research firm IBISWorld.
Unconventional Wisdom: Eight Wacky Schools
The billionaire entrepreneur shares his advice for promoting your business's best asset. Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. What follows is the latest edited round of insightful responses.
Richard Branson on Managing Experienced Workers
Seven Steps to Superstar Employees
Don't just rely on annual performance reviews. Create an ongoing communication with your employees to help them be their best. Many employers sit their workers down once a year for a review. At that time, the employee finds out what they've been doing right or if there are areas in need of improvement.
To follow-up on our recent post about do's and don'ts of using social media to screen new hires , when your company uses social media channels to both source and screen new talent, you must consider that your applicants can turn right around and use those same channels to your disadvantage. In other words, if you screw up the interview process or treat job seekers with disregard or disrespect, you could find yourself the target of a rash of unwanted publicity. For this reason, it's most important to capture and promote good feedback from candidates who apply for a job with your company, says Lisa Chartier, U.S. head of resourcing communications for Alexander Mann Solutions, a provider of recruitment process outsourcing solutions. Her firm just published Candidates, Consumers and Your Global Brand , a white paper looking at the impact of the job candidate's experience on consumer perceptions of businesses and brands.
How To Smooth a Rejected Job Applicant's Feathers
Do's and Don'ts of Using Social Media to Screen New Hires
Using social media to find new employees is one thing, but making a prospect fork over their Facebook credentials as part of a background check is something else entirely. More than one half of employers use social media sites to recruit potential candidates, up from just over a third in 2008, according to a June poll from the Society for Human Resource Management . More and more these days, however, employers are taking the practice one step further by asking applicants for their Facebook logins as part of the screening process.Update : Also see our 40-minute interview on this topic. Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors. The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them.
How to pick a co-founder
Think Twice Before Adopting The “Ship Or Die” Mentality
Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Uzi Shmilovici, CEO and founder of Future Simple , the company behind Base CRM . The “Ship or die”, “Done is better than perfect”, “Just ship” mantras have lately become a part of many startup conversations.
SEO and the Metrics of Success
Being in small business today necessitates a certain degree of familiarity with the language of the Internet. After all, marketing online has become one of the cheapest, easiest options available for small business with little or no barriers to entry. But entering into the online world has also meant adoption of a whole new vocabulary and way of thinking. Here is a brief look at Search Engine Optimization, metrics and the new tools of small business success.
People in some countries are more interested in self-employment than people in other nations. A 2009 survey funded by the European Commission queried over 25,000 randomly chosen individuals aged 15 and 64 in 36 nations about whether they would rather run their own business or work for someone else. The survey found that the fraction that would prefer self-employment ranged from 25.6 percent in Slovakia to 71.4 percent in China. So where is America on the list? The U.S. had the fourth highest share of people who would rather be self-employed among the 36 nations investigated, coming in at 54.8 percent.
Chart: Where People Want to Work for Themselves
Over the past couple of weeks I have interacted with people who work for small business owners who aren’t such great bosses. In fact, they are downright angry and mean. I can’t help wondering what they are hoping to accomplish. Yelling at people, demeaning them, using nasty language – none of these are leadership tactics, nor are they effective. You don’t get people to perform at their best when you spend your time beating them down.
Anger Is Not a Leadership Skill
Here's a look at five low-cost customizable business form providers. Running a small business well requires the ability to gather and manage a vast array of data, from sales leads to customer complaints and employee vacation time. Because this information is so critical, business automation companies, such as Basecamp, LiquidPlanner and Salesforce.com, charge good money to organize it. Now, a category of lesser-known yet powerful organizational tools is quietly gaining traction: online business forms.
Five DIY Online Form Builders
Related Forms From Entrepreneurship Terms of Use Please note: Prior to using these forms, please consult with an attorney or other expert knowledgeable in the laws of the applicable jurisdiction and the specific intended use of those forms. All forms available for download through FormNet are general in nature; are not based on the laws of any specific state or other juridiction but rather general principles of law applicable throughout the United States; and should only be used after first consulting with an attorney or other expert knowledgeable in the laws of the applicable jurisdiction and the specific intended use of those forms. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
Partnership Agreement - Business Forms
I own a research and development company for pharmaceutical drugs.