For the past year, I have taught an MBA-level online class on “entrepreneurship and small business management” for a local university. Rather than give students a traditional final exam, with multiple choice and true/false questions, I have adopted a “Zen exam” approach. Each question is a real-world entrepreneurial challenge that not only tests the students’ […]
How many times have you tried to get service from a company and been passed around endlessly to no avail? How does this make you feel? Personally, it makes me feel either as if there is not order in the world or, at least, as if I’ve wasted my time. As a business owner, each […]
Word-of-mouth advertising remains the most influential and trustworthy method of advertising, according to a Nielsen report, which found that 68 percent of people surveyed trust online consumer opinions. Real-life testimonials soften a business’s exterior, allowing for higher emotional intensity. The Keller Fay Group found that emotionally connected brands get three times more business than those […]
By some estimates, the typical entrepreneur consumes 60 sheets of paper a day or 12,000 a year. Even with the dramatic rise and popularity of the Internet, email, TM, IM, and Skype, when assessing the information deluge we each face, paper is among the largest culprits. In the US we have the lowest postal rates […]
If you’re like me, you critique other businesses that fall short of their product or service claims. You fume about slow websites, mazes of voicemail, products that aren’t quite what you expected. But what about your own business? What does it look like through the eyes of a customer? Here’s a simple way to analyze […]