Failure is an inevitable part of life. So why is it so often met with punishment? Negative reinforcement might be helpful when studying lab rats, but when you bring it into the workplace, it starts to cause harm—both to your employees and to your business. To understand failure’s impact, you must understand what actually motivates people.
Meetings in startups can be fun and exciting. But then low-energy, meandering discussions set in, wrecking decision-making and killing, not inspiring, creativity.
One of the most important skills to learn as a manager, a Mum, a Dad, or a Teacher of any description, is how to provide criticism. At some stage in your life, you’ve attempted to endow another human being with a nugget of your superior knowledge on a subject that you’re particularly skilled or knowledgeable in.
This article is inspired by Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion. Influence was recommended to me by a friend who sees it as a seminal text on how to convince people to do things. It’s a book that delves deep into the reasons why we do what others tell us to do, and the tactics that ‘compliance professionals’, as Cialdini calls them, employ to ensure that we listen and act (click!).
The next wave of Social Media E-commerce Tools is here. Selling through Instagram, Snapchat and Messenger has been up and running for a while now, and it seems to be working, with Facebook recently launching the beta version of a plugin for Messenger on business websites.
Every company has its own mix of hiring must-haves: hard skills, education, personality traits, ability to problem-solve under pressure, and more. But there's one that every firm - regardless of size or industry - should have on its list, and that's empathy.
As the co-founder of a startup now in its fourth year of life, I'm not surprised to see that, according to a recent Kabbage survey, 29 percent of the small-business owners it surveyed said they spend more than 50 hours a week working, and 86 percent take their work home on weekends and holidays (like the just-passed Memorial Day holiday).
For companies selling products with long lead times, that are complex to manufacturer or have limited shelf life, inventory management is a tightrope act. If you have too much merchandise on hand, products sit on shelves past their expiration dates. If you have too little, customers get upset about back-ordered products.
Google Analytics is an incredibly useful tool for businesses of all sizes, but because of its many complicated terms and metrics, it can be difficult to understand. Use this guide to learn what Google Analytics is, to see how to set up a Google Analytics account and to familiarize yourself with some of the most important metrics and terms.
One of the biggest misconceptions about tech careers is that programmers, web designers, developers—you name it—all work at tech companies. And sure, with their endless perks, tech companies sound great, but maybe you don’t want to work for a tech company.
Marketing moves fast, and working in this industry means you've got to get comfortable with change. At the drop of a hat, new marketing tools can change how we create and distribute our messaging, emerging technologies change how we track ROI, and trends can impact our decision-making processes.
Great marketing strategies are built around data, and existing customers provide you with plenty of that. If you've been documenting your customer interactions, you should have a picture of who they are, what types of products they buy, and what their pain points are. You can use that data to build personalized marketing strategies that keep those people interested in your company.