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Some businesspeople, especially solo-preneur executives on the go, sometimes require the assistance of a receptionist or Personal Assistant to provide clerical or other support to handle routine tasks so that they’re not tied down and can keep their eye on the ball on the things they’re expert in or yields more money. At the same [...]
Many of the families that I work with feel that having to bring in a consultant is an act of failure. The senior generation, in particular, believes that they must have done something wrong—that they must not have raised their children properly. They talk about the sacrifices they made, how they denied themselves many of [...]
“We’ve decided to freeze all salaries for next year, and my employees are now asking if there’s any point to performance reviews in this situation. I don’t have a good answer.” Mike: Ideally, a performance review should be a discussion about an employee’s performance, not about raises and bonuses. Go ahead and talk with your [...]
With all the new data security laws, such as HIPAA, HITECH, when companies are faced with a possible data breach, some companies will panic. Others will attempt to ignore the event completely…sometimes even trying to deny that it happened. I am here to suggest that panicking, ignoring, and denying are not good strategies. There are [...]
The serviced workspace options are immense these days, and growing, to meet the ready-to-go, low-cost, low-commitment, flexibility requirements of the current market, economy and evolving work generations. Fortunately there are a lot of places to go on-line that can assist you, at no-cost, with your search. Here are the best of the best: One service [...]
Yes you can! The entrepreneurial personality is a dogged one. The word “no” does not mean the same to an entrepreneurial personality as it does to you or me. What it means to him or her is that this way isn’t working, and s/he has to find another way. Although there is no research to [...]
“I have three key executives–co-founders, really–whose options are now fully vested. However, it looks like we face at least another three or four years of hard work and small paychecks before we get to a liquidity event, and I’m concerned they’ll leave before then. What incentives can I offer to keep them on board?” Mike: [...]
There are a number of possibilities on how your competitors can gain access to your customer information. In this post, I will attempt to mention some of the most common ways, as well as a few more interesting methods. Employees One of the more common ways someone will obtain your client information is from one [...]
We live in a time where long-term business planning has become practically obsolete. Who knows where you and your business will be in 5 months, let alone 5 years (or how about 2 months, let alone 2 years)? The speed of progress and change in the business world is dizzying. Tomorrow’s technologies and gadgetry are [...]
In my last column, I discussed the dangers of professionals stepping outside of their areas of expertise to give advice in areas where they are not trained. The interesting thing to me is that professionals do not walk boldly into those areas—instead they are frequently invited into them. As I’ve said before, successful advisors to [...]
We need to implement a better user access authentication process, what do you suggest? We are a small operation so we are not looking for something too difficult or expensive. There are other forms of user authentication, such as, security tokens, digital certificates, biometrics, non-text-based passwords, smartcards, etc. Now without knowing what application you are [...]
“One of our major competitors is telling customers that we’re in terrible financial trouble and might go out of business soon. The truth is, money is tight and we’re sometimes slow in paying our bills–but we’re certainly not close to shutting down. Is there anything we can do to disprove the rumors? Mike: Your company’s [...]
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