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If you own a business or are responsible for a business, do you monitor your reputation online to see what clients and other people are saying about you?
Given the statistics above, if you are not monitoring your online reputation, you really need to start Read More
The post Is Your Online Reputation Impacting Your Business? appeared first on Small Business Trends.
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Writing Travel
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Steveolsher
Tip â€" give nothing away for free â€" they MUST at least give their email newsletter (this works for SOME not for all or even most)
BuckHornSprings
RetinaEyeDoctor.com
Cookthisgetlaid
Writing Travel
RobHasAwebsite.com
Steveolsher
Tip â€" give nothing away for free â€" they MUST at least give their email newsletter (this works for SOME not for all or even most)
BuckHornSprings
From January 6th through 8th, Bloggers, Podcasters and Web TV content creators will be flocking to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for NMX 2013…aka BlogWorld.  This 3-day event will attract people from over 50 countries and offers over 140 educational sessions presented by more than 175 industry leaders on Content Creation, Distribution of Content, Monetization and so much more!
A few of the Keynote, Featured, Super Session and BusinessNext speakers lined up this year include:
Our very own Ramon Ray, Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com & Infusionsoft, will also be doing a session on ‘Personal Branding: How Little Companies Can Do Big Things‘.
Why should you consider attending NMX?  It's the first and only industry-wide conference, tradeshow and media event dedicated to providing valuable content on Blogging, Podcasting and Web TV creation.  What does this have to do with your small business?  It's all about CONTENT…and getting the right content out to your audience using the most effective vehicle (blog, video, etc.).
If you're not convinced, here's 10 great reasons why you should consider attending:
Make 2013 the year where you concentrate on upping the quality of your content and effectively delivering it to your audience and attend NMX 2013 to learn exactly how to do that!
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The deal that the President and Congress put together to force each other to deal with expiring tax cuts at the beginning of this year seemed like a strategy that was doomed to failure.
The fundamental disagreement was simple and fairly typical: Democrats wanted to preserve middle-class tax cuts, raise taxes on the rich and preserve as much domestic spending as possible, while Republicans wanted to preserve all the tax cuts and find savings by cutting social programs and other non-defense discretionary spending.
It doesn't often get much more unambiguously partisan than that.
In the end, circumstances forced the Republicans to meet the President halfway, giving him a final legislative victory just before showing the 112th Congress the door. I'm guessing that it's easier to stand your ground when you have a campaign promise to keep and you are not the lame duck in the room.
I'd bet that almost everybody involved is sorely relieved. Except, perhaps, House Republicans.
The final compromised reached largely between Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his former foe and colleague, Vice-President Joe Biden, calls for the Bush tax cuts to be made permanent for couples earning less than $450,000 per year ($400,000 for individuals). Capital gains taxes would remain at the 15% level for those lower income households, while the upper income crowd would see their income tax rate increase from 35% to 39.6% and their capital gains tax rate would climb to 20%.
House Republicans, in an attempt to take their lemons and make whiskey sours, are claiming victory and vindication because Democrats finally caved and made even some of the Bush tax cuts permanent - which President Bush was counting on all along. And, even though the more liberal Democrats view the President's compromise as yet another failure on his part to hold out for left-wing purity, they are hailing the tax increase as a victory and an early instance of President Obama keeping a campaign promise.
In the meantime, you might be forgiven for wondering if there is anything in this legislative bally-hoo that will be of benefit to microbusiness owners.
Back in mid-December, the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE), the only national advocacy organization specifically for microbusinesses, expressed its unhappiness with the evident inability of Congress to get its act together to avoid a tax hike that will hit middle-class microbusiness owners right where it hurts.
According to the NASE's analysis of the impact of inaction, microbusiness owners earning between $60,000 and $88,000 would have been looking at a tax hike of between $2700 and $3700 per year.
Of course, most microbusinesses don't actually make that much money. The overwhelming majority of them are nonemployers and their average annual earnings, as of 2010, were about $43,000 per year.
So, while there are some high earners among microbusiness owners who might be disappointed at this legislative turn of events, the majority of them will benefit from getting to keep their current tax rates intact.
The rest of the supposedly small-business-friendly items in this legislation - such as a temporary extension of the $500,000 Section 179 expensing cap and the R&D tax credit, a permanent estate tax exemption of $5 million (indexed to inflation), a permanent “fix†for the alternative minimum tax (the AMT won't kick in until a couple filing jointly reaches an earnings level of $78,750, also indexed to inflation) - won't apply to most small businesses.
And some small business advocates are disappointed at what they are calling a stop-gap measure that falls well sure of a much-needed comprehensive overhaul of the tax system.
Said Todd McCracken, President of the National Small Business Association, in a press release:
“While the permanent extension for the lower tax rates is a positive, tax increases-at any level-should only have been done within the context of broad tax reform.â€
The NASE has not yet released a statement in response to the fiscal cliff deal.
Fiscal Cliff Photo via Shutterstock
From January 6th through 8th, Bloggers, Podcasters and Web TV content creators will be flocking to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for NMX 2013…aka BlogWorld.  This 3-day event will attract people from over 50 countries and offers over 140 educational sessions presented by more than 175 industry leaders on Content Creation, Distribution of Content, Monetization and so much more!
A few of the Keynote, Featured, Super Session and BusinessNext speakers lined up this year include:
Our very own Ramon Ray, Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com & Infusionsoft, will also be doing a session on ‘Personal Branding: How Little Companies Can Do Big Things‘.
Why should you consider attending NMX?  It's the first and only industry-wide conference, tradeshow and media event dedicated to providing valuable content on Blogging, Podcasting and Web TV creation.  What does this have to do with your small business?  It's all about CONTENT…and getting the right content out to your audience using the most effective vehicle (blog, video, etc.).
If you're not convinced, here's 10 great reasons why you should consider attending:
Make 2013 the year where you concentrate on upping the quality of your content and effectively delivering it to your audience and attend NMX 2013 to learn exactly how to do that!
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Storing and protecting company data is an important function for those who run businesses of all types and sizes. Of course, new technology has drastically changed the ways companies choose to handle important data over the last several years. And now, the data landscape is changing once more, particularly for small and medium sized businesses.
Data security and storage company Imation recently announced its acquisition of Nexsan, a smaller data storage provider, in an effort to target medium and small businesses and strengthen its brand.
Imation has traditionally targeted larger businesses and enterprise clients with its scalable storage products and solutions. Nexsan, on the other hand, offers solutions that can target smaller companies such as cloud solutions.
President and CEO of Imation Mark Lucas said in a statement:
“Our strategy includes focusing on the underserved SMB market with purpose-built storage systems and appliances. This is a market that Nexsan knows well.â€
With this acquisition, Imation hopes to accelerate its growth in the small business market. It's not yet clear how this will specifically change the solutions offered by Imation and/or Nexsan in the coming months or years. But the move is expected to widen Imation's offerings, particularly pertaining to disk-based and flash storage-based technology.
Nexsan currently has more than 11,000 business customers worldwide, with its technology platform and disk and solid-state storage solutions. The company was founded in 1999 and also has a wide base of partners that help distribute its products and solutions to targeted businesses.
The acquisition price included $105 million in cash and about $15 million in stock. The deal is expected to be completed during the first quarter.
Nexsan's 200 employees, who are based in the U.S., U.K., and Canada have joined Imation, and Nexsan will continue to operate from the company's current headquarters in Thousand Oaks, California.
Kentucky has it share of bourbon distilleries and stories. Â Any story of bourbon must include Jim Beam. Â The brand and lessons from the producer's humble beginnings are highlighted in Beam, Straight Up: The Bold Story of the First Family of Bourbon. Â It's the story of a successful family business that has thrived through multiple generations.
The author, Fred Noe (co-authored by Jim Kokoris), is a 7th generation Beam Master Distiller, and the great-grandson of Jim Beam. Â I picked up the ebook browsing NetGallery, looking for a book that shares family history with business history.
Straight Up fits the bill as a great business teacher, similar in scope to Guitar Lessons. But it's also fun because of its subject matter. Food, in general, brings out the best in people.  We socialize around it, be it casual or the stereotypical business lunch and alcohol was always meant to keep people relaxed. Noe also notes that impression.
“When I first started traveling, I thought the world was a big place…. The food may be different, the customs, the clothes, but in the end, people are people. Bourbon helps. It's a common language, everyone understands it, no matter where they're from.â€
In noting that, Noe immerses the reader comfortably into his world. He explains the family history and his place, including a chapter on his father Booker, and the story of how Noe came into the business. Nice twists occur with touches upon the imagined cultural milestones along the way, like prohibition. During that time, Noe says Jim Beam:
“. . .did a lot of things to stay afloat, but one thing he didn't do was go to jail.â€
Beam ran a coal mine and rock quarry to replace the shut down distillery, though he was not as successful:
“Heart was not in it, and it showed in the bottom line.â€
Entrepreneurs may identify with various aspects of Beam family character towards the business:
And with some interesting quirks. Â Such as carrying a family heirloom, a jar of yeast used in bourbon distilling, in the front seat of Jim Beam's Cadillac:
“You see, you have to use the same yeast to keep your whiskey consistent and tasting, and he wasn't about to let it out of his sight. My great-grandmother Mary… said the yeast stunk up the house, said it smelled like old socks, but Jim didn't care…. That yeast was gold; it made his whiskey special and it smelled just fine to him.â€
Readers also get the factoids that make nice life-of-the-party topics. Guess what color whiskey starts out as? Clear as water, adopting a brown color from caramelized sugars in the aging process.
Interesting facts like that get woven into more compelling retelling, such as the robberies of stored liquor during the prohibition period.   Distilleries had warehoused stock, and plenty of it â€" they were still caught flatfooted by the outlawing of liquor. Thieves would break into the temporary storage for whiskey, replacing whiskey they'd steal with water. Another prohibition outcome was the use of bourbon for medicinal purposes:
“That's right, during prohibition bourbon suddenly became government approved medicine. A handful of distilleries stayed alive by getting permits to sell their whiskey to drugstores that could then turn around and sell it to people who had a doctor's prescription…. I may be wrong, but I don't think anyone made much money doing that, but every dime helped back then.â€
And Noe explains the timeline with Kentucky flair, such as his imagery for Jim Beams' retirement:
“In Kentucky, people don't ride off into the sunset, don't head out to pasture. They sit on the front porch. He had one of the best front porches in Kentucky. Wide and sturdy, overlooking North Third Street, Bardstown's main drag.â€
The most direct chapter that speaks to small business is Chapter 10: How to Build a Company That Lasts. This approach contrasts Guitar Lessons, another historical look at a specific industry. But this also speaks with authority â€" after all you don't get to be 7th generation anything without a lesson or two passed along.  A family tree dating to 1770 lets you know how far along the lessons have come.
The nuggets are common sense ideas, such as knowing your customer, ensuring quality, and consistency. Others are refreshed ideas that Noe personalizes, enough to compliment any business process book, such as having pride and passion â€" Noe gets a lump in his throat from seeing a Beam truck deliver bourbon, but he also does so as a muse for the quality and consistency he advocates.
If you pick up this book, delve into Chapter 9, which details the distillery's response to decreasing bourbon sales in the 1970s. Â You will learn what innovation means, with an eye for balancing family tradition and marketplace shifts.
A few images of the family history appendage at the book's end, as well as a small segment of Beam-based drinks and recipes. These are well done and festive in tone (I really liked the hangover cure!).
The book makes for a good gift for the business owner who appreciates business history or who just needs a step back from a process or technical book.
Noe writes in the prologue he had some reservations in writing a book. I am glad he chose otherwise.
