50 Shades of Green: The Difference Between Seeming and Being Sustainable

Green is the new black, and sustainability has been “in” for well over a decade. In fact, companies that don’t strive to support the green movement might as well close up and turn out the lights. In today’s ardently ecological climate, it makes smart business sense to build a brand on the basic tenants of sustainability, but too many businesses are giving the movement a bad name with less than adequate standards.

Bike to work

Even if you reduce, reuse, and recycle, your business likely contributes to a number of dangerous practices that are doing untold damage to the Earth and its people, and if your tree-hugging customers discover your washed-out shades of green, you might as well flip your “open” sign to “closed.”…

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Marketing Toolbox: Ways to Build Your Residential Construction Business From the Ground Up

Some of the smartest ways to build a home construction business aren’t always the most intuitive. Here are a few ideas to get you going from the ground up using smart marketing tools that your competition isn’t.

Residential construction business

How To Find Your Target Audience

Think about the age, gender, location, and income of the families you want to be working with. Figure out where these people live right now, what the neighborhood culture is like, and how to connect your ideal customer with that neighborhood.

For example, in Chicago, you might have one type of customer that would want to live in Hyde Park.…

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Silver Could Be the Perfect Investment Choice for your Business – Here’s Why

There comes a point in the life of every enterprise where your business isn’t performing as well as it used to. Peaks and troughs are inevitable, and yet the ultra competitive commercial environment left over from the recession means that the effects of such a pattern are more dangerous than ever before.

Silver coins and bars

For those entrepreneurs who are not willing to leave the fate of their venture to the vagaries of the economic market or industry trends, it pays to have a backup plan. You need to be able to create a comfortable cushion of cash to support your business, so that when you inevitably fall, hitting the ground doesn’t break you.…

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Ford Medium Duty Trucks for The Modern Job Site

If you are running a business that requires utility trucks, you surely understand that your choice of trucks can determine the effectiveness of your operation; you need the ones that are high in performance.

Ford F-650 2015

High performance utility trucks used to be all about function. Manufacturers built them for size and strength, and it was up to the people operating them to make these beasts fit the job itself. There wasn’t a lot of variety, there wasn’t a lot of customizable options. But that wasn’t the point. These vehicles over delivered in terms of strength and cargo load capability. It was a one-size-fits-all approach.…

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Navigating Coworker Conflict (from an owner’s perspective)

Unresolved or unaddressed conflicts at work can impede productivity and impact staff morale. While these situations are often a normal consequence of people working closely together, there are some tactics that will help to defuse these common occurrences and get your team back on track.

Conflict in the workplace

A successful mediation may even set the stage for increased productivity and provide affirmation to your team that their hard work and efforts are greatly appreciated. Let’s take a look at some of the skillsets that business owners can implement for successful mediation during coworker conflict. Some of these are in direct response to conflict while others are more preventative in nature.…

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Producing Great Membership Cards: DIY or Outsource?

If you run a business, club, gym or organisation the chances are you may need to produce membership cards. Hobby clubs and gyms use them a lot as a way to make sure that only members get access to certain areas. Effectively these double as simple ID badges.

Hyatt Gold Passport membership card

Many firms also use them as a way to reward customers for their loyalty perhaps taking a percentage off the bill for people who carry the card or only allowing people with a card to benefit from certain offers. Some firms use plastic ID cards with a magnetic strip or simple smart chip embedded in them.…

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How to Choose the Right Printer for your Business

The majority of businesses are majorly dependent on technology, and if you’re a small business owner you’ll probably have already bought a number of different gadgets in order to help you manage your business as best you can. Printers are just one piece of technology that are essential for any business – even though you can do a lot of things online or via email, you’ll probably still need to print documents such as invoices and receipts, and documents that you need regarding tax. If you’re planning to purchase a printer for your business, there are a number of things that you’ll need to take into consideration.…

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More Than a Vendor: How to Turn your Vendors into Partners

For many small businesses, vendors serve a defined purpose: They provide a product or service. Once that is done, the business pays the bill and moves on, until the next time they need the product or service.

Business partnerships with vendors

In some situations, this model works. However, many businesses have found their vendors are an important part of their success, and are instrumental in their company reaching its goals. Those companies that have developed strategic partnerships with their vendors are often in a better position to achieve their objectives and to maximize their results than those who take a more transactional approach to working with vendors.…

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5 Times You Should Relocate Your Business (and When You Should Stay Put)

Deciding to move to a different city when you work for someone else is a major decision. Balancing the emotional with the practical can lead to tough choices, even when it appears that moving is the best thing for your family, your career, and your life.

Relocating business location

When you own a business, making that decision is even more difficult. Even if your business is mostly online, or you work with clients everywhere, pulling up the stakes and heading to a new city requires thought, planning, and a healthy tolerance for risk. That being said, there are a few signs that it’s time to move your business somewhere else, especially if you want to grow.…

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5 Ways to Be a More Ethical Leader

In today’s business environment, perhaps no principle is more revered — and yet more misunderstood — than ethics. Leaders and business owners claim that they want to be more ethical, or that that conduct their businesses in an ethical fashion, yet have difficulty articulating exactly what that means to their daily operations.

Ethics

Often companies will devote considerable time and resources toward becoming a more social responsible — ethical — organization, with the intent of attracting more business and a more loyal customer base. And there is some evidence that those efforts pay off; in a recent Wall Street Journal report, researchers found that consumers are more willing to support, and will pay more for products from, a company that they believe acts ethically.…

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