POST CATEGORY : CEO Leadership

How to Make Negotiation your Super Power

Negotiation is a tool we all need at every turn. Business, better salary, leave permission, angry spouse, rebellious kid, street vendor; you name it. Mastering the art of negotiation can make your life much easy.

Businesswoman with negotiation super power

Especially in business negotiations, there is a lot at stake and you simply cannot afford to lose.

With so much pressure riding, it is important go in prepared and use some tips and tricks to ease your way into the talk.

Here are some lessons I learnt from my personal experience and research on how to nail a negotiation.

1. Give succinct anecdotes to prove your point

People like stories from the past to relate to.…

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5 Reasons Why Your SMB Should Invest In The Local Community

Small businesses owners face many challenges, especially in the beginning. You have to find a way to make your business thrive, often on a limited budget. For most business owners, the budget gets focused largely on improving your product or service, your staff, and marketing.

Businesses should support local communities

One aspect that often gets overlooked however, is using some of your money to give back to the local community. While you may think that there is not enough room in your budget to do this, we have a couple of reasons why you might want to reconsider and find some room.

1. Exposure

Marketing is a big part of any business, and rightly so.…

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Combined Skills: The Benefits of Forming a Real Estate Investment Partnership

Forming a real estate investment partnership can have some excellent benefits. An investing partner can open new possibilities that may not have otherwise been available and can make it easier to build up a profitable property portfolio in a shorter time frame.

Real estate investment partnership

Of course, there are times when investing as a partnership won’t be viable. For example, buying a smaller project or a single family home might be more profitable going it alone.

However, when you start looking at larger investments or multiple simultaneous projects, having an investment partner at the ready can help build momentum. Here are some of the key benefits to forming a real estate investment partnership:

Play to Individual Strengths and Combined Skills

A good partner should bring something to each investment deal that you don’t have.…

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The Perfect Location: Choosing a Launch Pad for Your Startup

When it comes to launching a new business, the location you choose can potentially be critical to the success of your venture.

Business district

There are many different types of commercial real estate on the market and numerous different locations to choose from too. If you are a tech business for instance, you might decide on positioning yourself in an area that is renowned for startups of this kind, or it could be that you want to take advantage of some tax breaks to help the finances.

Motivated by profit

The bottom line is that your startup will have to be profitable or it is not going to turn into a growing and successful business, which is why the location you choose can be important.…

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4 Tips for Maintaining Growth as a Startup

The very earliest days of starting up a new business will inevitably be challenging for the founders involved at the sharp end, regardless of the goals being set or the markets being targeted. But once a measure of growth and success has been achieved, there are new challenges to overcome and a new array of pitfalls to avoid.

Startup cofounders

Here’s a look at a few ways in which a fledgling company might aim to maintain growth and develop consistently into a business with a sustainable future.

1. Avoid making too many promises

Having ambitions to grow is essential as a startup but it can be just as important for a new company’s founders not to promise more than they are capable of delivering.…

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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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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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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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Modern Business: Tips to Keep Up with the Techonological Times

Many businesses don’t keep up with the times. They fall behind their competition quickly and then get stuck there forever. Here’s how to stay on top of the every-changing technological times.

Adopting cloud technology

Make Your Business Mobile And Flexible

Most businesses today have some element of mobility. Whether it’s a mobile site for customers or remote access tools for employees and the owner. If you haven’t implemented this kind of functionality, you’re already behind your competition.

You need to hire IT services companies that can bring you up to speed, and fast. Companies that can do business from anywhere are able to provide customers with unparalleled flexibility.…

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Great CEOs are Down on The Basics

There are hundreds of advice columns for CEOs, so let’s start this one with an acknowledgment of how CEOs got where they are in the first place.

Chief executives are bright, fact-based big-picture thinkers who have an innate ability to tune in to what other people are thinking, feeling and doing and to turn that instinct (and knowledge) to their company’s advantage. Those are the basic attributes.

Business woman and CEO

CEOs don’t overlook the small details, but they don’t get hung up on them, either. They are big-picture thinkers, which allows them to focus on long-term company goals.

In so many words, a company can hire all the detail-oriented people they need.…

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