Recent Articles
Steps To Take If Your Business Is Being Sued
If you run a business, you already have a lot to think about, but if a letter arrives in the mail stating that you’re being sued for any reason whatsoever, it can throw your entire routine off and make you feel like your world has spun out of control.
First off, you need to remain as calm as possible and reassure yourself that everything will be fine. Then, read through the following steps to find out what you need to take care of if your business is ever in a vulnerable situation because someone is trying to sue you. By knowing what steps to take, you can make sure that the case is dismissed and that you can prove your innocence.
Find a Business Attorney
The very first thing that you should do is look for a business attorney you can trust who will handle the case well because he or she has extensive experience in the world of business law. If you don’t know a lawyer you can call upon right away, you can ask for referrals from people you trust, or you can perform a simple search on the Internet for business attorneys in your area. Once you have a list of potential lawyers you wish to speak with, interview them, get a feel for their knowledge and expertise, as well as their willingness to help you with your case, and choose the person that you think will work best for you.
Contact Your Insurance Company
After you’ve contacted your lawyer, you need to let your business insurance provider know what’s going on. It may even be a great idea to tell your lawyer to get in touch with your insurance provider so that they can work together on building a strong case for you.
Countersue If You’re Not At Fault
If your lawyer agrees that you have a strong case and you have a good chance of proving your innocence, you can countersue for something like defamation or slander if the party that’s suing you is doing so on false grounds. Again, your lawyer will know what to do best, so follow his or her advice, and if you do decide to countersue, prepare for a lengthy process.
Settle Outside of Court If You’re At Fault
If you’re actually at fault and you don’t have a high chance of winning the case in court, according to your attorney, it may be a better idea to try your best to settle the case outside of court. This will also help keep your business’s name intact in the public eye.
Go to Trial If Necessary
If it’s necessary to go to trial, work closely with your lawyer to prepare all of the documents needed to develop a strong case, whether you decide to countersue or not. Again, be prepared for a long, hard road ahead.
When your business is sued, you may feel like you’re losing all the control that you once had over your company. But, as the owner, you need to keep a level head and remain as calm and professional as possible.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Rachel Dawes is a secretary working for Nishad Khan P.L., a foreclosure attorney in Orlando. She works hard and she indulges in dancing and gymnastics when she isn’t busy working. Log on to nishadkhanla w.com/ to know more about her work.
Crucial Corporate Meeting Power Dressing Pointers
A person’s looks play a large part in forming the initial impression about them. Of course, everyone wants to put the best foot forward and make the best impression at the first glance and indeed your clothes say a lot about you and who you are! Each event and occasion requires different kind of dressing. Dressing for the next corporate meeting or for a job or an interview or a networking event, etc. is a source of immense anxiety for everyone at some point or the other in their career. It can be a nerve-racking experience deciding on what to wear and what not to wear on such occasions. When talking about work and business, it definitely pays to have prior knowledge about the company’s culture and dress code. Mentioned below are some tips that can help you get away with your anxiety and be a success at your next corporate meeting.
Dress code
Wear a suit in shades of black, gray or dark blue in either a solid color or with pinstripes. Both are acceptable for formal business wear but the shirt should be of a light color or crisp white when the suit is dark. The sleeves of the shirt and the blazer should reach the wrist. The shirtsleeves should not be rolled up as it can be viewed as informal. Use ties made of silk or a similar material with a color and print which provides an attractive contrast when viewed against the shirt and blazer. Avoid using loud patterns, images, designer logos and novelty prints for the ties. Make sure to choose socks that match the color of the pants or the shoes and they should be long enough to not expose your skin when you sit down.
Shoes
The shoe should be formal shoes. Typically conservative, low-cut black leather shoes with laces and leather soles are always acceptable as they go easily with most styles. Shoes with plain toes or winged tips are the most commonly worn shoes for the corporate meetings. The shoes must be shiny, clean, well polished and always cleaned with a good shoe polish.
Accessories
Wear a belt that complements the material and style of the shoes. Jewelry for men should be minimal and limited to one ring on each hand at the most and a formal style watch. A necklace is a no-no. Especially when wearing a necklace with a religious symbol it should be tucked away inside the shirt so as not to be visible. When wearing a writing instrument use a good quality fountain pen. The final touch would be the briefcase that should complement the overall look. Choose a smart case or portfolio in a dark color.
Grooming
Grooming is plays a very essential part in the overall appearance. The clothing should be clean, pressed, wrinkle free, and without holes or frayed areas. The hairstyle should project a professional appearance and should be clean and neatly trimmed including the sideburns, the mustaches and the beards. Use a good quality cologne that is mild.
Always keep in mind to follow these basic standard dressing tips, no matter where in the world you are attending a corporate meeting and you will never regret it.
This article is written by Gisele Hawkins, a fashionista. She is also a freelance writer who shares fashion tips through her articles. She recommends skinny suits to men who have broad shoulders and athletic figure.
Tips For Enhancing The Exterior Of Your Company’s Building To Attract More Customers
No matter what type of business you operate, you need to draw in your customers who are walking and driving by your building. If you own your own building, you have a lot of options when it comes to really customising it and making it your very own place; both inside and outside. And with the right design elements, you can really enhance the exterior appearance of your business, which is the first part of your company that customers will see, so that you can entice them to come inside and see what you’re all about.
If you’re ready to invest some of your business’s funds into creating an exterior that will lure more customers into your company’s home base, continue reading for some important tips that will help you get started.
The Right Sign and Maybe Symbol
The right sign outside your business is the perfect way to get people’s attention. Bigger doesn’t always translate to better, though, so be careful about how you go about designing and having your sign constructed. For example, are you hoping to incorporate bold colours that match your business’s overall colour scheme, or would you rather go with a large metal sign that’s clean, sleek and professional looking?
Your sign will ultimately depend upon the type of business that you operate because you want to cater it to your customer base and what they would be attracted. Therefore, keep customers in mind as you work through the design process. Once you have your design in place, hiring the right sign company will ensure that you get a high quality product that will last.
If you can, add a large symbol to the exterior of your building as well. For example, if you own a café that’s called the “Rocket Café,” put a large metal rocket outside alongside your sign, or incorporate it into the design of your sign to really get people’s attention and pique their curiosity.
Use Artwork
Hiring a local artist to paint a mural on the side of your building is one way to get people’s attention. Large, beautiful pieces of artwork are foolproof ways to make your building stand out. You can even get a piece of metal art or a sculpture that you can place outside your building, especially if you have a little garden area or a large wall on which you can hang or place something unique.
Use Bright, Bold Coloured Paint
If you can paint the exterior of your building, take advantage of the option by incorporating your business’s colours on the outside, as well as the inside, of your space. Flashy colours will attract people who are passing by that otherwise would have ignored your drab building that blended in with all of the others around it. Make your building stand out in order to grab the attention of customers before they leave you behind.
When it comes to defining your business’s exterior, use bright colours and artwork to draw people’s attention to your place of business. Once you have their attention, they’ll see your large sign and logo and be curious to find out more about you.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
The author of this post, Jenny Wadlow, is a part of the team at Lump Sculpture Studio, a company specializing in urban art projects. She is a voracious reader and she enjoys catching up on her favorite novels during her leisure time. You can follow her on Twitter @JennyWadlow.
Is Talent Overrated?
Talent and intelligence are overrated.
For example, to become a successful ‘Laptop Entrepreneur’ you need to spend hours and hours studying marketing courses and books, learning about copywriting, outsourcing, online advertising, etc.
Unfortunately, most people want to believe that they can get something for nothing. They want to make money but with NO effort, and without adding any value to anyone.
In the real world, we know that successful athletes, top sports stars, musicians, rock n’ roll bands, doctors, etc. have spent at least 10,000 HOURS practicing and learning their craft. Just do some research on someone like Rafa Nadal, Jack Nicklaus or Sachin Tendulkar if you don’t believe it.
Don’t take my word for it, take that of senior CNN Money Editor, Geoff Colvin:
“The conventional wisdom about “natural” talent is a myth”, he says.
“The real path to great performance is a matter of choice.”
Read the full article here: Why talent is overrated
Tell us what you think. Do you still think you need talent to be successful? Use our comments box and let us know.
LinkedIn Etiquette
Ten Things You Must Do & Ten Things You Must Never Do
Many thanks to Melonie Dodaro for allowing this great infographic on LinkedIn Etiquette to be shared:
For more comprehensive coverage on the important issue of LinkedIn Eeiquette read the full article via Melonie’s blog: TopDogSocialMedia
If you behave like a professional, you’ll build a great profile. Tell us about good and bad examples of LinkedIn etiquette that you’ve come across. There must be some great stories out there!
What Your Website Says About You
If you have to make your business thrive in the digital space, or even otherwise, it is imperative that you back it up with a well-designed professional website. Your business website offers prospective clients a peek into who you are, what you do and how good you are at your job. In short, your website creates precious “first impressions” which can either motivate the visitor to contact you for business or bore them enough to hop over to another website. So, if you are out to create a (positive) digital identity for yourself, here are a few things you should keep in mind.
Content
Picture yourself landing on a website that is full of gibberish, or worse, bad grammar. Would you consider doing business with that individual or company? Likely not. Poor quality content reflects upon the unprofessional attitude of the owner and tells a prospective client that you couldn’t care less. Fix this aspect by drafting relevant, well-written content that is interesting and easy to read. If you aren’t confident about doing it yourself, considering hiring a professional writer for the job. Quality content not only projects your business in a positive light, it also helps you communicate better and build a connection with your clients.
Navigability
Nothing annoys visitors more than a cluttered and unorganized website. If visitors cannot find what they are looking for within the first few seconds, they wouldn’t take the pain of shuffling through pages and links. Make sure you have all the essential elements such as your introduction, services and contact details right there on the landing page. Also, plan the layout of your website such that it is easy to navigate – sorting your content under relevant tabs and pages can help you achieve this. The general guideline is to have separate “about”, “services”, “portfolio” and “contact” pages. In short, a fleeting look at the landing page of the website should tell the visitor what your business is all about.
Design
Going over the top with design is the most common mistake made by website owners. By all means a website should be visually appealing but that does not translate into stuffing it with all design elements that have ever existed. A simple, clean design with the basic elements will be far more effective than a jazzy flash website that takes hours to load. An “over-designed” website is distracting to the eye and takes the attention away from the real content, thus defeating the whole purpose of having a website in the first place.
Brand Identity
Right from the color scheme, to the pictures and fonts, every aspect of your website design should reflect the essence of your business. For example, you could use creative and fun designs if you are an artist or a photographer, and more elegant themes for a lawyer’s or doctor’s website. A professional web developer will be able to advise you on the best design for your needs. You may also want to create a business logo to establish brand identity.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://pixabay.com/en/new-internet-open-web-website-tab-38743/
Jenny Wadlow is a part of the team at Motto, which is a graphic design agency. She is an avid blogger and whenever she isn’t busy, she enjoys sketching and practicing her designing skills. You can catch up with her on Twitter @JennyWadlow.
Social Networking For Scientists
What are the advantages of using the Internet and social media if you are a scientist or other scholar? While it may seem like the Internet is full of sites and information that can distract you from your work, it in fact can help you make the important connections you need to further your research. A recent study showed that email was the most popular service used on the Internet, followed by Google, Yahoo! and Scholar Google. In addition to allowing for easy communication with colleagues all over the world, the Internet makes it easier to crowd source, collect data, share resources and build relationships. How much value does social networking hold for scientists overall? Use this infographic to explore the changing landscape of media to see how you can benefit from participating in this type of networking. This will allow you to gather the news and information online that is essential to your everyday life.
Created by Labroots, the leading social networking website for scientists, engineers, and other technical professionals.
Tips For Starting Up A Small Business
Starting up a small business is no easy task, but a lot of people have a dream of someday running their own company and being their own boss. If you’re one of these people, be prepared to make some sacrifices and put in a lot of hard work and a lot time into your venture. Remember that you’ll only succeed if you’re truly dedicated to your business idea and you go about it with the right strategy in place.
If you’re ready to start up your very own small business, continue reading for some tips that’ll help you make your dreams a reality.
Find a Location for Your Business
Depending upon the type of business you wish to own, you’ll need to determine where it should be located. You want to go where there’s a market for the goods and services you’re planning to offer, but you also don’t want to enter an area that’s already saturated with similar businesses. Therefore, it can be quite difficult to find the ideal spot where customers will know about your company and will want to purchase goods and services from you. You need to really do your research, find out where the competitors are and how well they’re doing, and consider which demographics in particular you wish to target.
Get the Proper Amount of Funding
Once you have an idea of what area you want to be in, you need to think about how much money you’ll need to actually get the business going. This includes figuring out how much the real estate costs in the area you’re looking at cementing your business in are, and you also have to consider that the first few months of a business are the hardest because you’ll be operating at a loss until you generate enough revenue to start earning profits. Once you have done the math and figured out how much money you need, though, you’re ready to get some funding to start up your venture. Look up grant opportunities, which you may qualify for that will give you free money you don’t have to pay back, as well as loans that you can apply for that you’ll need to repay with interest. These funds will help you establish your business and keep you going until you can stand on your own.
Start Advertising
You have to start marketing your new business before it even opens, so once you have your location and funding in place, put up a huge sign with your business’s name on it and the words “coming soon.” This should begin generating some interest in the local community. Put your website address on the sign so that people can find you and learn more about you, and start placing ads online and in the local newspaper.
Starting up a business is an exciting time. This is your chance to do everything right, so make sure that you gather enough information about the demographics you wish to target, the real estate you’ll need, and the loans you’ll require.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
The contributor of this post, Brian Smith, is an enthusiastic sales executive. He enjoys sharing his opinions through his articles, which mostly focus on his work experiences at YellowStone Capital. He is also very passionate about racing.
How Safe Are Your Online Documents? Here’s How To Guard Them Safely
Just how safe are the documents that you create on your computer? Anything from passwords to those essential tax prep documents can be potentially unsafe. Whether it’s personal things you need to protect, or sensitive commercial information, you need to know that you are doing all that you possibly can in order to make sure that your documents are seen only by the eyes that they are intended for. Every single business keeps confidential information such as personnel records and wage slips on their computer system – and in the wrong hands this could be catastrophic. There is even a risk on a personal computer – if you create documents at home, for example a journal, do you really want other people to be able to see them if they gain access to your computer? We didn’t think so! Here is our guide to making sure that your document security is watertight.
Set a Password
Microsoft Word gives you the facility to set a password for your document, meaning that it is impossible to open it unless you know what it is. This is a really important thing to do. Unfortunately, if you forget the password yourself, it can be very tricky to regain access to the document yourself, so you need to make sure that this password is either very memorable, or that it is written down in a safe place somewhere (well away from the computer).
Protect Folders
Sometimes you might have entire folders of highly sensitive information (such as personnel records). You can set a password on the whole folder. If you work on a shared network, you can specify certain users that are authorized to access the folder, so that only people with a genuine reason for needing to get in there can do so.
Track Changes
If ‘tracked changes’ is switched on within a document, then you will be notified of any changes that have been made and by whom. This means that you will always be able to tell if somebody has been changing the document without your authorization. Head on over to the ‘Trust Center’ on your computer and it will show you all the many ways you can protect your privacy. There is even an option for the program to warn you before it prints something – which means that if somebody is merrily printing out documents that they shouldn’t have access to, you can be notified.
Play Around With the ‘Document Inspector’
Microsoft Word offers a ‘Document Inspector’ feature which will tell you about any compromising metadata and let you remove it before you send files out. Have a look online at how other people are cleaning metadata from their files.
Protecting your online files is absolutely vital if you want to make sure that your documents are seen only by the people they are meant for. You need to protect yourself from all risks – from people that are just being plain nosy, to highly dangerous online identity thieves. Don’t leave yourself wide open to difficulties – always make sure your online security is as tight as possible.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Today’s guest author, John Cooper enjoys writing about his work and personal experiences and he also likes sharing useful information through his articles.
3 Tips For Facilitating An Office Move With Minimum Downtime
If you decide that you need more space to accommodate your growing business, you have to start thing of moving offices. When it is time to move offices, you need to look for ways to ensure that the move is conveniently effected and it does not affect your operations too much.
Whether you are moving down the block, or to a different town or state, there are things that you can do to ensure minimum interruption of your business. Through the use of technology, work can go on right in the middle of the move. Following are some tips to ensure a smooth move.
1. Plan in advance
You need to start planning the move early enough to ensure that you make the transition with ease. You need to know in advance how and where to set up the equipment and where the Ethernet connections will be wired. The move will entail moving your wireless network or local area network, as well as your computers, printers and other equipment.
Early planning will help you to manage the shipping costs, and you also get adequate time to install the technology in the new office. Moving over the weekend can be very convenient as you can do all the troubleshooting you need without interruptions.
2. Upgrading the equipment
A move is a great excuse to upgrade your office equipment. If you have been using old bulky equipment, this is a good time to think about getting new equipment. Think of it as making a fresh start in your new office. There is a wide range of new equipment in the market and you can take advantage of the occasion to make your business more efficient. Get rid of all the outdated hardware and software so that you can start business in the new office in a better position. You can sell or donate your old equipment before you move.
3. Utilize computer programs
Make sure that you use computer programs effectively to help you in the move. Save all your files in readiness for the migration and use the best software to ensure that you can make the transition to the new equipment and location without losing any data. This will help to ensure that you can start work immediately you get to the new location. There are programs that will help you to move the e-mail and other data that you want to keep so that you can transfer them to your new computers.
Even though you do not encounter any issues or delays, it is a good idea to anticipate them. This will help to ensure that you are prepared if anything happens. Moving can be quite unpredictable and it is not unusual to experience unexpected expenses or issues with clients.
Make sure that you keep your clients informed about the move and use laptops to ensure that you are still in operation. With proper planning and use of technology, you can make your move as painless as possible, and you can be productive while you are at it!
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Today’s featured writer, Thomas Philip is an ardent blogger, during his time off from work, he enjoys writing on a variety of topics that interest him.
