• Beauty and the Business. Photo by Startup Stock Photos. License: CC BY 4.0.
    Management

    Beauty and the Business: How to Compete and Thrive in the Salon Industry

    The beauty industry is one of the most competitive work forces in America. Many beauty professionals fail to learn the business management aspect of their salons – and this has led to the beauty industry yielding the second highest failure rate of any industry. To truly succeed in the beauty industry, there are four important tips that every salon owner needs to understand before they undertake such a big enterprise. 1. Never forget about social media. Every small business owner knows that social media is pivotal to a fledgling company. But beauty businesses have even more to gain from social media. Since they offer an aesthetic, utilizing the visual aspect of online…

  • Mailbox
    Business Tools,  Logistics,  Marketing

    Address Validation Tools Can Save Your Business Serious Cash

    You’ve captured the addresses of customers and prospects the same way for years, and you don’t really want to switch over to another system that requires re-training your employees. The learning curve and training time are nothing, however, compared to the costs your business incurs because of dirty data in your system. A whopping 94 percent of companies suspect their databases suffer from major inaccuracies, a QAS.com report on data quality notes. Even if you don’t think data cleaning is worth the time and effort, there are indirect and direct costs associated with data quality issues that all businesses need to be aware of. Direct Costs The postage you spend…

  • Write Business Plan
    Finance

    How to Write a Business Plan that Secures Funding

    Simply having a great business idea is not enough, one needs strong capital support from investors in order to make their idea a reality. The best way to acquire funds is to lay out a good business plan as financiers require a solid plan to evaluate an investment opportunity. Through a business plan, you can communicate your new business idea’s potential to investors in a logical and convincing manner. Writing an effective business plan may seem like a tedious task but it is critical in helping potential investors assess the business risks before investing in the company. When working towards building a workable business plan, ensure that it clearly and…

  • Finance

    How To Develop Confidence Speaking During A Budget Meeting

    Presenting a budget to shareholders, investors and colleagues can be uncomfortable, especially if finances in the past were less than optimistic. But even the most negative of situations can be made positive when speaking with confidence in the boardroom. CEOs are experts at dealing with this pressure and delivering investor confidence when talking about company money. In a TechCrunch article, Gregory Ferenstein argues that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer would be a great resource to U.S. Congress during the sequester debates in the House and Senate. The reasons vary from Mayer’s tactics of turning around Yahoo to her past with Google, but the underlying theme is that she knows finance and…