What does it take to get in touch with your inner rebel and run a business on your terms? Today’s Information Age has spawned a number of rebel business leaders, from Virgin’s Richard Branson to The Body Shop’s Anita Roddick and to Joie de Vivre Hospitality’s boy wonder the author himself, people who have the passion, instinct, agility and vision to rewrite the rules of business so it is ethical, respects diversity, and means more to people than simply turning a profit. So what exactly is a rebel? – Rebels get into activities that make them lose track of time

To achieve great things, you need a team. Building a winning team requires understanding of these principles. Whatever your goal or project, you need to add value and invest in your team so the end product benefits from more ideas, energy, resources, and perspectives. 1. The Law of Significance People try to achieve great things by themselves mainly because of the size of their ego, their level of insecurity, or simple naiveté and temperament. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. Read full article

If you think baseball is just the national pastime, think again. According to management consultant and ex-baseball reporter Jeff Angus in his book “Management by Baseball,” baseball can teach you everything you need to know about management. From the managers’ strategies to the players’ batting averages, baseball can impart critical lessons on project management, maximizing productivity of staff, strategic planning, facing difficult organizational challenges, or engaging big changes in a specific industry or the economy. In his book, Angus distills the lessons learned from baseball news and applies them to business management. He uses baseball stories and anecdotes from baseball

The Logo: a little history Logotype, commonly know as a logo, is a design, a graphic representation/image/trademark symbolizing one’s organization. Designed for instant identification, a logo can appear on company letterhead, advertising material and signs as an emblem by way of which the organization can easily be recognized. Originating in the 19th century, after a surge in industrial manufacturing that led to an increase in output, global distribution, and the commencement of competition, logos were created to differentiate between products within the same industry. Emblems or symbols were included on products, packages and labels so buyers could easily recognize the

This is a question we received from one of our readers through our Consult Your Guides: I’m staying in VA. Recently I’ve started a new firm (S Corp) and working as a contractor in DC through my firm. I’m the only one working for the company. My wife is partner in the company, but she is permanent employee of some other firm. Estimated revenue of my company is around 120K/yr. What salary/compensation should I draw for myself? As my wife is a partner, is it mandatory to pay salary/compensation for her? – Prashant Read our Guides’ response

We are all self-employed now. Today there is absolutely no job security. We are living in an age of corporate downsizing, and freelance consultants, or self-employed workers are growing by the day. Networking is one skill you need to practice to get ahead and survive these uncertain times. Wisdom in a Nutshell: 1. Networking is essential for both new jobs and business contracts.2. Effective networking is 12 times more effective than answering advertisements3. Advertising is becoming ineffective except on a large scale.4. Networking helps you find hidden opportunities and can set you apart from the competition.5. An indirect approach is

Are you finding many of your best prospects already working with competitors? When you pursue a new opportunity, is someone else capturing the prize? Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your positioning. Your market position is the place you occupy in the mind of your prospective clients. It’s how they think of you as compared to your competitors. Adjectives like established or cutting-edge; high-quality or inexpensive; convenient or full-service are all relative terms. When applied to you and your business, they distinguish you from the competition. Read full story

None of us have enough time in the day to get everything done, but small business owners and entrepreneurs like you are particularly pressed. You wear so many hats; there is a seemingly infinite list of tasks to accomplish each day, from providing services to clients, managing product distribution and delivery, to keeping accounting in order. You try to fit in some marketing when you can, but you’re not sure which activities are essential to do each week or each month to build a steady stream of clients. You make some calls, send out a mailing or put up a

Doing business with federal government agencies can be very lucrative for the people who lean how to maneuver through the maze of registrations, certifications and regulations. But if you are ready to start, these are the first steps you need to take to open the door to federal business opportunities. Read full story

The advent of spam, phishing scams, and tightened legislations on combatting these email menaces have put the effectiveness of email marketing on the line. Marketers began to have questions whether emails can still bring the level of response it did a few years ago. Are customers even receiving the emails? Or are the marketing emails being filtered alongside spam? Are customers so inundated with emails that they no longer welcome emails from marketers? Internet Retailer magazine sought to find out how marketers are viewing and using email to promote their businesses. The magazine sent out a survey to 32,000 subscribers