For the under-30 crowd, a career isn’t about graduating college and working for a Fortune 500 company anymore. It’s about finding a passion, usually involving social, economic, or environmental issues.
In the May 2012 The Tennessean article, “Young entrepreneurs blaze their own trail,” writer Duane Marstellar suggests that more and more young adults are becoming entrepreneurs for economic and personal reasons. Marstellar cites:
Joblessness among 18- to 29-year-olds nationally Continue reading
Power Partners is a compelling concept. Simply put, it is a group of businesses that band together to use and promote the products of the other businesses in the group. There is an old song; “No Man is an Island.” No one can do it alone in the business world.
As much as we might want to think that we can win the battle alone; it just does not work that way. No matter what your line of work, you cannot afford to stand alone. You need people promoting your business and helping to build your clientele. Yes, we have many online marketing tools to help us out, but what is better than “word of mouth,” especially when it comes from people you trust.
Find the people your customers trust, and build a relationship with them. Continue reading
The shortest distance between two points is always a straight line. However, selling directly to your customer instead of developing an indirect sales channel isn’t just about cutting out the middleman and keeping all the profit for yourself. It’s about considering the pluses and minuses of going it alone.
Selling direct may sound like the most profitable way for a company to do business, until you consider the costs that go into selling this way. Let’s compare Microsoft and Apple.
For the most part, Apple sells direct. Continue reading
Building alliances can be tricky. Building strategic alliances is time consuming in that to do it well, you need to be able to see the big picture. In a recent article written by Ken Lyons; 63 Free (or Almost Free) Ways to Market Your Business, each and every suggestion has its roots in building relationshipsKen’s advice isn’t repetitive. It’s just that the art of building strategic alliances is in and of itself the most effective, direct, and fool proof way of marketing your business.