Out of site, out of mind Out of site out of mind. This saying applies to your business as much as it does to anything else in your life. And in business, you want to remind your clients that you are there and ready to help them. Even the most successful businesses with the happiest clients should maintain a continuous connection with their clients. You may think that if your customers are satisfied, they will definitely return to you for more. Don't be so sure. Your business is nothing more than one of dozens if not hundreds of businesses in your field. The competition for attention is fierce, and you need to constantly remind your customers ...

Guy Kawasaki recently discussed the results of a new study that showed that thinking about money can create social barriers. The study concluded that when people have money on their mind, "they don't want to depend on others and don't want others to depend on them." Guy applied these results to the topic of evangelism of products and services. Evangelism is where a company offers monetary rewards to clients that spread the word about them. Guy says that perhaps introducing money into the relationship will not necessarily encourage the customer to spread the word, but will rather create some type of barrier that will damage the company/customer relationship. He concludes: "My take on this ...

When I started my home-based business, I was inspired by the many articles touting the benefits of self-employment for mothers. However, reality can be pretty different than ideals, so I would like to come right out and dispel some of the commonly-held falsehoods about self-employment: The lie You can save on childcare. Yeah right. Try getting work done with a kid on your lap tapping happily away on your keyboard, or pulling the pots out of the kitchen cupboard. Even when they're sleeping, you never know if they'll wake up in five minutes or two hours. The result – pressure! This does not yield high-quality results. The truth Get a babysitter, or a nanny. Or consider daycare. Better ...

A customer has walked into your store or has arrived at your web site. This person is interested in your product and plans to buy, whether from you or your competitor. Your price is reasonable and the quality of the product is good. But the person ends up leaving your store/site and buying the product elsewhere. Aaargh! So where did you go wrong? It's not always possible to say, but an important part of making a sale is erasing all your customer's fears and insecurities about buying your product from you. How do you do that? Use the shoe-burning method! Burn the Shoes One summer I needed sandals, and I headed to Jaffa Street in downtown Jerusalem. ...

Part of the Web 2.0 movement is the increasing ease of creating a web presence. Thanks to Blogs, Wikis, and other similar platforms, pretty much anyone can post content on the web. Weebly is a free service that allows users to create a pretty decent looking site quickly and easily. The site can either be hosted with Weebly under a weebly subdomain (i.e. example.weebly.com), or you can download your completed site as a zip, giving you greater flexibility in terms of appearance and hosting. Once you have registered with Weebly and chosen your subdomain, you can get to work. First, choose a ...

If you're in business, one of your main goals is usually to provide an income to yourself and your family. Now, you can't just be in business to make money - you have to love what you do and enjoy "helping" others, i.e. your clients or customers. But this kind of "help" does not fall under the category of charitable giving, where helping takes the form of aiding those who are less fortunate with basics, like food, clothing and health care. I realized recently that a person in business can use their business connections and knowledge to truly help others in a charitable way: by helping people reach a state where they can sustain themselves with their own income, rather than ...

Israelis are a driven people. With less than 60 years of statehood under their belt, Israelis have built leading companies, developed ground-breaking technologies, and even managed to attract Warren Buffet's first investment outside of the US. So what drives them so hard? I recently held a meeting with a client about creating the content for the website of their new desktop application. I asked the CEO by when he would like the copy to be ready. He looked me in the eyes and said, half-seriously, "Today." He was actually demonstrating more flexibility than most other Israeli business owners whom I meet and work with, who when asked the same question, answer "Yesterday." I observed to this particular client that ...

About two years ago I decided that conventional employment was not for me and my lifestyle (i.e. mother to a bunch of kids who felt unappreciated by her boss), and decided to go the independent route. On my first try, I approached all the relevant Israeli tax authorities on my own to open files, and in response these tax authorities chose to define me as a high-end earner and tax me for everything I've got. I quickly understood that this was a mistake, and closed all my files and got a regular employee job. A while later I decided to really take the plunge, and I hired a yoetz mas, a tax advisor, to take care of all ...

About a month ago I really discovered the value of blogs. Until that point, I had assumed that blogs were places where people could record their random thoughts and enjoy the ability to publicly express themselves. Blogging had become so easy, that anyone could do it, and therefore I had concluded that blog quality must be low. But then I began to discover some very intelligent, informative, and useful blogs. These blogs were obviously well thought out, and focused on specific topics. The people behind the blogs were very impressive, and I found myself checking their blogs frequently so that I could immediately read their new material. And then I discovered RSS ...