Starting a business is stressful, we all know that, but did you know that small businesses make up around half of all U.S. private-sector workers, and have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years? With new businesses popping up more and more, what are these current and new business owners doing to gain the capital backing they need?
Entries Tagged as 'Business'
5 Alternative Ways to Attain Money for Your Business
March 9th, 2010 · View Comments · Business Development
Tags:Alternative·Bank·Business·Cash·Factoring·Grants·Investors·Invoice·Loans·Money·Venture Capital
100 Words You Need To Speak Any Language even Chinese and Ancient Greek
February 25th, 2010 · View Comments · China
Did you ever wish you could speak French and read all those great novels? Or maybe Spanish, so you could travel to South America and have more than Buenos Dias? Or Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese. Most of us never start. It’s too hard. But, if I told you that all you need is 100 words [...]
Tags:Branding·Business·Career·Development·education·Innovation·language·Self-Confidence·Strategy
The Dunning-Kruger Effect & How To Fail Slowly
February 9th, 2010 · View Comments · Strategy
Have you noticed this obsession with speed? Everyone is doing things, real fast. Even failure has to be fast. Fail fast is the new mantra. Christopher S. Penn takes up this point, ‘Ever done this? You see a traffic jam ahead, get off at the next exit, and spend 30 extra minutes on side and back roads to go around the jam… which in reality is only a 10 minute traffic jam? This is the dabbler. This is the person who fails too fast.’ Do you fail too fast?
Tags:Business·China·Chris Brogan·Christopher S. Penn·Dunning–Kruger effect·Failure·Leadership·Motivation·Skills·Strategy
12 Steps To Getting Started as a Business Consultant
January 26th, 2010 · View Comments · Business Model, Career, Strategy
Most people think it’s difficult start a career as a business consultant. I used to think the same in my early 20s when I started in IT. In retrospect, I should have made more efforts to establish myself as a consultant earlier; the benefits certainly outweigh the downsides. As luck would have it, I was forced into a consultancy role when I lost my 9-5 job. Time to learn to hustling and bring in business.
Tags:Business·Career·Chris Brogan·Consultant·Harvard Business Review·Linkedin·management·Management consulting·Richard Branson·Strategy·Tom Peters
7 Tips for Business Trips to Shanghai
January 21st, 2010 · View Comments · China, Tips
Planning on doing business in China? Doing business in China is not the same as wherever you’re from. If you keep comparing China to your country, however wonderful it is, you won’t enjoy China very much. Take it on its own terms.
Tags:Add new tag·Best Buy·Bund·Business·China·Hong Kong·Pudong·Shanghai·Tips·Trips
Do Business Leaders Need to Write Well to Succeed?
November 23rd, 2009 · Comments Off · How To
Thom Haller asks on TCW if ‘to be an effective leader, you need to learn how to write well’.
Tags:Business·communication·Fortune 500·Leadership·management·Warren Buffett
How do you measure technical documents? What metrics do you use?
November 21st, 2009 · View Comments · Career
One of our tech docs team was fired yesterday. Why? Technical documents provide no value.
This is how Management sees it.
Tags:Business·Career·Design·Human-Computer Interaction·Marketing·Productivity·user interface
Are technical documents a waste of time?
November 20th, 2009 · View Comments · Career, Technical Writing
“Don’t worry” she said. “No one reads this stuff anyway. Just get it done.” Sounds familiar?
Tags:Bank·Business·Employment·Information technology·management·Project management·Project manager·Resumes·Technical Documents
How to Study Technical Writing Online & Get Certified
November 10th, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, How To, Technical Writing
The University of Limerick, Ireland offers an excellent online course for those who want to study technical writing at home.
This university has a pretty amazing campus, specializes in the Arts and provides a conveyor belt of freshly-minted technical writers to Microsoft, Google and IBM in Ireland. It’s one of the few universities in Europe with [...]
Tags:Business·Career·Degree·Distance education·Distance Learning·education·Electronic learning·google·Graduate School·ibm·microsoft·Online Courses·University·University of Limerick
5 Reasons Why Women Are Better Technical Writers Than Men?
November 7th, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, How To
Technical Writing attracts women. They’re very good at it and make great team leads.
Maybe I’ve been very lucky but I believe women are far better as technical writers than men.
Here are five areas where I think they have the edge of the guys.
1. Communication
When in entered technical writing, I assumed my days would be spent [...]
Tags:Adobe FrameMaker·Art·Business·Career·communication·Degree·education·English language·interview·Junior Technical Writer·management·Prod·Productivity·Team Building·technical writer·Writers Resources
Is this true? The goal of a project is to make the user successful!
November 6th, 2009 · View Comments · Career, How To, Productivity
Ben says: “The goal of a project is to make the user successful at what he wants to accomplish. Go ahead, read that previous sentence a few times. It’s one that would do well to sink in.”
Is this true?
Tags:Advertising·Business·Call centre·Customer Management·Goal·management·Product·Public relations·Technical support·Usability·Users
Is a Degree In Technical Writing Worth The Effort?
November 5th, 2009 · Comments Off · Career, Google, How To, India
Do you have a degree in technical writing or technical communications? Was it worth the money? If you had a second chance, would you have chosen this or opted for another career path?
One of my younger cousins has started her degree in university in Limerick, Ireland. Not the place most of us think of as [...]
Tags:Asia·Business·Career·Course·Degree·distance learning course·education·google·ibm·India·Ireland·Limerick·microsoft·Online Techical Writing Course·Technical Writing
Technical Writing News – Nov 6th
November 5th, 2009 · Comments Off · Reviews
New technical writing screencasts, Madcap win an award, and the Intercom editorial calendar is finally announced. What more could you want?
Here is a quick roundup of this week’s technical writing news.
Tags:Adobe Framemaker·Betsy Weber·Business·Business Services·Camtasia·Cherryleaf·Communications·Contracting·contracts·Freelancing·Intercom·israel·Jobs·MadCap·MadCap Software·Open Source·OpenSource·Screencasts·Seneca College·Snagit·STC·Symposium·Tasks·tech writing·Technical Authors·Technical Writing·Techsmith·Website·Writing and Editing
How To Make 200 Extra Minutes Every Week & Leave The Office Before Everyone Else
November 4th, 2009 · View Comments · Productivity
Looking for time-saver tips? This works. I get between 60-200 emails every day. 60 is low. Once I got over 480. As I run my own business, every minute is counted. Even when I worked 9-5, I kept a tight control of my email. If you don’t control it, it’ll control you.
What I want to [...]
Tags:Business·Chris Brogan·E-mail·Gmail·Harvard Business Review·Hotmail·Prod·seth godin·Time-·Time-saver·Time-wasting·Yahoo
Why do you need to develop a Capacity Plan?
November 3rd, 2009 · Comments Off · How To
Developing a Capacity Plan is vital if you want to understand how much capacity will be required to support your IT systems and, by extension, the infrastructure that supports it.
Think about it.
If you plan to install a new large-scale solution, for example, IBM WebSphere or SAP, you also need to consider the impact these will [...]
Tags:Bandwidth Requirements·Business·Capacity Management·Capacity Plan·Capacity Planning·Disk Capacity·Help Desk·ibm·IBM WebSphere·Information technology·Infrastructure·Memory Requirements·Network Capacity·Processing Capacity·Processing Requirements·Production Environment·requirements·Resource Capacity·SAP·Server Capacity·Service Capacity·template·Volume Requirements
