Are your expectations clear?

My January best practice tip builds on all the hard work you put into creating your Year End Strategic Plan. Didn't get that done? No problem! There is still time to review what worked and didn't work for your business last year and to create a custom blueprint for...

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News Alert: Minimum Wage to Increase January 2018

Remember Proposition 206? The one that requires all businesses with at least one employee to provide paid sick leave effective July 1, 2017?  Another important provision of Prop 206 is an incremental increase in the minimum wage for hourly employees. As a result, the...

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Are You Ready to Ring in the New Year?

Did you say 2018? Where did 2017 go? More to the point, how did it go? Did you hit all your business goals? If you did, congratulations. Set even higher goals for next year. But if you didn’t, don’t beat yourself up—build yourself up. Now is the time to figure out...

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How to Keep Good Workers: Follow the Golden Rule

Hiring good workers is a critical function for every small business, but it’s only the beginning. One of the biggest costs to small businesses, both in the outlay of actual money and in lost productivity, is worker churn. Once you hire good workers, how do you keep...

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How to Find Good Workers: Hire Them

In my work with small business owners, I hear all the time: “Wendy, I just can’t find good workers.” It’s as if they expect these mythical creatures to materialize before them, fully trained and ready to go. But that’s not how it happens. You don’t find good workers,...

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Building a Power Network

You’ve heard it everywhere –books, Blogs, Twitter, Workshops. If you want to grow your business, network, network, network. But what does that mean? Networking is more than the sum of your contacts – it’s the depths of your relationships. Here’s how to transform your...

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Be the CEO of Your Business, Not the Intern

As women entrepreneurs, we want to do it all, and to do it all well. And because we want to do it all, too often we forget why we became self-employed to begin with. And worse yet, we forget how to ask for help. Below are some “down and dirty” tips on how to be the...

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Communication: Listening Skills

Many of us are under the assumption that communication is just talking to people. It is so much more than that. For example – communication is about listening as well as speaking. This is important in both your personal and professional life. You can learn, re-learn...

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