The eBay scam is just the latest in a long line of sophisticated attempts to steal personal information through online means. Customers of PayPal, Amazon, Dell Computer, eTrade, Bank One, and many other online merchants have been the target of such scams in recent years.
During the dot-com boom the mantra was Brick and mortar is dead! Then when most of the dot-coms crashed like an elephant sitting on a wicker chair, the mantra suddenly changed back to The Internet is dead! Long live brick and mortar!
Let me give you a quick overview of a few of the retirement plans available to small businesses so you at least have an idea of whats out there before you start your search for a good financial advisor.
Many entrepreneurs would rather have their front teeth pulled without anesthetic than go to the time and trouble of creating a feasibility plan; often because they are afraid of what it will reveal.
Every business idea, no matter how good it sounds while bouncing around inside your head, should be put to the test before you invest time and money into its execution. Success lies not in what you think of your idea, but what the buying public will think. Many entrepreneurs find out too late that the publics opinion of their idea differs greatly from their own.
What my eldest offspring doesnt understand is I have a great life. In fact, I am living the life I have always dreamed of living. My life just happens to revolve around Planet Business. I am an entrepreneurial addict, a business junkie. Business is my chocolate, my Krispy Kreme donut, my nicotine, my caffeine, my crack. Maybe Ill start a 12 step program for entrepreneurs who want to kick the habit and charge a cover to get in. Hi, my name is Tim, and Im an entrepreneur… Sounds like a great business idea to me.
I can tell you that as a breed, entrepreneurs are an impatient lot and many jump on the first business bandwagon that comes along just for the sake of being in business. Thats a big mistake that usually comes back to bite them in their entrepreneurial behinds.
Last week I told you about a recent report from The Conference Board that has a lot of big company CEOs concerned about competition from smaller, more innovative and entrepreneurially-minded companies. To refresh your memory, The Conference Board’s CEO Challenge 2004 reported that 87% of the 540 global businesses surveyed cited innovation and enabling entrepreneurship as priorities for their companies, and 31% considered these issues of “greatest concern.
The fact that innovation and entrepreneurship run rampant in smaller companies, but is often suppressed in larger companies is nothing new. Management guru Peter Drucker first addressed the issue in his 1985 book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Drucker wrote that one of the most often-asked questions in many a 1985 boardroom was, How can we overcome the resistance to innovation that plagues most organizations?
We have all had customers who expected far more than was their due: customers who were unreasonable, overly-demanding, condescending, hard to please and sometimes, even dishonest in their dealings with you. When a customer’s reasonable expectations become unreasonable demands you must decide whether or not that customer is doing more harm to your business than good.
