Recent Blog Posts
Identity Theft
Nothing is more annoying than having your credit card shut down for fraud, especially if it’s a business card. In this day and age it is getting easier and easier for criminals to clone or steal your information to use it for their own gain. So how do you protect yourself from becoming a victim?
The following tips will help you to protect your business, your employees, and your customers from becoming victims of identity theft.
- Create and follow a security strategy in your business plan.
- Designate a top level manager to implement the plan if you become a victim.
- If you need assistance in designing a plan, enlist an expert.
- Protect your business records on file with the Ohio Secretary of State by taking the following steps:
- Assign a trusted person to be responsible for maintaining and monitoring your business record with the Secretary of State.
- Sign up for e-mail notification about changes to your business record.
- Sign up for Secure Business Filing.
Turning Your Competition Into a Friend
I consider competition a business that wants to see your business fail. They are usually unfriendly to you, talk bad about your business, and in general do everything they can to steal your customers. But just because another business does the same thing as you doesn’t mean they need to be your competition. Turning them into a friend can actually help both your businesses. But how?
Get Your Fax Straight
If you own a fax machine chances are you have received numerous amounts of offers from companies wanting to sell you vacations, excel classes and employee handbooks. More than likely you ignore them or call the number to be removed from their list.
It’s easy to ignore the outrageous prices when you know it’s a scam, but what about the scam that comes in the form of an official looking invoice to renew your domain name?
Domain name renewal scams can work in one of two ways. You might be sent an invoice for a domain name that is very similar to your current domain name – the scammer hopes that you don’t notice the difference and just pay the invoice.
Alternatively, you could be sent a letter that looks like a renewal notice for your actual domain name, but is from a different company to the one you have previously used to register your domain name.
So how do you protect your business from falling for the domain name scam?
Emergency Preparedness
Are you and your staff prepared for an emergency? Sure, you have your emergency evacuation paper taped to different areas of your office, but what if other situations arrive? Emergency planning and training directly influence the outcome of an emergency situation. Having a written procedure and plan can mean the difference between chaos and control.
I found some information on the National Fire Protection Association web site. Here are a few items from their list:
- Emergency Escape Procedures and Emergency Escape Route Assignments.
- Procedures for Employees Who Remain on Site after the Alarm Sounds.
- Procedures to Account for Employees
- Procedures for Reporting Emergencies.
- Contacts for Further Information
- Alarm Systems
- Procedure for media attention
Games Leaders Play
Are you playing checkers or chess with your staff? If you are playing checkers, you see each and every interaction with your employees as having a few simple moves – single slides or jumps – and each has the same “skill set”. But in chess, part of the strategy is learning how the individual pieces move and interact – a lot more like the average employee. Knowing what makes employees “tick” and also how they can help move the company forward is critical to keeping your company ahead of the competition. As leaders, we want to play games that make sense and grow profits, people and value. What games are you as a leader playing?
What Makes Your Business Different?
In the ocean called business standing out can mean life or death for your business. When people take notice they are more apt to pay attention to your business. If people are paying attention they are more apt to use your business. So I have one question for you. What makes your business different from your competition?
When you let doubt take over, you are accepting failure as an option.
Doubt is a nasty, idea destroying emotion. It will do nothing but hurt your idea/business. When you let doubt take over you are accepting that your idea can fail. Instead of taking the road that lets you believe in your idea, doubt takes you down a road that will find every flaw in your idea. It will then exploit those flaws, even to the point where you will give up on your dream. Doubt is a natural emotion that you will have, so how do you overcome it?
Office Supply Scams
I am sure most of you have seen or been a victim of a scam at one point or another. Scams come in a variety of delivery methods such as email, fax, mail, telephone, and even someone bold enough to show up at your doorstep.
The key to avoiding these scams are to read the fine print, understand what it is they are actually telling you and know that if it is too good to be true, it probably is in fact, not true.
But how do you avoid the scam when you don’t even know it is happening? Let’s say one of your employees gets a phone call. A woman with a pleasant voice kindly asks your employee to double check on the model and serial number to update her system. Your employee, not knowing any better, gives her the information that she needs. Within a few days to a few weeks your business receives low grade toner and/or paper with a high grade price tag.
The bill looks legitimate and if you do not pay it you will receive more bills that become more and more threatening. You may even receive phone calls day after day from the “collections department” of the company. When you try to return the calls you are sent from menu to menu or receive a message telling you the inbox is full and you will have to try your call again later.
So how do you get out of the scam?
4 Reasons Your WebSite is Hurting Your Business
A website is your business’s image to the world. Anyone, no matter what day or time can get on the Internet and view your website. That first impression can either help your business or it can hurt it. Here are 5 reasons your website is hurting your business and what you can do to correct them.
Do Your Employees Hate You?
Everyone has heard one boss or another say “I don’t care if my employees don’t like me, their a dime a dozen and are lucky to be employed.” More people seem to complain about their boss than compliment or praise them. Why does the boss always get the bad rap and should you care whether or not your employees hate you?
Unhappy employees can make work life less enjoyable for everyone, it can even reflect onto your customers. So before you play the blame game, step outside of the box and look at the big picture, it may be you. Employees can feel unhappy for many reasons like the boss being younger than them to the more serious abusive workplace.
Would you like to know some of the signs your employees hate you? Read on here!