If you’re one of the courageous people who have thrown off the yoke of working for the man and decided to start a business of your own, you’ve undoubtedly wrestled with the question of who your customers are. Just who will buy your services or products? Are they men or women? What age groups do they represent? In short, who are you trying to reach? The answer of course, defines your niche. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there were 28 million small businesses in 2010. More than three-quarters were non-employers, meaning they are owner-worker shops. They’re freelancers of every variety. Baby sitters, dog walkers and marketing specialists. They’re…
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The Mother of All Boredom Keeping entertained while at work can be a mother...
I have no idea why the bank hired me. Apart from a warm body and pulse, I didn’t have a thing to offer Ferneyhough Savings. They didn’t have much to offer me, either. Unless, of course, you count never-ending boredom and the $9.65 an hour entry level tellers make. To be honest, I didn’t even want the job. I was just trying to survive until ski season. Bank tellers are a dying breed that have succumbed to a lethal combination of online banking, electronic deposits and Square Cash. Unlike my counterparts of the 1950s who actually worked for a living, I spent the majority of my day staring into space.…
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Making Errands Fun Again The secret to combining dreadful tasks with fun-filled activities
Thinking back to my childhood, my mother had the process of multi-tasking errands down cold. She’d pop a load of dirty laundry into the washer, drive to the market, pick up the dry cleaning, pay my older brother’s parking tickets, and stop by the bank just in time to get home and move the clean wash into the dryer. Then, she’d make dinner for a family of four. How on earth did she do it? How can I apply my mother’s errand skills to my own life? It’s simple. I just need to get organized. The first thing I did was create an Excel spreadsheet with two columns: in column…
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Is There a Book in You? A published writer shares his experience with you about how to see your name in print
They say that 80% of people have a book in them. Or, at least they like to think they do. According to an article in Forbes Magazine, between 600,000 and a million books are published each year. Sadly, most of them sell fewer than 250 copies. Total. So, what’s the difference between you and all of the other people who have successfully published a book? The answer is preparation, preparation, preparation. And, contrary to popular belief, the hardest part isn’t writing the book. Not if you envision your book on the New York Times bestseller list. Sitting down and writing a book is relatively easy if you’ve done your homework. It’s the part where you get to…
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How Shall I Say This? How to craft killer resumes and cover letters that people can understand
I’m not a professional resume writer. I don’t even play one on TV. Nevertheless, as a professional writer and active job-search candidate, I’ve learned a few things about how to craft killer resumes and cover letters, beginning with our vernacular… that’s a fancy word for the language or dialect spoken by ordinary people in a particular country or region. How we obfuscate the English language One reason why recruiters and hiring managers have caved into Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) is having to wade through hundreds of resumes that use trite, lifeless terms like utilize, monetize and re-contextualize. Words we never speak or write in our common conversations with other people.…
