US Finance World

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: The President Sings

In his annual State of the Union address, President Obama cranked up the populist pitch. The G.O.P. responded. Representative Sam Graves outlined what he thought small businesses wanted to hear but small-business owners were split. A small-business owner in West Virginia was excited. One study finds small-business owners are dissatisfied with all of the presidential candidates. Joel Kotkin says “this is Americas moment if Washington doesnt blow it.” Your cellphone can now sing like the president.

Davos Update: An Intern Is Bored

As the sun bombards Earth with radiation, billionaires occupy Davos and bemoan the inequality of incomes. Their outlook is gloomy. Haley

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The economy is improving in baby steps. But that may not have had an impact on your business yet.

If your small business is still struggling with cash flow, never fear, there are some quick and creative ways you can improve just by making a few tweaks in your  business.

I have recently published a new quick read book that can help you solve some of those cash flow problems. Its available in Amazon Kindle format (you dont need a Kindle to read it just get the free Kindle reading app).

In this book, you will learn eight creative tactics to get your cash flow moving in the right direction.

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Author Shawn Achor says that the happiness advantage, Asks us to be realistic about the present while maximizing our potential for the future. I love this statement because it encourages us to realistically acknowledge our present circumstances without allowing them to predict our future ones. In other words, we do not have to put on rose-colored glasses in order to feel hopeful about the future, and most importantly to act on that hope to produce the results we want.

Last week, we read about Principle #1: The Happiness Advantage and Principle #2: The Fulcrum and The Lever. So lets get started. What are the first two principles Achor says can help us leverage happiness to our advantage?

1. Principle No. 1: The happiness advantage? This section of the book is filled with proof that the happiest people perform best in many areas of life, and in particular, in workplace productivity.

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What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: S.B.A. Gains Clout?

The Small Business Administration is invited back to the grown-ups table (but reaction among small-business advocates is mixed).

Trade Shows: C.E.S. Loses Clout?

This year’s annual International Consumer Electronics Show had lots to offer for small business, and Startup America firms converged on the event. And there were plenty of models — and Justin Timberlake, too. But many feel that the show is losing its clout. Matt Ryan explains why you should be glad you didn’t go: “Only a handful of companies are very good about keeping secrets, and they don’t typically announce products at C.E.S.” But you could have seen these 12 quirky gadgets on display. Or checked out some really strange laptops. The Neat Company introduced new scanners aimed at small businesses. Tom Simonite says there were three gems hidden in Steve Ballmer’s final keynote speech. Apple had 250 n

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Jan 14, ’12 1:33 PM Author Adrian Swinscoe Categories Business Ideas, Business Marketing, Customer Service, Marketing/PR, manage your time Tags automation, customer experience management, customer relations, customer relationship management, Customer Service, customers, digital world, ecrm, electronic commerce, help you, marketing automation, Marketing/PR, relations, stand out

Readers of this blog and my own across at know that I write about building better and more valuable relations with your customers and your people as a way of growing your business.

Over the festive break I spent quite a lot of time unplugged from the digital world thinking about how we can help ourselves stand out in front of our customers and, at the same time, help ourselves build better relations with past and present customers.

Heres a few ideas that I would encourage you to think about doing more of:

1. Automation, particularly marketing automation, is becoming really popular and there is a lot of talk about how we can automate this and that, specifically, when referring to online transactions, communication, customer service etc. W

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