US Finance World

Business is about relationships; every aspect of your business is reliant on building, nurturing and maintaining relationships. Building relationships doesn’t start and finish with customer relationships; in fact great customer relationships are difficult to maintain if the other relationships within your business aren’t satisfactory.

It is your customer service and relationships that will set your business apart from the competition, but in order to have the infrastructure within your business to give great customer service the relationships with you employees, suppliers and partners has to be right.

A lot of the time, especially on television, we are shown a brutality and harsh side to business that many feel is necessary to emulate in order to be successful. However, if a small business conducts itself in this way it is unlikely to have positive results. Bei

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Welcome to my new “channel” in the “You’re the Boss” blog.

I’m going to be looking at technology from a small-business point of view, a topic that gives me a lot of ground to cover. For starters, I’ll be exploring software and Web services aimed at helping entrepreneurs keep operations, marketing and finance organized and on track. There’s a constant stream of new, useful gadgets coming our way, so I’ll also be posting about the smartphones or laptops or digital cameras that best meet the needs of small businesses.

I’ll also spotlight ways in which small companies are becoming successful providers of goods and services via the Web. And I’ll try to help businesses deal with the considerable challenges of ensuring their computer networks are running effectively, affordably and reliably. Social networks, online intelligence, automating operations, managing tech whizzes — the list of technology-related topics and trends that are changing the way we do business is long and constantly growing. I’ll do my best to hit

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This week Sean Hamilton, founder of Give Youth A Chance, won the WinWeb Pitch of the Week competition. Sean has founded Give Youth A Chance as a one-stop-shop to support and help young entrepreneurs to succeed in business.

Having experienced the highs and lows of business life, Sean wants to help young people avoid many of the pitfalls that he has encountered and put them on the road to business success.

Do you have a business you would like to be featured here? If you would like to enter WinWeb’s Pitch of the Week competition visit our Facebook page for more information – you could win superb free publicity for your small business!

By Steven Russolillo And Donna Kardos Yesalavich

On Wall Street, bad may be the new good when it comes to economic data.

Investors translated a grim September jobs report as a welcome sign that central banks might rush to inject additional stimulus into the economy. It’s a twist of logic as Wall Street now views negative economic snapshots as a positive for the stock market.

The Labor Department report was the catalyst for the stock market as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 11000 on Friday for the first time since early May. There are building expectations that the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and perhaps the Bank of Japan might embark on a second round of quantitative easing—dubbed by investors as “QE2″—to keep the recovery going.

That means Wall Street has been viewing every negative economic report as another reason to snap up stocks. But

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Once upon a time, buying a wills kit from a retailer may have been a good choice. Everything goes to the spouse. If spouse predeceases you, everything goes to the surviving children. Uncle Jack and Aunt Helen are the guardians of the kids. Simple right?

However, a will kit presumes the will-maker has a “traditional” nuclear family. But the married couple with children has recently become a minority of the population and, along with it, the shrinking notion that there is such a thing as a “simple” will.

In a world of multiple marriages, separated couples,  same sex marriages/unions, step-children, adopted children and dependent parents, will planning is no longer that simple.  Since the estate generally pays for legal fees in a dispute for both the executor and beneficiary challenging the will, it is best for the will-maker to get it right lest the assets of the estate are drained for the lawyers and no one else.  What top three will planning mistakes should you avoid?

It starts with the executor. E

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We often speak about how to grow you business, how to be more successful, how to expand your business, increase sales and drive your business forward. This obsession with growth, however, is not every business owner’s primary aim, and nor should it be.

The measurement of business success is often cloudy; people quote a massive turnover but make marginal profit, have a large number of employees but make little after their wages are accounted for. If money is the means of measuring success all that matters is the bottom line- how much profit is made.

But, what if growth is not the dominating factor for running your small business? What if the measurement of the success of your business is not based on cold hard cash, but instead on the happiness of yourself and your family?

Lifestyle businesses are just that; businesses that are created to improve or maintain the lifestyle of the business owner. P

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maryannerussell.com Gloria Feldt

For American women, the days of overt “Mad Men”-style discrimination are largely gone. Women outnumber men at universities, have career options beyond the secretarial pool, and are (slowly) narrowing the pay gap with their male peers. So why has this half of the population failed to reach critical mass in leadership roles across industries? She Owns It explored the topic here, and author Gloria Feldt answers the question in her new book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change the Way We Think About Power and Leadership. Ms. Feldt, the former president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood, recently spoke with me about why women’s progress is stalled, her hope that a female Steve Jobs will soon emerge and the dangers of being a stay-at-home mom. A condensed version of the conversation follows.

Q. Why aren’t women walking through the doors that are open to them?

Ms. Feldt:<

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By Steven Russolillo

Stocks rallied to a five-month high on Tuesday, boosted by encouraging services-sector data and hopes that global central banks will follow Japan’s lead in stimulating economic growth.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 193.45 points, or 1.8%, to 10944.72, its highest close since May 3. Boeing fueled the Dow’s gains, rising 3.4%, while Bank of America increased 3.1% and DuPont rose 3%. American Express was the only Dow component in the red as investors digested the company’s decision to fight the Justice Department’s civil antitrust suit. Shares fell 2%.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose up 55.31 points, or 2.4%, to 2399.83. The Standard & Poor’s 500-share index gained 23.72 points, or 2.1% to 1160.75. All 10 of its sectors traded in positive territory, led by the materials, industrials and financial sectors.

Investor optimism comes ahead of some key data later this week. Dow-component Alcoa unofficially kicks off earnings season after the close on Thursday.

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