You know what a megatrend is — one of those sea changes in science, culture or business that will affect everyone on the planet. The emergence of the Internet is a megatrend. But if you want to get an entrepreneurial jump on competition, you may do well to focus not on the megatrend, but rather on the minitrend. John Vanston of Technology Futures Inc., says there are trends all around us that are not yet appreciated by the general public but that will be ripe in a relatively short time. Read more…

While more Americans are turning to entrepreneurship due to economic restructuring,  most of them are going the solopreneur route and not building companies with employees.

According to the “Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity,” 0.34 percent of American adults created a business per month in 2010, or 565,000 new businesses, a rate that remained consistent with 2009 and represents the highest level of entrepreneurship over the past decade and a half. In contrast, however, the quarterly rate for employer firms dropped from 0.13 percent in 2007 to 0.10 percent in 2010. Read more…

Three of my coaching clients all are having the same big issue. It’s an old issue and most entrepreneurs have it: how to deal with overload and better manage their time. All three had symptoms that will sound very familiar to you. Faces full of tension and fatigue, desks barely visible beneath mounds of paper, and most importantly, closed doors that never stay closed for long. Ever try to create a four-slide Powerpoint that should take you 20 minutes and it’s now six hours later and you’re only half-way done? Yeah, you know all about it.

There must be a system. Something you can buy that will make it stop. There is! Read more…

A client of mine  has a very important customer who had never visited his office before. They’d always met at the customer’s headquarters.

My client’s company has two floors in an office building, and reception is on the 3rd floor. His customer decided she’d like to see where her millions of dollars in purchases are going, so she made an appointment to visit. She went directly to the floor my client is on, the 2nd floor. When she arrived,  there was no receptionist, because she was on the wrong floor (even though my client instructed her to go to reception on the 3rd floor. ) She roamed the halls and cubicles.  No one got up from their desk to say, “May I help you?” It wasn’t their job. Needless to say, this million-dollar customer wasn’t very happy when she finally tracked down my client.

Remember:  whether your company is large or small, every one of your employees is selling, all the time. Do you train your people on the 2nd floor  to welcome guests, even if they should have been on the 3rd floor? Do they realize they are always selling? Have a similar story? Leave a comment. And read some valuable customer service tips.