I come from the PR world, where we eat stress for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — and that’s on the days when we actually have time to eat.

Stress is part of the human condition. If we face a dangerous situation, we need our adrenaline and cortisol levels to spike. Unfortunately, our bodies don’t know the difference between facing a rabid dog and an angry client who wants results yesterday!

There is a lot to think about when you own a business.

One of those many things is injuries. If someone is injured at your workplace, your business can be severely impacted.

This can be an employee injury or a customer one.

You can't always look out for your customers besides keeping your environment safe, but you can help your employees stay safe and injury free.

Opening a local franchise is a fantastic way to not only use your own entrepreneurial spirit, but also to leverage the history and brand recognition of the franchiser.

Taking this route in business, you can bring in profits from established brands without having to do the initial legwork, meaning you can focus more on turning your local franchise into a powerhouse within the community.

Numbers help give a new perspective to every kind of situation. Take for instance the Federal Reserve report indicating the consumer debt now stands at $3.37 trillion. It gets worse when you consider another study by National Small Business Association (NSBA), indicating that over 53% of these enterprises are in debt.

I have a secret weapon that I use to market my business. It’s so secret, in fact, that sometimes I forget I have it and don’t take full advantage of it.

Is it my superior intellect? No, but thank you.

Perhaps it’s the band of merry elves who live in my attic and attend to my every need? Still a pipedream, I’m afraid.

When it comes to training your staff, a little humor oftentimes goes a long way.

Whether you're in retail sales, medical sales, or any other industry, adding some humor to your training initiatives can make all the difference in the world.

Here are just a few reasons humor and sales training make a great match:

From my years as a successful small businessman in printing, marketing, and business development in South Dakota, through my time as the CMO of a Fortune 100 company, and into my current work as a speaker, bestselling author, host of a national TV show, and creator of the C-Suite Network, people have asked me one question more than any other: “Jeffrey, how did you do it?” My answer is: “I think big and act bigger.”

When it comes to your company's data management practices, it's important to keep big data initiatives on track. This is exactly where open source software such as Hadoop comes into play.

With efficient data processing in mind, here are just a few ways your company can get the most out of Hadoop on its next project:

People feel free to interrupt others with that innocent-sounding question, “Got a minute?”  And the interrupted people think they have to be polite and say, “Sure, how can I help?” – even when they are desperately busy on a deadline.  They let the Time Bandit steal their time because they have been acculturated to believe they must.
 
But the Interruption Culture persists for a very good reason:  We like it. We perpetuate it. We love our smart phones, our routers, our search engines, our unfettered access and exposure to everybody and everything. We demand to be immediately informed, via alerts on our stash of devices, what’s happening with the weather, traffic, stock market, politics, crime, sports, celebrities, our favorite Twitter feeds and our Facebook friends. Who can wait for the evening news or the morning paper when a story might be going viral?

As creatures of habit, we’re resistant to change, especially when it sounds like it might interrupt business as usual. While a paperless office may sound like a vague and unachievable goal, the dream of going paperless is not a “pie in the sky” objective. It’s attainable — and imperative to your future success as a small business.

Becoming a paperless office is a win not only for your business, but also for your customers. With the right document management system, you can access accurate information faster, increasing not only workflow productivity, but also your customers’ perception of quality.