Steve Farnsworth is a serial entrepreneur and a student at Fort Lewis College and at the age of 24, a Young Go Getter! Check out his site Burner Sports, where he serves as the President.

The time for change is NOW! Cliché you say? As over used as that phrase is these days, it is very true in our business environment. The only thing that you can always count on is change; everything in our daily lives change rapidly. A decade ago you could deliver a product or a service as promised to your customer at the quoted price and the sale would be complete. Now-a-days customers always want more. Customer demands and expectations are higher than ever before. Are you ready to fulfill those needs?

Anyone that has ever worked in a retail setting during the holidays can attest to consumers always wanting more! If you have ever sold products or services than you can certainly relate to this as well. As a sales person, reflect on the last sale that you completed. What did the customer want? What were their expectations? Did you at least try to meet the customer’s needs? Did you get frustrated or upset when you had to go beyond the “norm” for the customer? Every sales person at one time or another has gotten frustrated with a customer, and complained about it. My question is why?

Customers are very important to any business. Customers “push” you to do better. Yet many people in an organization complain about that, why? Many sales people and company’s think that having a “pushy” customer is a negative. When in actuality the customers “pushiness” holds you and your company to a much higher standard. The customer is “pushing” you to be better at what you do. A customer’s job is to push for more; push for better pricing, push for a speedy delivery, push for better quality, etc. Your job within your company is to not only meet their expectations but also to remind yourself and your co-workers that customers are not the root of your frustrations, stress and failures. They are the root to your success, profit and growth.

Knowing how to handle your customer’s when they are unhappy is a crucial part to your success in any position that you have in an organization. Knowing what techniques to use and when to use them is just as crucial. I have some helpful tips that can be used by anyone that works with customers.

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It’s inevitable, advertisements will always be on the majority of sites and we should be thankful that they are. Strictly form a publishing standpoint, they keep free sites just that, free. Great, right? Well, let’s go with great-ish. With many free sites relying solely on advertising revenue as their only income source, their goals sometimes stray. It can quickly become a cash grab and credibility can easily be lost.

Beauty and the Beast

Before Google Adsense came along, there wasn’t much hope for small to medium sized sites to get anyone to advertise. It’s a fantastic tool to generate a little bit of revenue however it’s ugly as sin. It takes away from the professional look, it’s plain and it has no personality. My dad may tell me that I was hatched and that I’m funny looking on a regular basis, but I like to call it character. Something Google Adsense lacks.

Information Overload

The site that triggered this article was Forbes.com. It almost seems that I’m calling out the giants, but these are the sites where it’s noticeable and something that I see frequently. I truly like a lot of the content that’s on this site, I just cannot be forced to respect the site itself. The layout is another can of worms that I won’t open, but the advertisements themselves are crammed amidst a mess of information. If you have an abundance of information on your site, don’t add to the congestion. Set aside a reasonable amount of real estate on your site for advertisements and stick with it all while keeping a nice flow. If you’re going to get creative with advertisements beware. This brings me to my next point…

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Is the goal of your business to make money and provide a great life for you and your family? Yeah, same here. But what about all of your business expenses that eat away at your profits? What if you could put together a plan that not only built up your marketing and branding but also took some of the headache out of your administrative costs. Below you will find twenty ways to get your business running like a well oiled machine for just about zero cost. If you know of any other ways that have been left off the list, please feel free to take a moment and let us know in the comments section.

Business Marketing

1. Social Media Websites - Building up social media profiles on sites related to your field can do many things for you. It can gain you traffic to your website, it can build up your branding efforts and it can also allow you to network with potential clients as well as other businesses in your field. For instance, my stumble upon profile is a PR3 and in some search engines, the PR value is passed through even though the links are no-follow. This helps get my links to my websites in higher rankings in these search engines. It also helps me network with potential clients as I have already designed two websites for clients I met on stumble upon and delicious. For a full list of social media websites in various niches, I’d suggest checking out this post on traffikd.
2. Link Directories - The main objective with link directories is to gain the link juice to get your search engine rankings up. Yes, you can find a few diamond in the rough link directories that will also be able to send you some traffic directly to your website, but the main focus should be on building up link popularity for your site so you rank for the proper terms in the main search engines. You can find various link directory submission services on some of the popular marketing and business related forums online who will submit to 1,000+ directories for a very low, low cost. *word of warning: make sure the submissions are done over a few weeks as google and other search engines track link popularity and a sudden burst of 1,000 links in one day screams “ban me from your search engine”.

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I just wanted to post a follow up to Blog Action Day that just passed. From what I have seen it was a huge success for everyone involved. I got a lot of comments on my post that is still open for commenting, and from that there were quite a few people donating money from their own pocket to help the cause. Thank you all!

I am really excited for next year and I look forward to being a bigger part of the action. Lets take it in all of our hands to keep it going all year, not just one day out of the year. There are so many people out there that need our help everyday, we see it as we go to work or are out to view a movie or have fun.

Thanks for the participation and keep it up!

If you run a business, you’ve probably either already started a blog or at least considered doing so. Companies of every size are using business blogs to build authority, increase online exposure, make valuable connections, and boost their sales. Unfortunately, many of the business blogs I read fall short in several areas.
That’s why I’ve come up with this list of 7 tips for better business blogging. Following these tips will help you get the most out of your company blog.

1.Be Professional and Personal- Since this is your business blog, you want to make sure your posts stay professional. In other words, don’t mention how drunk you got at the company party last night. However, you also want to make sure you include your personality in your posts. Find a balance of professionalism and personality. Remember, blogging is a social activity. Readers tend to follow those who separate themselves from the pack. How do you do this? By showcasing your unique personality.

2.Optimize Your Posts- By now, you probably know of the importance of optimizing your website for the search engines, but did you know you should be optimizing your blog posts as well? Search engines love blogs because new posts provide the engine with new content. Since the search engines like to display new content, it only makes sense to optimize your blog title and body for relevant keywords. This will grab you good rankings and increased traffic.

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Ok, so you’re toying with the idea of buying a business. With everything that’s involved in making the transition run smoothly, it’s easily possible to overlook details. I sat down with Michael D. from the Exchange Group of Chartered Accounts and he offered up a little advice on the matter.

One way or another…
In Canada, you can purchase a business by buying the shares of the company or by buying its assets. When buying shares, the buyer takes on all liability, loans, etc. You are purchasing the business as is, so if someone sues you a week after you take over, just hope you have a lawyer better than Lionel Hutz defending you. As well, the seller is eligible for certain tax incentives when selling shares, so most likely they will be wanting to go that route, however this may be an opportunity to leverage the price down.

When buying assets you purchase the physical entities of the business such as the building, inventory, hard equipment and goodwill. While buying assets may allow you a little extra legal protection as well as tax benefits through write-offs, these benefits may be reflected in the purchase price.

Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
If your new business acquisition involves real estate, incorporate your building separately from you business. Your business would just pay rent to the incorporated building. That way, if your business goes bankrupt, the building (being a separate legal entity) stays put so you don’t lose everything.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, you know that the economy is having its struggles. Because of this, companies are trying to cut back on spending wherever they can. One area where many businesses are trying to get the most out of their budget is marketing. While I don’t think you should cut your marketing budget unless you absolutely have to, I do feel it’s important to point out some of the free ways you can market your company.

While this list doesn’t include every free promotional opportunity out there, it does give you 5 great places to start marketing your business for free online.

1.Social Networking- Without a doubt, social networking is the hottest online promotional tool for businesses of all sizes. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and other social networks give you the opportunity to connect with others who share your interests. This helps you build authority, trust, and new connections with both other business people and potential consumers. Remember, it’s called social networking. Be a contributing member of your network, and you’ll experience more success on these sites.

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I am so happy to be apart of Blog Action Day ’08. It made me reflect on my own growing up, how tough things were for my single mom to make ends meet for me. Not having all the things all the other kids did, and sometimes just eating leftover cause thats all there was. But it pails in comparison, because I lived in a first world country, where going to school everyday was never in doubt. Where people with more means are in abundance to help out families like mine.

Looking back on that now and how far I have come it really makes me glad for what I have. I think being poor in childhood made me a hard worker and I learned to cherish all I had.

So for Blog Action Day ’08 I am going to give a dollar for every comment this post gets between now and January 1,2009. Half will go to the YGG kiva.org team to fund entrepreneurs in developing nations, the other half will go to combat child poverty in my city.

So I hope to see a lot of comments on this post in the next few months! Please make your comment about how you have helped, or plan to help combat poverty!

Every year, thousands upon thousands of active blogs dedicate one day to bring awareness to a particular cause by bringing to it attention through their postings. It’s called Blog Action Day (in case the title didn’t give it away) and this year the theme is Poverty.

To tell you the truth, I had a hard time with this one. I mean, we’ve all been strapped for cash at one point or another, but from my own experiences I’ve never been poverty stricken or without the luxuries that are available in a developed, industrialized nation. Needless to say, when it came to solutions, suggestions or ideas to combat this issue, the same regurgitated ideas came to mind like donating food and water to underdeveloped countries and communities. That would be too easy. We could donate food and water all day, but the old adage comes to mind: Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. If we spend all this time, effort and money on handing things over to impoverished communities, they are happy for awhile, but at the end of the day everybody is back at square one. Just like a business you have to start somewhere and grow it into sustainability. If it would be possible to teach people in 3rd world countries about business, finances etc. it may be possible to turn things around. Sounds too easy? Well, maybe it is too good to be true, but with a proper plan you never know. It could all start with a proper education on basic skills which can be used to contribute to the community and build upon and pass down through generations. An organization called Kiva (located at Kiva.org – go figure) connects entrepreneurs to micro-lenders in underdeveloped countries providing them with the necessary funding to get their business off the ground creating jobs and adding to the stability of the local economy. Education funds are a way to create access to proper education and instruction. Once people know what to do and how to do it, this knowledge will pass through the community and the information becomes readily available.

With the proper tools to facilitate growth and stability and a solid plan of action it could be possible to slowly but surely reverse the impact of poverty in certain places of the world. It’s not requiring someone to walk on water, all it takes are a few people to think outside the box and set the stone in motion. In all honesty, it’s not like it is going to take some miracle to generate a little momentum.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

I recently put a poll in at YGG asking what makes people work harder. The three choices were money, recognition or self satisfaction. I was surprised to see that money did receive a vote, but the other two were neck and neck so far. Well I wanted to delve further into it, I have a few more questions to expand on the current poll, so answer if you feel so inclined to do so.

Well I can tell you that I am in Sales, which a lot of you already know. I have been doing it for over 8 years now, mostly in the telecom industry. I really like technology and when i started selling mobile technology was just catching steam and becoming popular and it seemed like a great time to jump in. I like the technology and the constant learning that comes with it, there is always something new in mobile phones. I dislike the fact that it is a job, I really want to be fully on my own, owning my own business and making my own way.

I will say that what I do a healthy love of money is not a bad thing. But what i really crave is the recognition for my results, especially when I hit a sales milestone. I can’t wait to hear the responses from everyone, I want to see what drives people and I am truly interested in what exactly everyone does, so write back!