Author Archives: Donna Ling

Standing Room Only at CBI Pitch Session

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L to R: Holly Hanson-Director CBI, Justin Sidwell, Peter Bilodeau, Marie Fey, Diane Morey-Owner A to Z Printing and Facilitator of CO.STARTERS, Dave Clark-A to Z Printing and CO.STARTERS Mentor

Community supporters joined family and friends of the graduates of the Cumberland Business Incubator’s inaugural CO.STARTERS program to celebrate their work and hear them pitch their business ideas.  The CO.STARTERS group met once a week for 9 weeks as they validated their business concepts.

Graduates of the program that participated in the pitch presentation were: Continue reading →

5+ Reasons to Keep Reading…

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Clients ask if there is something they should read to be a better leader or to learn more about business.  The answer is YES!  There is a lot to be gained from reading.  Check out HBR’s For those who want to lead, read for reasons to keep reading.

Continue reading →

Is Your Business Viable?

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Why is it that we put so much emphasis on a business plan?  The goal is to be able to determine if you have a viable business.  What is a viable business?  A business that is freestanding, self-sustaining, capable of making it without outside financial support.  That means no credit card debt, no loans, just the business itself, standing alone, able to meet all the expenses from the transactions of the business. Continue reading →

Moving to Tuesday

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Tuesday Wordle

When you hear from an expert that you could be doing something better, do you make the changes?

We had an expert present a workshop recently about e-newsletters.  He stressed that sending out e-newsletters on Monday is the worst possible day to deposit messages in busy people’s inboxes. Continue reading →

Internet is Great – But Sometimes Relationships Count!

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 business relationships

We had the Small Business Marketing Analyst for a major package moving organization in recently to conduct a workshop.  We were reminded that sometimes it is the relationship that counts when doing business.  A representative from a company in our area attended the workshop.  The company had a critical shipment that had to arrive at the destination by a specified time or they would not be considered for the project they were hoping to get.  They sent the materials to arrive in time. Continue reading →

Get More Done – Increase Your Effectiveness

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NowandLaterYou’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction….Alvin Toffler

Not all tasks are created equal.  Some are more important than others. Continue reading →

Making the Most of Trade Shows

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It’s trade show season – home and garden shows, health and wellness shows, industry shows.Dave Lavinsky of Guiding Metrics Executive Dashboard recently had his organization’s first booth at the Traffic & Conversion Summit. His six biggest takeaways from his experience and other things to keep in mind are summarized below.

1. Location, location, location Continue reading →

7 Habits of Highly Wealthy Entrepreneurs

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Thomas C Corley studied the daily habits of hundreds of wealthy people in preparation for his book Rich Habits – The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals.

Corley’s definition of wealthy people is those earning at least $160,000 annually and owning assets of at least $3.2 million.

Some of the characteristics Corley identified of the wealthy include: Continue reading →

A Short Course in Numbers – Part 2

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In Part 1 I mentioned that John McCarthy, computer and cognitive scientist who coined the term “artificial intelligence” stated…”he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”

Recently I wrote about KPIs, Key Performance Indicators.  In Part 1 of this series, I presented a few ratios that might be your KPIs, or a part of your overall watchfulness of the numbers in your business.  In this post I’m going to review some calculations to determine what typically happens in your business.  There are four common methods of calculating a typical value: mean, median, mode and midrange.  Don’t run – stick with me – it will be painless, I promise, and if you need more help, call for an appointment to work on the numbers for your business. Continue reading →

A Short Course in Numbers

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numbers-300x2901

John McCarthy, computer and cognitive scientist who coined the term “artificial intelligence” stated…”he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”

In the next few newsletters I hope to help you through some of the numbers of business.  Recently I wrote about KPIs, Key Performance Indicators.  Many of the KPIs in business take at least a basic understanding of a few mathematical concepts.  In this article I’d like to introduce or reintroduce you to Ratio.  Don’t run – stick with me – it will be painless, I promise, and if you need more help, just call for an appointment to work on the numbers for your business. Continue reading →