CNN Money

Whether a child is groomed to take over the family business or mistakenly pushed into it, problems often arise when family and authority mix.

“Being in an emotional relationship and a business relationship puts a different, more difficult kind of strain on relationships,” said Getzler, who inherited his consulting firm from his father.

Difficult-to-solve personality issues are almost inevitable in family companies, and without an exceptionally strong patriarch or matriarch leading the family business, problems can mushroom.

Despite whether a favored daughter was groomed for the business or a son was mistakenly pushed into a position of authority, a parent might not have the ability to select an appropriate heir.

“Once the patriarch or matriarch retires or dies, many businesses become a free-for-all - despite carefully laid plans,” Getzler said.

To that end, Getzler offers some tips to help business owners make rational decisions about their successors. These strategies can also help owners make other tough calls when family relationships are at stake.

1. Set up an advisory board.
2. Employ a family business counselor.
3. Manage egos and salary demands.
4. Stop the feeding frenzy.

“Everyone gets along generally when there is a lot of money to go around. The fights start when someone feels they are working hard and not making enough,” Getzler said.

In the end, he insisted, “there’s nothing magical,” to navigating through difficult family business issues. “It’s about getting people to focus on the end result.”

A leader’s job often includes changing your people’s attitudes and behavior. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
   
2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
   
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
   
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
   
5. Let the other person save face.
   
6. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”
   
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
   
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
   
9. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.
   

A slew of businesses have popped up to help match students with internships, charging hundreds to thousands of dollars to help them write résumés, identify potential employers and find summer housing.

University of Dreams uses its staff’s personal contacts at 500 companies to get students internships with employers they couldn’t otherwise get into, said CEO Eric Lochtefeld. For interns, that’s better than sending in a résumé and hoping, he said.

“Does any college student really, sincerely believe that their résumé will stand out or get better consideration than an actual introduction would provide?” Lochtefeld said.

In four years, the company has placed 1,800 students in companies such as Paramount Pictures or MTV Networks, both divisions of Viacom Inc. It has slots this summer for 850 students, he said.

Students pay from $6,499 to $8,999 to have the company find them an eight-week summer internship, plus housing in dorms at universities, some meals, transportation to work and activities for a summer. Financial assistance, including loans, grants and full scholarships, is available.

An admissions team reviews applications and makes an offer. Students who are accepted pay a deposit of $500 to $1,000. Then they work with a placement agent, who finds a matching company.

They’re guaranteed an internship in the field of their choice or their money back. Most of the internships are unpaid, but University of Dreams arranges for college credit through universities.

rockymountainnews.com

Have you ever wondered …

• Why even the highest priced or lowest quality products sometimes outsell their competitors’?
• Why and how your prospects buy the products or services they do, even if their choices seem irrational or impractical?
• Why some brands have a devoted cult-like following while others have zero loyalty?

Will The Real Decision Maker (In Your Brain) Please Stand Up? — According to neuroscientists, there are 3 main parts to the brain, each functioning as a brain unto itself. These “three brains” - nestled inside one another — are as follows.

• The “Human” (”New,” or outer-most) Brain: Most evolved part of the brain known as the cortex. Responsible for logic, learning, language, conscious thoughts and our personalities.
• The “Mammalian” (Middle) Brain: Also known as the limbic system. Deals with our emotions, moods, memory and hormones.
• The “Reptilian” (Old) Brain: Also known as the R Complex controls our basic survival functions, such as hunger, breathing, flight-or-fight reactions and staying out of harm’s way.

Our “old” brain often overrides our voice of logic and drives all buying decisions for reasons beyond our conscious awareness. To influence your customer’s buying decisions, you must learn how the “old” brain operates and speak its “language.” Below are 7 key insights about the old brain that can add to your bottom line.

1. The old brain is driven by emotions.
2. The old brain “decides” on the basis of the gain vs. pain tradeoff.
3. The old brain is highly influenced by beginnings and endings.
4. The old brain is visually oriented and responds rapidly to images.
5. The old brain perceives the “pain of buying” in relative, not absolute, terms.
6. The old brain understands only what is tangible, physical and concrete.
7. The old brain’s control over buying decisions varies from culture to culture.

While neuromarketing is still in its infancy, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we market our products/services. The most important point is to use it for the right reasons. That is, as a way to better understand your customers and ultimately to better serve them. When used in this way, it can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

Business Know How

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, delivered a simple message this morning in a presentation titled: The game is changing but the rules are the same. The theme of the talk was a road map for growing a business in today’s environment.

Here are the three major points for Intuit’s success according to Cook:

1. Treat your employees as a volunteer workforce - Nurture your employees as entrepreneurs
2. Ultimately the work is delivered by people and process - Experiment and Adopt tools that let you stay agile
3. Word of mouth is more important than ever - Demonstrate value ahead of the sale and Proactively create customer delight

These words were delivered by the leader of one of the biggest companies around and yet, they apply to the one person shop equally.

ducttapemarketing.com

The Small Business Administration and the Postal Service have co-created a video-on-demand resource for entrepreneurs with advice and inspiration from successful business owners, the agencies announced Wednesday.

Delivering Success, which is available online at http://www.sba.gov/deliveringsuccess, provides a video library of interviews with successful entrepreneurs sharing their experiences and insight into business plans, financing, business promotion, planning, and research, among other issues.

Other videos cover reality checks for business, start-up tips, and how to take a business to the next level, the agencies said.

Why do small business owners write on blogs?

1. A faster and better way to create newsletter articles.
2. A strategy for getting published.
3. A low-cost way for a small business owner to market online.
4. A method to communicate and connect — especially important for business owners.
5. Satisfaction of some inner need to share.

Why do you blog? Or, if you do not currently blog, tell us the reason you do not.

smallbiztrends.com

Some words used in business names just bring certain connotations to mind, and, it can be enough to make me not go inside and shop.

1. “Today’s”
2. “Modern”
3. “Classy”
4. “Savvy”
5. “Swanky”
6. “Lady”
7. “Tidy”
8. “Charming”
9. “N’ Things”
10. Anything with a “K” where a “C” belongs - If you own “Kountry Klutter Kakes”, I will Kut you.

BusyMom.net

Successful selling at trade shows depends upon two things. One is your products and personnel: How good are your products and services, and how well do your people represent them. The second has nothing to do with you at all. It has everything to do with secrets.

Not all attendees are the same, and not every buyer on the floor shares these secrets. But most do, whether they’d like to admit it or not. These secrets are strong unifying factors that influence their buying decisions. If you, as a smart and savvy trade show exhibitor, know what these secrets are and tailor your exhibit appropriately, you’ll come away with higher sales numbers every time.

If you could hear your attendee’s deepest, most secret thoughts, they might go something like this:

• We’re impatient
• We’re lazy
• We’re Egotistical
• We hate math
• We liked to be pushed

businessknowhow.com

Shara Karasic, Community Manager of Work.com, will provide the inside view on how to use work.com as a valuable source of insight for your business — and also the ins and outs of how to use the site to increase visibility for your own business online.

Here is a sampling of some of the benefits of using Work.com:

• By contributing to the large database of 1,300 how-to business guides and developing your own guide, you become published and viewed as an expert in your field.
• Work.com guides become indexed by the search engines providing additional visibility. Keyword research as well as using the proper terms related to your topic will benefit the visibility of your guide within the search engines.
• Your guide may bring additional contacts and networking sources to your doorstep, as well as supplement your marketing efforts. You can begin by emailing your guide to clients and colleagues, linking it to any web sites you may have, and including it in your bio.

smallbiztrends.com

Lots of business owners skip a crucial step to ensure the success of their companies – writing a business plan. This detailed overview of your company and its future is commonly overlooked - often because it’s a lot of work. However, it’s some of the most valuable work you can do when starting up a business, which is why everyone from banks to venture capital companies require detailed business plans before they will even consider your business. The process of creating the plan and thinking things through has helped many business owners learn what it takes to be successful.

Some questions that a well-designed plan will answer:

• What does your particular industry look like right now and what will it
  look like in the future?
• What markets are you competing in – what will they be 5 years down the
  road?
• What specific competition will you be up against? What are their strengths
  and weaknesses?
• What products or services do you offer? Will they remain constant?
• What value (not features) do you provide to your customers?
• What long-term advantages do you have over the competition?
• How will you maintain them?
• How big and profitable will your business become?
• If youÂ’re using the plan to borrow money or attract investors: How much
  will you need & why?
• What action steps will you need to take to have your plan succeed?
• What will happen to the business when you retire or after your death?

Too often, business owners as so busy working “in” their business that they overlook the necessity to work “on the business”. A business plan helps you do this. How can you improve the odds of success? Planning! And the way to start planning is by creating a business plan, and continuing to pull it out, look at it and tweak it as your business grows. So, even if you don’t need to raise capital or borrow money, a plan can help your business significantly.

businessknowhow.com

Great faith. Great doubt. Great effort. It takes all three to bring anything meaningful to fruition, and it’s good to keep those in mind if you’re trying to start or grow your own company.

1. Great Faith: To build a business — or start anything new — you have to believe in yourself and your ideas. You can envision something that others cannot. You think up a new business, process, design or technology that hasn’t existed before.
2. Great Doubt: Even the best-laid plans and the best-planned businesses can fail. You have to allow yourself to clearly see and anticipate potential problems. If you do not bring a healthy and respectful appreciation of the challenges you’ll face when building a new business, you’ll be unable to withstand the difficult times.
3. Great Effort: Nothing succeeds without hard work. I’ve seen hundreds of people with great ideas who have never made a dime.

Great faith. Great doubt. Great effort. It takes all three. Others will challenge your ideas and question your chances of success. Without great faith, you’ll be shaken. Without great doubt, you won’t listen. Without great effort, they’ll be right.

usatoday.com

Achieving goals is not a matter of having “discipline”. It’s a matter of motivating yourself, and keeping your focus on your goal. Follow these hacks, or any combination of them that works for you, and you should have the motivation and focus you need.

1. Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes.
2. Keep a daily journal of your goal.
3. Create a friendly, mutually-supportive competition.
4. Make a big public commitment. Be fully committed.
5. Always think positive. Squash all negative thoughts.

Click here for a complete list of 20 hacks by zenhabits.net.

Posful is betting on the fact that many people still don’t use email, (apparently 65 million Americans) and that we know people who can’t receive any.

So the team at Posful has come up with a solution to bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Send an email to a special unique address with the subject line as the mailing address, and its gets outputted into a printed piece and mailed out at the other end.

Total cost, $.99 for one page full color, printing, mailing and postage included.