A business card is one of the most important elements of the successful business.

It represents the brand and makes sure it is remembered.

Therefore if you don’t pay enough attention to your business card, it means you are screwing up one of the most essential parts of your brand identity.

While there are a wealth of creative designs, this post looks at those that represents the business visualizing what it does:

Can you guess what this person is doing? I bet you can once you see the business card:

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Google, Intel, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard may lose tax credits and be forced to pony up more in the form of tax dollars to Uncle Sam.

If you’re wondering what these companies have in common – they all have operations outside of the United States. Barack Obama reiterated in no uncertain terms that there will be no tax breaks for companies creating jobs outside US.

Recently, at a White House meeting that was meant to reveal the tax reforms to ensure American multinationals start paying corporate taxes and keep jobs within the US, President Obama spoke strongly about the existing US system, giving the example of India. He said, it encourages paying “lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York.”

Under the existing US tax code, American companies with subsidiaries in foreign countries, do not have to pay US taxes on the profits from their subsidiaries until the time when money is transferred back to the US. As long as the money earned is put back into the foreign subsidiaries, they can avoid paying taxes and US businesses take advantage of this “loophole” as many call it, in the tax code. This means creating more jobs in other countries where the subsidiaries exist. Read the rest of this entry »

Colors are everywhere and their impact on us shouldn’t be under-estimated. Our nervous system requires input and stimulation. And color choice is the best way to help it.

Colors can change our mood, make us work or feel tired – imagine, your room colors may be the reason for your bad productivity or lower creativity! The human eye sees about 7,000,000 colors.

Certain colors and color relationships can irritate, cause headaches, or make you feel sick. Other colors and color combinations are healing and soothing.

Consequently, the appropriate use of color can maximize productivity, minimize visual fatigue, and relax the whole body. Here are some basics to start from:

Now, just a few details to support the data listed in the table:

Red:

It may look weird that while making you more energetic and excited, this color also makes you more productive and attentive to details. This phenomenon is explained the following way: Read the rest of this entry »

Starting your own business is tough. You have to think about so many things at a time that you can easily get lost. Apart from your usual professional assignments, you need to hand the whole bunch of other tasks from managing (new) co-workers to building new business connections.

The world starts going crazy… So how not to get lost? Get organized!

First, define what things keep you busy every day

Day by day, you watch your time spent nowhere and you feel you no more have any control over it. Now, sit down, grab a notebook and a pen and create a list of things you do every day. Mine is going to look something like this:

• Checking email box, killing spam, replying to some messages and sorting other for later references;
• Checking all your active social media accounts (Twitter replies, Facebook inbox, StumbleUpon shares…);
• Checking all recent blog posts (are there any comments outside the site itself? on Twitter, Digg, Reddit, etc);
• Checking morning business news, Digg and Reddit front page, etc
• Looking for some material for new blog posts, brainstorming for new post idea (lots of coffee here!)
• Doing some client work, creating daily reports for clients;
• Talking to online friends and partners;
• Checking my feed reader (especially those blogs which are updated daily).

Ok, going through this list, it seems I definitely need more than 24 hours a day… Ok, now let’s figure how to manage all those things and to get everything done. Read the rest of this entry »

With the Obama administration continuing its public relation efforts, the growing segment of the nation’s population – Seniors; which includes grandparents, retirees and the disabled have started receiving the $250 stimulus checks, beginning May 7, 2009. They have waited months for this, ever since they have been told that they would get some financial help.

The $787 billion stimulus plan is intended to make a difference to the economy and bring it out of recession, and is said to be the largest single stimulus payment ever made, with an estimated 55 million seniors, retirees and others are being benefited from $13 billion of the federal budget.

These checks will go out in a phased manner until June 4, 2009, mostly to Social Security and SSI recipients. The other beneficiaries include disabled veterans and railroad retirees, whose funds will be released separately by the respective agencies that serve them.

The stimulus bill passed in February in favor of this one-time boost for senior Americans to help them overcome this economic recession provides many exciting moments for all those people who will see their bank accounts swell by $250.

This stimulus money will be sent in a similar fashion to how each of them receives their regular Social Security or Supplemental Security Income money. If someone has opted to receive their SS check in mail, this $250 will also be sent to their mail. These days, since more and more people are using direct deposit, such people will see the money in their bank accounts immediately.

Even with the government trying to do its best to improve life for the Americans, there is an ongoing debate over how these stimulus payments will be spent by those people who are hard pressed for money. What affect will this money have on the overall economy? Read the rest of this entry »

Employees play a major role in the success or failure of a company. Happy employees are motivated and they take a company forward. Here are the secrets of some of the companies that are given top ten rankings by Fortune Magazine and Great Place To Work Institute, for being the best employers.

NetApp

This company specializes in proprietary network storage and data management. They have more than 130 offices throughout the world. It is ranked high, at the very top for being the best employer because of the workplace quality and the high-trust culture that is part of the organization.

The company management believes in maintaining a great rapport with employees and taking care of their every need, being completely supportive in every way and at all times. This generosity is taken to heart by the employees and makes the company one of the best-networked organizations.

Edward Jones

This company, with managing partner James D. Weddle at the helm, offers financial products for individual investors and currently have more than 7 million clients, with 10,800 offices in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom.

Culture: Their main focus is training and they provide an average of 149 hours of training each year to their employees, which is said to be far greater than the average of 45. The best part is that employees are not just trained for the job they are in, but are also allowed to develop new skills. Even the fact that employees can seek employment elsewhere with these skills does not deter the management. They believe in their philosophy that employees who are passionate about their job enjoy working for the company. Read the rest of this entry »

You would have by now caught on with the trend of the “gurus” endorsing different products. Such campaigns are found for every huge product.

There can be no better advertising than word of mouth – your satisfied customers talking good about you. And companies like Microsoft are using this strategy very effectively by featuring their high-end customers talking about their products. When customers who have used a product and been satisfied with it favorably endorse it, this is called “testimonial advertising,” which is one of the most popular endorsement approaches. The endorsement can be in any form and the individual giving the testimonial may be the head of the company or someone holding an important position in the company.

This testimonial advertising has come about to bring in the most important factor of influencing a customer into trying a product, since it has been praised by a satisfied customer who is also someone important. This gives the prospective customer a reason to emulate and choose to become a customer too.

If you have seen all the sales pages online loaded with testimonials with people who are said to have used the products, you would understand why they do it. But only people who visit these sites can see these testimonials. It is the same with the bigger companies like Microsoft too, where their testimonials are usually buried deep down in their company websites. Read the rest of this entry »

Billionaires are getting younger! These young billionaires stand out amongst hundreds of billionaires in their age group. They are different from those that inherited their billions, because they started their own businesses and built them from ground up to reach the peak.

Marc Zuckerberg – United States, Age: 23

Facebook has attracted more users than any other site can boast of. The founder is a young boy born on May 14, 1984 and named Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. This sky and reserved kid has an unparalleled brilliance. According to Forbes magazine, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in the world for 2008.

He was born in a Jewish family and his father is a dentist. From his early years, he loved hacking into computers and wrote his own programs. He studied at Harvard, and the idea that brought him fame and money, a social networking site, was born in his dorm at Harvard, and the rest is history. His idea took fruition as Facebook, gaining unprecedented fame. He and his friend Andrew McCollum along with two other roommates, Dustin Moskovits and Chris Hughes started Facebook. Mark is the CEO of Facebook and his net worth is said to be $1.5 billion.

Zuckerberg is the person responsible for the overall direction and product strategy for Facebook. He currently leads the design of Facebook’s service and development of its infrastructure and core technology.

He studied computer science at Harvard University and while he was there, he created a website called Facemash, that compared students’ dorm pictures kept side-by-side, to see which one is better looking (hot or not.) It was about a few months later that he launched Facebook. He also won the Crunchie Award in 2007 for the “Best Startup CEO.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the ten most powerful brands in the world brought out by Millward Brown research company, which takes into account the measure of brand equity combined with the performance of the company. According to the report, the top five remained the same, with all the five companies showing an increase in brand valuation between 15% and 30% when compared to 2007, but there are several changes with the rest of the list.

Google

As expected, Google tops the list. Google is the most powerful brand in the world with a current brand value estimated at $86 billion, and it has achieved all this in just ten short years. This global search engine giant had its beginnings in 1996 and was just a research project started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University Ph.D. students. The incorporation of Google Inc. took place on September 7, 1998 at their friend’s garage in California. The company experienced stupendous growth in a short time and went public on Aug 19, 2004. Google’s rank is based on the equity value and the fantastic financial performance.

General Electronics (GE)

GE is a giant US multinational engaged in technology and services industries. It has its headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. It is now the second largest company in the world, in terms of market capitalization. The brand value of this company is estimated at $71.4 billion.

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is the world’s largest software company and the third most powerful brand on the globe, with annual revenue of $44.28 billion and a brand value of $70.89 billion. This veteran software company was started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and has its headquarters in Washington. The company went public in 1986. It manufactures computer technology for business and personal computing, offering a wide range of software products. Read the rest of this entry »

Apart from CEO’s who would head the list, there are some other professions that are considered as overpaid in a recent survey. Of course, people in those professions may not agree; however, this is not about individuals but about the pay when compared to the responsibilities these professions demand.

You would be surprised to note some seemingly smaller professions paid big dollars.

CEOs

I think this is something we all agree on, what with the happenings of the recent past. Grossly overpaid CEOs are those of underperforming companies. These people get millions as a reward for their failed leadership. Even in companies that are doing well, does a company fare well solely based on the CEO? What about the efforts of employees? An average CEO is said to make more than 531 times of the average hourly worker’s wage. Facts reveal that the total return to shareholders was higher in companies whose CEO gets less than $500,000 than in companies where CEOs get multi-million dollar compensation. Read the rest of this entry »