Engage

Marketing guru.  Financial extraordinaire.  Head problem solver and communicator.  If you run a small business, you probably wear all of these hats and more.  Maximizing your organization, productivity, and just making your life as an entrepreneur could be a little bit easier if you use the right tech.

The best ideas often happen in the most unexpected places and inopportune times when your mind is aimlessly engaged in a nonspecific activity. The best thing you can do under such circumstances is capture those fleeting ideas, thoughts, and feelings before they vanish forever. Some do it on the back of the napkin. The more organized ones do it with a notebook at hand.

From entertaining games that promote creativity and learning, to utilitarian apps that organize your to-do lists, controversial apps that help you spy on your spouse, and even life-saving apps that monitor your heart rate, if you dream it, you can find it. Because there appear to be inexhaustible markets for online apps (ever hear of iFart and ZitPicker?) – many developers have been led to believe all they need to do for an app to be successful is to… build it and they will come.

In general, trust is often talked of as the most important currency in business. It can the bedrock of a company’s success and the element that undergirds all employer-employee relationships. Without trust, no one will believe in the organization. Without that belief, no one is going to serve the business within the business and no one is going to buy – be it a product, service, idea.

With ambitious startups impatient to conquer the world, middling businesses needing fresh sales growth strategies to catapult themselves out of obscurity and into the limelight.

Creativity is the cornerstone of imagination and progress. Is your business – are you – moving forward? Imagine, for a moment, you’re at a company-wide offsite. You’ve been placed at a table with several acquaintances (perhaps even strangers). You all work in different departments.

Brainstorming can be a major team builder and massive idea generator. It can catapult your business to new heights. However, brainstorming is not as easy as it may seem. In fact, if you don’t know how to brainstorm right, instead of being beneficial, it can be a huge waste of time!

Conventional wisdom dictates that when you want a superstar team, you should hire superstar players. Clearly, if you have a lineup that consists of MVPs playing against average players, victory is very nearly guaranteed. In fact, this line of thinking is one of the default sales growth strategies – and lessons in business – of companies who want to increase productivity especially in times of profit squeeze.

Whether you write, code, sell, or present for a living, try devoting at least fifteen minutes a week to exploring failure. (Although you probably shouldn’t experiment with this in a high-stakes environment.)

As more and more freelancers and independent employees are becoming part of a free agent nation, we all can expect that the way work works will be disrupted. Work will change not just by technological advances, but also by the exodus of baby boomers from the workplace and their replacement by millennials.