Where your company is headquartered makes a big difference to your bottom line

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Where a business is headquartered can make a huge difference in the skill level of your employees, raising capital and attracting customers. This time of a year is an important reminder that where your company is headquartered also can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

For startups deciding where to establish roots or for growing companies looking to relocate, these factors should be top of mind when deciding on home base, since corporate taxes differ greatly by state. As the Tax Foundation notes, for example, some states have no traditional corporate income tax (like Texas, Nevada and Colorado), while Alaska collects a whopping $993 per capita.

And while taxes are not the only consideration a company should give when deciding where to locate, the significant variance can affect the bottom line by a substantial amount and has led to an influx of companies moving into lower-taxed locales.

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About the Author

Craig CasselberryCraig Casselberry is the founder and president of Austin-based Quorum Public Affairs, Inc., where he has managed more than 100 strategic communications projects for half of the Fortune 50 companies, issue coalitions, and federal, state and local public policy campaigns for corporate clients of all sizes. As a 20-year-veteran of the Texas political and business communities, Craig is a sought-after speaker and consultant, advising firms like AT&T, FedEx, Dell and Ford as well as early-stage companies on their growth strategies in Texas.

Big-Name Firm or Hands-on Experience: How to Get the Most out of Your Internship

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Internships can be a valuable stepping stone for college students to start on their career path. But when it comes to deciding where to intern, students must consider where they’ll gain the most experience. Should they pursue a big-name firm that offers prestige, or will a small company offering practical, hands-on experience that is directly related to their career goals be a better choice? This decision is often predicated on what year of college the student is in.

Although working at a big-name company looks great on a resume, you’ll want to spend your time doing more than fetching coffee and answering phones. If a big name firm gives you the opportunity to do meaningful work that will help build your resume, great. Smaller firms can be a great choice and offer incredible career-related exposure with varied responsibilities. There is great value in being able to show potential employers you’ve had meaningful experience in your intended field. This experience becomes more important as you move closer to graduation.

As a freshman or sophomore, going for the big-name company is fine since there is still plenty of time to gain practical experience during a later internship. However, juniors should aim for an internship that will provide ample opportunities to hone skills that will be significant when it comes time to seek full-time employment after graduation.

An internship is an important part of your career development strategy. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you research possible internships and companies:

  • Internships offer a reality check. They allow you to see what it’s actually like to work in the field you think you want to work in – or you may realize that you hate it and that it’s not for you. Regardless, this is all valuable insight.
  • Internships are a good recruiting tool for HR departments. Human resource departments offer these as a means to recruit the best students from the top schools. Attaining and completing a quality internship is a means to securing full-time employment upon graduation.
  • Position yourself as a serious candidate just as you would for a job search for a full-time position. That means you have to market yourself. Develop a great cover letter. Clean up your Facebook page. Set up a LinkedIn profile. You have one chance to make a good impression.
  • School programs can pave the way. See if your college offers a formal program to connect students with companies that offer internships.
  • Be proactive if your school does not have such a program. Contact HR departments at companies where you may want to intern to see what they offer. Ask your academic advisors if they can help get you connected to the right companies. Start networking through LinkedIn and other contacts to see who knows someone at companies that interest you.
  • Don’t procrastinate. Start looking for a summer internship as early as January because these positions go quickly.
  • Cast a wide net. Be open to companies of all sizes. Consider paid and unpaid internships.
  • Once you land the internship, take advantage of all it has to offer. Get involved in all the company’s intern-related activities and training opportunities. Network with heads of as many departments as possible. Treat it like a ‘real job.’

Whether you apply for and accept an internship at a large company or small one, remember that internships are really designed to give students a leg up in a very competitive job market, and give employers a head start in recruiting the best of the best. Interns that perform well stand a good chance of receiving a job offer even before they graduate.

About the Author

Kathy HarrisKathy Harris is Managing Partner of New York City-based Harris Allied, an executive search firm specializing in Technology, UX/UI Design and Quant Analyst placement services in the Financial Services, Professional Services, Consumer Products, Digital Media and Tech Industries For more information, visit www.harrisallied.com. Contact Kathy Harris at [email protected].

Three Strategies to Synchronize, Backup and Protect Your Business Data

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Virtually every type of company generates valuable data that must be updated, retained and safeguarded, including ‘secret sauce’ information on company products, employee data and sensitive customer information. As a company leader, it’s your responsibility to create and implement a strategy to make sure your information is synced to enable collaboration, backed up to ensure retention and secured to make sure data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

If your company started out small, it may have seemed easy at first to manage your data. Maybe you saved it all on a server, and only a few employees had access to it, so you felt you could keep an eye on it easily. But as companies grow, they get more complex. And these days, more and more businesses store information on the cloud so they can scale their infrastructure as they expand and enable employees to access data on the road or from multiple locations.

Syncing data is critical if you want to make sure everyone has access to up-to-date information, which is especially important for companies that manage mobile workforces. Otherwise, you’ll end up with different versions of the sales data or data silos will develop on separate hard drives that result in only certain employees having access to information that everyone needs.

Synchronization needs to encompass all types of devices, including tablets and mobile phones, laptops, desktops, servers and external drives. The type of data sync approach your company should pursue depends on your unique business needs, your workforce and your technology assets. Broadly speaking, there are three different categories of data solutions to choose from; here’s a brief overview of each:

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About the Author

Bill Carey is Vice President of Marketing & Business Development at Siber Systems Inc., which offers the top-rated RoboForm Password Manager software.

Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich is full of timeless lessons.

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“Thoughts are things” is the title and the first words of the first chapter of the book.

When I first read those words, I didn’t really understand what they meant – even when I read the first chapter and the examples offered in Napoleon Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich. It didn’t resonate until I got to the end of the chapter and read, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, and believe, it can achieve.” Then I started to get it. That was 1972.

By coincidence, it was only a few days later that I heard the late, great Earl Nightingale say, “You become what you think about.” At that moment, I got it. It clicked. And it has clicked ever since then.

More reading and studying about thinking and the thought process revealed that neither Hill nor Nightingale had the original thought.

From Socrates to Samuel Smiles, to Orison Swett Marden, to Elbert Hubbard, to Dale Carnegie, to Napoleon Hill, to Earl Nightingale, to Jim Rohn – they all had their own way of saying THE SAME thing.

Your thinking becomes your actions. And it’s those dedicated, well-planned, and directed actions that lead to your outcomes. Your reality. Better stated, your success.

All of these legendary scholars can’t be wrong.

All of them told me in their writings – the same way I’m telling you – that positive thought leads to positive actions and positive results, if the aim and the purpose are passionately believed.

Orison Swett Marden’s book, He Who Thinks He Can, written in 1908, says it in the title. It’s plain as day right on the cover of his book. It was Marden, by the way, that FOUNDED Success Magazine in 1888.

Hill’s title THINK and GROW RICH tells you first you gotta THINK! Your thinking will affect your BELIEF, your belief will help you create your MAJOR PURPOSE, your major purpose will clarify your DIRECTED ACTIONS, and your actions, combined with your DESIRE, your DEDICATION, and your DETERMINATION will determine your WEALTH.
First THINK, then GROW RICH.

Got it? Sure you do. Getting it, that’s the easy part. First you get it, you understand it THEN you agree with it. Easy so far. THEN the harder part, you have to believe you can do it. You have to THINK YOU CAN. Finally, the HARDEST part is you have to be willing to TAKE ACTION! Do it! That’s chapter one. Read it lately?

The rest of Think and Grow Rich contains the ideas, the definitions, and the clarifications that provide the ANSWERS. Hill describes it as the roadmap to riches. I’m telling you, it’s the most important success thinking you’ll ever be exposed to – as long as you repeat it until it becomes your reality.

But I have to stop here and clarify the book. Think and Grow Rich, and Hill’s writing, is not written in today’s language. There are no references to computers, email, the web, Facebook, social media, credit cards, or even television. Because none of those things existed when Hill penned this classic self-help book. Yet somehow the book has managed to sell more than 100 MILLION copies over the past seven decades.

To receive all the wealth in the book, you have to get over the fact Think and Grow Rich was written 70 years ago. As a country, we were fresh out of the Depression and the stock market crash of 1929. World War II was in full swing, the mood of the country was nervous, and Napoleon Hill – and his colleague Dale Carnegie – were screaming, “Make friends, be positive, believe in yourself, be influential, develop a goal and a plan, articulate yourself clearly, dedicate yourself to excellence, take directed action, and encourage others to do the same.” Pretty cool, eh?

These books aren’t 70 years old, rather they were 70 years ahead of their time. Maybe that’s why Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People have been on bestseller lists for 70 years.

The first chapter ends the same way it began. With one sentence of immortal wisdom. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, and believe, it can achieve.”

I’m sharing this information today in the hopes you will read or re-read this timeless classic. Rededicate yourself to YOUR best thinking (first), so you can do your best for others (second).

That’s the secret! Please tell everyone.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Goal-Setting, Planning, and Testing: The Importance of Managing Your Lead-Generation Strategy

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Learning how to use lead-generation marketing to your advantage requires planning and forethought. You need to think through your management strategy before beginning efforts to improve lead generation in your company. By setting goals, creating a plan to adopt new tactics, and testing the results, you can measure how the company’s investment of budget and time helps increase the number of leads and sales.

Developing a Strategy and Setting Goals

Developing a good lead-generation strategy begins with setting goals on what you hope to achieve. Your goals should define how much you wish to increase your lead-generation efforts, by when, and at what cost. It’s amazing to me how many organizations plunge into campaigns with no idea of what they’re shooting for, how many leads they’re trying to bring in, or what level of cost-effectiveness they need to observe. When their campaign is over, they have no idea how well specific tactics are working to provide them with the leads they need or if they’ve provided a positive ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment). Often, they’ve gone over budget or executed a campaign that has provided them with a minimal number of actionable leads.

Overall, the goal for lead-generation marketing should be to use as many tactics as possible to your advantage. In defining a management strategy, you should focus your goals on three areas:

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About the Author

David T. Scott has served as CMO and Director of Marketing for Fortune 500 companies and billion-dollar organizations, including GE, AT & T Wireless, PeopleSoft, and Intermec. While working at these companies, he developed a set of strategies designed to help marketing organizations increase their lead-generation results. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business, Scott is the founder and former CEO of Marketfish, Inc.