Latest Posts

  • Technology 0

    Top Signs You Need Managed WordPress Hosting

    You’ve heard all those buzzwords, right? “Managed WordPress Hosting can save you thousands per year!” or “Speed up your site 3000 times with Managed hosting!” It sounds awesome, but when you look at it, it’s more crazy terms you’ve never heard of, like Varnish and Memcached, and it’s just another mystical black box to you! You just want your site to be fast, and by fast you mean “It doesn’t annoy me to watch my page load.” So maybe you do need this managed thingy. But how do you KNOW you need this hosting? How slow is slow? TTL (time to live) is a measurement of how quick your website responds at all when contacted. Th...
    On May 7, 2014 / By
  • Finance 0

    Tax Ramifications of Closing Your Business

     Over the last couple of weeks, a few of my clients have decided for one reason or another to close down their businesses. One is moving to a different state while another is about to retire and wants to travel the world. Whatever the reason, there will be tax rules to follow depending on the type of small business.   For sole proprietorships, closing down is a relatively simple procedure: Take the sign down and walk away. You simply quit filing Schedule C with your tax return. In fact, unlike corporate or partnership entities, there is not even a “final return” box on the Schedule C form. If your business is a corporation or partnershi...
    On May 5, 2014 / By
  • Marketing 0

    How to Social Surround Your Customers and Prospects

    While the title of this post could sound a little stalkerish, the fact is you can better serve your customers and attract new ones when you use social media to create a more complete picture of your ideal customer’s world. Employing tools and routines that give you a deeper glimpse into what your customers care about, are doing each day, can’t find enough of, are looking for, just accomplished, just completed, just lost, just attended or just got let down by is how you discover ways to serve, add value and build deeper relationships. Below are five elements of a social surround game plan. The usual suspects It should probably go without s...
    On May 1, 2014 / By
  • Technology 0

    How to Design an IVR Phone System That Doesn’t Annoy Your Customers

    Although it may be advisable for business owners to find ways to improve their productivity and make their lives easier, doing so at their customers’expense is a risky proposition.  One way some businesses are leaving customers frustrated is by using interactive voice response (IVR) systems that are difficult to navigate and hard to understand. IVR systems automate call-answering systems, thus preventing a small business’s staff from having to answer calls all day. IVR systems can be as simple as asking customers to press 1 for billing, 2 for product information and 3 to speak with a customer service representative, or as...
    On April 28, 2014 / By
  • Finance 0

    Lessons Learned From Your 2013 Tax Return

    With another tax filing deadline in the rearview mirror, most people don’t think about taxes until the next year. However, take a few moments to review your return before you stock it away. This year’s return can provide valuable information on the financial health of your business, as well as show you ways to improve your tax situation in time for next year’s filing. Tax Return Lessons Learned 1. Do You Feel the Self-Employment Tax Pain? Do you feel like you are paying too much in self-employment taxes? You’re not alone, especially considering the rate for 2013 is higher than it has been the past few years. If you make self-employed ...
    On April 24, 2014 / By
  • News 0

    Jim Ovia: Zenith leads Nigerian change

    Nigeria, little over two decades ago, was in short supply of the resources and infrastructure necessary to keep pace with the rapid technological and economic change in much of the developed world. Opportunities were limited and, as a consequence, business impetus was lacking, save for a select few individuals who sought to capitalise on what were then just pockets of opportunity. An economic overhaul and the ensuing market liberalisation in the early 1990s brought with it a wave of entrepreneurs, among them the Zenith Bank founder, Jim Ovia, who sought to inspire progressive change in what was then a sorely underdeveloped business climate. S...
    On March 11, 2014 / By
  • News 0

    The myth of isolationist America

    Is the United States turning inward and becoming isolationist? That question was posed to me by a number of financial and political leaders at the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, and was heard again a few days later at the annual Munich Security Conference. In a strong speech at Davos, Secretary of State John Kerry gave an unambiguous answer: “Far from disengaging, America is proud to be more engaged than ever.” Yet the question lingered. Unlike the mood at Davos a few years ago, when many participants mistook an economic recession for long-term American decline, the prevailing view this year was that the US economy has regained mu...
    On February 11, 2014 / By
  • News 0

    The race for video game innovation

    Derided for years by older generations as an industry purely aimed at children, the video games industry has grown to such a level that it is now among the most dominant – and most profitable – of all the entertainment industries. Worth around $80bn, the global video game industry has exploded in popularity over the last two decades, in part due to technological innovations but also because of the ageing population of youthful gamers that are reluctant to put down their control pads once they hit their 30s. Indeed, in the US, the average age of gamers is 34, while roughly two fifths of these gamers are female, defying the stereotype that ...
    On January 21, 2014 / By
  • News 0

    The call of corporate consolidation

    It’s highly unlikely that the average American consumer had heard of a company calledShuanghui International until the middle of this year – but they certainly will over the next few years. The Hong Kong-based but mainly China mainland-owned company is a producer of meat products that only got going 30 years ago. As for its Shuanghui brand (Shineway in English), it was launched barely 20 years ago. But in September, Shuanghui pulled off the biggest-yet takeover of an American company by a Chinese one when US regulators approved its $4.72bn acquisition of Smithfield Foods, a global conglomerate. Shuanghui, led by Managing Director Zhijun Y...
    On January 20, 2014 / By
  • News 0

    Trapped on a sinking island

    Like politicians everywhere, Puerto Rico’s legislators never like to be reminded of failure – not least (in their case) the island’s dubious distinction of sliding into recession in 2006 when much of the West was still in the throes of an economic boom. After eventually becoming a self-governing US territory (a new constitution was approved in 1952), which was a legacy of the US victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War, the island latterly entered an economic cycle punctuated by fiscal mismanagement that hit its nadir in 2006 when yet another budget crisis this time saw the government temporarily shut down, putting 100,000 people out of...
    On January 20, 2014 / By