Melissa Fisher, CFE 🎮

Millennial consumers are now the largest population in the U.S. Also referred to as echo boomers, these children and grandchildren of the Baby Boomer generation are decidedly different than their parents in many ways.

New cloud computing companies can help you cut costs and rapidly scale your business for launch, rapid expansion or even franchising.

Help ensure your business is free to redirect its resources for exceptional service, delivery and product innovation giving you a long-term competitive advantage in the market:

Attention Tech Startups & Fellow Entrepreneurs: As a Startupologist there is nothing better than finding free stuff made by awesome people! Here are 300 free tools to help you along your entrepreneur journey.

Every organization is vulnerable to crises and franchise brands are perhaps the best prepared for unexpected attacks. Whether it’s a disgruntled employee getting on social media, hoaxes or honest to goodness mishaps, every entrepreneur can learn from how franchise brands managers prepare for crisis communications.

The marketplace - and its relationship to your product - is organic, forever evolving and morphing, oftentimes in ways that neither the marketer nor the end user anticipated, intended or even recognizes. The only way to assess that relationship accurately is to walk in the target’s shoes, get on the ground level with them and understand the challenges they face, the rewards they seek and experience what it really is that drives them to purchase and to embrace your product.

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Give your business an opportunity to receive the capital it may need to launch and grow.

Eighty percent of our success in learning from other people is based on how well we listen. Most people think listening is a passive activity. Not true.

Good listeners regard what they do as a highly active process — with every muscle engaged, especially the brain. There are three things good listeners do

Franchising your business concept is a proven way to achieve rapid growth, but becoming a franchisor is not an automatic ticket to success, especially in today’s rapidly changing marketplace.

Use these tips to add value to your customer interactions, and you’ll be singing the loyalty song in no time. For global companies, local boutiques and every business in between,...

Timing is one of the most important components in creating a successful promotions program. To maximize profitability, promotional initiatives have to be coordinated, promoted and launched at very specific intervals.

The number one reason for M & A failure? Culture clash. And a decades long flawed strategy titled “integration.” Here’s the unspoken truth accompanied by the predictable chain of events.

Many brands and retailers will be facing Christmas with a mixture of excitement and fear: excitement for all the sales opportunities the season brings, and fear for falling profit margins,...

Do you feel stressed and overloaded? Or that your business growth seems stalled? If so, then you may need to brush up your delegation skills! Learning to delegate is critical to successful leadership. You can’t take on more responsibility unless you are willing to delegate to others. But that doesn’t mean it is always easy. If you don’t delegate you may die of exhaustion, but if you don’t do it right your business may seriously suffer.

New dining customers are delivered in a host of ways in our digital age, but despite all the noise about foodie websites and mobile apps, traditional direct marketing still delivers a great result for restaurants. Before consumers decide where to dine next weekend, which of the following do you suppose they are most likely to do?

The DiSC model provides a common language that people can use to better understand themselves and to adapt their behaviors with others. The Dwyer Group shared how they use DiSC, behavioral profiling during the franchise sales process and managerial hiring to help ensure they select candidates with the most potential for success.

Marco’s Pizza has achieved greater overall sales growth and profitability by encouraging every employee to rise above their job description to identify, care about and solve customer concerns. By focusing and rewarding employees that focus “above the line” they have benefited their bottom line.

Research proves gratitude is good for business. Thanking people works wonders for business because it expresses one of our most basic emotions: gratitude. When someone does something nice for you, they expect gratitude — and think less of you for withholding it.

Financing your business is one of the first critical decisions you’ll make. With this in mind, we thought you might want to consider applying the “Goldilocks Principle” to your funding quest…choosing the type that’s “just right.” To help you, we’ve highlighted various financing options that might fit your business.

Prominent executive coaches and leadership strategists Jane Hyun and Audrey S. Lee offer lessons on the vital skill of “Flexing” — the art of flexing your personal leadership style to more effectively lead people who are different from you. Creating flex in a company’s management style will impact all aspects of developing the talent you have, attracting future talent and building relationships with customers in this competitive marketplace.

Employee pride doesn’t start with a formal employee recognition program, it starts with you. Here are 4 easy steps to begin to improve your skills.

Attention Tech Startups & Fellow Entrepreneurs: As a Startupologist There Is Nothing Better Than Finding Free Stuff Made By Awesome People!

The first thing every entrepreneur who owns multi-location businesses needs to do is keep data on past Grand Openings to facilitate the right planning conversations for the next Grand Opening.

How do you define success? Success is all about having the right mindset. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of a dozen quotes about success from some of history’s most successful people and one inspirational movie character. Together they paint a clear picture of the mindset they had when achieving their success.

In honor of the upcoming National Women’s History Month, we are celebrating women-owned businesses in the U.S. – all 8.6 million of them!

Women-owned businesses are generating $1.3 trillion in revenues annually, and the value continues to rise; revenues are up 59% in the U.S. between 1997 and 2013 (Source: NAWBO). But in reality, female entrepreneurs’ reach is even further than that! For example, many studies focus on majority “women-owned” businesses, which overlook the 18.8% of… Show more

In honor of the upcoming National Women’s History Month, we are celebrating women-owned businesses in the U.S. – all 8.6 million of them!

Women-owned businesses are generating $1.3 trillion in revenues annually, and the value continues to rise; revenues are up 59% in the U.S. between 1997 and 2013 (Source: NAWBO). But in reality, female entrepreneurs’ reach is even further than that! For example, many studies focus on majority “women-owned” businesses, which overlook the 18.8% of “women-led” businesses (where a woman owns less than 51% of the company). These groups combined, however, make up 36% of businesses in the U.S, according to the National Women’s Business Council, and could possibly account for an additional economic impact of up to $1 trillion! Show less

According to Paul Gustavson and Stewart Liff authors of A Team of Leaders: Empowering Every Member to Take Ownership, Demonstrate Initiative and Deliver Results there are five categories of potential outcomes a business can measure, along with possible indicators helping an organization track their progress.

No matter how many good people you gather, most workplace teams settle into the same old rut. Once the initial enthusiasm dissipates, they become little more than order takers or paper pushers, satisfied with so-so results. At the core of the team dilemma is a little-known truth: It’s not the people who need to change but the design and measurements applied to the team that needs an overhaul.

Many entrepreneurs revaluate their business plans and set new goals as they head into a New Year.
Here are some inspirational quotes on the topic of goals.

Despite having a roller-coaster real estate market, people tend not to take lease renewals all that seriously. They see it as simple, thinking they can just call the landlord and get their new rate. That way of thinking can cost your firm a lot of money. Lynn Drake, President at Compass Commercial LLC ITRA Global of Michigan suggests if you’re looking into renewing your lease, make sure not to overlook these 3 critical steps.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back on a decade of my life spent in startups, it’s high time that I reflect on it all, ruminate a bit, even pass a little judgment on those with whom I worked (and myself). The result? These five little nuggets of startup wisdom.

In our fast-changing world, leaders are increasingly confronted by messy, multifaceted challenges that require collaboration to resolve. But the standard methods for tackling these challenges — meetings packed with data-drenched presentations or brainstorming sessions that circle back to nowhere — just don’t deliver. Great strategic conversations generate breakthrough insights by combining the best ideas of people with different backgrounds and perspectives.

The use of independent contractors saves employers significant money on federal and state employment taxes and allows them to avoid having to pay employee benefits. The need to ensure appropriate worker classification has increased due to elevated IRS and DOL enforcement. This increased enforcement activity can result not only in additional taxes and penalties, but also in additional exposure from employees making claims against the employer for employee benefits.

A positive attitude is a winning attitude. So what do you do when a member of your sales team is a real downer?

Think about this: Veteran’s are Employees Willing to Take A Bullet for Their Last Employer. In 2011 the International Franchise Association started VetFran, a program to recruit military veterans and returning wounded warriors.

You’ve seen her featured in Forbes and you’ve seen her speak at TEDx – and now she’s talking business and entrepreneurship with StartupNation!

Kelsey Ramsden is a force to be reckoned with! This $50M biz-starter, mother of three, and two-time #1 Female Entrepreneur in Canada founded SparkPlay in 2012 as a means of helping parents and kids unplug from electronic media and plug into authentic playtime.

Beacons, beacons, beacons. All I hear about are beacons. Being a featured speaker on the topic of marketing & promotions, I can’t seem to get away from them

There are more than 126 million active women entrepreneurs around the world. But there's more that needs to be done to fully tap the entrepreneurial potential of women globally.