Category: Money

Founded in 2011 by Homa Dashtaki and her epically mustachioed father, Goshtasb, the small company specializes in handmade Persian yogurt, taking pasteurized milk from a Hudson Valley dairy and turning it into jars of delightfully thick deliciousness.

Researchers asked, “What mistakes have you made in your career that benefited you in the long term?” and “What mistakes have you made that have hurt your career?” Here are the results—four mistakes that may ultimately prove to be beneficial.

Tech-job-hunting site Dice.com recently published its 2015 Salary Survey, which named the highest-paying tech skills. Dice surveyed 23,470 IT professionals in the fall of 2014 to come up with this list.

As she nears 100, Irene Bergman has some advice for enjoying a long career on Wall Street: Don’t do anything stupid.

Here are 10 websites that I visit almost everyday for their value, information, and charts.

In this post, I’ll explain why bad networking practices can hurt your freelance business. I’ll also give you four tips to help you keep in person meetings from draining your pocketbook and sucking away your time.

Serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban explains a very common social-media error--and what his company is doing about it.

The problem is that it’s not always easy to simplify things. You could have a thousand ideas in your head, or you could keep imagining new scenarios that need to be accounted for, or you could want your plan to be a success so badly that you throw everything you can think of into it. But at some point, you’ll need to stop, evaluate your position and make an active effort to make your plan simpler. Here’s how you can get the job done:

Have you ever had a discussion with someone who posed this question: “If you could invite any five people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be?”

Laurie Pickard publicly chronicled her pursuit of a business education entirely out of free or low-cost online courses. Her gamble is paying off.

Jobs turned the product launch into an art form. He also leaves a legacy by which entrepreneurs can learn to dazzle their audiences. The following five keynotes will help anyone give the presentation of a lifetime.

When your small business outgrows your original vision or your target market shifts, rebranding may be in order. But updating your image and messaging can be risky. So, how do you alter your approach without damaging your reputation or losing customers?

Here are three habits that haven't changed much over centuries that will positively affect you as an entrepreneur today.

What has made Buffett the most successful investor of all time? Many things.

Disneyland set the bar high for other amusement parks that followed, and it (and Walt Disney World, and the other Disney parks around the world) just seem to get better every year. Today Disneyland began festivities in the run up to its 60th anniversary on July 17, and I suspect there will be many more anniversaries in the future.

We are pleased to provide our readers an excerpt from the newly published book Investing Psychology: The Effects of Behavioral Finance on Investment Choice and Bias by Tim Richards.* The area of investor decision making is a rich one and Tim takes a deep dive into the many ways in which investors unwittingly sabotage their best laid plans. In the book Richards lays out a number of lessons on investing from behavioral finance, the first of which appears below.

What is the first step you should take in order to trademarking your business?

The Virgin Founder recently answered a reader’s question by listing six things that every fledgling entrepreneur should bear in mind when starting up…

Mezzanine debt gets its name because it blurs the lines between what constitutes debt and equity. It is the highest-risk form of debt, but it offers some of the highest returns -- a typical rate is in the range of 12%-20% per year.

Influence can be a very important ally in a negotiation. If used strategically, it can prove to be a decisive factor in the amount of power you have during the negotiation.

While $1,000,000 is a big number, it can be attained. The journey to $1 million may be a long one, but each step along the way is not difficult. In fact, each step is down right easy. With the right planning, commitment, and execution, anybody can become a millionaire. While there are certainly more than 5 ways to build wealth, what follows are 5 of the most practical concepts and methods that anybody can follow to become a millionaire in the making.

Small business owners and employees who work from home and who maintain a home office can deduct up to $1,500 per year in an easy way. The new option allows qualified taxpayers to annually deduct $5 per square foot of home office space on up to 300 square feet, for as much as $1,500 in deductions. To take advantage of the new option, taxpayers will complete a much simpler version of the current 43-line form.

“What I want to do is get exclusive distribution rights for their product in the U.S. Since I’m a novice at this, I would appreciate your direction. What should my next step be?”

Entrepreneurs work hard all year long to ensure their businesses become successful and stay successful, but everyone needs a break to relax and reflect. If you start feeling guilty about heading to the beach this summer don’t. Here is a list of summer reads that will keep you thinking and inspired -- even from your Adirondack.

While mere mortals stumble groggily out of the bed in the morning -- or, worse, lay prostrate before the irresistible lure of the snooze button -- the world’s most successful business leaders have mastered routines to kick off their days with productive vigor.

Lately I have been asked—in various ways—“How do I go about picking winners in the Small Cap Companies, Initial Public Offerings, Start-ups and Private Held Companies for Investment?” Well, since my personal win/lose ratio is about 80/20 (more winners than losers), you might expect me to go into some detail about reading the financial statements; looking at price-to-earnings ratios; using arcane calculus formulations; or observing mystical patterns in the trading activity of the stock.

I learned this formula when I was a copy cub working for a world-famous televangelist. This woman toured the country every other week, held a three-day conference in a major city, and then hit the road again.

This is the challenge for small startups without deep pockets—how can you get noticed when the traditional channels are out of reach? The answer, of course, is to find the channels that haven’t yet been overrun by the horde—and I’m going to walk you through the channels that we used to get 5,000 users within ten days of our launch.

Business leaders measure productivity by the quality and quantity of output over input. Management seems to have a big part in a business. They decide, implement actions, and take the control. The professional skills and roles of managers are important to be adapted and put into practice not only by business people but all people who want to do and be more everyday.

If you don’t learn how to write a good headline then the chances are you will have trouble attracting traffic to your website or blog. In a digital economy that can cost sales, because you need readers to turn up to buy your goods and services.

We read about a cool growth hack involving “commenting on blog posts” recommended by several websites. It seemed like a practical way to attract visitors at a very low cost (unlike paid marketing) and with no initial setup needed (unlike large scale content marketing). For many, this proved to be a neat and effective way of attracting those first needed users.

You know people whose main gig appears to be self-promotion? The ones who talk a lot more than they actually do?

“Good writing is not a natural gift. You have to learn to write well. Here are 10 hints.”

So please find a dozen of our community's most-loathed annoyances below, as culled from a few epic Facebook and Twitter conversations. If you have even more misgivings about how people misuse their missives, let us know in the comments.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Novogratz believes travel will help you more. He's tired of seeing the same types of resumes and argues that young people should take a gap year before they start their careers or college.

Average copywriters write average sentences. You, I’m guessing, don’t want to be average.

You cannot change anything unless first you believe in your ability to drive change.

But what if I said there was a way to invest that could remove much (though not all) of the risk associated with rapid stock-market corrections and recessions?

Harvard students get near-perfect SAT scores. These are smart, smart kids. So they shouldn't have trouble with a simple logic question, right?

Driven by insatiable greed and pursuing his firm’s self-interest above all else, the story goes, Rockefeller conspired to obtain an unfair advantage over his competitors through secret, preferential rebate contracts (discounts) with the railroads that shipped oil.

I tried to focus on the lesser-known ideas (avoiding the obvious and the abused) … and, more important, how they can apply to you today.

Joyce Benenson, a psychologist at Emmanuel College in Boston,doesn’t have Sandberg’s high profile, but she’s done the homework (and research) that’s missing from Sandberg’s book, laying it out in a fascinating science-based book on sex differences, “Warriors and Worriers: The Survival of the Sexes.”

Today, thousands of startups succeed in persuading new users to sign up for products — in some cases, sight unseen. We talk to executives from successful, young startups to see how they’ve been able to influence potential customers to take the plunge.

Remember: trading is a business. Treat the stock market with respect and you will be around a lot longer than most investors.

Relatively few entrepreneurs have MBAs, but I'll bet that almost all of the successful ones have read and truly treasure these seven short, easy-to-read classics:

These various websites offer huge savings at major department stores, grocery outlets and other retailers through coupons, exclusive offers, and cash rebates. It’s easier than ever to save money, so before you shop, check out some of the best websites to help you save money.

Today I want to share five critical components with you, and talk about how they fit into your marketing and your business. We’ll start, as every good story does, with the hero …

This can be your life — if you create self-sustaining passive income.