1. I guess we all have good, bright, precious ideas. Right?!  How to make sure your idea is valuable?

As entrepreneurs, we come across a lot of folks who poke holes in our ideas. We hear a lot of “No – this won’t work.”

So when should we go full steam ahead with our idea even after hearing all the negativity—and when should we pause and evaluate the idea?  The answer depends on who the naysayers are.

2.  The Single Greatest Way To Discover Innovation

Here’s the idea behind this. Whenever I am trying to get inspired, original or innovative in my thoughts to add to a presentation, blog post, article, product, service or book, I spend a fair amount of time reading. No surprise there, everyone does that, but what I’ve found is that some of the best ideas come from unrelated texts – if I know how to read them.

3. Question: What to Do When the Client Is Wrong?

Sooner or later most freelancers will have the pleasure of working with a client who seems to have forgotten why they hired you in the first place. This client may ignore or overrule all of your recommendations and even dictate decisions on the project that you, as the experienced professional, are certain will be detrimental to its overall success. Despite your objections, explanations and warnings, the client steamrolls the project toward something less than what your normal standards would require, all the while assuring you that they have a better idea and understanding of what their project needs than you do.

How should you handle this situation? Do you refuse to bend and lose or “fire” the client, refunding any payments? Or, do you submit to their demands and hope for the best?

1.  Focus On Your Output, And Restrain Your Input

At any single time, you are only able to either take in input, or put out output. Talking while you are listening is not doable in any useful form, and any variation of this will leave you tired very quickly. Accepting this concept is helpful for you to break up your time into manageable chunks.

2. 8 Ways to Develop Your Employees

One strategy that can improve recruitment and retention is training. Investing in staff training and development can alleviate skill shortages by improving your current staff’s abilities to handle increased or new challenges.

Training may sound expensive, but the cost of turnover is even more expensive. Replacing and employee can cost between 50 and 100 per cent of a positions’ annual salary! With this in mind, take a look at the following eight ways to develop your employees, from AILS.

3. Improve Conversions by Connecting with your Audience

Lots of people design sites based on what they would like to see. However, what makes sense to a designer may not make sense to their target audience. If designers seek to create a conversion-friendly web experience we’re going to have to learn about our audience and what makes them tick.

1. At some point I guess we all had something to present. So, which are the 7 deadly sins for speakers and presenters ?

Listeners don’t give their attention lightly and it doesn’t take much for it to wander. Here are seven bad speaking habits that will guarantee your listeners will be focusing on other things, instead of what you’re presenting.

2.  Personal Development: More Than Self-Motivation and Positive Thinking

Personal development happens when you finally decide to change the way you live your life for the better. It must be emphasized that the whole process is not only made up of good experiences or formal workshops. Even bad experiences can help in pointing a person to the right direction in life.

But most, if not all mentors would try to fix on self-motivation and positive thinking as the two most important considerations that ensure personal development success. Well, they may be right, but a holistic approach to self-development goes way beyond these two factors. Read on to know what else is needed to help you attain self-awareness and development.

3. How to Use Personal Development Information in a Better Way

Personal development books, blogs and videos can be a wonderful resource to help you improve your life. Over the last few years I have learned a couple of things that helped me to make better use of that information to get actual results in my life.

I would like to share those things today.

4. Free Consultation: Pros and Cons

In my search for effective marketing strategies for freelancers, I keep running into this idea. Get prospects on the phone for a free consultation with you.

You may have seen it yourself on some freelancers’ websites: an offer of a free 20- or 30-minute consultation to anybody who is interested in hiring them.

Should every freelancer offer free consultation to get more clients? The answer isn’t simple, and there is no one right answer for everyone. To see what the answer is for you, let’s go over the pros and cons of providing free consultation to prospects.

All the links for today are for entrepreneurs. And not only of course!

1.  How to Increase Productivity by Simply Disconnecting

As great as technology is, when it comes to finding the time to completely immerse yourself in your work, let’s face it – the same technology we depend on can just as quickly turn into a major hindrance. Being a web designer, the very nature of my job requires that I spend the majority of my workday online – which makes it that much more important that I take extra care not to get easily sidetracked.

2. The Creative Entrepreneur’s Guide to Linchpin

I’d normally start a book review by talking about the book, but this time, I’d rather talk about the author.

Seth Godin has been called a revolutionary thinker, a pioneer, and a trendsetter, among other things. And while those descriptions are true, I think it’s better to understand Seth as a really good weatherman.

3. The Simplest Secret To Business Growth

Everyone wants to know the one thing they can do to get things going, the magic pill they can take, the one bit or advice from a guru that will turn the ship around. (How’s that for some clichés?) Truth is, business is mostly a bunch of hard work, done consistently. However, there is one thing that every business can do that works in every instance – the one simple secret to guaranteed business growth. Want to know what that is?

1. Yes, I know. We have a strong belief that limits can’t make us feel more creative. But, what if sometimes it helps? Three Ways Limits Can Set Your Creativity Free

Instead of thinking of limits as constraints or as obstacles that block your progress toward achieving your goals, start thinking of them as valuable allies.

Lots of great things have been achieved not in spite of limits, but because of them. Particularly when it comes to creativity, setting limits–or having limits set externally upon you–can set you free.

2. Question: How long should be the post on your blog?

Answer is really simple: it depends. It depends on the target of your blog; it depends on the visitors of your blog. And what’s the most important… it depends on the type of published content.

3.  How to “Connect the Dots” in Your Business

In this post, I’ll describe what needs to happen if you want to connect disparate pieces of information about the same person, organization, or entity. I hope you’ll be further persuaded of both the difficulty and the value of such an effort. The need is widely felt, whether you’re trying to connect the dots on customers in business, terrorists in intelligence, patients in health care, molecules in drug development, etc.

1. At the beginning of my blogging year, I used to find reasons to blog. If you have this problem too please read this article 10 Really Good Reasons to Blog

You and I know good reasons to blog. Hundreds of millions of bloggers know good reasons to blog. It still amazes me when I find people who really do not understand all of the very important reasons why individuals and companies write blogs and comment on blogs, often. Maybe you don’t write a blog, and you just enjoy reading them and adding your comments, or maybe you are a full time super-blogger. In either case, it never hurts to review some of the basics. Here is a list of ten really good reasons to blog. I invite you to add to this list in my blog’s comments … as it should be.

2. Well, I must admit that today was my “advice for bloggers ” day . How to Be a More Relational Blogger [Tips for New and Established Bloggers]

The community and relational aspect of that first blog was a big part of why I decided to start my own first blog. I’d not seen anything on the web that allowed a person to grow a community around their ideas before and wanted to experience it for myself.

So I started my first blog – a personal blog about life, spirituality and culture – and began to experiment with my voice but also with engaging with those who read what I was writing each day.

3.  11 Quick and Simple Ways to Spread Positivity Around You Today

Improving your attitude and living a more positive life overall can take a lot of time and effort. But a part of it can also be simple. You can spread positivity around you with small actions.

This will not only make you and other people feel better today. Over time you tend to get what you give. You will make it easier for yourself to live a more positive life in the long run too.

1.  5-Steps for Creating a Social Media Marketing Campaign for Your Brand

Set goals for your social media marketing campaign

We all know the Internet is a great place to build your personal brand, and social media is a tool you should effectively harness. First things first with any campaign—you need to set goals. I’m reading this great book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg, which suggests the SMART method of setting goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

2.  How To Develop Motivation in Your Everyday Life

Personal development, maximizing your potential, goals setting, motivating yourself for the better – these are some of the inter-related things that you need to work on as an individual. Here, we will set our sights on the many ways that you can develop motivation in life.

The Importance of Finding Out what Motivates You

First, let’s find out what the importance of motivation exactly is. Simply put, motivation is that driving force which allows you to achieve your goals and go after what you want in life.

3.  How to Make Extra Money Online

Do you want to make extra money? I believe knowing a few ways to supplement your income won’t hurt. You might not need them now, but when you needed them it’s nice to know the available options.

There are many ways to earn extra income, but here I make a few restrictions to prevent this post from being too broad:

1. Sometimes, there’s no better way than learning from other people’s life happenings. What Going To The Gym Taught Me About Achieving My Goals

Looking back, I think a lot of the problem was that I expected immediate results. I tried so many routines both at the gym and at home, from trying to go for regular jogs to simply doing pushups at home, only to ditch them within a month. My motivation would disappear because it was so heavily dependent on short term results. As any regular gym-goer will probably agree, results don’t happen overnight.

2. 6 Reasons Why You Should Be Your Own Boss.

If you want to be your own boss you need to start your own business. Being self-employed will more than likely seem overwhelming in the beginning, but in the end many people feel that the benefits far outweigh the costs. So start brainstorming some business opportunities!

Here are some reasons why you should be your own boss:

3. If I like them, maybe  you will like them too. 7 Leaderships Tips From Leaders

What is a leader?

A leader is a person who guides others toward a common goal, showing the way by example, creating an environment in which other team members feel actively involved in the entire process. A leader is not the boss of the team, but the person that is committed to carrying out the mission of the venture.

1. Are you aware of your weak points? Here’s How to Find Your Productivity Achilles’ Heel

Even the most productive people have Achilles’ heels, types of tasks which they procrastinate on. Similarly, even the people who claim they have no willpower still have some work they always do on time.

Why is that? And how can you use that knowledge to fix the problem?

2.  Does Failure Inspire?

We have all heard the saying: ”If at first you don’t succeed try, try again.” We have all seen the stories that failing often and early is the best, and that you can’t succeed unless you fail. These are all great stories and sayings, but they always leave me wondering the same thing: is it true, and if so why?

3.  Social Media Strategy: First have a Plan. Then Execute the Plan.

Just like with anything, you need a roadmap or you’ll end up lost.Social Media: Why are you doing it? What do you hope to achieve?Here are some possible goals and strategies of your social media program:

1.  for GTD beginners, I have here 10 Tips to Create To-Do Lists Like a Pro! And they really help!

While creating and using to-do lists is relatively simple, there are some tips and tricks you can use to multiply their effectiveness. Below I’ll share with you the 10 tips I learned with my to-do lists over the years.

2. I don’t know about you, but I love the word “brand”. It’s so interesting, and it can give you new ideas. This article I mean :  10 Questions to Develop Your Brand

So much of our time is spent finding the answers, but to find those answers how often do you spend asking yourself the right question?

3. And for the end I have for you a brand new fresh article from Ian’s Messy Desk.  11 Golden Rules of Time Management

No one manages time; they only manage how they use their time. Successful people use their time on the things that matter most and on tasks that move them closer to their goals.

Consider the following “golden rules” of time management. See if you can be more effective in how you use your time.