Blogs

We’ve all had those projects/business ventures that just don’t feel “right” from the start. They seem to make sense at conception—they may even get us jazzed—but once they get underway, the momentum just sort of fizzles. For every one step forward, you seem to take two steps back; for every one hour billed, you seem…

REVENGE. It sure makes for great movie fodder. After all, what can be better than Ricardo Montalbán (as Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II) purring “Revenge is a dish best served cold” to Kirk and crew as the faltering Enterprise faces near-certain doom? Good stuff for the big screen, but revenge as a way…

Back in 1600, when Shakespeare penned Juliet’s now-famous line “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” I doubt he ever imagined it would be used in a 2012 business blog about “branding.” But here it is. And with my sincere apologies to The Great…

Creativity is amazing. Seemingly out of thin air, creative types produce great works of art and literature, they innovate with architecture, technology, medicine, song. If you can name it, chances are there was a creative person behind it. You think Albert Einstein wasn’t creative when he came up with the theory of relativity? Think again.…

[Laurie Pehar Borsh is a public relations professional, social media PR consultant/guru, and member of the Barrel O’Monkeyz team (http://www.lpbpr.com/).] How do you track results from your traditional direct mail or advertising campaigns? If you’re like most small business owners and entrepreneurs, you probably compare the number of phone or email inquiries you get before…

[Laurie Pehar Borsh is a public relations professional, social media PR consultant/guru, and member of the Barrel O’Monkeyz team (http://www.lpbpr.com).] Nobody likes to be outright “sold to” either online or offline. Just think of the last time you went to lease or buy a car. It’s not much fun to be on the receiving end…

I hurt my back recently and the outpouring of support from friends, family, and colleagues has been amazing. THANK YOU everyone for your well wishes and your empathy. At times like these, I often like to step back and see if there’s some underlying message I only have to open my eyes and mind to…

Entrepreneurs are quite often the prototypical “last man (or woman) standing.” We’re the first to arrive for work, the last to go home, and we’re never really off the clock. We think we can do it all—from CEO to Sales Director to Marketing Guru to Maintenance Worker—and we often feel we must, either out of…

I am always being approached by friends, colleagues, and sometimes even strangers who are thinking about starting their own small businesses. They want my advice, my insight, a glimpse at whatever “secret sauce” I’ve been cooking that’s allowed me to start-up several successful small businesses in the last decade. On one hand, I want to…

As we head down the path of choosing our President for the next four years, with incumbent Barrack Obama a shoo-in for the Democrats and Republicans still looking for their “player to be named later,” I must admit to feeling a bit disconnected. We are a nation 311 million strong, yet the political pundits and…

Sometimes our hearts and minds are stirred by the unlikeliest of sources. Take last week’s episode of NCIS (that’s right, NCIS—one of my guilty pleasures and one of TV’s top-rated dramas for nine years and counting). The main character on the show, Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon), faces a life or death situation which…

When someone gets a bonus at work, or some other form of recognition, are you happy for him or her—even when you get no such recognition? Or do you become overwhelmed with the feeling of sour grapes (or bananas), wishing it was you in the spotlight? What about when a family member or friend is…