Even though business coaching is the second fastest growing industry in the world, there are still lots of people out there who are unsure of what a business coach actually does.

A great way to find out what benefits a business coach can bring is to listen to a business coach’s client testimonial. Like the one above!

If you want to find out more about what business coaching could do for your business, click here.

Knowing your business' numbers is very important.

Any Business Coach knows that knowing your numbers is a necessity to survive when running a business.

Do you know your numbers in your business?

If you don’t think knowing this information makes a difference in business, it does. It can mean the difference of making more profit. Knowing your conversion rates is essential. Think about doing it in various steps:

You need to know your numbers for every step of the sales process.  For example, in a retail fashion store, getting customers in the store is one thing, starting a conversation is another, getting clothes tried on, and so on …

Do you know it for each and every sales person at every stage of the process ?  Dale might beat Sally, but Helen beats Dale, and all at different stages of the sales process, so they can learn each stage from each other.

Do you know your conversion rates for each marketing medium.  As in, do you know what the rates are for Yellow Pages V Referrals, not just think you know, but actually know.

How much do customers spend on the initial transaction? How much are they worth over their lifetime of buying from you?

How many referrals do you get from each marketing medium and from each salesperson, and so on?

Is this a lot of work?   Yes…but it’s worth it.

Imagine you knew that every $1,000 advertisement bought you 100 leads and 20 sales of $500 each.  How often would you invest $1,000 to make $10,000? What if they came back for three years on average and spent another $2,000 on average?

So, it’s work, and it might be hard work, but it’s much better to do the work than struggling to pay the bills because you don’t know your numbers.

If you’re struggling with keeping track of your numbers like this, perhaps a business coach could help. See what a free business coaching session can do for your business.

What are the things you need to accomplish before setting up your own business?

A business isn’t something you can rush into…it takes preparation and planning to make it work. And then, you have to work on it — not in it — to get it to succeed.

Who better to share the best To-Do list of what to check off your list when becoming an entrepreneur than Brad Sugars? The founder and chairman of ActionCOACH and contributor to Entrepreneur.com came up with a checklist every entrepreneur should have. Read it here.

TV news anchors can breathe a sigh of relief everywhere: a recent survey found that local and national TV news programs are more popular than online news.

According to the Pew Research Center and American Life Project’s survey, almost everybody (92%) gets their news from multiple platforms. For 78%, that includes local news; national news — including both cable news like CNN and network broadcast news — comes in at 73%; online news manages 61%; radio sneaks away with 54%; local newspapers snag 50%; and national newspapers like USA Today get only 17%.

So, what have we learned? While print journalism might still be suffering a long-impending death, at least people get their news from multiple platforms, which include the ever-increasing online news and good, old-fashioned TV news.

Read all the findings in the full article.

Why are local TV news stations more popular than local online news? Any ideas, readers?

What would you decide:

In 2006, some school students in Turin bullied a schoolmate, suffering from autism, and even worse, the incident was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. The Italian police became involved, and notified Google officially about the offending clip–it was taken “down within hours.” Google’s team then cooperated with the police to identify the perpetrators, and the data was subsequently key in convicting the female uploader, who received 10 months community service as a penalty, along with other involved male students.

That’s normally where Google’s involvement would end, right? Except not in this instance. Italy’s legal system finds Google execs to be at fault.

Google’s blog clearly presents the poor victim at the heart of the affair as suffering from autism, but Reuters reported that the the youth concerned had Down syndrome, and that the legal case was brought at the request of the victim’s father and an Italian advocacy group for Down syndrome sufferers, Vivi Down.

Read more about this case here. Who knows how this will turn out, but it sounds like a tricky situation. How do you think this will turn out for Google?

The team behind the start-up Secret London. Founder Tiffany is in the front row.

This isn’t an uncommon story anymore: a 21-year-old has a successful start-up.

What’s unusual, however, is the start-up was originally a Facebook group.

Tiffany Philippou started a group called Secret London in response to a competition for a summer internship with Saatchi & Saatchi. The Facebook group started as a page where Londoners could share secrets and their favorite things about the city, things only locals know about. There are also forums on the site where people can ask where to find something like live music, African drumming classes or a quirky wedding venue, and locals can respond with their opinions.

Just two weeks after starting the group, it had 182,010 fans. While the competition eventually had 800 different groups competing for the internship, Philippou now has a start-up. Internship? Old news.

With the URL bought (www.secretcities.com) and a Twitter account with 5,300 followers and blog that have both been live since early February, Secret London is blossoming. The most amazing thing about this start-up – besides the fact that it spawned from a Facebook group – was it only 2,963 pounds.

“What’s amazing is how much you can do cheaply if you are working on a project that inspires people.,” Philippou wrote in a guest blog post on TechCrunch.com. “As well as the incredible talent we got on board, we also got a printer from Freecycle.org, brought some equipment from home, and borrowed the rest. The folks at the Finsbury Centre in particular were really generous with their time and help.”

So how about that? A business can start from just about anything…including a Facebook group.

Start-up or not, every company has issues to overcome…does yours? Take our Business Health Check to find out.

PleaseRobMe.com is meant to get Twitter users to be careful what they Tweet.

Many people think a plus to social media sites is that anyone and everyone can find you for networking opportunities or to get back in touch, discover where you work, who you’re dating and pictures of your kids, dogs and cats. It’s all accessible, depending on your privacy settings.

A con to social media? Anyone and everyone can find you and get back in touch, discover where you work, who you’re dating and pictures of your kids, dogs and cats.

Why are the pros also cons? If people with good intentions know most of your info, people with bad intentions out there in the blogosphere and Twittersphere do, too. People know what your plans are, where you’re going and why, if you’re vacationing somewhere exotic or if you’re home sick from work. This can lead to making yourself a victim of burglary.

Mashable reported about a possible Twitter-related burglary, and a site called Please Rob Me was started to get people to be more careful about what they’re announcing to the world. It has a live Twitter feed that mainly features accounts of people who have theirs linked to FourSquare or Gowalla, sites that publicly tweet where a person is.

For the record, if used mainly for business, sharing advice and networking, this doesn’t really apply to you. But when you start tweeting about being away on a business trip or attending a business conference in another city, just be careful what you say!

Tiger Woods publicly apologized to the nation today.

Tiger Woods gave his non-press conference this morning, and TV news stations and radio stations across the country broadcast his public apology across the nation.

But did this help him…or hurt him?

TV and radio commentators and millions of bloggers are ready to pounce with their reactions. And here’s a sampling of feelings felt around the world: some people felt the apology was sincere, some felt it was arrogant, some felt it was too long and redundant.

Was this a good move for Tiger? If we think about it from a business perspective, yes, it was.

Whenever anything negative happens to a company, the situations that were diffused fastest were when CEOs or an executive publicly apologized and answered questions. JetBlue, Toyota…it’s happened to the best of companies out there.

This situation is different, obviously, since Tiger is a person, not a company, and the press weren’t allowed to ask any questions at this conference. So what do readers think? How did you feel about this public apology, an effort to “save” Tiger’s brand?

What will Tiger announce tomorrow?

Tiger Woods will hold a non-press conference tomorrow at 11 am EST. He will make an announcement, and take no questions.

Everyone is debating what he’s going to announce. Of all the options however, no one is exactly sure…though some have their hunches that he won’t be apologizing and he might have a go at the press for breaking the story about his infidelity in the first place.

The question is: is this non-press conference a good thing for Tiger, or a bad thing?

Or does it even make a difference?

We’v all heard the expression that time is money. But new research shows that for potential customers, time spent waiting could mean they’ll spend their time – and money – elsewhere.

A study done by Professor Dan Zakay at Tel Aviv University shows that even if people have committed to buying a product, a long wait time or a long line to buy could reverse their decision.

“When people are waiting in line, they have already committed to buying something, but because they don’t like to wait, that commitment can change,” Prof. Zakay explained to PhysOrg.com. “The value of waiting, so to speak, is worth billions of dollars. Clients are easy to lose and hard to keep, especially when customers call in to buy something.”

Customers want to feel like the company they’re waiting for feels their time is valuable. There are some clever ways to make customers feel this way; for example, at amusement parks, lines for rides should be fragmented into segments, so the line doesn’t look as long as a long, straight line might be.

To avoid losing customers, incorporate Zakay’s findings into your own business. Even letting customers know they might have to wait a bit or giving them coffee or cookies while they wait could go a long way, therefore, retaining their loyalty.

Remember, it’s not always about the product itself…customer service is a very important part of business, too.