It’s widely accepted that teamwork is a Good Thing. You’ll hear few sensible people saying, “Teamwork? Pah! What a waste of time!” But what is it about teamwork that makes promoting it a key priority for HR, and for organizations generally?
Have you heard about donor advised funds? According to Anna Bahney, a CNN Business writer and wealth coach, they are a good way to structure charitable giving while getting tax benefits.
With Black Friday behind us and Christmas Day being only 30 days away, the New Year is right around the corner. Whther you're looking to expand or start anew, here are 5small businesses opportunities for 2019, chosen from across a variety of industries.
New requirements lower the cash threshold and add more metropolitan areas
The U.S. Treasury Department said this week it has expanded an anti-money-laundering data program that requires title insurance companies to reveal the owners of shell companies buying luxury real estate.
Are employers invading workers' privacy?
On day one of any new job, employees engage in a sort of Faustian bargain: In exchange for a shiny new computer, they sign away their digital rights. The thinking goes that as long as an employee is on a work device, the employer has the right to monitor what you type.
You’ll have the opportunity to save more for retirement next year. The Internal Revenue Service announced this week that it will increase the contribution limits for a range or retirement accounts in tax year 2019. For the first time since 2013, IRA contribution limits are being increased. The IRS also announced an increase in the contribution limit for 401(k), 403(b), most 457 plans and the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan.
While travel advice abounds for the best times to buy the most affordable holiday plane tickets, it's hard to escape reality: Flying during some of the year's busiest travel periods whether for business or pleasure generally isn't going to be cheap.
With the holidays right around the corner, many individuals and companies alike are looking for ways to stretch their dollars or buying power. One tried and true tested way is by using credit cards. But, sometimes if you're not careful, you can easily get choked by credit card debt if cash flow is low.
Habits and routines are powerful. They help us every day, freeing up brain space and releasing us from making countless decisions. But not every habit is good, and not breaking a bad one can hold you back from success.
Smart technology is becoming a part of everyday life. We have smartphones that remind us what and when we have to get things done. We have wearable technology that track everything from our steps to our heart rate. And smart devices for the home, from thermostats and light switches to refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, are constantly being created — all with the purpose of making everyday life a little easier.
A few months ago when all the attention was focused on the Panama Papers, it may have made you more curious about offshore banking. Perhaps you’ve even been thinking of going the “sophisticated investor” route and stashing some of your money offshore, but have hesitated because you don’t want to wind up in trouble with the IRS. Offshore banking may have the allure of something out of a spy movie, but it’s actually a lot more boring and mundane than it appears – and it’s perfectly legal.
On September 24th Instagram’s co-founders, Mike Krieger (left) and Kevin Systrom (right), resigned from the photo app. Having presided over the company that boomed with help from technological advances and societal changes, their exits add to the challenges facing Facebook, which owns the app.
If you haven’t heard this yet, hold on to your cash, because over the next few years retail stores just might go through a metamorphosis thanks to Amazon.
In April 2017 a London lifestyle and food writer, Oobah Butler, set out to see if he could reach TripAdvisor's No. 1 ranking with a restaurant that doesn't exist as he thought there was something fishy with TripAdvisor when "restaurant owners would pay me £10 and I'd write a positive review of their place, despite never eating there."
When you spend decades working with executives and business leaders, you really can’t help but observe what works and doesn’t work over the long haul. One thing we’ve noticed, it’s not intrinsic characteristics or personal habits that determine whether you’re successful or not. It’s your behavior.
Drug addiction exacts a high toll on addicted individuals and their loved ones, but they are not the only ones who suffer from untreated substance abuse issues. Drug addiction also affects employers in several important ways.
How many times have you been frustrated by calling a customer service number to speak with a person only to end up in a continuous loop of prompts that ask you to press this button or that button?
One company is trying to reinvent how businesses approach customer care by going old school — connecting its customers with humans instead of robots.
Motorcycling in America is getting a makeover. Industry stalwarts and upstart competitors are trying to attract new riders who want something different from Harley-Davidson's big burbling cruisers or screaming Japanese and European performance bikes.
Meal prep kits were supposed to make the supermarket obsolete. The opposite has proven true. Now the companies that make the kits may need to partner with a grocery chain to survive.
Running short on time? Need to have that meeting but just can’t squeeze in that extra hour? Meetings can take a large bite out of your work day, especially if they take place offsite. Scheduling others to cover your work, making travel arrangements and planning for a space to accommodate attendees take time away from other commitments you could be handling. While some will argue that there’s nothing quite like a face-to-face meeting, virtual meetings can take some of the hassle out of the gatherings.
So you’ve decided to make the leap and invest in social media sites for business – good choice! Social media is one of the cheapest forms of marketing available, and the ROI it’s providing to the business world is growing more and more every day.
Unless you’re a small business owner who is not interested in growing your brand, you need to have a Website.
These days building a business website or ecommerce store is easier than ever: it doesn’t cost much money, you don’t have to know how to code or design, your online store is not restricted to business hours, and it’s one of the best means of free advertising.
Electric vehicles have a lot of perks: zero emissions, a quiet ride and instant acceleration. But can they save you money? Probably not.
The “gig economy” isn’t just a buzzword. It’s an accurate description of the state of the modern market – an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements – the Bureau of Labor Statistics has admitted difficulty in counting the exact number of independent contractors and contingent workers.
When Toys "R" Us announced plans to close all 735 of its U.S. stores back in March, it wasn’t exactly a surprise as sales and marketplace shares were lost to online companies like Amazon. This past Friday the harsh reality hit home as Geoffrey the Giraffe said his final goodbyes and like Lionel Playworld / Kiddie City and KB Toys before them, Toys "R" Us closed forever affecting close to 30,000 employees.
But as one major toy brand rides off into the sunset, another is rising from the ashes.
Each new season brings new challenges and new trends in social media marketing.
These six trends are an excellent source of ideas for your social media marketing calendar, but don't overlook the value of staying up to date on current hashtags and trending topics online.
The key to a successful social marketing season is looking at the big picture and not being afraid to try new ideas.
Every startup has one major need in common: money! Financing a startup takes a great deal of overhead, often before any revenue streams have come to fruition. That means while your fledgling company is spending money left and right to get up and running, it's likely not bringing anything in.
You probably heard about it. You might have even talked about it.
If IHOP had simply announced it was debuting a new line of hamburgers, would you even have noticed?
The brilliance of the "IHOb" "rebrand" isn't just that it got the internet buzzing about IHOP. Not all publicity is good publicity — people have been making fun of IHOP's branding and typography choices, and that's why it looked at first like the brand had fallen on its face.
German conglomerate Bayer on Thursday closed its $63 billion merger with Monsanto after getting the required nod from U.S. and EU regulators. With Bayer successfully completing the acquisition of Monsanto, shares in the U.S. company will no longer be traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Monsanto shareholders are being paid $128 U.S. per share.
Looking for another sign of how tough it is in the world of retail? After a 104-year era, the Lord & Taylor store on New York's Fifth Avenue is going to shut down next year and become a WeWork space.
Small businesses make up 99.9 percent of all businesses in America. Brock Blake, the founder and CEO of Lendio, the nation's number one marketplace for small business loan, quotes this statistic often, and for good reason. There’s nothing small about the impact these types of businesses have on our economy. Yet they routinely report difficulty in accessing the capital they need to start, maintain and expand their operations. Only half of small firms receive the full amount of funding they request. It seems counterproductive to limit financial services to those who are the driving force of the economy, but luckily, technological transformations are changing this.
While the final chapter to the Las Vegas Golden Knight's Cinderella story has yet to be written, and we're really not sure if the glass skate will fit, the season is already a major success. The once 500 to 1 long shot National Hockey League expansion team is just four wins away from history as they take to the ice this Monday night in an effort to win the Stanley Cup in a best of seven series against the Washington Capitals.
Tighter limits on deductions for entertainment and meals are prompting many business owners to cut back.
The internet is littered with ways to spoil moms on Mother's Day. Between chocolate, flowers and homemade spaghetti necklaces, there's no shortage of ideas. One thing that often gets overlooked, however, is how we speak to moms.
Specifically, moms who run their own businesses, freelance, or work from home. The prevailing misconception is that these women are "playing" at business, not committed enough to being a mother, or simply "not serious."
In 2001, a new approach to technology development was created by a daring group of developers. Called Agile, the process put customers at the center of product development, encouraged rapid prototyping, and dramatically increased corporate speed and agility.
Technology is poised to change the workplace, from robot co-workers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) bosses to a fun twist on working remotely.
One such innovation is virtual reality. Although it's often associated with gaming, it can also be a powerful workplace training tool.
Construction workers can put on a VR headset to understand hazards before entering a site, and nurses can learn more about the medical devices they use to treat patients. A startup named Strivr designs such VR experiences. It's worked with Walmart to prepare workers for shopping crowds on Black Friday, too.
If we all started thinking about it, we would discover a horrifyingly long list of ways we have thrown away money by putting off essential tasks. But at least we are not alone. If you polled friends and co-workers, there's a good chance you'd hear a number of similar experiences all caused by procrastination.
Each week at Louis Mamo and Company we try to identify stories that might be important to you and your business. We look at and examine trends in marketing, technology and general business so that you may benefit by potentially adapting your business to insure its longevity and success.
Almost half of the world’s population claims one of only 10 languages as their mother tongue. So what are the top 10 languages of the world? You might be surprised.
This week the issue of privacy in social media dominated the news. And as Mark Zuckerburg gets ready to head to Washington, the impact of Facebook’s woes on small businesses was addressed. The eroding of trust in the social network among Americans may have small businesses rethink how to use Facebook to reach customers.
Arizona officials saw opportunity when Uber and other companies began testing driverless cars a few years ago. Promising to keep oversight light, they invited the companies to test their robotic vehicles on the state’s roads.
Then last Sunday night, March 18, an autonomous car operated by Uber — and with an emergency backup driver behind the wheel — struck and killed a woman on a street in Tempe, Ariz. It was believed to be the first pedestrian death associated with self-driving technology. The company quickly suspended testing in Tempe as well as in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto.
Television-advertising sales in the U.S. fell 7.8 percent to $61.8 billion last year, the steepest drop outside of a recession in at least 20 years, while sales at cable networks slumped for the first time in almost a decade. And there’s no sign of a pickup in 2018, excluding cyclical events like the Olympics and the midterm elections, according to data from Magna Global.
People looking to fund new ventures are turning to their Rolexes and art collections as collateral for quick and easy loans from high-end pawn shops. The handful of lending companies tapping into the trend let their affluent clients take quick thousand-dollar or million-dollar loans with high-end collectibles as collateral. That's far greater than the average loan size of $150, according to the National Pawnbrokers Association. Business owners say the way the luxury goods-backed loans are growing points less to the financial distress associated with pawn shops and more to seize money-making opportunities.
Tony Robbins once said, "If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results." While many people dismiss self-help gurus like Robbins, thinking they are charlatans or modern day medicine men who perpertrate an elaborate con, the more successful ones, including Robbins, follow several common principles that help motivate sales people into becoming top performers.
Do you or your company use Gmail? We are seeing more and more companies and individuals moving to Gmail as their preferred email platform. And there's a good reason for that. It’s free. Not only is Gmail easy to use, but whether you realize it or not, it keeps evolving and has developed into more than just a simple communications tool.
Even if you aren’t very interested in sports, there's no escaping the TV coverage that has been given to the 2018 Olympic Winter Games from Pyeongchang, South Korea. You also probably know that the U.S. is winning it's fair share of medals and there have been celebrations to mark these achievements.
We are only six weeks into 2018 amd with every new year, there is always an opportunity to take stock, reevaluate, and course-correct our businesses when necessary. This is especially true for entrepreneurs like yourself, who can take advantage of this time in order to establish smarter business practices and keep your businesses moving in the right direction.
When it comes to athletic competitions there is often an emphasis placed on teamwork for without it, championships are not won. And while teamwork is important in athletics, the same principles apply to business for without workplace teamwork, businesses do not succeed, they fail. Being a master of one or a jack-of-all-trades in today’s world does not bring about success if you are unable to work as part of a team. The importance of teamwork cannot be stressed enough!
Although our client base consists of businesses and individuals throughout the U.S. and around the world, most of our clientele and recipients of our weekly newsletter reside in South Florida and Las Vegas. We all know the influence of the Spanish language in Miami-Dade and Broward County (Fort Lauderdale) in Florida, and with 29% of the population in Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas) being Hispanic, we must ask the all-important question, “Does Your Business Need to be Bilingual to Survive?”
Each year the very brightest and best converge in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and once again this year representatives of Louis Mamo & Company were in attendance looking for cutting and leading edge business and consumer solutions for its clients and customers.
Beyond just a memorable logo, good branding increases the value of a company, provides employees with direction and motivation, and makes acquiring new customers easier. So what exactly is a brand?
The short answer: Everything!
Whether you own or run a small business, you can learn a lot to protect your company by paying attention to what happens to the bigger companies. At one time Sears was the largest retailer in the world with a well-known, reliable brand that seemed almost indestructible. But will the company that started out as a mail order business 125 years ago – and grew into a global giant – be the latest company to go bankrupt and close its doors because it did not recognize change?
What is Bitcoin? Is it like a stock? Where does it come from? Why has it gone up in value? How and where can you buy them? How and where can you sell them? Is it really legal? Is there a difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash?
What's in a name? For Walmart, it will soon be a little less. Earlier this month the world's largest retailer announced it was changing its legal name from "Wal-Mart Stores" to "Walmart" to reflect its increasing emphasis on e-commerce.
If you haven’t seen them, you’ve probably heard about them – homes and businesses being built from cargo or shipping containers.
The holiday season is upon us, but as a business owner, you already know that. For many businesses, this is the most profitable time of the year. For some it's exciting and for others, well, it's a little nerve-wracking. So, here are nine (9) ideas for you to prepare and grow your small business during the holiday season by reviewing and delegating with your team.
In mid-November members of Louis Mamo and Company attended MJBizCon, the 2017 Marijuana Business Convention presented by Marijuana Business Daily magazine, representing one of our clients that are licensed marijuana growers.
It’s a simple question that requires a simple answer. If the answer is “No,” then you really should be tracking your dollars and the results they produce. But if the answer is “Yes,” do you know if your advertising is being effective? Is your return on investment getting you positive results?
Did you know that Americans are almost four times more worried about getting their computers and smart phones hacked than being murdered? There’s a good reason for that. There are nearly 2 billion stolen passwords and usernames available on the black market, and up to 25% of them will still work on a Google account according to a new study from Google, the University of California, Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute.
Most business owners today know their companies should be aligned. They know their strategies, organizational capabilities, resources and management systems should all be arranged to support the company’s purpose. The challenge is that business owners tend to focus on one of these areas to the exclusion of the others, but what really matters for performance is how they all fit together.
To succeed in business today, you need to be flexible and have good planning and organizational skills. Many people start a business thinking that they'll turn on their computers or open their doors and start making money, only to find that making money in a business is much more difficult than they thought. You can avoid this in your business ventures by taking your time and planning out all the necessary steps you need to achieve success.
If you're considering doing business in Cuba, there are many key differences in the regulations governing business there than anywhere else. In the hopes of saving new, as well as experienced entrepreneurs from some of the unexpected pitfalls that can arise from doing business there, here is a list of five of the most important rules that you must know before doing business in the Republic of Cuba.
Do you suffer from triskaidekaphobia? That is, do you fear the number 13? If you do, you might not be conducting business today and so you may not read this article until the weekend or Monday morning.
When Louis Mamo & Company decided to open an office in Las Vegas, some of our South Florida clients asked "Why?" In addition to better servicing our West Coast clients, Las Vegas offers us a unique opportunity that no other city could provide. It enables us to stay on top of various industry trends that can help our client base in a number of areas.
When hurricanes hit an area, depending on the path they take, damage and impact can range from minor to catastrophic. As we all witness the recovery efforts being done in the Florida Keys, Houston and Puerto Rico, for most of our Florida clients, they were very lucky Hurricane Irma did not directly hit Fort Lauderdale.
On the surface, nearly every tax specialist will tell you the same three basic benefits of electronic filing: One, you’ll get a faster refund; two, you’ll get a proof of receipt by the tax agency; and three, it’s less cumbersome and more convenient than paper filing.
The challenges associated with building relationships and trust with local business partners, clients and customers, and with government officials can be a challenging aspect of doing business in China. While establishing a business presence in China has become more straightforward in recent years the problems associated with identifying key contacts in partner, client and government organizations, establishing mutually beneficial and trustful working relationships with them, and developing meaningful channels of communication have now become more pronounced.
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” – Charles-Guillaume Étienne (1778-1845), French playwright.
I can see you there, your eyes piercing the headline and the quote and shaking your head in disagreement. But bear with me for a moment. In an entrepreneurial world where inclusion, delegation, communication and trust are the cornerstones of having a successful business thanks to those who work for you, it’s important to know not only when to let your company run on cruise control, but when to step on the brakes and take control of the wheel. Case in point . . .
“In this world, you get what you pay for.” – Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), writer, “Cat’s Cradle”
Have you ever gone to a Facebook page of a small business and noticed that they have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of likes or fans and you ask yourself, “How do they do it?” So, you do a little research and the next thing you know is you find out that all this small business did was pay a company to increase the number of likes on their page by using a network of people they have. You then say to yourself, “What a great idea” and you begin to look for a company that can do that for you.
"My Zombie apocalypse plan is simple but effective; I fully intend to die in the very first wave. Seems more logical than undergoing all kinds of hardships only to die eventually anyway (through bites / malnutrition / or terminally chapped lips)." – Graham Parke, writer and humorist.
“I like thinking BIG. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think BIG.” – Donald J. Trump, American businessman and President of the United States.
Eighteen months ago we asked the question: Would President Trump be good for my business? Whether the answer was a resounding YES or reverberating NO, there was another, more important question at the root of the subject that perhaps should be asked: “What have I learned from Donald Trump that will help my business?”
"Our employees are our most valuable resource." – Author Unknown
We’ve heard this before; a hundred fold. Businessmen have said it so many times over the years that most people who work for these entrepreneurs are sick of hearing it, because too many times the actions of the companies do not match the words of the leaders who are quoted.
