“The Top Cities in America for doing business are not at all where most people think, and there’s good data to back that up. This year Inc. publishes an exclusive Top Cities list, using a brand-new methodology that we believe to be the most objective, reliable system used anywhere for ranking fertile ground for companies.”

“The eighth edition of the email newsletter Plain Talk About Business Performance focuses on fighting fires in the workplace ó solving problems. James Rieley contends that instead of truly solving problems, most managers actually only address the symptoms of said problems.”

“The biggest obstacle to knowing what customers really think about us? Fear. We fear theyíll tell us our product or service stinks, that weíre horrible people and we should never have set foot on earth. Yet most companies never hear that type of painful feedback. Our research finds that companies with strong word of mouth and customer devotion behave like high-performance athletes when it comes to focusing on customer feedback. In effect, they are feedback machines. Customer feedback drives their marketing strategies, product development and service expectations.”

“If you were about to graduate from college and had an interest in becoming an entrepreneur, what would you do? That’s the gist of an I received in an email from Taylor Brooks, an entrepreneurship major pondering the big questions and asking for advice. With permission, I am answering this openly and hopefully drawing in better experts than myself.”