Management

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Anyone in the business world knows meetings are often necessary for keeping employees informed and allowing them to collaborate. But everyone also knows that meetings are often witless wastes of time. Here are some creative ways for making your meetings fun, memorable and thus (hopefully) productive.

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Sean "Diddy" Combs ended 2009 by slamming the landlord of his Sean John store in New York City with a $2.5 million lawsuit and demanding he be released from his lease. The problem? The building's ugly (and allegedly customer-deterring) scaffolding, installed in 2006, has marred the entrance to his 3,500-square-foot upscale shopping destination, causing an extreme -- near 50 percent -- drop in sales. So when you and your landlord don't see eye to eye, is suing your only option?

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If you're a parent, you already know this: Birthday-themed companies are hurting in the recession. But they're making moves to counteract the downturn, and any business can pick up a few tips from what they've been doing.

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If you watch TV, you've seen the ad. Domino's chefs are experimenting with a matrix of combinations of cheese, dough and spices -- anything to counter some of the negative criticism that's come their way. Domino's reads some actual customer quotes: "Domino's pizza crust, to me, is like cardboard." And: "The sauce tastes like ketchup." Then, of course, Domino's explains that they've reinvented their pizza -- thrown out their old rule book and made something completely new. But is it a clever idea, or a little insane?

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Listening to your customers, your community, is an important part of running a successful small business. For Help a Reporter Out (HARO), listening has been an instrumental part of growing their small business.

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With 26 million small businesses out there, there is no shortage of other places where potential customers can, and will, take their business. Who wants to do business with a company that has rude employees or is difficult to work with? And in this context, would you like to know the secret (or at least one secret) to long-term small business success? It is one simple word.

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Mistakes happen in every business. What doesn't always happen is having them publicized so everyone knows about them. So what should you do if you botch things up big time?

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Even if you've been following the health care hubbub in Congress, you may have easily missed the news that a 10% tax on indoor tanning services is being considered. Unless you're a regular indoor tanning customer or someone who works in the industry, the tax was probably an afterthought. But for small business owners in the industry, it's anything but an afterthought.