According to Katie, the key to securing your clients’ trust is to remain objective. It’s crucial to distinguish between your business and your clients’ needs and not let feelings get in the way of services. Remaining impartial to each goal and solely focusing on how you can best serve clients will increase your agency’s value.

End-of-year reviews are essential tools to help leaders gauge their business’s effectiveness and efficiency over the previous year. However, not all businesses implement a review, and some that do only look at the cursory metrics that would give them just a basic understanding of the company’s strengths and weaknesses.

Few things make an entrepreneur feel happier than accomplishing a significant goal. Many business owners approach their companies with concrete goals in mind for where they want to be in a few years. However, when you’re a new entrepreneur, it can be a challenge to plot your own course.

Keeping up with your employees on an individual level makes for good leadership. As you hire more and more people to your team, it can be difficult to maintain that one-on-one time with each employee.

Innovation is the key to a successful and progressive business, and your staff should constantly be looking for ways to grow your brand. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to help keep your workers engaged and motivated to create the next best thing for the company.

When I started my company, I had never been a CEO before. As the agency grew, I needed to develop leadership skills and learn to guide my team to achieve success for our clients and personal satisfaction in their roles.

A strong daily routine can make all the difference in a team’s productivity. Things like creating a to-do list at the start of each day and blocking off time for “deep thinking” work often help people get organized and feel more focused throughout the workday.

With the number of tasks an employee has to accomplish daily, many managers believe that it’s impossible to monitor staff workloads accurately. The problem becomes even more pronounced in organizations where it’s also difficult to track the movement of jobs between departments.

If properly planned and implemented, company perks are among the best parts of a job. In addition to offering significant morale boosts, they usually give great incentives to encourage creativity and retention.

Hiring a new employee is a huge commitment, especially if you’re a small to mid-sized business with a tight budget. Before you invest time, energy, and resources into a new team member, you’ll want to make absolutely certain they are truly a good fit.

When most of us start a company, it’s because we have a big idea or core competency and want to build a business around it. At first, as the founder, you wear all the hats. From sales to operations to execution of the actual work, all the jobs fall on your shoulders.

In any work environment, new teammates or employees need to be picked with careful consideration as a wrong hire risks threatening office balance or even worse, affecting the entire team’s morale and productivity. After all, the temperament and emotional intelligence of each team member can be crucial to how efficient and effective the business is as a whole.

A great team leader knows it’s important to recognize those employees who have done an outstanding job. However, no matter how much a team member deserves the praise, it’s also important to be aware of how other employees might feel about their fellow co-worker’s public accolades.

Social media is already the main marketing focus of most companies and they spend huge budgets on it. Regardless if you’re a small business or one of the giants of industry social media marketing should be your main priority. As such, it’s always a good idea to know what the trend is and use the newest techniques so you make the most out of it.

95 Experts Reveal Their 3 “Must-Do’s” for Solopreneur Success

For many business owners, their company is more than an income source-it is akin to their child. What do you do when your child is sick? What does it feel like when you don’t know what is wrong with them? When your “baby” (business”) is under the weather or simply having growing pains, Rising to the Next Level gives you clear and actionable answers to make your life better.