29 years old and hearing myself for the 1st time!

Sloan Churman was born deaf. For 29 years, she has relied on reading lips and, to a very limited extent, hearing aids.

Two months ago, she received Envoy Medical’s Esteem Implant, which utilizes ear drum vibrations to bring hearing back to its users. The reaction, captured by her husband on video, is nothing short of extraordinary. Her pure joy is contagious.

Here’s what she said on her YouTube page:

“I had an implant put in 8 weeks ago called The Esteem Implant by Envoy Medical. I was born deaf and have worn hearing aids from the age of 2, but hearing aids only help so much. I have gotten by this long in life by reading lips. This was taken as they were activating the implant.”

by Ben Parr

Check out the video, and feel free to share your reactions in the comments.

5 Things Your Business Should Never Pay For

This post originally appeared on American Express OPENForum.

There is a never-ending list of things businesses must purchase in order to grow. It’s just a fact, and that fact is exploited by plenty of folks that want to sell you things that may or may not actually propel you towards growth.

In the building of your brand, both online and off, there will come a time when a company approaches you with an offer for a service that seems to address a need, but in fact, is so detrimental it may actually do more harm than good.

These offers often address our inherent desire to shortcut the real work required to produce sustainable business and marketing results—but, of course, that’s the appeal.

Below are five things you must do the right way—and that usually means you should never pay for them.

Advertising you can’t account for

I’m not against paying for advertising, in fact, quite the opposite; I think advertising is an essential part of small business lead generation. What I am opposed to is buying any advertising that you can’t or don’t track.

Advertising only works if it’s the right message, presented at the exact right time, to the exact right audience. There are so many variables at play here that the only way to get your bang for the buck is to measure real results, in almost real time. Advertising without accountability is like playing roulette with your money.

Referrals

Lots of companies offer incentives for referrals, and in some instances a little cash for the act of a referral can motivate, but is it the right motivation?

Referral generation is an important aspect of marketing, but when you pay for referrals you change the relationship from social to financial and that changes the dynamic in ways that won’t last long-term.

The proper motivation for a referral is the lending of trust in an effort to help either the company receiving the referral or the individual being referred. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use creative incentives to keep referrals top of mind, it’s just that if you provide something of value, you shouldn’t have to bribe people to share.

Reviews of your business

Online reviews carry increasing weight in the information gathering routine of prospects, as well as in the ranking factors that contribute to high search engine results. Because of that, smart marketers are paying more attention to reviews and even getting more proactive about stimulating written reviews from happy customers.

So, it should come as no surprise that enterprising snake oil types are offering reviews for fee services that can get your business favorably reviewed by professional Yelp and Google Places review accounts located right there in your town.

On top of being dishonest, my guess is that paying for these reviews may actually get some businesses banned from review participation. Put the work in and make reviews an authentic arm of your message.

Links to your site

This one has faded from the mainstream for the most part, mainly because the search engines police it so heavily, but there are still lots of SEO types willing to sell you links from high quality sites leading back to your site.

Back links to your site are extremely important, but its become extremely easy for search engines to recognize abnormal linking behavior, and even easier to penalize sites that participate in it.

Write good content, point to good content and participate in social networks—that’s how you create organic links to your site.

Opt-in e-mail lists

Every list company, including the largest, most respected names, will sell you a list of targeted opt-in e-mails. The thing is, no matter how many hoops they jump through to make sure these e-mails are CAN-SPAM compliant, they aren’t opt-in, because they did not opt-in to get your e-mails.

Some companies get around this by not actually selling you the list, but instead renting you the ability to send an e-mail from their servers to a list. No matter how tempting this may sound, it’s still spam and not something you should even consider.

It can be difficult to navigate the various offers of help that show up at your door, but some things just simply can’t be bought.

posted by John Jantsch

Cool Tools from the Web this week

Cool Tools

Tools, links and services we found this week

Free Digital Images - another great resource for images that you may use in blog posts (that's where today's image came from), advertising and web design.

Sulia - billed as an "interest network" this tools delivers news and information from very reputable resources on the topics you choose - I've found it a great way to filter content.

Magisto - this video editing service allows you to take a group of unedited videos and add create a merged clip with some real polish with just a couple simple steps. Great for event footage.

by John Jantsch

5 Free Email Marketing Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

Business Remedy is the leading Houston IT Support & Houston Managed Services provider here to help via the web (http://BusinessRemedy.net), email (info@BusinessRemedy.net), or phone -- Toll-Free (1-855-765-4444). We are standing by to help you with all of you Technology requirements.

There is a common opinion that email marketing is mostly used by big companies that can afford it. This results in a wrongful opinion that if you are running a small blog it will be quite difficult for you to use this marketing technique. But in reality technology these days allows you to integrate virtually anything you want into your WordPress blog, and WordPress developers demonstrate the amazing flexibility of this CMS platform. Here are most popular newsletter plugins that will help you to easily manage email marketing campaigns without any problems. Actually it wasn’t that easy to find really powerful and reliable pieces of software, but these 5 plugins that we’ve chosen really do work and really are worth being used for email marketing on your WordPress blog. Having installed any of these WordPress newsletter plugins you’ll receive a great tool with a bunch of useful features allowing you to manage every step of your email marketing campaign starting from the process of the subscription to the moments of creating different mailing lists etc. We strongly recommend you to try at least two or three of these email marketing plugins for WordPress because each of these has its own interesting features that might be useful for you.

1. Newsletter

Newsletter plugin offers the widest range of options so far and is considered to be the most popular software in the field of email marketing tools for WordPress. Newsletter offers full set of tools including subscription widget, comfortable plugin interface with huge list of custom settings for the newsletter and subscribers. Also you can track down your marketing results via statistics tool available with this plugin.

Price: Free

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2. Newsletter Plugin

The following WordPress newsletter plugin offers a flexible system of creating and storing database of email subscribers on your website. You can easily create custom types of emails by using 15 custom fields, textboxes/radioboxes fields and many other useful options. This plugins is compatible with external newsletter software. It means that subscribers list can be automatically synchronized with any third party service.

Price: Free

 

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3. Email newsletter

Email newsletter is very simple plugin created for simple and basic mass email sending. You can send HTML email to the subscribed user and he/she can reply to the sender. Also this software contains contact form plugin used for feedback as the subscription tool. If you want simple and reliable email marketing tool – this is what you need.

Price: Free

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4. ALO EasyMail Newsletter

Actually ALO EasyMail is considered to be the “rising star” because it is just as good as the Newsletter plugin that was the first in this list, but it offers even more awesome functions for WordPress email marketing purposes. Frankly speaking you can manage every step of your mailing campaigns with the help of this software. It is a very reliable software with tons of awesome features. There is an Ajax widget for subscription, excellent theme manager to enliven email appearance, debug tool and many more.

Price: Free

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5. WP Autoresponder And Newsletter Plugin

WP Autoresponder has subscription widget at the sidebar, generates custom subscription forms to collect more information about subscribers, and schedules e-mail broadcasts to your email newsletters in text/html. The great thing about this plugin that it is completely free and easily replaces any third-party service.

Price: Free

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Written by Edward Korcheg

The Bliss Of Defensive Design

Business Remedy is the leading Houston IT Support & Houston Managed Services provider here to help via the web (http://BusinessRemedy.net), email (info@BusinessRemedy.net), or phone -- Toll-Free (1-855-765-4444). We are standing by to help you with all of you Technology requirements.

When we say “defensive” we generally mean something protective. Defensive design is also known as contingency design and deals with potential errors and difficulties that users may encounter while working with websites or software interfaces. The main goal is minimizing the chances of the audience drain because of stupid minor mistakes we see on websites every day. This is all about improving help sections, search and contact forms, error messages and other crisis points. Everything that makes your website joyful but not stressful!

After analyzing the users behavior on your website you may often notice that people are using some website options not the way you thought they were supposed to. Besides, they can mistype their personal info which will put them in a middle of dead end – and they will eventually abandon your website. And it’s not necessarily their fault. Defensive design is the younger brother of user-friendliness. It is aimed at eliminating dead ends in case of errors and making users enjoy staying on your web page. Sounds pretty simple, huh?

Humans make errors, systems have glitches, servers can be down, connections can be slow – you should consider all this when developing a project. If done correctly, it all can be minimized and accommodated. In healthcare it’s important to locate the disease before it causes you problems. Allowing to check on errors, defensive design is virtually the same story. It improves your traffic quality and boosts your site attendance.

Take Care of Slow Connections

Many users would rather load sites from their mobile devices and smart phones than from desktops. A great amount of people use wireless connections that are normally faster but are not always reliable. So you should think about the possible slow connections and the ways to work with them.

You may easily resolve this issue by optimizing the images, navigation and content and other graphical elements on the websites that normally have high quality graphics. Try to eliminate Flash or other specific content that requires plug-ins. The best option would be creating the cut down version of the site. It is not so money- and time-consuming as you might think. Still it helps to lure more people with mobile devices to your internet pages. Using multi-purpose code, less images and texts will be perfect for low-speed connection.

The problem lays often is designers themselves who want to implement all features imaginable into the layouts they create: special options, players, flash animations and other slow-loading elements. Be careful and think about the consequences of using extra widgets.

You may easily find mobile website templates on the net which even speed up the task even more.

Use Inline And Contextual Help

One of the ways to make user experience intuitive is including pop up boxes with useful information where it is needed. This is far more convenient than creating ‘help desk’ or ‘terms and conditions’ pages. Any user will be happy to have no need to search for info on his own.
It is called inline and contextual help.

Inline help is usually provided in some content tabs that appear when hovering over objects or it could be presented by pop ups. You will see a couple of nice examples of inline help below.

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Spruz offers information on all levels of their plan as long as users browse and go from one step to another. This kind of help seems to be distracting a bit but it’s extremely helpful for controlling the whole process and flow of text.

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Contextual help is a special guidance that shows up relevantly to the page you are viewing or the action you are taking. Contextual help differs from inline help by relating to the entire page. So it appears inside the content itself, without any need to hover on or click.

More Tips To Benefit From Defensive Design

One of the most comprehensive materials regarding the issue is Defensive Design for the Web, written by Matthew Linderman and Jason Fried. It provides with exhaustive guidelines on Defensive Design, with awesome illustrations and comments. After reading the book you’ll find out how to write successful error messages, design help sections and contact forms.
We’d like to outline the most helpful tips presented in the book, aimed at the developing the defensive design on the whole:

1. Make it fast, not just beautiful.
2. Offer noticeable, brief and clear error messages.
3. Use icons, highlights and wordings to clarify the problem area.



4. Outline the errors in the same way.
5. Use simple and clear language that is familiar to most of people.
6. Don’t show what customers can’t choose.
7. Customize error pages (like “Page Not Found” page).



8. Confirm entries at once.
9. Offer alternatives and options if visitors have old technology.
10. Upgrade information constantly.
11. Answer questions right where they occur.
12. Create user-friendly “Help desk” section and offer noticeable links to it.
13. Answer emails instantly and provide with real human responses, including phone support.
14. Don’t disable the browser’s “Return” button, but disable the form “Submit” button after it’s clicked.
15. Don’t make registration obligatory.
16. Offer a clear statement of no results or inexact matches found.
17. Offer filters in case too many results occur.
18. Offer suggestions about how to improve results or expand search criteria.
19. Create email notification.
20. Show up similar items if there are any available.
21. Get rid of unnecessary navigation in any multi-step process.

But all these guidelines mean nothing until you analyze the users activity and track where they face difficulties or even give up. The minor things such as fixing spelling and stylistic errors, unclear buttons might also help to fix the picture of the visitors activity. And the last but not least – don’t ever make clients feel like they’re criminals if they make an error. Be polite and diplomatic. Use defensive web design to minimize damage and guide your website audience.

Written by Helga Weber

Cool Tools from the Web

Tools, links and services we found this week

CardFlick - Beautiful digital business cards that you share with the flick of your phone

KeepVid - this free tool allows you to download videos from sites such as YouTube to embed in presentations.

PaperLinks - this service is essentially a QR code generator but it also allows you to quickly build mobile web sites to go with your codes and build branded designer codes instead of the industrial black box looking code.

By John Jantsch

Google Flight Search is here!!!

Ask about our free PC Check! Business Remedy is the leading Houston IT Support & Houston Managed Services provider here to help via the web (http://BusinessRemedy.net), email (info@BusinessRemedy.net), or phone -- Toll-Free (1-855-765-4444). We are standing by to help you with all of you Technology requirements.

Just over five months ago, we welcomed ITA Software to the Google family. Since then, our engineering teams have been working closely together to build new travel tools that provide faster, more flexible, and more useful results to online travel searches. We wanted to give you an early look at some of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far.

Starting today, when you search for flight information on Google, for example “flights from Chicago to Denver,” you will see a “Flights” link in the left-hand panel. This link leads to our new Flight Search feature, and is offered in addition to the flight schedules which have been available since May. You can also access the Flight Search feature directly at google.com/flights.

With this first step in flight search that combines ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology, you will be able to:

• Get super-fast results. Speed is critical to all the things we love on the web, and travel planning should be no exception. Making changes to dates, destinations, and filters should be as fast as we hope you’ve come to expect from Google. 

• See a simple list of the most relevant flights. Flight Search shows you an easy-to-scan list to help you get to your destination quickly and inexpensively. 

• Figure out when to travel. Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or check out the bar chart to compare lots of dates at once. 

• Consider your destination options. Flight Search helps you explore possible destinations, letting you filter them by airline, flight time and price. For example, you can use the map and filters to see where you can go from San Francisco within 3 hours for less than $300. 

Flights are chosen primarily based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. We automatically set the filters to focus on options which are reasonable in both price and duration, and you can always adjust the filters to show even more flights.

The selection of flight results is not influenced by any paid relationships. Airlines control how their flights are marketed, so as with other flight search providers, our booking links point to airline websites only. We're working to create additional opportunities for our other partners in the travel industry to participate as well.

This is just an early look: the takeoff, not the final destination! You may notice that at the moment we include a limited number of U.S. cities and show results for round-trip economy-class flights only. We’re working hard to improve this feature and look forward to sharing more updates.

Don’t worry if you don’t see the Flight Search feature -- we’re rolling it out over the course of the day. To learn more, check out this video:

via Google Apps blog

Who killed the fake-antivirus business?

Summary: The fake-antivirus business was a big money-maker in the first half of this year. Then, at the end of June, fake-AV products practically disappeared from the web. Was it technology, or does traditional law enforcement deserve the credit?

The fake-antivirus business went from boom to bust in record time.

Early this year, the bad guys were making money hand over fist with scareware and rogue security products. Then, suddenly, the business dried up.

The event that caused the sudden plunge? A high-profile bust by Russian authorities. On June 23, a network of web sites that were distributing fake antivirus software for Windows PCs and Macs suddenly went offline when the head of the company that processed payments for the group was busted.

The effect on the fake-AV industry was dramatic, according to Enigma Software Group:

Aside from the FBI cracking down on international “scareware” rings in 12 countries, Russian police arrested Pavel Vrublevsky, co-founder of Chrono­Pay, Russia’s biggest processor of online payments and a lead player in several fake AV scams. The combination of these two events [led] to a dramatic decline in fake anti-spyware and anti-virus software. On our end, we’ve seen a drastic drop in scan logs from new users, support logs, detections, and support tickets from new customers. Basically, we’ve witnessed a 60% decline in new fake AVs, scareware, and rogue anti-virus incidents.

Independent security researcher Brian Krebs also noted a “huge decline” in the fake-AV racket. According to Krebs, McAfee reported “a dramatic drop in the number of customers reporting scareware detections in recent weeks… McAfee has tracked more than a 60 percent decrease in the number of customers dealing with fake AV since late May.”

The Enigma Software report included a fascinating set of graphics that used data from Google Trends to monitor consumer searches for known fake-AV products. In theory, those searches represent interest by victims in how to remove the threats they’ve encountered. A spike in searches means more infections in the wild; a drop means the malware distributors are seeing less success.

I decided to use the same methodology to track the progress of this underground market from a slightly different angle. Starting with a similar set of Google Trends data, I came up with this chart, which tracks fake AV products for Windows XP and Windows 7 and adds Mac Defender to the mix:

That picture shows the ebbs and flows of an entire underground market. The green and purple lines on the left represent a pair of fake Windows AV products (XP Antispyware 2011 and Win 7 Antispyware 2011) that emerged in February and peaked at the beginning of April. They were replaced with 2012 versions (light blue and yellow) at the beginning of June, giving the market a new jolt of activity.

I’ve annotated that chart with a few key dates:

• May 19: Mac Defender search activity peaks. That’s the date a leaked Apple document emerges, in which the company orders support professionals not to acknowledge infections or attempt to remove them.
• May 31: A month after the Mac Defender attack began, Apple finally releases a security update that downloads antivirus definitions daily. By that time, though, the threat had nearly run its course. Apple’s response really was late.
• June 23: An international law enforcement effort shuts down the payment infrastructure for the Mac and Windows fake-AV industry. The effect is dramatic: business drops precipitously and has remained down since them.

The moral of the story is clear: technological solutions have some effect, but nothing gets rid of a gang of criminals like a series of well-coordinated worldwide police raids.

Sadly, this break in the action is probably nothing more than a brief interruption. Sooner or later—probably sooner—a new gang will be along to start up where the previous one left off. But for now, at least, the quiet is welcome.

By Ed Bott

America's 10 Favorite Bosses

Glassdoor recently took a survey of employees of some of the most popular companies, asking workers what they thought of the way their bosses were running the company. Glassdoor then broke down the data and ranked the head honchos based on the answers, in hopes of helping potential employees get a better picture of companies and their bosses. What resulted is an interesting look at why these business leaders have such great standing with their employees.

1. Ken Powell, CEO of General Mills

Ken Powell has worked for General Mills since 1979, but has been the CEO of the food company since 2007. Running a food company during a recession can be a tall order, and General Mills revenues continued to climb nonetheless. Their legendary products (Wheaties, Hamburger Helper, Cheerios) might seem a hard sell considering there are plenty of off-brands that could be purchased instead, but General Mills continued to expand its marketing budget and started innovating with online ads before their competitors. The result: major growth and revenues in 2009, at a time when companies were struggling to keep their doors open. In 2009, Powell received a 100 percent approval rating from his workers, a testament that his leadership style is one of the best of the Fortune 500 companies.

2. John Hennessy, Stanford President

People don't often think of university presidents as "bosses," but Stanford's President John Hennessy is one of the best. Dr. Hennessy became president of Standford in 2000, but has been a faculty member since 1977. He was one of the pioneers in computer architecture, and in 1981 he contributed to the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture, a technology that greatly improved computer performance. It's safe to say that Hennessy is an entrepreneur. John Hennessy's entrepreneurial streak has been what has helped Stanford become one of the most innovative universities. Stanford is one of the top three wealthiest schools in the U.S., and last year announced that it would start forging more ties with local tech companies, many of which sprang from the halls of Stanford. Dr. Hennessy received a 98 percent approval rating from his employees at Stanford, saying that Stanford was an "overall great place to work."

3. Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

Steve Jobs has become one of the most iconic bosses of all time. His keynote speeches at the annual MacWorld Expos keep the tech industry on the edge of their seat, and Apple's revenues continue to grow at blistering speeds. In January, the company posted it's highest fiscal first quarter ever, with their net income up 50 percent. It's no surprise then that the man leading Apple's charge has become one of the most popular and well-liked bosses. As Jobs' popularity and Apple's profits continue to soar, Apple employees will continue to rate the CEO highly. Employees at Apple gave Jobs an approval rating of 97 percent, with 517 votes.

4. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO

Love him or hate him, Lloyd Blankfein is popular with his employees. Even though he made our list of dumbest business mistakes of 2009, his employees who voted at Glassdoor gave him a 97 percent approval rating. Blankfein has been under intense scrutiny, with Goldman Sachs receiving federal aid in 2008 and then giving out $16 billion in bonuses. While this may have enraged the general public, it certainly made Goldman Sachs employees happy. Employees described Blankfein's leadership as "intense," but overall they were very happy with the performance of the company under his lead.

5. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO

Google is another tech company that has posted massive growth year after year. Many attribute this to the excellent leadership of CEO Eric Schmidt. Schmidt joined the Google board of directors in March of 2001, and quickly became the company's CEO five months later. Schmidt has helped raise revenues quarter after quarter, with sales last quarter jumping 23 percent from the previous year. Google has grown to handle over two-thirds of all search queries in the U.S., and continues to add innovative products and services to the company year after year. Schmidt was even named PC World's #1 on the 50 Most Important People on the Web in 2007. With all the growth and accolades, it's no surprise that Google is one of the most sought-after tech companies to work for. As Google continues to show strong growth and great leadership, Google employees will continue to be happy with their CEO.

6. James Truchard, National Instruments CEO

James Truchard is the co-founder of National Instruments. While National Instruments may not be the sexiest company around, it's definitely one of the best companies for employees. The company has been on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For for eleven consecutive years and counting. CEO James Truchard is directly responsible the accolades. James' employees refer to him as "Dr. T," and is one of the most accessible CEOs of a fortune 500 company. He drives an old pickup truck to work, wears jeans, and sits in a cubicle on the 8th floor, where employees are encouraged to discuss any issues they might have with the company. "Dr. T's" accessible leadership style has won the hearts of his employees, giving him an approval rating of 96 percent.

7. Edward Zore, Northwestern Mutual CEO

Edward Zore has been Northwestern Mutual's CEO since 2001, but he's been working for the company since 1969. In 2008 Zore made the list of 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics due to his strong stance on ethics in banking. When most financial institutions were caught with their pants down in the subprime markets, Zore insured that Northwestern Mutual had less than 0.5 percent of their assets exposed to subprime loans. Under Zore's leadership, the company has brought in award after award on social responsibility and quality. His employees gave the company a 96 percent approval rating because of the strong human element that Zore and the rest of the company have embraced.

8. Richard Edelman, CEO Edelman

Richard Edelman has helped the company his father started become the largest public relations firm in existence. Richard Edelman is a thought leader on PR, and has produced regular reports on the state of trust with corporations. Edelman has worked with high-profile clients like Walmart, Starbucks and many others. Richard Edelman is known for his outspoken critiques on the PR industry and industries that have PR problems. Yet his company ranks as one of the best by employees. They gave Edelman a 95 percent approval rating, giving Richard Edelman high marks for being a visionary and a great educator.

9. Gary Kelly, Southwest Airlines CEO

Southwest is known for its innovative approach to customer service, and also for the care of their employees. The man in charge for the excellent corporate culture is Gary Kelly. Gary Kelly joined the airline company in 1986, and was eventually named the CEO by 2008. Since then Kelly has been named one of the best CEOs in America twice (2008, 2009) by Investor magazine. The company has a slew of recognition and awards like "100 Best Corporate Citizens" for eight years in a row, and the leader in American Customer Satisfaction Index in both 2005 and 2008. Kelly scored a 94 percent approval rating for the care of his employees.

10. Matt Ferguson, Career Builder CEO

CareerBuilder.com has grown into the largest online job site, and has held that title since 2001. CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson has used many innovative strategies to grow the company, and the dividends are paying off. Under Ferguson, CareerBuild.com has built impressive customer service and expansive marketing campaigns to bring in high amounts of traffic and revenue. In 2004 Ferguson was named one of the Crain's Chicago Business 40 Under 40. Ferguson received a 94 percent approval rating thanks to his innovative vision for the company and his employees.

By Glen Stansberry

4 Skills Every Leader Should Have

The most well known leaders are often charismatic and extroverted. They make great speeches and can rally a crowd. In millions of successful and thriving businesses and communities around the world, there are also great leaders driving their companies and causes forward. But they're not all extroverted and gregarious. They're not all outspoken and charming. But they do all share four key attributes of leadership.

1. Leaders Make Decisions.

This sounds simple, but many business owners are paralyzed by the decision making process. A poor leader who can't decide between two great opportunities or two very tough calls makes things worse by deciding to do nothing at all. Almost as bad is the leader who asks a committee to make the decision, instead.

A good leader understands that she has to be wise but decisive. And while asking for opinions, ideas, and advice from others is important, ultimately a leader has to be prepared to make the call, and willing to take responsibility if things don't go well.

2. Leaders Meet and Greet Their People.

Those who follow need to feel connected to the leader. There has to be a trust in the leader's guidance and vision. Without a strong personal connection, that relationship cannot be built.

This doesn't mean one-on-one time with every employee, every day. If you're running a multi-million dollar company, you cannot know the name of every single person working there. But you have to be accessible. You have to find ways to meet and greet those on the ground floor. That's the only way they'll be willing to support you.

3. Leaders Establish a Common Purpose.

Your employees don't just want to help you make more money. That's not a worthy goal. Your company needs a mission statement and a culture that supports that mission. Give your employees something to be proud of by working for you. Give them a “worth vision” to pursue. The daily grind has to add up to something more than a paycheck.

The common purpose has to be worthy of their support, and they have to trust that you will hold to that purpose. Provide updates and news on the progress towards the shared goal, and make sure everyone knows where you and they stand in relation to that goal.

4. Leaders Teach.

The most important thing a good leader does is teach. Beyond the company's mission and long term vision, employees want to grow and perhaps one day create something of their own. Teach what you've learned. Share what you've been given. Be a mentor and example and ensure that you're providing an environment that will help your employees flourish. That might mean that you're giving them the tools to eventually leave your team. At the same time, stunting their ambition will be an invitation for them to leave as well.

It's easy to overlook these aspects of leadership when there are many more concrete and tangible things to address. It can be reports or meetings. It can be keeping up to date on industry news and developments. But at the end of the day, it's people who keep your company running and it's these people who deserve your attention.

by Lynn Truong