Rick Dexter

As a business owner, you've probably had the misfortune of letting a valued (or not-so-valued) employee go. The reasons might vary, but one thing is consistent: they're gone, and could potentially use their newfound residual malice to strike your business right where it hurts. How can you prepare yourself against former employees you may have once called "family?"

As a business leader, you know that you should read more about the latest industry trends and helpful management concepts. How's that going for you? For many business owners, finding time just to run their business is difficult enough, making book reading a luxury. We've found that you can do both by learning how to speed read.

For the modern-day business owner, moving to the cloud means to take advantage of the several strategic advantages it offers. Companies no longer have to restrict themselves by relying on physical servers, desktops, or hardware. Most businesses see the value that cloud-based operations can offer them, and they are racing to take advantage of this fairly recent development. In fact, Joe McKendrick of Forbes magazine says that four-out-of-five small businesses will be based in the cloud in the near future.

Major retailers are having a rough time of it these days concerning the security of their customer's financial information. Last December, Target was hit with malware that compromised 40 million customer credit and debit card accounts, and recently, Home Depot was hit with the same malware. What's a connoisseur of mass-produced boxed goods to do?

Not only can Microsoft PowerPoint make great slideshows, it can also make engaging infographics. The latest trend in marketing is fairly simple: Visual content sells. Images and videos are the most popular way to take advantage of this. Infographics can offer your marketing campaign a combination of text and image, allowing your marketing content to be both engaging and informative.