From Selling Power …Market research firm IDC states that half of all Internet-enabled employees access the Web while at work for personal tasks, such as reading the news (81 percent), personal email (61 percent), online banking (58 percent), travel (56 percent) and shopping (52 percent).

That’s really creating a conflict between management and the employees… Almost two-thirds of companies monitor workers’ Internet connections and one out of two store and reviewing employee email… Read more about this in the Selling Power article

What is the correct balance to have? This is a great discussion point for employers and key knowledge workers…

From Duct Tape Marketing Blog - their weekly newsletter they profiled what I think are essential small business tools. These tools don’t all directly relate to marketing, but most perform a marketing function. You can DuctTape’s 10 essential tools here. They cover things like project management, virus protection, file sending, spam blocking and keyword locating.

I highly recommend the Duct Tape Marketing Blog as a fantastic resource for great marketing articles.

• See the Top 10 Small Business Productivity Tools list

From Business 2.0 Magazine - While interviewing with the CEO of a top Silicon Valley e-commerce firm, Scott Langmack got the idea for a company of his own.

Langmack, a PepsiCo and Microsoft veteran, was a shoo-in for the position of chief marketing officer. But then the CEO complained that his headhunters had scoured thousands of resumes and that he’d spent three months interviewing shortlist candidates. A lightbulb went on in Langmack’s brain, and he turned down the job.

• See the whole article

From Fortune - When Google spent $1.65 billion for 19-month-old online video phenomenon YouTube, it was portrayed as a sign of the triumph of online video. And in important ways it is. But the voluminous coverage missed something central. Google’s interest in the video-sharing site, ironically, also has a lot to do with its belief in the staying power of conventional broadcast television and cable.

• Read the rest of this article

From CNNmoney - When it comes to pay, big business commands the bulk of attention, from the eye-popping pay packages of Fortune 500 CEOs to salary comparisons of the rank-and-file at the world’s largest corporations.

But half of all private-sector employees make their living working at small businesses.

Salary.com on Wednesday released a survey of 1,800 companies with 500 or fewer employees across 50 industries to spotlight the earnings of small-business CEOs and of their executives heading up the company’s major functions.

• Read the complete article
• 10 Highest-paid corporate execs

From BusinessWeek - Nick Sparagis asks a question no doubt on the minds of anyone who logs onto personal e-mail while at work: The Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) scandal has brought to the surface the curiosity I have had for quite a long time about snooping. I know that using corporate e-mail is always a bad idea for personal use, but how about Web-based e-mail programs like Yahoo! Mail (YHOO) or Google’s Gmail (GOOG) inside your corporate network? Can a company read these messages also, if they go through the corporate network? How about my instant messages?

• Read more

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time - This is a great book that really provides an actionable perspective on personal and professional networking. If you are starting, growing or building a business I’d really recommend this text to you. Below are the 6 key points that the author develops very well.

This is a great book - you can get it on Amazon at: Never Eat Alone

• Know where you want to go;
• Identify the people who can help you get there;
• Get with those people and help them succeed;
• Let them reciprocate by helping you do the same;
• Stay in regular contact with those people;
• Enjoy mutual success and a great relationship.

from Fortune Small Business - See Fortune’s exclusive rankings of which states are most favorable to small businesses regarding taxes.

• Here is the Full List Profile for all 50 States.
• WV is noted on a companion list with the 2nd lowest cost of energy in the U.S.
• A short slideshow with more details for the Top 10 States.

From Forbes Knowledge@Wharton - Several of the more prominent myths are discussed and insightful points developed in this discussion. The article share the experiences at the recent 2006 Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference, where a a group entrepreneurs were invited to discuss their backgrounds and business philosophies and offer advice to those interested in taking the plunge. The dozens of speakers and hundreds of attendees at the conference debated the issue as they tried to find an answer.

• Enjoy the complete article

Charleston, WV - As part of an open-book accountability inititaive, WV’s State Auditor Glen Gainer III’s office has posted the salaries of more than 65,000 state employees on its Web site (www.wvsao.gov).

The report lists all state employees’ salaries for 2006, including part-time workers. Here is the link to download the full 2006 WV State Employees Total Compensation Report.

from InformationWeek - I found this study amazing, especially the three reasons mentioned below. Of course compensation has to be competitive within any geographical market - but the issues with restricted opportunities and job dissatisfaction, I feel lie in a responsibility with management.

I’ve heard it said many times, there are no such things as bad employees, only bad managers. It’s every leader’s job to get the right people in the right place and to be a good steward of individuals time and talent. This is an insightful article if you feel your team might be searching in 2007.

Excerpt: “As the economy and job market continue to improve, employee retention poses a greater challenge for HR professionals,” said Gail Griffin, general manager of CareerJournal.com, in a written statement. “The top three reasons people voluntarily leave their organizations are for better compensation elsewhere, career opportunity elsewhere, and dissatisfaction with the potential for career development.”

From StartupJournal.com - This is a great follow-up article regarding the two young 34-year old entrepreneurs who secured a distribution deal with Wal-Mart and WalGreen for their innovative ink-pens (www.penagain.com). Catapulting revenues to over $3.8 million and with re-orders exceeding 400,000 units, it has put the small startup in a challenging state dealing with the growth. Enjoy the complete article. It provides a fantastic perspective on managing high-growth opportunities.

Excerpt: “Hi, this is Tim Banazek,” came the voice on the other line. “You don’t know me, and I know you get calls like this all the time, but I’m a distributor for Walgreen, and I have an order for over 470,000 units of your PenAgain. And I’d need them fast — in time for back-to-school.”

The State Journal has published a great video recap of the major headlines in 2006.

• 2006 News Headline Recap Video.

Additionally the State Journal provides a very good video recap of the Sago Mine Disaster.

• Video Recap of Sago

Here is a short list of Tom Peter’s favorite books from this past year.

• Most notable books by Tom Peters

I’m a big believer that personal growth comes from people you associate with as well as books you read. Tom’s perspective is certainly a very global one - focuses on a wide variety of business and professional topics. This list is well worth the look as his Tom’s daily weblog.

WV Inc Magazine reports on the five distinguished individuals who’s careers have warranted distinctive recognition from Marshall University’s Lewis College of Business Hall of Fame

• Here is the complete article

Full profiles are provided on the following five award winners:

• JAMES L. FARLEY
• DAVID E. HADEN
  
• BASIL IWANYK
• JOSEPH MCGINTY NICHOL
• JOHN RULLI

YouTube has made it easier than ever to see all of this year’s high-priced SuperBowl ad spots and rank them your way!

See them online at http://www.youtube.com/superbowl

2006 was a fantastic year in so many ways but one incredible statistic to share was the readership growth of our weblog. We started the Executive Edge weblog http://blog.premierstrategies.com as a companion site to our email newsletters in Q2-2006. We’ve received fantastic feedback over the helpful information in the e-newsletters over the past few years. Our in-house email list has grown to just over 8,500 business owners, executives and professionals. We never had a place to archive those articles and resources online for others to find online and use. With the weblog, we do.

Enter the world of the weblog. We use www.wordpress.com It’s made it so much easier and faster to write, share and contribute articles online, posting them to the weblog. We then then simply share with you a shorter, briefer compilation email each month that indexes our recently published resources. You can visit anytime and see any past articles or links.

The growth in readership has been incredible. Primarily because now all of that content is indexed by Google. This pulls in a significant number of new visitors and readers to not only the weblog but our website. I would highly recommend this experience to anyone who is looking to improve their personal or professional profile in a particular market. I believe it could be a very rewarding experience for you or your organization

As many of you know, in 2007, we will be focusing much more of our time on developing our portfolio companies and helping them expand nationwide. Premier will still maintain some select few consulting relationships with clients in the areas of internet marketing - but most of our energy will be directed towards these new initiatives such as www.statenewslines.com.

We’ll be announcing our expansion into several other states very soon. This week we’re bringing online the national website which allows you to visit any single state’s news aggregation site. We’ll be setting up a new email newsletter to keep you updated from time to time on the progress of the national rollout.

We’ve added an additional 20 news sources, including daily feeds for updated legislative news as well as additional sports news. Readership is surging each month and for members - you now have an incredible drag and drop personalization screen that lets you organize where each news source is placed on your screen. Also the daily headline clipping service everyone is excited to have available will be online soon.

Beginning again in February - the iPod contest will return after much request! Be sure to visit the site and enjoy having all of your West Virginia news headlines and article links on one easy-to-use web page!

There have been so many exciting things happen in the past couple months.  We've launched www.wvnewsline.com statewide and are in the process of launching www.statenewslines.com nationwide.  It's just been a breathtaking pace the past several weeks, with the holiday, new year and kicking off so many new things in January, that our regular postings have taken a back seat. 

I'll be kicking off a whole new series of articles this month for the weblog - mostly focusing on entrepreneurship, business growth, and technology and trends that can drive your business forward.  In every instance - most all of the articles and resources shared come from my own readings, experiences and insights gained each day on the frontlines of entrepreneurship with our own companies.

Thank you for your continued interest, readership and support. And may 2007 be the year of your dreams!
- Paul Helmick