Business Blogs: A Roundup of My Favorites

Business Blog Roundup:

Over the last year or so, I've been almost obsessed with topics on Small Business, Start-Ups, and Entrepreneurship, as well as Self Employment. Fascinated with all the World Wide Web, in all its glory, has to offer the already brave and intelligent individual who has taken that leap in life to successfully grab hold of professional and hopefully, financial freedom and independence.

After scouring high and low, searching for the best in resources, forms, advice, and articles, I give to you, a small but powerful list of my favorites.

I love, Love, LOVE this site! AllBusiness.com is a very resourceful site that includes categories such as Getting Started, Sales and Marketing, Finance, Staffing/HR, and Operations just to name a few. AllBusiness.com also has an expert site called

AllBusiness experts offers expert advice on a wide variety of topics including, Technology, Finance, Start-Ups, Staffing, and so much more. A great resource for the Small Business Owner!!! 

InBusiness.com is one of the most comprehensive resources on the Web for company profiles and marketing resources. The site allows small and growing businesses to post a free business profile featuring their company, products, and services. The site allows entrepreneurs, business professionals, local businesses, and marketers to establish a Web presence, connect with customers, connect with employees, as well as  find partners and vendors. Also allows link back features to enhance SEO ranking for search engines.  InBusiness.com is part of the family of E-PersonalFinance.com, Inc., which operates the premier small business Web site AllBusiness.com.

GetEntrepreneurial.com is a small business blog dedicated to providing business advice and resources to aspiring entrepreneurs. Specially hand-picked panel of GetEntrepreneurial.com Network experts regularly contribute entrepreneurial content and professional tips for small business owners worldwide.

SERN is a (501c3) not-for-profit education corporation established for the purpose and promotion of the development and expansion of self-employment for persons with disabilities. SERN's mission is to locate relevant self-employment resources, translate those resources into user-friendly terms, facilitate networking opportunities, and to identify best practices and most effective procedures for persons with disabilities interested in becoming self-employed or maintaining a productive small business.

Passion for Business.com is a business coaching and consultant site and blog full of helpful resources, links, informative articles, classes, and advice for the budding entrpreneur who is interested in starting or growing a business.

I hope you enjoyed my 1st Business Blog Roundup and check back for more round ups in the near future. If you have a favorite site you'd like me to check out please contact me.

Shelly Michalk-Schumacher

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The Best Twitter Accounts for Entrepreneurs

English: Mashable.com logo as of late 2008 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Image via CrunchBase

INTERESTING ARTICLE from MASHABLE.com

Awesome article I read at mashable.com . Interested in reading more interesting articles or just want to stay up on what's trending in apps, start-ups, and more, you can follow mashable on twitter.com yourself, just go to https://twitter.com/mashable

The Best Twitter Accounts for Entrepreneurs

Other articles I liked:
Track180 wants to Bring You News You've Never seen Before
How To Become Internet Famous for $68

Just go to mashable.com and read more!!!

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JOB HUNTING? WHAT'S IN YOUR ARSENAL?

Indeed.com (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

JOB SEARCH TOOLS AND SEARCH ENGINES:
                           
TOO OVERWHELMING ?

     Moving back to Texas last year after my divorce, I decided to focus on me. Take it easy, try and reduce my stress, and just basically, get to know me again. So, I decided to take a break from my title as Executive / Administrative Assistant and take a part time job as a waitress so I would have more time for me because  my previous positions required me to work basically around the clock at times. Now, almost a  year later, I'm missing being behind a desk and behind the scenes so I'm on a mission and it's called: Mission Find a JOB!
     I love to work but absolutely HATE looking for a job. So, I took a deep breath, opened my browser, said a nervous "HELLO"to google then gently typed in the empty search box under the logo, "J O B  S E A R C H". I pushed "SEARCH" and felt myself getting dizzy when I saw the results rise to over 3,710,000,000.
I thought about getting up right then and going to the liquor but I didn't. I put on my big girl panties and decided to use this opportunity to fuel my blog with the knowledge and resources I would gain from conducted my own job search.
     One of the things I've never liked about hunting for a job is the use of JOB SEARCH ENGINES. It has always been my belief that finding a posting of a job on a search engine is like trying to win the lotto. See, in the old days, employers would use word of mouth or newspaper ads to fill a position. Well say only 20 people saw the add and only 5 people were told about the opening. Well the odds weren't so bad, you had a 1 in 25 chance of getting the job. Not with a job search engine. No, with a job search engine, hundreds maybe, if I dare push it, thousands of people in a Metropolitan area, such as Dallas/Ft. Worth, see the ad and apply for it. There go your odds!!!! 
     So, I decided to research not the most popular job search engines, but the most effective, if there is such a thing. Now there are way too many JSE (job search engines) out there to mention in this post so we will just pick a few.  We have all heard of indeed.com , Jobs.com , simplyhired.com , careerbuilder.com , & monster.com and while these are the most popular, it still makes me question their effectiveness. Like I said at first, the more people to apply for a certain position, the weaker your odds get. So I decided to compare the most popular with the not so popular. 
     One of the things I looked for in a JSE was user friendliness, accuracy, and tools for organizing my job search. One of the JSE's I came across was jobsradar.com . When you log in and if you allow it to see your location, it will automatically shows you just how many jobs are in your area. Also, the site was over all very easy to use. I love to go onto  a site and look at what resources they offer if any at all, ( I love, love, love links. They are like little presents full of knowledge) anyway, this site offered 4 featured resources: #1 Career Cafe
which offered informative articles about jobs, job search, careers, etc... I found it quite helpful. Then there was  #2 Career News which offered the latest news on a wide variety of topics within the workforce. #3 Career Test  now this was cool, several categories of skill sets, you click all that apply to you and it shows you what careers best suit you. #4 Salary Information  simply type in Job Type, Job Title, and State and it will give you the State's average salary for that particular position. there are a few more resources such as Job Information, and Related News, but my favorite was Military 2 Civilian, this takes your military training experience and converts into civilian job possibilities. WAY COOL!!!! Definitely worth checking out.
     Now, for the things I DID NOT LIKE ABOUT IT: After you register with the site and your ready to get on with your job search, you push "ENTER" anticipating getting to the job board when all of a sudden, you get bombarded with a million continuing education ads trying to put the personal information you just registered with into their forms. I HATE THAT. I finally get through all of that to end up at the job board that looks just like indeed.com that is powered by indeed.com .  Then I realized, the not so popular Job Search Engines are powered by the popular Job Search Engines. Go FIGURE!
     Overall, jobsradar.com had some very good information and easy to use tools but, you be the judge. I will leave you with links to other Job Search and Career Resources that I found. Happy Job Hunting

Shelly Michalk-Schumacher
April 11, 2013
Featured site: http://www.jobsradar.com 

OneStopCareerCenter.com
SnagaJob.com
PerfectCoverLetter.com
My Favorite: LinkUp.com

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HELLO EVERYONE.... I'M BACK.

IT'S BEEN A WHILE and IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK!!!!

Another Company Who Doesn't Keep To They're End Of the Deal

CLEARWIRE LOGO.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

UGH!!! Not Again... Editorial 

So, I'm having a run in with yet another company who will lie to get your business, sign you up to a 2 year contract and yet NOT live up to their end of the deal. Who is it?
The company is ClearWire, they supply internet services. They claim to run off Sprint towers and say that if you can use your Sprint cell phone that you will be able to receive 4G internet services with them. THEY LIED!!!!
My home is in Pearland, Texas and I have ClearWire internet services with them at my home, so when I called to inquire about their ClearWire HotSpot, I was excited to hear that if I have a Sprint phone, which I do, that I should have no problem receiving their 4G HotSpot services. To my disappointment, I've been paying the $73.58 a month bill with no luck of using my HotSpot. When I called to cancel the service with no charge to me because of the misleading sales speech, I was deeply disappointed that they wanted to charge me $40.00 to get out of the contract that they did not honor.
The fight continues, and I will keep you all updated on how ClearWire plans to handle the situation.
Wish me luck.
Editorial by Shelly Michalk-Schumacher

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What in the Hell Happened to Customer Service?

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Julie and Julia

Julie & Julia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 My Inspiration



One of the inspirations for my blogging attempt is the movie Julie and Julia. It's a movie about a writer who cooked and wrote her way through Julia Child's cook book. It is absolutely one of my favorite movies as I too love to cook and Julia Child has been gracing my TV since I was a child.
I love the way the writer not only cooked her way through the cook book but she actually researched Julia and her life. She read through letters from Julia's husband, she learned about Julia's time in France, and it seemed as the writer was cooking, Julia would manifest in her kitchen to help her with everything except Beef Aspects, ( I believe it is called, lol).
 Julie was such an inspiration to me that I wanted to say, Thank You!!!! Thank You for NOT being afraid to follow through. Thank You for not letting Abigale steal your thunder, AND THANK YOU for not giving up even after Julia Child refused to meet you. I'm sure that was hard but at the time Julia had to be in her 80-90's and probably would have refused to meet the Pope. I know I'll never be as good as a writer as you are but I love your attitude and perseverance.
Again, Thank You

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English: American cook, author, and television personality (August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• Julie & Julia