Business and Financial News

In a time of economic uncertainty, one thing is for sure: antique Chinese porcelain is a hot commodity. In the last year, auction results have reached astronomical highs, with some pieces fetching fetching prices hundreds of times their estimates.

Here’s a look at 5 fabulous examples that recently sold to some very lucky buyers, according to Carlton Hobbs:

A set of four 18th-century Chinese Porcelain Vases were sold in Christie’s International’s “Exceptional” sale on July 7, 2011. The 4 foot-tall vases, painted with Buddhist and Taoist designs, were sold to Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts for $12.8 million, and are intended to adorn the Cotai Resort Hotel, his new resort in Macau, China.

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How to achieve your goals is a guest post by Jaime Tardy.

“By setting goals and measuring their achievement, you can focus on what is most important, waste less energy on noncritical tasks, and achieve greater results. “ – Harvard Business Essentials

Most of us have heard the statistic: People who set goals are more successful. You know how to set goals. But do you know how to achieve them?

As a entrepreneurial coach I have seen a lot! I’ve used my clients’ successes and failures to set up a system for actually achieving goals.

Pick one main goal. We get WAY too caught up in wanting everything now. Yes, I want everything now too! But if we don’t put a laser focus on our goals, we will water things down. Choose

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Have you ever done the “perfect day” exercise? Jack Canfield writes about it in his book The Success Principles. It goes like this:

Imagine your perfect day in great detail. Then write it down. Where do you live? When do you wake up? What do you do when you wake up?

Then go through each hour of your day. What projects are you working on? Who are you with? What do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? And when do you go to bed? What are you wearing?

This is well worth it to do, and here’s why.

I did this exercise in January, 2009–I typed my perfect day into a text file on my computer. And then I put the file away and mostly forgot about it.

Last week I found it again–when I was looking for another file, actually. I pulled it out and read it. And I felt overwhelmed. I felt li

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You’ve spent hours working on your business concept, and you’ve figured out something people will pay you for. Congratulations!

Now, you may be inclined to jump head-first into creating a business. Lured by dreams of freedom and setting your own hours, you spend all of your free time researching a name and hammering out the details of getting people to your door.

But there’s a common problem that may trip you up and cause you to work long hours for low pay (not the most exciting prospect!) Here’s a good example of how that can happen, and what you can do to avoid this situation.

Recently, I had a chance to speak with Stephen Ou via email. He’s an up-and-coming entrepreneur who’s quite good at identifying problems others are having. He sent me

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There is a complete disconnect between people ages 18-25 and the people who hire them (employers–that’s us!) This is a huge problem–one that we as employers need to recognize, and respect, before we lose an entire generation of young workers.

The young people’s discontent starts off early. Their parents and grandparents push this mantra: “Go to college, get a stable job, and then be happy.”

But they don’t see it the same way. The younger generation, by and large, doesn’t want to work for big companies. They want to travel, make their own way in life, etc. They’ve watched the Baby Boomers splurge relentlessly on consumer goods and bigger houses, and realized that it doesn’t make the boomers any happier.

Oh, sure, the kids are trend-aware and brand-conscious–perhaps the most brand-conscious of any generation we’ve seen. But they would rather h

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How to hire an employee. I’ve spoken a lot about hiring employees here on erica.biz, and why it’s so important to start hiring early, especially if you are just starting out and you don’t have a lot of free time to pursue your business. But many people I speak to don’t know how to hire an employee.

With this post, I’ll take hiring an employee step-by-step and show you exactly how I hired someone to help me out at home.

The situation: Brian, my current boyfriend, moved in with me about 7 weeks ago. He’s a freelance graphic designer who builds custom WordPress websites. He works part-time on Whoosh Traffic and takes other client contracts part-time.

He also loves to cook, and we now eat most meals at home. Neither of

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The Dear Urban Cyclists: Go Play In Traffic part of the headline is the one authored by P.J. O’Rourke in his recent article in the on-line edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Not exactly the same point of view – literally or figuratively – as that taken in the picture below from the blog post What You Missed This Morning…In Chicago. It’s a view many cycling commuters get while heading south on their way to work in downtown Chicago … on nice days, that is. 

P.J. O’Rourke, of course, is the noted political satirist and author, whose article was tagged by The Wall Street Journal as “P.J. O’Rourke on the Scourge off Bike Lanes”.  

Some people “get” Mr. Rourke and others don’t as represented by the 204 comments (to date) on his article. You can decide for yourself.

The second part of the headline, “but don’t forget about tax-favored commuter transit benefits” is my unabashed way to leverage off of Mr. O’Rourke

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