While growing a business is important in this time of the economy, core values must be in place. If you are dedicated to family, sacrificing that to make a business deal will create tension and turmoil no matter if it successful or not. Al Roker and Deborah Roberts talk about making the balance between family and business work.

Now, since we have all agreed not to fall into the traps of Playstation, what then should we do? If you believe Carol Tice, which I do, is to start looking to expand business ventures. The economy is still in intensive care, but there is enough of a pulse to warrant thoughts of prosperity and expansion.

Now, while you may never enter into the gaming business, we can all take a lesson from Playstation’s network woes of the past week. Always have a plan in place in case someone were to hack into your website or business. You can’t always worry about offending people. If you do that, you’re going to spend a lot of time worrying.

Don’t dismiss the notion that adults play games online anymore. Once an area specific to childhood, video games of one sort or another are the arena of many adults. There is a potential market for the right person who is willing to find a way to create a game that ties in with their business.

Jeffrey Gitomer does it again. He has been able to take self-improvement in the area of sales and make it seem simple and practical. If you have to make a presentation and want to know how effective you think you will be, then you need to ask questions about yourself. Do you know your main point? Is it clear? This will get you more efficient in the presentation and sales process.

Finding customers cen be reduced to a single word: networking. If you want to find customers, you have to know how to network and how to build a customer base from that. You need a plan on how to build, do it everyday and follow through. I have now just given you the same information that countless others have.

Here’s one of the things that really bothers me with online business ventures. Some people get a venture going and manage to become successful really quickly. They then go online and crow about their successes. While the success may be legitimate and hard won, it unfortunately creates in the mind of others a sense that it is a simple, easy, light work process because it happened so quickly.

The world of business and life is one of trial and error. Try something and see if it works. If it does, do more of it. If it doesn’t work, figure out why and attack from a new direction. The advantage to being a student of history is that you can use the mistakes of others and learn from them. Jane Porter wrote and article recently about marketing mistakes made by others and how you can avoid them. It’s a good read, even though there are only three mistakes discussed.

The dreaded “T” word, the only other thing that is certain in this life aside from death. The way you look at taxes really does reveal something about how you look at the rest of your life. Most people think they “have to” pay taxes, these are the people that are usually dissatisfied with their job, career, life etc. But some people look at the situation as they “get to” pay taxes. These are the people who usually have a more positive, upbeat attitude.

Here’s a little tip on how to generate a little more customer activity from John Arnold. Google Boost is an addition to the maps application and you can have your business pop-up when someone does a search in your location. This is a great idea, Arnold says, if you happen to have multiple locations for your business.