Many small business owners and managers will often say their personal assistant is invaluable to them yet they often treat them as if they're not.

"Franchise" is a word derived from French that literally means independence or privilege. Franchising is a strategy appointed by businesses to grow in the market. Franchising allows a number of independent units to share dependency and brand name of a particular company in the market. This indicated the franchises are not exactly independent companies but are representing the original company in an independent manner. This allows the company to have a major share in the market in form of these franchises as well as direct company branches and offices, thus allowing the company to dominate in the market.

A few months ago one of my clients felt a tingling in his finger. Being a workaholic he didn't have time to pay too much attention to it. After all he had meetings booked all day and they were more important than a tingle in his finger. He was about to leave home, then collapsed. Luckily for him, there was another person in the house and they called the ambulance.

Attracting and retaining a high performing team is one of the biggest challenges many business owners face. There are a variety of reasons for this and one of the key factors is that the owner doesn't realise that there's much more involved in the process than just placing an ad and asking a few questions.

Are you one of those people who regularly attends events to learn more, get all hyped up and excited on the actual day, write a book full of notes and proclaim to everyone in earshot that "this is it! I have found the magic pill that will transform my work and my life".