In one of the clearest signs yet of the renaissance that’s finally putting a close to The Dark Age of Personal Computing, Apple Inc. (AAPL) has overtaken Microsoft (MSFT) to become the second-most-valuable U.S. company.

What’s the difference between a company’s stock market capitalization and the value of its actual business (which is referred to as “enterprise value”)?

Apple stock market capitalization

Microsoft stock market capitalization

A company’s stock market capitalization includes the net value of the cash and debt on the company’s books.  To figure out the imputed value of the company’s actual business, therefore, you have to adjust for the value of those other things.

Business facts aside, today marks a psychological triumph for Apple Computer fans that has been over 30 years in the making. Cheers to a company that has become the poster child of American success, and one that has done so while inspiring creativity in millions of designers, programmers, artists, and consumers alike.

Thinking different, while not grammatically or politically correct, can sometimes lead to a moment that can change the course of our lives forever.

What do you think? Have you bought into the whole Mac experience? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Did you know that there are FREE ways to promote your small business? Wait, you DIDN’T know that? Well you are not alone. A new small business survey by Citibank found this to be quite the norm among small businesses.

Few small business owners and managers are joining the consumer trend towards increasingly using social networking websites and services, according to a new Citibank / GfK Roper survey.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…If you havn’t heard of these social media tools, then you REALLY net to get out more. Or get online more as it were. The buzz around social media is deafening, but a whopping 81 percent of respondents say they still haven’t tried it. Why not? Nearly half of respondents (47 percent) don’t believe that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are of value to their business, another 21 percent think the sites are for personal use, and 18 percent say they don’t know enough how to use the sites.

According to the survey of 500 small business executives across the United States, 76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86 percent say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61 percent of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.

“Our survey suggests that small business owners are still feeling their way into social media, particularly when it comes to using these tools to grow their businesses,” said Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi’s Small Business Segment. “While social media can provide additional channels to network and help grow a business, many small businesses may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them.”

Other online tools that are going unused: Nearly 40 percent of small businesses surveyed don’t have a website, 62 percent don’t send marketing e-mails to promote their business, and 84 percent haven’t engaged in e-commerce. But among the companies that do have a website, 74 percent say it’s an effective way to bring in business.

What do you find to be the best online tool to promote your business?

The gurus at Inc.com have released a library of tools and templates for your business. With forms, job description templates, interactive worksheets, spreadsheets, and contracts, including 100 tools from DocStoc, you will find a business owner’s candy store of professional documents.

Business areas covered include: Start-up, Running a Business, Money and Finance, Leadership and Managing, Sales and Marketing, Managing Technology.

If image is everything, these tools will give your business a competitive edge.

Business Plan Checklist

The Business Plan Checklist is used by individuals or entities who are creating a business plan. The Business Plan Checklist provides an outline for all the information necessary in creating a successful business plan and should be used as a guide for completion.  View tool

Employee Handbook Sample

The Employee Handbook Sample is used by companies as a guide to create an employee handbook. The Employee Handbook Sample provides a comprehensive outline for employment policies, practices and procedures, standards of conduct, benefits, and company facilities. This sample is customizable for your company’s specific usage.  View tool

Business Presentation Template

The Business Presentation Template is used by individuals or entities to explain their business plan to viewers in a clear, effective manner. The Business Presentation Template provides a format for an overview of a company’s mission, staff, goals, and competition. The template is used when giving a business introduction to the company’s basic plan.  View tool

Go to Inc.com to begin supercharging your business!

SERVICES PROVIDED:
Art Direction, Graphic Design, Typesetting

PROJECT DETAILS:
JF Designs created a strong branding identity to promote a new consumer product line that will be featured nationally in retail stores.

It was one of this year’s reality show standouts, beloved by viewers for the dose of schadenfreude they’d get by seeing executives fail at attempting the basics that make their companies tick. Undercover Boss took CEOs (such as 7-Eleven’s Joe DePinto, above) out of their corner offices and planted them as entry-level grunts in their own business. What ensued needn’t just be couch-potato fuel, though: We’ve compiled some notes so you can avoid these CEOs’ mistakes.

Do Sweat the Small Stuff

Joe DePinto, a West Point graduate who’s now the CEO of 7-Eleven, knows how to run a $13 billion company. But brewing coffee without overflowing the dispenser? Not so much. In investigating exactly how the 7-Eleven in Shirley, New York, manages to sell 2,500 cups of coffee a day, DePinto managed to mix up flavor batches and make a mess. But he took a lesson from middle-aged coffee-maker Dolores, whose precise brewing combined with impeccable customer service (she seemed to know the name of every person who entered the door) kept caffeine fiends coming back day after day.

Lesson: Pay attention to detail – and to your regular customers – and you will be rewarded with repeat business.

Even Small Jobs Require Confidence

It seems obvious: a CEO should intimately know – and ostensibly enjoy – the product or service they sell. On the episode about Churchill Downs, the racing park that’s part of the largest horse-racing business in the world, that wasn’t quite so for COO Bill Carstanjen. When he went out dressed as a new hire to work with a horse trainer, it was readily apparent he was afraid of feeding the horses. And though he learned how to play the “Call to Post” on the bugle, he discovered he was terrified of playing in front of a crowd.

Lesson: Inspiring confidence takes confidence especially in a highly-competitive environment.

Keep Your Customer Service Skills Sharp

Rick Arquilla, president and COO of Roto-Rooter, got his hands dirty in an episode of Undercover Boss. After cleaning some drains like a pro, he was tasked with working the phones at a dispatch call center. He struggled, in part because the call system is color-coded and Arquilla is colorblind. That’s no fault of his, but his phone skills also leave a lot to be desired – he sounded pushy and impatient when he talked to a customer.

Lesson: Your interactions with customers over the phone are deceptively difficult to get right, and require patience and foolproof systems.

Enforce High Standards

Coby Brooks was not ready to meet Jimbo. He was the manager of a Hooters restaurant to which CEO Brooks was assigned, and he liked to “inspect” female employees in a leering fashion. Brooks, who spoke with pride about his company’s donations to breast cancer research, was not amused. “The things I saw today,” he said on the show, “were inappropriate. They were wrong and I don’t want any part of it.”

Lesson: Even if your company image thrives on being a bit racy, employees must abide by clear standards set by human resources regarding harassment.

Find Out What Goals Mean in Human Terms

When Chris McCann, president of 1-800-Flowers and the younger brother of CEO Jim McCann, went undercover in his own company, it was with the aim of testing how well he understood the business. He suspected that the company needed to do better at connecting with its workers. And he was correct. For instance, when he struggled to keep up with his task at the chocolate bonbon conveyer belt, he struggled and lagged behind. An employee remained calm, telling him that the hefty goals are set by men who never visit the factory.

Lesson: Seek input from – and get to know – your front-line workers.

Source URL: http://www2.inc.com/ss/5-lessons-undercover-boss

What is Apple’s secret?  They do one thing, better than everybody else.

Read on to see what Tim Cook, Apple Chief Operating Officer thinks about how Apple does it. Focus is critical in order to bring specific success to a specific enterprise.

Tim Cook (bio):

“Yeah, that is a great question. The executive team of the company spends a lot of time thinking and discussing how to retain and recruit the best talent in the world, because at the end of the day—I know it’s a cliche—but people are our most important asset by far, and it’s people that deliver innovation, which is key to us. And so what else do we do other than that? Well, we are the most focused company that I know of, or have read of, or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day; we say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose, so that we can deliver the best products in the world. In fact, the table that each of you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, and yet Apple’s revenue last year was over $40bn. I think the only other company that could say that is an oil company.

And that is not from just saying “yes” to the right product which gets a lot of focus—it’s saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as the other ones. I think that this is so ingrained in our company that this hubris that you talk about, that happens to companies that are successful but then decide that their sole role in life is to get bigger, and they start adding this and that and this and that, I can tell you the management team of Apple would never let that happen. That’s not what we’re about. So, focus on people, and ensuring that it’s a small list of things to work on and putting all of our wood behind those things, that’s the magic behind us.”