Going on vacation is supposed to get you away from your work. However, you should never leave your work behind entirely. You should always do at least a little bit of business networking on your travels. This allows you to make contacts in your industry who are located all around the world. In today’s global society, this is important.

You don’t have to take too much work with you when you travel to be successful in this. Just plan to attend one event or meeting related to your business. For example, let’s say that you’re a realtor. You’re going on vacation in Tampa, Florida. Find a conference or class designed for realtors in Tampa. The class should only take a few hours of your time and can easily be worked into your itinerary. Do quality networking there and you’ll leave with a bunch of friends who are realtors in Tampa FL. This may end up coming in handy one day if you’re ever in a position to do real estate work in that area.

Of course, you can’t just meet people and drop the ball. Stay in touch with the people you meet on your travels. Do this by making sure to add them to your social networking sites and contact them now and then online. Try this for one or two trips and you’ll be surprised by the results that you get.

Before you can start building a company website, you first have to choose a web hosting provider.  Though it may be tempting to just sign up with the first one you run across, that plan can backfire.  Here are a few tips to help you find good unix hosting.

• Do they have a package that will fit your needs?  This requires that you know a little bit about what you need.  If you just want a small website and don’t anticipate having much traffic come to it, a small website with shared hosting will probably be just fine.  If you have big plans for an ecommerce giant, and you have reason to believe you truly can do it, looking into dedicated hosting options.
• Will there be room for growth?  Again, this does require that you know a little bit about what you expect from your website — initially as well as what growth you anticipate.  Be sure there is a plan to upgrade to should your bandwidth and storage requirements exceed the plan you will be starting out with.
• Do they have good customer service?  Good customer service response time, not to mention ability and willingness to help customers, are a necessity with any web hosting provider.
• How do their prices measure up?  While this is too important of a decision to make solely based on price, the cost of your web hosting does matter.  Do a quick comparison check to see how the company’s prices measure up to their competitors before signing up with them.

These are just a few of the things to look for when choosing a hosting provider.  I’m sure there are things I’m forgetting, so if you notice something I didn’t mention, please feel free to make suggestions in the comments!

My horse trainer — the woman who started my horse under saddle and is teaching me how to be a better rider — certainly knows how to destress.  She and her husband have a boat, and last month they took a week-long boating vacation.  They know all about boating accessories, what you need and all that.  I don’t know half of what she is referring to sometimes when she tells me stories.

I think it’s great that she has such a good way to relax and destress.  If you work hard (which she does), you deserve to have a chance to play hard, too.  Although I don’t have a hobby quite so impressive (or quite so expensive), I do like to destress by riding my horse, reading, and and watching movies with my husband.  It’s how I reward myself for working and successfully running my own business.

As one professional I once interviewed put it, a healthy amount of play, whatever that is for you, allows you to fuel your passion for what you do for a living.  Without one, you couldn’t have the other.  What do you do to “play”?  How do you fuel your passion?

My older boys are both in college now, and it’s really tough sometimes to make ends meet.  I also have a two year-old, so his daycare costs only add to the bills.  I think everything together adds up to around $900 a month.  So I definitely needed a way to find an extra couple hundred dollars a month in income.

My sister works for a search engine optimization company.  I’d never heard of this before:  the idea that you can pay to have your own business website pop up sooner in all kinds of search engines.  But she’s been able to throw a few jobs my way that I can do from home.  Being able to do extra work from home has been a godsend!

Now that I’ve moved to Florida, I’m poking around to see if there isn’t a place here that will give me similar work.  There is a Tampa search engine optimization company that looks really terrific.  And they do more than just that:  they also will analyze the pros and cons of your website, and do internet and website marketing for you, as well as pay per click services.  This is a whole new field that more people should really look into!

It’s never too early to start learning about how to run a small business. Smart parents will help their kids learn some small business lessons from a very young age. They can do this by encouraging kids to turn their interests into profits.

The first thing that a parent must do is to identify what a child’s interests are and how they might be marketable. Sometimes this is easy. If you’re daughter likes jewelry then she can make jewelry and sell it. Children and jewelry naturally lead into a business. However, sometimes it’s a bit tougher. If your kid’s favorite toy is play food then you might need to get more creative to think of a money-making scheme that involves this stuff.

Once you have the idea in mind, you should suggest it to your child. However, you shouldn’t push it on him. If he seems interested, let him know how you can help him to get started. Let him do as much of the work on his own as he can. That’s how he will really learn what business is all about. The goal here isn’t to make a mint are launch a career; it’s to have fun while getting educated about making money.