by Pradip Francis Rodrigues »  A month ago, Catherine Sullivan (name changed to protect privacy) walked into the nearest travel agency and booked herself and her family a cruise along the Nile, with a side trip to Paris and Rome. Two hours earlier, Catherine was served a pink slip that ended a ten year run with a five-figure salary.

“I had two choices, go home and cry myself into a depression or go and start packing for a long overdue vacation that eluded me for a decade. I came back more positive and focused on the things that are really important,” she recalls.

On the other side of town, a CEO whose firm is suffering a major slowdown calls in his staff to a meeting, which essentially is a pep talk designed to rally the troops.

Every day, the above two scenarios are playing out over and over again, and in both cases how the managers and business owners deal with the situation is of crucial importance in these times of economic upheaval.

By Mary E. Fenuta » If you have, you’ve just been handed a wonderful opportunity for change! Downsizing is not a terrible thing – it is a great opportunity to review your career path, take some time to be with your family, or shift gears completely as I did. 

I am writing this article as an expert in the area of downsizing… both from the management side that actually planned the downsizing, as well as from an employee’s perspective – having been downsized myself. Let me share with you what I have learned from both sides.

Editor's Note: This is the third in our Small Business series, ‘So You Want to Be An Entrepreneur’

By Cheryl Antao-Xavier  »   The fun part of creating a business plan is jotting down the concept and projecting big profits at the end. Between the concept and the big profit, however, come the nitty-gritty details of making the idea a reality. Those details constitute the operations plan, which for a budding entrepreneur is generally not the most fun part of the planning process.

Editor's Note: This is the second in our Small Business series, ‘So You Want to Be An Entrepreneur’

By Cheryl Antao-Xavier  »   Successful marketing of your business is all about “positioning”, says marketing guru Peter Sirois of Sachem & Scribe. “It is carving out a place in the consumer’s mind and owning that space such that no competitor can penetrate it to any significant degree.”

Editor's Note: This is the first in a four-part series

By Cheryl Antao-Xavier  »  The Wikipedia online encyclopaedia defines an entrepreneur as one who takes “a high level of personal, professional or financial risk” in pursuit of opportunity, yet is more of a “passionate expert than a gambler”.

Fashion designer Katya Revenko was both a passionate expert and a gambler when she launched her label Desperately Different on the Toronto fashion scene. “There were many who said it was not the right time in the market and tried talking me out of it.”