I make people think. I make them laugh. I make them money.

How To Motivate Employees for Enduring High Performance

Paying the most will lead to a constant pipeline of candidates wanting to work for your company, but once they are employed, the good salary is just one part of what will keep them motivated.  The truth is that sometimes there isn’t enough you can pay someone to make them stay if the corporate culture […]

Important Things To Look for When Choosing an Employee Benefits Platform

For many years, HR platforms were messy, making it hard for employees to find benefits information when they needed it most. While those systems might have checked the right boxes for the business, they were rarely built with the employee experience in mind. It can be a struggle if the business software you’re using is […]

Q1 2026 Gave Us Whiplash

The first quarter of 2026 was a doozy. Partial government shutdown, military actions, supply chain and commodity pricing issues, oil price fluctuations – we’ve had them all. If your business plan needs updating to manage against some or all of these risks, you should take care of that.  As we head into Q2, it’s time […]

You Can’t Win ‘Business’ or ‘Career’

If I asked you who is your biggest competitor, or what is your biggest competition in the marketplace, you might name another company or type of service provider. We are taught to look for our competitors and differentiate ourselves from them, which is important, but optimist and New York Times bestselling author Simon Sinek talks […]

Use Compassion, Not Empathy, To Deliver Hard News

If you are in business, you will have to deliver hard news. You will need to replace one vendor with another, or one agency with another. And while those conversations may be difficult to have if you liked your account team, the hardest conversations will likely be when you have to let someone go.  Whether […]

Do Your Employees Use a ‘Corporate Translator’? 

Sometimes comics or shorts/reels can perfectly demonstrate the absurd and the ridiculous. I think it’s something about the process of condensing a much bigger topic into a few frames and the discernment needed to do that.  By the way, the shorter something is, the harder it can be to create.  If you’ve ever worked in […]

The Block To Scaling May Be the Founder 

Companies are built by founders, but after a certain point, the founder needs to step back from parts of the business and hand the responsibilities over to an experienced executive. This can be difficult for the founder because they have to give up control, but it also can be difficult for the people who work […]

Skills AI Won’t Replace: How to Stay Valuable and Relevant

There is a lot of fearmongering on the interwebs about AI taking over job functions. Yes, AI can do a lot of things, and it can do many things better and faster than humans, but, at least for now, there are some humans skills that are superior. In the video “The 6 Skills AI Will […]

Best Tips for Retaining Employees in 2026

Employee retention can be a big challenge for small businesses, so we have asked the incredible CarolRoth.com contributor network of business owners, experts, advisors and entrepreneurs to share their best tips for retaining employees. Their tips are presented below, in no particular order. You may notice some similar ideas listed below, but I kept them […]

Survive the News Cycle and Stay Focused on Your Business 

The news cycle has been fast and furious this year. I was hoping that we would get a few pauses here or there, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.  I want to remind you that while you need to stay informed, the Mayo Clinic article, “Constant coverage of scary news events can […]