Business & Financial

Being a full-time executive spouse (or wingspouse) is not different from any other career. Some choose this path. Others do not. If you want to be a successful wingspouse, you have to be professional, trustworthy and genuine. Your product is either marketable, or it is not. Customers either like you, or they do not. But who is the customer in your case? As the wife of an executive, your most important customers are your spouse, your spouse’s boss, and co-workers. Their attitude toward you can significantly impact your spouse’s career.

I remember being asked (during one of my husband’s past interviews) if I was willing to accept the “First Lady” role. I laughed at the time, naive to what that really meant but later I understood. My interaction with others has the potential to keep a customer happy or leave them wanting to return the product (my husband being the product). My role as the wife of a C-suite executive is not a whole lot different from the position held by any US Presidents’ wife, although I have never met the queen. The wingspouse role, however, is a powerful one.

With corporate awareness on brand identity value increasing day by day, logo designs are hard to be missed. Each year we see tons of new and fresh logos evolve, conglomerates and mergers taking place and numerous redesigns happening.

Some designs are regarded as the best logos of the year while several face severe censure from the design community. Some of them are criticized for their exorbitant prices, while others are refuted on visual grounds. Following is a list of 10 most talked about logos of 2010.

Bausch + Lomb: Jan 2010

Designer: Pentagram

In the new Bausch + Lomb identity, the plus sign becomes a translucent medical sign that communicates that “Bausch + Lomb” is willing and committed to partnering with the medical community.

Skittles: Feb 2010

Designer: Miles Newlyn & Dragon Rouge Agency

You may be thinking, “You’re crazy, I can’t do that!” but all of those things on your list will be there when you get back. But when you get back you’ll also have something else – clarity – which will help you tackle everything with a much clearer head.

I recently took some down time from my business, and it was the best thing I could have done. I practiced extreme self-care and it was the first step of several I took that eventually tripled my income. Here are a few of things I recommend to start taking care of yourself, which will in turn take care of your business.

1. Look at your calendar, pick a day and write in huge black letters O-F-F! This is not going to happen unless you mark it on your calendar and make it part of your schedule. Then when the day comes, do something for yourself to create some space. I got a massage, went shopping and bought myself some new clothes. I did not work.

Creating a big sign for a special occasion is part of the fun of having a party or a sale. The best way to send a big message is to make a big sign – a banner. Banners are usually as long as they need to be to deliver the message. Height is usually 18 or 36 inches tall. Used for a variety of events, they are traditional in appearance with light colored backgrounds and bold lettering. They are mounted in a visible place for everyone to see. This includes vehicles driving by a business or hung in a park for people to find the right place to go for an outing.

It is very hard to do anything in the UK without a bank account. Without a bank account, the very simplest of tasks become very complicated. Like it or not we are a society that has, for many of its most important transactions, dispensed with cash almost entirely; your employer will need, for instance, to pay your wages into a bank account, and paying your bills without a cheque book or debit card can be almost impossible.

So, we know that we have to use a bank account, but with the recent behaviour of many of our banks we may be feeling a little sheepish at the thought of having to choose between what often seems like a bad bunch. Choose we must however, and whether we are looking for our very first current account, deciding to switch to a different bank or opening a second or third account to spread our finances around, ‘just in case’, the truth is that despite recent issues, the UK does benefit from a great breadth of choose when one is looking to open an account.