Business lunches have become a very common way for clients, customers, and competitors to meet and discuss new business opportunities. Often times this is a great, casual way to accomplish business in a causal environment, but it can lead to disaster quickly if proper manners and considerations are not made. An important point to remember when setting up or agreeing to a business lunch is that the purpose of your lunch is to MEET not to EAT. Below are the most important, and most commonly broken, rules for conducting a successful business lunch:

• Dress Appropriately: If you are organizing the meeting, it is courteous to offer your guest a subtle tip about appropriate attire (ex: “The restaurant is pretty casual, I’m coming from home so feel free to wear something comfortable”). If you’re the guest and didn’t receive a hint, feel free to ask. It will show that you’re self-assured enough to take charge and handle details (ex: “I usually wear khakis and a golf shirt to work, would that be appropriate?”)
• Arrive 5 minutes early: You should plan ahead for any traffic/parking issues you may have so that you will arrive five minutes early to your lunch appointment. Just like with a job interview, timeliness is an essential way to communicate your interest and enthusiasm about your meeting and arriving late communicates that you do not value the other party’s time.
• Put your phone away: Point blank, being on your phone during a meeting is rude. While you may think that having your phone out makes you look important, it actually gives the impression that you’re inept and unable to manage your life or business for the short time of your lunch meeting.
• Order something easy and practical to eat: If something spills on your clothes, or you’re wrestling with your food while you try to eat it, it will be very hard for others to be able to listen to you or take you seriously. If you’re the guest of the lunch, do not order the most expensive thing on the menu, even if your host does. Ordering lobster while everyone else opts for a sandwich reflects negatively on your personality and attitude.
• Remember your table manners: Keep your elbows off the table, take the time to cut your food, don’t chew with your mouth open or talk with your mouth full. These may seem like common sense but they are manner rules that are broken all the time.

If these suggestions sound to you like what you’d hear when you ask for advice on a date, then you’re going in the right direction. You should be as focused on your manners while you’re meeting with a colleague for lunch as when you are meeting with a potential romantic interest. When you’re on a business lunch, one of your key goals is to impress who you’re with and give a good impression of yourself and what you represent. These points may seem trivial and unoriginal, but breaking these simple rules can undo any credibility you may have and ruin your business meeting. Keep these tips in mind and your work, not your bad manners, will be what everyone remembers.

Between work accounts, social media accounts, and general bill pay/life accounts, you’ve probably got a lot of passwords to keep track of. We’ve all been told many times that you should absolutely not have the same password for everything because if a person gets access to one account, they’ll be able to crack them all. However, the need to have such varied passwords is actually making us less creative, and thus making it easier to break into various accounts that are highly important to us.

Trustwave, an IT security company, set out to prove this point by analyzing passwords and their weaknesses and attempting to hack the password of 2.5 million of its customer as a test. Of those 2.5 million, Trustwave was successfully able to crack 200,000 of those accounts in only 10 hours using a very inexpensive software cracking system. The ease with which Trustwave was able to break into accounts is a little unnerving, and should remind us that while it may be annoying to do, making secure passwords is important.

While breaking into these accounts, Trustwave came across some very helpful info to keep in mind when you create your web passwords.

• Setting your password as “Password,” “Password2, Password 3, Password4 etc”, “P@ssw0rd” or anything similar is the biggest mistake you can make. This was the most commonly used password for the Trustwave accounts, and the most easily hacked.
• Picking just plain English words like “January” or “Kentucy” or “Jennifer” is almost as bad; almost all passwords hacked that weren’t a variation of “Password” were generic English words with no variation in them.
• Length matters: Simply put, the longer your password is, the more possibilities it gives, and the harder it is to figure out. Trustwave found that it was easier to crack the password “R$*k” than it is to crack “ThisIsMyPasswordNoReallyItIs,” showing that length, more than fancy characters, will help keep your account secure.
• Pick something obscure to the world, but not to you. Did you study classic literature in school or a foreign language? Then make your password the name of your favorite obscure literature character or a foreign word. You’ll remember it easily, but others will have a harder time cracking it.

These tips may seem simple, but they may mean the difference between having secure accounts and making information that might be confidential and highly important vulnerable to the outside world.

Compiled from this TechFlash News article.

It’s pretty safe to assume that as an employee, you use email multiple times a day. But, just because you send many emails, doesn’t mean you’re doing it correctly. To make sure your emails are well received and effective, make sure to avoid these common mistakes:

Mistake 1: Your email is too long: If you’re sending long winded emails, there’s a good chance that people won’t read all the content. A good solution: give yourself a 300 word limit per email to make sure your info is succinct and only includes key info.

Mistake 2: Your email is too vague: People read emails at iPod speed, meaning they give each email a few seconds before they decide to “skip” to the next one. If your email isn’t meaningful in its title and first sentence, there’s a good chance it won’t get read.

Mistake 3: Your email is self-centered: If the word “I” is showing up more than the word “you” in your email, it’s unclear how your topic relates to the receiver. Small changes to your sentences will make sure that it’s clear why you’re sending the email. Ex: “I will send you the materials tomorrow” should change to “You will receive the materials tomorrow”.

Mistake 4: Your email is too long: A huge block of text can be overwhelming and boring, regardless of how important the info is. Solution: Write short 2-3 sentence paragraphs and include bullet points when possible to break up the info that people are reading.

Mistake 5: Passive email: We all hate the “limp fish” handshake, and a passive email can have the same effect. Use active voice in your emails to make it sound more succinct and communicate the main point quickly.

Mistake 6: Your email is too heavy: If you attach every spreadsheet, Power Point, and word document that relates to your topic in the email you send, your receiver will feel buried in data. Make sure you are only including need-to-know information. 

What are your pet peeves when it comes to email?

Compiled fron the PR Daily Article: 6 Email Mistakes You Should Never Make