Small businesses can increase their chances of standing out from the pack by taking novel and interesting approaches to the everyday problems affecting all of their peers.
In the high-pressure world of business, long hours and thankless tasks can be part and parcel of getting things up-and-running for small company owners.
So people with budding businesses will likely be able interested in an article on CNN Money, which documents how one such entrepreneur has managed to counteract all the stress that these factors bring.
The article 'Subsidizing inner peace - A lingerie designer uses meditation to help herself, her business and the world' focuses on how Jacalyn Bennett has managed to bring a little calm to the cutthroat world of fashion.
Finding that spiritual philosophies from the east had managed to help her maintain her own inner peace, the owner and founder of Jacalyn ES Bennett & Co, which specialises in lingerie designs from its Massachusetts base, began applying these same principles to her work.
"Meditation can encourage things that are often lacking in businesses - like peace, compassion and sanity," she told CNN Money.
"If I've got something that keeps me from ripping my hair out daily, I'm a better boss for it."
Ms Bennett has helped establish the Insight Meditation Centre in Newburyport, which offers the same inner sanctum to similarly stressed-out business workers in the surrounding area, including some of her own employees.
Based on the ancient Buddhist principle of Vipassana, it claims are still relevant in the modern world, the centre offers daily sittings, practice groups, workshops and even retreats.
"To truly know ourselves, we need to understand all people and realize that we're all equal," she added to the news provider. "I have a company; that doesn't mean I can change my employees. I can, however, give them the opportunity to go in one direction or another."
Insight Meditation claims that Vipassana is a simple practice that trains the mind to focus on the present and provides practitioners with growing awareness of their experiences and how they relate to their lives.
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