Negative Numbers In Exponents

So the question is "why is a number raised to a negative power always less than one, but not ever less than zero.  Well negative exponents are a confusing topic, but I will try my best to explain them.  There are different ways to solve a problem with negative exponents, but this is how I was taught.  All that you have to do is first find the reciprocal of the number.  So if you have 4^-2 you would change 4 to 1/4 and negative 2nd power to positive 2nd power, and now have 1/4^2.  So then you just multiply 1/4 by itself and you get .0625 which is less than one, but not less than zero.  This is actually a very simple method and the good thing is that it will work with any and every problem that has a negative exponent.