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Tag: Growth Strategies

  • These Comic Creators Got a $500,000 Shark Tank Investment

    These Comic Creators Got a $500,000 Shark Tank Investment

    “I wanted to tell a story about African history before slavery,” Manuel Godoy, co-founder of Black Sands Entertainment with his wife Geiszel, says. “[So I wrote] a story about Ancient Egypt and the surrounding areas. And it was amazing — people gravitated toward it because they finally felt included in historical contexts.”


    Courtesy of Black Sands Entertainment

    The Godoys began Black Sands Entertainment in 2016 to draw attention to the characters and stories that so often go unwritten in mainstream media. Now, the comic publisher and media venture boasts dozens of titles that represent the entire diaspora, and young adults are devouring them — just like the Godoys would have, if they’d had the opportunity at their age.

    Black Sands stands apart for its dedication to Black history and its commitment to the Black community, but something else has also contributed to its striking success: The Godoys’ status as United States Army veterans.

    Ahead of Veterans Day, Entrepreneur sat down with the Godoys to learn how they’ve grown Black Sands from crowdfunding to almost IPO with investments from Kevin Hart and Mark Cuban — and how their Army backgrounds have informed their entrepreneurial journey along the way.

    Related: 6 Ways Small-Business Owners Can Celebrate Veterans Day

    “Momentum is the biggest factor when it comes to raising capital.”

    From the start, the Godoys spread the word about their content on social media and set their sights on raising capital. Between 2017 and 2020, Black Sands ran four Kickstarter campaigns and raised $80,000 in total. Then, in 2020, they decided to launch another campaign on WeFunder.

    “We basically judged the intent of our biggest followers,” Manuel says of their approach to the 2020 campaign. “We asked them, ‘How much were you planning on investing?’ [Then we said], ‘If you were to invest this much money, we would spend at least 15 minutes talking to you about any questions you have about our company, our financials, etc.’”

    The Godoys asked, and their readers answered: They raised $40,000 in those first 24 hours. Ultimately, that campaign brought in $500,000.

    “No one wants to be the first investor,” Manuel adds. “But if you already got 300, 400 investors in the first day, everybody’s like, ‘Hey, I’m joining too.’ Momentum is the biggest factor when it comes to raising capital if you’re going through customers.”

    And the Godoys have kept up Black Sands’ momentum since those early days, climbing to the top 1% of the Patreon community, raising $2 million in capital and earning more than $2 million in revenue to date.

    Related: Why Creators Are Recession-Proof

    “We got on stage, pitched our information, and everybody fell in love.”

    Earlier this year, the Godoys appeared on Shark Tank to pitch their company.

    Shark Tank features Mark Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary as permanent judges, with Kevin Hart, Emma Grede, Peter Jones, Daniel Lubetzky and Nirva Tolia as recurring guest judges.

    The Godoys knew that Hart was going to be one of their judges ahead of time.

    “We knew we had to make him fall in love with our content,” Geiszel says. “So we got on stage, pitched our information, and everybody fell in love.”

    Initially, the Godoys offered the Sharks a 5% stake in Black Sands for $500,000, with the funds earmarked for animation development and additional titles. But Hart and Cuban countered with a 30% stake for the same investment, citing the media resources that Hart’s production company, HartBeat, could provide as Black Sands expands.

    The fact that Black Sands’ Shark Tank deal went through is a testament to its strong business model and the Godoys’ entrepreneurial savvy. Forbes spoke to 74% of the people who were offered deals on the show in seasons one through seven and found that roughly 43% of those agreements didn’t go through — because the Sharks pulled out or changed the terms.

    Now, Black Sands is focusing on that animation development — and on taking the company public.

    Not only are the Godoys dreaming of an eventual $1 billion IPO, but they’re also envisioning a future where Black Sands’ fans-turned-investors are at the forefront, continuing to hold stock as “their slice of the pie.”

    Related: The Basics of Raising Capital for a Startup

    Image credit: Courtesy of Black Sands Entertainment

    “Being in the Army taught me how to be an entrepreneur.”

    The Godoys’ experiences in the Army have helped lay the foundation for Black Sands’ success.

    “Being in the Army taught me how to be an entrepreneur,” Geiszel explains. “In the Army, I was leading a group of 30 soldiers. So it taught me about how to manage a team and run a company, because [it gives] you that discipline and structure you need.”

    Manuel agrees, noting that the Army imparts significant leadership experience, even for those lower on the chain of command — because you have to learn how to get things done on time.

    Another skill the Army teaches that every founder should have on lock? Inventory.

    “You have to know where everything is and how much you have,” Manuel says. “Otherwise, one day you run out, and it takes three months to get the next part. And you’re out of business for three months.”

    The Army has given the Godoys essential skills for running a business — and it’s also inspired some of Black Sands’ narratives.

    “I’m a war nut,” Manuel says. “I love war, so anything that has to do with strategy, military tactics, logistics, that’s stuff that I put into my writing. I make sure it logistically makes sense that [a particular] battle is happening, and that’s probably why people like the accuracy of the storylines.”

    Related: 7 Qualities the Army Instilled in Me That Helped Me Launch a Business

    “Veterans always want to choose five different businesses at once. I’m like, ‘No, stick to your favorite.’”

    There are many reasons why veterans make excellent entrepreneurs. Manuel notes the benefits they have at their disposal, which can help accelerate their business’s growth.

    Still, the Godoys stress it’s important to keep several key things in mind.

    First up? Stick to one business idea — and see it through.

    “Veterans always want to choose like five different businesses at once,” Geiszel says. “Stick to your favorite, take those military skills, apply them to your everyday business life, and you will succeed. Don’t give up. If you fail, keep going.”

    Additionally, you should know exactly who’s buying what you’re selling.

    “Find out who your core customer is,” Manuel says. “Don’t worry about what you’re going to make and how you’re going to do all that stuff. Find out who you want to sell to — because once you figure that out, then you can make a product that’s tailored to them.”

    Once you have your idea and customer in mind, you have to surround yourself with people who will help you level up.

    “Hiring the right team is very important for a business to thrive,” Geiszel says. “And you want to make sure your team is going to be loyal to your company.”

    One sure way to cultivate company loyalty? Pay people fairly, raising benefits as the company succeeds — it will make employees feel valued and willing to continue their contribution. Manuel says that Black Sands has people who have been on the team for five or six years.

    Related: The 4 Rules of Treating Employees Equitably

    “We have to champion things that the Black community wants us to champion.”

    Above all else, Black Sands is a company that refuses to sacrifice its principles.

    Originally, the co-founders wrote and designed all of Black Sands’ comic books by themselves, but they’ve begun allowing other Black creators to write for them as they build their own brands.

    Black Sands has also harnessed the power of Kickstarter as part of its larger effort to lift up Black creators and their work. The Godoys recently launched a campaign for Everett Montgomery’s Flame comic series.

    Image credit: Courtesy of Black Sands Entertainment

    “We are a company that’s dedicated to Black history,” Manuel says. “And that means that we have to champion things that the Black community wants us to champion. We can’t just go out there and be like, ‘Oh, we make comic books, and that’s all we do.’ We have to be involved in social issues and other things that are related. We have to be able to say that we actually are doing something about it.”

    Amanda Breen

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  • What SaaS Companies Need to Focus on to Survive Market Downturns

    What SaaS Companies Need to Focus on to Survive Market Downturns

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    If this is your first market downturn, you may be especially confused by the conflicting advice arising from such an event. To some, the sky is falling, and you should quickly change your model. To others, the pastures are green, and you should take advantage of the weakened landscape. Which one you are depends on what the data tells you about your business.

    Right now, the data from the venture capital world can feel bleak: Global VC funding fell 33% quarter-over-quarter in Q3 2022. SaaS, specifically, has seen valuations slide since the beginning of 2022. However, not all companies are created equal.

    The valuation decline has been the steepest for companies not focused on their data, specifically their unit economics. In those unit economics, you’ll discover whether you should bear down to weather the storm or attack the market to expand your dominance. Either way, the decisions you make now should be strongly rooted in your unit economics.

    Related: 2022’s Top Trends Impacting SaaS Company Funding and Growth

    The pendulum swing

    We all benefited from larger funds and higher valuations. A rising tide raises all ships; unfortunately, that includes the leaky ones. The glut of available capital meant companies performing at mediocre and poor levels from an efficiency perspective could still grow quickly. In some cases, investors were pushing companies to take more chances and bet on future growth, sacrificing efficiency and certainly profitability.

    Those days of “growth at all costs” seem behind us. As markets sank and capital tightened, funders scrutinized their deals harder. They now seek companies demonstrating the fundamentals of running a scalable SaaS company, with efficiency and a strong path to profitability as hallmarks.

    The metrics that matter

    To be clear, SaaS companies cannot survive without growth — dominating your space requires it. But growth can no longer come at all costs, and companies must display certain fundamental metrics to support faster growth. SaaS companies should track dozens of metrics, but to attract investment in the current market, companies must address their efficiency metrics, especially:

    • Gross retention, with a goal of 90%+;

    • Net retention, with a goal of 110%+;

    • Gross margins, with a goal of 75%+;

    • Cost of acquisition (CAC), with a payback goal of <2 years

    Achieving these efficiency metrics will help companies maintain or exceed their valuations. If you’re already achieving these metrics, then you’ve earned the right to discuss deploying more capital in exchange for growth. If you aren’t, consider slowing growth and redirecting your strategy, especially if capital is tight.

    Related: Four Ways To Ensure Your Company Will Survive A Market Downturn

    The cost of capital without efficiency

    The higher cost of capital may prove incredibly expensive for companies buying time to achieve efficient growth. Beyond tightened funding requirements and depressed valuations, investors are placing more funder-friendly structures into deals with less fundamentally sound companies, including liquidation preferences, voting rights and even board control to reduce their downside risk. In fact, overly flawed later-stage companies may struggle to find funding on acceptable terms and may have to explore an exit or consolidation. But those wanting to tough it out and buy time to see better metrics have options.

    What can leaders do now?

    Start by scrutinizing your business fundamentals and assessing the efficiency of your core operating teams, then adjust to reduce inefficient spending.

    • Sales: Review metrics like pipeline-to-bookings ratio (with a goal of 4-5x+) and average seller’s quota attainment (with a goal of 65%+). This information will focus your efforts and help you find needle-moving improvements before simply growing your sales teams without correcting underlying issues.

    • Marketing: Focus on efficiency metrics like your cost per opportunity across every channel and over-invest in high-performing channels.

    • Product teams: Consider tracking efficiency based on a product productivity benchmark and monitor user-to-issues ratios. You might invest more in customer features and platform stability over new builds to increase retention and enable higher converting upsells.

    • Customer success: Examine retention rates across various customer segmentations to understand your customer base’s strengths and weaknesses. Optimize your book of business-to-customer rep ratios, and heed customer Net Promoter Scores and other sentiment metrics.

    As you adjust, you may need to shrink your teams and rightsize your operation. It’s an unpleasant reality, but you should fill any cracks in your ship before renewing your push for growth. This can help control your burn rate and buy the time needed to convince an investor you’re on the path to efficiency.

    Related: 4 Tips To Keep Your Business Afloat in a Downturn

    Where is the funding?

    Valuations likely won’t reach 2021 numbers, but companies with strong fundamentals will find funding. Companies correcting their fundamentals and needing to buy time with capital will find tougher markets. So, where else can you go?

    Start with your current investor base. They have as much to lose as you do, and in the case of venture capitalists, they often have allocated “dry powder” for situations like these. They may also behave more moderately as bad valuations and more structure can often hurt their previous positions. Another way to avoid a down round in the short term is by raising via convertible notes.

    If equity is not an option, climbing interest rates have made debt providers more active, creating an opportunity to explore debt financing. If it’s available to you and makes sense financially, leveraging debt lets you raise non-dilutive capital that buys you time to achieve better efficiency metrics. Timing matters, however, as the debt market can ebb fast should monetary policies change further.

    The funding silver lining

    Companies that rightsize their operations and control their burn for the next year might find a funding pool at the end of the proverbial rainbow. Funds with charters to invest in private tech companies are riding out the troubled market on the sidelines. As the market improves, funds will further open their checkbooks to companies with healthy efficiency metrics.

    Valuations may not have completely rebounded by then, but companies will keep raising at good multiples if they demonstrate solid fundamentals and maintain healthy efficiency metrics alongside growth rates. These companies are best prepared to ride out the falling wave and catch the rising tide again.

    Afif Khoury

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  • Are You Charging Enough Money for Your Software? Here’s How You Can Tell.

    Are You Charging Enough Money for Your Software? Here’s How You Can Tell.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    My biggest mistake as an entrepreneur and startup founder happened just before raising our seed investment. I was sitting on a windowsill at our old office, looking over the sea, contemplating what masterstroke could take my company to the next level. Then it hit me: Why don’t I just lower the price to $4 per month per user? “If the product is cheap enough, everyone will buy it and see its immediate value,” I thought to myself.

    What happened was that I totally overestimated our brand, the maturity of our product and our ability to drive product-led growth. I was convinced that the quality of our product would be self-evident and that it would sell itself because of the embedded virality of the platform. Instead, I learned that our product was underdeveloped, the market immature and that we had to educate our users to show them the full value and capacity of our product. In many cases, we even had to help them implement our solution for our customers to prevent them from churning.

    Later, it would show that raising prices wouldn’t just increase our top-line growth. It made our users happier with our product as they got more committed.

    Related: 4 Reasons Why Raising Your Price Is a Brilliant Marketing Move

    The problem with under-charging

    My mistake is not unusual — quite the opposite. I often see young, inexperienced founders under-charging for their products. Either because their imposter syndrome makes them underestimate the value of their product, or they overestimate their ability to make bottom-up sales.

    Selling a product at $4 per user would require an utterly insane amount of users to keep growing. Having so many users means you must have virtually no touchpoints with the users, which requires a totally self-explanatory UI. You need a really sticky product that sells itself. That’s not impossible. Slack did it. Notion did it. But it’s extremely rare to hit such a home run on your first try.

    So, what justifies charging big money for B2B software? What makes companies pay 50k or 100k for a piece of software? As I see it, your product must be hard to replace, business-critical for the users and show a clear return on investment. Let’s take a closer look at those three elements.

    1. Is it hard to replace?

    The first aspect is making your software hard to replace. By that, I’m not suggesting that you take your users hostage with opaque termination conditions and well-hidden cancellation buttons. The point is that you ensure your software is embedded deeply into the workflows of the business you serve. The truly value-adding solutions in today’s B2B software landscape aren’t just digitizing a process or replacing another similar solution. They change the way we work. Driving actual behavioral change in your users’ approach to work requires skilled consultants, multiple touchpoints, a forward-thinking mindset and a lot of education from your end. But it also makes your product unique and very hard to replace. Simple licenses are convenient in some instances, but they don’t drive loyalty because no real commitment is involved.

    Related: How to Let Customers Know About Increased Prices Without Making Them Mad

    2. Is it business-critical for users?

    Second, your product must touch something sensitive and business-critical for your user. You can justify a higher price if your software cures a real pain than if you just remove a little nuisance. And you can charge more if your product reaches far into the heart of a business. Certain products are so important to the operation of my own business that I’m willing to pay very high sums for them — like our CRM system or billing software, for example.

    3. Does it show a clear return on investment?

    The third aspect is the most obvious but may also be the hardest to achieve. Your price point is only fair if you can justify it from a return-on-investment point of view. You must be able to show your users the value you bring them in order to charge real money. It’s one thing to create a product that really creates value, but it’s another thing to be able to back it up with actual proof. Nevertheless, finding a way to calculate your value will enable you to set the price point where it belongs — usually higher than you think.

    Related: How Raising Your Prices Can Actually Help You Make More Sales

    With all that said, there is also a mental aspect. You have to believe in yourself and your product, and don’t underestimate your worth. Finding the right price point takes experimentation and iteration. I probably still haven’t found it, and it changes over time. But in my experience, charging too little psychologically affects your users. It makes them less committed and less likely to perceive the true value of your product. With higher prices, you might lose customers, but those who stick will be more devoted. Luckily, I could rectify my mistake and take my business to the next level despite my initial wrong-doings. But there is no reason you should make the same mistake.

    Niels Martin Brøchner

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  • Why Founders Need Coaching in Each Stage of Company Growth

    Why Founders Need Coaching in Each Stage of Company Growth

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As organizations grow and mature, they go through predictable stages, each of which requires a different form of leadership in order to drive success at each stage. Coaching ensures that leaders are supported and growing exponentially in order to support this rapid evolution.

    We can refer to the stages of venture capital funding as a roadmap to match leadership and organizational dynamics. Each stage of organizational growth requires distinct skills and mindsets, and they are surprisingly different.

    The shift from being a contributor to a leader brings in the human factor, and managing others who are doing the work becomes primary over doing the work yourself as a founder. This is accompanied by increasing pressure from the market, board and associated complex decisions that involve many other humans for the first time. The best investment a leader can make is in having a place to actively develop in an effort to meet the different needs of each stage. Coaches can support the transformations that are required.

    Related: Coaching: The Best-Kept Secret to Growing as an Entrepreneur

    Early stages (pre-seed to A)

    At the earlier stages, from pre-seed to early A-rounds, the work is hands-on, intensity-driven and revolves around key decision-making with co-founders and other early-stage employees. Leaders are individual contributors, and the work is both creative and technical. This stage requires moving very quickly, focus, ruthless prioritization and sharp hiring practices, as each new hire can be existential. That is, based on its small size, the company can either thrive or struggle based on one person. All of these efforts are focused on establishing the core product and service.

    This stage is fairly existential: The company is literally being born, and most decisions have a big impact. Keeping things focused and moving quickly is paramount; people report that this stage is fueled by energy and the passion of the founder. A coach can help a founder focus, prioritize and learn about the beginnings of their business. At this stage, coaches frequently counsel the entire team; their effect is systemic and broad as they help the team work through designing early management processes, provide feedback to each other and learn as they make critical decisions. They can also help quarterback other key resources and advisors who assist in the success of the business.

    Related: If You Haven’t Hired a Business Coach, You’re Holding Yourself Back

    Growth stages (B to C)

    The beginnings of the growth stages, sometimes from the A-round but peaking at B or C rounds, are where the true organizational foundations are laid. A leadership team forms, strategic HR is hired, and processes are built to drive the organization and enable it to scale. It’s during this time that culture comes to the forefront. In this stage, the CEO and other executives begin to focus on the organization as much as the product, and a true executive team begins to form. This requires a different, more human, skill set. Leaders have to become process builders.

    These are also the stages in which leaders need intensive counsel and coaching so they can successfully make the transition from early-stage product leader to organizational leader. This requires an operating system change. It also typically requires a deep dive into where they ascribe value and the mental model of their role, which is to enable others to build and thrive versus doing it themselves. Growth-stage leaders also have to be process builders. They are the ones who build infrastructure that has not existed before, and this lays the foundation for the organization at scale. The competencies that enable this include emotional intelligence, vision, communication and narrative-building skills, a subtle understanding of cultural and social dynamics and the ability to motivate and inspire.

    Coaching is key in developing these areas. A coach can help a leader upgrade their operating system and process the fundamental shifts at this stage. By offering reflective inquiry and support, the coach helps the leader understand that their value comes from letting go of parts of the business, building culture and the more symbolic aspects of their leadership. If they make it, these stages of growth can transform a leader into the mature version of leadership we know from larger companies.

    Related: 4 Ways a Coach Can Help You Lead Your Business to Success

    Late stages

    Later-stage companies build on the growth stage capabilities, and human-centric skills become even more important. For many, cross-functional relationships facilitate their effectiveness. However, this can feel political or jarring, as they are used to having full vertical control and have experienced seamless collaboration with a smaller leadership team. As such, this requires having more one-on-one meetings with peers and realigning mental models around horizontal leadership: your peers are how the work gets done.

    Innovation and breaking down processes can also be important, as the creep of institutionalization requires a refresh of the original fire. Leaders have to focus even more on presence; their leadership brand is what speaks when they leave the room.

    Lastly, at this stage of scale, a business has a greater responsibility to all of its stakeholders, including the community and the planet. It is critical for a leader to have a point of view and aligned actions around that responsibility.

    A coach at later stages helps a leader untangle cross-functional relationships and practice difficult conversations. Coaches support the leader in understanding the subtle cause and effect of leadership at scale and provide a mirror for a leader to pull apart incredibly complex decisions. Leadership at this level is highly symbolic and drives ripples of culture. A coach can help the leader understand how they are showing up and how that impacts engagement and motivation across thousands of people.

    At all stages, having an open space to process the complex changes that occur and make diligent adjustments is critical. Coaches help leaders address key blind spots that can impact a company’s long-term, sustainable success. Investing in coaching at all levels of leadership provides one of the best mechanisms to scale the humans and human-centric skills as the business scales.

    Matt Auron

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  • 5 Things You Should Know Before Collaborating With An Influencer

    5 Things You Should Know Before Collaborating With An Influencer

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Brands are projected to spend a whopping $15 billion on influencer marketing in 2022. Influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing techniques to help brands connect with their audience. Why? Because people tend to trust influencers and their content about the product more than companies.

    According to this study, 63% of their participants between the ages of 18 and 34 trust what influencers say about brands more than what brands say about themselves.

    Collaborating with an influencer to scale your business is a smart move, but there are a few things you should know. Let’s dig right into some of the best practices for better influencer-brand collaboration.

    First, choose the right platform that fits your product or service

    As we know, a major part of your social media strategy is selecting the right platform. Selecting the right platform depends on a few factors:

    • Your goals: Do you want to drive more traffic to your website, drum up sales or encourage more engagement from your audience? Some social platforms encourage engagement and conversation, while others encourage views. This can help you identify the platform you should focus on when looking for an influencer. For example, if your goal is to encourage engagement, I recommend TikTok where the average engagement rate per post reaches 5.9% while it’s only 0.83% on Instagram and 0.13% on Facebook. Let’s say you’re selling B2B products or services, LinkedIn will be the most suitable platform to build brand awareness, drive website traffic and generate leads.
    • Your target audience: You should also consider demographics like age, gender and location when choosing a platform. Adults between 24 – 34 years old, for instance, make up 31% of Instagram’s audience, while 24% of TikTok’s global audience were women between the ages of 18 and 24 years are more likely to be on TikTok. Facebook is the top-visited social media platform in the U.S., while Twitter is the most popular social media in Japan if we exclude LINE, a messaging app founded in South Korea. Do your research before selecting the platform. Back up your decisions with demographic data, rather than being swayed by the current trends.
    • Where the competitors are: It can save you time seeing how the competitors are performing, what things they did well, what things they dropped the ball on and learning from their mistakes.
    • Identify if the influencer is well-known on the platform: You might find an influencer with more than a million followers on TikTok while having little or no presence at all on YouTube. So, validate that the influencer has a highly engaging audience on the selected social media channel(s).

    Related: How to Succeed Using Influencer Marketing and Brand Collaboration

    1. Choose a relevant influencer

    It is essential to choose an influencer that addresses the same target audience as you do. For instance, when marketing a fitness product, a suitable influencer could be someone who shares educational content about health and fitness or workout videos. Relevancy is a crucial part of selecting who to partner with to build trust with your audience and provide advice and recommendations from experts with authority in the field.

    You should also keep in mind that there are different types of influencers out there and that you can expect different results from each. There are four main types of influencers when it comes to their follower base:

    • Nano-influencers: 10,000 followers or fewer.
    • Micro-influencers: between 10,000 and 100,000 followers.
    • Macro-influencers: between 100,000 and 1 million followers.
    • Mega-influencers: 1 million or more followers.

    If you aim to raise brand awareness, relevant mega and macro-influencers would fit nevertheless. Although micro and nano-influencers reach fewer people, they are more likely to inspire action. Micro-influencers can have a greater impact on followers’ actions than celebrities can. One study suggests the reason for this is that audiences usually find them more trustworthy and relatable than celebrities.

    2. Validate the followers

    To know whether an influencer is a perfect fit, you first need to pay close attention to their followers. If you have a business account on a social media platform, chances are you have come across those accounts that pretend to be like real ones by collecting fake followers and engagements. A simple but effective test to see if the influencer you want to work with has fake followers or not is to select some of their followers at random and notice how they engage with that account.

    Check on their profiles to confirm that they are not fake and that they look like your customer profile. A fake account can be easily detected, a typical one would normally hold zero number of posts or very few ones. The fake follower would most likely follow thousands of accounts while having a significantly lower number of followers. Sometimes the account has no profile picture or a vague profile description. All these criteria are red flags that they are fake accounts.

    You can also check the influencer’s previous posts. If you find only a few engagements (likes, comments, shares) then don’t be deceived by the high number of followers. This influencer most probably bought fake followers. A good exercise is to chat with the influencer about previous successful campaigns’ they’ve worked on.

    Related: What ‘Authenticity’ Actually Looks Like in an Influence-Marketing Collaboration

    3. Give influencers room for creativity

    The content delivered to the audience should be authentic. The best way to do this is to analyze the influencer’s previous posts as a reference point, and work together on how the content will look, the constraints you have and the things you expect to achieve without dictating and letting them do the talking.

    4. Monitor engagements and track campaign results and outcomes

    One of the core pillars of social media marketing is listening and engagement. Social media listening is identifying and assessing what customers say about the brand, brand mentions and the trends around a company. It will allow the company to measure the campaign’s success, know what worked well and avoid future mistakes.

    It is really important to track the impact of influencer marketing by using social media listening tools and not depending only on data supplied by the influencer. There’re many social media listening tools like Brandwatch, which helps marketers understand their audience, track conversions and monitor brand mentions.

    If influencers drive website traffic, you have to set up Google Analytics to measure the campaign performance KPIs like the number of visitors to your website, pages per session and bounce rate. Ultimately, if you’re selling a product online, you should track sales in real-time. An easy way is to give each influencer a discount coupon to share with his/her followers so you can easily detect the source of each transaction.

    Are you ready to collaborate with an influencer? When in doubt, refer back to these pointers before you commit.

    Ahmed Mokhtar

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  • Need Workers? Employers Are Realizing The Untapped Talent of These People.

    Need Workers? Employers Are Realizing The Untapped Talent of These People.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    If you give any leader the opportunity to increase their talent pool of potential employees by 15% — with all these new hires belonging to an underrepresented minority — they’d jump at the chance, especially given tight labor markets and CEO desires to increase headcount. Yet too few leaders realize that, according to the U.S. government, people with disabilities are the largest minority group in this country, with 50 million — 15% of the population — living with disabilities.

    Sure, many executives feel concerned by the extra investments involved in providing accommodations for people with disabilities. Yet these accommodations might not involve anything besides full-time remote work, according to a new study by the Economic Innovation Group think tank. The study found that the employment rate for people with disabilities did not simply reach the pre-pandemic level by mid-2022, but rose far past it, to the highest rate in over a decade. Remote work, combined with a tight labor market, explains this high rate, according to the researcher’s analysis.

    Related: 5 Ways Employees With Disabilities Help Maximize a Company’s Growth

    A bit of history: Employment rates among people with disabilities dropped, along with the rest of the labor market, early in the pandemic. However, they recovered quickly. People with disabilities aged 25 to 54, the prime working age, are 3.5 percentage points more likely to be employed in Q2 2022 than they were pre-pandemic. What about non-disabled individuals? They are still 1.1 percentage points less likely to be employed!

    That means the labor market recovery for those with disabilities was substantially faster than for those without disabilities. We know that both those with disabilities and those without faced a similar conditions of a tight labor market. Given that, remote work appears to offer the major differentiator that enabled those with disabilities an opportunity to join the workforce.

    These statistics align with expert statements. For example, according to Thomas Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute (NDI), workers with disabilities had been asking to work remotely for decades before the pandemic and had consistently heard companies say “no.” During the pandemic, he said that when “we all realized that … many of us could work remotely … that was disproportionately positive for people with disabilities.”

    Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Find Great Talent Despite a Labor Shortage

    The benefits of remote work for people with disabilities are particularly relevant due to the impact of long Covid. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 19% of those who had Covid-19 developed long Covid. Recent Census Bureau data indicates that 16 million working-age Americans suffer from it, with economic costs reaching $3.7 trillion according to a recent estimate.

    Certainly, many of these so-called long-haulers experience relatively mild symptoms — such as loss of a sense of smell — which, while troublesome, are not disabling. But others experience symptoms serious enough that they have become disabled.

    According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, about a quarter of those with long Covid changed their employment status or working hours. That means long Covid was serious enough to interfere with work for 4 million people. For many, this interference was serious enough to qualify them as disabled.

    Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found in a just-released study that the number of disabled persons in the U.S. grew by 1.7 million. That growth stemmed mainly from long Covid conditions such as fatigue and brain fog, meaning difficulties with concentration or memory, with 1.3 million people reporting an increase in brain fog since mid-2020.

    Many had to drop out of the labor force due to the intensity of their long Covid. Yet about 900,000 newly disabled people have been able to continue working. Without remote work, they might not have.

    In fact, the author of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York study notes that long Covid can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disability Act, depending on the specifics of the condition. That means the law can require private employers with fifteen or more staff, as well as government agencies, to make reasonable accommodations for those with long Covid. The author notes that “telework and flexible scheduling are two accommodations that can be particularly beneficial for workers dealing with fatigue and brain fog.”

    Related: The Labor Shortage Is Only Getting Worse. What’s Causing It and How Can I Avoid Losing Staff?

    But companies shouldn’t need to worry about legal regulations. It simply makes dollars and sense to expand their talent pool by 15% of an underrepresented minority. After all, extensive research shows that improving diversity boosts both decision-making and financial performance.

    Companies that are offering more flexible work options have already gained significant benefits in terms of diverse hires. In its efforts to adapt to the post-pandemic environment, Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, decided to offer permanent fully remote work options to its current employees and new job applicants. And according to Meta chief diversity and inclusion officer Maxine Williams, the candidates who accepted job offers for remote positions were “substantially more likely” to come from diverse communities: people with disabilities, Black, Hispanic, Alaskan Native, Native American, veterans, and women. The numbers bear out these claims: people with disabilities increased from 4.7% to 6.2% of Meta’s employees.

    Having consulted for 21 companies to help them transition to hybrid work arrangements, I can confirm that Meta’s numbers aren’t a fluke. The more my clients proved willing to offer remote work, the more disabled staff they recruited — and retained. That includes more obvious employees, such as those with long Covid symptoms and mobility challenges. But it also includes employees with invisible disabilities, such as immunocompromised people who feel reluctant to put themselves at risk of getting Covid-19 by coming into the office.

    Unfortunately, many leaders fail to see the benefits of remote work for underrepresented groups, such as those with disabilities. Some even claim the opposite: thus, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon claimed that returning to the office will aid diversity. What explains this poor executive decision-making?

    One part of the answer comes from a mental blindspot called the in-group bias. Our minds tend to favor and pay attention to the concerns of those we perceive to be part of our in-group. Dimon and other executives who lack disabilities don’t perceive people with disabilities to be part of their in-group. They thus are blind to the concerns of those with disabilities, which leads to the kind of jaw-dropping statements made by Dimon that returning to the office will aid diversity.

    In-group bias is one of many dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases. These mental blindspots impact decision-making in all life areas, ranging from the future of work to mental fitness.

    Another relevant cognitive bias is the empathy gap. This term refers to our difficulty empathizing with those who aren’t part of our in-group. The lack of empathy combines with the blindness from the in-group bias, causing executives to ignore the feelings of disabled employees and prospective hires.

    Omission bias also plays a role. This dangerous judgment error causes us to perceive failure to act as less problematic than acting. Consequently, executives perceive a failure to support the needs and interests of those with disabilities as a minor matter.

    The failure to empower people with disabilities will prove costly to the bottom lines of companies that don’t offer remote work options to those who would benefit from such accommodations. They are limiting their talent pool by 15%. Moreover, they’re harming their ability to recruit and retain diverse candidates. And as their lawyers and HR departments will tell them, they are putting themselves in legal jeopardy for violating the ADA.

    By contrast, companies like Meta that offer remote work opportunities are seizing a competitive advantage by recruiting these underrepresented candidates and expanding their talent pool by 15%. They’re lowering costs of labor while increasing diversity. The future belongs to the savvy companies that offer the flexibility that disabled people need.

    Gleb Tsipursky

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  • How Online Journaling Helped Me Get 10k Instagram Followers

    How Online Journaling Helped Me Get 10k Instagram Followers

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Growing up, I always loved writing. Writing allowed me to express my thoughts and ideas. It was also a great avenue to vent my frustrations. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve always kept a private journal. I struggle with journaling on a daily basis, so I would always update my private journal every six months. It wasn’t until I started my software company, Trend Watchers, that I decided to hop on the #buildinginpublic trend.

    Building in public is where you document yourself starting a company from scratch. When documenting your journey, you are supposed to showcase the good, bad and ugly days.
    Most people build in public on Twitter, but I decided to do it on Instagram. To start, I decided to delete my account and start from scratch.

    Related: How Journaling Can Make You a Better Entrepreneur and Leader

    How journaling online grew my Instagram following

    At first, I documented my journey through Instagram posts only. I would create a minimalistic graphic on Canva and would max out my Instagram caption, sharing whatever lesson I learned that week.

    The thing that makes my Instagram posts so unique is my wide variety of topics.
    One week, I’ll write about a lesson I learned from conducting business, another week I’ll write about a lesson I learned from dating, and so forth. There is no way to predict what I will write next. Even I have no idea what topic I’m going to be writing about beforehand.

    My posts are 100% based on inspiration. This makes my posts even more unique to where people want to share and read my posts. I started seeing growth on my page after I started posting pictures of myself to go along with the maxed-out caption.

    Growing up, I never took photos of myself. When I try to look back, I can only find the photos my parents took of me. I never took any of myself. To change this, I decided to post high-quality pictures of myself with each post that goes up. After doing this for over a year, I’m able to look back at my life with gratitude and can tell you exactly what was going on based on the photo I’m looking at.

    Instagram also likes it when you show your face. It makes you appear more human. I noticed my engagement jump up by 50% when I started adding photos of myself. This organic engagement boost combined with sharing my story with the Trend Watchers customer list helped me make my way to 10,000+ followers. When I first started the page, I had no idea it would make it this far, but by building in public, I have earned the following:

    Related: 7 Ways to Grow Your Instagram Without Buying Followers

    1. Networking opportunities

    To get the most out of networking online, it is important to have your profile well put together. Once it is well optimized, start following key people within your industry.

    One of my favorite tactics is to follow professionals I meet in person and have them follow me back. I also keep my Instagram stories up showcasing my life, and usually by doing this, they will remember me. Some of these relationships go nowhere, but now and then, an opportunity will come through.

    2. Dating opportunities

    About 2-3 times a month, someone will slide in my DMs. Most of the time, I’ll take these girls out on a first get-to-know-you date, and the conversations are just amazing. Most of the time, they have the same energy as me, and it’s refreshing to be around someone that has a growth mindset. Whether your intention is dating or not, building an Instagram following the way that I have can help you meet new people and build meaningful relationships.

    3. Customer acquisition channels

    My Instagram page also serves as a way for me to acquire new customers. If I’m selling high-ticket, I’ll have them follow me on Instagram to further build trust. They can scroll through my posts, learn more about me and see that I am authentic and credible. This often makes closing the sale a breeze.

    4. Amazing friendships

    Women are not the only ones sliding in my DMS. Every once in a while, guys will as well. Most of these people are not serious, but now and then I’ll come across someone who is. We’ll end up talking, and before you know it, we are great friends talking about issues both in our business and personal life. This is probably one of my favorite benefits of documenting my journey online.

    When I decided to start documenting my journey on Instagram, I did it for fun. I love having my own personal databases/journals that I can always look back on and go through. Little did I know, my public journal would gain momentum and start touching lives all over the world. Not only is it touching lives, but it is starting to open up doors in all directions that I could have never imagined.

    Related: 4 Ways Documenting the Journey Has Become More Popular Than Celebrating the Outcome

    If you are passionate about writing or keeping a journal, I’d highly recommend documenting your journey online. You’d be surprised by the people you’ll touch and the opportunities that will come your way.

    Dejon Brooks

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  • 9 Types of Lead Magnets That Will Quickly Grow Your Email List

    9 Types of Lead Magnets That Will Quickly Grow Your Email List

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    If you’re anything like most internet users, your email inbox is crammed full of messages from brands you love, brands you’re interested in and brands you’ve never heard of. There’s no way you can read (or even keep up with) all of them. So, how do you make sure your messages stand out and get opened?

    One way is to offer a lead magnet, also known as an opt-in incentive. A lead magnet is a piece of content that’s designed to capture a user’s attention and persuade them to sign up for your email list. There are many different types of lead magnets — from ebooks and white papers to free trials and coupons — and they can be very effective in growing your email list. To help you get started, here’s a list of nine types of lead magnets that you can use to quickly grow your email list:

    Related: Earn More Email Subscribers and Customers with Powerful Lead Magnets

    1. Free trial

    Offering a free trial is a great way to get people to sign up for your email list. It’s an especially effective lead magnet for SaaS products, which can be difficult to understand and use without some guidance.

    This removes the barrier of entry for potential customers and gives them a chance to try out your product before making a commitment. Of course, this has to be done right. Your free trial should be long enough to give people a chance to use your product and see its value, but not so long that they forget about it.

    2. A fun quiz

    From fashion to pop culture, quizzes are popular because they’re fun and relatively easy to take. They can also be very effective in growing your email list. For example, you could create a style quiz for a fashion brand or a celebrity trivia quiz for an entertainment website.

    Even B2B companies can use quizzes as a lead magnet. For example, a company that sells project management software could create a quiz to help users find the right software for their needs. With no-code quiz makers, you can easily create quizzes, polls and other types of content without any tech skills required.

    3. Ebook

    Ebooks are a popular lead magnet because they’re relatively easy to produce and can be very helpful to your target audience. For example, if you sell products for new parents, you could create an ebook with tips on how to get your baby to sleep through the night. In comparison, a B2B software company might create an ebook with tips on how to reduce IT costs.

    The key to creating a successful ebook lead magnet is to make sure it’s relevant and targeted to your audience. It should also be well-written and informative, with a clear call-to-action at the end.

    A white paper is a type of lead magnet that’s more in-depth than an ebook. They’re usually around 2,000 to 5,000 words and cover a specific topic in detail. For example, a company that sells email marketing software might write a white paper on the best ways to improve email open rates.

    4. Case study

    A case study is a type of lead magnet that tells the story of how one of your customers used your product or service to achieve success. For example, if you sell customer relationship management (CRM) software, you could write a case study about how one of your customers used your software to increase sales by a certain percentage.

    Case studies are an effective lead magnet because they provide social proof that your product or service works. They also help to build trust with potential customers by showing that you’re transparent about your successes (and learning experiences).

    Related: 8 Proven Strategies to Get People to Open and Read Your Emails

    5. A contest or giveaway

    People love free stuff, which is why contests and giveaways are such popular lead magnets, whether it’s a free product or even a gift card.

    In order to make sure your contest or giveaway is successful, be sure to promote it across all of your marketing channels, and put some thought into the prize. It should be something that’s relevant and valuable to your target audience.

    6. A downloadable template

    Downloadable templates are another popular type of lead magnet because they’re useful and easy to use. For example, a home decorating website could offer a downloadable room layout template that helps users plan the perfect furniture arrangement. Or a business consulting website could offer a downloadable proposal template that helps users create professional-looking proposals.

    7. Coupons or discounts

    Coupons and discounts are popular lead magnets because they offer a tangible benefit that’s hard to resist. For example, you could offer a 10% discount on your products or services, or you could offer a free shipping coupon for orders over $50.

    To make sure your coupons and discounts are successful, be sure to promote them across all of your marketing channels and make them easy to find on your website. You should also consider putting an expiration date on them to create a sense of urgency.

    8. Access to exclusive content

    People love feeling like they’re part of an exclusive club, which is why offering access to exclusive content is such an effective lead magnet. Entire business models, like Clubhouse and (originally) Tinder, have been built on this concept.

    For example, you could offer exclusive access to blog posts, video content or even physical products. Or you could offer a free membership to your email newsletter for a limited time.

    9. A free consultation

    A free consultation is a great lead magnet for service-based businesses — like consultants, lawyers and financial advisors. It’s an opportunity to show potential clients what you can do for them and build trust and rapport.

    To make sure your free consultation is successful, be sure to promote it across all of your marketing channels, and make it easy to schedule on your website. You should also consider offering a free initial consultation to new clients as a way to increase leads and conversions.

    Related: 7 Things Your Opt-In Forms Need to Do to Gain Email Subscribers

    If you want to make sure your messages stand out, using one or more of these nine types of lead magnets is a great strategy. Make sure your lead magnets are valuable, easy to use and promoted across all of your marketing channels.

    Vlad Gozman

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  • How to Overcome the Challenges of Increasing Insurance Rates

    How to Overcome the Challenges of Increasing Insurance Rates

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    With today’s emphasis on corporate transparency and accountability, an organization’s directors and officers face countless exposures. Regardless of your company’s size or mission, the legal costs associated with a lawsuit can be crippling for both the organization and your directors and officers. Many wrongly assume that directors and officers (D&O) insurance is only necessary for publicly traded companies. However, privately held organizations can just as easily fall victim to lawsuits that can impact the company, its officers, and board, making D&O insurance a must.

    Some benefits that D&O insurance can offer to privately held companies:

    • Coverage for manufacturing or production flaws
    • Legal cost reimbursement
    • Coverage for regulatory exposures
    • An improved ability to attract new directors
    • Peace of mind

    Related: Get an insurance quote tailored to your needs!

    Unfortunately, these days the D&O marketplace has been severely impacted by the COVID environment, causing rate increases, more stringent underwriting, and a decreased capacity in the marketplace. An example is below us after being presented with a $140,000 increase (111%) on a renewal for a $20m D&O policy. We were approached for a second opinion and a last-ditch effort for the insured as the policy was set to expire within 48 hours. If no other options existed, the insured would be forced to reduce their limits to bring their renewal premiums to an affordable level.

    Part of the problem was that along with a difficult marketplace, the insured’s underperforming financials also played into this large increase. The current broker had collected a renewal application and financials but had no further discussions with the insured before taking the account to market and coming back with a quote.

    When Bryson asked the insured what their financial outlook was for the next 12-18 months, the insured noted that they had finished a recent capital raise and a seven-figure sum would be received by the company in the next month. Further discussions revealed an updated business plan for the coming year and data regarding their current investors, of which many were accredited.

    The current broker made an egregious error in the renewal process by not collecting relevant data that we knew would make a major difference in marketing efforts. D&O rates hinge greatly on the insured’s financial standing and an underwriter’s ability to determine how well the company will perform over the life of the policy term.

    The solution was to approach the insurance carriers with the full financial outlook of the company, along with a strong relationship with a newer D&O carrier that focuses on private equity-backed businesses and provides aggressive rates based on their faith in the PE firm’s due diligence process, this saved the insured over $150,000 on their renewal while providing a full $20m in limits, which had been reduced to $15m on their original renewal quote.

    Although the insured was not private equity-backed, we uncovered that this carrier would consider companies with accredited investors. With new, positive financial details and an aggressive carrier willing to consider our risk, we went to work to put a deal together in under 48 hours.

    Takeaways

    1. An application and financials do not tell your full story
    2. Partner with a broker who will be your advocate with underwriters and understand D&O insurance specifically
    3. Make sure your broker has strong relationships with carriers who have an innovative outlook

    While many private companies do not believe that they need D&O insurance, this can cause a very dangerous outcome. D&O lawsuits can occur without warning and easily reach six figures, draining the personal assets of a company’s leadership team.

    If you want to learn more about D&O insurance to protect your company and your leadership team, contact Bryson at info@brysonfinancial.com.

    Get a business insurance quote tailored to you today!

    Trent Bryson

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  • How to Set Measurable Goals and Achieve Maximum Success

    How to Set Measurable Goals and Achieve Maximum Success

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As an entrepreneur or business leader, there are myriad reasons why you should care about goals: They help lead you in the right direction for your vision; they motivate teams and hold them accountable; they help leaders make decisions, clarify priorities and eliminate day-to-day distractions.

    But most importantly, the measurement of goals will help you track progress and explain the direction of your business to funders and other opportunities for financial capital — and the best way to do this is to include goals in your strategic plan.

    A strategic plan captures and communicates your goals to various audiences. The strategic planning process includes a document that summarizes your vision for the future of your organization and lists the goals and objectives to reach that vision. The result of this process is not only meeting the goals you were seeking, but also achieving greater organizational capacity, hitting your mission, generating greater revenue and being more financially secure. Here’s how to do it right.

    Related: How To Create A High-Performing Strategic Plan

    A common challenge with goals

    You’ve likely been hearing about goals since you were a kid. They’ve been taught and promoted to you by your teachers, counselors, coaches, bosses and so on.

    As a result of all of the different inputs, you have likely learned different definitions of goals. In fact, I bet that if you ask members of your team to define a goal, then you’d get a variety of different answers — and that’s a major problem.

    One of the challenges that I frequently encounter as an obstacle to successful strategic planning is the varying definitions of goals that team members have. When your team members define goals differently, they approach goals and performance with different perspectives and ends in mind.

    So let’s get everyone on your team on the same page with a common definition of a goal.

    I take my goal-defining guidance from the world of sports. In soccer, for example, a goal happens when the ball crosses over the goal line. In hockey, a goal is scored when the puck crosses the line. There are numerous other sports examples, but all of them provide crystal clarity for when a goal is scored.

    Applying this concept brings me to the following simple definition of a goal: a specific and measurable desired achievement.

    Related: A Guide to Goal Setting

    How to write strong goals

    You may be familiar with the well-known SMART mnemonic acronym for writing goals:

    • S: Specific
    • M: Measurable
    • A: Accountable
    • R: Relevant
    • T: Time-bound

    Over the years, I’ve found the SMART acronym to be quite useful. My definition above highlights the specific and measurable elements of the SMART acronym.

    Most of the time, the “A” in the acronym refers to either “achievable” or “attainable.” While that works, I think “accountable” (or even “assignable”) is stronger. All too often, I see teams create goals that don’t have people identified as being accountable to them. And, not surprisingly, the goals don’t get completed.

    Regarding the “R,” as in “relevant,” your goal should be taking you in the direction of a long-term vision.

    One other thing: I like to add a “goal topic” to the beginning of goals on a strategic plan since it helps readers get a quick idea of what the goal is about. For example, when setting a goal of receiving a specific score on a staff survey, I’d use the goal topic of “staff engagement.”

    When developing your goals for your strategic plan, ask yourself the following questions:

    • Is it specific?
    • Is it measurable?
    • Does it have accountability?
    • Is it relevant?
    • Is it time-bound?

    You’ll know you’ve got the right goals for your plan when the answer to each of those questions is “yes.”

    Related: Define Your Short-Term Goals With These 3 Components for Long-Term Success

    Goal guidance for your strategic plan

    There are two different types of goals that you can develop for your strategic plan: results goals and process goals. Results goals are accomplished when a specific metric has been achieved. Process goals lead to the completion of a plan, process or system.

    That said, you may be wondering about how you can measure process goals. Those goals are complete when you have a documented process in place. Sure, it’s not a number, but it’s still a measurable achievement.

    This leads me to a very important piece of guidance. Several years ago, I started to notice that organizations I worked with that were really succeeding in strategic planning utilized a high percentage of process goals. In other words, they created and achieved goals that helped them develop capacity-building processes. So, be sure to consider including process goals in your strategic plan if you want to create the changes you’re seeking.

    I recommend having goals on your strategic plan that are organization-wide that have a completion timeline of several weeks to one year. You can also list action items, the individual tasks of the larger goals, that will take a shorter amount of time to complete.

    In summary, it’s critical that you and your team have a common approach to how you write strategic goals. This guidance will help your organization solidify its strategic plan and achieve greater success.

    Eric Ryan

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  • How Data Analytics Can Help Your Startup Achieve Success

    How Data Analytics Can Help Your Startup Achieve Success

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Data analytics is one of the most important tools that startups can use to help them succeed. In this article, we will provide a practical guide to using data analytics to help your startup achieve its goals. We’ll cover topics like identifying key data points, analyzing data and making informed decisions. By the end of this article, you will have everything you need to start using data analytics to help your startup achieve success. So, let’s get started!

    What are the benefits of using data analytics for startups?

    There are many benefits to using data analytics for startups, and here are just a few:

    • Data analytics can help you identify patterns and trends in your data that you wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. This can help you improve your product or service in ways that you never thought possible.

    • Data analytics can also help you identify which areas of your business are most profitable and which ones need more attention. This can help you prioritize your resources accordingly, making sure that you’re investing in the areas that are most likely to succeed.

    • Data analytics can also help you track user behavior and determine what kind of feedback they give you. This helps you create better products and services that meet their needs and expectations.

    • Finally, data analytics can help you measure the success of your company both short-term (in terms of revenue) and long-term (in terms of customer retention).

    Related: Data Analytics Are Invaluable to Your Business. Here’s Why.

    How to get started with data analytics

    If you’re looking to increase your startup’s success, then data analytics is a key tool you need to have in your arsenal. As stated above, data analytics can help you understand and optimize your business processes, identify and correct any issues early on and improve customer retention rates. It can also help you create better marketing campaigns and track the progress of your products and services.

    There are a few things you need to keep in mind when using data analytics for startups:

    • Start by identifying your data projects and their respective business goals. What are you trying to achieve? What kind of data will help you achieve those goals?

    • Make sure all the data you use is accurate and up-to-date. If it’s not, then it’ll be useless in helping you reach your objectives.

    • Work with a data analyst who understands startup processes and can guide you through the analytical process step by step.

    How to identify key data points

    In order to increase startup success using data analytics, you need to identify key data points that will help you improve your business. There are a number of ways to do this:

    • Use surveys or interviews to gather feedback from users and customers about their experience with your product or service. This will help you measure how well it meets their needs and what areas you need to focus on in order to improve it.

    • Monitor social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to see what people are saying about your product or service. This will give you an idea of whether people are happy with it or not and which areas might need improvement.

    • Analyze the financial data of your company in order to understand how well it’s performing financially. This will give you an idea of whether there’s potential for growth or if there’s a more pressing issue that needs addressing first.

    • Collect sales data from retail outlets where your product is sold in order to get an idea of how much demand there is for it. This will help you decide whether marketing efforts are effective or if there are other strategies that would be more successful in reaching more people.

    Related: Why Data Analytics Can Help Drive Sales For Your Business

    How to use data analytics effectively

    There are a number of different ways to use data analytics to improve your startup’s performance. Some common techniques include:

    • Data mining: This involves extracting valuable information from large data sets by using special algorithms. This can help you find patterns and insights that you wouldn’t be able to see otherwise.

    • Forecasting: This is the process of predicting future events based on past data. It can help you make informed decisions about marketing campaigns, pricing strategies or other strategic decisions.

    • Performance monitoring: This allows you to track key performance indicators (KPIs) over time to identify areas in which your company is performing well or not well. This can help you make necessary changes to your strategy in order to improve results.

    • Insights reports: These provide a detailed analysis of specific aspects of your data that can help you make better decisions.

    5 tips for making data analytics work for your startup

    1. Make a data-driven culture part of your startup from the beginning.

    2. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different data analysis tools and techniques.

    3. Be sure to collect and track the right data for your startup’s needs.

    4. Keep your data analyst team small and nimble for maximum agility.

    5. Use data analytics to inform every decision made in your startup, from product development to marketing to sales.

    Related: Data Analytics Should Become Part Of A Company’s Culture

    To sum up, data analytics is a powerful tool that can help your startup understand its market better and get you to the top. However, it is important to invest in the right tools that can take your analysis process further. In case you are running low on funds or time, we have curated a list of data analytics tools to equip your startup with everything it needs.

    If you’re ready to take the next step, all you need is a few months of hard work and dedication. You can then start tracking your every move with data analytics in order to find trends that will help you achieve stellar results!

    Piyanka Jain

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  • 3 Simple Reasons to Add Technology to Your Non-Tech Business

    3 Simple Reasons to Add Technology to Your Non-Tech Business

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    You are a business owner but aren’t in the tech industry, so why would you need to focus heavily on adapting technology in your daily workflow? Some people may say you don’t need to. However, I’m here to put a bug in your head and prove how technology is critical to any business across any vertical. And that includes you!

    We know technology can be intimidating. It also can be complex, and there are seemingly endless options. So, is it worth the cost, integration headaches and question if you are picking the right ones? Yes! Here are my top three reasons to focus on technology, and I’ll explain how to integrate it into your business:

    1. Not applying technology means you could face a technology deficit

    Let’s face it, not having a line item in your books for technology and software subscriptions means your company will hit a point where you can’t grow any further. Whether your marketing team will be missing major data points for essential customer acquisition or your efficiencies will eventually put you behind, your competition could pass you by (we’ll get to this one more in the next point). No matter the roadblock you will hit, the point is your growth will have to slow down or halt. You don’t want to wait until that point to use technology once the train has left the station without you!

    Related: 5 Types of Technology All Entrepreneurs Need Access to in the Digital Age

    2. Results are everything

    No matter your business or vertical, your most valuable resource is your team. How can you empower your team to work smarter, not harder, and ultimately produce the best results? The answer is with the right technology! Even if your staff has been set in their ways and doesn’t want to learn a new program, you must pick the right operational systems and offer proper training. A minor setback in the learning curve will mean a huge uptick in productivity.

    I once ran into a mid-sized company that was technologically behind due to not prioritizing this aspect of its business. This inadequacy caused marketing and sales to lag compared to its competitors. I likened their technological powers and abilities to taking a knife to a gunfight.

    If a company can increase its operational automation in the marketing space, that would allow it to understand its target customer and truly understand how to sell to its market in an efficient and results-driven way.

    A data warehouse and congruent CRM would allow this business to properly segment and hit goals for its best marketing demographic more accurately. Identifying, understanding and addressing low-hanging fruit, such as abandoned shopping cart funnels, is crucial.

    When you are focused on results, technology almost always needs to be integrated to increase efficiencies and drive sales in the long run. And it’s always easier and cheaper to integrate the right technology early to ensure your team is trained and using it along the way!

    Related: How Technology Is Shortening the Road to Fame

    3. You’re increasing your footprint of liabilities without the right technology

    I’ve seen every range of technology integration, from the tech-savvy millennial CEO who relies on data and analytics for every business decision to the companies that don’t integrate it at all and still use a pen and paper within every significant department. However, if you are closer to the latter, you are potentially putting your team at a huge safety risk. If you have only minimal or wrong technology, you could be putting your customers, reputation and finances at risk too!

    I’ve even seen clients using only a single source for major bookkeeping and documentation, like Excel. One wrong move or fat-fingered mistake can change your calculations completely. Or worse, delete everything! If that isn’t risky, I don’t know what is.

    Technology can feel overwhelming, which is often why we hear people stay away from adding it to their daily workflow. However, there are simple ways to make that change. Start with finding a company to give you a technical audit — which is often cheaper than you might expect. Take their advice and then apply it in chunks.

    You may not need to go from 0 to 100 in the first week. You can slowly add, integrate and manage critical technology into various departments as you feel comfortable. And as I mentioned earlier, a key to tech success is training! Empower your team to take the tech leap with you and work on this together. Everyone can learn a new trick, and it could even be fun! Finally, ensure that you have a base infrastructure to make the ideal environment for success. This includes having the basic technology hardware and compatible systems in place.

    Take this article as your sign to take the first step and better your business with tech!

    Craig Ceccanti

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  • How Texting Customers Could Be the Engagement Tool You Need

    How Texting Customers Could Be the Engagement Tool You Need

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As we head into the home stretch of the 2022 fiscal year, sales teams everywhere are looking to close as many deals as possible. Deloitte expects 2022 holiday retail sales to increase by 4% to 6% from the previous year.

    Given inflation, the firm also expects consumers to shop early and take their time finding the best prices. According to GE Capital Retail Finance, consumers spend an average of 76 days researching major purchases, meaning there might be just enough time left in the year for a sales push.

    Knowing when and how to contact consumers with an offer or deal is a fine art. Having the right content at the right time and delivered on the customer’s preferred channel is key, especially in the later stages of the customer journey — this is where an omnichannel communication platform comes in handy.

    Omnichannel communications — a strategy that uses a combination of websites, apps, social media, phone calls and other ways to reach an audience — have become a necessity for businesses looking to deliver the best experience along the entirety of the customer journey. Leveraging additional platforms such as chat and messaging apps on top of the standard web, social media and app channels provides frequent opportunities to get in front of potential buyers at the right point in their journey.

    Related: Redefining Omnichannel: How To Be Where Your Customers Are

    For busy consumers juggling a ton of priorities, email is not always the best option for communication. On the other hand, chat apps or texts are quick and literally in their face instantly.

    Compared to email, the more personal nature of SMS is one of the leading reasons these messages have an incredible 98% open rate in the U.S., with 60% of those messages being viewed within the first five minutes they are received. Meanwhile, chat apps like Discord, Line, Telegram, Viber, WeChat and WhatsApp are especially popular in countries like Brazil, China, India and Nigeria, where more than 80% of consumers reported using chat apps to interact with brands.

    Buyers want a tailored experience as they progress from first hearing about a service or product all the way through to their purchase. Understanding the needs and expectations of busy consumers and communicating solutions to those needs in a time-efficient and effective way can convince them to buy. Chat apps and SMS provide more opportunities to personalize communications with a specific buyer and require less effort on their part to reply than returning an email or visiting a website.

    Related: 5 Ways to Use Texting to Grow Your Sales and Marketing

    When to leverage messaging

    To be clear, a chat app/SMS strategy for engaging your audience should be brought in methodically, and it should never be used to reach out to a net new buyer.

    An unsolicited chat or text message can be seen as “spammy” and risks the consumer feeling ambushed on their personal device, ending any potential relationship then and there. Deeper into the customer journey, however, these messages can work wonders once relationships have been established in other ways.

    Take the case of a typical consumer sales process. The GE Capital Retail Finance survey found that consumers start researching a product or service online more than 60% of the time, and they visit two to three online sources and a comparable number of physical stores before deciding to buy.

    Capturing customer information from website visits or app downloads can provide marketers with a window into their preferred channels. Providing follow-up information, offers or other communications based on their previous activity personalizes the interaction between brand and consumer.

    Related: Here’s Why SMS Marketing Is Literally the Best Idea Ever

    The power of messaging

    For many, SMS is the most powerful engagement tool during the buyer’s journey. According to my company’s research, marketers cited SMS’s primary benefits as real-time delivery, high open rates and global reach/ubiquity of mobile devices. Additionally, marketing professionals plan to use digital communications to support their customer engagement efforts, including forging meaningful connections with consumers, improving accessibility and improving omnichannel communications.

    And it works. The same survey showed that 80% of B2C marketers reported SMS performed much better than any other channel, especially for advertising and brand awareness. Additionally, more than three-quarters of marketers who send promotions or offers through SMS reported revenue growth in 2020-21, a time when connecting with consumers was challenging due to the pandemic. SMS might just be the future of marketing — our research showed that two-thirds of Gen Z favor text messages over email when interacting with a brand.

    This makes sense. When we want to get a quick note off to a friend or family member, we don’t log into our email and compose a long note — we text them. It is no different for brand engagement. Meeting your customer in the moment with a message that resonates on the device that rarely leaves their side is the most effective way to move the sales forward.

    Sean Whitley

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  • 3 Problems Most Small Businesses Face and How to Avoid Them

    3 Problems Most Small Businesses Face and How to Avoid Them

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    On a weekly basis, I have the opportunity to work with small business owners in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, I am often helping them to overcome a challenge that they really didn’t need to have happen in the first place. For instance, one area that far too many owners face is the inability to get working capital because they never dealt with their own poor personal credit. Another example is when I am helping a business owner get out from underneath a loan they took out from a hard-money lender.

    Both are prime examples of situations that can easily be avoided had the business owner done a better job of getting the personal credit in order. So, what issues are you facing today, that if you had prepared just a little more in the past, would simply be nonexistent?

    Here are some ideas on how to ensure that you can limit tomorrow’s challenges by taking steps today:

    Related: 7 Mistakes That Make or Break Small Businesses

    1. Credit/finance

    Small business owners will be mostly looking at the bottom line — what they brought in this month, last month and what’s expected next month. They are also thinking about much further in the future, like next year, next 3 years, next 5 years, etc. What they are not always thinking about is “What can I do now to avoid future mistakes and to make sure my business is set up for financial success in the future?”

    So, if you need to expand, are you ready? Do you have those funds readily available in the bank? Do you have a business credit card? How much can you get on a loan or line of credit? Do you have any business credit at all? If you don’t already have a business credit card/line that is open, active and paid on time, then you most likely won’t get as much as you’d like or need at the time you really need the money. The time to start building business credit is several years ago. The next best time to do this is now. Like right now.

    Here are a few ideas around finance to get you going in the right direction:

    • Savings account: Put aside 10-20% of all profits into a savings account as soon as the funds are received. This way you won’t have to pay last year’s taxes with this year’s profits.

    • Personal credit: Clean up your personal credit now because YOU are the personal guarantor of your business credit.

    • Business credit: Establish (and use) business lines of credit now, and increase them each year. This way, when you need to expand, you’ll already have the capital waiting to be used.

    • Taxes: Consider not writing off EVERYTHING. Your accountant will tell you that the less you pay in taxes the better, and I agree. However, when a business owner writes off nearly everything and pays next to nothing in taxes, they show no profit. When that happens, you can’t get funding. After all, if there is no profit, how can you pay back the money you borrowed?

    Related: The 7 Financial Habits of the Most Successful Small Business Owners

    2. Staff

    You ever get a few angry customers calling you because a job was not done correctly? Ever have prospects and/or customers write bad reviews for your company on social media? Ever get heartburn or high blood pressure because you know it could have been avoided if “that dang employee had just used their head?” This type of unneeded occurrence happens every day when employees drop the ball.

    Small business owners usually fall into two categories here: They either hire people who are exactly the same as themselves, or they hire whoever is breathing. Both are big mistakes. The problem with hiring people exactly like you is that there will be no new ideas, no fresh outside perspective — it will be the same old, same old. In other words, there will be no growth. When you hire whoever is breathing, it’s worse. You will have employees who are not engaged, who don’t care and who don’t see your company as one to stay with for the long haul. This is the employee who causes problems more often than they’ll offer solutions.

    Here are a few tips on hiring and training quality staff members:

    • Resumes: Take the time to review each and every resume that crosses your path with a fine-tooth comb. Look to see if the person leaves their job every six months or so to see if they have the ability to stay committed.

    • Cover letter: Require a cover letter. This gives you an idea of the person’s thought process and how well they can communicate, which is crucial if they are interacting with customers and/or other departments.

    • Training: Make sure you have a well-designed training and onboarding program. This goes two ways. It shows the new hire that you are professional and have high expectations, and it also demonstrates that you value them because you are providing top-notch training. The other is that it allows you to PREVENT issues with customers before they arise.

    • Reviews: Have employment that is conditional upon their 30-, 60- and 90-day reviews.

    • Skill set: Look for other skills than just industry experience. Oftentimes I have found that employees who have been in an industry for a very long time do not do well with change. People from outside the industry can often be easier to train and have an easier time learning new things.

    Related: Asking These 2 Questions Will Improve Your Hiring Process

    3. Industry change

    Okay, so you know all about the Blockbuster vs. Netflix story, right? You also know who won that battle, and of course, you know why. In fact, almost everyone knows this information, yet there are still so many business owners who refuse to update aspects of their business, even when they know they are losing business and need to make changes.

    Here are some areas in which you can easily make sure that you are handling change in a fast-paced and yet still well-thought-out manner:

    • Sending/receiving funds: How do you send and receive funds between customers and vendors? Are you still using checks or a debit card? Maybe cash? There is a tremendous amount of fraud surrounding checks and debit cards, and you take on most of the responsibility with those. And cash? Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Having and using safer and more effective methods of sending and receiving funds will make your customers happy and keep your accounts safe.

    • Staying on top of industry trends: For your business to stay profitable, it needs to stay relevant, so what changes are happening in your industry? Is there new technology? New business methods? What changes are happening with your customer base? To keep up with change, go to at least two industry trade shows each year. You’ll learn what is new, what’s old, and who is leading the way and getting the best results. Take time in the trade shows to meet people you can network with to push your company forward.

    • Advertising and marketing: Still doing coupon clippers and the local newspaper? Today, if you’re not using Facebook, Google and the rest to market your business, then you’re most likely losing to your competition on a daily basis. The companies that use Google Reviews and take it seriously, win. I can’t tell you how many people refuse to hire companies that get a score below 4.5. So, get involved in social media, and take it seriously. Don’t know how? Just hire someone.

    Pro tip: Write down the top 10 biggest challenges that you have faced and/or are facing now. Next to it, list out all solutions that you need to solve it. But now, list out what created the issues in the first place and what could have prevented it from happening in the first place. Once you see a pattern, you will be in a better position to prevent any negative experiences from happening in the future!

    John Kyle

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  • The Pros and Cons of Expanding into International Markets

    The Pros and Cons of Expanding into International Markets

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    My company, Educate Online, specializes in online education. We are actively expanding the geography of our presence: Latin America, India, China, Nigeria and other emerging economies.

    All markets are unique, but there are some common things that you should know before reaching new destinations. Today I want to share with you some experience and insights that I gained during the launch of a product in new, foreign markets.

    Reasons to look for new markets

    First of all, why should you even consider entering new markets? It is not a simple question. There might be many reasons. Here are a few of the main ones below:

    1. New markets mean new opportunities: As the business flourishes and the company’s market share increases, the entrepreneur can face growth constraints. After all, in many cases, the local market has a limit. The most important thing here is not to miss the moment you have reached a particular ceiling. At this point, you either actively develop, look for a new product, grow or stagnate, and then your competitors outperform your company. Remember that a business that wishes to be the top enterprise must continuously spread its roots.

    2. Diversification protects you from risks: Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Every investor knows you cannot invest all your money in one asset. The same rule works for businesses. If your company’s profit depends on only one market, then in the event of an economic, political or any other crisis, you risk losing all your money. A problem like this will not affect your business if your company has sources of income in other markets.

    3. You can quickly gain a competitive advantage: Entering new emerging markets means that you can receive substantial competitive advantages. A successful start can ensure the company’s prosperity for many years. It often happens that we look at a foreign market and immediately understand that this market could be our lucky ticket. Any delay could play into the hands of our competitors.

    The benefits of entering a new market seem apparent, but what about the disadvantages? Are there any? And what should you keep in mind when starting a business in an unfamiliar country?

    Related: When Is the Best Time for My Company to Enter a New Market?

    Risks of entering new markets

    Do not think that gaining a foothold in a new market is quick and easy. Entering a new market carries several risks and difficulties our company has faced. Here they are below:

    1. Cultural risk: The discovery of a new market is always accompanied by a search for a new product that would satisfy the client’s needs. The preferences and financial capabilities of the audience are very different, so it’s tough to say which product will be successful in advance. In addition, the mentality and cultural preferences of the customers in a particular country are of great importance. You need to speak with the audience in one language, understand their problems and needs, and be patient and delicate with cultural traditions.

    2. Need for a new team: Each new market requires upgrading business processes and hiring a unique team of specialists who know the specifics of the local market. All your employees must be immersed in the market knowledge and understand how to interact with new clients. Finding such professionals is a puzzle that can take weeks or months.

    3. Country risk: It would help if you remember that there is always a possibility that significant economic or political changes may occur in the country where you do business. As a foreign citizen, you should never forget that your business will always be at high risk in a foreign country. In this case, you can invest money and time — and at the same time, not understand the returns that you’ll get.

    Related: Here’s How to Make Your Expansion Into New Markets a Success

    As for me, I realized that it is worth looking for new markets only when you already have a successful and sustainable business. You must have a foundation upon which you will build something new. If it is not there, you may fail in the new market and lose your position in the old one.

    In addition, when entering a foreign market, you must immediately determine the timing of the search for the minimum valuable product (MVP). The main mistake is to get bogged down in the market in the endless search for MVP. So, try to create a product that will have a unique benefit for your client worldwide. This way, you can significantly increase the chances of your company’s success.

    Alexander Zheltov

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  • How to Outsource Product Development

    How to Outsource Product Development

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    According to Statista, around 74% of businesses outsource IT services, and 87% have stated their desire to maintain or increase their IT spending.

    The trend of working with remote development teams, which companies often use to outsource their product development, is prospering and will continue to do so in the future.

    Let’s discuss the significance of outsourcing your enterprise product development, compare it with an in-house team and discuss the considerations to understand the outsourcing model.

    How does outsourced product development help?

    When companies opt to outsource their product development, they’re looking for opportunities for various tech solutions and speeding up development at a lesser cost.

    Moreover, companies get access to modern tools and tech stacks, new resources, and top talent, optimize their IT processes, reduce costs, and make reliable forecasting regarding their short- and long-term IT objectives.

    Related: 3 Strategies to Optimize Innovative Product Development

    Outsourced product development vs. an in-house team

    In-house

    In-house teams are created from the ground up. You’ll fill the positions based on the talent and expertise needed for product development. Building an in-house team is comparable to hiring permanent employees for your business. You’ll shortlist candidates, conduct interviews, and onboard them through typical on-prem proceedings.

    The benefits of hiring an in-house team are that they’re in direct communication with the team, offer immediate support and, most importantly, are aligned with the company’s goals and vision.

    On the downside, in-house teams:

    • Are costly prospects with high turnover rates
    • They lack versatile expertise and problem-solving depth
    • Are not easily scalable for team upskilling

    Outsourcing

    Outsourced teams offer many benefits for businesses by providing a vast talent pool and no technology limitations, allowing businesses to exercise more control over budgeting and acquire better expertise.

    The only cons are the communication barrier and trust issues in the team. Moreover, legal issues regarding the hiring process, regulatory compliance issues, information exchange before and after the project completion, cultural intricacies and time-zone differences can cause a problem.

    The following are four things to consider when outsourcing product development.

    1. Analyze your problems and requirements

    Start by analyzing your problems, requests and requirements.

    Without a clear understanding of your requirements, you gain nothing from the contractor’s team.

    Create a to-do list of items and activities you need to be done, state your budget, and set approximate deadlines for all the milestones, for example, UI/UX design delivery, development, app testing, etc.

    Related: What Not to Do When Outsourcing

    2. Select the suitable cooperation model

    The most popular cooperation models are the fixed price and time and material models. Each has its characteristics and requirements; select the one that best fits your project.

    – Fixed price model

    As the name suggests, the fixed price model works through the fixed budget, timelines, and scope of work and is mainly preferred for small projects with highly limited functionality. Furthermore, the model doesn’t allow for catering to additional changes and iterations, is expensive, and there is a probability of possible tradeoffs concerning product quality.

    – Time & material model

    The time and material model is a flexible counterpart that infuses nicely with the agile principles. Unlike the fixed model, the T&M model allows teams to start development quickly. The flexible developer hourly rate allows teams to manage tasks and set deadlines and budgets. The agile approach benefits teams in determining the result or progress at each development stage.

    3. Select an agency or freelancer

    Deciding whether you need an agency or a freelancer isn’t as simple as people often think—if it’s a small project, hire a freelancer; if it’s a large, complex project, hire an agency. In my experience, there is always more to the story in most cases. You need to clarify you need specialists for which particular processes. Business owners often struggle with the prospect of how and from where to land the right contractor for their outsourced product development.

    Here are some of the best sources to find a reliable contractor:

    Social channels. Use social channels like LinkedIn to hunt full-fledged development companies or freelancers for your next project. Check out their social posts, read reviews from previous customers, see team ratings, and more to check their business credibility and trustworthiness.

    Business review websites. See platforms like Clutch, Trustpilot, GoodFirms, etc., to inspect agencies and freelancers and review their ratings, customer reviews, and other metrics to understand better their credibility and what their clients say about them.

    4. Create a design and software specification document

    Write a design and software specification document that describes your product (at least an MVP), how it will perform, and how you want the end users to interact with it.

    Despite being a laborious job, it is one of the essential things you’ll do in product design and development.

    The design and software document will contain the following elements—a comprehensive project overview, problem statement, project goals, target audience, functional requirements, intended features, aesthetic details, non-functional parts, suggestions and restrictions, and questions.

    Mistakes to avoid when outsourcing development

    1. Selecting a misfit contractor

    Business owners often mistake hiring the first contractor or agency they come across in their search. Hence, they hire a contractor whose location, experience, expertise and skills aren’t suited for their particular project. Take your time when organizing your search and starting the hiring process. The more detailed your analysis is, the better the chances for you to hire the right company and a responsible partner.

    2. Not familiar with the cost of your product development

    One of the most common mistakes businesses make is not examining the cost of outsourcing product development. The estimate might look reasonable on paper, but several underlying essentials might not have been included in the quote. Request the development agency to create and send a complete quote. Ask the right questions from the development team alongside the timelines that should help you analyze the actual project cost.

    3. Lack of a strategic action plan

    Having a sound strategic action plan is crucial when outsourcing your project. The inability to clearly outline your requirements and state deadlines of your deliverables isn’t something you want to experience.

    Ask yourself the following questions:

    • What are your project’s core goals?
    • When do you expect to complete your product development?
    • What are the developers’ working hours?
    • How many remote developers do you want to work with you?
    • Is your hired team experienced enough to cater to your custom project?

    Related: 3 Mistakes (Nearly) Every Tech Startup Makes — and How to Avoid Them

    Final thoughts

    No matter your requirements and project specifications, there are always pros and cons of working with an in-house team and outsourcing your product development. However, take your time to weigh the considerations by analyzing your problem and requirements, selecting a suitable cooperation model, choosing an agency or freelancer, and creating a design and software requirement document. Last, avoid mistakes when outsourcing product development, including selecting a misfit contractor, inadequate cost estimation, and lack of a strategic action plan.

    Asim Rais Siddiqui

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  • Assuming Innovation Requires In-Office Proximity Is Wrong. Here’s Why.

    Assuming Innovation Requires In-Office Proximity Is Wrong. Here’s Why.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Apple, Google, and other companies mandating that employees work in the office for most or all of their time claim that any time spent working remotely stifles innovation. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, “Innovation isn’t always a planned activity. It’s bumping into each other over the course of the day and advancing an idea that you just had. And you really need to be together to do that.”

    Yet is this true? On the one hand, research at MIT found that remote work weakens the cross-functional, inter-team “weak ties” that form the basis for the exchange of new ideas that tend to foster innovation. A study by Microsoft similarly found that remote work weakens innovation since workers communicate less with those outside their own teams.

    On the other hand, McKinsey research points to a different conclusion. It found that, during the more than two years of the pandemic, there’s been a record number of new patents across 150 global patent filing authorities. Moreover, in 2021, global venture capital more than doubled from 2020, rising 111%. McKinsey suggests that it’s because more innovative companies developed new ways of connecting remote workers together to build and sustain the cross-functional, inter-term ties necessary for innovation, thus widening the pools of minds that could generate new ideas. Deloitte similarly highlights how adapting the process of innovation to remote settings offers the key to boosting innovation for hybrid and remote teams.

    Related: Maintaining a Collaborative Culture in a Hybrid and Remote World

    My experience helping 21 organizations transition to hybrid and remote work demonstrates that innovation is eminently doable. But it requires adopting best practices that address the weakening of cross-functional connections and lack of natural spontaneous interactions that breed innovation. Unfortunately, companies like Apple and Google have adopted a traditionalist perspective on how to innovate, which ironically hinders innovation.

    An excellent technique for innovation in hybrid and remote teams to replace innovation-breeding random hallways conversation involves relying on collaboration software like Slack or Microsoft Teams. What you need to do is set up a specific channel in that software to facilitate the creativity, spontaneity and collaboration behind serendipitous innovation, and incentivize employees to use that channel.

    For example, in a late-stage SaaS start-up that used Microsoft Teams, each small team of six to eight people set up a team-specific channel for members to share innovative ideas relevant to the team’s work. Likewise, larger business units established channels for ideas applicable to the whole business unit. Then, when anyone had an idea, they were encouraged to share that idea in the pertinent channel.

    We encouraged everyone to pay attention to notifications in that channel. Seeing a new post, if they found the idea relevant, they would respond with additional thoughts building on the initial idea. Responses would snowball, and sufficiently good ideas would then lead to the next steps, often a brainstorming session.

    This approach combines a native virtual format with people’s natural motivations to contribute, collaborate and claim credit. The initial idea poster and the subsequent contributors aren’t motivated simply by the goal of advancing the team or business unit, even though that’s of course part of their goal set. The initial poster is motivated by the possibility of sharing an idea that might be recognized as sufficiently innovative, practical and useful to implement, with some revisions. The contributors, in turn, are motivated by the natural desire to give advice, especially advice that’s visible to and useful for others in their team, business unit or even the whole organization.

    Related: Six Tactics To Improve Collaboration For Remote Teams

    This dynamic also fits well the different personalities of optimists and pessimists. You’ll find that the former will generally be the ones to post initial ideas. Their strength is innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, but their flaw is being risk-blind to the potential problems in the idea. In turn, pessimists will overwhelmingly serve to build on and improve the idea, pointing out its potential flaws and helping address them.

    Remember to avoid undervaluing the contributions of pessimists. It’s too common to pay excessive attention to the initial ideas and overly reward optimists — and I say this as an inveterate optimist myself, who has 20 ideas before breakfast and thinks they’re all brilliant! Through the combination of personal bitter experience and research on optimism and pessimism, I have learned the necessity of letting pessimistic colleagues vet and improve my ideas. My clients have found a great deal of benefit in highly valuing such devil’s advocate perspectives as well.

    That’s why you should both praise and reward not only the generators of innovative ideas but also the two to three people who most contributed to improving and finalizing the idea. And that’s what the late-stage start-up company did. The team or business unit leaders made sure that they both recognized publicly the contributions of the initial idea generators and the improvers of the idea, and also gave them a bonus proportionate to the value of their contributions. Indeed, several of these ideas ended up generating patent applications.

    While this technique helps address the problem of spontaneous interactions, what about the weakening of cross-functional ties? To help address that problem, while also improving the integration of recently-hired staff, we had the SaaS company set up a hybrid and remote mentoring program.

    The program involved several mentors. One came from the recently-hired staff’s own team. That mentor assisted the mentee with understanding group dynamics, on-the-job learning and professional growth.

    However, we also included two mentors from other teams. One of them came from the same business unit as the junior staff, while another came from a separate business unit. The role of these two mentors involved getting the new employee integrated into the broader company culture, facilitating inter-team collaboration and strengthening the “weak ties” among company staff to help foster collaboration.

    Six months after these two interventions, the SaaS company reported a notable boost in innovation across the board. The channels devoted to innovation helped breed a number of novel projects. The mentor-mentee relationships resulted in mentees providing a fresh and creative perspective on the company’s existing work, while the mentors from outside the team helped spur productive conversations within teams that bred further innovation and collaboration.

    If a late-stage start-up with 400 employees could adopt these techniques, so too can Apple and Google. Certainly, some tasks may best be done in person, such as sensitive personnel conversations, intense collaborative discussions, key decision-making and strategic conversations and fun team-building events. Yet the more tasks you can do remotely, the better. The future belongs to companies that can best make use of human resources around the globe while minimizing the time wasted in rush hour commutes. Doing so requires adopting best practices for hybrid and remote work, instead of being stuck in the past.

    Gleb Tsipursky

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  • Lauren Maillian Shares How to Grow Your Business by Aligning Your Talent With Your Motivation

    Lauren Maillian Shares How to Grow Your Business by Aligning Your Talent With Your Motivation

    If you need help aligning your talent with your motivation so you can grow your business, Lauren Maillian is here to help.


    Marta Skovro

    Lauren is the definition of an innovative entrepreneur. She co-founded her first business, Sugarleaf Vineyards when she was just 19 years old. That made her the youngest self-made winery owner in the U.S. (before she was even allowed to drink).

    At the same time she was working as a model in Paris and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Since then she’s gone on to become a founding partner at Gen Y Capital Partners, an early-stage venture firm focused on investments in mobile and consumer-facing technology-enabled companies.

    She’s also founded digitalundivided, non-profit leveraging data, programs, and advocacy to catalyze economic growth for Latina and Black women entrepreneurs and innovators. There’s more but you get the point by now.

    She provides more details – and how you can develop the confidence and strategy needed to thrive – in the latest episode of the Launch Your Business Podcast.

    I’ll share a few of my favorite takeaways below.

    How to figure out if your business idea is a passion or a hobby

    Many entrepreneurs start a business based on something they’re passionate about. And while that may sound like a foolproof plan, it’s easy to mistake your passion for a hobby. Lauren gives the example of her friend that enjoys doing hair and is considering opening a hair salon. She then asked her friend how she’d feel if 100 people showed up the next day wanting to get their hair done. Would she feel excited or overwhelmed?

    So what does this mean to you and your business?

    Lauren goes on to say, “If you had a whole bunch of clients, if you could make a lot of money doing this, would you continue? Would that light you up and motivate you? If not, that’s not what you’re passionate about.”

    She also shares why it’s so important to do the deep work required to find your passion. “When life affords us the opportunity to chase our passions while achieving success in doing something that is enjoyable for us, then we get to that point where the timelines don’t matter because you’re just being yourself. And that’s when you can actually really say, I get paid to do what I love.”

    Realted: 4 Reasons Following Your Passion Leads to Success

    Why having faith in your ability is crucial to your business

    I often say self-limiting beliefs will take your chances of success much faster than any external obstacle. Lauren provides more context and shares the impact of not being confident in your abilities.

    “Have the faith that you deserve to be there. Have the faith that your skill is enough to get you through. Have the faith that you are qualified to get yourself out of whatever situation you’re in. Because when you feel uncertain it’s seen and felt and reverberates to people around you. They will then begin to doubt all of who you are because they don’t know why you are acting insecure. So make sure that your confidence is unwavering in yourself and your skill when you are in these difficult situations.”

    And, it’s important to note there’s a big difference between having confidence and the “fake it till you make it” approach. Let’s say you’re currently on level three out of ten when it comes to your expertise on a subject. That’s fine, just be the most confident and honest level three out there. You’ll earn trust, gain experience and continue ascending.

    Lauren’s operational definition of success

    How do you define success for your business? The most common answers typically include a combination of time, lifestyle and financial freedom. However, Lauren’s response to that question stood out to me because of the empowerment referenced.

    “Success to me is being able to decline opportunities because they don’t align with what you want, and knowing that declining does not change your circumstances in any way. Financial, environmental, in terms of the opportunities that you’re gonna get in the future, any of that.”

    She continues, “It’s when you can say to yourself does this align with who I am? Do I wanna do it? Does it make sense to do it? You don’t feel like you’re required to, or have to in order to maintain a relationship. There’s no prerequisite anymore for the next opportunity, other than is it something I wanna do? And ultimately, we know that we are successful when we have the power, the ability, and the autonomy to say no on our own without getting the approval to say no from anyone else.”

    Related: 3 Keys to Entrepreneurial Success

    Next steps

    Ready to get more tactic-level detail on how to find your zone of genius and scale your business? Here are a few more ways to learn from and get inspired by Lauren.

    Listen to the full podcast episode

    Follow her on Instagram, and LinkedIn

    Join her newsletter to stay up to date with her projects and events

    Terry Rice

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  • Your Fear Is Lying to You. Here Are 3 Steps to Overcome It.

    Your Fear Is Lying to You. Here Are 3 Steps to Overcome It.

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    I recently shared the stage with comedian, actor, writer, and marine veteran Rob Riggle. Rob is a good friend of mine. In fact, we’ve fished, golfed and vacationed together for years now. But walking onto that stage with him to have a casual conversation in front of 30,000 people was a different experience altogether. It was a little nerve-wracking, to say the least.

    Now that it’s over, I look back and wonder why I was so fearful.

    Fear is all at once commonplace and strange. I’ve seen how it affects anyone and everyone in different ways, but I’ve been very interested in how it can stymie and limit so many talent-filled entrepreneurs — and what they can do about it.

    Fear’s powerful effects

    Fear keeps far too many of us from realizing our full potential. It disallows us to make the kind of money we should and pushes us away from leaning into our passions or seeking investment to fuel our enterprises. Ultimately, it stops us from taking risks that could lead to our ultimate success.

    Related: Fear Can Kill Your Drive. Keep Your Entrepreneurial Passion Alive with This Simple Trick

    But why? Why do our body, mind, and neurological system respond in such a way that limits action and ultimately holds us back? I wanted to answer these questions and, quite possibly, give the reader some actionable items to help overcome fear the correct way in order to find more success and fulfillment in life.

    I spoke with a good friend Tracy Litt, a life coach whose approach combines neuroscience, consciousness, and practical spirituality to deliver next-level results and unprecedented success with those she works with. Her brand, The Litt Factor, has helped thousands of women and entrepreneurs multiply their revenue, realize their potential, and overcome their fear in practical, ever-improving ways.

    Here are three key things she taught me about fear.

    Why we feel fear

    Why do we feel fear in the first place? Fear is a deeply-embedded biological response. Neurons fire, letting us know we’re in an uncomfortable or unfamiliar situation, putting us into a sympathetic nervous state in order to protect us.

    Here’s an important distinction: fear is not danger. Although they may feel the same, there is a massive difference between a shark fin coming towards us in the water and wanting to speak up in a board meeting. Even though they may feel the same, one is not life-threatening. Tracy says that recognizing the difference, along with understanding why fear is present, is the first step in overcoming it:

    “Fear only comes on the scene when you’re expanding. Something is deemed a threat to your system. When you’re an entrepreneur that could be anything because everything is scary and expansive in nature. Every single thing you do (whatever it is) is completely unlike anything you’ve ever done before. So your body lets you know that you’re uncomfortable in a nervous-system-based way. However, if we identify that what we’re experiencing is not dangerous or life-threatening, we can begin to thank our fear and find appreciation that we are in yet another situation to find growth.”

    At the end of this part of the conversation, Tracy said, “The goal is to learn to love your fear, appreciate it for what it is and what it means we’re about to do.”

    We’ve been taught to combat fear incorrectly

    Ok, great. You know where your fear comes from, but guess what? It’s still present in your day-to-day life. Are slogans going to help? “Feel the fear and take the leap!” Right? No way! “Square your shoulders and be the man!” Fat chance. This masculine approach to powering through fear is not only unhealthy but 100% ineffective.

    Related: Your Problem Isn’t Laziness. It Is Fear.

    We need to learn how to approach fear correctly and realize that how we’ve been taught about fear is incorrect. Tracy teaches:

    “Societal messaging preaches an over-addiction to willpower and motivation, which is a well that runs dry really quickly. It’s not sustainable or suitable for how your mind functions. You’re not working with your human/spiritual self when you’re trying to power through fear.”

    “When your fear response is ignited, it shifts you into a sympathetic nervous system state (fawning, flight, fight, or freeze) because we’re wired to protect ourselves. This is your stress state. So, instead of trying to power through it, we need to bring about safety by activating our Vagus nerve (deep, slow breathing), taking us to a parasympathetic state or our calm state. Your pre-frontal cortex comes back online. Now, we can make our new conscious choice.”

    Sounds complicated, right? It might be easier than you think.

    Here’s how to overcome fear correctly

    Now, here’s the most important part. In Tracy’s words: “Information without application is useless, but information with application is transformation.” So, let’s help you transform your fear into power and give you some wonderful tips that will enlarge your ability to expand and succeed.

    First: Notice it. That’s the prerequisite for doing any other work internally. Allow yourself to non-judgmentally understand what fear is keeping you from doing. Why is your power being abdicated to fear? Notice the moments it keeps you from acting.

    Second: Create safety. Safety, safety, safety. Our fear response combats “unsafe” situations by employing self-doubt and other negative neurological responses. So, we need to give our system the safety it craves. What does it look like? It looks like breathing on purpose. We should start to breathe in a deeper, slower cadence. 4-4-4-4 breathing (count in a cadence in, count in the same cadence out). We start to place our neurological feet back on safe ground, allowing our conscious mind to take over and make powerful decisions. Once we master this process, we can create safety on demand.

    Third: Get to know and learn how to communicate with your higher self. This isn’t woo-woo or weird. Your higher self can be described as who you want to be five years from now. This is the better version of you. Who is that person? How would they respond in situations your present self feels fearful? The better you can understand who that person is and how they act, the easier it is to envision yourself acting similarly in the present. Then, you can more quickly step out of fear and into conscious, confident decision-making.

    These tips are not only powerful but self-sustaining. The better you get at mastering each of them, the higher your threshold for overcoming fear. Tracy says that with this method, she’s watched thousands of women not only reach their potential but see that their previous potential was only a part of what they could actually achieve.

    Randy Garn

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  • 3 Strategies for Hiring Promotable Entry-Level Talent

    3 Strategies for Hiring Promotable Entry-Level Talent

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Beating a tough labor market is easier when you can promote from within. And the easiest way to have a promotable workforce is by setting up a pipeline of eager, entry-level workers.

    Companies that hire from within do better than those that focus on promoting outsiders. Case in point: A University of Massachusetts Global deep dive shows that internal hires cost about 18% less than their external counterparts. They require limited sourcing efforts, too, which can lead to more savings. But that doesn’t mean you can just pull from the rank and file and start filling positions. Being able to hire from within starts with a consistently replenished entry-level talent pool pipeline. If you’re not being strategic about bringing in high-performing, entry-level newcomers, you can’t get the benefits of internal hiring.

    A 2021 Joblist survey showed just how much of an advantage it could be to promote current employees when possible. Out of the 1,000 workers asked, nearly two-thirds said they’d rather be led by someone from within the company. Seven out of 10 felt the practice was important for their employer’s growth potential. More than 55% said it led to heightened morale and lowered training costs.

    LinkedIn’s 2020 Global Talent Trends report reflected similar findings. The report found a 41% uptick in how long workers stuck around at companies that hired from within. Plus, it reveals that almost three-quarters of hiring professionals are in favor of inside recruiting.

    Related: 7 Ways to Make Sure Your Employee Knows How to Get Promoted

    The message is clear: Internal promotions can accelerate employee engagement, trim onboarding timeframes and attack attrition. And the simplest way to have internal job candidates is to bring rising talent into the fold. By regularly pulling in strong, entry-level employees, you can create a funnel that pushes future leaders up the corporate ladder.

    The following strategies will help you attract eager entry-level applicants to your organization. That way, you can choose the right ones to start constructing an enviable — and internally promotable — workforce.

    1. Interview for both hard and soft skills

    Most jobs require some type of basic technical know-how, even if it’s just being comfortable with general word processing or spreadsheets. However, employers are discovering more often that it’s soft skills that make certain employees stand out. And a stand-out employee is one who may be interested in moving around the company.

    According to recent data gathered by a High Point University poll in 2022, companies put a higher value on soft skills than hard ones. The poll of 500 leaders from enterprise-size organizations identified employee motivation and coachability as markers of future success. Three-quarters of poll participants said it was easier to teach technical aptitude than motivation. Seven out of 10 felt the same way about technical expertise versus the ability to accept constructive feedback.

    How can you determine someone’s soft skills based on resumes or initial conversations? One method is to ask candidates to answer situational “What would you do if…?” questions. Another is to have prospective workers talk about challenges and failures and how they faced them. Just be sure you’re asking the same questions to all applicants. You’ll reduce interviewing bias and be able to compare interviewees’ soft-skill responses objectively.

    Related: Why Soft Skills Are More Important Than Hard Cash for Your Acquisition’s Long-Term Growth

    2. Make career pathing part of your onboarding and ongoing training

    Career pathing involves helping your employees create roadmaps to move through your organization. For example, a career path will show the routes an employee can take to get from job A to job B to job C, and so on. Most entry-level workers haven’t been in the workforce long enough to understand how to construct career paths. You can assist them by introducing them to career pathing during onboarding and making it part of their employee experience.

    Having a group of employees who have constructed realistic, doable career paths can improve your internal hiring. Deloitte’s Talent 2020 report notes that 42% of employees looking for different employment are leaving because they’re not using their talents. 37% said they were unsatisfied with their career progress. Dynamic professional development support and career pathing can ease those challenges.

    Remember that you can’t just set up career paths and let them gather dust. Teach supervisors how to encourage their team members to identify training areas using their career paths as guides. Be sure to set aside resources for upskilling, too.

    Related: 4 Reasons Employees See a Bleak Career Path and Quit

    3. Treat your internship programs as feeder opportunities

    Information culled in 2020 by Chegg Internship suggests that around 70% of all internships turn into job offers. Of those interns offered a position, 80% accept. This means that for every 10 interns you bring into your organization, you could end up with around five or six new employees. Those employees would already be familiar with your culture — and buoyed by a chance to start working.

    Even if you have an internship program in place, take a harder look at it. See how you might be able to make it more of a feeder into a bigger succession plan. For instance, should you be broadening your current pipeline and accepting interns from more disciplines? Could you use interns in more departments than you normally do? These are all questions worth asking.

    Interns who feel their time with your company was well-spent may become members of your C-suite someday. At the very least, they’ll be more likely to join your company if you extend a job offer after they graduate. So look for ways to boost the real and perceived value of your internships. Don’t be afraid to survey current and past internships so you can continuously improve your internship experiences.

    The Great Resignation has shown how tough it can be for employers to find candidates. When you can hire from within, you have more choices. You also reduce downtime associated with empty seats. So start (and keep) bringing entry-level workers into the fold. They’ll become your competitive advantage.

    Rashan Dixon

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