Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Many people that I meet tell me that they dream of starting their own business. I always ask them, “Then why don’t you?” They typically respond by saying that they have so many financial and personal responsibilities, that they can’t just quit their job to start a company, etc. Then I tell them my story …
Entrepreneurs can be impatient. When we have a great idea, we want to make it happen now. But I’ve learned that patience — taking time to convince resistant customers, or to prove your concept to dubious investors — can create an outcome much truer to your vision.
Courtesy of White Noise Coffee Company
Seven years ago, I began trying to open a coffee shop in New York City. I had long worked as a barista, and imagined a café that treated coffee like a performance — the bar acting as a stage, where baristas would pull the espresso shot, weigh it, and heat it to a precise temperature, all while telling the origin story of the beans. I wanted the shop’s sounds and smells and visuals to envelop each customer. I’d call it White Noise Coffee Company.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Whether you run a start-up that focuses on a single market or own a large business that operates worldwide, defining the company’s mission and values is the fundamental thing needed to communicate its reason for existence, connect to customers and organize the group of people who will work toward a common business goal.
This is what the “First Who, Then What” concept presented by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great refers to. It also encourages entrepreneurs at the helm of building successful organizations to “get right people on the bus” — in the key seats — and only then decide where to steer the bus. My company quickly became convinced of this idea’s veracity, and I am willing to share how we ensure no “random passengers” on board.
When we saw our company growing 10x in the first three months after launch, we understood that this increase was most likely to continue along the same lines. And now, after ten months of operation, the monthly revenue exceeds $3 million from zero, which is an even greater performance, meaning that our assumptions were right. So we needed a more advanced approach to business to keep pace with it.
After consulting with a few highly skilled entrepreneurs from various niches, we summarized our research and concluded that any great organization’s first and foremost criterion was quality recruitment.
Сompany values that let the workforce know the essential parts of doing any given business are what underlies the hiring processes. They serve as a reliable guideline for an employer who seeks long-term and productive cooperation.
While hard skills can be corrected or enhanced over time, a potential employee’s values are usually immutable. In case a candidate’s inner culture runs counter to your company’s principles, making a job offer:
poses a threat of wasting time and energy on training;
can cost you thousands of dollars — our HR department calculated that the losses are six monthly salaries of a bad hire plus indirect costs of the organization’s inefficiency;
will eventually require more efforts to revitalize the search for a better employee.
Setting your company’s core values helps avoid these outcomes, systematize the qualities that you need your staff to have and better understand what workforce should be fired. If employees easily get discouraged by what they do after a month of operation, do not learn from their failures or do not want to grow, they are not with us for long. The passengers of our bus never give up and always strive for more.
When working on your company’s culture, consider the values that matter to you. Do not motivate your employees to lead a moderate and thrifty lifestyle if you purchase a luxury purse every time you walk past an expensive boutique. Otherwise, your employees will soon sense the difference, and communicating with the team will be much more challenging.
If several entrepreneurs manage a business, all co-founders must agree on the company’s values to avoid future misunderstandings and conflicts. As three co-founders, we came to common opinions about our company. Among them, we believe that we need to be first in everything. Thus we are waiting for a job candidate who is not just a good employee, but a top performer. Also, we do not tolerate gossip and rumors, so we cannot go any further with those who demonstrate that they are prone to backstabbing.
Based on our experience, the best solution is to integrate your values into all employee development activities, which requires excellent internal communication. We started by presenting the company’s mission and values to our C-level executives to assess whether they could settle down in the team. As soon as some positive progress was made, we designed our own culture fit scoring system, which implies:
Holding an extra interview with a competent expert to determine whether the candidate’s values correlate with the company’s fundamental beliefs. In cases with C-level managers and team leads, often the co-founders themselves perform this role. Ideally, you should involve an impartial specialist who did not previously participate in the hiring process and will never even cross paths with a candidate at this job. Thus, you manage to avoid the bias as people unconsciously sympathize with those they already put time and energy into. This tactic is a good hedge against the risks – third-party opinions have already saved us from multiple bad hires.
Including acquaintance of new employees with the core values into the list of the onboarding activities so that every specialist knows what qualities you appreciate along with hard skills;
Launching individual training plans and performance reviews for employees who are generally good performers but lack a few essential qualities. For example, suppose people are afraid of making decisions. In that case, managers are gradually delegating relevant tasks to them. Then the discussion of the results takes place.
As an ending note, I would like to share one good method my company uses as part of culture fit when selecting suitable candidates during interviews: appeal to your senses. This means that the first part of the conversation you spend being diligent and attentive to details, but then you distance yourself from what you hear, focus on your inner thoughts and try to feel the candidate in front of you. Sometimes employers become too keen on the process and ignore their doubts when having doubts should be a key signal for refusal.
Creating the company’s culture is more important than coming up with strategies because strategies are executed by people who get genuinely inspired by your mission and values. Setting the right culture fit scoring system may significantly increase your recruitment’s effectiveness and ensure your business’s long-term success.
Elena Rosa is a Los Angeles-based artist who wanted to create a lesbian story world where people of all genders, sexualities and identities could learn about lesbian bar history. She drew from photographs, writings and interviews with former bar patrons and bar owners to bring L-BAR to life. Rosa sat down with Jessica Abo to talk about her interactive online bar and salon, and her advice for anyone trying to create a sacred experience.
Jessica Abo: You’ve spent years working as an actor and artist and say you’re really passionate about creating different worlds. What is it about creating environments that lights you up?
I love building environments. I like thinking about our architecture and how that frames our identity. I have a particular fascination with Byzantine churches, the way the masses can walk into this dome, this heaven on earth and everyone has one focal point. Straight ahead is the focal. It’s one truth, one belief. And if you look to the left or to the right or above you, there are depictions of saints mirroring that truth and confirming that truth. I love thinking about how that informs us in those spaces.
In contrast to the lesbian bar, which were our saloons and taverns, they’re usually pretty dark. And they might be down an alleyway or they might be down a flight of stairs, but they’re dark. In the beginning, there weren’t any windows, and where there were windows, they were covered with curtains, so you couldn’t see what was going on inside. I think that encourages experimentation and walking into the unknown. It’s full of mystery, and I believe in that space is where agency can be explored.
Why did you want to create a space dedicated to lesbian bar history?
I wanted to celebrate and honor lesbian bar history. I think that these bars, especially pre-Stonewall, were bars that really allowed women to frame feminism and ideas of desire and ways of being in the world. So, I wanted to honor that history and also honor the trailblazers, all the people that crossed the street to go into the bar when it wasn’t okay to do that.
I think about my own lesbian bar history, and I landed in San Francisco and I’d just come out and I would go to this bar on Sundays and it was Ladies’ Day on Sundays. I don’t recall it being about consuming alcohol. It wasn’t about that, the bar for me. But, on an unconscious level, I suppose there was this other aspect and I couldn’t wait to get to the bar. There was this other aspect of walking into a place, walking in somewhere, and the people that you see mirror who you are. I think that unequivocal understanding that someone else is like you. It’s a lifeline, really. I was raised very religious, and to me, this was everything. This was everything to me. But, I don’t know if I realized it at the time, but I needed it. I needed that mirror to myself at the time, from people, from those women in that bar.
What’s the state of lesbian bars today?
Well, there aren’t many lesbian bars left. According to the Lesbian Bar Project, which raises money to fund the remaining lesbian bars in the U.S., there are under 25 lesbian bars. I believe that in order to understand why they’ve disappeared, we need to understand why they existed. The lesbian bars are very different today. They are far more inclusive with language. I think when I was going to bars, there were many different identities and ways of being there, but they just weren’t spoken about. Or, if they were, it wasn’t foregrounded by that. I think bars were more foregrounded by desire, at least when I was coming up. Now, language is there, and inclusivity is there at the forefront, and I think that’s really great. I think that’s wonderful. Sometimes, I wonder if we need the term lesbian bar anymore if we need lesbian bar anymore.
It’s interesting to think about. I think also, I’ve noticed that the intergenerational aspect of bars when I was coming up is not there anymore. I remember going to early bars and I would talk to the older dykes about how to shoot pool and how to be and whatever, and there was a lot of communication between generations, and that’s not the case anymore. That’s to do with the online world. A lot of my older friends have wonderful, amazing relationships online and they don’t need to go to the bar. So, it’s not a bad thing, it’s just different. The bars are very different today.
What will someone experience when they enter L-BAR?
Inside L-BAR, you will be presented with a world, I call it a lesbian story world. That world has loads of cities that you can click into, and when you do, you’ll find bars, lesbian bars, presented to you. These bars all actually existed. They’re from 1925 through 2005. Now, I made these bars, they’re digital art interpretations, I made them based on oral histories from former bar owners and bar patrons. So, you can also hear those interviews inside the space. You can meet friends there or make new ones, sit at a bar stool and listen to people like Joan Nestle, Jewelle Gomez, Lillian Faderman to name a few. You can actually hear them inside the bars.
What do you think this project represents now?
I think this project represents a living archive. I think it offers a way to look at history differently by being inside of it, by occupying that history, by hearing the stories where that history took place and sitting inside of it and sharing your own story inside of it. I think it’s another way to document and another way to experience one’s self through history.
I think it also shows how important and sacred lesbian bars were for a lot of people, and sacred to our history in terms of identity building and shedding and ways of being in the world.
What’s next for you and L-Bar?
I’ll be moving off of this platform that I use, which is called ohyay, which is amazing. They are shutting down on December 31st, so L-Bar will also shut down. I’m currently applying for grants and looking for funding to move the project somewhere else. I’m also making a documentary about lesbian bar history.
What advice do you have for someone who is trying to create a sacred experience whether it’s through the metaverse or through a brick-and-mortar environment?
I think it’s important, in whatever you do, whatever you create, to make it personal, make it full of your heart, because I think people are going to disagree with you and they’re not going to like what you have to say, and that encourages conversation. I believe in the conversation. I believe in difference, and I think that is what sustainable business is. I don’t think it’s pleasing everybody. I think it’s actually a conversation.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We live in a time where ideas can become businesses at an unprecedented rate. It has never been faster to have an idea, file for a name, quickly get a logo and business address and move on with that idea. This ease of entry, plus the aftermath of the Great Resignation, “Quiet Quitting” and turbulent market disruptions led our economy to a proliferation of new businesses and startups, many of which are small and agile enough to succeed where larger companies would fail.
However, that is not without challenges, as startups are under immense pressure to succeed. They must gain traction and prove their worth to investors while maintaining a sense of normalcy and momentum. However, with new startups, many induce self-inflicted problems in the ramp-up to launch and scale.
We’ve all seen it — the entrepreneur or founder that agonizes over every decision tries to do everything themselves and wastes countless hours over distractions, from agonizing over trivial choices, not making decisions fast enough or even delaying selling the product or service. In the end, startups need to focus on their core mission and not get distracted. Making decisions quickly and efficiently can increase their chances of success.
What are the most common areas in sales strategy that entrepreneurs need to focus on to avoid costly mistakes?
1. Realize what your strengths are, and sell to those strengths
The strength of your brand is essential to find an effective strategy to sell that brand. The team should continuously find direct paths to sales by getting in front of the right audiences, staying consistent and constantly pushing. Branding is vital to reach potential customers, so it is essential to make finding the strength of your brand a priority. Customers must be able to identify with the message that the brand is trying to sell, and they should feel confident in the product or service offered. If a company can manage to do this, then they are well on its way to finding success.
However, it is not always easy to maintain a strong brand, and it takes a lot of work to keep pushing the message and ensure it reaches the right people. There are many ways to market a product or service, but it is essential to remember that not all of them will be effective for every company. It is vital to research what has worked well for others in the past and then adapt those methods to fit the company’s needs. There will always be some trial and error involved, but as long as the team is willing to put in the effort, there is no reason why the company cannot find success.
Trying to be everything to everybody is a trap that catches many entrepreneurs. Almost every entrepreneur is guilty of this, which needs to be addressed in strategy before execution. They believe that by offering more products or services, they will be able to attract more customers and grow their business. However, this is often not the case. When a company tries to be all things to everyone, they spread themselves too thin and cannot provide the quality of service that their customers expect. One of the worst traps a new startup can find themselves in is overpromising service, continuously introducing new lines or services and overextending resources that are not part of the company’s core.
Additionally, constantly introducing new lines or services can confuse customers and make it difficult for them to know what the company offers. Entrepreneurs need to focus on what they do best and not try to be everything to everybody. By doing so, they will be able to provide the quality service that their customers demand and sustainably grow their business.
Consistency is vital to success. A sound sales strategy should be built on a foundation of core values and principles that are unlikely to change over time. Find your core and niche, do not stop selling to it, and continuously improve the profitability of those sales. This stability gives customers and clients confidence that they know what they can expect from the company. It also allows salespeople to build strong relationships with their clients based on trust and mutual understanding.
In contrast, a “throw everything at it” approach to sales may yield short-term results but is ultimately unsustainable. This strategy is often based on changing messaging, sales techniques and target markets to make quick sales rather than build long-term relationships. Not only is this approach confusing for customers, but it also makes it difficult for salespeople to establish themselves as trusted advisors.
It is also important to remember that industry partners are essential for success. Cultivate these relationships and work collaboratively. Blaming them for failures is not productive and will only damage valuable partnerships. A sound sales strategy is vital to success, informed by a deep understanding of the core audience and built on solid relationships with industry partners.
In the end, consistency is critical to success in sales. Companies and entrepreneurs who focus on building a solid foundation for their business are more likely to weather the ups and downs of the market, find growth and scale.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Why do some businesses succeed while others fail? Many factors contribute to a business’s success, but one of them is brand building. Your brand is what sets you apart from your competition and tells your customers who you are and what you’re all about. Creating a positive brand can help you attract new customers and keep them coming back for more.
But how do you go about building a successful brand? There are many different methods, but one of the most important is developing relationships with key members of the media. This is where public relations comes in — an essential aspect of any successful branding strategy. PR can help you build relationships with key media outlets and promote your story to the public. This can help increase your brand’s awareness and create positive customer sentiment.
Here are three tips for using PR to build your brand and create success.
Every business has a story to tell, but not every business knows how to tell that story in a way that will captivate its audience. If you want the media to sit up and take notice of your business, you need to learn how to develop a compelling story. Here are three tips to help you get started:
1. Find the hook
What is it about your business that makes it unique? There’s always something — you just have to find it. Once you’ve found your hook, use it to drive your story. Build on it and make it the central focus of your narrative. Everything else should support that hook.
2. Know your audience
Who are you trying to reach with your story? What kind of tone do they respond to? What topics are they interested in? Keep your audience in mind as you’re developing your story so that you can craft something that will resonate with them.
3. Be concise
The media is always looking for stories that can be told quickly and easily. They don’t have time for long, drawn-out tales. So, keep your story concise and to the point. Tell them what they need to know and nothing more. If you can do that, you’ll have a much better chance of getting their attention.
It is important to get your story out there. But simply having a great story isn’t enough — you also need to make sure that it’s being seen by the right people. That’s why it’s so important to do your research and identify which media outlets would be the best fit for your story. Once you’ve done that, you can start building relationships with the journalists, editors or producers who work there. The better your relationship with them, the more likely they are to want to cover your story.
The first step is to research which media outlets would be the best fit for your story. Look at their previous coverage and see if they’ve covered stories similar to yours in the past. If they have, that’s a good sign they’ll be interested in what you have to say. Once you’ve narrowed down your list, it’s time to start reaching out to the people who work there.
The best way to do this is by offering them something of value, whether it’s an exclusive scoop on a story or just some useful information that you think would be helpful to them. Whatever it is, make sure that it’s something that will make their job easier. Once you’ve established yourself as a valuable resource, you’ll be well on your way to building strong relationships with key media outlets.
Building a brand takes time and dedication. There are a million different things to think about, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s important to remember that all of your hard work will pay off if you stay consistent in your approach.
Brand building is a long-term game. You won’t see results overnight, but if you keep at it, eventually, people will start to take notice. The key is to be consistent in everything you do. Promote your brand regularly and try to come up with new and innovative ways to get people interested. Develop a press release strategy and have a compelling press kit ready.
Building a brand can be challenging, but it’s also incredibly rewarding. If you’re willing to put in the hard work and stay consistent, you’ll eventually see results. The key is to focus on your audience and develop a story that will resonate with them. Don’t forget to reach out to key media outlets and build relationships with the journalists, editors or producers who work there. By doing so, you’ll increase your chances of getting your story covered. Brand building takes time and dedication — but if you stick with it, you’ll be successful.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Starting a business can be one of the most exciting and rewarding things you’ll ever do. The process has its challenges, but it’s important not to let misconceptions about them stop you from trying. In this article, we’ll go over seven common misconceptions about starting a business.
Misconception 1: You don’t need a business plan.
There are a lot of misconceptions about starting a business. One of the most common is that you don’t need to write a formal business plan. It’s easy to understand why this would be so — after all, who has time for more paperwork when you’re trying to keep things going as efficiently as possible? The problem with skipping the planning stage is that it can lead to wasted time, money and a poorer product or service than what you could have created.
An example of this is advertising: many start-ups spend thousands on ads without thinking through their audience, budgeting, or messaging strategy. Writing out a marketing plan before investing in any ad buys would help prevent these issues from arising and save you some cash along the way.
The reality is that there are several different kinds of plans — business plans (which detail your company’s overarching goals) and financial plans (which provide projections for revenues and costs) are examples — but they all have one thing in common: they help you visualize where your company is headed over time.
Misconception 2: You can entirely rely on your financing.
Learning the basics of running a business before seeking financing is essential. While it might sound great to have all that money at your disposal, you could end up in debt before you even start.
There are two common financial mistakes made by people who don’t have a lot of experience running a company. The first is relying too much on financing and not having enough personal money invested in the business. This leads to an over-reliance on loans, which can be difficult if the company goes under or runs into trouble. The second mistake is spending too much money on things that aren’t helping your business succeed — like a fancy office space or expensive furniture.
Misconception 3: You’ll have to choose between work and having a personal life.
You will not have time to handle every single detail. After all, you are now the head of your own company. That means you’ll have to balance running your business with everything else. You will not be able to handle everything by yourself. It’s okay if you need help from someone else. It’s expected.
You can delegate tasks that don’t require special knowledge or training, such as answering phone calls or taking out the trash at the reception. Still, there are some things only you can do because they involve special skills and experience that only come from doing them before.
For example, setting up marketing campaigns requires understanding how different channels work together for maximum effectiveness; updating website content requires knowing what keywords people search for when looking for information on a particular topic; creating invoices requires basic knowledge about accounting software programs like QuickBooks Pro.
Misconception 4: Everyone on your team will work as you do.
When you are starting a business, there will be times when things get complicated. The longer you have been in business, the more complex the challenges can become. This is just part of the journey; everyone has their own way of dealing with these feelings.
In my experience, though, I have found that rarely anyone will tell me when it’s time to stop and go home. And chances are you’ll keep working if you haven’t set boundaries. No one else should be expected to work as you do. After all, this is your company. You should temper your expectations of yourself with what you expect from an employee — and then act accordingly. If you fail to do this, your expectations will be unrealistic, and ultimately, nobody will want to work with you.
Misconception 5: You must compare yourself to other companies.
You’re new in your space. It’s important to capitalize on what makes you unique and slowly carve a market share for your product or service. At this stage, comparisons are unproductive and could lead to jealousy or negativity. Instead of comparing yourself to other companies, focus on your goals and how you can achieve them in the most effective way possible. You can learn from others, but don’t try copying their success — it’s not likely that someone else’s approach will work exactly as well for you as it did for them in their industry.
Misconception 6: There’s no room for error.
As a founder, it’s easy to mount a full load of responsibility on your shoulders. So much more becomes personal when you’re an entrepreneur. But remember, everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. If you’re not making any mistakes, you’re either not trying hard enough or have lost your ability to think creatively and independently — and that’s a problem.
Mistakes are part of the process. They tell you what works and what doesn’t. They teach valuable lessons about yourself, your product, service, customers and competition — all invaluable information for any entrepreneur building their business.
Misconception 7: Taking a risk is too risky when first starting.
Not making decisions based on risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. Fear is why many people don’t try to start their own business in the first place — or even leave their current job for a new chance. When you can overcome your fears and take calculated risks that match up with your values and goals as an individual or company, you can do more than survive; you might thrive.
When fear enters your mind, remind yourself that it is often a sign that there’s something more prominent on the horizon if you choose to overcome it — and if there isn’t something bigger on the horizon for you right now, then find it. There are many opportunities out there waiting for those ready to take them on.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I recently had a call with one of my best friends who moved to London to work for a big, multinational public company. She’s talented, successful and hardworking.
Yet, she called me full of tears, anxiety and anger. “They are restructuring the company; they are cutting positions. My role is about to die.”
I suggested that she apply for the same role in other ventures, companies that could offer multiple benefits, from remote working to stock options. I explained that with her talent, potential and ideas, she could even be self-employed through freelancing for various clients with contracts. She could chase her version of success and happiness. And she could probably end up with more money and even more freedom.
“You don’t get it.” She said. “I don’t want to be nobody. I want to work for the top companies in the world.”
Perhaps I don’t get it. But I also don’t get why talented, hardworking individuals like her want to throw their full potential into hierarchy and politics for prestige. Why do they let their companies fill them with stress, ruin their day, restrict their career options and define their value?
Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of great people acknowledging their worth and consciously choosing to advocate the employee’s mentality. They are okay with that.
But if you’re fed up with the corporate world, feeling like it’s limiting your options in life, and wondering when is the right time to leverage your skillset and make a transition, it’s probably now.
1. You’re in love with the idea of working wherever and whenever you want
Flexible work hours and location independence started becoming the norm after the pandemic in 2020. You proved to your employer that location doesn’t affect productivity and that a strict 9 to 5 workday could burn you out instead.
And while many companies allow work-from-home days and a flexible working schedule, you still have to report your location and total work hours.
However, with an entrepreneurial mindset, complete location and time flexibility is your dream; you know the only way to achieve that is to fully own your freedom by creating your income stream instead of expecting a salary.
2. When in meetings, you’re daydreaming instead of participating.
The average employer spends at least 3 hours weekly in meetings, with 30% reporting that they spend over 5 hours weekly.
And instead of actively participating in that meeting, you’re contemplating how to avoid the next one so you can work on something instead. You know you could be spending your time in a more fruitful way than attending company meetings, but there’s nothing you can do about it.
Someone more senior requested your presence; you have to be there. So there you are, visualizing how you can escape this misspend of your hours, wasting time while time is money.
When having an employee mentality, you get so caught up in titles. You fool yourself with pride, showing off on Linkedin, gossiping about others’ abilities, and jealously spreading your best wishes to the colleagues who claimed the C-titles first.
When you are a business owner, you laugh at job titles. You want people to work with you, not for you. You also know that a title cannot determine your worth. Anybody can go on Linkedin and claim that they are the CEO or an executive member of a 5-people company.
What does that even mean?
Fancy titles in corporate jobs almost always equal less freedom, less time to work on your relationships with others and less time to spend with your kids before they become adults.
C-titles while climbing the corporate ladder also mean less time to invest in your self-care planning, wellness, and personal skills and less time to enjoy life.
4. You’re testing multiple side hustles after or before work.
With an employee mindset, you look at the clock at quarter to six and know it’s time to shut down your laptop and get on with your day.
And while maintaining a work-life balance is crucial, as a business owner, you are continuously testing concepts and trying side hustles to build multiple income streams whenever you can. You don’t depend on one client, idea or salary, but you’re willing to test, take risks, fail and start over.
5) You’re not afraid of building relationships from outreach.
As an employee, you are terrified of cold pitches. You are not fond of being rejected or ignored because that usually happens. You don’t attempt to reach out to others unless you’re selling something; in that case, you face outreach as a transaction, not a relationship.
However, as an entrepreneur, you know that expanding your systems by connecting, advising, or simply interacting with others is one of the most vital steps in building a personal or professional brand.
You don’t underestimate the power of community and networking; you aim to create daily connections with one or two new people in your industry. In one year, you are astonished by your reach and the ways your network proved helpful.
6. You know that building passive income and making money online is 100% possible.
When having an employee mentality, you don’t care about investing or building a passive income online. Even if you care, it strikes you as too-good-to-be-true, and you don’t bother putting effort into creating a diversified portfolio.
On the contrary, when you have entrepreneurial tendencies, you get excited about passive income ideas and turn your world upside down to build an online income.
Creator’s economy is not a too-good-to-be-true scenario nor a get-rick-quickly scheme. It’s an available reality with no barriers to entry, and as a business owner, you like that challenge. You know that spending an x amount of time creating the tiniest passive income stream can yield 10x results in the near future.
They know they must find what they enjoy creating and work on it daily.
7) You’re constantly enriching your knowledge and skillset to increase value.
You are exchanging your skills and experience with payable work hours as an employee. However, as an entrepreneur, you offer your skillset, idea or business as a service that solves problems and delivers value.
You don’t charge by the word, hour, or month. You charge according to the advantages and utility of your solutions. You answer questions and deliver results. And because your expertise is directly related to the value and results you deliver, you’re working daily towards improving and enriching it.
Final thoughts
Perhaps you’re not 100% ready to escape the rat race. However, if any of the above signs hit true, you know it’s time to start owning your career and follow a path you can fully control.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Almost everyone across all industries is familiar with the adage that success is based on who you know, not what you know. That can certainly be true.
We all want a broad network of people, colleagues and friends. It’s human nature and helps us have a community we can turn to when we want to socialize, learn about solutions to daily life and advance our careers.
Are you having trouble with back pain? Ask someone you know to recommend a good doctor. Visiting an out-of-town location and want good restaurant recommendations? Ask a friend. Are you trying to raise seed capital for your startup entrepreneurial concept? Ask a business colleague if they know any investors to introduce you to.
That’s how it works. Who you know helps you find success in all aspects of life. Right? Maybe. But it can also be a “false positive,” especially when it comes to business. How? Let me share a few ways an existing network can hurt you as you pitch your project to people.
1. The person you know may not be a decision-maker
Just because you know someone with a big title doesn’t mean they can approve or push your project where it needs to go. Sometimes they can, but usually not, especially nowadays when authority and decision-making have become a complex web.
2. They don’t look at you in terms of business
If you have a friend in an influential position, it may be hard for them to take you seriously in business. They know you as a tennis buddy or a neighbor and have separated work from personal. They don’t see you in the same light as business colleagues. They may be polite. But will they stake their business reputation on a person they know from down the street? Maybe to your face, the answer is “sure,” but behind closed doors? Not necessarily. These “friends” can be the most devastating. They will “nice” you to death and blame others for the ultimate “no” you receive. Sadly, you never had a chance.
3. It can be harder for you to ask a friend for a favor
Let’s say your wife’s best friend is married to the head of a company and you ask a favor of him. What happens to those weekly Friday night dinners or Sunday brunches? That couple will suddenly come up with excuses to skip out on these traditional events. Why? The husband doesn’t want to be hounded, nor does he want to be confronted with a person he isn’t able to help. The friendship days have been altered (or are gone altogether), and your wife is upset with you forever.
4. Bad impressions on another project are hard to break
If you already have a network of people to go to with your projects and you’ve made poor choices or produced subpar projects with them (even if it’s just once), they’ll remember. Any new work you bring into the fold will be cast in the shadow of your old work or old behavior. It’s tough to wipe a slate clean once it’s been soiled. This is even more true in today’s business atmosphere. Most executives are overly sensitive and risk-averse when protecting their jobs. Beware. It’s challenging to reinvent yourself. Many people do it at some point in their lives, but once you’ve tapped into your network with a project that turns out to be a complete bust and a total waste of time, reinvention is like pushing a peanut up Mt. Kilimanjaro with your nose. It just isn’t going to happen very quickly or easily.
5. Once you ask a favor of someone, you’ll owe them
Maybe not officially in a spoken way, but in that underneath-behind-the-shadows way. So what? From that moment, all your communication will be slightly restricted. Either by you or by them. You’ll be waiting for them to reply to your favor and speculate when you think they’ll have an answer for you. And they’ll be hesitant to let their guard down if you ask again… and again and again. You don’t want to be embarrassed.
On the other hand, if they don’t help at all, you then have to suck it up and act as if it doesn’t matter (when we all know it does matter, a lot — or you would never have asked in the first place.
6. Your connection might be at too high of a level
Remember the husband of your wife’s best friend? If he does run the place, he’s too far separated from the initial gatekeepers that screen projects for their worthiness and fit. He doesn’t do the job you’re asking him to do. Instead of asking for help with your project, he’s the one you might want to ask for a referral to the “right” person. A bit of nepotism isn’t bad, but you need to know there will be no awkwardness when the deal doesn’t pan out.
7. Your timing might be off
You don’t always want to use your current network to make a project fly because you may want to save the favor. What if the project you have right now isn’t very good? You might think it’s impressive, but what do other people think? You don’t want to cash in a chip with someone in your network until you know the project has legs and is good and powerful. You need to be 100% certain of your timing and readiness.
So, you see, there are quite a few reasons why tapping into people you know can hurt your chances of success rather than help them.
Can doors open that might not have otherwise opened? Absolutely.
Consider what doors are being opened and why
Are you seeking solutions to a big ask, or are you hoping simply to get a glimpse into a room you might not otherwise have seen? There’s a huge difference. So what’s a person to do?
Seeking out advice and insight through your own networking is the best way to go when asking a favor of someone you know. You can find those doors on your own, without help from those you know now. Most people are willing to help someone they don’t know when they feel the request is sincere and authentic.
Get out and meet people on a regular basis — whether it’s in-person or virtually. There are a lot of groups, organizations and mentoring programs to join. Start there and see where things go.
You’ll be amazed at how much you can do without having to know so many people already. What we all have at our fingertips today — which, if used correctly — can also change your success path. Use LinkedIn and other business social sites to create new relationships based on the premise you’re networking to help each other mutually. There is more opportunity for give-and-take and a fresh start in those scenarios.
No matter where you are in your path, someone out there needs your help or your ideas. Get out there and create a new network of colleagues on your terms without worrying that your weekly Friday night dinner will now be awkward and uncomfortable.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
When I left my job as a consultant in October 2021, I had never made more than $5,000 per month from my business.
Courtesy of Clo Bare Money Coach
In fact, when I made a plan to leave my 9 to 5, I had an honest conversation with myself about whether or not I was okay with the possibility of only making $60,000 per year as a money coach — less than half what I was paid at my consulting gig.
And my answer? Absolutely.
As a 31-year-old millennial who graduated college with around $80,000 of debt for a degree in English and Spanish, I never would’ve dreamed I’d be able to someday consider taking a pay cut to quit my job and go full-time with my business. In fact, prior to 2018, I was still living paycheck to paycheck, knew nothing about investing and assumed I’d work the rest of my life.
You see, I grew up believing I was just “bad with money,” like it was some character flaw you were either born with or without. I’d seen my parents struggle with credit card debt, furloughs during the Great Recession and the unending stress of living paycheck to paycheck while raising five kids. I thought struggle was normal, especially when it came to money.
I started working at the age of nine to have a little spending money and hoped I’d someday do better, but money always burned a hole in my pocket, no matter what I did.
I kept telling myself if I just had more of it, things would be fine.
Spoiler alert: No matter how much money I made, it never fixed the problem of my overspending.
It wasn’t until 2018, after spending most of my 20s without an emergency fund, overspending, not investing and thinking I’d die with student loan debt, that I decided it was time for a change.
I started learning about the debt-free community, which led me to the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) community, and eventually I thought, Why not me?Why not at least try?
Well, I’m glad I did.
Not only do I now know the peace of financial flexibility and a retirement savings that I’ve already invested enough in to have millions by the time I retire even if I don’t invest another dollar, but it also led me to something I never expected.
I started writing about budgeting and investing online, which led me to creating content on Instagram and TikTok, which led me to become who I am now: a multi-six-figure business owner.
But this time last year?
I was just excited to even be able to consider quitting my job to pursue my passion of teaching people about money full-time.
So, with a year’s emergency fund saved and a solid $5,000 from one-on-one coaching filtering into my bank account each month, I went off into full-time entrepreneurship land.
Last month was my one year anniversary, and I did not make $60,000.
The gross revenue I made from my first year as a full-time business owner was $305,000 with about $45,000 of expenses.
How did I do it?
By recognizing I had to scale, bringing in an expert and focusing on one funnel and one product.
Recognizing I needed to scale
When I quit my job, almost 100% of my income came from one-on-one coaching. In fact, during my first month of full-time business ownership, I had 60 coaching calls, with more than half of the calls lasting two hours.
By the end of the first week, after 17 coaching sessions, I was already losing my voice, and feeling drained and discouraged.
I knew I couldn’t keep up with that kind of grueling schedule, so I increased my prices in October and again in December, thinking it would lighten the load without really impacting my income.
I was wrong.
By the end of the year, I charged $499 for a two-hour session and $299 for a one-hour session — but no matter how many times I increased my prices, I still sold out within 24 hours of announcing openings in my coaching calendar.
The coaching clients kept rolling in, and I had a hard time saying no to the emails requesting help as soon as possible or clients who needed another follow-up call. So, despite trying to manage my client load, I’d always end up with more than I could handle. Between October and December that year, I ended up coaching nearly 150 people.
I was exhausted and already burned out, just two months into full-time entrepreneurship.
Then, one day while lying on the couch to close my eyes for three minutes before the next coaching call, it hit me: I needed to scale. At the rate I was going, I’d be back in corporate in three months. I was capped, and despite wanting to help more people, my system at the time was unsustainable.
I needed to find a way to move beyond selling my time. But I had no idea where to begin. That’s why I decided to bring in an expert.
Scaling beyond coaching was new territory for me, and although I’d seen other creators create courses and digital products, I wanted to make sure I was doing what was best for my business.
When I started shopping for a business coach, I was nervous because there are so many problematic business coaches who teach people how to run a business despite never having run a business before. I wanted someone I could trust, and who I knew had worked with people in a similar niche, with similar goals.
After doing my research, I decided to hire a well-regarded coach who had helped the giants in the space scale to multi-six-figure — and even seven-figure — businesses. She’d be the person who would teach me how to launch a course and build a funnel.
By working with my coach, I was able to go full-speed ahead and avoid a bunch of mistakes I would’ve made trying to do it all myself — mistakes that would’ve cost me time and money.
Investing $2,000 into my business resulted in my first product launch bringing in $35,000 — but I would’ve never gotten these kinds of results if I hadn’t hired my coach and implemented a funnel.
I did not know what a funnel was when I quit my job, but my funnel was the single most important investment I made in my business.
A funnel allowed me to make sales without doing anything — no posting, no DMing people, no going live to push the sale.
Instead, I was able to get people into my funnel and let the funnel do its automated magic.
Here’s how my funnel worked:
Instagram or TikTok followers would sign up for a free guide.
The free guide would invite them to my free class.
The free class would have a small pitch for my course, and all registrants would be put into a sales funnel of emails for the next 2-5 days.
Keep in mind: At each stage, I was providing more value.
My funnel made me sales even while I slept. No posting. No exhausting my followers on all my accounts to get in on the sale. My emails were set up to do it all for me so I could spend my time doing other things to build my business.
The emails people received after signing up for the free class addressed their concerns, answered most frequently asked questions, shared testimonials and painted the appealing picture of what their life would look like after they completed the course.
So many content creators create a course or digital product and push it out to their audience without a funnel. They just put it on sale and hope people from their Instagram or TikTok will buy it because it exists. If you build it, they will come, right?
Not exactly.
We have to nurture the relationship, and an Instagram follower is at a much different stage than an email subscriber or someone who has downloaded your free guide and attended your workshop.
We have to provide consistent value that builds trust with our ideal audiences. Going straight for the killshot of “Hey, buy my product” would be like asking for a job without having ever applied or submitted a resume. You need to date your leads and nurture them by providing value.
Focusing on perfecting my funnel has allowed me to zone in on what is and isn’t working, understand my audience better and not get distracted by the shiny-object syndrome that so many new entrepreneurs face.
First, it allowed me to streamline my messaging to my audience to make sure they were never confused about what I have to offer. I wanted to guarantee people went to my page and saw immediately what I specialized in: lazy investing. Not a little bit of lazy investing with some debt pay off, credit repair and budgeting sprinkled in. I want my audience to come to my page and understand exactly how I can help them.
Think about the last time you were shopping for a service: for example, a person to clean your home.
If you came across someone who had a list of services that included lawn care, car detailing, oil changes, handyman services — and oh yeah, they’d also clean your home for you — you likely wouldn’t choose that person over someone who made it clear that cleaning your home was the only thing their business did.
Focusing on one product also helped me master the product, which only made my confidence in the product stronger and, in turn, allowed me to sell with ease.
When we know without a shadow of a doubt that our products solve the problem we say they do, selling becomes simply highlighting the problem and explaining how our product is the solution.
I don’t think I could’ve made as strong of a course had I not focused on only that course in the last year. Every month I added to it, tweaked, surveyed my members and found new ways to improve it. And the result is more than 500 happy customers who are now out there building wealth on their own.
We all know how overwhelming and stressful it can be to manage a million different things: coaching, courses, digital products, group coaching and the list goes on. The mental space and clarity that come with focusing on one thing is something I’ll continue to prioritize as I build out more products in the future.
Now that I’ve worked on The Lazy Investor’s Course and its funnel for a year, you might be wondering if I’m moving on to something new.
But in 2023, I plan to continue to perfect the funnel and my offer. Because even though I’ve made more than $300,000 from my business so far, I know I can still make improvements. So I’ll continue to refine this one offer I have until I’m confident I’ve squeezed everything out of it that I can.
And then — and only then — will I move on to the next thing.
As my friend Allison Baggerly said in her keynote at Fincon this year: simple scales.
And for me?
Simple allows me to maintain a level of sanity and make sure I don’t burn out.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I have been witness to a great many ups and downs in the markets — including a number of seismic events — and in the process have developed a bit of a déjà vu response when it comes to cycles and bubbles, not least in the realm of starting a business.
I began my formal Wall Street career in the investment banking group at Bear Stearns in 1992, however, as early as 1987 (while still in high school), I worked for two summers as a specialist clerk “making markets” in Walt Disney and other equity options. Among the events I’ve witnessed since were the crash of ’87, the Netscape IPO in 1995, and numerous companies at the time paying for eyeballs to achieve unsustainable valuations. Then there was the 1998 Russian financial crisis and the Nasdaq and dotcom bust in 2000. Then came Madoff in 2008 and the subsequent years’ many sector bubbles (from biofuels to biotech) and now crypto and other things I frankly don’t really understand well. I’ve learned over all this time that cycles are just that: they repeat and rhyme, with main characters simply changing their names.
There is currently a massive need for funding among venture-backed start-ups, but the fundraising environment has never been more challenging. The Fed has opened an airlock; we can all hear a massive whooshing sound of money being sucked out of the system, and this will severely impact venture-backed companies and their ability to raise capital to stay alive. Most of them, along with their founders, are still a bit “deer in the headlights” in response — struggling to accept the new valuation landscape. As the world was flooded with liquidity in 2020 to 2021, we witnessed giddy times for start-ups raising capital, whether Series Seed, A, B or C companies. We saw many in the Series B category being paid inflated Series D or pre-IPO prices by mega crossover hedge funds that were trying to leapfrog and lock up deals prior to an IPO. Today, things have changed: New capital is in short supply, and it will be harder than ever to fundraise. Because of that, we will see many wind-downs, unfortunately, of some potentially great start-ups that simply run out of fuel. Most venture funds are now in slow-play mode — more focused on their existing portfolio and keeping their winners alive.
So, based on past cycles and various myths I have heard recently, some guidance:
My advice to founders is to raise money now if it is available to you. Do not wait for things to improve because companies seeking capital will have even more competition in 2023 and need to accept this new reality. It may be a lower valuation or more draconian deal terms like 2x liquidation preference or warrants, but a bird in the hand is always the best course of action in an uncertain environment. Early-stage start-ups will not be as pressured as later-stage growth round enterprises (i.e., post-Series C companies), which may have raised capital at valuations not reflective of where things are today and will see more highly structured or down rounds.
Myth: 2023 Will Be a Better Fundraising Environment, Including Better Terms
Possible but not probable. The challenge with this argument is that there will be so much pent-up demand and competition for new capital from other start-ups that it will be a buyers’ market and there won’t be sufficient capital to fund all companies.
Imagine New York’s LaGuardia airport on a winter weekday night at 10 p.m. It has been snowing all day and the airport has been closed due to weather. There are hundreds of planes waiting to land on limited runways and no chance they all get in before LGA closes at midnight. That is what we are seeing now, and it will get worse, because funding will be much more limited and expensive in 2023. In challenging times like this, term sheets are going to change from “plain vanilla” to much more structured and investor-friendly deals. Founders may encounter things they haven’t seen in a long time, like warrants and full-ratchet anti-dilution provisions.
True, but this was also true in 2008 when LPs told their PE or VC fund that if they issued them a capital call, they would never re-up for future funds. It worked. All that dry powder which was supposedly on the sidelines was all on a string. (For example, a statement like, “Yes, I committed capital to you, and you have dry powder, but don’t ask me for it!”)
While many venture funds have raised new funds which are 2020 or 2021 vintage years and are actively making new investments, many are making hard decisions about which among their existing portfolio companies to support, and are also working at putting out fires. New investment activity will suffer, and we are seeing a period of what I would call “slow play,” with a lot of tire-kicking and reluctance to act quickly. Gone are the days of companies receiving multiple term sheets on the same day and rounds filling up quickly. There will be longer diligence periods, and we will even see funds back away from issued term sheets. This is the new norm.
Myth: Valuations and Multiples will Rebound
There is an old expression: Stocks go up on an escalator and down on an elevator. Some multiples will not rebound anytime soon to the peaks we saw in 2021 and may take years to do so, if ever. The liquidity-fueled tsunami caused the pendulum to swing hard to one side; it could well overcorrect to the other, and may take a long time to find the median.
So, if you are seeking capital, my advice is to start early and plan for a long, slow process. You will need to kiss a lot of frogs before finding your prince. Have low expectations when it comes to terms, and know that every dollar raised will be a hard-fought battle.
Don’t be bashful about raising funds in smaller increments and with multiple closes. Also, be frugal with spend and be prepared to tell your story many times over. Good ideas and founders will make it, but, with the hot money now gone from the playing field, Darwin will rule the day and only the best will be allocated capital. It’s also important to realize that the venture industry focus has shifted to near-term profitability vs. growth, and so most companies are working to reduce costs and extend cash runways.
The landscape will always have the “haves” and “have nots,” and we are going to see many down rounds coming for those companies that do not have the funding to get through 2023.
Getting to the next round of funding as quickly as possible
Increasing valuation
Maintaining their reality distortion field
Attracting and retaining employees who are motivated by potential future value rather than the current mission
Notice that there isn’t anything on that list focused on what it takes to build a great business. Focusing on short-term outcomes and motivations can lead your startup down a dangerous path. Here’s how to avoid these pitfalls.
1. Don’t set an arbitrary deadline for your next fundraise
When you raised your last round of funding, you probably expected that you would be ready for your next fundraise in 18-24 months. As that timeframe approaches, you might feel pressure to raise again from your board and current investors who are worried that you’re not making enough progress. If you succumb to this pressure before your startup is ready, you’re likely to increase spending to chase vanity metrics and top-line growth, even as your core metrics suffer and cash burn accelerates. You’ll quickly lose sight of product-market fit and pull precious resources away from potentially higher-value initiatives that need more time to play out.
Set key milestones that will support another round of funding. React to data that suggests your original assumptions were off, and give yourself time to find a better growth path. Leave room for the possibility that your startup won’t reach venture scale, recognizing that it could still be personally and financially rewarding. Don’t treat getting to your next round of funding as a Hail Mary pass. The concept of “go big or go home” sucks if you’re the one going home.
2. Avoid over-emphasizing valuation
Founders often over-emphasize the importance of valuation, particularly in the early rounds of funding. Focusing on maintaining or increasing valuation when your business hasn’t achieved the proper milestones leads to longer fundraise cycles, putting your startup at risk. You might save yourself from some dilution only to end up with worse economics and less control in the future. Higher liquidation preferences, ratchets and valuation hurdles can limit future options if you need to raise or sell. And you’ll be more likely to attract mercenaries focused on maximizing their economic outcome rather than missionaries who believe in you and your vision.
What’s more important than maintaining or raising your valuation? Adding high-quality investors who can best support you through the ups and downs of building your startup. Manage your cap table to protect the future economic outcome for you and your team and keep as many options open as possible.
When it comes to startups in distress, valuation gets the headlines, and liquidation preferences and other investor-friendly terms get the cash. A flat or even a down round isn’t the end of the world if it keeps you and your team in the game and your future options open. Play the long game when it comes to valuation.
3. Don’t get trapped by the reality distortion field
Founders have to believe in opportunities that others often can’t see. It’s the fuel that powers you through obstacles and allows you to leap into the unknown. But that power to believe can also be a trap when your best-laid plans run awry and your startup isn’t hitting your milestones.
Too many founders believe that they must put on a brave face for their employees, their board and the press, regardless of their startup’s struggles. They worry that any crack in the perception of inevitability would lead to the downfall of their startup. That’s the trap.
You can truly believe in the future opportunity ahead of you while being honest about the roadblocks and challenges on the path to getting there. If you don’t open up to your employees about where your startup is falling short, you’re no longer aligned, and they won’t solve the right problems or exploit the most important opportunities. If you hide challenges from your board, they can’t help you along the way, and they will pull back when you surprise them with bad news.
4. Hire missionaries, not mercenaries
Sixty-five percent of VC-backed startups fail to return 1x of capital. When you hire employees, if you overemphasize the potential value of stock options in their compensation package, you risk attracting mercenaries that are more motivated by the potential of future riches than in helping you realize your vision.
Even for the most successful startups, the path to creating real value in your equity is never straight up and to the right. Mercenaries will jump ship at the first sign of trouble, in search of the next startup that might be on a stronger path to the mythic unicorn status.
Hire people who, first and foremost, believe in your vision and are excited about the challenges you’re trying to solve. It’s easier to step outside your reality distortion field when you have a team ready to grab an oar and row in the same direction. You will face this moment. Who will be in the trench with you? Who will be the first to jump out and run away?
When you jump on the venture capital flywheel, you instantly feel the pressure to shorten your time horizon, thinking only of the next fundraise and the sprint to get there. Short-term execution is critical, but don’t optimize your decisions around the fundraise cycle — or you’ll miss the long-term goals that help you build something great.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I had no intention of creating my own software company. I was kind of forced into it. You see, a few years ago, I was a full-time YouTuber. All was well until my channel got demonetized. This means that I was making $0 from the ads being placed on my videos.
There was a point where I was getting 2-3 million views a month on my channel and didn’t receive a penny. As a way to bounce back from this low, I decided to put my life savings ($5,000) into starting a creator economy software startup at 19 years old. I dropped out of college to work on my SaaS startup full-time, and I have learned valuable lessons along the way. Here are five of the most important lessons I have learned so far:
I had no experience in coding — let alone creating and growing a startup. Despite these challenges, I 100% believed in my idea. Backed with a proof of concept, I was willing to do everything within my limited budget to turn my SaaS idea into a reality.
With a well-written vision and lots of persistence, I was able to find a good developer overseas that not only fit my budget but believed in my vision for Trend Watchers.
We still work together to this day. The first versions of Trend Watchers were hideous, but over time, the UI/UX slowly improved. When I look back at my journey from a software development point of view, I should not have made it this far. I went through so many setbacks and hurdles. I should have quit back at the start line, but by having a great vision and team mixed with the desire to succeed, we were able to pull through.
No matter how challenging a task may seem, done is always better than perfect. Oftentimes, perfection comes through the countless mistakes you make along the way.
2. The importance of data collection
One thing I implemented early on is good data collection. What do I mean by data collection? Data collection has a bad rep, thanks to large companies and scammers abusing it to make a quick buck. But there is a good side to data collection. Data collection can be used to make better marketing decisions. It can also be used to discover what users like and don’t like.
I collect data in a few ways, but two of the most useful data collection tactics I used are asking good questions on our signup sequence and having a session recording software that tracks how long users are on each page and what they click on. These two data-collecting methods have helped with making the right decisions and software updates to improve the user experience.
For the people in the back, I’m going to repeat myself: Get a proof of concept before you build. In early 2022, I thought it would be a good idea to build a marketplace within Trend Watchers. Marketplaces are great, and when used right they can be a great growth engine for startups — but no one wanted that. They just wanted trends they can use to go viral online.
Instead of listening to this market feedback, I went ahead and built it anyway, and it was a major flop. It also caused a whole lot of other issues, but I wasted a lot of time and money on something my users didn’t want at the time. Because of that experience, I always conduct surveys and get a proof of concept before I add a new feature.
4. Tell your story
Starting a software company at 19 years old with my own money was already challenging enough financially. The next question was, how am I going to market this thing with a $0 marketing budget?
Growing up, I’ve always been an amazing storyteller. In my free time after school, I would always write my own books. I would go into our home office, grab a few sheets of paper from the printer, fold them in half, staple them together, and boom — I had a book.
I decided to leverage this skill I developed at a young age to slowly build a movement of loyal followers that would help me get traction for Trend Watchers. The two platforms I decided to focus on to document my progress were Instagram and leveraging press. This wasn’t an overnight success. It took tons of writing, documentation and pitching to slowly start getting my brand’s story heard, and now it is starting to pay off.
One interesting insight I recently discovered about my paying customers is that they tend to stay longer knowing that their money is being put to work. A lot of my paying customers follow my story through my email list or Instagram page for weekly updates.
If you are working on growing your startup, document your journey. Not only do you end up with a well-written journal in the end, but you can also find loyal customers along the way.
5. Take every opportunity that presents itself
Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made were time-sensitive opportunities that came my way. Some of these opportunities included opportunities to buy into programs, go to different places and break my schedule to attend certain events. About 90% of these opportunities came out of nowhere, and every time I took one, it significantly helped me in the process of growing my business.
As most people know, starting and growing a business is not easy, especially for a young adult with no prior experience. Reading books and watching YouTube videos can be very helpful and informative, but experience is truly the best teacher. The skills and lessons I’ve acquired through my experience have helped me grow exponentially, and hopefully, these five lessons above can help other entrepreneurs — young or old — grow their businesses as well.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Businesses, especially startups, are characterized by uncertainty. From the viability of a business idea to investors’ decisions, as well as how users would respond to your latest product feature, you’re never exactly sure what’s coming. Externally, political, technological and competitive uncertainties are causes for worry as well.
Studies have shown that uncertainties are constant in entrepreneurship, and a leader’s ability to tolerate and manage them will greatly support the success of their venture. However, repeated exposure to high levels of uncertainty can send entrepreneurs into an emotional rollercoaster that could affect their self-image. Early-stage and first-time founders run greater risks of being broken by the twists and turns of rapidly changing business environments.
More fascinating, though, is that some — especially serial entrepreneurs — are hooked to the uncertainties synonymous with startups. And their ability to tolerate these uncertainties and adjust accordingly to changing environments has helped them succeed. You, too, can learn to do the same by incorporating these four attitudes into your life:
Delegate some uncertainties. So many activities go into building a company. A majority of those activities carry fair amounts of uncertainty. And it’s easy to get roped into bouts of worry trying to figure out how things could go wrong.
It could be a marketing campaign that your team is trying out for the first time or a new product that your company is working on. Rather than actively engaging in these activities and interfering with your team’s every move, you can rid yourself of the anxiety that comes with the process and focus your energy where it’s needed the most.
Studies by the Harvard Business Review reveal that micro-managing a team could significantly add to a boss’s stress and anxiety levels. Just lay back a bit, and let the marketing or product team worry about the uncertainty associated with their roles. You’ll thank yourself for it.
2. Accept what you cannot control
As far as entrepreneurship is concerned, so many events take place that are beyond the entrepreneur’s control. It could be some government policy changes that threaten the survival of your business. Maybe a key employee is quitting to spend more time with family. Whatever it is, there might be absolutely nothing you can do to change things. And you have to accept that.
Yes, it’s easier said than done. You’ll most likely feel vile for being in such a position. That’s okay. Feelings make us humans, and you don’t have to deny them. The University of Utah Health Care psychiatrist, Maria Reyes, predicates that recognizing and acknowledging our feelings towards circumstances beyond our control is the first step to managing anxieties related to uncertainty.
Also, you might need to disengage from the situation a bit. Stepping back helps you gain a better view of what seems like an obstacle to your success. Some entrepreneurs make the best of this step-back moment, by doing things like playing golf or engaging in hobbies of various sorts. You can give it a shot.
Gratitude is an antidote for the negative emotions that uncertainty engenders, wrote psychologist Guy Winch in his book, Emotional First Aid. Being grateful has a joyous effect on the mind. Studies have shown that expressing gratitude causes the release of serotonin and dopamine in the brain. These hormones are associated with happiness, higher self-esteem and motivation.
Endeavor to take small breaks to reflect on your experiences. Identify the little things that often go unnoticed, and imagine how life would have turned out without them. It could be as trivial as being able to refuel your car at the gas station the day before. If it’s helped move you forward in the slightest bit, then it’s worth expressing gratitude for.
An act as simple as being grateful, if done repeatedly, can help you build tolerance for uncertainty because you believe that there will be good things to be grateful for either way.
Building a business requires making assumptions and following gut feelings. A majority of the time, those assumptions are wrong. Worst off, verifiable market research data may look so wrong when reality sets in. If they were always right, I guess uncertainty would be every entrepreneur’s least problem.
So, as you make assumptions and lay out plans to succeed, it’s crucial to also plan for failure. What would you do if reality renders your assumptions nonviable? What are your Plan B and Plan C?
You have to figure these out. According to a report by the Harvard Business Review, in times of uncertainty, the best entrepreneurs create contingency plans that can allow them to change course quickly. This is particularly helpful because most lethal circumstances are beyond the entrepreneur’s control. Talk about changes in market trends, and like in 2020, the pandemic.
It’s very easy to get tangled up in the need to control your future and that of your company. And knowing that some things just aren’t fated can be unsettling. That’s understandable. You’re not alone. Many have learned to live with it. And so can you.
The best approach to tolerating uncertainty is to stop resisting change and accept what you can’t control. Also, reduce the amount of uncertainty that you need to deal with by delegating some of them while making plans to recover from possible failures.
Most importantly, don’t forget to pause and appreciate the little things that you experience along the way. As with most processes, building tolerance for uncertainty is a worthwhile journey. You don’t want to miss the opportunity to be grateful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur, right? It’s in the DNA of a founder to re-create their original success over and over by starting new businesses. After all, it’s why the term “serial entrepreneur” is so popular. Richard Branson, Elon Musk and many more continually reinvest their profits in new ventures. While that is certainly one tactic, using a portion of your profits to create an investment fund can be infinitely more valuable.
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There are many forms of investment companies that manage pooled assets of multiple private investors, such as venture capital, private equity and hedge funds. While most startup founders don’t think of themselves as finance experts or professional investors, their experience building and exiting successful companies may very well equip them to succeed in making investments on behalf of others.
The seeds of my journey to creating a hedge fund started when I was an engineer focused on research and education computing (far from a finance background!). Eventually, that led to my role as a CTO at a startup, and I co-founded a firm that grew to $30 million in revenue in just under two years. Several liquidity events from that business became the foundation for building my family office, a private wealth management firm that runs like a hedge fund.
Today, that is the foundation from which I build my wealth rather than embarking on new business ventures. But why should other entrepreneurs consider following this path? Here are three reasons:
If you’ve started one successful company, it’s easy to think that you can do that repeatedly. But doing so can be more challenging than expected. The conditions that created outsized achievements the first time are hard to replicate as the world around us constantly changes. The best use of your proven business acumen may be to invest on behalf of others rather than diving headlong into developing another company.
That said, starting an investment fund isn’t unlike establishing another company. Your first step — even before you line up initial investors — should be to hire a good lawyer and contact your state’s Secretary of State for guidance about investment fund business structures. In the case of hedge funds, most are formed as limited partnerships, in which the founder acts as the general partner and an incorporated group of investors act as the limited partners. This means you would likely need to set up two entities: one for the fund itself and one to incorporate its various investors.
Bigger potential upside
A fund structure is attractive because it allows a successful entrepreneur to use their expertise to help others navigate investments. In addition, the financial rewards can be substantial. Successful fund managers, whether in venture capital, private equity, hedge funds or real estate, are highly compensated and only limited by their performance and how many investors they can attract.
For successful entrepreneurs such as myself, launching or participating in funds can amplify their expertise with capital and create a new kind of business that also brings about material financial contributions. In the course of founding your startup, you likely got to know some wealthy individuals who contributed to your success. Founding a fund can enable you to deliver value to these individuals in a new way. Because time is our most scarce resource, it doesn’t make sense for individuals with $20MM to invest their time into a $1-2MM opportunity, when instead they could invest that capital into your fund, go to the beach and call it a day.
Once entrepreneurs have participated in major liquidity events, they realize a great deal can be gained by exploring new investment opportunities, managing taxation, and utilizing estate planning. After all, the point of founding a startup for many entrepreneurs is to compress the working years of one’s life, sell the company and have more years of freedom. Founding an investment fund can allow you to do that.
For me, the idea of a fund seemed an appropriate encore to a successful business career. Fast forward to today — the strategies I spun off from my family office have become the heart of the TrueCode Capital Crypto Momentum Fund I founded. It allows me to spend my time sharing the lessons that made me a successful investor in digital assets and helping individual investors and family offices achieve growth, all while sleeping through the night.
Of course, founding an investment fund — like any venture — isn’t for everyone. But for those with confidence in their ability to read the market, with contacts among high net-worth individuals, and with a proven track record of business success, starting your own hedge fund may be the next career step you’ve been looking for.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
With exceptional leadership skills and a deep understanding of how teams work, veterans are uniquely well-suited to running a successful business within a proven system. That’s why each year, more and more entrepreneurial veterans are getting into the franchise industry when their military service ends — and finding meaningful financial and personal success in the process.
If you’ve dreamed of starting your own business, this event will put you on the path. We’ve assembled a panel of leaders from brands named on Entrepreneur magazine’s Top Franchises for Veterans list who will explain the ins and outs of finding, buying, and running the perfect franchise for you. Join us for this free webinar on Tuesday, November 9th at 3:00 PM ET.
Key topics:
Transferring your military skills to small business
Steve White has more than 35 years of leadership experience at every level of the franchising industry including food and B2B franchises, ownership and his current role as the President and COO of PuroClean. His passionate leadership has radically changed failing organizations and helped good organizations become great. Steve is an Army Veteran, a Board Member of the International Franchise Association (IFA), and immediate past Chairman of the IFA’s Education Foundation VetFran Committee.
In his over 32 years with the Snap-on Tools company, Tom Kasbohm has held numerous leadership roles, including that of a franchise owner. Currently, he serves as the Director of Franchising for the 3600+ franchise owners and 165 company stores across all of North America. Tom is charged with leading the #1 Franchise for Veterans and the #1 Tool Franchise, as recognized by Entrepreneur. For the past 10 years, Tom has helped the franchise system reach historic highs and navigate safely through the Covid-19 pandemic. Snap-on was recognized for the past two years as a Recession Proof Franchise by Franchise Business Review. A proud member of the VetFran committee and the IFA, Tom Kasbohm is an accomplished franchise industry leader.
As a leader in the travel industry, Drew sits on several boards and serves a voice among other industry thought leaders. He is also a member of the American Society of Travel Agents, the Executive Leadership Broward Class of 2017 and is on the events committee for Gilda’s Club of South Florida. In addition to being interviewed by CNN, he is a regular contributor offering travel advice and tips on NBC and FOX affiliate; and is often cited as an industry expert in travel trade publications.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Investing in real estate is good for people who want to make money work for them. And this is because, with real estate investments, you can buy a property and use it to earn more. Now there are many ways to use an acquired property for profit. But perhaps the ones that are gaining more traction are short-term rentals on Airbnb.
But what is Airbnb?
If you’re an avid vacationer, you’ve probably heard of the app that can connect you with people who will let you stay on their property for a period of time. This app, called “Air Bed and Breakfast” or Airbnb, was launched by two industrial designers who moved to San Francisco in 2008.
They couldn’t afford to pay rent for their apartment during this time, so they decided to earn extra by letting people who couldn’t find hotels rent their space temporarily. And long story short, their strategy became a massive hit because it expanded into a vast network of 4 million hosts worldwide. And up until today, their platform continues to create more opportunities for hosts and real estate investors in general.
Real estate investments include property rentals, and there are two main ways to earn from them: Long-Term Rentals and Short-Term Rentals. When I started as a real estate investor in 2012, all my properties were long-term rentals. But in 2017, I transitioned all of them to short-term ones, most of them through Airbnb.
Why? There were a lot of factors that made me decide to go all-in with Airbnb:
1. You make less money on long-term rentals.
Did you know that when done correctly, you can make a $2,000 average monthly profit on Airbnb? Of course, many things must be considered to get to this number. Plus, you can make less or more than this amount every month.
But the point is, with Airbnb short-term rentals, you can determine your price, and no other person has a say. You can’t do this with traditional long-term rentals. With long-term rentals, you can only set a fixed amount and increase your rent by 3% to 5% a year.
2. You are under bigger obligations as the landlord.
There are several things to consider when hosting a long-term rental, and one of those is that your tenants may never deep clean or take care of repairs on your property. The reason is simple: they won’t be staying there forever. Ultimately, the obligation still falls on your shoulders.
Another fact worth mentioning is that you won’t be able to evict your tenants easily. Now, the stipulations change from city to city and state to state, but typically after 30 days of staying, your guests acquire certain rights.
Case in point: In 2020, the government passed an Eviction Moratorium where landlords are not allowed to evict their tenants on the grounds of non-payment. This was, of course, helpful for a lot of tenants all over the country. But now, some landlords are still owed thousands of dollars in back rent, and they may never get the chance to go after them again.
3. With Airbnb short-term rentals, you don’t have to work like an employee.
Short-term rentals are passive in nature, which means that if you have a property, you can still earn even if you’re not around. Add this to Airbnb’s online platform, and your market potential gets wider.
But here’s the thing: you may still be trapped by working around the clock to manage your listing. Thankfully, there is a way to build a system and create a team that operates the business on your behalf. We use this innovative business model with Airbnb, which has since accelerated our cash flow and offered tremendous growth.
4. You don’t have to buy properties to get started.
If you’re familiar with cash flow goals for long-term rentals, you’ve probably heard that the aim is to earn $200 per unit per month. This is all well and good, but if you’re trying to replace a job that gives you $5,000/month, this income won’t give you much. You still need to own at least 25 units to get there.
So what you can do instead is to buy a couple of units, give them a nightly rate, and launch them on the platform to start getting bookings and recover your returns faster.
But what if you don’t own properties and still want to do Airbnb? Well then, all you need to do is apply the Arbitrage Model.
The Arbitrage Model, also called subleasing, is where you rent properties from other landlords, get their permission in writing, and then launch their property as your short-term rental on Airbnb. Yes, this strategy is perfectly legal and lets you start a business without buying properties.
Are there other ways to start an Airbnb, even if you don’t own properties?
Yes. Aside from subleasing, there are two more ways to launch an Airbnb business without much capital.
1. Co-hosting
With the co-hosting strategy, you don’t have to buy or own properties because all you have to do is to manage and help hosts manage their listings. This method allows you to learn more about the business and earn.
2. Using O.P.M (Other People’s Money)
A balance transfer is when you transfer the money available on your credit card into your checking account. You can then use this money to sublease a property and start your own Airbnb business without using any of your money.
Airbnb is a great platform for real estate investors. Its innovative business model will allow you to create positive cash flow, get started even if you don’t own properties yet, and enjoy the time, location, and financial freedom that most people only dream about.
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).
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.
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
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!
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!
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!
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!
