Browsing Tag
run your business better
69 posts
7 Mistakes New E-Commerce Startups Make and How to Avoid Them
As a serial entrepreneur, business adviser and mentor, I’ve seen many e-commerce success stories. But, I’ve also seen some horrible e-commerce startup mistakes that have cost their founders time and money. If there was anything I could do to help more of these startup founders, it would be to offer advice on how to avoid...
Why Grit is Essential to Your Success as an Entrepreneur
For entrepreneurs building a business, the initial startup stage is an exhilarating time: you’re energized by your idea and engrossed in building the business. It feels like it’ll always be fun. The hard truth is that in building any business, there are peaks and valleys. When you hit a valley, it can be difficult to...
How to Use AI to Successfully Build and Scale Your Retail Business
Starting a business is no easy task. The commitment and time sacrifice are significant, and the expenditure of capital combined with the stress of managing numerous tasks can be overwhelming. Growing your business can be equally as challenging. In addition to facing operational issues, you also need to take into consideration the management of additional...
A Healthy Work Culture = Happy Employees, Happy Customers
Roughly 25 years ago, I teamed up with Dr. Larry Patterson to found Eye Centers of Tennessee (ECOTN). When we launched the business, you could count the number of people who believed in our venture on one hand, and probably have a digit or two left over. That didn’t deter us, and we jumped into...
5 Golden Rules For More Productively Managing Your Time
Low priority tasks and distractions hinder our efficiency. According to productivity experts, we spend 80% of our time dealing with low priority tasks and only 20% with important, vital activities. The question is, how do we change this equation to more productively manage our time? In this article, you will find tips on how to...
The Startup Coaching Playbook: Do You Need Business Coaching?
The biggest challenge for a startup founder is knowing where to focus. You’ve got to pitch investors, target the right customer, hone your business model and raise critical funding just in time. Your team is lean, the margin of error narrow. Yes, you can screw up some things, but there’s one task you can’t get...
How to Scale a Business Successfully in 4 Simple Steps
As a new founder at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey, you have many tasks at hand and little bandwidth to do them all. There are countless responsibilities, from everyday tasks like investor pitch decks and elevator pitches to longer-term tasks like business plan revisions, product launch strategy and much more. How do you know if...
Unnecessary Expenses That Startups Should Avoid
Starting a business can be an exciting time, and the idea of being your own boss and doing what you love is alluring to many. However, with startups being so young, they’ll have additional deficits from their initial costs. While there are essential costs every business needs to pay for its day-to-day functions, it’s easy...
It’s Not Too Late to Make This the Year of the Customer
This is a story about the importance of amazing customer service. Sometimes, entrepreneurs can get too caught up in the day-to-day problems and trying to make money that they forget there are actual humans purchasing their products and services. Recently, I bought a small gift for my daughter that ended up deteriorating within a few...
Goldfish Swim School CEO Shares 5 Must-Haves in Post-Pandemic Playbook
Over the course of the last year, it’s been remarkable to watch successful adjustments to remote work, new innovation projects and everything in between, as small businesses across the nation quickly adapted to changes brought on by the pandemic. As we’ve surpassed the one-year mark of COVID-19 and inch closer to a return to normalcy,...
How to Get Out of Day-to-Day Operations and Into Leadership
When you start a business, you have a vision of what you want running your company to be like. While every founder is different, most entrepreneurs envision customers who love their product or service so much that they see it as the best (or only!) option in the market. Years after they start their business,...
How to Use CRM and Marketing Automation to Improve Your Scalability
Automation has become a business essential. For entrepreneurs looking to grow their business, the question always is, “How can I work smarter, not harder?” That’s where the power of marketing automation and your customer relationship management (CRM) comes into play. With such high demand to cut down on costs while increasing profitability, businesses are turning...
4 Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Ask Themselves
Time is the most important asset you have. Unlike money, once you’ve spent it, you can’t get it back, and how you spend it is important. They say time is money, but time is your dream. When you’re running a startup, you’re in the dream business. And every minute you can spend on your dream...
8 Tips for the Work From Home Solopreneur
You’ve plunged into starting a solo business venture from home. Being a solopreneur is a fantastic experience for motivated individuals, but it can easily become stagnant if you aren’t careful. When everything starts piling up, you can lose sight of what drew you to your passion project in the first place, and your tools of...
How Quality Reporting Helps Smart Entrepreneurs Build Investor Trust and Long-Term Returns
Think of investor reporting as the foundation of trust between a company’s founders and its investors. That trust is earned over time and is strengthened by timely reporting of company results. Strategic entrepreneurs will see good investor reporting is both the foundation for a company's success and an entrance to later investing. Done correctly, early...
5 Reasons Why Startups Need to Create a Crisis Communications Plan Now
A crisis can happen to any business at any time. While planning for a crisis may seem quite ironic, given that the very definition of the word is something that happens unexpectedly, it is incredibly important that business owners invest in creating a crisis communications plan. A thoughtful and well-crafted plan has the potential to...
6 Ways to Keep Your Startup’s Finances Balanced Year-Round
Now that we are halfway into 2021, it is time to think about how you can further improve your startup’s operations to guarantee greater success in the latter half of the year. During this process, you will want to ensure that your cybersecurity measures are up to date, properly organize all of your old customer...
3 Tips to Grow Your Business in the Post-Pandemic Era
Summer is in full swing, and in some areas of the country, mask mandates have lifted and event production companies now have packed schedules. It seems like we are starting to finally overcome and move beyond the COVID-19 crisis. If you’re a business owner, you may be wondering what steps to take to ensure the...
3 Lessons for Balancing a Side Hustle When Launching a Business
Any founder will tell you that starting a new business while working another job (or two for that matter) is lousy. Figuring out what that side hustle, or main hustle, will be to support launching this new endeavor is going to suck up two things in your life: your time and attention. But it’s important...
Small Business Drive and Passion: What Keeps an Entrepreneur Going?
If you are an entrepreneur just starting out, you’ve probably already gotten a glimpse into the hard work that goes into launching and running a business. While it’s rewarding, there can be sleepless nights and a slew of new challenges you did not anticipate. You’re not alone – a new study this summer by OnePoll...