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The Single Most Important Principle for Any Entrepreneur to Understand

Entrepreneurs are ambitious and excited people.

They have a brilliant ability to imagine a bigger and better reality. They can envision the future and set brilliant goals to pursue that future.

The problem for most entrepreneurs isn’t their ability to come up with a bigger future or to envision.

The problem is that once they see that bigger and better future, they then ask themselves the wrong question.

They ask themselves: “How do I accomplish this?”

This is the WORST question an entrepreneur can ask themselves.

This question leads to a great deal of pain, frustration, and ultimately, procrastination.

Rather than asking yourself “How?”, you should ask yourself “Who?”

This is the insight that Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach, got after coaching over 30,000 successful entrepreneurs.

When you begin asking, “Who can help me accomplish this?” then you stop trying to do everything yourself. You stop procrastinating and you stop spending large amounts of time in your head. Dan calls this “dread time”– or the time you spend dreading to do the work you don’t want to do or don’t know how to do.

Remove the dread time and starting WHO’ing your way to all of your dreams.

The better you can get at asking, “Who?” and then getting smart and intelligent people to help execute your goals, the more successful you can become.

As Dan is known for saying, “Millionaires ask ‘how?’ while Billionaires ask ‘Who?'”

He would know. He’s coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone alive.

Applying “WhoNotHow” As An Entrepreneur For Mind-Blowing Results

I recently had experience applying this principle.

I was organizing and running a mastermind group. But I’d never done that before. I didn’t even know where to start.

So I spent a few months procrastinating. There was a lot of dread time and very little progress made.

So I decided to apply what Dan calls, WhoNotHow!

Jon Berghoff became my “Who.” Jon is the founder of Flourishing Leadership Institute, and creator of Xchange, an approach to creating exponential outcomes, through choreographing conversations that unlock group genius.

Xchange is the go-to approach for industry-leading companies like Sensi, BMW, Facebook, Vitamix, Nike, and has also been relied upon by leading peer-to-peer learning organizations / mastermind groups, like Vistage, Keller Williams, Gobundance, Quantum Leap Mastermind, and Front Row Dads, Additionally, over 250 forward thinking coaches and consultants, representing 21 countries, have now been trained and certified in the XChange approach.

The companies and leaders who leverage Xchange are considered to be at the forefront of an evolutionary leap, in how human beings lead and learn. Central to their philosophy is that “command-and-control” approaches to leadership are broken and ineffective. Rather than answers known by only a few at the top, Xchange emphasizes questions targeted toward as many minds as possible– what they call collective intelligence or group genius.

The problem is, most people don’t know how to do it. Neither did I, until I got 60 minutes with Jon.

Jon helped me organize my mastermind event with their methods in less than an hour. This is something that would have taken me dozens of hours, and there’s no way I would have created something as powerful, simple, and clear as what Jon helped me create.

Jon and his team of researchers, consultants, and behavioral scientists have spent tens of thousands of hours honing the Xchange method. He can look at any situation in which a group of people is trying to shape their future, solve a complex and shared problem, or dramatically multiply the learning across a mastermind group like the one I was trying to organize, and INSTANTLY see multiple pathways for unlocking group genius – fast, naturally, and consistently.

And with his experience, that’s exactly what he did for me.

Expertise is powerful, and if you want to be very successful, you need to leverage experts in your network. You need to stop asking “How do I do this?” and start asking, “Who is the best in the world at this?”

According to Kevin Harrington, the reason most people fail is that they hire people who aren’t smarter than them. The smartest people in the world are those who hire people smarter than them! If you want to be the best team, then you get the best players. If you want to be average, then get average players.

It’s all in your mindset.

A Fundamentally Different Approach To “Leading” and “Learning”

Unsuccessful people think they must first have enough money to hire big players. What they don’t realize is that it is the key players that increase profits. You’ll never get there thinking small. Play big, create powerful incentives for everyone involved, and create something beyond what you could ever create on your own.

This is exponential thinking, and that’s really what Xchange is all about. Exponential transformation through the unlocking of group genius, which doesn’t happen with traditional perspectives, models, and attempts at leadership.

Exponential leaders and entrepreneurs listen more than they speak. They allow the voice and insights of the group to guide the ship to a much higher and more powerful place than a single vision could ever do.

So, not only did I want Jon’s help in organizing my event, I decided to leverage and team with his growing team of who’s. Jon connected me with Adair Cates, a stand-out in the Xchange community who has been in the leadership and personal development spaces for over ten years. Adair uses whole-person and team-focused techniques which have won her organization numerous awards.

By combining her unique approach to helping leaders and their teams transform with the Xchange methodology, it would be obvious that Adair was a capable “WHO” to facilitate my first mastermind.

Who-thinking accelerates progress and energy, while how-thinking creates dread-time, procrastination, and a lack of progress. How-thinking is small-minded.

To further illustrate the power of “who”… when Adair and I wanted to get support from another trained facilitator, she simply put an “ask” into the Xchange private community, and within 24 hours, had 8 qualified candidates offering to fly in and help our mastermind event. We were honored to have Rachelle Nieman join us, who was not only trained in the Xchange approach, but knew exactly how to support the environment, and Adair’s facilitation.

I had a few phone calls with each of them to prep for the event. These phone calls to less than 3 hours altogether, and I had complete peace of mind. They took great care of me.

This is one of the most powerful reasons for applying WhoNotHow, you don’t have to over-stress the details. Those details are handled by the experts you’re working with.

Peace Of Mind: An Essential Yet Rare Experience For Entrepreneurs

Peace of mind is a powerful and rare commodity in entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur tries to do too much.

When the week of the event came, Adair and Rachelle were there to make it happen. All I needed to do was pay attention to the people who flew from all over the country to have a transformational experience.

Adair facilitated the whole experience. She took our group through multiple experiences and it was completely seamless. She knew exactly how to engineer psychological safety, how to choreograph powerful conversations, and ultimately unlock the highest potential of the group – individually and collectively.

I spoke with one of the participants and asked her how the event was going. She said, “I’m so glad you have Adair here. You are the talent. You need to have people around you so that your brilliance can shine. You wouldn’t be able to do that if you were trying to take care of the logistics and facilitation.”

I’m blown away by how easy and successful the experience was.

Also, I’m blown away by everything I learned from this experience. When you learn from and work with experts, you quickly can learn what they have spent decades honing. You learn through experience rather than by theory.

Questions to Consider

How fast are you learning?

How much peace of mind do you have when trying something new?

How much dread time are you dealing with?

Are you stuck in how-mode or focused on finding the right who’s?

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US Incorporation Service for Foreign Companies

Throughout the USA corporations are the most widely used legal vehicle for operating a business. A corporation has the same rights and obligations under US law as a natural person. Among other things, this means it can acquire assets, go into debt, enter into contracts, sue or be sued, and even be found guilty of committing a crime.

To incorporate a new company in the USA., one or more persons(called “the incorporators”) may form a company by filing articles of incorporation, notice of address and notice of directors with the Corporations Division Office of the desired jurisdiction of registration.

Ecompanies USA offers fast & easy US online incorporation and business registration services to foreign companies interested in doing business in Canada. At Ecompanies Canada we help you step-by-step and take care of the entire business registration process from start to finish. Incorporating a business with us is fast, easy and takes just minutes.

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Start A Business. Save Your Life — Like This Million-Dollar Entrepreneur

Kathy Goughenour still remembers the shock she felt when, after following a supervisor’s advice and getting an MBA in marketing so she could get promoted, he told her the “real reason” she wasn’t going to move ahead: “You laugh and smile too much.”

Goughenour had enough. Although she was still earning nice raises as a marketing manager, the stress of corporate life was wearing her down. “I was literally giving myself a heart attack,” she says.

Ready to take the leap into self-employment, Goughenour walked into the same boss’s office one day and handed him her resignation letter. “You’re making the biggest mistake you’ll ever make,” he told her. “You’ll never make this kind of money again.”

“Not only will I make more, but I’ll be happier than I’ve ever been before,” she responded.

That was in 1995. Goughenour tried direct sales after she left her job, but quickly realized she wanted to work from home. Her breakthrough came when, through a real estate broker who was helping her find a home, she learned about the then-emerging field of being a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant, often called a VA, is an administrative support professional who works remotely for clients, communicating by phone, email or videoconference.

That type of work sounded appealing, and she jumped into serving other real estate agents. She eventually started offering training and coaching to counterparts who were newer to the field, showing them how to master the business side of their work. After lots of experimenting, she hit the $500,000 mark by May of this year, up from about $300,000 for 2018. She celebrated hitting the half-million milestone by buying a Peloton bike and paying for it in full.

Based on current sales, Goughenour, now 62, projects $1 million in revenue for 2019 at Expert VA Training, her profitable business in the greater St. Louis area. Even better she can run it from a rustic cabin in the Missouri Ozarks, where she lives with her husband Tom and two Golden retrievers and enjoys visits from her six grandchildren.

“When I gave my notice, never did I even think I’d run a million-dollar business,” says Goughenour. “Women my age haven’t had many role models who spoke up and said, ‘Look at what I’ve accomplished. You can do it, too.’”

Goughenour is one of a growing number of Americans who are on their way to creating million-dollar, one-person businesses—or already breaking the $1 million mark. There were 36,984 nonemployer firms—those with no paid employees except the owners—bringing in $1 million to $2.49 million a year in 2017, up 2% from 36,161 in 2016, according to Census Statistics released June 27. That tally rose 38% from 2011, when there were 26,744. Most of these businesses are solo operations, but some are family businesses and partnerships.

Why do these statistics matter? Like Goughenour, many people realize that corporate life, once a path to economic security, isn’t what it once was and comes with stress that ultimately becomes intolerable. However, leaping into solo entrepreneurship is often hard for them. Many struggle because they don’t realize they need to make at least 130% of their old salary, if not more, to approximate their compensation package, due to the cost of benefits. And even if they do realize it, they don’t yet know how to break into the higher revenue categories.

Fortunately, the new Census data on high-revenue, nonemployer firms shows that many businesses have more revenue potential than the owners may recognize at first. The more we learn about how solo entrepreneurs are breaking $1 million—which, after taxes, often leaves them with a high six-figure take-home income—the more it will be possible for others to replicate their success.

Here’s how Goughenour built her successful business.

Make the most of your professional experience. After giving advice on website marketing to her real estate broker, and helping him improve his website, the broker told her something that would be life changing At that time in 2001, the real estate industry was an early adopter in using VAs, and many agents were looking for exactly the type of help she gave him.

Goughenour began doing free marketing training at local real estate agencies, then branched out into webinars to expand her reach. That helped her find work creating web content, such as blogs, for many agents.

“Blogging is really important to the success of their marketing,” she says— Goughenour created a membership site where they could access 20 blog posts a month that they could easily customize for their market and post on their websites.

Getting started was not easy. Internet speeds weren’t what they are today back then. “It was like the pioneer days,” she recalls.

But Goughenour was determined to build a six-figure business and applied herself to figuring out the logistics. Within a few years, she had 70 clients.

The business did well, but writing all of the real estate blogs ended up being exhausting. “You can’t imagine how burned out I was by writing blog posts,” she says. When someone approached her to partner on the subscription site, the Lead Booster Club, she ended up selling it to the potential partner in 2012.

Don’t be afraid to pivot. Meanwhile, in 2010, Goughenour shifted her focus to offering both administrative and marketing services to authors, speakers, trainers and coaches. Within the first month, the practice filled up.

As she grew the business, Goughenour narrowed her focus to mainly serving professional speakers. She learned through experimenting that fiction writers, an early target group, often lacked the budget or inclination to hire a virtual assistant. Nonfiction writers, though in a stronger position financially, didn’t gravitate toward hiring a virtual assistant as much as she expected, either.

Successful speakers, however, had the budgets to invest, wrote books on a regular basis and needed help promoting them. They turned out to be ideal customers. Her success in working with them showed her the importance of focusing on the right market.

“One of the first things you have to look at is ‘Do they have the money to spend for a well-paid VA?” she says. “Do they want to—do they see the value in paying for it? And do they have an ongoing need? Those are the three things I suggest people look at.”

Know when to outsource. Over the years as her client roster grew, Goughenour knew she needed help to maintain the level of quality she was delivering. She began subcontracting work to five other VAs referred to her by friends and contacts from her corporate career, training them in the processes she used and designating one with excellent organizational skills as their project manager.

It was then that she discovered how much she enjoyed guiding other VAs. “I fell in love with helping other women who were in the same position I was, not having people see their value,” she says.

Leverage what you’re learning. In 2008, Goughenour decided to turn her training system for subcontractors into an online course, offered at ExpertVATraining.com. The idea was to teach professionals to launch their own home-based VA businesses.

Goughenour had found that running a VA business could be very profitable. All someone needed to start up was a computer, a phone and the necessary software to serve clients. However, many of those who started the businesses, who were primarily women, sold themselves short by making mistakes such as undercharging or not setting boundaries with clients, she discovered.

“Women are so giving,” says Goughenour. “They really want to help.”

By showing her students how to manage their businesses in more profitable ways, such as delivering premium services for which they could command higher pay, she was certain she could make an impact. “I’m teaching them to become the 1%—the best there is,” she says.

The course took off. Today, the six-month program, her base offering, sells for $7,500, which the VAs can pay in monthly installments. It includes weekly Zoom meetings with Goughenour —to which she often wears tiaras and other quirky headgear—and one-on-one coaching, with unlimited email access to the coach. The message of her marketing for this and other services is, “What one woman can do, another can do.”

She carefully vets the VAs prior to enrollment, to make sure they are already running their businesses in a serious and focused way and can benefit from her help. “I don’t bring on anyone who can’t grow three times faster than they are now,” she says. Typically, that means turning away 25% of applicants.

Goughenour has worked with a business coach, Jennifer Kem, who is helping her to embrace the mindset of “progress, not perfection” to grow her business.

In response to demand from existing customers who wanted more extensive programs, Goughenour has added a Certified Virtual Expert program, which indicates to clients the VAs have earned additional credentials. It costs $67 a month to participate and maintain the credential. On the higher end, she has offered a one-year mastermind, which costs $15,000 a year, with 14 people currently enrolled, and an Elite Expert mastermind, which costs $25,000 and has six people enrolled.

One area of emphasis is directing her students into specialties. Many don’t realize that while a general VA generally can’t bill for more than $25 an hour, a specialist in an area such as social media marketing can earn $150 to $200 an hour, she says.

Identify your core customer. Goughenour has found that her program resonates particularly well with women in the 40-to-55-year-old age group, who are ready for a career change and have plenty of energy to build a business. A number of her clients are married to men with disabilities. They need to earn enough income to support a family but also seek the flexibility to manage their family life. One woman who posted on Goughenour’s Facebook page recently shared a story of losing her job as she juggled medical appointments for both her husband and child, who each have health challenges. She started a VA business to survive economically. “In just a few months, she has made more working from home per month than she did in that job,” says Goughenour.

Goughenour creates online activities that help bring her clients together, such as a “show-and-tell,” where they share things from their lives, whether it’s the latest scarf they’ve knit, a cake they’ve baked or a great story of their grandchildren. “I’m developing a community of women who truly support each other,” says Goughenour.

Now that she is close to an age when many people retire, Goughenour is still going strong in her business. She loves her lifestyle and has no regrets about leaving corporate America. She’s free to laugh and smile all she wants and go to yoga with her friends when she wants, with no career penalties—and she has plenty of reason to be happy. “I love what I do,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like work.”

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How Successful Entrepreneurs Protect Themselves And Their Businesses

As technology advances, so has the number of self-made entrepreneur millionaires. In fact, the NY Post recently reported that the US has more millionaires than Greece has people. In addition, there are said to be 143 tech billionaires around the world, and half of them live in Silicon Valleyalone. Technology has been steadily increasing and continued improvements are allowing businesses to grow globally and come up with creative ways to make a profit.

While innovations have made the online business world more accessible, offering resources and business possibilities not previously available, they have also increased the risk associated with being a publicly known entrepreneur. As entrepreneurs increase their success and financial worth, the risk of financial and even physical harm can also increase.

According to FBI statistics, CEO fraud is now a $12 billion scam. And when private information about these high-profile individuals is exposed online, it carries a high degree of risk for both the individual and their business – not to mention threats against the physical security of the executives and their families.

While wealth and asset possession can make entrepreneurs more vulnerable to risks such as theft, entrepreneurs at all stages are at risk of security breaches and intellectual property theft. And this isn’t just limited to high-profile entrepreneurs. Those who do not publicly share their salaries or company sales, can still be targets in today’s digital world where anything can be researched and discovered.

Let’s looks at a few ways that successful entrepreneurs can protect themselves.

Protect Against Cyber-Attacks

“Digital breaches can cause significant financial damage, which is why protecting against this threat is a necessary step all entrepreneurs and executives should take to protect themselves, their families, and their assets,” says Dan Schoenbaum, RiskIQ president and COO. The company’s Executive Guardian software tracks what potential attackers can find about a company’s executives online and protects executives against cyber attacks.

Leaders within an organization are particularly vulnerable to attack, with C-level executives being 12 times more likely to fall victim to security incidents than last year.

The threat has become significant, for example, Facebook’s board recently approved a $10 million annual allowance for Zuckerberg to pay for personnel, equipment, and services needed to keep his family safe.

Minimize Legal Exposure

Protecting your online business from legal action is an essential part of its overall success. This includes taking the necessary steps to ensure that your business is legally compliant and that business is conducted in ways that will minimize exposure to any legal issues.

The Better Business Bureau Standards for Trust can be a good source of knowledge and provides selling and customer service practices that enhance customer trust and confidence in business.

Protect Ideas And Intellectual Property

Most tech businesses are built on intellectual property. And the most valuable parts of a growing tech business are the ideas and innovations behind it, whether that be technological innovation, your brand, or even an advertising slogan.

While physical assets are obviously in need of protection, so are your enterprise’s intangible assets. While physical assets may make up most of your company’s visible value, it’s the intangible assets that allow you to remain competitive and unique.

There are a number of ways to protect your intellectual property, including copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Trademarks are most typically used for logos or other types of branding, and copyrights protect original pieces of work (such as a jingle used during an ad). Patents are more complicated and difficult to obtain as they must meet certain government guidelines, but are typically granted for inventions.

For e-commerce businesses specifically, conducting regular IP audits can allow your business to maintain awareness of the IP rights it owns and any related risks and opportunities. Protecting intellectual property is as important and provides as much value as protecting any other asset within a company.

While setting up an online business is getting easier, it is getting more difficult for entrepreneurs to protect themselves and their assets. One data breach or an instance of intellectual property theft can do major damage to a business. But taking precautionary steps can combat this possibility, improving both personal and organizational security for entrepreneurs.

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One Mistake Led This Entrepreneur To Build A $3.5 Billion Business

Kristo Käärmann is the co-founder and CEO of TransferWise. A fintech startup that has gone from bootstrapping to saving users over $1 billion a year when transferring money.

By tackling a common problem and taking action on it, Käärmann and his co-founder, Taavet Hinrikus, have gone from zero to a multi-billion dollar business in just a few years.

Kristo recently appeared as a guest on the DealMakers Podcast. During the interview, he shared his journey, his experience raising $400 million from some of the most respected investors, and how he created a global business that is disrupting the status quo.

Learning to Code

Kristo Käärmann was born and raised in Estonia during the days of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t until the late 80s, early 90s when they saw the first personal computers.

As a kid, he first got his hands on a Spectrum – Zedd X. Later it was a Commodore on which he wrote his first pieces of code. From there he was inspired to get his college degree in mathematics and computer science.

It was then that Käärmann followed the path I’ve seen many successful startup founders take. He went to work as a consultant with PwC.

Why Being a Rockstar at Spreadsheets Isn’t Enough

Having freshly broken away from the Soviet Union, the oldest company in Estonia at the time was only about 15 years old.

Desiring to gain the insights of more mature companies, Kristo moved to London in 2007 to work as a management consultant with Deloitte. There he got to see inside the machine of 100-year-old companies.

As for his take on why consultants end up making good founders, he shared that “When you’re starting up a new business, you have to be organized. Consultants are usually good at organizing and structuring the work to get things done fast.”

Within the first year of launching Transferwise, the volumes they were processing very quickly outran what spreadsheets can handle. At this scale, the work is more databases, code, and industrializing.

The benefits of being organized are clearly very useful in the entrepreneurial journey, especially when everything has to run like clockwork. It is clearly an advantage in any startup set on achieving scale.

The Billion Dollar Mistake

When Kristo met his co-founder Taavet, who was also one of the first hires at Skype, they shared a similar problem.

Kristo’s challenge was that he had a great salary in the UK, but his savings account was still back in Estonia. He found he was actually losing money through the transfer due to an exorbitant amount of bank fees. To get into specifics, he was losing about 500 euros.

He thought it would cost him 12 pounds to make the transfer. What he didn’t know was that his bank was using an exchange rate that was 5% less than you see on Reuters, Bloomberg, or any other website. Those 12 pounds aren’t really how banks make their money. It’s about the fees that are hidden in the exchange rate. This was his mistake.

Taavet had the exact opposite problem. He was moving money from Estonia to London. He was still paid in euros into his Estonia bank account, but his living expenses were all in pounds.

After these cofounders shared their frustrations with how banks were handling their transfers, they decided to come up with a solution. TransferWise was born.

They launched in January 2011 with a simple blog post on TechCrunch. They immediately got a ton of mail from people around the world. Many saying, “Hey, we had exactly the same idea with my friends back in university, but we never did anything with it. We never really built it into a product.”

TransferWise started in 2011 making payments between the UK and eurozone. People in the UK could send money to Europe, and people in the eurozone could send money to the UK. That was it.

Six months after launching they were doing 800 transactions a week. Now they’re moving about $5 billion across the border, across 1,600 different currency routes, moving through 70 different jurisdictions, with different local regulations and local banking systems. They are now servicing 5 million customers around the world.

Startup Fundraising

Right away, these two co-founders knew the challenge they were solving was much bigger than the two of them. So, they went out to hire a great team.

They began by bootstrapping and were paying the salaries of early employees from their own salaries and savings.

Raising money in Europe in late 2011 was really hard. They wasted more time on it than they wanted.

Eventually, they flew to New York and raised a seed round of $1.3 million from IA Ventures. The seed round had a big impact on helping them put everything together.

To date, they’ve raised around $400 million with a $3.5 billion valuation from Sir Richard Branson, Max Levchin, SV Angel, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Kima Ventures, IVP, Sapphire Ventures, IA Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, or Valar Ventures to name a few.

Valar Ventures was cofounded by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

The Danger Of Perfection

Today, Kristo’s one piece of business advice for other early-stage entrepreneurs is not to waste time. He says at TransferWise they spent six months deliberating the idea, whether to launch and polishing version one. He says, “we definitely did overthink this in the beginning.”

Many times, you just want to have the perfect product, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing like having it on the market and being able to listen to your customers and optimize as you go.

Kristo‘s recommendation to other entrepreneurs is to spend the early days thinking about how to build a product that customers want, and that the customers are willing to pay for. Once you have that, then investors are going to come running to you.

Listen in to the full podcast episode or check out the transcript to hear Kristo’s take on:

Turning frustrations into billion dollar companies

Raising capital from the best

How to think about building teams for startups

Digital currencies

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How To Go From Freelancer To Entrepreneur

Thinking about turning in your resignation letter so you can be your own boss? You’re not alone. Many Americans are saying goodbye to their traditional 9-5 jobs in favor of freelancing. Statistics show that the gig economy is not going away any time soon. One study revealed that an estimated 43% of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers by 2020. It’s not surprising since freelancing allows you to choose when you work, where you work and what clients you work with. You are the one steering your career. But isn’t that the same as an entrepreneur? Is there a difference? According to Seth Godin (who considers himself a freelancer) there is. Godin says,

Freelancers get paid for their work. If you’re a freelance copywriter, you get paid when you work. Entrepreneurs use other people’s money to build a business bigger than themselves so that they can get paid when they sleep.”

As a freelancer, there is a limit to how much you can grow your client base, and only so much you can reasonably charge for your time. It’s just not scalable. If what you want is to take the next step and go from freelancer to entrepreneur, here are some important shifts you will need to consider.

Develop a growth mindset

To survive and thrive as an entrepreneur, you need a growth mindset. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck explains that, “The attitude we bring to our daily activities can play a large role in shaping and extending the ways we utilize our innate talents.” People with a growth mindset possess a love of learning and view failure as a gift. As a freelancer, you are limited because you are essentially exchanging time for money. You are the business, and there are only so many hours in the day. As an entrepreneur, it will be necessary to focus on creating systems and automation that can operate without your direct involvement. You will ask yourself questions like: How many customers did we land this month? How many email subscribers do we have? Is it time to hire more employees? Looking at the long-term view is also essential to ensure growth—like establishing yearly revenue goals and multi-year forecasts.

Become a master juggler

When you’re a freelancer, it’s apparent what your priorities are. You have projects, clients and deadlines. Once you go from freelancer to entrepreneur, there are a myriad of other activities that you will become involved in.

Suddenly you are the accountant, marketer, graphic designer, blog writer, video editor and much more. Entrepreneurship will make it necessary for you to practice ruthless prioritization. It’s virtually impossible to focus on every aspect of the business all of the time. What great entrepreneurs do is they establish a ruthless prioritization filter, and if the activity doesn’t meet the established criteria, they don’t focus on it. One approach is laid out by author and entrepreneur Grant Cardone in his book The 10X Rule. Cardone offers a blueprint for how leaders can take “massive action” instead of behaving like everyone else and settling for average results. To apply this mindset, the next time you are faced with a difficult decision, ask yourself: Is this going to propel the company by a factor of 10? If the answer is yes, Cardone recommends doubling down on that activity. Once you know the project is a game-changer, it’s worth investing more of your time and energy to maximize results.

Hire people to help you

It’s not possible to build a scalable business by yourself. As a freelancer, you may have gotten used to working solo most of the time. As an entrepreneur, you will need to hire people to help you if the business is going to grow beyond a certain point. Having a team will enable you to delegate projects and have a support network so you can focus on more important activities. It is also impossible to be an expert at everything. Hiring employees will allow you to find people that can fill in the gaps where you require specialized expertise. Instead of spending your time delivering the service, your time will be spent on creating processes, strategizing and expanding the business.

Get comfortable saying no

As an entrepreneur, learning to say no is crucial because it can mean the difference between success and failure. When you start your business, you may want to pursue every opportunity that presents itself. This approach will work for a while until you become overloaded and experience burnout.

Entrepreneurial success is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s more about working smart than working hard. That makes how you manage your time extremely critical. As Warren Buffett says, “Really successful people say no to almost everything.” Reserve your energy for the activities that will truly move your business forward. When you say no to things that aren’t a number one priority, you are saying yes to your long-term dream.

Going from freelancer to entrepreneur can be a natural shift if you are prepared and approach it thoughtfully. While it may be scary at first, the magic happens outside of your comfort zone. Are you ready to accept the challenge?

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Why entrepreneurship is important and how to avoid entrepreneurial burnout

When you hear the word “entrepreneur” a number of images probably flash before your eyes. Depending on your upbringing and experience, you’ll either see an enterprising young go-getter or smarmy old moneybags. But there is a middle ground to be found between Elon Musk and Donald Trump and being an entrepreneur is more about being a businessman, it’s about being a business leader that knows when to switch off before they burn out.

The early years

In the early years of any business, everything is fresh and exciting and everyone on board will have their fingers in a number of different pies. If a business isn’t moving, it’s shrinking, after all. However, as scaling occurs and the workforce expands, it makes sense for workers that once diversified by necessity to specialize in what they’re good at. Including you. This is what sets an entrepreneur apart. They know where their skills lie and they know when to step in and when to take a backseat.

According to Vistage chair Jo MacSween, it’s important to have the “honesty, humility and vulnerability to admit what you know and what you don’t know.” This means recognizing when it’s time to rely on others to help you develop new leadership skills, take over daily activities and offer valuable insight.

Taking charge

In the first few years of a business, after that first Liberis loan has started to sink in and you’re starting to take stock, it’s typical for the business leader to be in charge of everything and that’s also something that requires entrepreneurial skills. This can also prove beneficial in certain areas. In recruitment, for example, entrepreneurs are generally very savvy when it comes to discovering great talent. However, nobody can build an empire alone and at a certain point, you’re going to need to step back from the hiring process.

Marketing is another sector that entrepreneurs often feel the need to gravitate towards and micromanage, but this is one area where it’s best to bring in expert help as soon as possible. A good marketer can identify new opportunities, find ways to generate quality leads and improve conversion rates. Marketing and sales are the key pillars of growth in any business and whilst you might be an expert salesman, it’s unlikely that you’re equally as adept as a marketer.

Super leaders

In a culture that puts such a high premium on individual achievements, it can be difficult for ‘super leader’ entrepreneurs to understand that the top-down, micromanagement approachcan hinder growth.

However, as the leader’s personal and professional lives begin to merge and they start to alienate everyone around them, the negative effects of taking on too much will eventually start filtering down into the rest of the company. If you can’t learn to know when to let go, you run the risk of flying too close to the sun and damaging both your business and your health.

Letting go

Being a great entrepreneur is all about building your brand and building your acumen and then knowing when to let go of it. Letting go is, of course, really about one thing – peace of mind. You need to be confident that your team can do the best job possible without you there to hold their hands. In an investigation into the challenges faced by most modern scale-up businesses, Vistage found that 46% of leaders their greatest challenge was finding a decent work/life balance. If you don’t learn to let go a little, that balance will only drift further and further until it becomes truly unobtainable.

So whilst entrepreneurship is important because it engenders a better work ethic and better results, it’s also often a misunderstood term. Still, without them, the world would never move forward and it would be a much less exciting place.

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Starting a business in Arizona: 10 investment opportunities

If you’re hoping to start your own Limited Liability Company (LLC) or other business entity type, you need to be ready for some adversity. The business landscape has become so competitive in virtually every field, and newcomers who are starting a business need to be ready from day one if they want a fighting chance at claiming their fair share of the market.

Of course, launching a business anywhere has specific challenges based on the demand, customer base, economy and existing competition in your community. Before you commit to any business venture, you need to take stock of which businesses are most likely to succeed. For instance, if you’re starting a business in Arizona, here are 10 business ideas that won’t bog you down with upfront investment costs.

Delivery Services: Convenience has come to the forefront of so many industries, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that companies offering pickup and delivery services are as popular as ever. Even better, this business has incredible flexibility. Work as much or as little as you want. Travel as far as you’re willing, and create any other parameters you need to be comfortable.

Lawn Maintenance and Landscaping: Although Phoenix is the state’s most notable metropolis, Arizona also has a ton of parks, gardens and residences that need landscaping work to maintain their appearance. Beyond some initial equipment, it actually doesn’t take a whole lot of investment to get started with your own landscaping business.

Electrical Repair: Tech and appliance repair are big markets most places given the prevalent role technology now plays in our everyday lives. But Arizona still has a burgeoning market for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to break into this field. You need to have some expertise dealing with devices as well as some basic knowledge. But the barrier to entry is surprisingly low.

Barbers and Stylists: Personal hygiene services are in demand anywhere people live. So if you have the skill set and/or are ready to hire some folks who do, you could start your own hair salon, barbershop or similar venture with little trouble. Like many of the other entries on this list, customers are paying for expertise more than anything else — be sure you have at least that much covered.

Digital Printing: Unlike the other ideas listed here, a digital printing business can be expensive to start up due to the highly specialized equipment it requires. But the potential for profitability is high. It’s also a great opportunity to establish long-term relationships with other businesses, as they may prove to be the foundation for your customer base.

Billboard Advertising: Word of mouth is always an effective way to get people talking about a product or service…but sometimes we need to help it along a bit. That’s where you could come in, offering companies a prime spot to advertise on one of your billboards. Arizona has a ton of high-profile locations available. Because of the potential exposure they offer, billboard companies turn a tidy profit each year.

Gift Basket Preparation: Gift options are so bountiful nowadays that anyone looking to send something special is left with lots of generic options. What about starting a company that creates customized gift baskets tailor-made for each individual? Such a business would be a great way to indulge your creative side and put something positive out into the world at the same time.

Videography: Even though almost everyone now has a video camera on their smartphones, there is still no replacement for professionally made video documentation. Weddings, birthdays and other special moments benefit from greatly being captured with high production value and a creative touch. If you have videography skills or want to learn, this idea has tons of potential, especially in a bustling market like Arizona.

Bakeries and Cake Shops: In tandem with videography, people tend to buy cakes and other special treats to highlight their celebrations no matter the status of the larger economy. You could do the baking yourself or recruit a team of local bakers to work with you. Again, it’s the quality of service that will keep customers coming back, so take great care in the team you assemble.

Party Services: Are you noticing a pattern here? Arizona residents host a ton of parties and other gatherings all year round. You can also define what services your company will provide. Everything from food, drinks, entertainment, lighting and decorations could be included in your service packages. Or you could simply offer to plan parties for your customers as well, at which point you would carry even fewer upfront expenses.

It’s Business Time

Even if the above list doesn’t feature any business ideas that interest you, at least you’re beginning to familiarize yourself with the market you’re about to enter. Research is one of the most vital — and overlooked — elements of starting any kind of business. By giving this article a read, you’re already that much further along in your journey to educate yourself and maximize your business venture’s chances of long-term success.

Another way to give your business a leg up is by working with Incfile. Our mission is to ensure that your company has the guidance and knowledge to prepare for the challenges that lie ahead. Before you take another step toward starting your Arizona business, reach out to discover how we can help. Check out our website and get started today.

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Eva Amurri Martino on starting her own business and what she learned about career from her Oscar-winning mom

Actress and lifestyle blogger Eva Amurri Martino sits down with Yahoo Finance’s Jen Rogers to talk about stepping away from acting to start her own business. She reveals what she learned about money from her husband…what she didn’t learn about money from her mom, Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon…and her worst job ever.

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What Are The Most Important Skills You Need To Start A Business?

What are the most important skills founders need before they start a business? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Answer by Alex Solomon, CTO and Co-Founder of PagerDuty, on Quora:

I’ve seen lots of patterns of successful founders with a variety of skill sets, so I don’t think there’s a single right answer to this question. In my case, all three PagerDuty founders started out as engineers, building the original PagerDuty product. Having a strong technical background — meaning being able to build and run the product — was key for us. In addition to that, even though none of us had any formal product management experience, we were all fairly product oriented. We all spoke to customers or potential customers to understand their problems and combined this with our own sense of where the product should be headed to form a cohesive product vision and direction.

In addition to this, we all had a few years of experience at an established company, Amazon. There, we learned a lot about how to build and run production systems, how to hire engineers, and about devops (Amazon was one of the pioneers of devops). Our time at Amazon led to us coming up with the original idea for PagerDuty.

To sum it up, for us, the most important skills we had before starting PagerDuty were:

A solid founding team of friends that trusted each other.

The engineering and product management skills needed to design, build and run a product.

Work experience at an established company which led to us coming up with the idea for PagerDuty.

Everything else we learned on the job.

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Avoid These 4 Big Reasons Small Businesses Fail

According to the SBA Office of Advocacy, the vast majority of new companies fail within their first 18 months of operation. Only 50 percent of all businesses make it to the five-year mark, and only 33 percent make it to their 10th anniversary. Surprisingly, the failure rate of small businesses hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years, either.

As a small business owner myself who helps other business owners save on their credit card processing fees, I have thousands of clients who fall into the small business category. And, over my seven years in business, I’ve seen my fair share of busts.

In my experience, here are the four most common reasons small businesses fail:

1. Lack of Sufficient Capital or Addressable Market

This one’s pretty obvious. According to a study of 101 small business failures by CB Insights, the most common reason that businesses fail is that there was no market need (42 percent of respondents). The second most common reason for failure? Lack of sufficient capital (29 percent).

When you think about it, these two reasons for failure are two sides of the same coin. If you run out of money, you can’t be in business. And what’s the easiest way to run out of money short of misspending it? Not having any customers because no one needs what you’re selling.

2. Lack of Differentiation and Poor Marketing

How do otherwise “regular” business owners gain a competitive edge? By branding and marketing themselves well. Even if there’s nothing super unique Aabout your business, the way you present it can make or break your chances of success.

While there’s a lot of talk about people having attention spans shorter than goldfish nowadays, as reported by Time, you actually have as many as 15 seconds to make a good first impression before a visitor leaves your website.

How do you take the most advantage of those 15 seconds and ensure a potential customer keeps coming back to your website? Employ good branding and cross-channel marketing to ensure you show up in front of your leads consistently and at the right time.

3. Hiring the Wrong People and Firing Them Too Slowly

One of the biggest mistakes all small business owners have made (myself included) is to hire people for the wrong reasons, and then take way too long to fire them. By the time you realize that they really aren’t cut out for the job, you’re already attached and you feel bad letting them go. So, you put it off — and before you know it, you’ve sunk six figures into a bad employee.

This is always a mistake. According to the U.S. Department of Labor and reported by HR Exchange Network, the average cost of a bad hire is at least 30 percent of their first-year salary. In other words, a bad mid-level hire who makes $75,000 per year will cost you $25,000 and who knows how much wasted time. Let them go.

4. Growing Too Quickly and Spending Too Much Too Soon

One of the most surprising reasons small businesses fail? They became too successful too quickly, and then their risk assessment skills go right out the window.

These bright startups have a predictable trajectory — parabolic growth accompanied by VC investments, rapid expansion and brand extension (i.e., selling more and more stuff). Then, after flatlining for a period of time, they run out of cash in a spectacular crash and burn cycle.

According to Startup Genome, 74 percent of high-growth startups fail due to premature scaling. And, depending on who you ask, scaling too soon too quickly can actually be a predictor of failure. This really isn’t that surprising. Anytime anything goes parabolic, the law of markets comes into play — just as with stocks, what goes up must eventually come down.

How many of these mistakes are you making?

Although I’m three years away from hitting my 10-year anniversary as a business owner and making seven figures per year, I’ll be the first to admit that I have made all of these common business mistakes several times. In fact, I still make some of them today.

Ask yourself, “How many of these mistakes am I making?” Answer as honestly as you can. Then do something about it. Tomorrow is a brand new day.

Aleksey Nugid is the CEO of Nadapayments. He helps businesses that accept credit cards get the best rates possible.

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Where to Stay, Play and Invest in Kansas City

With a population of just under 500,000, Kansas City, Mo. is a Midwestern mecca of art, culture and business. So Worth is bringing you some of the most interesting businesses, hotels, restaurants and attractions in KC.

BUSINESS

KC TECH COUNCIL

KC Tech Council is on a mission to make Kansas City the top tech hub in the region. The organization also hosts conferences and retreats covering topics within the technology sector. 1828 Walnut St., 3rd floor, [email protected], 816.895.2820, kctechcouncil.com

KANSAS CITY STARTUP VILLAGE

After being selected as the first U.S. Google Fiber city, Kansas City, Kan., attracted startups in droves for its ultra high-speed internet. This influx spawned Startup Village, which provides office space, community and Google Fiber service to about 25 companies in a range of industries. Kansas City Startup Foundation, the entrepreneurship-focused Kauffman Foundation and Sprint are all supporters. kcstartupvillage.org

KCRISE FUND

Launched in early 2016, this investment fund raises money from local investors and helps connect area entrepreneurs to prominent VCs. When those VCs make an investment, KCRise matches 20 percent of the amount with local funds—an effort designed to help risk-averse locals invest in their community. Darcy Howe, who spent 30 years in the Merrill Lynch private banking and investment group and is now an angel investor, helms the fund. KCRise has raised $19 million so far. kcrising.com

HOTELS

CROSSROADS HOTEL

Located in what was once the Pabst Brewing Depot, this luxury hotel offers 131 rooms and suites. After settling in, grab a drink and play a game of bocce at the rooftop bar, Percheron, or indulge in an Italian candlelit dinner at Lazia Restaurant. 2101 Central St., 866.531.2400, crossroadshotelkc.com

THE FONTAINE

Formerly Hotel Sorella, The Fontaine houses 132 rooms, nine suites and a presidential suite. The hotel attracts guests for its rooftop pool and rooftop restaurant, Parker. 901 W. 48th Pl., 816.753.8800, thefontainehotel.com

THE RAPHAEL HOTEL

This Italian Renaissance Revival-style building was rebranded as the Raphael Hotel in 1975. The boutique property completed an extensive renovation to its 126 rooms and suites in 2010. Raphael’s restaurant, Chaz on the Plaza, offers regional cuisine. 325 Ward Pkwy, 816.756.3800 raphaelkc.com

RESTAURANTS

FRESHWATER

Reopened in 2018 after a car accident caused the restaurant to close, Freshwater serves up an ever-changing menu of small, shared and large plates, as well as a 10-course tasting menu, both of which highlight local farmers and ingredients. The restaurant’s executive chef, Calvin Davis, earned a James Beard Award nomination for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2019. 3711 Summit St., 816.820.0296, freshwaterkc.com

ARTHUR BRYANT’S

A local fixture since the 1920s, Arthur Bryant’s has perfected burnt ends, the BBQ dish named for the end pieces of brisket that are more bark than meat, tossed with K.C.-style barbecue sauce (tomato-based and sweetened with molasses). Go hungry and prepared to wait. 1727 Brooklyn Ave., 816.231.1123, arthurbryantsbbq.com

BLUESTEM

Husband-and-wife co-owners Colby and Megan Garrelts celebrated Bluestem’s 10th anniversary with a major renovation in 2014. Winner of the James Beard Award for best chef in the Midwest in 2013, Bluestem was nominated for outstanding restaurant in 2015 through 2018 and won Outstanding Chef in 2019. 900 Westport Rd., 816.561.1101 bluestemkc.com

THE MAJESTIC RESTAURANT

Eat a strip steak and listen to live music at the Majestic Restaurant, housed in a former saloon downtown. Reserve a table on the lower level, which was a speakeasy during Prohibition and has live jazz performances every night. 931 Broadway Blvd., [email protected], 816.221.1888, majestickc.com

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Google Launches New SMB Initiative

Officials said Google for Small Business will serve as a portal for the tech giant’s SMB-facing tools and services.

SMBs will be able to establish a list of customized actions to boost their online presence.

Along with online services, Google for Small Business will help entrepreneurs find local, in-person workshops.

One of the largest corporations has released another tool to help small businesses grow, with Google officially launching its Google for Small Business initiative yesterday. Touted by officials as a way for the tech giant to help entrepreneurs and small business owners reach their goals, the effort is the latest in Google’s recent series of SMB-related efforts.

Unveiled at the Grow with Google Learning Center in New York City, officials called Google for Small Business a way to help fledgling businesses “grow and thrive” on the web.

“I’ve had the opportunity to get to know many small business owners … [and] most of them tell me that they need help saving time at work, or that they need easy tools to help them promote their business,” said Kim Spalding, Google’s global product director of small business ads. “The internet has created new opportunities for small businesses, but it can be hard to know where to start.”

Launching the initiative on International Small Business Day, Spalding said Google for Small Business is her team’s contribution to help SMBs “find the right Google tools and services to reach your business goals.”

How Google for Small Business works

When starting a new business, most entrepreneurs focus on practical necessities like finding a space to rent or procuring products to sell; there’s a long list of things to do. But one of the things they often neglect, according to Google, is their online presence. Since learning the ins and outs of digital marketing takes time – and often money – officials said Google’s latest offering should help bridge the gap.

Once on the site, business owners are asked for basic information about their business, including its name and web address, though neither are required to start. After that, the service asks what the business’s primary goal is and where it serves its customers. Based on these responses, the website generates a personalized to-do list to bolster a small business’s online presence. You can have the list emailed to you for future use.

Business owners looking for in-person assistance with their online efforts can use Google for Small Business to find free, local Grow with Google workshops.

Google’s continued support of small businesses

This launch is the latest in a line of SMB-related moves by the tech giant. Last month, Google released CallJoy, its cloud-based, AI-driven phone system that handles incoming customer calls with a virtual customer service agent. At that time, it was available on an invite-only basis. The service has since begun accepting a broader base of users, even offering a 14-day free trial to anyone who wants to try it out.

Earlier this year, the Mountain View, California-based company rolled out its free Google My Business service. With that tool, small business owners can create an online profile, allowing them to actively contribute to the information shown about their business across Google’s products.

Last year, Google launched Smart Campaigns as part of its effort to rebrand its AdWords property. Smart Campaigns uses machine learning to help small businesses optimize their online ad efforts to increase customer interaction.

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How To Manage Your Cash Flow as a Solo Entrepreneur

The life of a solo entrepreneur sounds appealing: You get to do things your way and set your own schedule. You know your success or failure is fully due to your efforts. But there are downsides, too, such as a lack of institutional support — and, of course, finding your own health insurance.

One of the challenges many would-be solopreneurs overlook is cash flow. When you — the owner of a single-person business — stop working, your cash flow is often reduced to zero. But you also don’t want to feel like you can’t take a day off: What’s the point of the freedom to set your own schedule if you can’t actually enjoy it?

Finding ways to manage cash flow should be a top priority for solo businesspeople. Fortunately, there are a few ways to do this:

1. Pinpoint the Source

Cash flow problems come in many flavors. Take a look at your books: Are you simply not making enough sales? Try investing in a lead-tracking tool. If you have enough accounts, is your typical transaction smaller than you thought it would be? Upselling existing customers may be your best bet.

For a surprising number of small businesses, though, the issue is that their accounts simply aren’t paying on time. Intuit data published earlier this year showed that a third of U.S. small-business owners have more than $20,000 in outstanding receivables. Further, 31% of small-business owners across the U.S., U.K., Australia, India and Canada wait a month or more to get paid by their customers. Although relationship-building can help, a different payment model may be in order.

2. Rethink Your Payment Model

If the same accounts are late to pay each month, consider switching to a subscription model. In an Insights by Stanford Business interview last year, Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo argued that every business will soon be subscription-based, a model that’s grown by 100% per year in recent years.

Why are subscriptions so popular these days? DealMachine CEO David Lecko said in Born2Invest that the reason is twofold: The subscription model decreases the consumer’s barrier to entry by reducing his upfront cost, and it gives the provider a more predictable revenue stream. In effect, subscription companies never start a month with no cash flow.

3. Shorten Your Invoicing Cycle

What if you’ve got a subscription product but are still struggling to collect payments? Try sending invoices more often. In his payments guide for freelancers, Brennan Dunn suggested that solopreneurs invoice their clients once a week or more. Although that might sound like overkill, especially if you’re used to sending monthly invoices, it’s a good way to put pressure on late payers.

Remember, most companies work on Net 30 terms. If you invoice once a month, you have to wait up to 60 days before you can consider an invoice outstanding. Not only do you get paid every 37 days (or fewer) when you switch to weekly invoicing, but your invoices will also pile up much faster. Multiple outstanding invoices get attention from corporate accountants in a way that a single delinquent invoice simply doesn’t.

4. Get a Carrot and a Stick

Speaking of getting accountants’ attention, penalties and incentives are great ways to promote regular payments. Accountants might ignore a begging email, but they won’t when money is on the line. Start with perks before sharpening your stick for persistent nonpayers.

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Six Steps To Get Your Startup Business Off The Ground

Want to validate your startup business idea? Here’s how you can go about implementing this, as well as crush the market with your idea, in six steps:

Step 1: Believe in your idea

If you don’t genuinely believe in what it is that you are doing, there is no way that your business idea can succeed. According to The Oxford Dictionary, the term belief is defined as “an acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.” The importance of having belief in your startup idea is that it will reinforce your confidence throughout the times when the market won’t accept your offer, which will then be a shield of defense towards your self-doubt. Belief in your startup idea will overthrow any form of external influenced self-doubt.

Self-doubt isn’t something that comes with the initial thinking of the idea phase, it’s something that comes later on, once the market starts to reject what it is that you offer. Understand that specific market segments will reject what you have to offer, but you need to persevere throughout the nonsense, and rely on your belief to then satisfy the market segment that needs your services, because they are out there.

Step 2: Find a solution to a current problem

When I started my sales training academy about two years ago, it was because I noticed one thing: there are so many startup companies out there who are struggling to sell their products, and the reason why is because they are not providing a solution to a current problem.

A lot of companies out there in this generation are struggling to generate new business, because their products are not being sold the way they should be. Throughout the corporate world, products are not being pitched properly, and psychology is not something that is being heavily focused on when it comes to training. Therefore, I created my sales training academy, which is an online sales course that trains individuals in any industry how to sell any product psychologically, whether it be a product or service priced at US$3, or a product or service at $1,000,000.

Whatever product or service it is that you’re looking at entering the current market place with, make sure that the output is a solution to a current market problem. Once you release a product or a startup idea, the markets response will be based on your output, and how effective your product/service can be.

Step 3: Gather perspectives from people who have done it before

With any idea that comes to your mind, allow it to process. Don’t immediately cancel it out, and think that it will not work. If it is a business idea in which you have not worked in, or a field that you do not have expertise in, keep an open mind, and do not be quick to judge. What you need to do is really simple: do not seek perspectives of people who have not done it before, seek the perspectives of individuals in that specific area, experts in that specific field/industry, or someone who has done it before.

What a lot of entrepreneurs do in the early stages is seek the wrong perspectives i.e. their friends, family, or other people that are not considered the correct credible and reliable to source information from. Nine out of 10 times, those individuals will give you the wrong advice, because they don’t know that industry accurately enough to give you the correct feedback. When you seek the perspectives of individuals who have done it before, they will show you the upsides and downsides, as well as explain the challenges you will face as they would have faced them in the past, which will then lead to them explaining how they overcame those specific challenges.

Step 4: Develop a plan

I want you to picture two boats in a large ocean. One boat, say Boat A, has a captain, a full boat crew, and a specific destination in place. The other boat, Boat B, is empty, and does not have anyone in the ship. What do you think is going to happen? Boat A is going to arrive at its destination, because it has a captain steering it in the right direction, whilst the water will take Boat B to wherever the direction of the current is flowing.

Don’t be Boat B- be Boat A. Have a direction, and develop a specific plan as to how you’re going to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. It needs to be a specific step-by-step plan that documents your what’s, why’s, and most importantly, your how’s. This will further reinforce your confidence in your idea, and this will always give you something to work on, on a daily basis, as you will be forced to work towards your specific goal, and your plan will dictate how you’re going to achieve reaching your goal.

Step 5: Stay committed

If you are not committed, you may as well throw in the towel now. Commitment is key in any business, and when it comes to you starting a business, you need to put your blood, sweat, and tears into it. At the end of every tunnel, there is a light, but most people back out of an early startup, because they are influenced by what they see in that tunnel, which is pure darkness. You need to keep working, with the belief that you are going to see the light, and that it is going to happen.

I remember when I first was recording all my videos, and went about launching my sales training academy, there were many times when I said to myself that this is not going to succeed. All of this self-doubt was hitting me, but I did not allow anything to come between me and my goal, because one, I had solid belief in my product, and two, I stayed committed. Now, I have startup businesses all around the world working alongside me, doing the sales training course and increasing sales revenue in their business, strictly because I did not listen to my self-doubt and I stayed committed. If you do the same, nothing can stop you.

Step 6: Think big

Always think big- never think small. Albert Einstein once said, “Logic can take you from A to B, but imagination will take you to places in which you have never been before.” In my book, Your Life Your Business, I wrote, “Don’t be influenced by your surroundings, but be influenced by your imagination.” Always remember that you are one human out of seven billion on this planet- just stop and think about that number. You may be one, but there are so many people out there that are busting for your services, so don’t think about servicing the people within your city or your province, but be willing to service people on the other side of the planet! The internet has made international business so easy to do now- you can generate a sale from your phone in your bed at 4am, if you so wished!

In 1937, Nikola Tesla said, “When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony, we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared to our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”

My fellow entrepreneurial friend, the day that Tesla predicted is here. Get up, change the world, and constantly aim high.

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Why This Serial Entrepreneur Doesn’t See Failure as a Bad Thing

Erik Voorhees is the founder and CEO of ShapeShift, a secure and fast solution for cryptocurrency exchanges. Voorhees has long been a Bitcoin advocate and entrepreneur. Previously, he worked at BitInstant, Coinapult and SatoshiDICE, which was responsible for most of the world’s Bitcoin transactions in 2012 and 2013.

Each week, GOBankingRates sets out to discover what makes the people behind top companies tick. We like to call this series “Best in Business” — and Voorhees really is one of the best. He told us about the challenges of working with cryptocurrency, why he believes budding entrepreneurs need to sink before they swim and ways that you can find (or build) your own dream job, too. Below, find our favorite moments from the story of how Voorhees launched his business.

It All Started With an Epiphany

ShapeShift was definitely an epiphany moment. I realized there was a new way to do an exchange in which the customer wouldn’t have to leave funds on deposit — crypto enables many new types of transactions to work. When I had started SatoshiDICE a couple [of] years earlier, it demonstrated how effective and safe a financial application can be when you aren’t holding onto customer money. This principle carried forward into ShapeShift. The epiphany was in February 2014, and we launched the following July after building the prototype.

To be honest, when we first started it wasn’t really a “company.” It was just a cool financial tool for crypto trading. Once it started gaining significant use and we realized we’d need dedicated engineers, support, marketing, etc., then we turned it into a formal company roughly nine months later. So there were no fears when starting it because there were few expectations.

He’s Faced — and Continues To Face — His Fair Share of Challenges

Since the early days, the biggest challenge has always been regulation. Crypto exists often in a gray area, and just figuring out the nuances of the legal landscape — which has to be done internationally for any crypto company — costs an immense amount of money and time.

There was a period of time in 2017/2018 when we had achieved profitability. That is the ultimate measure of success, to produce more than you have consumed as an organization. We have fallen back below profitability, but have become a much stronger and healthier organization. Now, we’re working to rebuild toward that goal. I’ve become extremely proud of the team here and how adaptable and dynamic our little project has become. Long-term, I’ll consider ShapeShift a “success” when we’ve achieved profitability and at least a billion-dollar valuation for at least a year.

I’ve often lost interest in a project when things get hard or uncertain. I was determined not to do that this time. I’ve kept at it through all conditions, and this perseverance has been immensely rewarding on a personal level.

He Has This Advice for Aspiring Business Owners

Start it and run it into the ground with failure. Then start another, and fail that one. Then fail again and again. After quite a bit of this, you will have learned how to build a business.

Ideas are a dime a dozen, as the saying goes. What matters ultimately is execution more than anything, and execution is hard and complicated and ever-changing.

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Eight Key Factors For Sustainable Small Business Growth

When it comes to small businesses, any type of growth is a victory, whether it’s new followers on social media or increased foot traffic to your store. However, it can sometimes be difficult to achieve sustainable growth—especially in New York City, where new competitors are popping up all the time.

How does a small business create long-term profitability while keeping costs low? We asked a panel of Forbes New York Business Council members to share their key factors for building a steady stream of growth as a Big Apple business owner.

Team Trust

Without trusting your team, there is no way you can scale your operations to increase the volume of your output. If you trust your team to do the job correctly, you can focus on the next growth opportunity, instead of simply taking care of BAU (business as usual) work. – Maurice Harary, The Bid Lab

Deep Market Saturation

I’m a huge believer in going deep versus going wide. I think making sure you’ve saturated your current market is more important than being available in multiple territories/states/countries. You want everyone around to know who you are before moving outward. – Hoda Mahmoodzadegan, Molly’s Milk Truck + F’in Delicious Beverages

Clear Key Performance Indicators

Know your numbers. I have heard this countless times as a business owner. Simple, but of paramount importance. Key performance indicators give you a weekly pulse on key metrics in the business. To track growth, stagnation, or worse, backsliding, these numbers help you adjust on the fly to keep you focused on your goals. If metrics are not lining up with the goal, a shift is required. – Steven Libman, Integrity Capital Group

Cash-Generating Mechanisms

To fund growth, you need cash, but cash is not easy to come by when you’re scrambling to survive as a small business. Therefore, you need to identify and deploy mechanisms to generate that needed cash for product development, new hires, etc. so you don’t stay stagnant. Later you will probably find a few of these mechanisms actually become part of your growth engine as well. Enjoy the ride! – Ching Au, Durabrite, Inc

Hustle

Never stop out-hustling your competition. That “hustle” applies to every area of your small business, from continuous improvement and competitive analysis to upgrading equipment and good old-fashioned work ethic. Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle. – Don Daszkowski, International Franchise Professionals Group – IFPG

No Debt And Minimal Fixed Expenses

In the early days of a startup, funds are low. There is no brand recognition. You are running on nothing but passion and exhilaration. Stay nimble and out of debt. There is no need for a fancy office, staff that you don’t have time to train and leasing expensive things. Start your business and build sustainability by working smart, marketing yourself and putting in extra hours. – Nic Faitos, Starbright Floral Design

A ‘Big Hairy Audacious Goal’

To achieve sustainable growth, it’s important to consider slow growth at first to solidify your concept, processes and procedures and team. Then I’d suggest adopting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG). A BHAG creates sustainable growth because it motivates employees, forces them to get creative and aligns everyone in the company toward one big goal. – Josh Cohen, The Junkluggers

Unit Economics

How much incremental cash do you make with every unit you sell, and how does your cost of acquisition match up? Too many small businesses rarely understand all of the expenses required to acquire a customer, and then deliver the product or service they are selling. You really have to dig into the details and make sure you understand the core profitability of each sale. – Matt Cooper, Skillshare.com

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6 Top Software Solutions For Small Businesses

A small business has to be every bit as streamlined and diverse as a big business if it hopes to succeed these days. That often means that a single person has to wear many hats or that departments need to cross-pollinate ideas and resources. Small businesses certainly aren’t the siloed, specialized machines that many big companies can afford to be, so they need all the help they can get.

Luckily, in the age of automation and business software, there are solutions for small businesses to remain as competitive and streamlined as their larger counterparts. From accounting to sales, from communication to project management, and everything in between, there are tried and tested software solutions available to small business owners.

In this post, let’s look at six such software solutions, each applying to a separate department or business concern, and each top of the line in terms of performance.

Communication: Slack

There’s a reason businesses both big and small have flocked to Slack over the past half-decade. The communication software, developed initially with small businesses in mind, is notable because of its channel-focused approach to intercompany communication. Channel communication allows your company to operate in a more compartmentalized fashion, siloing separate departments, teams, projects, etc. Its intuitive design and easy-to-use interface are another selling point — it doesn’t require any specialized training, just a beginner’s grasp of technology.

Accounting: QuickBooks

Developed by Intuit back in the ’80s and honed over decades, QuickBooks now enjoys its hard-earned status as perhaps the best accounting software on the market. It allows accountants (or is in charge of money) to monitor cash flow, send and accept invoices, track accounts receivable/accounts payable, and prep the company for tax season. QuickBooks is a one-stop shop that — relative to other accounting platforms, which pretty much preclude non-professionals on the basis of how tricky they are to understand — is pretty straightforward and easy to use.

Sales Engagement: VanillaSoft

It used to be that sales departments would rely on their sales development reps (SDRs) to manually choose leads from the CRM, and then manually call them, manually set up a time to follow up, and manually log all the info. It wasn’t just an ineffective use of an SDR’s time, but it resulted in quality leads slipping through the cracks. Thankfully, VanillaSoft put out a simple and effective lead management software that addresses those issues. The software organizes the SDRs’ list of leads in real-time, constantly shuffling the best leads to the top, so SDRs are always working the best possible leads. It then auto-dials the leads and auto-schedules the follow-ups. Sales engagement has never been simpler.

Meeting Management: Fuze

There are countless communication and meeting management platforms out there, often with overlapping capabilities, but Fuze has to be among the best. You can use Slack for the majority of your intercompany communication, but when it comes to more serious meeting management, go with Fuze. While Skype (the leading competitor in the field) is probably easier to use, Fuze is more business-minded, with flexible video conferencing and real-time content sharing. It’s perfect if you have remote employees or clients that you meet with regularly.

Project Management: Trello

Trello is a simple tool, but an effective one. It may not have the wide range of functionality others on this list boast, but its minimalist “board” system for task management is simple to use and simple to track. Trello allows you to create boards for different projects, within which you can list separate cards corresponding to tasks or notes. It’s not expensive nor is it particularly earth-shattering, but as a small business project management tool, it’s on the money.

Hiring: Workable

Without the aid of software, the hiring process can be both protracted and costly. It’s a good ROI therefore to get a hiring management tool. Workable, one of the best hiring/HR tools out there (Workday and BambooHR are strong competitors) helps you with job posting, organizing candidates, communicating among the hiring team, approving candidates, and a lot more. Best of all, it lets you detail a hiring plan, complete with a budget, so that you can monitor spending. Some small businesses unwittingly sink up to $10k into hiring an entry-level position, which is far too much. Know your budget, know what kind of candidate you’re after, and let the software do the heavy lifting.

With these six software solutions in your small business tool belt, you’ll be able to save money, maximize efficiency, and grow your company without losing control of operations.

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