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  More and more people are pouring into the arena of small business to earn the right to call themselves entrepreneurs, but how many of them stay in the game and produce a thriving small business? The title has always had an attractive quality, even more so now, but successful entrepreneurs know the staggering amount of work and sacrifice required is what really defines entrepreneurship.   Entrepreneurs are Like Firefighters without the Glory On a day-to-day basis, a business owner is not coming in for two hours in the morning and letting the team take it from there. In fact, there are owners who run their businesses like that, and they’re the ones who probably won’t be around for very long. Not only will you need to be at work for the whole day and then some, but you’re usually going to be, “putting out fires” the majority of the …

  Technology has enabled us to conduct business way faster and smarter than we ever could before. You’ll find no argument here that technology clearly gives us an advantage; that’s not what’s on the table here. This is about boosting creativity through making small changes in your workflow, methods, and techniques. You may find that setting aside some of the technology you use for your work can release potential for creativity, and even productivity that you could not achieve otherwise.   It Forces the Muscle to Grow The first principle of this philosophy is that applying shock to your brain causes it to adapt by approaching things from a different angle. A good analogy for this principle is how we use weight training for the body. Most of us know that how you build muscle is by literally tearing the muscle tissue during a workout, and then the body adds …

People talk. They always do, and they always have. How you respond to it as a business (if you should respond at all) depends on the nature and severity of what people are saying, and who is saying it. Your response to it should be essentially from two angles, and the first part will probably be painful: Take heed to the comments and actually make some changes, as needed. Then, directly interface with the people who are saying those things to address whatever problems they have with your business. Here is a pretty good action plan for dealing with bad feedback. Step One: Decide to Handle It First and foremost, don’t take the easy way out and just ignore negative comments. Mind you, what I’m referring to here is not just a random, one-off comment from an individual once in a while. You can probably ignore those. What you need …

  If you want to really impress your customers, then you have to give them more than what they usually get from other businesses. It’s not necessarily grand gestures that will get their attention; the little things that prove to them that you’re devoted to taking care of them usually make much more of an impression.   1. Respond to Inquiries Quickly Whether it’s through an email, a phone call, or an in-person meeting, the time it takes you to get back to a customer always makes a huge difference. Most businesses are well aware of this fact, but we can underestimate how positively people respond to it because responding quickly makes someone feel that they matter to you.   2. Prove that You Care About Them Yes, of course you are in business to make money, and even though your customers are aware of that the whole time, they …

Have you had some good success? Been in business for a while? If your business has been doing pretty well for a good amount of time, then you’re likely developing a false sense of security. There aren’t very many scenarios where you will be able to do things the exact same way forever and always be as successful as you are now. This is why the best way to quantify a business, no matter what size it is, is to think of it as a work in progress. Forget Your Past Successes The best way to keep making great strides is to create a great stride and then immediately move past it. Take pride in what you’ve done, learn from it, and put it behind you. It’s really easy to live off of the afterglow from a successful project or even a good decision that turned out pretty well, and …

Think of all the businesses in the world as species of fish in an ocean, and then imagine all of the individual fish within each species. In the current corporate climate, there are more species and families than there have ever been before, filling the ocean with all kinds of colors and types of fish so that it is densely populated. Now imagine your customers as ocean divers who are each searching for the fish that they need. The only way that each diver can pick out the one they are looking for is to recognize a simple, crucial difference that sets it apart from all the other fish in the ocean. Yes, You Need a Differentiator If you’re not familiar with the concept already, then commit this to memory. It doesn’t even matter if you’re entering a completely saturated industry–you can do very, very well, but only if you’ve …

  When a business owner finds that they have a successful small business, they have a tendency to look beyond it and consider opening up another one. That can either turn out to be a massive triumph or a dismal failure; it depends on a variety of factors. The bottom line is that ambitious entrepreneurs should think very carefully about the decision to take a leap into adding another business.   Is it an Emotional Decision? There’s a good chance, when you decide to open another small business, that you don’t realize what your true motivation is for doing it. You will tell yourself that you’ve found another great business model, but it could very well be a subconscious, emotional response to the success of your first business. It behooves you to take a close look at what is motivating this decision because you may find that, rather than creative …