Start, Run, & Grow Your Business

Business Owner’s Guide: Get Organic Traffic to Your Website

In today’s increasingly connected world, your online presence is more important than ever. Having a website & organic traffic flowing to it is key to attracting potential new customers and building a relationship with them—most American consumers are more likely to think that a business is trustworthy if it has a website than if it doesn’t. However, you probably already know that. You’re a savvy business owner ready to conquer the modern market, of course you have your own website! The problem is getting people to see it when they are flooded with billions of Internet pages. Even though paid advertising can get your website in front of more eyeballs, organic traffic is the best way to increase visits to your website without spending too much money. Optimizing your SEO results will help you rank higher on Google’s search engines, which in turn will help you get your website …

Why Entrepreneurs Have to Continually Improve Themselves

As an entrepreneur, most of us are aware that when we put in the effort to improve by forcing ourselves to grow and learn in new and different ways, you will certainly see the benefits. There’s actually nothing very mystical about it because the more you work to change & grow, the better equipped you will be to handle the various challenges presented in life and work. Therefore the more able you will be to have success in your pursuits. As an entrepreneur, self-improvement can benefit you even more than others because constantly learning new skills and innovating for your business is part of the job description. If you’re one who is somewhat resistant to change or who doesn’t have a particularly strong thirst for knowledge, then this article is for you, too. Consider these reasons why continually improving yourself gives you a unique advantage for building a better …

How to Make Sure Your Calls Don’t Get Flagged as “Potential Spam”

Whether you’re running a non-profit that’s looking to connect with potential donors, or you’re a small business owner who wants to let your customers know about a promotion, phone calls are still some of the best ways to get in touch with people. Emails and texts are easy to ignore and talking over the phone makes it easier to build a personal rapport. However, that can only happen if your potential connection picks up the phone in the first place. Since the dawn of mass-market telecommunications, people have been trying to avoid spam calls. The situation has gotten worse over the past few years, and some phone providers are trying to help customers by flagging potential spam calls. Unfortunately, many innocent businesses get caught up in the spam warning system. How can you avoid landing your calls in the dreaded “spam likely” box and actually ensure that your customers will …

8 Basic Reasons Your Small Business Isn’t Growing

Your small business got off the ground. Congratulations! For many people, launching their own business fulfills a long-time dream. Maybe you love the product you sell, or you enjoy building a team, or you just want the freedom to be your own boss. Maybe you plan to turn your enterprise into a family business and leave it as an inheritance for your son or daughter. Whatever your reasons for starting a small business, you deserve a pat on the back for getting yours up and running. Over the next few weeks and months, however, you may start to notice a problem. Your small business isn’t growing. In fact, more money is leaking out than rolling in. Maybe a lot more money. That’s a scary place to find yourself, especially if you owe for a loan or (worse) you’ve mortgaged your property to kick off your idea. Before you start …

How Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd Is Shaking up Gender Norms

You can add Whitney Wolfe Herd, CEO of Bumble to the list of successful entrepreneurs with popular social platforms. However, unlike most of the startup founders in Silicon Valley, Herd is a woman. People often associate tech startups with the male gender. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Joel Simkhai (Grindr), and Sean Rad (Tinder) launched some of the most popular social networks and dating apps. Whitney Wolfe Herd is giving these men a run for their money. Bumble’s initial public offering (IPO) was valued at more than $8 billion just last year. Wolfe Herd launched Bumble in December of 2014 with two former Tinder employees. Just eight years later, it’s the second-most popular dating app in the United States. Over 42 million people actively use Bumble each month to make connections, date, or find new friends. So, what led to the success of Bumble? How is it different …

15 Innovative Ways to Excite Your Customers in 2022

It’s important to always be innovating, actively thinking & growing your business. Customers are a BIG part of any business, so coming up with new ways to excite them is vital to your business’s continued success! 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.. it’s the little things that usually make much more of an lasting impression. Here we provide 15 innovative ways to help you excite your customers in 2022: 1. Organize giveaways Giveaways are a great way to get customers to try your products as well as promote them for a small gift or voucher. Use social media to announce a contest where you can get customers to post, like, tag, or promote your product and offer complete product …

Useful Techniques for Defining Your Brand Identity

Ask ten small business owners to give you a good definition of brand, and you’ll get 12 different answers. Branding is a slippery concept even among the best & brightest entrepreneurs. For all the chatter about the topic on business blogs, much about branding seems elusive, contradictory, impractical, or expensive. Many people don’t think of much beyond their logo & color scheme, something they paid a marketing agency to develop for them a couple of years ago but were never really sure why and then rarely used. The confusion around branding is unfortunate because the concept itself is critical to marketing, sales, and corporate culture as a whole. Let’s add a little clarity to the discussion here. In some cases, the word “brand” refers to a type of product. For example, you could say that Coca Cola owns several brands such as Sprite and Mr. Pibb. Broadly speaking, however, the …

How to Use Your Existing Phones with a Virtual Phone System

Entrepreneurs have a lot of questions on their minds, especially when starting out or scaling up. How will I make payroll? How do I advertise my business? Is my product properly positioned in the market? Even, what’s the best phone system for my business? We’ve been entrepreneurs a long time, and we’d like to help answer some of those. Check out our blog for some great tips for new business owners to help solve the first three questions and others about getting started in business. And as far as phone systems go, well, that’s our business, so we can certainly get you started off on the right foot there, too. We think simple, fast, and easy solutions are the best solutions for entrepreneurs. So we believe that the best business phone system is not a particular make, model, or brand. The best one is the one that works consistently. On …

How to Motivate and Promote Entrepreneur Success

To be effective is also to learn from others who have already accomplished their goals. Having a mentor is an incredible blessing for an entrepreneur, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to find one. The path to a productive entrepreneurship may seem thrilling and full of adventure, but the reality is that being your own boss isn’t easy whatsoever. As they say, with great powers come great responsibilities. Starting a business is one thing, but effectively managing it is quite another that you may need to tackle because each company has to go through its own ups and downs. To this end, a good company depends a lot on how well you can cope with stress and face the obstacles that are inevitably bound to come along. If you don’t know how to get there and stay motivated throughout your journey, here are the top 10 tips to help …

How Spanx CEO Sara Blakely Built a Billion Dollar Business

In 2012, Sara Blakely joined an elite club of just 2,604 people in the world. That year, Forbes crowned her the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, and Sara was welcomed into the world of the Walton family, Carlos Slim, and Warren Buffett. Pretty good for a girl who once failed her audition for the part of Goofy at Disney’s Orlando theme park. It wasn’t the only failure Sara had experienced before she hit the quarter-century mark. In fact, nearly anyone else would have given up on success long ago if they’d faced as many setbacks and disappointments as Sara did. Sara’s story showcases two major themes — failure and grit. As a young woman, Sara got a major dose of both. It wasn’t that she came from a hardscrabble background. In fact, Sara grew up in Clearwater, Florida under an artist mother and a lawyer father. Her failures were her own, …

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