How to Prevent Feeling Overwhelmed as a Business Owner

  Starting your own business is incredibly exciting. When it begins, you’re likely riding the high that comes with quitting the 9-5- grind to go your own way. You hear phrases like “freelancers are the only people who work 60 hours a week for themselves to avoid working 40 for someone else,” and chuckle. Then things start picking up. Where before it wasn’t hard to stay on top of your daily routine and separate the professional from the personal, now you’ve got more work than you can deal with, and things are beginning to blend together. Your work days might be bleeding into your personal time, and you catch yourself banging away at an article or piece of content when you know you should be sleeping. While too much work as a business owner or a freelancer is a “good problem” to have, it can still add up to more …

5 Reasons Why You Should Get Rid of Your Business Landline

In the old days, one of the first steps to opening a business was having a telephone installed. Now, the traditional landline phone may be on its way out, replaced by cell phones and PSTN technology.  In fact, many companies began phasing out their landlines at least a decade ago. This article will explain some of the reasons why it may be time for you to eliminate your landline too.  If you’re wondering whether you’ll be able to keep a professional business running without a landline, the answer is yes. You can set up a virtual phone system which provides everything that your old landline used to—a call menu, a welcome greeting, professional voicemail, and much more. Of course, if you’d like to keep your landline, that’s perfectly fine! You can incorporate it into a virtual phone system as well. Keep on reading for some of the best reasons to …

Tory Burch: The Grateful Billionaire

The Tory Burch story is an aspirational example of hard work, dedication, and gratitude paving the way to great success. By consistently applying the values she has developed throughout her life to her business decisions, Tory has managed to create one of the most powerful brands in history. Tory Burch Learned About Philanthropy as a Child You might be surprised to learn that Tory Burch—one of the world’s few self-made female billionaires and an international fashion industry icon—started life as a self-professed tomboy. Tory grew up in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania alongside her three brothers, spending much of her free time climbing trees and enjoying the great outdoors. Tory’s parents, Reva and Ira Earl “Bud” Robinson made sure the family traveled extensively, exploring far-flung locales like Marrakech, Athens, and Capri, perhaps influencing some of Tory’s future fashion designs. Reva and Bud instilled an early sense of philanthropy in their 4 children, …

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 …

Why Your Email Open Rate is the Key Analytic

  In the world of email marketing, there are many different metrics for determining a campaign’s success and even more opinions on which one is the most important. So far in this series, we’ve talked about the often-underappreciated click-through rate and how it tells you when you’re getting people’s attention and when you’re not. We’ve also discussed conversion rate and how it’s one of the most important analytics you have at your disposal. After all, it tells you how many people are encountering your content and then taking the ultimate desired action, which is of course buying from you. Now it’s time to address the analytic that makes all of the others possible – the email open rate.   What Is an Email Open Rate?   As you might have already guessed, email open rate is the percentage of recipients that see the subject line of the message you’ve sent …

10 Reasons Your Office Phone System Should Go Virtual

  1. Trim the Fat & Lower Your Cost Have you considered switching from a traditional phone company to a virtual phone system? A virtual phone service like Talkroute is most likely going to be much less expensive than using one of the main phone carriers that you may be using right now. Many of these suggestions are of course for businesses that run out of a separate office, but you can use most of the same principles by applying them to your home business, too. Business phone systems can get pricey very quickly, but thankfully the traditional providers are not the only option you have at your disposal. Switching to a virtual phone service provider can save a business a lot of money by eliminating the need for additional phone hardware and network equipment because you can simply use the phones you already have. Traditional providers also tend to …

How Gary Vaynerchuk Created Success Out of Nothing

If you want an example of a fiercely ambitious, highly gifted entrepreneur, you can’t do much better than Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s been on the “hustle” since he was a young kid in New Jersey, and a talent for creating profitable businesses is in his blood. You’ve probably seen him somewhere online, especially YouTube, because he documents nearly every minute of his days to promote himself and his businesses as much as is humanly possible. In fact, he’s probably the first person to document his life to the degree that he does, which has prompted many other entrepreneurs to follow his lead to promote their own companies. The CEO of his massively successful media company, VaynerMedia, venture capitalist, investor in a wide range of social media companies and other investments, frequent public speaker, and creator of multiple original segments on YouTube, “Gary Vee”, as he is known to his fans, never …

7 Tips for Bootstrapping Your Business Without Falling Apart

  This is for all you wide-eyed, ambitious, and driven small business owners out there, who have decided to take it upon yourself to foot the bill for your business without taking an investment from anyone. You don’t want to owe anything to anybody, which is both admirable and smart because once you get going and you’ve been in business for a while, it’s really nice to be able to keep all your profits (or put it back into the business, as one does). Bootstrapping your business can be tough, and especially tough when you’re not made of money. If you’ve made the decision to do that, then you probably know what you’re getting into. Be that as it may, however, you will likely still welcome some tips to make sure your business ends up fully-funded and flourishing. That’s the purpose of this article, and these small pieces of advice …

Long Form vs. Short Form Emails: Which Work Best?

  As a small business owner, you’ve probably heard by now that email marketing is a worthwhile online marketing strategy. With conversion rates consistently above other advertising techniques, it’s often the go-to source for transforming prospects into paying customers. To keep the pep in your copy and your conversation rates high, it’s vital to know how to carry out a solid email marketing campaign. There’s more than enough advice out there about long form vs. short form website copy and blog content, but when it comes to email marketing, there are a lot of mixed messages. Many professional marketers are sold solely on short form copy, shouting its dominance from the rooftops. Others take a more well-rounded approach, encouraging you to diversify anything and everything email-related. Ultimately, the take-home message is simply to write your email copy—long form or short form—in a particular way so that it achieves the purpose …

Was Your Number Port Rejected? Here are 8 Reasons Why

  Transferring your business number to a new service provider shouldn’t take a lot of time or trouble. Sometimes, however, number porting turns into a giant headache. When you’re transferring your number to a new provider, the last thing you want to hear is, “The port was rejected.”   What does porting your number mean? Simply put, when you change service providers for your phone service, porting your number refers to keeping the same number you had with your previous carrier. Businesses prefer to port their number rather than accept a new one to minimize disruption for their clients or customers. Sometimes, a number simply can’t get ported. According to the FCC, “If you are moving to a new geographic area, you may not be able to keep your current phone number when changing providers. Also, some rural wireline service providers may obtain waivers for the porting requirement from state …