Shouldn’t Quit Job When Starting Business

Why You Shouldn’t Quit Your Job When Starting a Business

If you’re like many Americans, you dream about starting a business and being your own boss. We’re a nation of entrepreneurs whose legendary can-do spirit built businesses, nonprofits, schools, and houses of worship that have created jobs and services for hundreds of millions of people. The best part of dreaming about entrepreneurship is that your vision really can become reality. More people than ever are becoming entrepreneurs. The U.S. is home to 28.8 million small businesses, accounting for 99.7% of all American enterprises, according to the Small Business Administration. Mix a little ingenuity with a lot of hustle, and you can start your own company whenever you want. Unfortunately, many new business owners fall for the false narrative of having to “go all in” on their idea. But going all in financially (exhausting personal savings) and professionally (quitting your job) on your new business is far more likely to result …

Contractor on personal phone

Debunking 5 Misconceptions About Business Phone Systems

Business phone systems are becoming increasingly advanced & complex thanks to constantly evolving communication technology. These new systems provide excellent alternatives to the traditional phone systems that have been in place for decades. As with most new technologies, however, misconceptions, myths, and legends have cropped up around these new communication systems, and consequently, some companies are growing wary of investing in the latest phone system technology. Many professionals seem to think that their old phone system worked just fine. They think the company should call in the repair team one more time to keep it alive instead of buying something new for the office. Is this the right approach to corporate communication technology, though? Can virtual phone systems really stand up to the old-school, traditional systems that we know? Let’s look at the five most common misconceptions about business phone systems, old and new, and then consider the right approach …

Ryan Serhant Real Estate

Ryan Serhant: From Hand Model to Real Estate Tycoon

There are a lot of industries that take a lot of energy and hard work to be successful in. Entertainment, real estate, and publishing are all pretty high on that list, but today’s Storytime Tuesdays subject has been successful in all three. Ryan Serhant is best known as the host of Bravo TV’s Million Dollar Listing New York and Sell It Like Serhant, but is also a published author, prolific blogger, and, of course, self-made real estate mogul. He is an excellent example of a business owner who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and built his business around his passions and strengths. A Foundation of Hard Work Ryan Serhant grew up with an interest in theater and acting. Raised in Massachusetts, Ryan and his younger brother were taught to value education and hard work from a very young age. One summer, their father, Vice President of State Street Advisors …

Email Open Rate Key Analytic

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 and choose to …

Office Phone System Should Go Virtual

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 …

Gary Vaynerchuk Created Success

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 …

Long Form vs. Short Form Emails

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 you …

How RE/MAX Is Using Virtual Phone Numbers to Crush the Competition

  Let’s face it, no matter what industry you may be involved with, we are all looking for a competitive advantage. That one thing that will give us the edge over our competitors. And when it comes to the cut throat world of real estate, there may never be a more truthful sentiment among agents. Whether you are managing listings for apartments, multi-million dollar homes, commercial spaces or everything in-between, there is always another agent around the corner ready to steal your listing and close that sale. With more than 123,000 agents worldwide, there is no surprise that REMAX was ranked as one of the top 10 global franchises and called “the fastest growing franchise brand” by entrepreneur.com. Nobody can argue REMAX’s achievements in such a fierce market but their ability to replicate their successfully model both nationally and around the world is truly remarkable. While there are many tactics …

Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington: From Entrepreneur to Influencer

  If you live in America, then you’ve probably read and heard at least something about Arianna Huffington in the past couple of years, which is ironic because she is actually from Greece. Nevertheless, you could debate the reasons why she has actually been thrust into the public forum these past few years, most likely because one of the latest books that she’s published about the importance of healthy sleep habits struck a chord with a lot of people. Arianna has been writing books for decades, and she is exceptionally intelligent. An intellect like hers that is matched with relentless self-motivation to work in different fields, influencing many people as she goes, is a pretty rare combination to occur in the same person. All the books which she has published over the years seem to be her way of expressing and releasing all of the ideas she has inside of …

conversion rate

How to Understand Your Conversion Rates & Improve Them

For any small business utilizing online marketing of any kind, there aren’t too many metrics that you want to be more aware of than the CR (conversion rate). Otherwise, if you are just continually creating and publishing content without running analysis on it, then you are doing it blindly and won’t know what’s working, what’s not working, and which content you need to change according to its performance with your audience. If you are well-aware of the CR, on the other hand, but can’t figure out how to improve that number, that’s obviously a problem, too. Businesses have been trying to come up with ways to persuade web searchers to buy from the business they’re promoting through the emails they send out for a really long time. The difference now is that there are online metrics like conversion rate that can help you immensely in getting a solid grip on …