Concepts Entrepreneurs Need to Know

A coach a consultant and a mentor sitting in front of a client

Are You Asking the Wrong Person for Help? The Hidden Differences Between Coaches, Consultants, and Mentors

With SCORE’s Reduced Role, Small Business Owners Must Be Intentional About Choosing Advisors. Coaches, Consultants, and Mentors Serve Very Different Purposes. Knowing Which One You Need Right Now Can Save You Money, Reduce Frustration, and Move Your Business Forward With Greater Clarity.

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Sales Call

Powerful Words to Deal with Indecisive Prospects

When It Comes to Making Sales, Sometimes the Prospect Is Indecisive. As A Business Owner or Salesperson, You Want to Get the Prospect to Move the Sale Along, but Either the Prospect Comes Across as Dismissive, Saying They Know Something and You Know They Don’t, or They Are Just Fearful of Taking the Leap and Choose to Procrastinate. There Are Four Sets of Powerful Words That Every Business Owner or Salesperson Can Use to Get an Indecisive Prospect to Commit One Way or The Other.

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Ancient Hunter

What You Need to Know About How Dyslexia and ADHD Can Drive Small Business Success

What Are Often Considered Human Flaws in Today’s Society Such as Dyslexia and ADHD Can Actually Create More Effective Small Business Founders. For Millions of Years, Natural Selection Favored Hunters. Then The World Adopted Farming, and Genetically Well Adapted Hunters Were Marginalized in Favor of Farmers.

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PetPal Minimum Marketable Product

How to Reduce Startup Risk with an MVP, Minimum Marketable Product, and Minimum Lovable Product

Before Investing Time and Energy in Engineering a Final Product, Founders Need to Begin by Developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to Validate Their Overall Idea and Concept, Progress to a Minimum Marketable Product to See If Others Will Exchange Money for It and Get Genuine User Feedback, and Finally Scale the Solution to Create a Minimum Lovable Product That Appeals to The Mainstream Users.

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Sales Discovery Meeting

How to Use Sales Discovery Questions to Close More Deals

When It Comes to Sales, Too Many Small Businesses Spend Too Much Time Pitching Their Solution and Not Enough Time Listening to the Prospect. Small Businesses Need to Use Sales Discovery Questions to Control the Buyer’s Journey and Uncover Their Needs, Challenges, and Goals Before They Offer Their Solution.

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Business Valuation - value of a company

How To Compute the Value of a Company – Everything You Need to Know About Business Valuation

As A Business Owner, You Will Need to Know How to Compute the Value of a Company Be It Your Own Business or One That You Hope to Acquire. Discover The 5 Reason to Conduct a Business Valuation, Things That Affect a Valuations Outcome, How to Value a Lifestyle or Micro-Business and 6 Other Methods to Establish the Value of a Company.

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Customer Service

8 Steps To Delivering a Consistently Memorable Customer Experience

These days, customer loyalty depends on the total customer experience, not just price and quality. As a consumer, I rarely pay attention to your marketing pitch, but I certainly always remember a exceptionally positive total experience with your team, based on a memorable set of interactions from first contact to discussions with friends. Yet, as a business consultant,

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LLC IRS Audit

How to Know If Your LLC Is Compliant with IRS Rules?

Paying Taxes at The Corporate Level Is Undesirable for Most Small Businesses, So the LLC Was Born. To Avoid Being Considered A Corporation by The IRS, You Can’t Look Like One. There Are Four Selectable Characteristics that Are Common to Corporations. As an LLC, You Can Only Pick Two Of The Four.

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Lady and cash

How to Create a Budget for Your New Startup

Budgeting Isn’t Just About Spreadsheets, It’s About Control. Start by Mapping Fixed Costs Versus Variable Costs, Then Layer in Conservative and Optimistic Revenue Projections. Use Industry Comparables From RMA NAICS-Based Ratios to Build a Baseline Instead of Guessing. Review Monthly, Cut Discretionary Spend When Needed, and Let the Numbers Guide Hiring, Pricing, and Financing Decisions.

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You Have Been Conditioned To Be Mediocre

Belief Systems – You Have Been Conditioned To Be Mediocre

Beliefs drive our behaviors that lead to our results. Beliefs are the cause, behaviors the effect, and success is the predictable result. Successful entrepreneurs know their behaviors are driven by their beliefs and that it is their behaviors that allow them to succeed. You have been conditioned to avoid failure and to live a life of mediocrity.

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Entrepreneurship e-learning course

Everything You Wanted To Know About Entrepreneurship

I saw so much value in the CrashCourse entrepreneurship program that I used it as the basis of a extremely comprehensive post on explaining entrepreneurship. Each CrashCourse video acts as an introduction to a subject area followed by a bunch of related content and other resources. The result is what I think is an incredibly complete and multi-modal product to educate individuals in what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

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Microsoft Building

10 Keys To Finding That Perfect-Fit Business Partner

There are so many challenges in a startup that no founder should try to go it alone, as you need someone to share your successes, and help you recover from the inevitable setbacks. When you find someone that works, I’m betting you will be together on your next startup, and the one after that. Great teams persevere, and success breeds success.

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Facebook Ad

Getting Started with Facebook Ads

Changes to Facebook’s algorithm has de-emphasized a business’s ability to get their organic content into a user’s news feed. A business can no longer just focus on producing meaningful content to get their brand seen by the user. Today, Facebook has evolved into more of a paid marketing platform than an organic one. For your content to get in front of prospects, it requires your business to run Facebook ads.

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The Anatomy of a Business Owner

The Anatomy of a Business Owner

Inside every small business owner, there are 3 personas, each competing for time as the leader. The three personas are the technical person (work-focused), the President (inwardly-focused), and the Chief Executive Officer or CEO (outwardly focused). To succeed, a business must possess all three personas.

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ReferenceUSA LifeStyle Database

Video: Tutorial on How to Use the Data Axle (Formerly ReferenceUSA) LifeStyle Database

Psychographics track a person’s interests, activities, and opinions. Knowing the psychographics of a specific person or locating people that share common psychographic characteristics is possible with a (LifeStyle) database that is part of a toolset called Reference USA (available at many libraries). This video is a quick tutorial on how to use the LifeStyle database portion of Reference USA to discover what a specific person’s interests are and how to locate anyone else that shares these same interests.

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Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge

Tacit Vs Explicit Knowledge – Why You Need To Know The Difference

One of the problems with obtaining any kind of knowledge, especially when it comes to business, is that while some kinds of knowledge can be easily codified and articulated to others (Explicit Knowledge), there are also some forms of knowledge that are much harder to pass on and must be experienced (Tacit Knowledge).

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The Simple Truth Why Business Plans Cause Business Failures

Conventional business advice is that in order to have a successful business you need to write a business plan. However, did you know that the simple act of writing a business plan can often lead your business to fail?

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Be Unpredictable to Drive the Competition Crazy and Make Huge Profits

Be Unpredictable to Drive the Competition Crazy and Make Huge Profits

When assessing one’s business competition, we often look at their strengths and weaknesses and attempt to predict how they will respond to various situations. Based on this information, we design a plan to deal with the competition. Yet, what happens when the competition acts in unpredictable ways? Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was one of Germany’s

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A College Degree and Entrepreneurship in the Millennial Generation

A College Degree and Entrepreneurship in the Millennial Generation

Recently, I was speaking at a local community college about the value of an entrepreneurial mindset. While there, one student asked me, “How important do you think a college degree is to becoming a successful entrepreneur?” The question was a bit awkward since I was the guest speaker with no college education and there were

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Curiosity: The Fundamental Attribute of Successful Entrepreneurs that No One talks about

Curiosity: The Fundamental Attribute of Successful Entrepreneurs that No One talks about

Most business articles neglect to discuss one fundamental attribute that is a critical part of a successful small business owner’s personality. This dimension of their personality is so important that some say it is the linchpin to business success. Yet, rarely do you see it discussed in any business books. So, what is this attribute?

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Leverage Contingency

Leverage Contingency Principle – Planning for the Unexpected

Conventional business advice discourages entrepreneurs from practicing the leverage contingency principle. Instead of encouraging the entrepreneur to make small low-cost incremental steps to observe what happens, conventional wisdom recommend extensive upfront planning as a way to hit their ultimate target or goal on the first try without any type of feedback loop to test assumptions during the development process.

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