How to Make Big Money in a Small Town
When we imagine big businesses, we tend to imagine tall offices in impressive buildings at the center of some of the world’s most powerful cities: London, New York, Seoul, Sydney, and — if it’s a tech company — San Francisco. The idea is that, in order to thrive, your business needs to be located where…
Read More21 Lead Magnet Ideas to Pull in Your Top Prospects
If you aren’t optimizing your lead magnets, consider yourself guilty of gross mismanagement! But before we toss out 20-plus lead magnet ideas for you to test out, let’s quickly define what we mean by the term “lead magnet.” A lead magnet is an offer you make to prospects in exchange for their contact information. Before…
Read More5 Awesome Tools for Running a Small Business
Regardless of size, running a business is no piece of cake. From acquiring new customers to retaining existing ones; from successfully managing projects to maintaining happy employees; and from growth planning to profit evaluation; there are many considerations for businesses to address. Considering the importance of technology and the power of apps, entrepreneurs should leverage…
Read MoreEven a Taste of Ownership Motivates Employees
How about employees all the way down the line and through the corporation? How do we align them to the goals and strategies of the enterprise? Obviously for the appropriate individuals, a bonus program aligned to the department’s goals is appropriate. But how about awarding stock options for all employees? I discovered the power of…
Read MoreShould We Kill Marketing?
“What if everything we know to be true about marketing is actually what’s holding back our business?” And in fact – “what if we realize we’ve invested the shipwreck of marketing?” An interesting way to start a marketing book, eh? I just finished a fascinating new book, Killing Marketing: How Innovative Businesses are Turning Marketing Cost…
Read More4 Concrete Ways for Millennials to Achieve Their First Million Dollars
Setting a goal of having your first million before you reach the age of 40 may sound preposterous but it is highly achievable. If you get your first job or put up your first business at the age of 25, you will have 15 years to save up for your million dollars. That means saving…
Read More7 Bold Predictions for Digital Marketing in 2018
Every year around this time I take a step back and to ponder some predictions for our field for the coming year. Some come to be, others are a few years early, and then there’s predictions I’m still waiting to come true years later. You can’t win them all, unfortunately. That said, the trends I’m…
Read MoreWhat Transferrable Skills Can Help You Buy and Run a Business?
When you are looking to purchase a business to run, you should not necessarily consider your lack of experience to be an insurmountable barrier. The reality is that you are almost certain to have acquired a range of transferable skills which will prove just as useful as any role-specific talents you may feel you lack.…
Read MoreProfits Eat Innovation for Breakfast
Michael Porter said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is the first thing that popped into my mind when I read Steve Blank’s HarvardBusiness Review article explaining why Jeff Immelt lost his job as CEO of GE. Steve argues activist investors forced out Immelt because of the long, languishing performance of the company’s stock. Following Mr. Immelt out…
Read More7 Things Wannabe Entrepreneurs Need to Know
What do entrepreneurs need to know as they get started? Of course there’s need to know, absolutely; and there’s ought to know. I was asked to come up with a list, and here is my best guess. Know the difference between cash and profits. You Think in Profits, but You Live on Cash.Things like sales on…
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