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Sometimes the best way to grow our startups is to spend some time doing stuff that has nothing to do with our startups!

It sounds easy to do and yet so many of us have a huge issue with getting outside our own startup bubble.

But what if we knew that time away was the key to actually making our startup grow faster?

The problem with "startup all the time"

Aside from the obvious challenges around things like burnout, being focused exclusively on our startups prevents us from getting some new perspectives that we would have otherwise missed.

Whether it's that passing thought during meditation, that interesting point another Founder made at dinner, or the inspiration we got when we were sitting on a beach staring at the sun — our time away fro...

We've been working around the clock on our side hustle with the dream that one day it'll be our full-time gig.

But now that we're getting some traction, the real question is, when do we go all in?

The best Investor — our current paycheck

There will never be a more equitable investor than our current paycheck.

Full funding, no pitch process, and market compensation from Day One.

Compare that to when we try to actually raise money in a grueling pitch process, spend months with no income, and have to work for half of what we made last year.

While our current investor (our paycheck) has a lot of hours and distractions, it has some really important benefits: it's predictable, it's consistent, and if shit hits the fan, we just focus on that.

Being a Founder doesn't imply one is a good manager. It just means we were around when the company was formed!

Sometimes Founders do grow into great managers — and sometimes they were great managers already. But the real question is: "Do Founders need to be good managers?"

Ideally, yes. But it's not a requirement.

We can fake it for a minute

In the formative years, when we only have a small team, we can usually get by without being great managers.

That's because the team is still small, and mostly operates in a flat "team" structure without a lot of management to be had. That's also why Founders often don't realize they are shitty managers until later on because they ran for so long in an unmanaged structure.

Eventually, though, it catch...

Trying to recruit an extraordinary business developer to get more sales? Or maybe a top-notch developer to create an app that will make you millions? Regardless of who you are seeking, the rules of recruiting have changed.

Essential supplies include:

• A helmet
• Military-level strategies and tactics
• A whole lot of tenacity

It is a war zone. I am not trying to discourage you. Rather, I’m trying to prepare you – to find the very best candidate that will propel your business to the next level and contribute positively to the culture that you’ve worked so hard to create. Not necessarily an MBA, but even “hungry creative kids that want to step up,” says Jason Khan.

Possible hazards you might encounter in the field include:

• Stacks of secretly key...

Exactly one month ago, I landed a job at Roam Co-Living as their Channel Management Consultant. Roam is an international network of co-living and co-working spaces, designed for global travelers and digital nomads who want to see the world without sacrificing convenience, community, and comfort.

Working at a small, rapidly-growing organization like Roam has been an incredible experience, and I would recommend it to anyone. But, I didn’t get this opportunity through a job search, career fair, or recruiter.

It took hustle, plain and simple.

This journey started in November, shortly after I buried the VR startup I had been working on at the time. After a very brief mourning period, I decided to check out an organization called Venture for Ame...

James Wolf was late for our interview — two and a half hours late, to be exact. I’d speed walked the fifteen minutes from my apartment to his shop in Ho Chi Minh City’s expat hub, Thao Dien, at 8:30 in the morning, only to be met with a shuttered door and no signs of life inside. Sweating in the shade as loitering taxi drivers threw me curious looks, I called him up.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, picking up after a couple of rings. “I didn’t expect to have to go to the factory this morning but something came up and I’m just arriving, on my bike. Can I call you in a couple of hours when I’m headed back to Thao Dien?”

“Oh no problem!” I said. “It’s my bad! I should have sent a follow-up email.”

Now, anyone who knows me knows that that’s not my us...

One of the most common questions we get asked is, "Should I raise capital for my business?" _What they’re really asking is, “Can you tell me how to raise money and where to find it?”_

And our stock answer is simply "No".

That tends to mess with people — because they typically aren’t expecting pushback. But the reality is that there are actually very few reasons that a startup absolutely has to raise capital. Every startup could use it. But does every startup absolutely have to raise?

Nope.

Having answered this question about a billion times, it seemed like the right time to list what the decision tree for startup Founders should be when determining they must raise capital so we can distinguish the difference between "I need it" and "I have...

Clicking the “Publish” button is one of the highlights of my day.

Working hard on a post and then putting it out there to help others is extremely rewarding. It’s one of the main reasons why I continue to write so much.

But it’s not the only reason….

Content marketing remains one of the most effective strategies to grow a blog – any blog.

Eighty-six percent of marketers in North America use content marketing, and 71% of marketers (overall) are planning to increase spending on content marketing.

Creating great content is an extremely important part of any successful content marketing strategy. But it’s just one part.

If all you do is hit “Publish” and then move on to the next article, your blog won’t grow as quickly as it should.

And if you...

Pre–seed. Seed. Series A. Series B. Growth capital. Term sheets. Valuations. Cap Tables. Convertible notes. Market opportunity. Venture Capital. Angel investment. Equity Crowdfunding. Family offices.

While the learning curve is steep, getting funding is about more than just an understanding of terms, it’s about the art of relationships. For female founders, the funding landscape has been less than friendly. According to Crunchbase, the number of female-founded, venture backed companies has plateaued at 17% since 2012. Is venture the only way to go? Certainly not. There are a diversity of funding sources founders can tap into. Crowdfunding, for example, is the only type of funding where women outperform men.The SheWorx100 Summit NYC brough...

This is a stupid idea. Why did I quit my job? Why did my friends say they liked this idea? I bet they were just humoring me. What if nobody likes it? I have no clue what I am doing. I should ask for my old job back.

If you are even a month into starting your own business I am going to hazard a guess that at least one of these thoughts has popped into your mind. You’re not alone. Self-doubt is natural even for the most confident of people, your business is essentially a highly visible, physical manifestation of your beliefs and thoughts. So yes, it is scary exposing yourself in that way, the same way it would be scary if you were to share your love letters (Snapchats nowadays) with the world.

But this is not a good reason to stop or slow do...