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Don’t miss out! Check out the previous chapters here:
–Chapter One
–Chapter Two
–Chapter Three

CHAPTER FOUR: Translate Emails Into Task Lists

In This Chapter:

-Reframe how you use and view your inbox
-Bucket your tasks into 3 sections: “High Priority”, “Offloading” and “Later” tasks

Alright—let’s take a step back and see the state of things. So far, we’ve established: 1.) How to rebuild your email workflow 2.) The tools to prioritize, deflect and destroy any inbound communication and 3.) How to quiet the voice that’s sternly reminding you to “RESPOND-TO-EVERYTHING-ASAP”

You’re probably feeling more productive, already. Maybe you’re feeling a little anxious with all the changes you’ve made (it gets easier— promise!) Or, maybe a rush of po...

If there’s one thing that’s more available than ever for founders in 2018, it’s advice. Not a day goes by without someone recommending a book, blog, podcast or conference that I can’t miss, or someone I ‘have to meet’.

On the other hand, we all know that the secret to success is not as simple as following instructions from [insert your favorite unicorn]’s playbook and just doing what those before you have done successfully.

Perhaps this explains why it is so easy to forget the obvious source of insight, advice and perspective that you have right in front of your nose, the people that you have spent the most time courting and that have cost you the most – your team.

This article shares some of the reasons why our own team has become one of t...

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

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I was having a second coffee with an ex student, now the head of a marketing inside a rapidly growing startup. His company had marched through customer discovery, learning about the customer problem, validated solutions and was now scaling sales and marketing. All good news.

But he was getting uneasy that as his headcount was growing the productivity of his marketing department seemed to be rapidly declining.

I wasn’t surprised. When organizations are small (startups, small teams in companies and government agencies) early employees share a mission (why they come to work, what they need to do while they are at work, and how they will know they have succeeded). But...

Do you have a startup business and are looking for an effective online team to keep it rolling?

You have probably been thinking about how you are in need of hiring affordable, reliable talent for your company. However, a lot of startup business owners fall into the same old traps when hiring effective remote workers for their business, causing their company to slow down on the road to success.

There are five top mistakes business owners make when looking to build an effective online team. I want to discuss how you can avoid these mistakes and create the dream team for your business as quickly as possible. Then you can begin building your business on a foundation of great workers.

#1 – You Don’t Know What You Need Outsourced

Most startup ow...

Don’t miss out! Be sure to check out Chapter 1!

CHAPTER TWO: Create Tools To Prioritize, Deflect & Destroy

In This Chapter:

1. Create a priority contact list to sort email quickly
2. Buy more time to respond with time-delaying filters
3. Send unnecessary emails to purgatory

Take a few minutes and reflect on what you’ve accomplished this past week. We’ll wait.

Ready?

How much of your day was spent handling random, one-off things that either could have been handled by someone else, or took priority over what you really needed to get done?

Yeah, we thought so. Fortunately, we have got you covered. We can get through this together.

While we suggest joining forces with one of our stellar VA’s—You can take care of the enemy that is email by doing one...

CHAPTER SIX: Make Your Calendar Thoughtful

In This Chapter:

–How to hack your calendar to be more thoughtful
–How to never forget your moms birthday

Your calendar can keep you smart about meetings—But, what if we told you it can also make you a bit more thoughtful?

You may have a handful of important dates like your spouse or kids’ birthdays or perhaps some holidays sprinkled in your calendar. But what about all the other “mini anniversaries” and holidays that may be important to others that may not be easy to remember?

A great way to keep you looking 10x more thoughtful than you could ever be is to populate your calendar with a cross section of “events” that you’d love to respond to when they come up. Can’t think of any? Well, friend, th...

I read a popular article recently arguing why anti-lean startups are back because lean isn’t a…viable…way for ambitious startups tackling new domains, like artificial intelligence, to take moonshots.

Hmmmm…

As a practitioner of lean startup achieving high growth in Fin-Tech, I’m intrigued with counter-arguments to the methodology.

The article states getting paying customers is an anti-lean advantage:

“Anti-lean ventures, which have what lean startups sometimes lack, customers willing to pay for them. This fact alone upends the usual freemium model!”

Actually, points can be made that lean startups are particularly good with validating market (willingness to pay) risk.

Many lean startup experiment designs like ‘Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Concierge...

When you’re at a startup and don’t have a budget for marketing, PR is a great way to get your market’s attention and foster growth. The right PR strategies will create awareness for your startup company and product and expand your reach.

There are so many articles on building long-term PR campaigns just to get one journalist’s attention, that it can be overwhelming when you’re looking for effective tactics that work right away. Luckily, you don’t have to wait months for one press hit.

Doing PR for startups can lead to massive growth

Here are five simple PR strategies that will drive instant results for your startup.

1. Find co-marketing partners

Co-marketing is a very effective way to broaden your reach by collaborating with another compan...

Startups.co, the world’s largest startup launch platform, announced Tuesday, August 11th that they have signed an agreement to purchase Zirtual, the leading platform for connecting fast-growing startup companies with virtual assistants.

This agreement comes on the heels of an announcement by Zirtual on Monday, August 10th that the company would pause operations while it made a transition. The brief outage was due to a capital infusion that the company was counting on for expansion. Startups.co has notified all Zirtual employees, clients and associates that the service will resume normal operations as of Monday, August 17th.

The Zirtual service has grown at a rapid pace, expanding to over 400 Zirtual Assistants (ZAs) in just a few years, ser...

Remember when clouds were just for sifting snow, and “the Cloud” was just for storage?

A lot has happened since those days. A lot. But the Cloud’s out-of-sight and out-of-mind nature makes it easy to miss the benefits of the latest developments.

Why Cloud computing matters

Recently I sat down with my colleague Eric Schmidt, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) certified Cloud Systems Architect, to talk about his perspective on the future of Cloud computing. Our aim was to exchange ideas as we create products and services our customers value.

Cloud computing is a key strategic compon...