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I think I’ve won the startup game. No, I didn’t sell my company for a billion dollars. I didn’t raise at a unicorn valuation. I’m not headlining TechCrunch Disrupt.

I won because I decided to not give a shit about any of that. I opted out. I focused on my own business and stopped worrying about what everyone else was doing.

It was the most life changing thing I ever did. And, now I’m hoping you join me.

I GREW UP WHEN I SHUT DOWN

My victory didn’t come from what I did – it came from what I stopped doing.

• I stopped paying attention to what other people posted on social media.
• I stopped worrying about what was reported in startup news.
• I stopped comparing my success to how my friends were doing.
• I stopped trying to sell people at coc...

Sara Blakely, the founder of SPANX, joined social media 5 weeks ago (Instagram to be more exact) and at the MA Conference for Women in the span of 10 minutes, she gained 2K new followers.

Wait…what? Can I do this too!? Here’s my breakdown of how she did it through the influence of public speaking and tips on how you can move the crowd to build your tribe.

On Thursday, December 8th, I’ve had the honor to be one of the few males to attend and speak at the nation’s largest conference for women, the Massachusetts Conference for Women (Yes, it was fun if you were wondering and the wifey had no objections because it was a conference. Win-win!).

In front of a sold-out audience of 11,000, Sara Blakely was interviewed by Gayle King (Co-host of CBS ...

According to research from Kaufman, 40% of first-time entrepreneurs in the United States are women.

Even more impressive? The number of women-run businesses in the US is growing at twice the rate of men-owned businesses. The rate of women starting businesses and startups throughout the country is at an all-time high.

Let’s take a closer look at women-owned businesses, including certification and funding opportunities.

What it is a woman-owned business?

In its simplest form, a women-owned business is a business owned by at least one woman.

But when it comes to qualifying for certain grants, loans, and contracts, a women-owned business is at least 51% owned by controlled, operated, and managed by a woman or women.

What is WBENC Certificatio...

It’s not “How are you feeling?”

For years I’ve been having one-on-one meetings with my employees. These meetings are invaluable for building trust, providing feedback, and sincerely understanding how I may help each employee. They’re my favorite meetings as they’re also the most productive.

During each one-on-one meeting I go over the questions provided by Lead Honestly. These questions ensure we’re continually discussing new topics, creating new insights, learnings, and feedback.

There is also one question I ask during every one-on-one meeting. Given the nature of a one-on-one meeting, and it’s focus on an employee’s emotions, many are quick to guess that this question is “How are you feeling?” It’s not.

I’ve tried this question without m...

Startups often adopt a sprinter’s mentality. They want to get as far ahead as possible in as little time as necessary. Progress is measured in terms of growth, profitability, and revenue, but there’s a big difference between generating revenue and driving actual value. Just because a company is growing doesn’t mean it’s actually becoming a greater asset. It’s just a larger version of its previous self.

To boost your company’s value, I recommend creating a startup exit strategy as part of your startup’s overall business plan. You may be thinking, “I’m not ready to sell!” But hear me out.

All business owners should be taking steps from day one that will determine how profitable their creation will be on the day of the sale. And the exit stra...

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of a startup name — which is why naming a business can feel so harrowing. A great name can help push your company to the next level, but a terrible one can sink you before you even started. So how do you find a great business name?

While there probably are as many approaches to coming up with a company name as there are failed startups, one great place to start is with idea generators. These quick, handy online tools spit out word combinations that can be a great jumping off point for you and your team.

Once you’ve found a company name you like, you can use the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) to find out whether or not a business name has been trademarked. You should also use ICANN WHOIS to...

After almost two decades of decline, music industry revenues are finally starting to recover again and a lot of the credit goes to one guy: Daniel Ek, Founder of Spotify. Ironically, Spotify was backed by the guy who helped enable all that piracy to begin with: Napster’s Sean Parker.

It was no small thing for the Recording Industry to learn to love Spotify… or any Internet music company for that matter. It was also no small thing for Ek to start Spotify with the stance of not wanting to “Disrupt” music labels—he wanted to help them.

It took Founder Daniel Ek two years to get his first deals in Sweden, and another two years to launch in the US. He and his partner invested largely their own money until they showed traction, and likely would h...

Big brands know the value of teaming up. Starbucks and Spotify, Lucasfilm and Covergirl, and IKEA and Dreamworks have all forged lucrative partnerships.

Nearly every company can benefit from a good partner. My own company, bluemedia, fabricates and installs experiential activations for some of the biggest brands, events, and venues across America.

We’ve had plenty of success, but our partnership with a variety of key vendors in our space has helped us forge meaningful relationships to fuel our growth.

This teamwork helps us reach our clients’ goals faster and more efficiently. On top of that, the clients are happy because they’re getting two steps of the process done at the same time.

How partnerships help business

With a successful partne...

Google AdWords is a heavyweight when it comes to understanding and monitoring the desires and questions of Google searchers, and ultimately understanding what affects the overall decision making that drives clicks.

By digging through and analyzing data, one can find explanations for budget leakage, and reasoning for campaign renovation. Using AdWords, in combination with multiple tools, users can conduct an accurate analysis of a campaigns current performance, both to discover strengths to continue taking advantage of and areas to improve.

For those of you looking to discover new ways to analyze your campaigns and make large and small scale changes to your account, join us for this ultimate PPC account analysis.

Tools and Resources Used:

I...

One of our favorite interviews we’ve done was with Yahoo! Co-Founder Jerry Yang. Not just because of what he’s done, but because of the time we did it.

There are a lot of interesting moments in history to interview Yang — ours was just after Alibaba went public in the largest global IPO in tech history.

This was a massive vindication for Yang, who originally brought the deal to Yahoo!, and argued against Yahoo! selling half of its stake off years later. He needed the vindication: Yang was supposed to be the Steve Jobs founder hero coming in to save Yahoo! back in 2008. He initially turned down a $40 billion acquisition by Microsoft, was eventually ousted as CEO, and Yahoo!’s long slide continued.

It’s hard to assess his legacy: On the one h...