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There’s an old adage that says “Entrepreneurs do what other people won’t in order to do what other people can’t.”

The suggestion there is spot on – that the entrepreneurs who get to live the life people dream about did so because they were willing to make the sacrifices it took to make that life happen.

So the question really is: can you afford not to be an entrepreneur?

If the answer is “yes,” your life will probably be just fine doing whatever it is that you enjoy doing. But if you really want a taste for what it means to control your own world and reap the benefits of taking risks, starting off on your own is really the only option.

A Paycheck versus a Payout

Most people equate starting and growing a business to the financial rewards of ...

Office distractions take many forms: checking emails throughout the day, responding to text messages, making phone calls, responding to Skype requests, having quick meetings, and even figuring out what’s for lunch. All of these sap our daily decision-making “battery” (yes, science has proven we can only make so many decisions during a day) and subtract from our ability to focus on what’s most important.

For these reasons, I’ve found that quarterly meetings that are unplugged and off-site are a reliable way to get more clarity about where my team and I are going, what’s working, and what isn’t working.

Why Go Off-Site?

My friend Leo Patching, one of the most seasoned, successful entrepreneurs I know, calls an off-site meeting a chance to get...

Entrepreneurs are classic risk-takers. They are continually assessing the world around them, seeking to identify problems in need of a solution. They work hard to address these problems, and transform them into opportunities to improve their world. However, in their haste to identify and seize those opportunities, many entrepreneurs rush into their businesses and forget to establish a long-term vision.

The history of the business world is littered with the empty shells of failed startups that burst onto the scene, but were unable to sustain their business model after their initial appeal wore off. Many of these businesses were started by well-intentioned entrepreneurs who were able to cast a compelling vision for the startup phase. But thos...

As one of the partners of a Ruby on Rails software development agency, I speak with dozens of non-technical startup founders every week who are in various stages of building their first web or mobile application. The range of technical acumen, willingness to learn, and time and resources varies widely among the group.

As a firm, we’re not just competing with other NYC-based agencies for their business, but also offshore devshops, freelancers, and in some cases, the prospective client who may want to execute internally.

At the end of the day, a non-technical founder who has decided that they must build something has two options: pay someone else, or partner with people. Below are the pros and cons.

Paying Someone Else

Obviously, every situat...

The following post is an excerpt is from Chapter 2 of the book Startup Seed Funding for the Rest of Us: How to Raise $1 Million for Your Startup – Even Outside of Silicon Valley, by Mike Belsito. This chapter specifically talks about the importance of finding traction for your startup, even at the earliest stages of building a product and raising seed capital. Further, this chapter discusses specifics on what entrepreneurs can do to build up that traction at these early stages.

CHAPTER TWO
The Only Chapter You May Need to Read

Traction: It’s what investors everywhere are looking for in order to determine whether to anoint your startup “the next big thing” and inject the cold, hard cash needed to accelerate your business. If you can’t fin...

For many entrepreneurs, focusing on one critical skill will lead to success in the early stages of their business. Finding that skill and focusing on it could mean the difference between success and failure. In this post, we hear from eight different entrepreneurs and learn about their one “critical skill.” I asked them the following questions:

• What was the one skill or activity you focused on that made your startup(s) successful?
• How did you know this was where you needed to focus?
• Did you need to sacrifice in other areas of your business to focus on your one skill?

What surprised me is that for most of them, focusing on this skill did not make them feel like they were sacrificing in other areas of their business. If you are focusing on ...

“If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business,” a reasonable claim from Simon Sinek, renowned author of Start With Why, at the beginning of his talk at last year’s 99U conference.

Sinek explains that companies like Apple have been able to build a fanatical following because they understood that business is done through people. People who are looking for connection and meaning.

Simon argues that trust is the foundation of any and all relationships, and that if business fail to create that bond with customers — they will fail to succeed.

Founders who have successfully built a true following have done so by surrounding themselves with people who believe what they believe, and spreading an honest gospel about those values — at...

You would think that after 20 years of founding companies, I would have the whole work/life balance thing down to a science. When I sit down and talk to young entrepreneurs, often the first thing I’m asked is, “How do you maintain the other facets of your life while building a company?”

The reality is that though I can’t claim to be living a perfectly balanced life, it is a goal I strive for everyday. Even after all of these years, it’s still a daily struggle. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Understand That Your Lifestyle Will Not Be Normal

One of the luxuries of entrepreneurship is that you can structure your time any way you like. If you’d like to spend more time outside of work, you can choose to do that. But first,...

Let’s face it, while launching your own business can be incredibly rewarding, it can be also be just plain stressful. We had the opportunity to speak with Charlie Hoehn, best-selling author and launch strategist, about some of his tips for combating startup burnout.

Charlie graduated in 2008 from Colorado state with a degree in Marketing and Media Studies. Like many of us, he didn’t know exactly what he what he wanted to do right off the bat. What he did know was that he didn’t want to work for a big corporation for the rest of his life. Since graduation, he has worked with bestselling authors like Seth Godin, Tucker Max, and Tim Ferriss, and wrote Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety. His work has been featured by NPR, The New Yor...

You need a social media team that can absolutely nail it. That doesn’t happen by just putting warm bodies in front of computers. You need a team of innovators, mold-breakers, thinkers, organizers, brainstormers, collaborators, and strategists who are wicked smart, insanely skilled, and ready to push your business to an extreme level on social media.

In other words, you need a social media dream team.

How do you wrap your mind around the social media scene?

Social media has seemed to spiral out of control. It’s bigger than we ever thought it would become. It grows and changes on a daily basis. We’re all done talking about its “meteoric rise.” That’s cliché. We already know that more than a quarter of the world’s population uses social media,...