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A recent study done by for Fusion called the Massive Millennial Poll — which included 1,000 people between the ages of 18-34 — found that a firm 50 percent of millennials don’t think that there are only two genders.

Instead, people are viewing as gender and sex as two related but different things: Sex being a person’s biology (including genitals, chromosomes, and hormones) and gender being someone’s identity (including how they present themselves to the world and which pronouns they choose to use). While most people fall within the binary of “male” or “female,” there’s a growing portion of people who simply don’t.

And another cultural shift — online dating — is happening concurrently with this change in how we view gender. While online dati...

I talk to hundreds of entrepreneurs every year. It’s a privilege that provides me with extraordinary perspective on how ideas are making it to market. One of the consistent themes in startups struggling to make it out of the idea/concept phase is that they can’t get out of their own way.

While the stereotypical inventor is purported to be secretive, distrustful and reclusive, many of these behaviors—intentional or incidental—can now be observed in startup founders of all stripes. Because of the ease with which you can now reach vast audiences, doing nothing to promote or expose your idea can now be interpreted as an act of secrecy. You owe it to your idea to expose it to a potential market to determine viability.

Your idea might be great, o...

The mobile internet has been both a blessing and a curse for startups and small businesses looking to build their brands from the ground up.

Never before in history has achieving awareness and influence been so democratized. Truly any brand can have their 15 seconds of fame – or more. However, that’s also the curse. There is more noise than ever before to stand out from and drive awareness.

Therefore it’s not a surprise that when we recently asked over 500 startup & small business owners what their primary digital marketing objective was — their number one priority was to increase company and product awareness. It even beat out driving inbound leads and customers — go figure.

In order to achieve brand awareness in this new mobile-driven, ...

My grandfather usually starts his day at 5 a.m, followed by yoga in his favorite part of the lawn. Without fail he and his friends, are engaged in daily yoga practices. Back from yoga, he prepares for himself a healthy breakfast and enjoys it while reading a newspaper.

I was not an early bird—That is, until I realized how productive my days could be when following the morning rituals by observing my grandfather.

My grandfather has always been a great motivation for me to start off my day on a positive note. He believes, “morning is that time of the day which will make or break a good or a bad day”.

Rituals instill a sense of peace and builds a solid foundation for what you want to accomplish each day.

One day, my grandfather told me about ...

When startup founders hear the word “lean” in reference to business, we usually think “lean startup.” But Eric Ries wasn’t the first person to apply the word “lean” to a business philosophy. Here’s a look at what lean means, how it applies in business versus manufacturing, and a quick explanation of lean startup.

1. What is lean business?

“Lean,” at its essence, is about using fewer resources in order to provide a great product to your customers. A company that’s implementing a lean system is focusing on streamlining its systems in order to reduce waste, ideally to the point of creating no waste at all.

One big advantage of adopting a lean business model the ability to change course quickly when the needs of your customer base change. When...

Most consumers discover products and services on the internet, and this has leveled the playing field for all kinds of vendors. A two-person startup with an eye-grabbing web presence can attract customers just as well as a big corporation.

But there’s a catch: With so many options available, the target audience is going to size up a company in an instant. The first impression a company makes will determine whether a potential customer passes or gives it a closer look. And design is largely responsible for that first impression.

But let’s face it: Design is subjective. As with fashion, people tend to be pretty complimentary of their own design tastes. If they think something looks good to them, it must look good to everybody, right? And bec...

Back in 2005, some of you may know I ran a website called Great Adventure Online, a fan site for the popular New Jersey theme park, Six Flags Great Adventure. It was so popular, that for awhile when you Googled the theme park, my website would be ranked higher than the actual official site to Six Flags.

I managed to grow this site to an active online community of over 2,500 daily fans with over 40,000 hits a month; and even larger during peak season.

When you’re 12–14 years old, this is an unfathomable number.

I still remember clearly the advice given to me by then park president, Mark Kane. He asked me how I was making money on this.

I told him I wasn’t.

He was shocked, and immediately followed up with a stern, why not?

I couldn’t compreh...

You know that feeling you get when you just know your idea is going to be the next big thing? Well none of us had that feeling when we first started working on DashMetrics as a side-project. I’d love to rewrite history and tell you we knew our project was going to take off from the start, but this began like any other passion project. We had this hard problem of trying to make data visualization easier for the average person to understand without a dashboard looking like some hi-tech stock trading program with crazy looking candlestick charts, or a DevOps monitor displaying two-tone colored website traffic in real-time. No, we were going tackle the gnarly task of making metrics look sexy. It felt like our calling.

People rarely remember exa...

Imagine for a moment if you could shape every minute of your life to work exactly as you wanted it to.

Well, you can’t. Not exactly. Sorry about that.

But you can actually control more of your daily schedule than you ever thought possible, creating more time to do the things you enjoy or at the very least spending less wasted time on pointless meetings.

“Free time you say? No pointless meetings? Woohoo! Sign me up!”

Well now, that’s the spirit!

Take Command of your Calendar

The problem we tend to face with our calendars is that we let others control it for us.

Sometimes that’s necessary – like when a client or your boss insists on meeting right away at their offices. But often our calendars are left simply to fate and serendipity which soun...

It’s tempting for young companies to put “getting involved in the community” on the to-do list for the future. They wait until the company is more established, more employees are on board, or a few more clients are locked in.

But carving out precious time to help the community, especially in the early days, can be a defining moment in building your company.

I’m not talking about the grand gesture of a big donation. Who can afford that, especially in your company’s early days? I’m talking about real grassroots involvement that engages your company and your employees in the community.

At Rocksauce Studios, we set out to establish core values that gave us a road map to consistently deliver happiness for our employees, customers, and the world ...