Forget cramming to learn your new industry inside and out. When you’re starting up, ignorance makes you more creative, unique, and effective. Maybe ignorance really is bliss. I talk with entrepreneurs all the time who started their businesses without a real understanding of what they were getting into. It sounds crazy, but I actually […]

Whether you’re just starting up or need a way to manage existing operations, these tools have you covered. My inbox is constantly cluttered with announcements about the latest newfangled Website that will change how we all do business. Some of them, like the inbox fixers I wrote about in my recent magazine column, really do […]

Growing fast? Here’s how to make sure your company culture and organization keeps up. Last week, I was talking with the CEO of a start-up that was so successful that in the last year it had increased its revenues and employee count by more than 50%. And at the same time, it had just raised […]

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, PayPal will let you offer customers a buy now, pay later option. Bonus: You get paid right away. People love deferred interest financing programs, especially toward the end of the year when holiday shopping puts the squeeze on their wallets. So the timing makes sense for PayPal […]

These three avenues will help you focus on the core while capturing new growth opportunities. Every business we know struggles with the tradeoff of investing in and maximizing the core business while trying to take advantage of growth in new, adjacent markets. It’s generally easier (and more profitable) to focus on your core business. That’s […]

Before you have a company–or even a fully-formed idea–you can benefit from a formal or informal board of advisors. Your new business may be nothing more than an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin, or it may not be written down at all. Believe it or not, you should already be thinking about creating an […]

Today, instead of owning a hot stock or tulip bulb, the thing to do is become an entrepreneur. But what happens when reality sinks in? Uh-oh. Be careful. Be very careful. Something’s up. I can’t be entirely sure, but I think another bubble is building. Yes…all the signs are there. A bubble happens when the […]

In my experience, many business owners particularly those who have built a successful business feel they are doing “perfectly fine, thank you” without conducting marketing research.  I even run across those who are contemplating a new start-up who feel that this step can be rushed through at best, or skipped completely, at worst.  From the […]