Past Guest Publications
4 Traditional Habits Every Small Business Should Break
Have you ever wondered about handshakes: Respected business owners stand with their backs straight, looking each other in the eye while they compete to crush each other’s fingers?
How to Keep People On Your SIde When Your Startup Changes
Startups constantly look to pivot. But like a horse with blinders on, our tunnel vision during the process can leave a lot out of the picture. The most dangerous of these exclusions include our previous core mission and the clients who were best served by it...
6 Steps To Turn Your Business
Into A Local Institution
To be championed by your community, you need to first champion those around you. Follow these 6 tips to make your local business the "place to go."
Can't Start Up In A Booming Tech Hub? A COllege Community Is The Next Best Thing
Location, location, location: It matters for any business, not just real estate. My startup has operated under a number of roofs over the years, and each one has had its “leaks.”
Small Business Advice: How to Overcome Cultural Misconceptions And Xenophobia
Overcoming xenophobia is really just a branding challenge, but it’s an extremely challenging one. Here are four tips that I believe can strengthen minority and immigrant business branding efforts, and they revolve around two important elements: education and multifaceted storytelling.
Marketing To The "Happy" Majority of SMB's
A well-defined target market is the most important component of a business. It’s every business’ raison d’être, not to mention the pie in the sky that fuels entrepreneurial ambitions in the first place. Market definition is business-defining.
Manpreet On Showing, Not Telling
Every entrepreneur I’ve talked to has given up more than they had anticipated in order to make their businesses survive past the dream stage. I knew going into this I’d have to give up a lot, I just didn’t realize what that meant when I started TalkLocal. It’s an online concierge service that connects consumers to local businesses. We act as a marketing supplement for these businesses, but one of our initial downfalls was marketing our own name.
5 Ways Startups Can Contribute in Crisis
For small businesses with obligations to investors and a job to do, overwhelming societal challenges tend to make day-to-day entrepreneurial efforts feel suddenly insignificant — so much so that leaders and staff fail to see how even startups can be a platform for impactful engagement.
12 Ways to Have the Most Efficient Staff Meetings Ever
So, in addition to letting teams exchange notes on their respective projects, meetingsenable staffers to review their progress and work towards future victories -- if only to maintain the esteem of their peers.
14 Ways To Increase Your Brand Marketing Impact in 2016
Now, the conversion from buyer to follower will become valuable as a measure of repeat business potential. Email newsletters and websites will increasingly link to social media which presents the dual possibility of an immediate purchase or a follow...
Mobile Driving Ad Dollars Towards Apps
Improving mobile devices requires that the mobile industry exert what influence it has to promote and incentivize quality content creation. Passively opening the floodgates to third-party ad-blockers is one way smartphone creators are doing that.
How To Make Your Company's Culture of Innovation More Than Just a Nice Idea
And with more engagement comes more shared responsibility for both successes and failures. Most off-the-wall ideas never get implemented, so giving a constructive response to unviable suggestions early on can help your team members come up with more effective plans in the future.
When meeting a high-value contact at an event where he’s headlining, “What a pleasant surprise!” is the worst icebreaker.
Networking Mistakes to Avoid
From a $2 Billion Fund to Internet Startup
“Why can’t I just make a website that consumers go to, describe their problem, and then someone calls them?”
“Try things very fast, don’t spend too much dwelling about is this gonna work is this not gonna work.”
12 Sure Signs You Shouldn’t Trust a Business Partner or Vendor
They don’t have any questions or concerns. The only type of deal that doesn’t raise questions or concerns is the kind that won’t happen.
For Brick and Mortar to Beat Ecommerce, It Takes Mind, Body, and Spirit
Rather than kill the physical store, digital has challenged stores to evolve and show what they’re made of: brick, mortar and silicone. Through big data and mobile-based innovations, physical storefronts are getting smarter.
Location, Location, Location: 8 YEC Members on How YOur Zip Code Impacts Company Culture
Silicon Valley is posited as where big ideas go… colleges and universities are where big ideas come from.
Growing Your Tech Startup? Find a Community Outside of Silicon Valley
More fundamentally, the community fosters an intellectual curiosity that drives our team members to discover, share and attend networking and learning opportunities every day. As a result, best practices aren’t just shared at a conference on the West Coast. They fill up my email inbox and the agendas of young leaders who value us as an opportunity to test out theories and apply their knowledge.
3 Steps to Attracting High-Quality Interns
If you think of internships as a type of charity (by letting some kid fold your letters in hopes of preparing them to make real contributions down the line), think again. At my company, the evidence to the contrary was compelling...
How Local Search Innovators Can Improve
COnsumer Loyalty
There’s something invaluable that individuals and communities gain when developing personal — rather than transactional — business relationships at the local level. By spending a little time on the phone, at the cash register, or by becoming a repeat customer, consumers discover that behind every professional demeanor lies just another neighbor.
Don't Neglect This Huge Customer Service Advantage
Many small businesses like to mimic what big companies do in an effort to look bigger. When it comes to customer service, that can be a big mistake.
How To Build Your Business In Hyper-Local Markets: Research, Relate, Reinvent
The difference between blanket coverage and becoming a part of the very fabric of every local community your business is part of comes down to what I call the three R’s: Research. Relate. Reinvent.
3 Ways the Sharing Economy Will Restore and Strengthen Our Perception of Community
In fact, once integrated into social media and used in collaboration with the local government to impact even the most challenging communities, the technology can actually redefine what constitutes "community" as we know it.
6 Ways to Incentivize Your Sales Team this Summer
During vacation season, working feels like unending drudgery. The only way to keep workers from resorting to mental vacations, distractions, and low productivity is to reward strong performance in the office with more time out of the office.
10 Signs You Are Relying Too Heavily on Technology to Run Your Business
If you’re the early adopter… you may lack imagination for problem solving. Low ROI, team management, inefficiencies, CRM: there’s an app for all of that and more, but they aren’t always the answer
13 Things Job Candidates Should Have on Their Resumes
Generic or ill-suited objectives need not apply. After all, unless candidates see working here as a path to reaching their own goals, I shouldn’t expect them to put their best foot forward once it’s in the door.
Displacement and Measuring the Unknown in Multi-Device, Multi-Channel Marketing Attribution
Now, with customers using so many devices to engage companies online, anything short of accessing both Verizon’s Super Cookies and Google Data would leave holes in your attribution data. Today, a strategy I call “displacement” is an essential part of solving the attribution dilemma.