Entrepreneurs: What’s Your Move To Take Your Biz to The Next Level?

James 2 Comments

One of my favorite audio books is The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by venture capitalist legend, Ben Horowitz, and I had two key takeaways from it:

  1. The only difference between successful and unsuccessful CEOs is the successful ones never quit. That’s it. Not being super-smart, or having the best product or service. Just not quitting.
  2. When a CEO is struggling with her business there is always a move she can make that might turn her fortunes around. She just has to be persistent enough to discover what the move is, and have the fortitude to make it.

It’s the second point I want to talk about in this post.

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Entrepreneurs: Sometimes When You Lose, You Win (part 2)

James 4 Comments

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I share both the good and the “bad” of my entrepreneurial journey. Anyone grinding out there knows too well the feeling of defeat. But if you’ve been consistently grinding, you also know sometimes situations that seem bad at first have a way of coming back around in your favor.

I’d like to share two such stories to inspire all you entrepreneurs to hang in there because you never know what’s gonna happen.

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Entrepreneurs: Do you use pain to push you to greatness?

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On the path to fulfilling our dreams, or personal legend (as described in the book, The Alchemist), and becoming great, there will be moments of triumph, and moments of pain.

This morning I saw a great graphic in the Facebook Group, StartupDadHQ, and the timing could not have been more perfect, as my day yesterday was painful as hell. What I found interesting was my response to the pain.

I’d like to share something amazing that happened, and something pretty challenging. Then my self-observation, which I think might be insightful for some entrepreneurs, and I suspect many others will be like, “Yep, I totally get that.” (more…)

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Spirits dadpreneur started with WHY when launching new biz

James 6 Comments

I am excited to introduce you to a great guy, Simon Ford.

Simon and I worked together at The ABSOLUT Spirits company before it was acquired by Pernod Ricard in 2008. Back then, Simon was a respected taste maker in the spirits game, who traveled the globe befriending and influencing the world’s best bartenders.

Today Simon is an entrepreneur, recently starting his own spirits company, The 86 Co., and he’s a new dad trying to figure out how to balance the startup grind and raising a family.

I caught up with Simon and talked with him about how things are going.

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My experiment with monetizing periscope

James 2 Comments

Periscope.

It’s all the rage now on social media.

I’m a bit of a natural skeptic, so I was like, “I don’t get it.” But I’m also willing to try new things because there’s no harm in doing so and you just never know where opportunities will come from.

I wondered if there was a way to monetize periscope for my biz. So, I reached out to Mario Armstrong, Digital Lifestyle Expert and founder of the #NeverSettleClub and soon-to-be NeverSettle TV Show.

 

Here’s what happened.

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Entrepreneurs: The brick wall exists for a reason

James 4 Comments

Most entrepreneurs I know love what they do and relentlessly drive to make their vision a reality. I hear a common theme from them about how hard it is sometimes, and they ask, “why does it have to be SO hard?”

 

At least once a month I ask myself, why does it feel like there is a perpetual brick wall standing between me and my vision to sell my biz for tens of millions of dollars?

The answer is simple. (more…)

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Why startups can’t rely on PR for sales

James 11 Comments

If you have a startup, PR can be awesome for business.

I recently wrote about the importance of PR and suggested working with an agency and hustling on your own to get media exposure. That self-hustling piece is great because there is something magical about the way a founder or CEO can communicate her/his passion to a blogger or journalist.

I’ve written myriad times on this blog about how PR has saved my ass and generated sales for my biz, which helped me raise another round of capital.

But I never expected to score a HUGE media placement in a leading national lifestyle publication and have no results to show for it.

 

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How entrepreneurs find and maintain momentum

James 5 Comments

This is a guest post by Bill Roth. Bill is a dad of six, an entrepreneur, and current founder of Brand Comics, a company that creates custom comic strips for content marketing & lead nurturing campaigns.

Now, over to Bill!

 

I recently read that the biggest contributor to failed startups is a sustained loss of enthusiasm by the founder(s); this makes sense.

As a bootstrapper that’s pursued 15 businesses, profitably built 6, and sold 2 (over 14 years), I can say from experience: enthusiasm = momentum. (more…)

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Happy Father’s Day, dadpreneurs

James 8 Comments

Being a dad is something I’ve grown into these past two years since the twins were born. At first, I was like, what are these two lil’ things up in my house making all this noise and constantly disrupting my sleep?

Then I grew into the whole “dadpreneneur” thing after the business ran out of cash and I had to come home to take care of the twins and hustle to turn the biz around. At first, I was not into it. At all.

Then I realized this is a precious opportunity to bond with the kiddos, as they’ll only be this age once. (more…)

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1 sneaky hack to convert web visitors who use your contact us form

James 6 Comments

Getting inbound messages from users is a beautiful thing. Every time my phone pings from an intercom.io in-app CRM message, or I get an email from a user via our contact form, I just smile. Because I know there is a very good chance I’ll be able to convert that user to a happy, paid customer.

I want to share one, small tip from my business’ “contact us” form that I find invaluable.

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