Tag Archives: solopreneur

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Great Leaders Are Thoughtful and Deliberate, Not Impulsive and Reactive

You set aside the first hour of your day to work on a strategy document that you’ve been putting off for a week. You haven’t been disciplined about getting to it, but you’ve had one crisis after another to deal with in the past week. Now, finally, you’ve carved out 90 early morning minutes to work on it.  First, however, you take a quick peek at the email that has piled up in your inbox overnight. Before you know it, you’ve used up the whole 90 minutes responding to emails, even though none of them were truly urgent. By the time you walk into your next meeting, you’re feeling frustrated that you failed to stick by your plan. …

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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How to Make Smarter Decisions in Chaos

How does a business leader strategize in chaos? It’s a question many of us are facing as we currently shelter-in-place and navigate a volatile world economy. … Moving forward, leaders need to both respect the moment and lean into the next business space. In an interview last year, marketing veteran Seth Godin said one’s next best move comes from asking one important question: Do more people trust you and pay attention to you today than six months ago…

Inc.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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10 Commandments of Modern Marketing – actually 24…

Number One. Thou shalt build revenue FIRST and brand SECOND. Brand matters, but the primary goal must be sales. It’s possible (although not recommended) to sacrifice brand at the alter of sales and still recover. But you cannot sacrifice sales at the all-holy alter of brand and hope to survive. Number Two. Thou shalt write offers…not slogans. Slogans might win awards, but they don’t make sales. Great marketing inspires ACTION! It does not merely inform or entertain. (Also, there’s a special place in marketing hell for advertisers and marketers who stack up awards for their “creativity” but who have never owned or influenced a sales number. They would do us all a favor if they stuck to finger painting.) …

LinkedIn.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Harvard Business Review: Management – Begin with Trust

Trust is also one of the most essential forms of capital a leader has. Building trust, however, often requires thinking about leadership from a new perspective. The traditional leadership narrative is all about you: your vision and strategy; your ability to make the tough calls and rally the troops; your talents, your charisma, your heroic moments of courage and instinct. But leadership really isn’t about you. It’s about empowering other people…

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Use This Simple Business Tool to Make Good Decisions Faster

It’s tempting with a long task list to spread yourself too thin. You can stay busy all day and still find you have not much progress to show for it by the end of the night. Now apply the 80/20 rule to your to-do list. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.  Get our free tools here.

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Tech Giants Have Hijacked the Web. It’s Time for a Reboot.

While Washington looks to combat online monopolies, some innovators are developing new internet platforms to prevent monopolies from forming in the future… While lawmakers try to combat the concerns by talking about antitrust and regulation, a cottage industry of true decentralizers is emerging in the computer space. They want to recapture the original promise of the web, to create a platform where information isn’t siloed by private companies or monitored by police states.

WSJ.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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33 Things Successful Leaders Have Given Up

The advice here is harsh and it will help you understand leadership and the traps that exist. … Let’s look at those successful leaders we all admire and what they *don’t* do. What these leaders don’t do says more than what they actually do. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Want to Be Super Successful? Science Says Do Any 1 of These 10 Things

We all have the same amount of time. That’s why people who are more productive — and successful — use their time more effectively. … Chris Winfield is a great resource for entrepreneurs.  Chris is an entrepreneur and writer, and if you like this post (and the next two in the series), he’s created a special bonus area with a worksheet and 40 powerful morning habits you can adopt.

Inc.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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These Seven To-Do List Mistakes Could Be Derailing Your Productivity

Before you write your next to-do list, make sure you aren’t making these seven common mistakes:

1. Writing the List in the Morning… Instead, create your list the night before.

Fastcompany.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The Power of Stilling the Mind – why leaders do it

I have also practiced this discipline for twenty-two days in a row. Honestly, this has been one of the most transformational things I have ever done. …  Here are three of my own reasons for practicing the discipline of stillness:  I want to maintain perspective. If I don’t make time to be still, then I find myself in reactive mode—influenced by hundreds of little voices with big demands. I want to stay connected to my true self. I don’t want to get confused, thinking that I am the image I present to the world. They are related, of course, but I want to live from the inside out. I want more internal margin in my life. While I have been pursing external margin in my calendar and finances, I also want internal margin—more room to notice what matters most and be thankful for it. … How to Practice Stillness…

MichaelHyatt.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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5 Reasons Why You Should Commit Your Goals to Writing

The research is conclusive. Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, did a study on goal setting with 267 participants. She found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.  I have found this to be true in my own experience. Here are just a few goals I have written down over the last three decades: …

MichaelHyatt.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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How to Start a Business with No Money

We all know that hard work can produce incredible results. But the prevailing rise-and-grind mythology often pushes founders into business before they’re ready. Many smart, ambitious people feel pressured to quit their jobs and go all-in. They work around the clock, sacrificing their health and happiness to chase a startup dream. For every founder who’s battling exhaustion and surviving on protein bars, I’d like to suggest a different path. …

Jotform.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Here’s Why Time Off Work Actually Improves Your Work and Life

Leonard Mlodinow, a physicist, who also co-authored two books with Stephen Hawking, recently shared scientific research in his book Elastic about taking time off. He demonstrates that taking time off work improves our well-being:  “Though some may consider “doing nothing” unproductive, a lack of downtime is bad for our well-being, because idle time allows our default network to make sense of what we’ve recently experienced or learned.”

GetPocket.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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All The Apps You’ll Need to Run Your Small Business

With the right combination of software tools (plus the unavoidable hard work, long nights, and grit), you could find yourself with a thriving business…  [Here are some of] our favorite small business apps into each of these categories. All apps mentioned here have a 4+ star rating with more than 100 reviews (with only a few exceptions for awesome, lesser-known apps).

AppSumo.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

Have you used any of these apps? Give us your feedback!

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7 apps that will let you hire people to do almost anything

You might not realize just how many tasks can be carried out via your smartphone, but if you’ve got the right apps, you can do pretty much anything. … we’ve collected some of the top apps that will turn your phone into an outsourcing machine.

PopSci.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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11 Unproductive Habits You Want to Quit

When you want to become successful or productive, look at how you become the opposite. Turn things upside down. That’s what we’ve done… By simply avoiding these unproductive habits, you’ll automatically become more productive.

Pocket.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

What bad habit needs to go, NOW?!

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The Top 10 Lies We Believe About Our Influence

Avoiding These 10 Lies and Focusing on Real Influence

You might not be as influential as you think. Misconceptions about influence keep us from continued success. Anyone at any level, with any title, can influence others to act willingly upon what we have to say, but only if they are willing to do the work. Influence is a learned skill requiring self-awareness, feedback and ongoing practice. But why?

Thriveglobal.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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A prisoner in my own company

In the first few years after founding AP Logic, I went from being a dreamer and a creative person who was proactive to being someone who was drowning in a box of requirements and “to-dos”. … I started to hate it. I slowed down. I focused on tasks even though I was bad at them.  How could I be trapped in my own business?

Jim Ratichek, LinkedIn.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The Importance of Working With “A”Players

We operate in a world where it’s nearly impossible to accomplish anything great as an individual.  When you think about it, you’re the product of an education system, a healthcare system, luck, roads, the internet and so much more. You may be smart but you’re not self-made. And at work, most important achievements require a team of people working together.

The leader’s job is to get the team right. Getting the team right means that people are better as a group than as individuals. Now this is important.  Step back and think about that for a second — the right teams make every individual better than they would be on their own.

Farnamstreet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

What has it cost you, when you try to save money on less expensive help?

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3 Easy But Highly Effective Ways To Keep Tabs On Your Business

One of the benefits of the digital age (and the direction it is moving) is the ease with which so many different platforms can easily be connected. Cyfe, for example, is a business dashboard that integrates with everything from Facebook, Google Analytics, Gmail, Shopify, QuickBooks, and EventBrite, to Stripe, Bitly, and dozens upon dozens of other platforms. Think Hootsuite, but for everything.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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The Office of the Future — Brought to You by Microsoft

An interview with Microsoft’s director of office envisioning Anton Andrews…

Anton Andrews, wants to flip that equation by answering what he calls his core question: “How do you get people to lean in and do their best work together and collaborate?”

It’s a question that Microsoft has been asking itself for years.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Ten Powerful Habits That Will Change Your Life and Career

Having success in life largely depends on the habits that you repeatedly engage in, which ultimately shape your life. …

Your habits will either make or break your existence as it directly affects your source of happiness and success. Some habits are more powerful than others and simply put; your everyday habits determine your attitude and future progress both in life and in your career. The following are ten powerful habits that will improve your life and career direction. …

Forbes.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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You Need Multiple Layers of Security

The findings in the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC)’s “2018 End-of-Year Data Breach Report” serve as a stark reminder of why companies should take a layered approach to security.

SecurityIntelligence.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Even if your data is stored in the cloud, you need to back it up

Relying on your cloud service provider to provide fault-tolerant data storage does not account for the potential of data loss through user error, malicious destruction of data, or other incidents that can result in the loss of mission-critical business data. …

TechRepublic.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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7 Counterintuitive Rules for Growing Your Business Super-Fast

Blitzscaling a company isn’t easy; if it were, everyone would do it. Like most things of value in this world, blitzscaling is contrarian. To succeed, you’ll have to violate many of the management “rules” that are designed for efficiency and risk minimization.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

What rules have you violated and still succeeded?

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Streamline Your Workflow by Assigning Tasks to Days of the Week

The idea is pretty simple: Rather than shift your focus throughout the day, group together similar tasks so that you can streaming completing them.  … So I might always do one type of task on Mondays and Wednesdays, and another on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Perhaps you reserve all your in-person meetings or site visits for Wednesdays or Fridays. …

LifeHacker.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Scalability and Automation – Why it is so crucial for your company

In every incubator, the founders say this sentence about 1000 times a day. “Scaling, scaling, scaling.”  But the smart founders … mean the following: Does your business model still work when you suddenly sell 3000 socks a day instead of 3? It is just one example.  Is your business model practicable if you have to supply significantly more customers?

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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Why We’re Bad at Estimating Time (and What to Do About It)

If you understand the reasons why we tend to underestimate how long tasks will take, you can take steps to avoid the pitfalls of the planning fallacy and start forming more realistic estimates. …

To avoid the negative consequences of underestimating—at both work and in life—you have to make an effort to stop estimating using intuition only. And the best way to do that is to use an estimation technique: an exercise designed to help you form more realistic estimates.

The following six estimation techniques are all designed to help you avoid underestimating when you’re trying to determine how much time a task will take.

Zapier.com click the link to read the rest of the story.

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