21 Resources to Make You a Better Entrepreneur

It’s all too easy for entrepreneurs to keep their noses down, focusing on the day-to-day grind. Heck, Michael Gerber made his millions speaking to this fact of working in a business rather than on it. But coming up for air once in a while can net major benefits, especially when it comes to expanding your knowledge and skills.

Here are 21 places you should be looking to learn new things about your industry, as well as different facets of running a business.

Blogs. You’ve gotta love blogs. They provide really insightful information most of the time, without charging a dime. You can learn everything from how to use social media, marketing your business, to the latest news in your industry.

Not every blog is awesome, so when you find one that delivers real value, bookmark it or add it to your RSS feed. Here are a few picks you might find useful:

1. Search Engine Land: One of the reasons I love contributing here is the diversity of entrepreneur-related content, as well as insightful, breaking news and analysis regarding search-engine marketing.

2. Small Business Trends: Aimed directly at small-business owners, this blog covers company spotlights and hands-on how-to advice.

3. Social Media Examiner: If it’s possible to do on social media, there’s already a blog post about it here. Useful if you’re doing your own marketing.

MOOCs. No, it’s not a derogatory term. MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses, which are free to take. Universities all over the globe offer online courses on every imaginable topic, including business. Try these sites to start:

4. Coursera: It offers more than 700 courses, including those on data analysis and mobile-cloud computing.

5. Udemy: Learn about Bitcoin, business strategy or 15,998 other topics.

6. MOOC List: Comprehensive list of all available MOOC courses across multiple platforms.

Whitepapers and ebooks. Looking for a little more knowledge than a blog post can provide? Whitepapers and ebooks go in-depth on a topic and can be consumed quickly. Some are free (just expect to have to provide your email address to access them), while others are pretty affordable.

7. QuickSprout: Here you'll find personal expertise from world-renowned marketing expert and extremely successful entrepreneur, Neil Patel.

8. HubSpot: The company’s giveaways might be more popular than their marketing software. Current offerings include ebooks on Facebook marketing, SEO and content marketing.

9. Kindle Unlimited: If you’re an avid reader, Amazon’s new service can help you digest more digital books without paying full price.

Webinars. Everyone learns differently. If you like videos and interacting with your teachers, look for online webinars, both live and recorded, as valuable teaching tools. Again, some of these will be free, but the real value will be found in the ones that charge even a nominal fee.

10. Google Hangouts: Search for whatever you want to learn more about and join a Hangout on Air. The Hangouts are recorded and posted to YouTube, in case you miss the live stream.

11. BizLaunch: This company hosts regular free webinars for entrepreneurs on topics such as email marketing, SEO and social media.

12. SCORE: Here you'll find excellent information on the basics, such as how to start a nonprofit or negotiate a commercial lease.

Twitter chats. If you’ve never participated in a Twitter chat, you’ll be surprised how quickly they go by and how much you can learn. But don’t worry if you can’t take it all in in real time. You can always scroll back through the participating tweets (designated with a specific hashtag) and take notes later.

13. #SmallBizChat: Held each Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, this chat covers the gamut of topics relevant to small-business owners.

14. #BlogChat: One of the largest Twitter chats, this one has an impressive lineup of social media, content marketing and small-business experts Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.

15. #B2BChat: Learn from business-to-business experts and network on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.

LinkedIn groups. Another spot on social media that can provide plenty of fodder for your brain are LinkedIn groups. There’s one on every topic under the sun, so sign up for a few and start ingesting.

16. On Startups: Run by Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot, this group provides insightful articles from entrepreneurs.

17. Sales Best Practices: Beef up your sales skills by joining this group, filled with sales pros and business owners.

18. Succeed: Small Business Network, Powered by Staples: This group includes a nice mix of entrepreneurs with different sized businesses.

Videos. If you prefer video to written content, you’ve got plenty of educational content to watch on various video distribution channels.

19. YouTube: It’s not just for cute cat videos! YouTube offers channels such as Small Business Television Network and Small Business Building with how-to content.

20. Videolla: An up-and-comer, this site offers really specific advice, such as “how to pitch to investors in under two minutes.”

21. Justin.tv: With more than 10,000 live channels going on at a given moment, you’re sure to find business content you can use.

While I listed general small-business and entrepreneur resources, you can also look for Twitter chats, ebooks and webinars in your own industry. Look for industry associations and organizations that may offer free or for-a-fee educational content.

Don’t get overwhelmed with so many options, though. Put the resources you want to explore on your calendar, assess two or three a month, then dedicate time to really dive in and see what’s there. While it will require some time investment, you’ll be rewarded with knowledge.

From Entrepreneur

5 Steps to Building a Personal Brand (and Why You Need One)

People want to do business with other people, not with companies. Putting

 a strong personal brand on the frontline of your sales process can dramatically

improve conversion rates.

Your company's brand is one of the most important factors for its eventual success. It's the culmination of your company's identity, packaged and presented in a way that's pleasing, familiar, and attractive to your prospective and recurring customers.

However, companies and organizations aren't alone in the need for solid branding. Personal branding, the art of building a unique brand around yourself as an individual, is just as important. Just as so with a traditional brand, personal branding requires you to find a signature image, a unique voice, and a recognizable standard that your readers, fans, and customers can grow to recognize.

Personal branding is becoming increasingly important because modern audiences tend to trust people more than corporations. Audiences are used to seeing advertising everywhere, and tend to believe corporations and organizations take actions and speak with only sales in mind. Personal branding allows you to establish a reputation and an identity while still maintaining a personal level of trust and interaction, usually through social media.

Furthermore, people want to do business with other people, not with companies. Putting a strong personal brand on the frontline of your sales process can dramatically improve conversion rates.

Whether you use your personal brand to consult, freelance, or drive more traffic and trust to your company, it's vitally important to establish one to stay competitive.

Step 1: Determine your area of expertise.

Before you can establish or develop your expertise, you have to decide what you want to be known for. The world of personal branding is flooded with competing entrepreneurs, so it isn't enough to choose a general field like "marketing" or "human resources." Instead, it's best to develop yourself in a very specific niche. With a niche focus, you'll have more opportunities to prove you know what you're talking about, and while your potential audience might be slightly smaller, it will also be that much more relevant. Specificity is a trade of volume for significance.

Step 2: Start writing and publishing.

Once you know your area of focus, it's time to start building your reputation, and the best way to do that is to show off your expertise. Content marketing is the best way to build a brand and reputation online; when people look for information, they tend to go back to sources that were helpful to them. If you can become a trusted source of information through your content, over time you'll become collectively known as the expert of your specific field. It's best to start your own blog and update it on a regular (at least weekly) basis, but it's also a good idea to start guest blogging on other reputable blogs.

Step 3: Flesh out your social media profiles.

If content is the fuel for your personal brand, social media is the engine. Take the time to flesh out the details of your social media profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and make sure they're consistently in line with your personal brand standards. Post updates regularly (at least once a day for Facebook and LinkedIn, at least a few times a day for Twitter), and don't be afraid to re-post your older content for your new followers.

Step 4: Speak at events and develop case studies.

If you're trying to win the business of your personal brand followers, it's a good idea to work up a few case studies. Work with your past or present clients and co-workers to spin and present a solid narrative. People love real stories more than promises or speculation, so prove what you've done by giving them digestible case studies. You should also consider looking for speaking events in your area, which will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise while connecting with new audiences.

Step 5: Network, network, network.

On social media and in the real world, the key to sparking growth in your personal brand is networking. Engage with other individuals in your field, social influencers who have many connections, and anybody else who could be valuable in helping you spread the word about your expertise. Attend professional networking events to meet influencers in your area, and in the online world, engage in community discussions whenever you can. The more opportunities you have to meet people and talk, the better.

A personal brand is like a garden. Once you lay the groundwork and plant the seeds, you'll be in a great position to eventually reap the benefits. However, it still takes time and dedication to nurture and expand your creation. As you continue to develop your personal brand, stay consistent with your efforts, pay close attention to how your audience responds to your content, and hone your direction until your focus is razor sharp.

From Inc. Magazine

4 Entrepreneurial Cult Classics to Cultivate Success

As a habitual one-hour-a-day reader, I become excited when I find abook that catches my attention. Too many books offer the same old regurgitated advice leaving me to flip to the cover wondering if this is a title I've already read in the past.

Here are four books offering a fresh take on achieving entrepreneurial greatness. They've penetrated the entrepreneurial ranks through word-of-mouth, great content and raving fans. As evidence of their appeal, the titles have collectively drawn more than 1,100 five-star Amazon reviews and the authors have 42,000 followers on Twitter as well as thousands of "friends," "followers" and "likes" on their various Facebook pages.  

These authors have built communities of entrepreneurs who listen intently to their lessons, build businesses by their blueprints and live by the success credos memorialized in their tomes. The following business-lifting titles could be called entrepreneurial “cult classics,” if you will:

1. The Miracle Morning:The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life Before 8AM by Hal Elrod, 2012: The premise is simple: Those hitting the snooze button each morning are telling the universe they would rather be unconscious than live out their day. Elrod's book offers a system to start each day since the way people begin each morning speaks to the way they live out their entire day, week, year -- and life. 

2. The 7 Levels of Communication: Go From Relationships to Referrals by Michael Maher, 2010: This book offers salespeople a blueprint for building a network of advocates who will refer them business. It's not about using neurolinguistic programming to entice buyers or digging into a suitcase full of objection-handling techniques.

No, this book offers a blueprint for developing relationships and then turning them into business. It’s a light and entertaining parable built upon a foundation of highly valuable techniques that work when applied to any business.

3. Selling Luxury Homes by Jack Cotton, 2010: Working in real estate is not a prerequisite to loving this book. Those selling anything based on value rather than price will find it worth reading. Cotton has built a lucrative career selling homes to millionaires and billionaires: He offers exceptional advice about how to sell based on value and presents a bird’s-eye view into the minds of ultrawealthy consumers. Putting on a pair of white gloves to pull out luxury-marketing materials may be a bit much, says Cotton, but he also concedes that it might not be for those truly selling luxury.

4. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime by M.J. DeMarco, 2011. I can’t bear to remove this book from my briefcase even though I’ve read and reread it now several times. DeMarco has a unique take on attaining prosperity, saying most people work their entire lives and never accumulate wealth since their habits keep them on the slow lane when it comes to saving huge sums of money.

His assumption is that it's not possible to attain massive wealth when a person's income is tied to the number of hours worked, as is the case for most individuals. His advice? Separate the number of hours in the day from earning potential to hop over to the millionaire fast lane. 

From Entrepreneur

5 Tips on How to Avoid Losing Your Temper at Work

Have you ever received an email from a client, customer or coworker that was rude, irrational, demanding and unnecessary? Or had an employee make a costly mistake? Your first instinct may have been to react immediately — to angrily hit “reply” or chide your employee in front of the entire office.

Keeping your cool, especially during stressful situations, is one of the most important attributes of a good leader. These five tips will help you keep a clear head and an even temper, no matter how stressful your day.

1. Take a step back. Try to view the situation as a third party. Pretend you’re a representative of yourself and evaluate the problem from a logical point of view. An emotional reaction or angry tirade will almost never solve a dilemma. At best, losing your temper may cause an embarrassing situation and you may need to offer an apology for your behavior. At worst, you’ll intensify the situation and add to the list of consequences. Ask yourself, “Is this something I’ll still be angry about a year from now?” If not, let it go and move on. Many seasoned entrepreneurs will tell you that the things that used to upset them don’t even register on their radar anymore.

2. Be the voice of reason. When someone raises his or her voice to you, take a deep breath and remain calm. Keep your voice steady and speak at a normal pace. Most people will quickly realize they’re the only aggressor in the situation and will bring their voice and their temper back down. Some may even apologize for their outburst. At the same time, be prepared to apologize if you say something you didn't mean to say.

3. Think carefully before you speak. Once something comes out of your mouth, you can’t take it back. Saying hurtful or nasty things can be risky or dangerous to your professional reputation. It can also shatter your credibility. Watch what you say, how you say it, and where you say it. It’s best to confront someone in private, whenever possible.

4. Don’t take it personally. Entrepreneurs care deeply about their business and take extreme pride in their products and services. After all, they created the entire company from the ground up. Because of the emotion tied to your business, you may take negative feedback from customers as a personal attack. Instead, try to put yourself in your customers' shoes. You never know what kind of personal stressors someone may be dealing with on a daily basis. Try to practice patience and understanding and always treat everyone with the same level of respect you’d like to be shown.

5. Walk away. If you find a situation pushes you to your breaking point, step away until you can return with a clear mind. If you’re in the middle of an argument, simply tell the other person that you feel the conversation has gotten out of hand and you’d like to table the conversation for another time. Take time to calm down. Go outside and take a walk or take an hour and go to the gym. A break from the office and physical activity will help you relax. When you return to the problem, your fresh perspective will help you find the best solution.

From Entrepreneur

Even If Your Goals Seem Out of Reach, Stay Motivated With These 6 Strategies

I’ve been working on one project in particular for what seems like forever now -- and I’m growing frustrated. I have nothing to show for my hard work. The project feels as if it has come to a standstill. Day after day, nothing changes, and I find myself wondering, how long can I keep this up without giving up?

Self-doubt has crept in. I know walking away isn’t the answer, but these negative feelings are starting to eat away at my creativity.

Staying motivated is even harder when it comes to challenging projects that seem to drag on and on. That doesn’t mean we should shy away from them, though. Use these tips and strategies to stay focused and on track.

1. Feed your soul. There are a lot of ways to do this. Professionally, I find that the best way to feed my soul is to surround myself with people who are positive and who have my best interests at heart. I need all the support I can muster, and they help lift me up.

If I’m working in a team, I know how much I benefit from relying on them. I keep in touch. I brainstorm with them. I ask for their opinions. More often than not, simply asking a co-worker or someone I respect for their opinion leads me to a solution for a problem that has been vexing me. And it’s so easy to do!

2. Don’t lose sight of the big picture. What's it all about, anyway? Have you forgotten? Most of us do, to one extent or another, because we’re focusing on the daily grind. Do whatever it takes to keep your goal in sight.

Write it down on a huge sticky note and plaster that note to your computer. Find an image that represents your goal and hang it in your line of vision. Thinking about why I’m working so hard always reenergizes me!

3. Ask for help. When something isn’t working, stop and ask your boss, manager or mentor for their advice. Don’t wait too long to ask! When I find myself feeling stuck, I know someone with more experience might be able to shed some light on my problem. Listen, but also ask a lot of questions.

I still call my mentor when I’m stressed out, because he always helps get me back on track. He can see the big picture when I’ve lost it.

4. Get inspired. When I need a little pick-me-up, I read The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. It never fails to remind me of what I am capable of, and how to achieve it. What books or blogs inspire you?

5. Have a hobby. What gives you joy outside of work? If you have trouble answering this question, then you may have a problem. I don’t have many hobbies, but I do have one: I love to garden.

My backyard is my domain. I don’t depend on other people to do it and it’s always available to me. When I’m feeling low or overwhelmed, I work in the dirt. I find it very relaxing. Then I return to my desk a little more light-hearted.

6. Give back. Stop focusing so intently on yourself and your business for a bit. Find a way to help someone else. Donate your time. If I’m losing my magic, this helps without fail.

Staying motivated isn’t easy, especially when the goal you’re working towards seems as far out of reach as ever. Try not to get too down on yourself. Likewise, don’t get too excited when things are going well! Success takes time. There will be stops and starts.

You’ve heard this before, but I’ll say it again: You had better try to enjoy the journey, because, speaking from experience, reaching the top won’t feel as great as you think it will.

From Entrepreneur

Why It's a Mistake to Piggyback on Someone Else's Business

My company's experience developing a product that relied on Facebook shows how building a house on rented land is rarely a good idea. Here's why you might be better off investing your time and other resources in something you own.

Way back in 2007, Facebook was like the wild, wild West. Once the social network made it possible for brands to connect directly with their customers, it became a natural place for businesses to plant a social media flag. For awhile it was a total land grab. Hosting Facebook contests and promotions became very popular and my company profited from the trend. At first it was because I ran a web-design business that built Facebook applications (e.g., contests and promotions) for a handful of clients. And then it was because I took the experience I had building those apps and created a software product that anyone could use to do the same thing.

My company has grown nicely for the last few years--going from 80,000 users during 2011, our first year, to more than 300,000 in 2014. But Facebook's constant changes--to its algorithm, its terms of service, and its promotions guidelines, including a new ban on like-gating--made it clear that we needed to be independent. As of today, our product still works with Facebook, but it's no longer dependent on it.

Here are four things I've learned about piggybacking a new product on someone else's, and why it's not a good idea.

1. You're building a house on rented land.

The minute you build a company or product based entirely on what someone else is doing, your destiny becomes tied to theirs. What's more, if you happen to gain some traction, the "host" company will be watching what you do and learning from it. Basically, you're doing free R&D for a potentially huge and probably already profitable company. And once you figure out what your users--who are by default also their users--want, the landlord is going to swoop in.

We had this experience last summer when Facebook all of sudden revamped its promotions guidelines and made it possible for anyone to host a contest or sweepstakes on their Timeline without needing to use a third-party app provider (like my company ShortStack makes). We can only presume that they were well aware of how popular contests and promotions were on Facebook and wanted to grab a share of that attention--and the advertising dollars used to promote them--for themselves. On the day Facebook made that announcement, there was a bit of panic in our offices. But ultimately it motivated my co-founder/lead developer and me to rethink our product and get to work revamping the software to make it platform-agnostic.

2. You exist at the mercy of the landlord.

For several years, businesses were hungry for software like ShortStack's since it allowed them to leverage their Facebook presence. But over the years we've felt hamstrung by Facebook's ever-changing rules and regulations. Facebook's desire to "move fast and break things" made it difficult for us to consistently provide a stable platform for our users. Facebook's policies affected the way people used our product, but we didn't have a say in their decisions.

We were often frustrated on behalf of our users when they'd have an issue with something, but there was nothing we could do to help them. They'd ask us why a certain feature that worked "last week" didn't work any more. Or why a mobile function was giving them trouble. It was never our policy to blame Facebook but it was aggravating to take the hit for something that had nothing to do with our product.

3. You can't improve the house without the landlord's permission.

Another frustration we've had to deal with over the years is Facebook's less-than-stellar mobile experience. No matter what we did to make the mobile experience terrific for users of our platform, they had complaints that always led back to issues with Facebook's infrastructure. Our new product isn't affected by Facebook's mobile challenges. Another benefit of making our product function independently is that we don't have to follow all of Facebook's rules and regulations, making it easier for our users to run streamlined campaigns and action-gate them in multiple ways.

4. Sometimes the landlord doesn't want you around any more.

The landlord will always change the rules to benefit him. Always. Facebook has made so many changes to its platform and the rules its partners have to follow, that some of them, like Zynga, finally were forced to move away from Facebook. Zynga has 265 million monthly active users who evidently love the company's games, but the company's move away from Facebook hasn't gone well.

While it's absolutely true that using rented land can help you launch a product and even bring in revenue, it's important to make sure you're being smart with the money and saving up to go from renting to paying a mortgage. I'm armchair-quarterbacking here, but it seems like Zynga should have started with Facebook all the while knowing they'd need to move on sooner rather than later, when they were forced to.

The biggest lesson here is that entrepreneurs are much better off putting time, energy, and other resources into building something they own. Your growth rate might be slower, but ultimately you'll have more control over what you build and how it's used. Don't get me wrong, we still love Facebook and the majority of our users still publish what they build with our software to Facebook. But they no longer have to, which ultimately gives them more control over what they build, what kinds of data they can collect, and what they can do with it.

I'm curious to know if any of you have built a product or service that's closely tied to someone else's. Do you regret it or has it helped you get your business off the ground?

From Inc. Magazine

3 Crazy Ways to Boost Your Creativity

If you need fresh ideas, doing the same old thing probably won't help. Dare to try these wacky-sounding innovation boosters instead.

Creativity may be partly innate aptitude, but science has shown it's influenced by a host of other factors, including your physical environment and how many new experiences you expose yourself to. Businesses looking for fresh ideas can certainly leverage these lessons to build spaces that encourage creativity. Individuals can use them to maximize whatever level of inherent creativity they were born with.

But by now, a lot of these insights are old hat. The innovation-enhancing effects of officesthat allow people to bump into one another and gel together easily in small groups have been well covered, for instance. So what if you've been through the usual list of creativity boosters and are still hungry for new ways to rev up your brain to produce out-of-the box ideas?

It takes a little looking, but there is no shortage of more off-the-wall ideas. Recently, writer Herbert Lui went prospecting around the Web for weird and wacky creativity boosters for The Freelancer and came back with a host of promising possibilities. Here are a few of them:

Do It in the Dark

Getting outdoors has been shown to boost creativity, but if you're not really a nature person (or live in a concrete jungle), Liu found another idea. Leverage the power of darkness. Nope, you don't need to disobey Yoda and fail to resist the pull of the Dark Side; you just need toturn out the lights.

"If you're feeling stifled, try working in a dimmer environment. A study published in theJournal of Environmental Psychology has shown darkness and dim illumination promote creativity. Other experiments discovered that you can boost your creativity by simply priming yourself with the idea of darkness--even just describing an experience of being in the dark," writes Liu. Just be aware that while this works for generating ideas, when it actually comes to executing them, it's best to flip the switch on again.

Build Yourself a Box

Shakespeare's poetic genius thrived in the highly structured form of the sonnet (yup, ex-English major here). Why? Perhaps because constraints, even artificial ones, can spur creativity. Therefore, Liu suggests you skip thinking outside the box and opt to think inside one instead.

Medium, Twitter, and Blogspot co-founder Evan Williams has written about how constraints helped him make decisions more effectively: "With Medium, we have an engineering team that can build anything, matched with large ambitions, and plenty of capital. How do we ensure we don't create something overly complex and/or fail to ship at all? By picking a date,'" Liu reports, adding: "Think of it like having a blank canvas as opposed to one that already has a few brush strokes. It's much easier to work around the lines and create something based on those constraints rather than putting a brush to emptiness."

Annoy Your Friends

Listening to you babbling on about your half-baked notions might not please your friends, but if they're willing to lend you an ear, such aimless chatting is likely to help you develop new ideas, according to Liu. Just don't tell your buddies that their input and advice is completely beside the point.

"When you're stuck, a simple solution is to talk out your problems with a friend. You don't have to take any advice--but listening to ideas and responses could spark new ones of your own," Liu explains.

From Inc. Magazien