Tag: startup advice

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How to Create an Inexpensive but Effective Employee Training Program

by Cate November 5, 2013 1 Comment

In an earlier video I talked about how small companies can attract and retain top employees  even when they don’t have the cash to offer the compensation packages that big companies do. One of the things I mentioned is that top employees want to feel like they’re continually learning and growing, so it’s important for small companies to offer training and development to their employees. The logical next question then is: how do companies implement a successful employee training and development program when they don’t have much spare cash to spend on it? Check out this week’s video to find out:


 

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How to Conduct Market Research for Free

by Cate October 28, 2013 2 Comments

Last week I walked you through the basics of creating a solid marketing plan that you can use to promote your startup or small business. Much of what that marketing plan is built around is comprehensive market research, so I thought I should give you a little more detail about where to get some of the information you’ll be attempting to dig up about your ideal customer as you begin to work on your marketing plan.

Many entrepreneurs are afraid to dig into doing market research because they don’t know where to begin and fear that the only way to get good data is to pay a market research company a ton of money. When you’re just starting out with planning your business, however, you can do a ton of very effective market research yourself, for free. Check out this week’s video to learn about some of the best tools out there for getting market research without spending more than you already do for your internet connection.

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How to Create a Marketing Plan for Your Startup or Small Business

by Cate October 21, 2013 2 Comments

When you’re just launching a company or you’re trying to grow a small business you don’t have the massive marketing budget or penetrating brand recognition of major multinationals. Developing a solid marketing plan is key to successfully bringing in new customers and building a thriving business. Watch this week’s video to learn the basics of creating a solid marketing plan for your business’ success:

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Why Aspiring Entrepreneurs Should Stop Being Afraid to Share Their Ideas

by Cate October 15, 2013 3 Comments

Many aspiring entrepreneurs are tripped up by a common fear that sidelines their businesses before they even get started: a fear of sharing their idea. While it’s natural to want to protect your “billion dollar idea” so that you can maintain control and build the business of your dreams, if the fear of someone stealing your idea prevents you from seeking out advice, feedback, and mentorship it can easily prevent your success. Watch this week’s video to find out why this fear is so damaging and how to prevent it from crippling your company before it even launches.

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How to Get Your Business in the Press Using HARO

by Cate October 8, 2013 No Comments

Naturally, one of the biggest struggles for any new business is marketing. They don’t have the name recognition they need but they also don’t have the money to fund major marketing projects or pay for a public relations team. That’s why entrepreneurs have to learn a few tricks to try to get their names out into the press and in front of potential customers and one of those tricks is the service Help a Reporter Out. Watch this week’s video to learn what HARO is, why you should be using it, and how to get started.

Update: I got a note from the folks over at MonkeyLearn who said, “we recently discovered that some experts sources are using MonkeyLearn to create personalized alerts for HARO requests. This helps them speed up the process of answering relevant HARO queries and save time. With this in mind, we wrote a guide about automating this process in four easy steps (without writing a single line of code).”

I haven’t tried it yet but I’m interested in anything that helps me save time so I wanted to share. Let me know if you give it a try and find it helpful. Again, here’s the link to their guide. 

 

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Tools for Nomadic Entrepreneurship

by Cate October 1, 2013 No Comments

Last week I talked about how to manage your business from anywhere so that you can take full advantage of the freedom that entrepreneurship gives you and travel the world if you’d like. This week, as promised, I want to share some of the tools I use to help me while I manage my businesses remotely. Some of them may be familiar to you while some may be brand new but they’re all incredibly useful so check out the video below and then let me know in the comments what tools you use to help you manage your business(es) as you travel.

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How to Manage Your Business from Anywhere

by Cate September 24, 2013 No Comments

As you’ll know if you’ve explored the other pages on my website, I’m a full-time nomad and I’ve spent this year traveling through Latin America to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystems in the region. The fact that I have no real home base hasn’t stopped me from running my businesses, so I was recently asked to write a guest post for Under30CEO about how to live life as an entrepreneurial nomad. I got such a great response from that piece that I figured I should adapt it for video and share it here, in case some of you would love the freedom of being a nomad.

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How to Prevent Your Business Website from Being Hacked

by Cate September 10, 2013 3 Comments

Unfortunately, the number of hackers out there that take pleasure in destroying small business websites just to prove that they can is growing. It’s become a game to them, but it’s completely devastating to a small business when its site is compromised and it needs to shut down, restore, and relaunch. Not only do the entrepreneurs who are victims of these attacks have to deal with lost revenue and customer trust created by the site’s inaccessibility but also they have to pay hefty fees to get everything secured and back up and running. For many small businesses this is simply too much and they are forced to close after such an attack.

While there is no way to completely hack-proof your company’s website, there are ways to make it more secure so that you will be less likely to be a target. Check out this week’s video to see some tips that I learned the hard way to help you keep your company website safe.

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How to Apply SWOT Analysis and Porter’s 5 Forces Model

by Cate September 3, 2013 1 Comment

Two of my most watched videos are those about Porter’s 5 Forces Analysis and SWOT Analysis and I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about how helpful both are. I have also, however, received quite a few questions that imply a number of you are still confused about how to use them. When multiple people have the same question it always means one thing for me: it’s time to make a video to answer it. So this week I’ll give you a little more explanation about how to apply Porter’s 5 Forces Model and SWOT Analysis.

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How to Increase Word of Mouth Marketing

by Cate August 27, 2013 1 Comment

Word of mouth is hands down the most effective marketing technique for any small business or startup and, with an ever-growing number of avenues for your customers to help spread the word, you should absolutely be taking full advantage. However, it’s tough to stand out from the crowd enough that others will start publicly singing your praises.

With that said, there are ways to encourage your happy customers to spread the word. Check out the video below for tips to get your supporters talking: