Getting Your Business Ready For The Holiday Season

The next few months are jam-packed with holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas tend to be the big marketing ones. Each holiday offers its own ways for you to promote your brand and improve office morale, so don’t delay and start planning your new strategies for the upcoming season.

Spread Office Cheer.

The holiday season offers plenty of inexpensive opportunities for you to boost company morale and promote camaraderie.

Halloween:

Depending on how spooky or kitschy you’d like to go (and keep in mind the comfort of your employees) your Halloween decoration options are vast. From fake cotton spider webs in the corners of your office to gourds of all sizes covering various surfaces in your office, your office will look like a pumpkin patch in no time.

Thanksgiving:

When the holiday of gratitude rolls around, put up paper turkeys to your heart’s content, or order Thanksgiving floral arrangements for display around the office.

Christmas:

Christmas decorations tend to be a big winner, so let employees spend an hour one afternoon decking the office in the best of the season. Garlands, trees, and fake wrapped presents can do wonderful things for mood in the weeks leading up to the holidays. If your office space or business repeatedly sees customers walk through your door, these decorations are a must.

Get Customers Involved.

Halloween:

Offer a trick or treat day within your store for local families to take part in. Work with other nearby businesses to make it an event that will bring out droves of children and their parents. This will help you become more connected to the community, and the advertised allure of a Halloween treat will bring potential customers into your store who may not have entered otherwise.

Thanksgiving:

Plan a fun run designed to fundraise money for a particular cause and have participants raise dollars with each mile completed. This opportunity is probably best suited for the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, as weather conditions in much of the country can turn wet and unsuitable for outdoor activities.

Christmas:

Buy ugly Christmas sweaters for your employees and instruct them to wear them during the weeks preceding the holiday. Offer discounts to customers who wear their own ugly sweaters to inspire community involvement and draw in more profits. One great idea to get customers excited for the season, as well as an incentive to visit your business, would be to have a giveaway contest. If you’re a clothing store, give contestants the chance to win something unique but relative to the holiday, like a vintage holiday ski suit. If you’re a bar and pride yourself on your whiskey selection, give away this cool whiskey advent calendar before December hits.

Promotional Ideas.

Halloween:

Trick or treat, the deals are here! Wrap coupons around inexpensive candy bites and hand them out to customers when they make their purchase. It will entice repeat business, and give a sweet treat to already loyal consumers.

Thanksgiving:

Black Friday is already one of the most lucrative days of the year for businesses all across the nation, but you can use this to your advantage. Plan a pre-Black Friday flash sale and beat your competition to the punch line.

Christmas:

Send out greeting cards from your company and make a connection with your customers. Tell customers that if they bring in the greeting card, they’ll receive a percentage off of their purchase.

Holiday Party on a Budget.

If you’re trying cut down on expenses, you can still throw an inexpensive shindig for loyal employees. Make it a potluck, and provide the decorations, cutlery, and plates for the event. Small businesses often don’t have the money to throw into elaborate parties, but your employees can still have a wonderful time sharing their favorite recipes and soaking in some holiday cheer. Providing incentives like fun office get-togethers contributes to camaraderie and productivity, so don’t skip it just because of monetary limitations.

Give Back to the Community.

The holidays are a time of caring and sharing. There are endless ways you can get involved and help your community, but here are a few ideas to get you started.

Halloween:

Plan a canned food drive and drop off the collection at your local food bank or homeless shelter to make for a Halloween treat they won’t soon forget.

Thanksgiving:

A delicious spread is usually a staple for most Thanksgiving celebrations, but many are not so lucky. Ask your employees to spend one workday at a local soup kitchen, feeding the hungry and inspiring the spirit of generosity.

Christmas:

During the Christmas season many children may go without presents under the tree, so a toy drive is a wonderful way to bring smiles to the faces of local kids in your community.

These simple efforts can help others and also improve your brand awareness by instilling you as an integral part of your local community. Many of these ideas can be altered to work at any time of the year, so make it a regular part of your efforts to improve your community and your business.

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Taking Care Of Your Warehouse With These Ace Tips

There you are, lounging in your ivory tower of an office complex, sun glinting through your 43^rd floor window. A newton’s cradle sways to and fro and you sit in your chair like a Bond villain. But something niggles at you from the back of your mind.

You’re in the lap of luxury. But then you begin to remember disgruntled workers in your warehouse.

Yes, that was it, some kind of picket line and a few burning tyres. Oh Christ! You think, barrelling off your chair like you’d been given an electric shock. No one in my warehouse is satisfied!

With a shoddy warehouse comes agitated workers. And with dissatisfied workers comes potential strike action and productivity grinding to a halt.

So don’t lounge too far back in your office chair. You’ve got to sort out your warehouse – but how?

Lifting spirits (and boxes).

When your forklift trucks are sputtering and clattering like a contraption from the Acme Corporation, you can guarantee that your workplace will suffer. Constant breakdowns, failing exhausts and easily drained batteries – it’s time to replace your ancient trucks.

Fork trucks for sale from various places online, and some providers can offer you refurbished trucks at low prices.

With a new set of trucks, your fuel economy will be greater and breakdowns fewer. What’s more, you’ll have a troupe of satisfied workers with the shiniest machinery to work with. So if your fork lifts are faltering, you know what to do.

Safe and secure.

Safety should be a key concern in any warehouse, but a worryingly large number of employers will skimp on investment in safety gear. And when you don’t care about worker safety, the likelihood of an accident will increase dramatically.

To combat nasty slips, trips and falls, bring in a safety officer to survey your entire premises. They’ll point out any holes in your safety records. Patch up these potential dangers and you’ll avoid the vast majority of accidents in your workplace.

Listen up!

You see those picket lines and burning tyres outside your warehouse? They didn’t get there for nothing. At their root is a lack of communication.

If you don’t want your workers to get irate, initiate an open door policy for any problems they might have.

While you won’t be able to implement all changes they request, sometimes listening is enough. But the real trick will be to decrease the number of complaints you’ll have to address. Employees can sympathise with a boss who’s trying their best. So make an effort and the chance of seeing burning tyres outside your warehouse will drop dramatically.

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Can You Really Turn A Hobby Into A Business?

By Nick Goode, Commercial Director at Sage One

The whole hobby-to-business proposition is a little misleading — primarily because we need to rethink the word “hobby.” When we hear it, we think of those fun, voluntary pastimes that bring us enjoyment and help us make the most of our free time: reading, collecting stamps, community theatre — they’re all things that we do because we enjoy doing them. But is simply enjoying stamp collecting enough to translate your hobby into a successful, thriving, and sustainable career?

What we’re really talking about here is “passion.” When your hobby becomes something all-consuming—that thing you think about all day long during work and jump right into as soon as your time is yours again — that’s more than a hobby; that’s a passion with potential. And that passion is what represents something that can be both personally and professionally sustainable.

Here are a few areas to consider before taking the leap:

Social Media — It’s Already Working For You.

Your first stop on this journey from hobby to business is unquestionably: Get Social. In my view, social media is still a relatively untapped resource — and it’s one tool every hobbyist already has at their disposal to do the most basic market research. Start with Facebook and search for people with businesses like the one you’re considering. Since it’s unlikely your idea is going to be of Tesla-level uniqueness within the small business community, there will be many similar businesses you can learn from. Which appeal to followers the most? Which are most successful and why? Steal ideas with pride and connect with followers to learn as much as you can.

When researching this topic, I immediately turned to my Twitter community for insight. Using the hashtag #hobby2business I posted a photograph, tagged eight of my followers from the small business world, and asked for their advice on turning a hobby into a business. Within an hour, coworkers from my office were retweeting and tagging others, and my feed was full of #hobby2business content and advice. My favorite?

@PennyPower | Build community. Without social media, your use of it, and the connections you make with the people who will help you, your hobby will most likely remain just that.

Differentiate From Day One.

What makes a good business? Remember the seven P’s of marketing: product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning, and people. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to need to define all of these things in order to figure out where you stand in the marketplace—and how you can do it better than everyone else.

First, intimately understand the product you want to sell. Even if it’s a service, think of it as a product — what are its features? Why are they appealing? What is the size of your target market, and what percentage of that market do you anticipate will buy it? What are others charging for something similar?

You’ll also need to consider the logistics of getting your product to the people who want to buy it. If you’re selling online, where would your consumers naturally go to get your product? eBay? Amazon? Your own website? What apps will you need to collect money and get paid? Will you need storage, packaging, or shipping services? These channels are your routes to market, so defining them will also help you build a strategy for finding customers and making it as easy as possible for them to buy from you.

And while it’s important to identify these things, don’t overthink it. Unless you are inventing a patented product (which is rare in the hobby-to-business landscape) you’re probably going to differentiate on price, service, audience, and the product itself in comparison to what’s already out there. Embrace these things and use them to help set yourself apart from the competition.

Business Is Both Fun and Dull All The Time.

Fun is a small word with a huge impact on our lives, so it makes sense that we’d prioritize injecting fun into our business lives whenever possible. And, if you’re thinking about becoming your own boss, the ability to capitalize on fun is definitely one of the advantages: you can wear whatever you want, play music while you work, control the tone and presentation of your product — you’ll be in control of a lot of fun, new components of your business.

However, even the most fun business is still just that — a business. There are a lot of decidedly un-fun and dull responsibilities that your business requires to remain successful and profitable. Finance, administration, inventory — these are all things most small businesses owners do not go into business to learn how to do. That being said, there are ways to help minimize the impact of these dull tasks so you can focus on the fun stuff:

• Get a bookkeeper or an accountant from day one. Explain that you are a very small business on a shoestring budget, and that you don’t need corporate advice — you just want to get the basics right.
• You’re going to want mobile and online offerings first, so find a bookkeeper who does the same. You’ll get the advice and help you need without spending time and money travelling to meet them in person.
• Use an accounting app that your bookkeeper recommends. Every dollar you spend on your business counts towards your success.
• Learn the basics of accounting, invoicing, expense management, tax returns, and cash flow. Accept that your success depends on it. You don’t have to be an expert but you will fail without mastering the basics of accounting.

For everything else you need help with, use sites like www.upwork.com and http://ift.tt/x6LqFg to get freelance help. These sites offer experts on demand and at an affordable price.

Do The Math and Get More Help.

Fundamentally, every business needs to answer this simple equation to find success: revenue minus cost. To make sure your business is financially stable, start by figuring out how much income you need along with how much product you need to sell, and what your costs are. Then you’ll need to calculate how to manage the cash flow (the money you need to make the business work) as you ramp up. Keep going over these numbers.

If you are useless at numbers, don’t give up — get help! It’s a given that you will be weak in some areas of your business — after all, your passion for your hobby is not enough to keep a business up and running smoothly. The good news is that anyone in marketing, finance commercial management, product management, or your bookkeeper can help you. And don’t forget your friends and neighbours: your community includes people who will do things pro bono, provided that you can help them back. Be open to this. The social-first generation is all about mutual support (and that’s what makes it awesome!).

Your “Why” Should Not Be Because You Hate Commuting.

In his book “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action“, Simon Sinek challenges what and how thinking. While what and how are the yin and yang of everything, why is the driving force. So why didn’t I start the article with the why? Because the hobby-to-business process is agile rather than step-by-step — you need to consider each of these areas over and over; you can refine your why as you go.

But first, ask yourself why you want to make a career out of your hobby? Boil down the essence of your purpose because it will drive you to success. Without identifying the why you will not tap into the real reason you are changing your life. If that sounds bold, it is—you’re changing your life for a reason and you should be able to explain what that reason is; whether it’s to save your health, become the person you were told you couldn’t be, or because the real you is not stuck in a call center, defining the real, fundamental reasons why you want to transform your passion into your business will help you ultimately be more successful. Try to complete this sentence:

I am doing this to [enter bold life-changing statement here].

If we all did this, we’d change the world faster. Define the why today and reach for the highest branch.

Be Ready To Put Yourself First.

Corporations create context, like a river that flows: join in and drive and you’ll be part of the solution; float along and you’ll end up as part of the problem. We’ve all been there at one time or another.

Your hobby-to-business journey includes the acceptance that you will now be the river. No one else is going to create the environment, motivation, and drive you need to get things accomplished. As the owner of a business, you are on your own.

To be the best you can be, put yourself first. For me, it’s important to exercise every day, eat healthfully, and get the right amount of rest. If that meant buying a spinning bike for my house or cooking and freezing healthy meals in batches to save time — so be it. Make sure you can identify what keeps you happy, healthy, and grounded before you make the jump to living your passion on a full-time basis. When you are your own company, you’re the source of your own success; make sure the journey is worth it.

Conclusion.

Now more than ever we are encouraged to do what we love. After all, life’s too short for a boring job, bad bosses, and doing something you hate just to earn a paycheck. And because technology now enables work to be a thing you do rather than a place you go, the opportunity to identify and develop unique career pathways is greater than ever! For example, social, political, and environmental awareness has helped organizations such as Freecycle to flourish; a global movement toward embracing “makers” has built revolutionary sites like Etsy. We’re blessed, as a society, with an unprecedented combination of time, technology, information, and the quantified self: yes, we want it all.

And we can have it, too — as long as we channel our passions in the right places. For all of you who are thinking about turning your hobby into a business, I hope you found these insights helpful and I wish you luck!

 

Nick Goode is the Global Commercial Director of Sage One, Sage’s cloud accounting and payroll solution for start-ups and small businesses. Goode is accountable for the commercial, channel, product and marketing strategy for Sage One worldwide. Goode is previously Head of Sage One for Sage UK, and prior to that, Head of Marketing for the Accountants Division at Sage.

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Protecting Small Business Data – Six Expert Tips

By David Zimmerman, CEO of LC Technology International

Peruse the latest tech, business or marketing-related online magazine and you’ll assuredly come across articles about data, specifically the value data holds for the organization. Whether it’s uncovering insights through analysis of “big data”, processing recurring customer payments, or sending out marketing campaigns, modern companies rely on information. For smaller firms, safeguarding data is supremely important. Big firms that lose or mishandle data can sometimes handle the branding and financial hit. Consider Target’s credit card data breach and the efforts the company has put in to regain customer trust. Small businesses do not have this luxury, and should employ the very best practices in data protection in order to prevent catastrophic losses.

Here are six best practices for small businesses that need to protect their most valuable asset:

1. Create and follow a written plan.

By design, smaller businesses are usually not run as formally as bigger businesses. Multiple employees might have a fluctuating job description, and the firm might have several “jacks of all trades” who hold a variety of responsibilities. While this attitude is ideal for attracting customers, it’s not a reasonable strategy for data management. It’s important to assign a small team or individual that holds responsibility for writing a formal data protection and management plan. They will detail the various types of information held by the organization, where data should be stored, and when it should it accessed or analyzed. The written plan should delegate individuals to assist with following the plan and performing various tasks such as handling data backups.

2. Centralize the information.

Once the “what” of data management is completed, it’s time to focus on “where” it should be stored. Keeping information at a centralized place is the best way to prevent mismanagement or loss. It also makes it easier to compile and analyze the information, especially in cases where data is being pulled together from multiple data sources. The written plan should detail data storage and movement protocols to ensure staff are working diligently.

3. Build-in Redundancy.

Storage is increasingly headed to the clouds, with cloud enjoying a period of lowered costs and impressive reliability. Smaller firms should use the public cloud for most information storage, but look at the private or hybrid cloud options for the sensitive information. And backups are essential, especially for small businesses that have very limited funds and need cheaper methods of data protection. A quality strategy is to build “backups to the backup,” where a company might use the cloud, on-premises servers, and hybrid connections to create multiple redundancies. Remember that storage is inexpensive especially when conducting a “risk-reward” on the headache associated with stolen data. 

4. Manage information over time.

Small businesses grow quickly, which means hiring and training new staff members and managing departing employees. Change means disruption, and it’s vital to have a plan in place that does not rely on any single individual for control of data. When employees leave, be sure their access is cut off automatically and then implement a permissions-based structure where employee access to or ability to download information is severely limited.

5. Be gentle with devices.

The mobile small business increasingly uses their own personal devices to conduct business transactions. While this improves productivity, it can open up the company to data breaches. This remote generated data still needs to be captured and catalogued, so employees should use care when using free Wi-Fi or connecting to unknown networks. When working with information stored on fragile SD cards, employees should take care to not bend the cards or get them wet. Employees that use portable hard drives should take similar precautions.

6. Be sure deleted items are gone for good.

Storing data safely is a great best practice, but care should also be taken when deleting information. To permanently delete files, use a program such as FileExtinguisher® that pulls together file fragments and removes them before they could possibly be used to recreate the deleted file.

Protecting data should be supremely important for small business owners, as data drives the entire organization, from marketing and sales to the finance department. Companies should follow these six data management practices to; leverage the most sales from the customer base, avoid branding and potentially legal consequences, and raise their chances of longer-term success.

 

David Zimmerman has been in the hardware/software industry for over 30 years, specifically in the data recovery software market for 18 years. During this period, he has been involved in the creation; marketing and support of the earlier drive recovery software products to enter the PC market and successfully marketed them both nationally and internationally. His company LC Technology International makes data recovery products for most of his competitors.

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Key Ways You Can Easily Strengthen Your Business

In your first year, you’ll be thinking about keeping your business small. That way, you can decrease the level of risk that you’re taking on as a young entrepreneur. But, at the end of the first year you might find that your business is in a better position than you previously thought. It could be that you have a chance to make it stronger with some extra money in your business accounts.

Where are the key places that you should think about investing that extra cash? We think there are a few key areas that you should be considering when strengthening your business:

Employees.

It’s important that you hire the most skilled employees that you can find for positions in your business. Don’t forget that your employees are who your clients are going to be interacting with. They are going to be the face of your business and how others judge it. But, even after you hire the best employees, there are ways to improve their skills. You can send them on training courses. By giving your employees more training, they will learn new skills that they can use to generate more business. You may want to get new clients for your business. If that’s the case we recommend you invest in training, such as sending your employees for new Activia sales courses to improve their sales pitches. By doing this, you’re guaranteed to get the new customers that you want recruited and satisfied with the service that they receive.

New Tech.

You should also think about how new technology can boost your business. The latest tech on the market available to a company like yours can certainly have an impact. It’s not uncommon for employers to provide their staff with tablets as well as laptops. By doing this, they can make their work more mobile and their business model as a whole, more flexible.

If the business is more flexible, efficiency will be increased, and that means that in the long run, you’ll be making more money at the end of the year. If you are trying to increase efficiency, you should certainly think about investing in cloud software. By using cloud software, you can have all the information that your employees need readily available. There will be no delay and because of this they’ll be able to service clients far more speedily. Cloud servers are also a secure way to store sensitive information.

Marketing.

Of course, if you want to strengthen the position of your business on the market, you need to increase promotion. If your business operates primarily  online, there will be another company vying for your position on a search results page. To stop this, you have to be constantly investing in ways to increase your search ranking. One of the best ways to do this is to invest in an expert SEO service for your site. By having this service, you can guarantee that your business stays on Page 1. Customers will continue to choose your company over the competition.

Take this advice on board and we’re certain next year, your company will be one of the top businesses in your industry.

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How Managed Hosting Helps Get Startups Off The Ground

By Alan Glazer, Senior Product Manager at Hostway Services, Inc.

Startups in every industry have their work cut out for them. In recent years, this community has had greater access to cost-effective technological solutions. Still, the vast majority of startups fail.

Working against the odds.

According to Forbes contributor Neil Patel, nine out of every 10 startups fail. Several factors can contribute to these failures, according to CB Insights:

• 29 percent ran out of capital
• 19 percent were beaten by competitors in the marketplace
• 18 percent experienced pricing or cost issues
• 14 percent ignored customers

Tackling these pain points to better position your startup to succeed can hinge on managed hosting.

Increased adoption.

Managed hosting, in which a company leases dedicated IT equipment and resources, has become increasingly popular in recent years, a trend projected to continue. According to a January 2015 Markets and Markets report, the managed services market will likely experience considerable expansion through 2019 thanks to boosted adoption across a range of industries, including the startup sector.

“Organizations of all sizes are showing an increased interest in outsourcing their expensive in-house IT-related infrastructure to third party managed service providers to attain better efficiency from these resources as well as to use their costly IT personnel for more creative tasks, such as forming new policies and to smoothen out their current processes,” the report stated.

Why do startups need managed hosting?

There are several advantages that startups can reap from managed hosting, including more cost-effective access to high-performance IT equipment. Because it is a leased service, a startup avoids the high cost of investing in on-premises top-notch servers and hardware components. Instead, the company can rent these from its service provider, reserving its limited capital for other purposes.

Managed hosting also offers savings when it comes to internal IT and overall maintenance. Many startups, limited by available resources, can’t afford to have a team of IT workers to update equipment – some groups may have a single individual taking care of these responsibilities, or count on an employee to take on these tasks in addition to other duties. Outsourcing this to an expert team ensures hardware is properly maintained at all times. Not only does this save considerable time and money, but it also enables workers to focus on other mission-critical aspects of the company.

This style of hosting can also be a boon when it comes to security and compliance. The expert management it provides better ensures that critical, sensitive resources are maintained in a protected environment. In addition, some vendors like Hostway take extra steps to guarantee compliance with industry regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Managed hosting is also inherently reliable, ensuring that the startup is never without access to its important applications or customer portals. In this way, the company can provide the best possible service to its clients while having the peace of mind that its critical infrastructure will always be available.

In addition, managed hosting offers scalable, secure resources that can grow alongside the business. Because equipment can be dedicated to a single client, the environment is more protected. Since managed hosting providers inherently operate at scale, resources are readily available for expansion. In this way, the managed hosting provider can support the organization’s demands and requirements at every stage in its lifecycle.

Overall, managed hosting offers a range of advantages for startups, many of which directly address the top reasons for failure in the industry.

 

Alan Glazer has almost 15 years of experience as a product manager in the information technology field. At Hostway, he oversees the Managed Hosting product set and vendor relationships for Managed Services, Dedicated Servers, Colocation and Security Services. Alan holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and an MBA in Marketing from the University of Delaware. He’s also a certified Scrum Product Owner, ITIL Foundation Certified and a practitioner of Pragmatic Marketing and Journey Mapping.

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The Legal Side of Entrepreneurship

by John Vrionis, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed is in the business of encouraging entrepreneurship. This past summer, the Lightspeed Summer Fellowships program invited selected guests to provide aspiring entrepreneurs a perspective into all aspects of starting a new company. The program provides entrepreneurs the resources and mentoring they need to build their companies and develop their skills.

Craig Schmitz, a partner in the Technology Companies Group at law firm Godwin Proctor LLP who works on corporate, governance, board and fundraising issues, and Erika Fisher, an associate in the firm’s Business Law Department who deals with IP, fielded questions about the legal issues startups face. This article highlights their advice on issues ranging from financing to patent trolls:

***

While startups may believe lawyers are too costly, working with one early on avoids potentially serious problems later. Law firms that focus on emerging technology companies understand their legal issues from multiple perspectives and offer excellent advice.

Financing.

Startups need to understand how to manage the seed money they receive from investors and VCs. Investors typically negotiate from a term sheet, which if not handled properly can create problems that can hurt or kill the startup’s chances when they do their Series A round of funding. Entrepreneurs need to hit a happy medium with backers, not giving away too much but not making overly aggressive demands.

They also need to decide whether to structure terms as an equity deal or a convertible security deal. “If you’re going to raise $1 million, my advice is to propose a convertible security, because you can get it done quickly and less expensively,” said Schmitz. “And if you have a valuation cap; a higher cap is always better than a lower cap.”

The Cost of Financing.

Startups bear the costs of their financing, from the first seed investment to the sale of Series A stock. In a Series A financing, companies must pay the investors’ lawyers as well as their own. Investors’ fees are capped, which influences what a startup will pay its own lawyers. Paying lawyers $50,000 when you are raising $500,000 doesn’t work. Lawyers should use standard forms, and investors should cap their lawyer fees at $7,500-10,000 for a seed round of this size. Even $15-20,000 is too expensive. These costs make it preferable to use a convertible security for a raise of this size and to structure as equity financing if you are raising closer to $2 million.

Convertible Securities.

Debt or convertible securities (e.g., a SAFE or KISS) provide a much simpler transaction with less terms to negotiate. The primary terms for these types of transactions are the valuation cap and the conversion discount. Debt also has a due date and interest rate to negotiate. Equity transactions are preferable from an economic certainty standpoint as they fix a price whereas convertible securities with a cap provide a ceiling on valuation but do not have a floor. “Investors won’t insist on complicated Series A terms if they are writing a check for $50,000, but if someone writes a $1 million dollar check and insists on an equity deal, I would take that deal and get the financing,” said Schmitz.

Incorporation.

Startups should incorporate as soon as they can; the expense is low. Lawyers can do it, but companies can do it themselves at websites such as Clerky or LegalZoom. Startups also must pay an inexpensive service fee for incorporating in Delaware. If high U.S. taxes are a company’s biggest worry, it might think about incorporating in the Cayman Islands or Ireland. However, the U.S. will collect taxes on sales in the U.S.

A major reason for incorporating is to have the founders assign their IP to the company; it is far easier for a business to contract with a startup when the IP is owned by one entity. In addition, investors will look to confirm the company they are investing in actually owns its technology assets. Incorporation also protects the founders from a liability standpoint.

Board and Stockholder Votes.

Two types of votes matter: board votes and stockholder votes. Things such as issuing equity and setting the compensation of officers are board-level votes. Even if one member of a three-person board holds half of the company, he can be outvoted by the other two. When it comes to issues such as electing board members, what matters is the number of shares the stockholder owns, not the number of stockholders. In Silicon Valley, most boards ultimately make decisions based on a consensus.

Patent Trolls.

Patent trolls purchase portfolios containing patents and sue companies for infringing them. “This is a shakedown,” said Schmitz. “When you raise millions in Series A funding you’re big enough to be interesting.” Depending on the claim, writing a check to settle and get rid of a troll may be worth it. On the other hand, it may encourage other trolls to visit. A startup may need to hire a lawyer to understand what the best strategy is given its particular technology space and to guard against being seen as an easy mark. “From a diligence perspective, trolling appears as a blemish on the company,” said Fisher. “You need to get a waiver and release of claims so the troll never comes to your doorstep again.”

Intellectual Property.

“The number-one thing that will kill a company is if the founders haven’t assigned their IP to it,” according to Schmitz. In semiconductors and other areas where hard IP really matters, investors highly value patents. Issues in software IP are nuanced and require a fairly high level of expertise to determine if the technology is patentable at all. However, depending on the technology, it can be a good idea to get some provisional patents on file to preclude others from filing similar patents. Fisher noted that, “If you can’t patent your technology or process, there are other legal protection strategies to leverage, such as copyright protection, trade secrets, and trademark protection.”

Use of Data.

“Startups need to remember that just because data is publicly available on a website does not necessarily mean they have a right to it,” said Fisher. Although the data is public, the startup may not have been able to manually aggregate that data on its own, or the owner of the website may expressly prohibit use of the data outside of the services the owner offers. The owner will want representations that a company one degree removed from the data will not do certain things with it.

With direct customers, personally identifiable data is of most concern. Most state laws require companies to tell users what they are doing with the personally identifiable data they collect, who they share it with, what their terms are, and the steps they take to protect data, as a leak may give users cause for action. Best practices dictates that a company provide the same explanation to end-users with regard to all data (not just personally identifiable data) collected through their products or services.

Domain Squatting.

If someone is squatting on a domain a company wants, the company can send a letter offering to buy the domain. If the squatter makes an offer in return, and the potential purchaser sends a letter acknowledging the offer, this is considered prima facie evidence of squatting. If the squatter doesn’t give up the site, the issue can be taken to court, and the squatter will have to show it is operating a business or maintaining a service. If a domain name is critical to a brand and the domain is not empty, the best course may be to find a new name.

A startup can also use a trademark to acquire a domain; if another party acquires the domain name after the startup received trademark rights that can be incredibly helpful. If someone violates the trademark by using a certain domain name, the startup could make claim in court.

***

John Vrionis (@jvrionis) is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners who focuses primarily on early stage enterprise and consumer technology investments. In addition, John is the founder of Lightspeed’s Summer Fellowship Program. John holds an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business, an MS in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and a BA from Harvard University.

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The Pros And Cons Of Relocating Your Business

.Not only does this have an immediate effect on your own quality of life, but it can also dictate the quality of employees you’re able to attract and whether or not you can successfully run your business.

Here are the pros and cons of relocating:

Pro: Increasing Your Audience.

Many businesses feel that moving to a new location could earn them a larger, or even more profitable, customer base. While this becomes a primary concern when sales are low, if your industry is experiencing growth it may also be viable to try and take advantage of this situation as much as you can. As serviced office providers Landmark PLC have identified, relocating to the business capital could also give you a better opportunity to hire high-quality professionals seeking work in your industry.

Con: Inflicting a High Initial Expense.

There’s no doubt that relocating any business, no matter what the size, will incur a significant cost. The price of your initial deposit on your new property, paying third-parties to ship any valuable office equipment, and hiring new members of staff will all start to add up quickly. There may be other hidden costs you’d not considered, too, like the change in lifestyle you can expect from moving to a new location or the impact it could have on your family life.

Pro: Reducing Your Operating Costs.

The potential to reduce your overheads is often one of the primary motives behind relocating. In fact, if you’re currently struggling to pay the rent on your current property, you may feel that you have no choice but to move to a less costly area. During the planning phase, don’t simply look at locations that have the lowest cost of operation. You may find that the broader economic reasons behind this make the locale much less desirable than you initially thought.

Con: Disrupting Your Business.

Finally, one of the main concerns many business owners have over relocating their business is the downtime it could cause. You’ll have to ask yourself if the money that could potentially be lost during this period will be appropriately recouped in the long-term. This is a particular concern if you run a seasonal based business, where you can’t afford to lose out on the most viable months of the year.

Like most decisions in life, relocating has both its advantages and disadvantages. Make sure you weigh up all of the factors before you commit to your choice.

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$1 Million At 25: How My Business Made Someone A Millionaire

by Paul Scolardi is the CEO of Super Trades LLC

When it comes to finding financial success, so many people focus on having to build their financial portfolio for years and years and to wait decades until they can make the money they want and live the life they have always wanted to have. However, there is a young man by the name of Matthew Owens that is proving that philosophy wrong. Matthew was 24 years old when he started my program in 2013. This is how Matt’s journey unfolded and how he found himself as not only one of my top trading students but as a financial stable millionaire by the time he reached age 25.

Overcoming Early Challenges.

While Matt’s rise to the top of the trading world may seem quick and easy to the average outsider, mainly because of Matt’s age and quick success, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t face any setbacks. He started off with a couple of other programs and looked at day trading in general before joining my program. For whatever reason, Matt felt as though he wasn’t learning much and that these programs were not giving him the information he needed to find the success he was looking for. Additionally, Matt had lost 30% of his account during this time. This is when he decided to join my trading program and have me as his mentor.

Learning the Rules & Discipline.

One of the things that impacted Matt from my program was learning the infrastructure of trading as I call it. This consists of trading rules, trading discipline, and the psychology of trading. I coach my students as athletes and make sure they know the playbook, which represents trading rules and a disciplined trading plan for each trade. No matter what field you are in or how you are planning on making money, having discipline is one of the most important things you can have in life as this type of control can only help you make smart choices. Additionally, I coach them through the psychological aspects of trading (fear and greed to name a couple). It is equally important to master the psychology of trading, as it is the technical aspect of trading.

Developing Important Skills.

My program also helped Matt on his journey to becoming a millionaire by learning some of the more qualitative focused skills associated with stock trading. This includes properly analyzing the qualitative and fundamental aspects of a stock and doing the research needed to get insight on a company. This is something that the average trader does not take the time to do and something my program emphasizes because I know first hand that these types of skills are very important in the market. Many traders just focus on charts, I emphasize charts AND the fundamental or as I like to say, qualitative aspect of what is going on with a company. The great news is that my background was a CPA and CFO in corporate finance. So I am able to cut through and focus on what is actually important financially when it come to trading stocks as well as make it easy and fun to learn. There is no need to be intimidated if you do not have a background in finance as I do, and I make it easy for beginners to learn.

Lastly, my strategy is not focused on day trading. My style of swing trading does not require you to be glued to the computer screen all day.   Money can be made trading part time in the stock market while still excelling at a full time job or as a full time student with my strategy. This worked well for Matt, as he is a successful full time student.

$1 Million at 25.

Matt is now a millionaire at 25 years of age! However he likes to emphasize continued success and not fixate on the $1 million mark. Not only that but he has taken my strategy and combined it with his own unique style and strategy and he now teaches his own newsletter to his own students. The great thing about the stock market is it offers the opportunity that Matt and I both have now – to be financially independent and to be our own bosses. You can learn this skill in much less time than a college degree and for a fraction of the course. However, the question really comes down to character. Matt had a hard work ethic and put in the time taken to learn and perfect his trading while still excelling as a full time student. Many people out there want the prize but do not want to put in the work. I am so proud of Matt in becoming my first millionaire student. The only question I have now is who is next?

 

Paul Scolardi is the CEO of Super Trades LLC. He spent 16 years in Corporate Finance as a Certified Public Accountant and Chief Financial Officer. Additionally, Scolardi has also been investing/trading in stocks for over 18 years and is a self-made multi-millionaire from it. He is currently a financial educator with more than 1,100 students in over 30 countries and recently had his first student to also become a millionaire from his strategy.

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Momentum Ventures: Three Reasons Your Teams Need To Be In House

The traditional venture capital model calls for a degree of faith in the teams you choose to invest in. They can be down the hall, across the street, or on the other side of the world. At the end of the day, you can easily become detached from these individual teams, leaving them to their own devices in the hope they are working efficiently and towards the goal of building a successful business. This is just one of the many factors that contributes to the abysmal startup failure rate that Forbes reports is nearly 90 per cent. One technology company that is changing the game on this front is Momentum Ventures.

Based in Montreal, Quebec, Momentum Ventures has launched seven successful businesses since 2007, holding a perfect record at launching new ventures over the last eight years. One of the reasons they have been so successful is due to the fact that they insist on all development for all projects being completed in-house. Momentum Ventures CEO Matt Keezer says that this is one the cruxes of his vision, adding “with all development being done in house, we get not just collaboration at a higher level, but we have learning opportunities due to some of the new members of our team being able to work with or have access to people who have been in the online industry for more than a decade.”

Here are three reasons why teams working on multiple projects work better in-house:

1. Learning Opportunities For Staff.

By having all your teams under one roof you are able to expose your team members to a multitude of different workplace experiences. Firstly, for those working on far different projects, they will learn and stay connected with the many different systems in play across all projects. This exposure grows their knowledge base. Lastly, exposure to veteran staff allows team members to learn from experience and get the kind of mentorship that benefits all team members.

2. Collaboration Between Teams.

When Momentum Ventures began development on Alio, an online travel agency, they started from scratch. The development process could have been extremely difficult, but Alio had the added benefit of sharing an office with FlightHub, another online travel agency. The collaboration has benefited both teams, with Alio learning the ropes of online travel development and FlightHub determining they needed a server upgrade and planning their migration to Amazon Web Services after seeing Alio’s success using this well regarded cloud computing platform. This is just one example of many as to how collaboration benefits all the teams at Momentum Ventures.

3. Accountability and Immediate Action On Issues.

Lastly, accountability. Due to the nature of proximity, no issue goes without notice at Momentum Ventures. Frankly, by staying under one roof, development catastrophes or missteps are immediately noticed and rectified. By being in such proximity, some issues are even prevented due to the mentorship available to the Momentum Ventures teams. Likewise, if an emergency does come up, teams can benefit from out of the box thinking coming from many different sources thanks to the variety of teams on site. Working in one space also allows for friendly competition among teams, creating internal motivation that can spark innovation at the grassroots level. 

There are many reasons why the traditional venture capital model is flawed. Detachment from the work at hand is just one. By having your teams work in-house you can increase collaboration between teams, accountability, and introduce a whole variety of learning experiences for your teams and their individual members.

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What Is Local SEO Marketing & How Can You Do It

The most successful startup companies all begin with the same strategy: strong marketing. It is not a secret that marketing can bring in big revenue, and the best strategies can be well worth the financial investment.

One of the most obvious strategies is to use social media marketing, and to the right audience with the right product this approach is worthwhile. However, social media marketing is not always the best answer for your startup marketing needs. An often overlooked method of marketing is what is known as local SEO marketing, and it is worth investing your marketing resources.

What is local SEO marketing?

Digital marketing is the best way to spend your marketing dollars, but most startups do not really understand what it is or why digital marketing matters. More people are online now than ever before, using their smartphones to search for whatever they need, no matter where they are: on vacation or across town.

The rise of smartphones directing people to local businesses has changed the way those businesses utilize SEO to bring traffic through the door. Local SEO is designed to provide results based on the location of the person searching. For instance, if someone searched for ‘closest salon,’ the results in Google will bring up a map with locations to choose from based on where that person is standing. By utilizing local SEO marketing, you can bring in both local and out-of-town traffic directly through your door. Almost all of that foot traffic will spend money on location.

How to optimize local SEO marketing.

The next big question is: how do you capitalize on local SEO to drive that traffic through your door? There are a few different options to consider.

1. Get on local-friendly sites. Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Google are great places to start. With some of these sites, it is as simple as registering your business. With others, you need some way to get your foot in the door; and when you do, you need to have reviews to help build credibility.

2. Write local articles for your website. These shouldn’t be just any article. Include a “best of” article in which you review 3-5 of your competitors (but not yourself). These should be honest reviews in which you include direct links to their websites, location information, and phone numbers. This may seem counter-intuitive; however, when potential clients search for that particular business in your area, the locations listed and the honest reviews will help build your credibility. Believe it or not, readers will trust you and be more likely to select your business than your competitors.

Don’t limit yourself to just your competitors though. Write best or worst of articles about other local businesses outside of your specialization but related to what you do. For instance, if you are a salon that only does hair, write an article about salons that do manicures or day spas. This increases your credibility and local SEO ranking.

3. Create local places pages. This is listed last, but is actually more important. Visit Yahoo, Bing, and Google and create a local places page. These are simple enough to create. All you need to do is register, enter your business information, location, phone number, and hours (if relevant).

There are other strategies that work, but these three will help get you off to a good start with local SEO marketing.

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Branding Your Car, Van Or Other Vehicle

If you are running a small business, getting your brand recognized is one of the first steps to success. They say most people will remember a brand and have some ideas about it in their mind once they have seen it seven or more times. This may sound like a lot, but if you can get your branding into their field of vision regularly, or have them returning to something you have branded like your website often, it won’t take long for it to become firmly implanted in their memories.

More Brand Visibility.

One way a lot of companies try and ensure people are seeing their brand a lot of the time is by putting adverts in prominent places, and another is giving out branded merchandise people will keep on their desks or in their homes, like mugs, pens and mouse mats. Of course, these require a significant investment, and so you may be looking for things you can do that are less expensive but still allow you to get eyes on your logo, colors, and other brand elements. A good way to do this can be by branding your vehicle.

How Easy is It to Brand a Vehicle?

Branding a vehicle is fairly simple if you just want to stick a logo on it or even paint it a different color, add details like stripes, and then add a decal. There are lots of companies you can order vehicle decals from, and you will just need to send them a file with the graphic you want and your size specifications. If you want to try adding your own paint details you can look at using Plasti Dip colors to do it, or of course you can take your car, truck or motorcycle to a professional to have the exact paint job you want. For mopeds, scooters and motorbikes, remember also to brand things like helmets and panniers!

Of course, some companies go further than this and make modifications to their vehicles to make them really recognizable. If you want to go down this route you could be looking at more cost, and also at making sure the vehicle remains street legal. For most entrepreneurs, however, simply adding decals and perhaps painting the vehicle in brand colors is enough.

Using Your Branded Vehicle the Right Way.

For small businesses, chances are you are branding your own personal vehicle, so you’ll be using that car, motorcycle or truck when you are doing things that are not work related. This is in general a good thing, because it gets your brand out on the road even more, but when you are driving a branded vehicle you have to think of yourself as being basically ‘in uniform’. Drive courteously, park legally, and don’t be seen anywhere that could look bad for your brand!

Branding a vehicle is a very good way to advertise locally just as you drive around, and looks great when you visit clients.

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[ADV] GeWorko Method: Application In Pairs Trading

This method can be described as an innovative approach used to study financial markets as well as the analysis of their dynamics. In fact, it is a technique based on the Forex concept, according to which, one financial asset is quoted by another. According to GeWorkoMethod, this concept is expanded for portfolios, which stand for the base and quoted parts. To be more precise, one combination of assets is quoted by another.

Pairs trading is a strategy, also known as spread or arbitrage trading. It can be described as a technique allowing to take advantage of inconsistencies and strong price differences between assets not touching the market neutrality.

Definition of GeWorko Method

It is a technique of coming up with and trading a new class of instruments, referred to as Personal Composite Instruments (PCI). The available financial instruments are used to create this synthetic instrument. The concept of the new class of instruments is fully based on Forex, where B/Q parts are the components of trading instruments. Nevertheless, being based on this concept, the new class of instruments has a substantial distinction: instead of single assets in both the base and quoted parts, the components of these new instruments are base and quoted portfolios.

The portfolios can be made up of instruments from completely different classes such as currencies, indexes, stocks from different markets, and commodities, among others. This implies that aside from containing more than one asset, each part can contain assets from different financial sectors. Furthermore, each component asset features an individual weight in the instrument’s total structure, and this leads to the creation of instruments as per the user’s trading strategies. However, most investors prefer creating instruments with only one currency in each part of the instrument, which will make the personal composite instruments a standard currency pair.

Purpose

The purpose of this method is to analyze financial markets, which is the study of complex interrelations between assets and their combinations. This method offers convenient technology for the technical analysis of complex asset portfolios (the study of portfolio behavior, based on historical data). Ideally, the method is essential to the trader because it allows him realize his trading strategies and ideas through the PCI. It also allows him check his instruments’ behavior, based on long-term historical data and find his optimal ratio of the projected profitability as well as risk tolerance.

GeWorko Method: How it Works

Given that this method is an innovative approach to study financial markets and analysis of their dynamics, it works by allowing you create new financial instruments from a variety of available assets. It uses these assets to study the changes in the relative price of the new instruments and to determine the value of one asset relative to the other, based on a historical retrospective.

Advantages

This method is a unique portfolio trading technique especially for traders with the desire of expanding their strategic capacities to implement their impressive trading ideas and move beyond the “standard” group of financial instruments. Moreover, this method helps asset managers locate optimal risk-return characteristics for their guests or clients. Individual market participants also find it effective since it makes it simple to grasp as well as implement otherwise complex strategy of portfolio trading.

GeWorko Method in Pairs Trading

To apply pairs trading strategy it is necessary to conduct accurate analysis which is quite difficult without the ability to build charts of relative combinations of the interested assets. Traders have to export data from the terminal and spend much time on analyzing it. GeWorko Method can become an easy solution to this problem. Traders can create charts quickly and go ahead with analyzing simple and complex combinations of assets.

Application of GeWorko Method in Other Spheres

NetTradeX (the new generation trading analytical platform) is the trading terminal where this method may be applied in practice. It makes building PCI GeWorko easy, effective and quick. You can get the desired price chart instantly and use a variety of technical analysis tools to predict the price of the created instruments.

Here are a few of possible examples of GeWorko Method application:

• Simple Portfolio of Assets
• Conversion of the quoted currency
• The structure of two portfolios

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6 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Stay-At-Home Dads

by Gerry Hays, DinnerCall Founder and CEO

The number of stay-at-home dads in the U.S. has surged to roughly 2 million, a 90 percent increase since 1989, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. Although stay-at-home dads are becoming a new norm, there are still stigmas associated. Because of the antiquated belief that men are the family breadwinners, many see stay-at-home fatherhood as a loss of income, lack of desire to work and shortage of domestic knowledge.

What people tend to forget, though, is the innovative ground these stay-at-home dads have broken. Domestic dads tend to inherently have key characteristics that make them successful – appreciating experiences, ignoring stigmas and going above and beyond to name a few. When applied to other areas — such as entrepreneurship and running a business — these same skills and characteristics can translate into high levels of success.

So, entrepreneurs should take a page out of the stay-at-home dad handbook and apply these six invaluable lessons for growing a budding business:

1. Be authentic.

In a world where authenticity is scarce, commit to being the genuine version of yourself — and your business. Don’t let anything or anyone alter your goals, passions or values. In the realm of stay-at-home dads, hidden agendas aren’t welcome. Don’t make them acceptable in entrepreneurship either.

2. Appreciate each experience.

Every first (and second, and third) should be savored. You’ll be thankful later that you took in all the moments that got you to where you are today. It may be cliché, but every experience will be a lesson learned. Just like mastering how to discipline your children or which route to take to school, welcoming each adventure will help you succeed in the end.

3. Be devoted.

It’s hard to make something grow when you aren’t dedicated to seeing it flourish. Your project should be your passion and vice versa. If you feel like it’s losing that spark, take the time to rekindle your excitement. It’s easy to see how the chaos of everyday life could burn out a dad, but the second his kid says “please” or gets that first “A,” it makes everything worth it.

4. Be an early adopter.

Aren’t sure about the newest trend? If you think it could work for you, try it out early. No harm, no foul if you decide to drop it later on. If it does work out, it could give you the edge you need to succeed. Moms have typically been the stay-at-home parent in past years, but some families have now adopted this new family structure in their homes. It may be unconventional, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for some.

5. Ignore stigmas.

Some of the most successful people had to overcome stigmas before ascending to accomplishment (Think Bill Gates, Walt Disney and Jackie Robinson). Ignore stigmas that are holding you back from pursuing your dream. As stay-at-home dads have learned, disregarding criticisms can be worth it in the end.

6. Go above and beyond.

It may not include baking brownies for your child’s soccer team, but there are many things you can do to take your success to the next level. Many people are average, but few excel. The winners in business are those who take the time to go that extra mile – your employees, partners and customers will appreciate the extra attention and dedication.

Even if you’re not taking on full-time stay-at-home dad duties àla famous TV fathers Joel Graham or Cameron Tucker, that doesn’t mean you can’t apply these practices to embrace your role and become effective in whatever you do. These men are doing incredible things, and so can you.

 

Gerry Hays is the founder and CEO of DinnerCall, a public benefit corporation founded in 2015 out of Indianapolis. DinnerCall’s premier initiative is The Billion Family Dinners Challenge – a social advocacy venture that aims to bring families back together at the dinner table. DinnerCall will eventually serve as a mobile commerce platform for providing consumers with affordable, convenient and healthy meals.

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How Businesses Can Effectively Use Smartphones To Their Advantage

One of today’s most effective modern business tools is the smartphone, whose technology has given many small and start-up companies a greater ability to increase productivity and lower costs. Whether you’re a small business looking to find ways to improve employee multi-tasking, or a larger company hoping to increase your employees’ autonomy, the smartphone and its many applications can provide a solution to creating a more efficient business.

Here are just a few of the ways that a smartphone might help your firm, and a few tips to best utilize them:

Seamless communication.

There are a variety of free and purchasable apps for smartphones that will not only improve your business’s talk and video communications through conference calling, conference videos, recorded instructionals, meetings and more, but also allow for seamless sharing of documents and other important information. There’s no need for any employee to be out of the loop, especially if you ensure that your phones have the best network coverage, meaning you can always be in-touch and up to date.

Multi-tasking functions.

For any small business the ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously is an absolute necessity, and often times those projects can drag you in a number of directions and to a number of destinations. Smartphones allow you to constantly monitor the changes in different projects, from product development to sales. Whether you need to respond to customer inquiries, check inventory updates or communicate quickly with co-workers, you will always have access to the information you need.

Organize and maintain contacts.

For any company, one of the most important things to build a positive relationship with customers. Customers will contact you 24 hours a day seven days a week, and smartphones provide you with the ability to have instant access to all the relevant data and information needed to answer their questions. Smartphones also provide you with the opportunity to make changes to customer information and requests on the go, which means saving time, reducing mistakes, and increasing customer satisfaction.

Implement time restrictions on work.

One of the things to keep in mind when implementing the use of smartphones is that although they increase efficiency, they can also increase the number of hours employees work, as they can work from any destination. To prevent burnout, many companies have begun restricting the use of work smartphones to a specific number of hours per-day.

Be sure to consider smartphones for the next step in the growth of your business.

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[Interview] Deekron Krikorian Of MotionTraxx

Startup founder Deekron Krikorian of MotionTraxx, was able to pursue his dream of spending a summer abroad in Ibiza, enjoying the music and nightlife of one of the clubbing capitals of the world, while using technology, co-working and other tools to effectively managing his startup and ensuring it moves forward towards its goals while he was abroad. We ask him how he managed to do so – in fact his answers to our interview questions were written while on the island. Jealous much.

1. How did you come up with the idea to go to Ibiza and why? How long did you stay?

I fell in love with Ibiza when I first went there in 2008 with some friends from Madrid. I’m a huge lover of Techno and House, and it really has the best nightclubs and parties in the world for dance music. Yet, what surprised me were all the other amazing things Ibiza as an island has to offer, which you can take advantage of during the day. Things like hidden coves with breathtaking views, daily spiritual activities like mediation and yoga, and a mandatory ferry trip to the neighboring island, Formentera, renown for its raw island beauty.

I recently separated from my wife (over the Christmas 2104 holiday), went through a divorce this year and found myself suddenly single again. With the summer in front of me, I got the inspiration to spend the entire summer season in Ibiza. I figured that it would make a nice break from the intensity of my home town of NYC, and going for the entire summer would help me take full advantage of the amazing music out there, as well as provide a chance to hit the ‘refresh’ button my life.

I had to move a few small mountains to make it happen, but it’s been was totally worth it!

2. Tell us about your startup. What is it about?

Our NYC-based startup has developed a fitness app, called MotionTraxx that motivates you to push harder in the gym so you can be fit and feel great. It streams soundtracks that combine audio coaching from top trainers with music that’s synced to the workout. We say it’s like having a fitness class in your earbuds.

3. Who is on your team? How did they handle the news that you were going to Ibiza for the entire summer?

We’re a 3-person team and we work full time on MotionTraxx. My cofounder, Jason Keck, heads up our tech and runs everything related to our app. Production of audio content falls on my plate. We share marketing and management duties and also have an active Advisor, Andy Jackson, who is based in Denver and handles our Business Development.

I’m lucky that both Jason and Andy were very understanding about my plan to spend the summer in Ibiza. They had both been to Ibiza themselves (Jason actually met his wife there!) and Andy had also been through a divorce. They totally got it, and were very supportive. I thank my lucky stars for having partners that allow me the freedom to do things that are important for my life.

I sense that, often, startup teams can get too heads down and focused on their startup and lose sight of the things that matter personally. Business can do that. But by default, we’ve developed a culture of freedom and flexibility on our team. I think it really works well and it’s one of the things that motivate us to make Motion Traxx a success. That way, we can enjoy good quality of life and freedom while still having financial success. It’s the only way to fly.

4. How did you communicate with your team? How often? What technology/tools did you use?

With Andy in Denver, and Jason and I in New York (but only working out of our coworking space 2-3 days per week) we were already a mostly virtual team. So the transition for me being away didn’t change our flow as a team too much.

We use most of the common cloud-based tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Clear Slide and Asana. One great new tool that we added recently is Uberconference. As a distributed team, our 2X/week team calls were crucial and the free services like Google Hangouts, Skype and FreeConferenceCall.com seemed to always have some kind of call quality problem. We have to pay a small fee for Uberconferece but the quality and cool features have made it a great new tool in our toolbox.

The other thing that really helped was finding Coworking spaces here in Ibiza (I tried out two different ones, and settled on one – Cowork Ibiza – which as close to where I was living in Play d’em Bossa.

5. How did you make things work? How did you plan? How did you work out your schedule to be on the same time zones?

With me in Spain, we were spread across 3 time zones. Not to be cheeky, but going to party at nights actually helped us stay in sync. For example, I would often go to bed around 4am, which would only be 10pm in NYC. I’d wake up at 11am, which was 5am in NY. While I’d show up to the coworking space and start my day, around 2pm, it was 8am in NYC. So to keep ‘New York’ hours while in Ibiza helped us with the time zones and helped me get to enjoy the nightlife.

6. What did you accomplish? What were the results?

While my productivity in Ibiza fluctuated, depending on what friends were in town and which parties were happening that week (ha!), I don’t feel we missed too much of a beat. During the summer, we were able to move forward on some important items, including negotiating a partnership deal with Bowflex, producing 2 custom workouts for Shape Magazine, make progress on fundraising, launching our blog and kicking off the redesign of our app.

To give credit where credit is due, Jason worked his tail off during the summer to keep things humming along. He’s already the most productive person I’ve ever met, and he took things up a notch from there, moving at 100 MPH. I am indebted for the extra support he provided me while I was away. The lesson there is that you can benefit from having a great cofounder. He or she can be there to pick up the slack when you can’t.

What was the biggest challenge for your startup with you, the founder, being away all summer?

One challenge, that is endemic to all virtual teams, is that you don’t communicate as much as you would if you were in the same room. This can lead to breakdown and misunderstandings. I’ve found that the key to making a virtual team work, is to communicate as much as possible, and to be ready to listen with an open mind and open heart whenever a breakdown in communication causes upset with one of the team members. The upset MUST be resolved by phone or Skype, directly with the party involved. It will not work to try to do it over email or to speak to anyone other than the party that is upset. By maintaining this philosophy, I think we’ve done this fairly well and nipped problems in the bud pretty quickly.

Another challenge was the fluctuations in productivity. There were times where I was productive, while other times, I was less productive and was a bottleneck for my team or our freelancers from moving forward. There is no shortage of distractions here, but I did my best to maintain some kind of discipline and not let the party schedule slow things down for too long. Besides, at my age (I’m 43) the body just can’t go non-stop for too long like it used to, so that will force you to get back to business as well!

7. What were the lessons learned for your business? And personal life that can transfer professionally?

Professionally, taking this trip and still being able to keep the startup going, reminded me about the importance of having great people around you, and having a great culture at your startup, no matter how small it is. Flexibility and freedom for your team members matters, because it will give them balance and be happy, which will translate to performance while they are at work. Use all the virtual tools available to you in order to keep things going, and when there is a breakdown, resolve it by having a real conversation, directly with the person. Use phone or Skype. Email is not intended for important conversations and can lead to misunderstandings.

Personally, I was reminded about the value of staying inspired. I love dance music and being able to motivate people to workout and be healthy through music, was the reason I launched my start up in the first place. Along the way, the duties of a startup caused me to relate to music as a ‘to do’, that was part of our product. I rarely took time to enjoy the thing that inspired me in the first place. Being in Ibiza and taking in incredible music from the top DJs and artists in the world has helped me reconnect with the music again and to feel re-inspired and happy for why I do what I do.

8. What would you change?

Not much. If and when I do a trip like this again, I’ll probably get my own place instead of Airbnb it with housemates. I would probably also join a gym sooner (instead of waiting 2 months) so I can keep myself fit and strong and in a good mental state for the demands of the startup. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change a thing. I feel super happy and very blessed for having had this opportunity.

9. Would you recommend this to other entrepreneurs, employers/employees?

On the one hand, I would say that anytime you have the opportunity to live abroad, you should absolutely go for it! It broadens your horizons, it forces you to get out of your comfort zone, to meet new people, to learn about new cultures and makes you a smarter and more culturally aware person.

I would only caution that there are a lot of things to consider, like where to live, how to get around, medical insurance, language barriers (luckily I speak Spanish), extra expense and the team-related and time zone challenges I covered above.

But the tools are definitely there to allow others to take a trip like this. If you have the inspiration, the technology is there to keep you connected to your team while you too, can take the trip of a lifetime!

Now if you’ll excuse me. Carl Cox is Djing at Space tonight and I have to get my party outfit on.

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Enhancing Your Bare-Bones Marketing Budget With Public Speaking

by Lauren Sergy, founder of Up Front Communication

For many small businesses, marketing budgets are thin to non-existent. While many turn to social media and websites for inexpensive advertising, local speaking opportunities can provide exceptional marketing value with virtually no direct cost.

The power in speaking as a marketing platform lies in the fact that face to face interaction increases trust and lets people meet you on a more personal level. Speaking directly to an audience accelerates the know-like-trust factor while enhancing your credibility. Speaking gives you the opportunity to provide immediate value to people, to demonstrate your abilities, and to chat with them informally afterwards. People get to see you in action, experience your professionalism and skill first-hand.

Finding an audience.

As this is intended to be a low-to-no cost marketing activity, you will be focused on your local market. Search your area for service clubs, professional associations, and business networking groups. Many of these organizations hold monthly meetings with guest speakers. Some may limit speaking opportunities to their own members, but many are eager to bring in a fresh face from outside their organization.

Another excellent venue for public speaking are conferences and professional development events. Organizers of these events need speakers for their concurrent sessions. Proposals for sessions from outside the conference’s target industry are often welcome. A productivity coach, for instance, may provide a time management technique session at an urban planners or teachers conference.

Even if you’re running an online business, public speaking allows you to reach customers in your own backyard. Additionally, you can leverage your local talks into interesting content for your website. Announce upcoming talks to build excitement. When you give a talk, record it, upload it (in part or in whole) and make it available via YouTube and on your website. This gives online customers the chance to watch you speak to a live audience, and can turn a single talk into a highly leveraged marketing tool.

Shouldn’t I be paid for this?

Most speaking opportunities for associations, clubs, conferences, and so on will be unpaid. While some organizations may offer a small honorarium or a charitable donation in your name, most do not compensate their speaker. But the purpose of this activity is marketing – not breaking into the professional speaking circuit.

Still, it takes a lot of time to prepare and practice these presentations, so spend your time wisely. You are doing this to generate business, so only present to groups that fit your client description.

Again, this is a marketing activity, so be shameless in seeking attention. That is your compensation. Encourage the organization to trumpet your talk as much as possible via social media, on their website, in their newsletters, and so on. Make it easy for them by providing them with a professional headshot, a very brief description of your business, your bio, and all your contact information including social media handles.

Good content, good contact.

When it comes to the talk itself, the best presentations are highly focused on one skill or idea. The talk should provide people with information they can immediately apply to a particular aspect of their work – such as a run-down of anti-spam laws, or a current best practice for recruiting on LinkedIn. The key here is to provide the attendees with a sample of your expertise while giving them memorable skills or information they can easily share with others.

While some people put a strong sales pitch into their presentation, it has been my experience that this should be avoided. First, many organizations explicitly ban pitching during presentations. Second, even if pitching isn’t banned, the audience usually turns off as soon as the speaker goes into sales mode. That being said, it is absolutely acceptable to let the audience know what your business is and invite them to contact you. Often the event host will incorporate this into your introduction and the thank-yous at the end of the talk. If you are using a slideshow, have your name, business name, website, and full contact info as your final slide.

Always make sure you stay after your talk and hang around after the meeting concludes. I find that people always want to speak with me after a presentation, and this is where you can make valuable new contacts. Bring lots of business cards, ask people for theirs, and send them follow-up emails. If you have a newsletter, bring a sign-up sheet so that people may subscribe on their way out the door.

But I’m not a public speaker!

Don’t let a lack of speaking experience stop you from finding and pursuing speaking opportunities. If you are informative and engaging, the audience won’t care one whit how many presentations you have under your belt. They are interested in you your expertise, your message, and if all goes well, your products or services. Prepare and practice thoroughly, bring your enthusiasm, and you’ll do just fine. And don’t give up after one talk; hunt down opportunities, refine your talks, and give more presentations. Not only will you become a better speaker, you’ll even come to enjoy it!

 

Lauren Sergy, founder of Up Front Communication, is a public speaking and presentations coach and trainer. Her unique speaking and coaching method engages both mind and body, incorporating techniques from acting, radio, psychology, marketing, and more. Lauren walks the public speaking talk with regular lecturing and presenting at a wide variety of events. Her first book, the Handy Communication Answer Book, will hit the shelves in winter 2016. You can connect with her on Twitter @lsergy.

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How Product Images On Your E-Commerce Site Affect Your Fashion Brand’s Identity

A lot of young entrepreneurs head for the fashion market when it comes to creating ranges of products they understand the target audience for, whether it is people who design and create their own clothing and accessories, or those who source styles for their own online boutiques.

Owning and setting up an online store that can handle the transactions with your customers and keep track of your stock is actually a fairly simple part of creating a business like this, but what can set one apart from another is how well the creator has managed to create a brand that their target demographic really engages with and wants to wear things from.

Branding and Small Fashion Businesses.

The branding of an ecommerce site is everything when you are working in the fashion market, because what you are selling is style, and you are selling it in a saturated marketplace. For every great independent jewellery designer there are hundreds of others, and for every person who has created some awesome upcycled festival clothing there are dozens more on Etsy they have to grasp their customer’s attention from. When you name your brand and create your logo and website’s look and feel you are probably very aware of what your branding decisions mean, but where a lot of people fall down is on keeping it consistent with their product imagery.

Are There Really That Many Ways to Show Off a Product in a Photo?

You may think that there can’t actually be that many different ways you can show a picture of one of your products – essentially you are just taking a photograph so the potential buyer can see what it looks like, right? Well, this isn’t the case. For one thing, you have to decide whether you will show your products with or without someone wearing them. This is already a key thing. If you are going for the look of a high end jewellery store you may want to photograph your pieces on a piece of richly coloured velvet, whereas if you design quirky, fun jewellery and your brand is supposed to be personable and cute, you may prefer to show your pieces on models dressed in the kind of clothes that reflect that brand.

Also, if you do decide to use people, do you use professional models? If you are going for a wholesome, homemade vibe with your brand, then it may be better to have your real friends and family or even yourself modelling the fashions you are selling, but if you are selling designer gear, you probably aren’t going to get the right aspirational feel if you don’t have beautifully shot pictures of cool, attractive people.

Always Consider Branding.

You have a lot of choices, from interesting 360 degree models of the product through to just having it hanging on a clothesline on a sunny day, but choose a consistent photography style that matches your brand. Are you minimalist, high tech, cute, traditional, outdoorsy, or posh? Think of the adjectives that describe how your brand should be seen, and think about using them to define how you display your products – it can have a big impact!

Branding is so crucial when you are trying to get a foothold as a fashion ecommerce site, so make sure your product imagery is consistent with your vision of the brand!

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3 Tips For Hiring Managers On How To Recruit Veterans

by Justin Constantine, founder of The Constantine Group

It’s great that so many businesses are saying they want to hire veterans. But it’s not enough to just say it. You have to do some legwork to meet them halfway, but for some hiring managers they might not know where to start, especially if they don’t have a military background.

Members of the military have very different experiences, job titles and ways of talking about work. Even when their experience is directly applicable to a job opening, it may not be clear on their resume to a hiring manager who doesn’t know what to look for.

Here are three tips for hiring managers looking to recruit veterans:

1. Learn their language.

Corporate America has mentors; the military has sponsors.  Corporate America has hiring managers; the military has recruiters. Corporate America has job titles; the military has billets. The list goes on.

When service members leave the military, they receive some training in translating their experience into corporate English. But they may not always remember to do that. If you see a term you don’t understand, ask what it means or search for it online.

2. Understand their values.

People who work in the corporate world are constantly taught to self-promote in order to get ahead. But members of the military learn to focus on the mission and only take responsibility for mistakes.

If you are interviewing a veteran, you may find they avoid talking about their achievements because they don’t want to sound like they’re bragging. You may need to draw them out by asking them to explain their role in a mission’s success.

3. Appreciate their experience.

Even straightforward tasks in the military require exponentially more planning and risk than equivalents in the corporate world. Don’t assume that you understand everything that went into a simple job description. Ask for details.

A veteran might tell you that they ‘drove a truck in Iraq’. In reality, that might mean they led four other people for six months, planned missions for 100 convoys, and displayed courage under fire as enemies attacked. Who wouldn’t want someone with those skills working for them?

 

Founder of The Constantine Group Justin Constantine is an inspirational speaker and leadership consultant who serves as a liaison between the military and corporate communities. He is a senior advisor to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Hiring Our Heroes Campaign and is a fellow with the Truman National Security Project. Justin also serves on the Board of Directors of the Wounded Warrior Project and co-founded the Veteran Success Resource Group. He received a Purple Heart for his service in Iraq.

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