Entrepreneurship - Page 6

How to Pump Up Your Startup’s Online Brand Image

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Crafting a brand image is no easy feat. A lot of work must go into establishing a brand, let alone creating an image that stands out and is successful. Many new startups often falter because their image isn’t one that actually serves them well, and a brand image that fails a company often belongs to a company that fails.

All in all, a company’s brand image speaks to the audience as a first impression. Consumers make a lot of decisions based on a company’s branding, so it’s essentially that your own startup have a pumped up brand image that snags you success the first time around.

Narrow Down Your Target Market

A common mistake startups make is trying too hard to have “mass appeal.” Unless you have a tried and true company that has services and products that can truly appeal to all consumers, there’s no need to market to a broad audience.

Target markets aren’t just necessary to consider when it comes to marketing. Your brand image and representation speak to a demographic, but what demographic are they actually speaking to? A pumped up brand image is one that knows who it’s trying to access and succeeds at doing so.

Focus On Your Competition

How often do you check in on what your competition is doing? Don’t worry – you aren’t snooping around in an attempt to copy your rivals, but instead you need to focus on what your competition isn’t doing.

Simultaneously, it is good to see what your rivals are succeeding at. Do they have a bigger audience than you do? Why? It’s okay to mimic their branding successes as long as you put your own spin on them – copy the concepts, not the content. Also look at where they’re faltering and take advantage of these flaws by fixing the problems within your own branding schemas.

Determine Your Selling Point

What makes your brand unique? How do you differ from other startups and businesses out there? Establishing your uniqueness should be the cornerstone of any brand messaging. There are thousands of businesses out there that do the same things, but each one has something special that applies only to them – and if they don’t, they fail.

Your brand image should center on what differentiates you from everyone else. This is your selling point – so why not use it to do what it’s there for?

Get Help with Problem Areas

Most startups are incredibly understaffed. If your company is run out of your living room with help from you and three others, it’s very likely that you won’t have all of your marketing and branding bases covered. For instance, is someone in your startup a graphic designer? Is someone an expert on demographic studies?

When you have a weak point within your company, find a way to fix it. Good branding is visual and focuses on marketing psychology, and if you don’t have team members that perform these functions flawlessly then you’re already lagging behind.

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3 Books Every Female Entrepreneur Needs on Her Shelf

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If you’re a woman in the business world, you’re likely familiar with the idea of “the boys club.” The realms of industry, innovation and entrepreneurship have long been dominated by males, and there is still a very patriarchal edge that lingers in these settings. As a woman who is also an entrepreneur, you can fell unwanted, threatened or intimidated in these spaces.

The key is to rise above this preconceived notion and do your best without allowing others to compare you based on gender. To be a woman is to be strong, confident and sure of yourself. This should shine through in your business acumen.

Still, it can definitely be hard to be a female entrepreneur some days. You want to shine bright, but the pressures, possible harassment and discrediting can get you down. When you need a positive pick-me-up, try out one of these three amazing books by female entrepreneurs. Once you read these three, keep going back for more – it’s never a bad thing to support female writers and share in their sisterhood.

“Ladies Who Launch” – Victoria Colligan, Beth Shoenfeld, Amy Swift

This is one of the best entrepreneurial introductory reads in the world, let alone just for women. The spin on this book is obviously riddled with female empowerment, but aside from that the advice is ingenious for any entrepreneurs who need a little help launching their first business. Any men who happen to be reading, you should pick this up as well.

Colligan, Shoenfeld and Swift are three female entrepreneurs who have all been in your shoes – a little beaten down by the male environment that they work in, but they put a female and spirited perspective on success. They don’t believe in succeeding in spite of being a woman, they believe in succeeding because you are a woman, and there’s nothing more empowering than that.

“Shark Tales: How I turned $1000 into a Billion Dollar Business” – Barbara Corcoran

Not everyone is born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and that’s incredibly true of “Shark Tank” star Corcoran. Her “rags to riches” story tells the tale of a young waitress bussing tables in a diner who gets a $1000 loan from her boyfriend.

Through hard work and experience, as well as failures and triumphs abound, Corcoran found out that success was still something she could accomplish, even coming from where she did. Now the female entrepreneur is a real estate tycoon who helps others blaze their own trails in the business world.

“Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” – Sheryl Sandberg

As the CEO of Facebook, Sandberg obvious has a pretty strong business resume, and her success is one that women the world over should triumph. Only recently have women found their foothold in the higher-up tech industries, and Sandberg is paving the way for millions of girls who want a piece of that pie for themselves.

Her book details her success and strategies, but also sends across an even more important message: the world actually needs more female leaders for a myriad of reasons, and it’s time we start allowing it to happen. Sandberg also doesn’t shy away from controversial discussions, like career vs. family and money over enjoying your life.

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3 Time Management Lifesavers for New Entrepreneurs

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Time Management for New Entrepreneurs

If you’re new to the world of being an entrepreneur, then you likely don’t know how to manage your time like one. There’s a certain science to time management in general, but when you’re an entrepreneur you’ll need an airtight budget for your time. You’re a business owner, an employee, and a customer service rep all in one – you don’t just have one job, you really have all the jobs.

This means your time is no longer yours unless you work hard to make it yours. Unless you have tight control over your time limits and management, you’ll find yourself drowning. The charm of being your own boss is supposed to be you write the schedule and you can take as many days or evenings off as you want, but the reality is that without having a mature discipline, you can easily find yourself swamped.

Time management is about give and take and sacrifice. While you may want to sleep in, it’s better to handle your invoices in the morning and spend time for yourself at night. This kind of compromise is what your new schedule will run on, and these three time management tips may be what separate you from a full schedule and a week-long vacation.

Start Analyzing Your Current Time Management

Before you commit to any new, improved schedule, first thing’s first – you have to understand where your time is going now and what you’re capable of. Spend one day next week working at full capacity. In a sense, run yourself ragged. This will show you what your maximum capacity is. Now spend the rest of your week as usual. This can be a slow pace or one that’s realistic; whatever you would naturally do.

At the end of this week, step back and compare your starter day to the other days in between. Your time management schedule should be somewhere in the middle. You need to do enough in a day to be productive and you need to be trying hard at it in order to make the most of your day.


Plan Your Downtime

Real people have office hours, and you should too. It’s okay to check your work phone while you’re away from your desk, but don’t schedule yourself for anything when you know you’ll probably have to be ripped away from something else. You have a life, you have to eat and you have to sleep. If you know you won’t be awake before 7 AM, don’t schedule a conference call for 6:30.

This also keeps you grounded. You shouldn’t sacrifice your life for work. You’re working so you can live your life – remember that.


Learn to Put Things Off

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? But one important concept of time management is the focus. Don’t answer every email that comes in just because your phone tells you it’s there. Don’t pick up the phone when you’re working on something else. There is a time to give everyone your undivided attention, and it’s not while you’re in the middle of giving it to another task.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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4 Unique Brainstorming Methods for your Next Project Meeting

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Being the owner or employee of a small business means being a constant idea machine. You’ll have to learn how to come up with solutions and ideas on the spot at any time of the day. At first, this can be pretty easy – you’re a fresh mind with fresh ideas and you’re spitting them out left and right. After a while, though, the well starts to run dry. You’re grasping at straws, trying your damnedest to come up with whatever you can and what you do deliver isn’t very good.

This means you’re going to have to learn how to brainstorm. No matter whether you’re totally new at this or you’ve exhausted your entire idea bank, it’s never a bad idea to develop a talent for brainstorming – especially with others.

Group brainstorming activities can be the best way for you and your team to come up with brand new ideas, or even fine-tune old ones. One half-formed idea you have combined with one half-formed idea from another coworker can add up to be the best idea you’ve seen all year.

But sometimes the common forms of brainstorming don’t work as well as they should. Everyone will get pretty burnt out on just shouting out ideas, so implement these four new and innovative brainstorming strategies during your next project meeting. You’ll be amazed by how much synergy you guys will share, and the ideas will come pouring out.

Change the scenery a little bit

Sometimes what’s really blocking all of your creativity is staying in the same old meeting room and office space over and over again. Even if you work in the most inventive and creative office in the world, staying in the same place every day stagnates your creativity. Instead of staring at the same wall again, suggest everyone move somewhere else.

The best place for sparking creativity is somewhere engaging, like the outdoors, but even moving to a different room can get the juices flowing again. Being in a different setting can give you a refreshed sense of newness. Oh – but if you’re a cool boss or have some pull in your workplace, definitely go for the work picnic option.

Stop applying all that pressure

One of the reasons you’re drained of ideas is probably that you’re trying too hard to force them out. The best ideas are organic – they simply spring out of you without effort. When you sit there and think, think, think yourself into a stupor, you aren’t going to get anywhere.

This idea is two-fold: first, always keep a pen and paper handy – even in every room in your house. Don’t let that idea slip past you in the shower. Hop out and write it down! Just let your engines rest and write things down as they come to you.

Utilize some group therapy techniques

No not in a somber way. When you all pile into the meeting room, sit in a circle and just talk – you can pick a question or topic to answer, but just get talking about something other than brainstorming.

When you engage with others on a more personal level, you get your mind working in ways that get it ready for more extensive brainstorming work ahead. Talking about critical thinking or personal questions makes you actually think about your answers, so you aren’t just regurgitating ideas using the same old brain techniques you usually use.

Also, try the opposite strategy

Sometimes what really gets people motivated is keeping them apart from the rest of the pack. Skip the meeting once and tell employees that they have an hour to come up with an idea – just one. After the hour, bring everyone to the meeting room and go around in a circle, reading off the ideas.

Also work in making small groups with different dynamics, instead of just one large group. Some people work better with other personality types – if you can make an ideal match made in heaven, you’ll get brainstorming ideas in no time.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Best Entrepreneurial-based Books Hitting the Shelves this Spring

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The notion of building wealth and becoming prosperous is not a strange desire; many have dreamed of this for ages, since money is one of the factor’s that ultimately gives us freedom. Many of the best books of the last five years have talked about social media marketing, how to allocate wealth once you have it, and the art of public speaking.

This year is going to be a big year in the entrepreneurial space: the popularity and usefulness of drones is rising, web commerce is still driving a lot of traffic, and people are really starting to travel again. Here are some great picks for the year ahead, as the entrepreneur in you will be encouraged by curling up with a great read.


The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs, by David Kidder

Just 5 years ago, more than 550,000 businesses were concocted just within the borders of the United States, all hoping to become financially stable for life. This New York Times bestselling author and expert on the current economic climate shares experiences from some of the globe’s most successful entrepreneurs and startup players; picking the brains of those you want the most advice from.

He goes very deep into his duty, and here you can glean information about how companies such as Paypal, LinkedIn, Ted, Flickr, and many others became a common name instead of just a pipe dream.
Selecting a successful business model, finding funding for your venture, and dealing with hurdles you may encounter along the way are all some of the topics covered in this book that we conclude are one of the most valuable of the decade! We know it wasn’t written this year, but it is a drop-dead contender.

Mad Genius: A Manifesto for Entrepreneurs, by Randy Gage

One of the reasons we deem this one so important is that it shows us how conventional business thinking is not always cutting it in the market these days and talks about the candid reasons why. This book really goes deep into what it takes to change the culture to get results in the business world, and even change what is taught in the educational institutions about an entrepreneur’s mindset.

Whether you want to have an excellent product for sale, gain inspiration for your own call to action, or need pointers on never settling for the second best, there are tons of valuable tips and ideas here for you. This is one author that recognizes the difference between the entitlement mindset and sitting down and actually getting something done, and he has inspired many to think big worldwide.

Wouldn’t you be thrilled to be sitting in the driver’s seat of an incredibly awesome business idea at the start of 2017?

The Conquer Kit: A Creative Business Planner for Women Entrepreneurs, by Natalie MacNeil

The best thing about this work and the reason it really caught our eye, is that it’s very interactive! The open invitation to doodle, sketch and record what you are seeing in your mind’s eye in many ways is one of the best things about this book.

It seems like a simple notion that you may sometimes overlook, but when you are reading other great books about how to get a killer startup up and running if you don’t choose to write things down, you may completely lose them in the most crucial moment!

Finding the perfect name, the right kind of legal status, constructing your team, and fully bringing the business to life are the 4 crucial components of business strategy covered here. AND: it’s exciting that it’s geared towards women, the innovators that will continue to shake up and define the world in 2016!!

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Five Ways to Revitalize your Creative Mind

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When your mind isn’t creative, there are going to be many elements that suffer. Sure, you can just churn out the work that needs to be done, but your upper end of production is simply not being reached. To truly revitalize yourself could take many different activities and avenues because your best work is not going to come through when you are not at your optimum output level.

Putting the right things into your body and making sure you commit to truly taking care of yourself are essential! Whether creating content or being on your best productive level, these tips are important for you to make sure your mind is sparking your brain to produce the valuable goods you know you can.

Food

This is so mandatory in your mantra because the nourishment that our bodies thrive on is a key to brainpower that makes it be able to constantly produce. Just like the need for water, the need for energy food is dire in your system. Antioxidants found in berries are crucial, and their anti-inflammatory properties of them are beneficial. It has also been shown that eggs have properties that enhance memory, and salmon has a lot of ammunition such as iron and B vitamins for reasoning. Eggplant has also shown to enhance communication with brain cells and the molecules themselves that make up our systems; you’re always going to perform better with at least these types of foods as a starting point.

Exercise

When your heart rate is up, a lot of things are going to happen. First of all, your creativity factor will rise just based on the fact that you automatically feel better about yourself once you start moving. There is a period after the initial rush where your muscles may relax enough to where you don’t actually feel productive. We believe that the best time to fester creativity is while you are getting the exercise! When the treadmill is rolling or the bike is cruising fast downhill, you’ll map out all sorts of new possibilities. Just like any element, it needs to be timed perfectly, but getting exercise is going to help you right off the bat.

Brainstorming

When you are staring a large project down in the face and at the beginning point of its life cycle, its so important to take a crucial step back. Keeping your creative mind focused does involve starting with a blank slate, and seeing what you are capable of in the long run.

During a moment in which you are not feeling fully creative, brainstorming is going to involve asking yourself questions. Where does your business go from here? Am I spending too much time on unimportant tasks? And if you are in the slogan or logo department, you can really benefit from brainstorming. Writing out huge flowcharts of ideas is always to your advantage, and you can take small elements from each new idea to build one large final idea. Another large part of brainstorming is going around the table asking all sales or creative personnel their opinions on any new ideas on the horizon.

Close Friends

Just having someone to lean on that knows your true creativity is always going to help. Being through thick and thin with a close friend will absolutely help your creative mind. When someone that has known you a long time is helping you in the creative process, you’re going to always trump whatever elements you are facing.

Looking at a blank canvas can always seem daunting, but when people that have known you through thick and thin come into the picture, the creative light may shine down on you sooner and in more abundance. Truly hearing what everyone who cares about you has to input on your situation will stoke your creative scale in a good way.

Close Friends and Peace/Down Time

When you don’t have to be going full force and taking care of all your daily tasks, downtime and being away is one of the best boosts to creativity. Just ridding yourself of all the overstimulation and stress that daily life brings with it can really make you whole again. It doesn’t have to be a getaway in a different location, it can just be some time in a room with not as much light or relaxing music. Even though it is not as kinetic, and energy-laden as a brainstorming session, peace and downtime are very essential to the creative mind.

After being fully powered down for a while in a zone where the daily pressures don’t manifest themselves, creating and being successful can sometimes reappear naturally after some downtime. Revitalizing the creative mind can be a long process, but these tips will help point you in the right direction.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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How to Break this Year’s Business Goals into Small Pieces

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Business Planning Tips

Every marketer or entrepreneur knows the feeling of having several large projects that need immediate attention and completion, the ones that are vital to the survival of your commerce.

A new business plan, doing taxes, maintaining your creative content, and going over invoices are part of the vital stream of tasks to stay afloat daily. Then you will have others like business-to-business phone calls, reading articles and other content to stay up on important trends, and looking for applications and software to streamline your process down the road.

At the beginning of the year is when you are always going to plan what you really want to make happen, and it can feel daunting. But there are a few ways to at least break all of these large goals into smaller pieces.

Initial Brainstorming: plugging in early

When you know you are going to have enough tasks to keep you busy for a while, one thing that will help off the bat is utilizing time increments or sessions to narrow down the work it will take for the finished product. One very good rule of thumb during this process is to take the list of things that need to be done and write just a short sentence about it, such as: “This is such an important part of my marketing process because it involves learning code like Java.”

Then, you have the very important tree of information written down that involves what you have to do, even if it’s broken down into 20 steps. These little “micro tasks” can be as quick as jotting down important updates, to going back over things you have already completed to see if there are any comments or additional updates on them. This type of brainstorming really helps because it can take place over a long period of time and does not threaten your fixed regimen.

The Periodic Process Review

When you have different things to do that seem to be the mountain too hard to climb, there’s one great thing you can do that at least may keep you in perspective and have you re-evaluate how hard you need to work. Whether it’s over your micro tasks or the entire final product, it’s more than just checking things off that are done. You really can stand back, take a look at how your overall progress is going, and make room for more growth.

It’s almost like having one tab open, opening another and zooming out a bit, but can be done. Beyond just what tasks did you accomplish, you are really sizing up what the next week or so may have in store. And most importantly, don’t get discouraged over the things that you didn’t complete; you’ll be motivated to get an extra strong cappuccino and knock it all out soon.

Truly Envisioning your Success: The Finish Line

One of the hardest parts about breaking your large-scale projects down to size is the sense that you’ll never get everything done. You absolutely WILL, and it can all come down to one beautiful, discerning moment on the finish line. Completing the hard tasks always seems like it may not be worthwhile while you’re doing them, but they will be. While doing extensive market research, you can come across a lot of dead ends.

Many stories and facts just link back to each other with no real worth, and everyone’s trying to replicate the same success. The new year is the absolute best time to line up your priorities and size up the items that will make you the most successful. The projects and finished goal of perhaps being featured by someone you admire or emulating their success will keep you permanently fixated; 2015 would be stellar to really knock it out of the park in terms of goals.

Keetria is an entrepreneur, wellness advocate, and brand strategy coach for creatives & entrepreneurs with 16 years of public relations expertise working with some of the world’s leading brands, startups, media personalities, and entertainers. If you would like to work together, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Stop Hesitating! 5 Reasons To Start Your Business Today

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If you have ever had a dream to start your own business, it can really eat at you and your current career life. This is a good thing because all the daydreaming about being your own boss and doing things your own way will solidify your transition to entrepreneur. What a lot of people don’t realize about being your own boss is that it could absolutely be more time-consuming than the 9 to 5 work life, and not as stable, especially in the beginning.

We know that there are so many reasons why people do hesitate to start your dream business, and it is understandable. You may feel as if your idea has already been done, or if you are an artist, that of course, you may just “not be good enough to cut it.” These fears could always influence you, but every month in America, millions of people go through some type of job loss or change. One of the best things about starting your own company is that even though there will be plenty of change there as well, at least you own it, and it will be your entity.

Getting downsized is a bummer, and as long as you can sustain some life into a product line, you may embark on your most exciting journey ever. Here are some great reasons to start a company and put your idea in motion today!

Freedom and its Perks

Truly having time to spare is one thing that has been valued by many more than ever lately. Once you have a few talented individuals working for you and they can contact you when they need to, becoming the CFO is really what most end up doing. If you are superb at your craft, you’ll be able to monitor the financials and get free time at some point. On some days you will experience complete overload, but once you have a system in place for the usual inquiries, getting products out efficiently, and keeping customers around with social media, you may not feel as hurried or burdened as an hourly worker for another corporation.

Eventually Having More

Even though fear is still rampant and you may not hit the jackpot right away, if you do create something, own property, and offer goods or services, you could eventually have more. Even with the other layers of support, you’ll need to create something epic, drop-ship businesses, people who sell collector’s items, and personal coaches are doing very well. There really are great monetary rewards after you’ve toughed it out for a while!

The Feeling of True Flexibility

Having the time to do what you want when you want to will feel immaculate to you, especially since you were thinking about being your own boss in the first place. Website owners and product line designers may eventually have more time in the long run than coaches and salespeople, but after you have the foundation lain for your business, you can always turn some obligations down if they aren’t feasible. Other people that are excited and optimistic about what you are doing will be more profitable and easy to deal with in the long run.

Having a Life of Greater Extremes

In recent studies over 80 percent of respondents said that if the business in question was their very own, the passion they would display would be on a much higher level than if they were working for someone else. It’s not just the bottom line, the clout, or the freedom, you really feel as if you are branding yourself. If you have created something that you have already been passionate about all of your life, monitoring it, tinkering with it, and gaining more followers is always going to feel like blissful and passionate overload. You will truly own what you are doing, and if the long hours and endless prospecting ever get to you, it could still be better than doing all the work for someone else.

Letting the Difficult Fish Stray From your Hook

There are definitely reasons that letting difficult customers go is healthy for you. Some of them are so demanding that the time it would take to satisfy them will really drive you off your desired path as CEO. Because after all when you choose to start your own company, your dreams will best be fulfilled and you will be happiest when working with people whose ideas are close to your own. It can be a very difficult and long road to travel, but real organic business is done with those who are not only impressed by your ideas but want to travel the wonderful and prosperous road with you.

One of the best pleasures about being in business for yourself is finding others who want to see you succeed, not fail at your competitor’s heels. In the global business realm, if you are talented enough to take your own route in the first place, you will have your day to never deal with anyone that is aggressive or rude again.

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