2015 09-22

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From Salaried to Solo: 7 Financial Strategies
How to Keep the Money Coming In When You're Starting a Business
By Nina Ham
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There are ways you can still bring in money while starting a business.
A 40's something woman was talking to me the other day about her growing sense of frustration over
"working for someone else" and her longing to "do my own thing, drive my own wagon". But, she said with
consternation, "I have family counting on me and a standard of living I don't want to sacrifice."
Everyone has to decide for themselves what level of sacrifice and risk they're willing to undertake in order
to enjoy the satisfactions of working independently.
Knowing some strategies for managing the risk of starting a business will allow you to make a well-
informed decision.
Of the seven financing ideas for starting a business included below, the first two suggest ways to gradually
transition from salaried to solo, instead of diving off the edge. The second two are ways to stretch the
dollar and the final three are ideas for getting started without stopping.
1. Continue to draw a (reduced) salary.
Leaving your current employment in order to develop your new business may look like the only option,
based on an assumption that you won't get approval for reducing your hours. While this may prove to be
the case, asking yourself why and how your company will profit from retaining your skills and experience
for a transitional period can provide the basis for approaching your employer. Be sure to do your
homework first, however, and be able to back up your request with a solid rationale.
Also consider the issue of timing when starting a business. You want to weigh informing your employer of
your wish to leave with being prepared to leave if the answer to your request is no.
Equip yourself with the skills you need to improve the impact you make
2. Develop another income stream.
If you need to leave your present employment, is there a skill in your toolbag that you can resuscitate and
put to work without a significant expenditure of time or energy? Is moonlighting or freelance work an
option? E-lancing websites (such asElance.com and Guru.com) may be worth looking into for short-term
professional service opportunities.
For example, a community mental health worker transitioning to private practice used his conflict
resolution experience to sell a training package to public schools. A woman transitioning out of an
insurance brokerage created and sold seminars on long term care financing at local retirement centers.
3. Reduce expenses.
Another financing idea for starting a business is seeing what you can save. Apart from fixed expenses -
mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc. - are discretionary expenses that make up the larger part of budgets.
Doing a careful analysis of these expenses and choosing what you can forego for a while can often save
thousands per year.

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Carefully analyzing hidden expenses - credit card interest rates, bank charges, late fees, auto debits, phone
plans - or "lost money" from low interest rates on savings may generate several thousand more per year.
4. Borrow.
It isn't necessary to wait to borrow for start-up costs until you have a well-documented idea to submit for a
business loan. Refinancing a home or taking a line of credit are relatively low-cost ways of generating
capital when starting a business. Depending on your credit rating, you can also get time-limited low-
interest loans from credit card companies.
If you choose this financing idea for starting a business, applying for loans or refinancing packages while
you're still employed is strongly advised. Your rating as a borrower declines quickly once the regular
paychecks stop.
You don't have to wait! Get started on your new business idea while you're still employed. Several of the
all-important first steps (below) can be started while standing in the grocery line or running on the
treadmill. They involve asking yourself some questions and doing some informal research to get crystal
clear about your idea. This can take weeks off your actual start-up time.
5. Identify your niche.
When starting a business, think about the services you're uniquely qualified to provide, as well as the ones
you most enjoy providing. Be specific! Write them down! Then think about what group of people would get
benefit from those services and have the ability to pay for them. Again, be specific: age, where they
congregate, habits and values, how they define the problem your services are going to solve.
If you don't know, ask. Find someone who fits your "ideal client" profile and get permission to ask some
questions. People generally love to be helpful.
6. Create your marketing plan.
While what you need from a marketing plan will get more sophisticated as your business develops, for now
it simply means answering the question, "How is my business going to make money?"
What is the product or service you're going to sell? How will you describe it so people quickly recognize the
value? How will you package it? (Fee for service? By the project? On retainer?) How will you price it?
(What's being charged for comparable services?)
7. Manage fear!
For most people, anything involving money involves some level of fear. It's important to acknowledge to
yourself and to others that you are taking a risk, and you've decided it's a risk you want to take. So consider
the fear of starting a business natural, and find ways to manage it.
Getting support from people who believe in you and in what you're embarking on is number one in fear-
management tactics. Don't assume that you'll get it from the people closest to you or that if you don't have
it you shouldn't proceed. They're probably the ones most impacted by your decision and so may be least
ready to offer support. Their consent - a willingness to go along with your plan -is helpful, but support may
have to come later.
It's also helpful to set a goal (and a date for completion) that's key to your new venture - arrange financing
by a particular date, or sign a lease - and announce it to at least one person. You'll find that making that
commitment to that financial idea for starting a business, saying it out loud, and following through will in
turn generate more confidence and more forward momentum.
To all of you who are tired of marching to someone else's drum and are eager to go solo, these financing
ideas for starting a business should help you take prudent but positive steps toward realizing your goal.
Good luck!

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29 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Business Website
How to Get Your Business Website Found & Visited Often
By Susan Ward
All headed for your website?.
Promoting your business website used to be a very easy process. You made sure your page had some
keywords and that the keywords were in the right places for the search engines to find and that was it.
But in the early days, the “worldwide web” very much resembled the science classroommodel of the solar
system – a few planets circling the sun.
It’s very different now, when keywords don’t even matter and your website is competing against an entire
Milky Way full of websites, blogs and forums.
So what can you do to make your site stick out like the North Star?
Use the list below to find ways to drive potential customers to your business website.
Content First (Duh!)
1) Content isn’t just king; it’s the whole court. Give your customers a reason to visit by ensuring that
there’s something there for them – the product(s) or information that they’re looking for.
2) Have a call to action on every page. Make it clear to your visitors what it is you want them to do,
whether it’s signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product.
3) Make your content easy to share. Include prominent sharing buttons on your content to make it easy for
people to share your content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Google+, Pinterest, etc.
4) If possible, write and post some quizzes on your site. When BuzzSumo analyzed the social share counts
of over 100 million articles of an 8 month period they found that 8 of the top 10 most shared articles were
quizzes.
5) Quizzes don’t work? Create some infographics.
They’re very shareable too!
6) Consider guest posting on other websites that also serve your target market. The link back from such a
site with a large following can be a real traffic driver.
7) Use metrics such as Google Analytics to analyze how your site visitors are interacting with your content
and figuring out how you can tweak your content to increase your conversion rate.
8) Produce a regular email newsletter – and provide an opportunity for your website visitors to sign up for
it on all your business website pages.
9) Offer added values on your website that relate to your business and will appeal to yourtarget
market. These may include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links.
10) More ideas for offering added value: Offer a free ebook or white paper on your site. Its size doesn’t
matter if you’re providing it for free. Make sure it’s specifically written for your ideal client – and make
sure that you let website visitors know that they can forward the ebook or white paper to others.
Sit Pretty in the SERPs
11) Search engines still provide the majority of visitors to many websites so make sure your site is search
engine friendly.

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12) Make sure every page of your business website is properly optimized for search. Need help? Check out
Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.
13) Pay special attention to crafting your meta description tag. It’s the description of your webpage that
will usually show in search engine results. The more well-written it is, the more likely that your page will
win the click.
14) Use rich snippets on your pages, if appropriate. Rich snippets give your potential website visitors
detailed information about your content in Google’s search results – information that may cause them to
click on your page rather than someone else’s.
15) Update your website regularly. Search engines love fresh content (and it gives you something to
promote in social media too.)
16) Check your business web site's links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such
as Xenu's Link Sleuth or Online Broken Link Checker.
Make Visitors Comfortable Enough to Recommend You to Others
17) Make your business website trustworthy. Make sure you have a privacy policy and full business contact
information posted and use business and privacy seals to verify this information to your website visitors. If
you are payment processing, obtain an SSL Certificate and use a secure connection and make sure that
potential customers know that your connection is secure.
18) Answer potential customers’ questions in advance by having visible and fully developed policies
regarding customer service and the collection and use of customer data. If you are running a Canadian
business see:
Canada’s Anti-Spam Law: What Your Canadian Business Has to Do to Comply regarding sending electronic
messages; and
The Privacy Act (PIPEDA) and Your Small Business regarding the collection and treatment of customer data.
19) Make sure your website uses responsive web design so that everyone can comfortably see and use
your website no matter what device they’re using – desktop, smartphone, tablet, etc.
20) If you are selling anything online, use a shopping cart and a secure payment method for credit
cards. (Turnkey ecommerce packages make this really easy; see 8 Easy Ways to Get Your Small Business
Into Ecommerce.)
Spread the Word
21) Place your business website address on all your printed literature including all your business cards,
brochures, newsletters, letterhead, and ads.
22) Make the name and URL of your website part of your email signature.
23) Don’t forget to mention your website when you’re networking locally.
24) Use social media to promote your site. Set up a Facebook page, Google+page, Twitter or Pinterest
account for your business – or all of them and use them regularly to engage with your target market and
send them to your site. Get started with How to Create a Social Media Plan and then read more articles
about using social media on this site.
25) Don’t forget to use whatever special tools each social media platform provides, such as Google
Hangouts or LinkedIn groups to build relationships and community.
26) Place ads on the social media of your choice to drive traffic to your site.
27) Participate in online forums and groups as an expert. You can include your business name and website
URL in your three or four line signature.
28) Get some free publicity for your website by becoming a valued source for writers. Sign up
for HARO and the reporters will come to you.
29) Use press releases when you have something to announce, such as a new ebook that you’ve written or
a business milestone you’ve achieved. Email them to the media, your clients, friends and associates. This
list of 20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites from Mashable will be handy.

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The Top 10 Ways to Lose Customers
By Susan Ward
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Why Not Keep Customers Instead?
Ask anyone in business about their worst customer ever and they’ll be hard-pressed to tell you about just
one.
But ask them about their best customer ever and they’ll probably have to take time to think about it.
It’s the old 80-20 rule in action; for most people, it’s the unpleasant, nasty or outrageous that sticks in the
memory. The good bits blur.
Which explains why, as business people, we sometimes forget the basic truth that our customers are our
biggest supporters.
They want to think well of us (and our products and services). They want us tosucceed.
Many of them start dealing with us in the first place hoping to become repeat customers. It makes people’s
lives so much easier if they can continue to deal with one butcher or one carpet cleaner.
And all they want from us is for us to meet their expectations – which means not doing any of the things in
the following slides.
Learn how to get and keep customers by reviewing the top ways to lose them, in reverse order from ways
that will merely aggravate some of your customers through ways that will alienate all of them forever.
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#10) Lose customers by: Engaging poorly trained staff.
Imagine that you walk into a store selling blinds, wanting to purchase some blinds for your home. But
although several different sales people seem eager to assist you, none of them seem to know anything
about blinds! Imagine how frustrating that would be – and how long it would take you to walk out and take
your business elsewhere.
Customers, you see, have an expectation that sales people at a business will be knowledgeable about that
business’s products and services.
You can get around this expectation, however, by eliminating this type of hand-holding customer service
from your business. Several very successful big-box chains have done this, expecting customers to see this
as a fair trade for lower prices. And online businesses tend to operate as self-serve businesses.
However, the bottom line is that if your business operations include a customer expectation that they will
be able to interact with knowledgeable staff, you’d better have some – especially if your sales depend on
it.
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#9) Lose customers by: Restricting your hours of operation.
A coffee shop that only stays open until 3 p.m. A doctor that only works two days a week. A bakery that
closes for a month at a time so its owners can go on vacation.
Three examples. Three businesses that have lost customers (and money!) because of restricted hours that
seem unreasonable to prospective customers.

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Now most bricks-and-mortar businesses restrict their hours to some degree. As customers, we don’t
expect to be able to browse through retail stores or go and get our hair cut in the middle of the night.
But the difference is that we see these as reasonable restrictions; they make sense to us.
You need to provide customers with what they will consider to be reasonable access to your products and
services. If you don’t, they’ll find what you’re selling elsewhere.
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8) Lose customers by: Looking unprofessional.
For small business people, the adage “Dress for Success” should actually be “Dress to Impress (the
customer)” because that’s what it all about – looking like someone that a customer thinks will do the job
well, whether that job is selling people tools to do work on their own homes or selling people’s homes.
It’s no coincidence, for instance, that Home Depot’s sales associates all wear aprons; the uniform,
suggestive of a carpenter’s tool belt, makes them look like handy types who know what they’re doing.
And if you don’t look like you would be good at the job, customers just move on.
So point 1 is that you don’t need to wear a power suit; you need to look knowledgeable about whatever
your expertise is.
Point 2 is that to look professional, you also need to be properly equipped. I once had a person I was about
to hire to prune some trees ask me if I had a ladder he could use. Uh, no. And you can go away
now. Business image is not just about personal appearance.
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7) Lose customers by: Making it difficult to do business with you.
Trying to conduct a simple transaction with some small businesses is like fighting your way through a
blackberry thicket; you end up feeling all scratched up and wondering why you made the effort.
I personally have seen and/or experienced:
a business where you had to pick up a phone to get buzzed in to the office – except the phone was around
the corner of the building with no signage pointing to it.
a business with no answering service or voice mail, so that when you called the number the phone just
rang and rang. (Learn how to answer your business phone properly.)
a home business where clients had to walk all through the main living quarters (obviously occupied by a
family with a baby) to get to the tiny office in the basement. (Do you meet with clients in your home? Read
these tips for making your home business as client-friendly as possible.)
a retail business that only accepted cash. (Just silly; the more payment methods you offer customers, the
more convenient it is for them and the more sales you’ll make.)
Unfortunately, this is a list that could go on – and I bet you have no trouble adding examples to it yourself!
Businesses that make it hard for customers to get into the premises, pay for merchandise, or even make it
just about impossible to even contact them at all do themselves no favours – these are all experiences
customers won’t want to repeat.
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6) Lose customers by: Making it hard for customers to return goods to you.
Making it hard for customers to return things marks the halfway point of this survey of ways to lose
customers because while it’s something that really aggravates customers, it’s not something they’ll all
experience.
You may have (and hopefully do have) lots of customers who will never feel the need to return anything.
For them, it probably doesn’t matter that to return an item to your business, a customer needs to have not
only a properly dated receipt but be trying to return the item between 2 and 3 pm on a Friday in a week
with a full moon.

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Which is great. Because if they ever do decide to return something and find out that it’s super difficult or
even impossible, you’ve lost them.
Avoid stress on both your parts and handle returns the right way, so that your customers go away happy
and will be willing to return to your business and buy again.
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#5) Lose customers by: Doing shoddy work or selling shoddy products.
I call this the “plenty of fish in the sea” business model. Instead of trying to institute the kind of customer
service that increases the odds of customers coming back, businesses that follow this model expend their
energies reeling customers in and working them to make that one-time sale.
The most popular way for these businesses to draw customers in is through loweredprices, either lower
than competitors’ or as advertised sales.
They literally don’t care if the customer comes back or not; their theory is that there are lots of other
potential customers out there that they can lure in and do the same thing to.
And don’t think that this business model is limited to retailers; it’s especially popular among providers of
home renovation services.
I have three words for you, shoddy businesses: word-of-mouth.
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#4) Lose customers by: Being unresponsive.
It’s interesting how forgiving some customers will be. Even doing a shoddy job for them once is not enough
for them to never give you a chance to sell to them again in some cases.
With way #4, though, we’re entering the realm of the unforgivable, otherwise known as “things you just
don’t want to do if you want to keep customers and get new ones”.
Being unresponsive to customers can occur at any stage of the sales cycle.
An interior designer who overrides a customer’s color choice or a dog groomer who can’t be bothered to
fully answer a prospective client’s questions about her service are both guilty of ignoring a customer’s
wishes.
Unfortunately, in a world of phone texting and social media, customers’ expectations are ballooning. If
you’re feeling stretched too thin to be properly responsive to your customers, it’s time to hire some help.
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3) Lose customers by: Making the customer feel unimportant.
Making a customer feel unimportant is even more unforgiveable in a customer’s view, which is why it
comes in a number three.
Everyone has a need to feel that what they do and say matters. Feeding this need is the essence of good
customer service.
But it’s so easy to fail. When we do things such as not returning a client’s call in a timely fashion, not giving
them our full attention when we speak (or worse, interrupting them!) or not providing them with some
sort of acknowledgement when they become “regulars”, we tell them that they’re not important to us,
whether it’s true or not.
Never believe that people will judge you by your words when your actions say something different.
To succeed at customer service, you need to make every customer feel special.
A trick to help you accomplish this: Who’s the most important person in your life? Hold this important
person in your mind and treat every customer the way you would treat him or her.
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2) Lose customers by: Lying to them.
This isn’t one of the fastest ways to get rid of customers, but it’s definitely one of the best.

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You’ll get away with it for a while because generally people want to believe the best of one another and
because if you promise a customer, for instance, that you will definitely, positively have that new floor laid
in five days, it will take them at least five days to discover that you made them a promise you couldn’t
keep.
And then most people will tell themselves that things happen and you didn’t mean to lie to them and let
you tell them the next lie.
But here’s the rub; they won’t fully trust you to fulfill your promise the second time – and they’ll be about
one hundred times less likely to recommend your business to somebody else.
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1) Lose customers by: Making the customer feel cheated.
If you need an absolute never-fail way of ensuring that a customer never darken your literal or figurative
doorway again, this is it – because this is the one thing that a customer will never forgive.
Customers will make excuses for you – to a point.
Shoddy service? You were having an off day.
No return call? You’re really really busy.
A rip-off? We’re done! (And you might be hearing from my lawyer!)
Now obviously, legitimate business people do not go around deliberately trying to cheat their customers.
But you have to be careful to avoid the possible perception that your business is trying to take advantage
of customers too. Sales techniques such as upselling may be viewed this way by the customer, so before
you use them, consider their potential effect; they might not be suitable for your industry.
Customers’ perceptions of prices are probably the main source of sour feelings about their transactions. All
customers are not seeking bargains, but they all expect prices to be fair.
For instance, if a customer selects an item to purchase on Tuesday that you know is going to go on sale the
next day, you or your staff should point that out to them, leaving the customer to decide whether they
want to buy the item today at its full price or tomorrow at discount. If you don’t, that customer is going to
feel mistreated.
And the customer that feels taken advantage of is the one you won’t see tomorrow.
Remember, the true secret of good customer service is that there is no secret. Offer quality goods and
services at a fair price and treat customers the way you would like to be treated and those who do
business with you will come back again and again.

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Are You Sabotaging Your Small Business?
Don't Increase Your Small Business's Chances of Failure
By Susan Ward
I talk to and hear from a fair number of small business owners who aren't interested in growing their
businesses. They don’t want to get into exporting, open new locations, or even increase their customer
base much. They feel they have all the work they can handle without having to expand.
In other words, they just want things to go on as they are.
Sound like you?
Well that’s fine.
Except that being in business is very much like swimming in the sea; you can only float so long before
you’re going to sink and drown.
If you want things to continue as they are, paradoxically you need to keep moving.
Have a look at the following list of areas that you can’t afford to neglect when you’re running a small
business. Are you sabotaging your small business by not doing any of these?
1) Not looking after your health.
If you are the mainstay of your business ( the CEO, a sole proprietor, the head honcho), this is like playing
Russian roulette with bullets in every chamber. I recently spent time visiting the cardiac unit at a local
hospital and 75% of the patients there waiting for heart surgery were business men under age 60.
Imagine trying to run your business from a hospital bed. And worse, what if you can’t because you’re
totally incapacitated?
No matter how busy you are, you need to be proactive and look after your health. If that means lifestyle
changes, such as following a healthier diet or exercising more, so be it.
2) Not hiring help when you should be.
Small business people are doers; they are capable, active people who often are more comfortable doing
things themselves than assigning other people to do them.
www.eonetwork.org
Connect with EO, the world's only peer community of entrepreneurs.
Unfortunately, that’s a personality trait that can easily get of hand.
If you find yourself regularly working more than the standard 35 to 40 hour week, regularly working
through lunch, or generally just feeling run off your feet, you need help.
Whether that help consists of hiring an employee or a contractor, outsourcing particular tasks you don’t
need to be doing, or delegating some of your responsibilities to others, it’s important to get your work-life
balance balanced again.
Learn more:
7 Ways to Make Employee Recruitment Easier
The Hiring Process: Hiring Employees in Canada
Let Go and Delegate!
Tired, frazzled people don’t make good decisions or provide good customer service; you need to get the
help you need to be the person your small business needs.
3) Not doing the planning that needs to be done.
It’s common to speak of having a job as a daily grind but the typical day in a small business is actually more
like a day spent spotting and putting out little fires.

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If you’re the kind of business owner who works in your business, typically you have plans for what you’re
going to do any particular day and then you go in and spend the day doing other things – which means that
whatever organized planning you mean to do keeps dropping to the bottom of the to-do list.
But your business needs leadership, goals, action plans and all the direction and impetus that regular
thoughtful business planning provides.
You have to make this a priority and take the time to do it. This may mean having someone else do or
oversee your small business’s daily operations, permanently or at least on a weekly basis.
One great idea is to start every day with some business planning.
And many small businesses have found it incredibly useful to bring in more brains bycreating an advisory
board.
4) Not trying to innovate.
A lot of small business owners seemto have the idea that innovation is something that only big businesses
with established R&D departments and/or universities can do.
But innovation doesn’t have to be a complicated or costly process. All it means to innovate is to look for
the new - new ways to do things or new products or services.
And it’s actually a necessity for all businesses, not a frill. If you don’t try to innovate, your business won’t
stand still; it will fall behind others who are looking for and implementing those new products and
processes.
5) Not investing to keep your business current.
Sometimes our innate desire to keep things the same results in us overlooking things that need to be
replaced or updated. From the shabby armchair in your reception area through old software, there are
always things that need updating if our business is going to hold its place in customers’ affections (and
buying habits).
And sometimes these things require a significant investment. For instance, a coffee shop may need a new
roaster or a furniture company may need a new truck. Or perhaps it’s time for a small business to move
from using spreadsheets to using a real accounting system.
You need to regularly assess the state of your small business’s assets and make sure that the things that
need to be updated or replaced are.
Your Small Business Needs Your Help to Survive
The idea that an established business will just run itself is a fiction; if you want your small business to
continue to thrive, there are things you have to do to ensure that it does. Even a mature plant needs to be
watered.

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http://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/5-things-every-startup-should-do-and-5-to-
avoid.html?cid=em01012week39a
5ThingsEveryStartup Should Do--and5toAvoid
The Executive Director of The Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco shares the dos and don'ts
that every entrepreneur needs to know.
BY MARLA TABAKA
This week marks the launch of the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco, a new state-of-the-art
mentorship resource for entrepreneurs. The center utilizes a pay-it-forward application promise and looks
to give entrepreneurs ongoing educational programming, workshops, and hands-on guidance from leaders
across the Nasdaq ecosystem.
Nicola Corzine serves as the Executive Director of the Center and shared with me her top 5 do’s and don’ts
for entrepreneurs. Wise words indeed!
5 Things to Do
1. Optionality is key, build in options from the start.
To ensure that you're protected from market conditions and not dependent on a single strategy, build
various paths to profitability for your company. One of the key things we focus on at the Center is helping
entrepreneurs evaluate all paths of funding so you have a deep understanding of alternatives when
positive or challenging developments occur.
2. Know more segments of people.
Don't only network with prospective clients. We teach aspirational entrepreneurs to surround themselves
with people from various types of businesses. You never who will become a great mentor or help refer
future resources for your business.
3. Work backward to identify your message and strategy.
From investor pitches, board meetings, key hires, and first sales pitches, it's important that you work on
your brand and communications strategy. At the Center we're focused on helping founders understand
how to identify what's core to their values while understanding how to work backward from the needs and
perceptions of their industry, stakeholders, and the media.
4. Have a sustained thirst for information.
Insights are only as good as one's understanding of how to bridge your experience with the real-time
current landscape. Whether you're looking for partnership, funding, or referral, new contacts will have
trouble believing you are set-up for the future if you aren't synced with the current landscape.
5. Understand that meetings are for connecting as people, digital is for being empirical.
You've heard it at least one-hundred times, but the greatest business leaders see meetings as a chance to
really get a feel for the values and insights of the person. Save your persuasive, linear case for whatever
you're proposing for emails or digital communications. Pitch yourself at a dinner, pitch your ideas later.
5 Things to Avoid
1. Don't opt out of entrepreneurship because you don't fit a "typical” build.
More and more entrepreneurs are leading great companies and solving real problems from various
backgrounds, industries, and regions. There is no "one size fits all" approach to entrepreneurship and
fewer people from your background in the industry actually means fewer folks who've tried your unique
approach.
2. Constantly feed yourself and others as founders.
This is not a path best traveled alone; pursue organizations and situations where you can learn and grow
with peers. Also commit to paying it forward to others who have not yet begun the entrepreneurial

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journey. Founders need a safe haven to learn from other founders, if for no other reason than to
understand the perspective of those with more experience.
3. Keep the user alongside for your entire journey.
We believe that it's critical to engage users, early, often, and at all stages of development. This is why
we've created opportunities for entrepreneurs to have access to storefronts and concept pop-ups to
ensure they are designing with the end-user in mind.
4. Create something positive out of the rainy days.
Challenges are the greatest opportunity to make alliances stronger and lead critics to reconsider. If you
approach these situations knowing that some ground will be lost but that you can use the opportunity to
show grace and balance, you'll quickly find peace in not trying to control the uncontrollable variables.
5. Don't forget that leadership is about evolving and improving.
Smarts alone don't create great leaders; commitment to improvement does. Look to improve your
product, reflexes, morale, and team. In turn you will grow into a savvy and powerful leader.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.