The average startup owner works well past the traditional eight-hour mark with some clocking well up to 70 hours per week. While some of that is true work, you can bet that much of that is eaten up by tasks that don't need to take as long as they do such as perusing email and attending numerous meetings. When it comes to wasted time, startup CEOs are just as guilty, if not more, than the established business CEO. What can you do about it? How can you manage your time better and streamline your w...

Many business people are familiar with the terms B2B and B2C, but are unfamiliar with D2C. Direct to consumer marketing (D2C) is a strategy in which companies markets and sells products or services directly to consumers, removing any and all intermediaries. D2C marketing is popular among millennials, the generation driving economic change, which means that companies are adopting D2C practices to capture this demographic. Some characteristics of D2C companies that are attractive to millennials in...

Do startups offer vacation time? How much vacation time is normal? Does everyone get the same amount? Because this can be such a hot topic for your newly hired team, we look at what startups need to know about vacation policies. Today's workers, especially Millennials , don't like the traditional model of earning vacation where you have to wait months or even years to get two weeks of paid vacation. To cater to this growing subset as well as the generation of workers coming up behind them, you w...

Various shapes, words, or colors can make small but powerful associations between a brand and an intended meaning. Brands like Amazon or FedEx have mastered this even in just their logo. Subliminal messages are one way to create this meaningful and lasting association for customers. Subliminal messages can be used through many mediums – whether it's a TV commercial, print ad, or email campaign. It taps into a customer's subconscious mind and creates repeated exposure to form a brand meaning. Fro...

Are you tempted to do everything yourself? If so, you're not alone. It's a common dilemma for startup founders and CEOs. It's easy to see why entrepreneurs would want to maintain total control of their products, their marketing, their sales, their finances, and their delivery systems, but it isn't realistic. The art of letting go and delegating can be a hard task to learn, yet it is vital to the success of your startup. Why delegate One of the most important and perhaps obvious reasons you shoul...