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Most of us have been advised at one time or another to choose our battles wisely yet, while we know it's good advice, we may not always recognize which battles are worth engaging in and which we should walk away from. Deciding which path to take isn't always about who's right and who's wrong—and there may be times when "taking the wrong path causes you to lose twice," says entrepreneur turned VC investor Mark Suster. Here, he shares his insights and experiences to help you know when to fight, wh...

For those facing redundancy, early retirement or wanting to swap the constraints of a full-time, nine-to-five job for the flexibility of freelancing, starting your own consultancy business is an increasingly popular choice. Establishing yourself as a freelance consultant involves a lot of planning and you need to be aware of—and prepare for—the challenges that lie ahead. And, as with any other business, it can take time to grow and become established so you need to make sure you have enough capi...

With a 4.99 score in a 5-star rating ,  from a total of 500 trips, one Toronto Uber driver demonstrates the value of delivering an excellent customer experience even when there's "no leaderboard, ranking, or major incentives tied to it." While being an Uber driver may not have been his first choice—having emigrated from India to Toronto with an MBA and extensive corporate experience—Vishwas Aggrawal nevertheless uses his sales and marketing skills, attention to detail, and high st...

To make yourself known to your target audience, you need a business blog. Consistent blogging helps you build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, build your credibility, and enhance your inbound marketing efforts. As well as giving you an opportunity to connect more deeply with your existing customers, by providing interesting, relevant and high-quality content you can attract new readers and convert more of your visitors into customers. With this in mind, Dr...

Having years of experience—and being good at what you do—doesn't always mean you're good at finding a new job. And it isn't just entry or mid-level candidates that make mistakes during the job search and interview process. Even those who've achieved significant levels of career success and reached a senior level position can make mistakes when it comes to landing their next executive role. To help you refresh your job search skills, Elena Bajic follows up her previous article on the subject with...

While launching your own company for the first time is an exciting prospect, it's also fraught with challenges. There's a steep learning curve involved with plenty of opportunities for making mistakes that could significantly hinder your progress. Although mistakes help you learn and grow, that doesn't mean you have to make them yourself. Learning from other people's mistakes means a shorter learning curve and quicker success for you. Most startups fail within the first two years. To help yours ...

Effective meetings are essential for any business. They can boost productivity, enhance performance, lift employee morale and increase revenue. Yet so many meetings are either unnecessary or so poorly organized people dread the prospect of giving up valuable time to attend. Meetings should be "high-leverage events" that help a company move forward, says author, speaker and corporate trainer Paul Axtell. Here, he shares the five most commonly raised issues and how to resolve them, whether you're ...

If you want useful answers, you have to ask useful questions. When you're speaking with a prospective customer, you need to quickly identify their needs and if you don't ask the right questions, you won't understand the right problems to solve. While it's important to be an active listener, there's also an art to asking sales questions the right way—so your prospect doesn't feel like they're being interrogated. Here, Heather R. Morgan shares how to frame five crucial questions to ensure you...

Graduation and commencement speeches often provide the best examples of what makes a powerful, inspirational speech that moves the audience. Introducing personal stories into speeches gets listeners on side and keeps them engaged. Yet, while they love hearing such speeches, few executives are comfortable delivering them, says Nancy Duarte. To help you connect with your audience by telling powerful stories, Duarte shares here some of the techniques her company uses to help "executives craft talks...

Being a female entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry can be challenging and "the trick to breaking the mould is to know what you are doing, have a good track record within the industry and maintain a good relationship with your clients," says Lucy Agwunobi, co-founder of Arredo by TRT. To help you become successful in less time, Agwunobi shares here the key lessons she learned during the early years of running her own business, how to speed up your learning curve and the best way to avoid fa...

Networking is a particularly daunting prospect for introverts, who cringe at the thought of walking up to complete strangers and making small talk. Yet, although it may have gained a dubious reputation for being a self-serving business activity, networking isn't about attending events to swap business cards in the hope of landing a new job or getting more clients. It's about developing genuine, mutually beneficial relationships—and genuine relationships are the...

Many people think of entrepreneurship as an opportunity to be their own boss, follow their passion, create a utopian work-life balance, and maybe even become a millionaire in the process. In many cases however, your clients, investors and the business itself become your boss, dictating when and where you have to work. And while you may love what you're doing, it's still hard work and it can sometimes be lonely work too. If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to take a balan...

Bad bosses kill innovation, stifle growth, increase costs, create instability and make people miserable. Great bosses, on the other hand, build relationships with their employees that create a source of growth and stability, says executive coach and author Kim Scott. And, without realizing it, well-meaning people can unintentionally become bad bosses, she says. Here, Scott shares the common mistake managers make, why both self-awareness and relational awareness are important, and the advice she ...

Social media influencers can be powerful brand advocates and tapping into the thousands, or even millions, of followers they have on various social media channels is a highly effective way to target an engaged audience. Although it's the fastest growing and one of the most successful marketing strategies, it also has its problems. In this article, Kate Harrison shares some top tips from influencer marketing expert Richard Wong to help you mitigate the risks, reap th...

Although many people think of entrepreneurship as a way to escape the 'rat race' of a daily commute, a demanding boss, an unfulfilling job or a stifling company culture, the reality is that running your own company can also take its toll on your mental health.  Entrepreneurship has its own responsibilities and challenges and it's easy to become overwhelmed if you're not prepared for them. To help you keep a healthy perspective during your entrepreneurial journey, business and leadershi...

Hiring and retaining the right people is challenging for any business. And choosing a suitable candidate who can meet the demands of an overseas assignment creates additional challenges. Compared with large companies, SMEs often have less experience in having staff based overseas, smaller budgets for relocation and fewer resources available to support employees on long-term assignments abroad. While having staff based overseas always comes with some risks, the rewards of a successful assignment ...

Being a mentor is a great way to give back to the business world by sharing your knowledge, skills and experience to help new entrepreneurs build their own success.While a good mentoring relationship can make the difference between a young entrepreneur persevering or giving up, it can also be a rewarding experience for the mentor. Mentoring is not without its challenges however, and intergenerational differences may present additional challenges when you're mentoring millenials, says mentorship ...

When you're traveling for business, you'll probably be taking any combination of smartphone, tablet or laptop with you. If you're traveling for pleasure, the chances are you'll be packing at least one of your digital devices for the trip. And with the summer holiday season fast approaching for many of us, it's a good time to review your cyber security awareness and consider the precautions you can take to keep your equipment and data safe from the ever-present risk of cyber crime. In this blog p...

When the time is right to expand internationally most European companies will start by setting up business in another European country. There are advantages to expanding within the European Union (EU) with its harmonised standards, common currency and freedom of movement for EU residents. Each EU member state still has its own business regulations and procedures however, and there are cultural differences you also need to consider. Here, Ludovic Gaudé shares some top tip...

It's said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and when you have a good idea, there's a good chance that someone is going to copy it. Although imitation validates your idea and shows how profitable it might be, it's important to stay ahead of your competitors to avoid any negative impact on your business or potential damage to your brand. Here Albizu Garcia, CEO and co-founder of a marketing technology company, shares some top tips on keeping the copycats at bay to ensure your ideas ...

When you're looking to raise funds for your startup being a newcomer to the tech industry, Silicon Valley, and the venture capital business can make it difficult to get a meeting with the right investor. When Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon launched her first startup, she was new to the industry and didn't know anyone in Silicon Valley. Now, using her experience both as a founder and as a mentor, Dixon's new startup is training non-traditional tech founders on how to succeed in the industry....

Among the many roles an entrepreneur needs to embrace, getting to grips with customer sales is often the most challenging. Although you may have already sold the idea of your business or product to investors, you need to master a different set of skills to succeed at new business meetings with prospects and closing sales face-to-face. And, particularly for entrepreneurs, knowing how to sell to customers is critical to the success of your venture. In this article, entrepreneur and marketer Sujan ...

  Some people take even the most trying circumstances in their stride while others can become overwhelmed by stress and anxiety. Especially when change is forced on you by unforeseen circumstances, you need to be resilient to keep moving forward. Resilience is what helps you recover from a negative experience, cope with adversity, overcome failure, or adapt to a new situation. "Understanding the key qualities of resilient people is the first step to cultivating that bounce-back quality...

Starting a new business with a friend may seem the natural thing to do, especially when you both share the same passion. A great friendship may not always make for a great business partnership however and, especially if you're taking your first steps in entrepreneurship, it's one of the risks you need to weigh up carefully before taking the plunge. Founding with friends has high stakes, as both the friendship and the business can suffer permanent damage, yet "some early planning can prevent prob...

Entrepreneurship can be an emotional roller coaster ride of exhilarating highs and crushing lows—and being able to recover from the inevitable setbacks is crucial to your success. To thrive despite the high failure rate for new businesses, you need to be resilient. You need to learn from your mistakes and look on setbacks and failure as an opportunity to grow and develop, so you'll be able to bounce back. "Closing a business is not the end of your story. Finding ways to deal with closing a ...

Most leaders consider high-performing teams to be essential for the success of the business. Effective teamwork brings together individual employees with different yet complementary skills, ideas, and experience to collaborate on a shared goal. While it takes effort and commitment to build successful teams, the business will benefit from improved performance and increased productivity. When a team is impacted by too many negative characteristics—when there's more going wrong than right...

San Francisco is home at least 32 startups believed to be at or near the $1 billion threshold, according to Crunchbase data. And, despite being a diverse bunch of companies, analysis of the startup funding, exit, and unicorn creation data has revealed a number of shared traits. You're not likely to replicate their recipe for success "without talent, drive, connections and timing," says Joanna Glasner. If you do have those ingredients however, following the principles she shares here may give you...

Entrepreneurs may stand or fall depending on how successfully they're able to negotiate business deals. Successful negotiation starts with a process of discovery to understand what matters to the other side, why it matters, and where common ground might be found. And, although it takes practise, when you master the art of negotiation, your ability to create a positive outcome for both parties not only benefits your business it also enhances your reputation. Here, negotiation expert, keynote spea...

While your friends may seem the best candidates to help build your startup, there are potential pitfalls you need to be aware of. When it comes to hiring, as a first-time founder you're most likely to look to people you already know and trust; people you're comfortable with. And hiring your friends can work out very well. "More often than not, though, hiring friends brings some problems and difficult moments," writes Alisa Cohn. To help you mitigate the risks, Cohn shares her top ...

Entrepreneurship can be tough at the best of times and often involves a steep learning curve. Each stage of your company's journey brings fresh challenges. And although that means plenty of opportunities to learn from your mistakes, you may be able to avoid some of them by learning from others and by getting expert help if you lack any of the essential business skills. As "a shortcut for new, budding entrepreneurs," Zack Hanebrink, co-founder of a digital marketing and design agency, shares...