Nibletz Staff - 81/87 - Serious Startups

5 Ways To Have Better Business Conversations

Being able to communicate with confidence is a game changer. It’s the difference between getting people to believe in you, or causing people to forget about you. If your customers believe you, they’ll buy your product. If venture capitalists are inspired by your passion, they’ll invest in your company. If your staff trusts your vision, you don’t just have a team — you’ve sparked a movement.

As an executive coach and business correspondent, I’ve worked with and interviewed scores of top entrepreneurs. Though they excel at building businesses, one thing many struggle with is basic interpersonal communication skills. In fact, many can be painfully awkward in public.

Is this you? Do you have a minor case of social anxiety? Are you more comfortable online rather than off?

If so, take a deep breath. No, really, take a deep breath: I have good news.

Being less awkward is easier than you might think. When you build your confidence, you can become a better leader and form deeper relationships, both of which can generate success for your company. Here are five surefire steps you can take to improve your communication swag and become less awkward.

USE THE ONE-OUT BREATH RULE

People are always going to ask you some version of: “What do you do?”

Have a clean answer ready to go – with one caveat: exhale only once.

By the time you run out of breath, you should have completed your answer. If not, you’re blabbing. If you’re clear and concise, your reward will be hearing, “Tell me more about that.” That’s your cue, and permission, to go deeper.

WINGING IT IS FOR AMATEURS — STAY ON MESSAGE

Be like a politician and, come hell or high water, stay on message. Have you ever noticed that regardless of what politicians are asked by reporters, their answer is often unrelated to the question? This is because they have an agenda. So do you.

I’m not asking you to be inauthentic. Just know what’s most important to you and what you want your listener to remember.

Politicians typically have three to five talking points and they don’t stray far from these. You can use this same approach whether you’re speaking with investors, customers or employees.

LISTEN — PEOPLE LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES

The easiest way to build immediate rapport with someone is by being interested in them. So take some pressure off yourself when you meet a stranger by being a good listener.

Here’s the deal: people love to talk about themselves. Take advantage of this. If you want to be the most interesting person in the room, play the role of journalist and be a great listener.

Try paraphrasing someone’s answers back to them for clarity. Provide guiding cues like, “tell me more about that.” Listen closely enough to create value. Don’t be afraid to make an offer like making an introduction or suggesting a book or app they may like.

GET YOUR NON-VERBAL ON

Nothing is worse that being perceived as indifferent, unless you’re a hipster living in Williamsburg. So elevate your communication skills without even opening your mouth.

Use your hands to make points (but be careful not to knock anything over) and make firm eye contact with others when they’re speaking. If you’re interested, nod your head to show you’re in agreement or smile. A little goes a long way.

DO YOUR RESEARCH (AHEAD OF TIME)

Whether you’re meeting someone for coffee, attending a dinner party or having drinks, learn all you can about him or her in advance via LinkedIn, their website, About.me or articles that mention that person’s name.

If you’re attending a conference, find out who else is attending and make sure to follow the conference’s hashtag. Get in the loop.

This creates an opportunity to form context and an alleyway to success. There’s more connective tissue out there than you can imagine. So find the connections and use them to feel familiar.

Antonio Neves is an executive coach, speaker and award-winning business journalist. He’s the founder of the consultancy THINQACTION and the co-founder of international accelerator, The Ignition Lab.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

4 Types of Insurance Every Startup Needs

More than three million people were injured on the job last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While workers compensation insurance covers medical expenses and lost wages, your startup also needs liability insurance in the event of a lawsuit. Liability insurance protects you against claims made for bodily injury or property damage.

A lack of adequate insurance could leave your startup vulnerable to a host of legal and financial woes. While some business structures (such as an LLC) protect the personal assets of the owner, this protection is not a substitute for liability insurance or workers compensation insurance. Here are four types of business insurance that every startup owner needs:

General Liability Insurance

This type of insurance protects your startup from lawsuits over everything from faulty products and services to inept employees and scorching-hot coffee spills. Liability insurance pays the cost of damages as well as attorney fees. If you manufacture, distribute or sell a product (wholesale or retail), product liability insurance will protect your business should a product defect cause injury. And while general liability insurance is a must, the type of liability insurance that your startup needs may vary. Check with the requirements mandated by your state.

Workers Compensation Insurance

If your business hires a W2 employee, state law requires you carry workers compensation insurance. You may carry workers compensation insurance through a commercial carrier, on a self-insured basis or through a state workers compensation insurance system. Stiff penalties apply for noncompliance. Since insurance requirements may vary from state to state, talk to a business insurance specialist to learn more about this type of insurance and the policies and riders available in your state.

Commercial Property Insurance

Commercial property insurance will reimburse your company for loss and damage from a fire, smoke, severe weather, vandalism and other catastrophic events. Home insurance policies generally do not provide insurance coverage for home-based businesses. While you may be able to add a rider to your policy, the Small Business Administration recommends purchasing a separate commercial property insurance policy. The definition of property under these policies is fairly broad and includes computers, company papers, money, building, business interruptions and lost income. Talk to an insurance provider to find out which policy options are best for your startup’s needs.

Unemployment Tax Insurance

If you have W2 employees, you are legally required to pay unemployment tax insurance to your state. You will first need to register your business with your state’s workforce task agency. If your business is located in California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico or Rhode Island, you are legally required to purchase employee disability insurance. If your startup is based in another state, you may opt to provide this insurance through an employee benefit scheme, although you are not legally required to do so.

Karen Sanchez runs the HR department for a 103-person manufacturing business.

What Facebook’s Latest Changes Mean For Your Startup

Facebook is at it again.

Have you heard about the latest updates that affect business business Pages? If you manage a business Page, you’ll want to know about them.

Below, I’ve outlined the biggest changes that will impact business owners on Facebook and shared some resources to further explore each:

Objective-Based Ad Creation

Facebook has simplified their advertising options. They continue to work on streamlining their ad creation process. Recently, Facebook announced that the process of building ads has been re-thought and re-created to focus on advertisers objectives.

According to Inside Facebook, the new ad flow will allow advertisers to create a Facebook advertisement based on the following common objectives:

• Clicks to Website
• Website Conversions
• Page Post Engagement
• Page Likes
• App Installs
• App Engagement
• In-store Offer claims
• Event Responses

Once a business has decided on an objective and built an ad, Facebook will place the ads where they perform best. Advertisers will no longer have to choose between the right-hand side bar or the newsfeed: Facebook will decide.

According to Jon Loomer, you can toggle back and forth between the new ad units and old ad units if you’re looking for some more control over your ads. Facebook has also given an updated look to the ads manager to support this change.

Updates to Facebook Insights

Earlier this year Facebook did a complete overhaul of their Insights. Recently they’ve started rolling out some enhancements based on user feedback. Some of the updates include the “People talking about this” metric splitting into Page Likes, People engaged (unique users who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared posts), Page Tags and Mentions, Page Check-ins and other interactions with Pages. Facebook also changed the name of the virality metric to “Engagement rate” and added clicks to the measurement.

These are just a few of the changes. To learn more about all of the changes, check out this article from AllFacebook.

Facebook Alerts Users When Messages Are Bound for Recipients “Other” Folders

Awhile back, Facebook made it so that when you send a private message to other users or brands that you are not connected with, message would go into an “Other” folder, instead of that user’s/brand’s inbox. The change was a little confusing. It was hard to tell where your message went and if the user/brand ever saw it. Now, you are fully warned when your private message will land in a user’s or brand’s “Other” folder.

Graph Search Now Includes Posts and Status Updates

At the end of September, Facebook updated Graph Search’s capabilities to make posts and status updates searchable. This new feature allows you to search for status updates, photo captions, check-ins and comments, and to find the things that were shared with you. According to Facebook, you can search for posts you want to see again, like “Posts I commented on” or “My posts from last year.”

Graph Search has always been set up so that you are only able to see content that has already been shared with you and public posts. If you haven’t updated your privacy settings since Graph Search was released, you may want to check in and freshen up on the options you have chosen.

Have you noticed any other updates to your Facebook Pages lately?

A version of this post originally appeared on the author’s blog. Images are used with permission from AllFacebook and Inside Facebook.

Jim Belosic is the co-founder and CEO of Pancake Laboratories, a software company based in Reno, Nev. The company is best known for its flagship product, ShortStack, software that’s designed to help small business owners and designers create custom apps that harness the power of social media. ShortStack recently celebrated its second birthday; Pancake Laboratories has several new software products slated for release in 2013.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

ReplyAll Debuts The World’s First “Blogcasting” Service

ReplyAll is a content creation/distribution startup based out of New York City. Founded by former college classmates Zach Abramowitz (CEO) and Ari Gold (CPO) {now joined by Emanuel Ilyayev as CTO}, ReplyAll came into being as the result of ongoing, daily conversations among a group of friends. The founders were regularly engaging in daily messaging sessions on topics like sports, pop-culture, and current events. These intriguing and often humorous conversations among friends begged an audience. It was this realization and search for a distribution platform that led to the creation of ReplyAll.

Ari tried his hand at podcasting. Zach sought an audience as a stand-up comic. They examined the possibility of blogging. Between the solitude of blogging, the scheduling conflicts of podcasting, and the uncertainty of the comedy circuit, it was obvious to the two that none of these platforms was the solution they sought. Enter ReplyAll.

ReplyAll offers a platform for invited participants to engage in an ongoing online conversation. Unlike comment platforms, ReplyAll participants are community members that are invited to contribute to conversations via an email.

No need to worry about drive-by comments littering a feed or derailing a topic. No need to worry about trolls and spammers. ReplyAll allows an ongoing conversation to take place between interested participants, and that conversation can happen in real time. Invited participants are able to add their contribution to the discussion when their schedule allows.

No need for a pre-scheduled meetup time. No need for all participants to be in the same time zone or location. The conversation can happen naturally and proceed according to the will of the invited participants. Community members and onlookers are able to offer their contributions too, but those contributions are only added at the will of the existing, invited conversation participants. If your contribution doesn’t add to or further the conversation, chances are it won’t be included.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “Whoopee a closed conversation for invited-only participants…Big deal, what’s in it for me?”

ReplyAll is launching an embeddable widget that allows these ongoing conversations to be embedded on any website or blog. SEO friendly, these conversations can be indexed by search engines and offer a way for online content creators to add fresh content to their site on an ongoing basis without having to be the sole creator of that content.

Think group blogging meets podcasting.

As the conversations evolve over time, no single party has to be solely responsible for the creation of the content. Want a way to boost your site’s presence on the web and grow your community at the same time? Host and embed a community discussion on a topic near and dear to the hearts of your community. From investment chat on a startup blog to trade talk on a baseball blog, the options are only limited by your imagination.

See a conversation happening on Twitter amongst your peers relevant to your website? Why not invite specific participants to expand on that conversation via a ReplyAll discussion? No need for 140-character contributions; the conversation can grow and expand inside a ReplyAll discussion. Unlike question and answer sites or comment platforms, ReplyAll captures the camaraderie of a conversation. A group blogging platform where the conversations are the content; winning concept, right?

Their business model is pretty straight forward: premium accounts to be offered, native advertising, and white label offerings.

Think ReplyAll’s content creation/distribution platform might make a profitable addition to your portfolio? Connect with the team on AngelList.

Eleanor Wall (aka Tech Tidbits) is a freelance tech blogger and startup cheerleader. When she’s not busy unearthing intriguing startups, Eleanor ghost writes brand marketing content for corporate clients.

5 Things You Need In A Startup Job Posting

Startup founders might have some trouble finding their first employees. They’re often more concerned with getting their business off the ground, and the recruitment process consists of much more than simply interviewing prospects and choosing the best ones.

It starts with the job posting, and the results of the entire endeavor are determined by what the posting accomplishes. A great job posting can bring in top talent, while a mediocre one will attract lackluster candidates. Choosing from a pool of possible employees who all leave something to be desired is no way to hire.

Founders need to create a job posting that will lead to applications from outstanding individuals – people with passion and skill will help build a startup into a thriving company. Here are five tips on how to do just that:

1. An Eye-Catching Title
The title of the job posting is the first thing prospective candidates will see, and it needs to grab their attention. However, there’s a middle ground with this – quirky titles like “design ninja” are rarely effective, but postings with bland titles or even numbers like “programmer three” are also unlikely to get read by many people.

Titles that draw viewers are those that are specific enough to give information about the position, but not so company-specific that they have little meaning to those outside the industry or even the business itself. Relying on accurate information rather than gimmicky titles will also help job postings show up more readily in searches. Founders looking for a designer can say as little as “Designer Sought for New Startup” and find several candidates who are interested in this type of work.

2. Clear Requirements for Applicants
Startup founders should consider what they really need in an employee for the position they’re advertising. It’s common to post openings and ask for innovative and self-motivated applicants, for example, but this is not necessary to request. It’s a given that employers don’t want backward and lazy workers. Instead of focusing on descriptions like that, startup founders should ask for specific qualifications, industry training and traits. For example, it’s helpful for many early-stage startup employees to be flexible and able to handle stress, as well as to have good networking skills to get the word out about a new business. This is much more informative than a generic set of adjectives.

3. Give a Comprehensive, Concise Job Description
Job descriptions should be the centerpiece of job postings. It’s important to outline the duties and tasks a worker will be expected to handle, especially because it’s easy for different people to have different perceptions of what a programmer or designer really does. Additionally, startups often have employees double up on roles occasionally, and this should be made abundantly clear to those who are interested in applying. If founders really need marketing professionals who can also program computers, this needs to be explicitly stated in the job posting. This will save time that would otherwise be spent sifting through applicants to find someone with a surprise skills section on his or her resume.

4. Discuss Company Culture
Applicants generally want to know what the company they hope to work for is like day to day. One great way to show them is through a brief description of the culture. Startups have a reputation for interesting cultures, and anyone who’s looking to jettison an enterprise career for a small, fresh company will almost inevitably want to know how it’s different. This has the double benefit of attracting applicants who would fit in and cautioning those who aren’t a good match up front.

5. Give Contact Instructions
Even on job boards where the next step applicants need to take is stated clearly, it’s a good idea to outline how to apply and what’s expected in an application. Not everyone will include a cover letter if they aren’t told to do so, for example. Job postings for startups are unique, but it should be made clear that certain requirements apply across the board.

Shipping Rules for Holiday Packages

It’s the biggest time of year for many retailers, including startups. In 2012, Cyber Monday outpaced Black Friday in terms of products sold — expect the same to happen in 2013. If you don’t already have your sales strategies and your marketing in place for this big business day, it’s time to get planning.

Once your business reaps the benefits of Cyber Monday, you then have to deal with the harder aspect of the holiday season: shipping your products to customers. The way you handle shipping this year will determine how many sales you get next year. If products arrive late or broken, or if they are in any way disappointing to your customers, you’ll lose customer loyalty and your fledgling business will find its wings crippled.

With that in mind, here are the shipping rules for holiday packages:

1. The packages must arrive on time.

A lot of online retailers promise that packages will arrive “by Christmas.” That’s all very well and good, but keep in mind that many people travel. This year, the weekend before Christmas falls on December 21/22; that’s when people will start traveling to visit family. Don’t make them wonder if your package will arrive by then. If people order on Cyber Monday, you need to get them the packages within two weeks, or by December 9. As sales continue, you need to be ready to ship as fast as possible.

2. The packages must look great.

There are two moments this holiday season at which your package is unwrapped: one of them is of course at the moment when the recipient receives the gift, but the other is when the person who bought the gift receives your shipment.

Make sure your customer is just as happy to open your package. Invest in custom logo boxes to make your box stand out. Include little details to delight your customer, such as a personalized thank-you letter or a bonus gift. Adding a vinyl cling sticker or a cute inkpen to every package is an inexpensive way to build brand loyalty and make your customers smile.

3. The item must not break.

Packages get tossed around a lot, so make sure your product is securely wrapped. Items that arrive broken, especially right before a major holiday, cause a lot of additional headaches on the part of your customers.

Of course, you also have to be careful not to use too much packaging, lest your product end up on the front page of Overpackaging.com. Customers are very sensitive about companies that use large boxes to ship small items, or that fail to pack their products in recyclable materials.

4. Your return policy has to be easy to follow.

It goes without saying that your product should be described as accurately as possible, so customers know exactly what they’re getting. However, even when the product is exactly what they expected, people sometimes still need to return the item.

Make your return policy as easy to follow as possible. Include the padded return envelope in your packaging, along with a postage-included address label sticker. If customers don’t want to return your product, they can always use that padded envelope for something else — another win-win and another way to build customer loyalty.

5. You must be easy to contact.

If you don’t already have a customer service number on your website, now’s the time to add it. If possible, throw in a customer service chat option as well; a lot of people prefer asking their questions through online chat instead of over the phone. If you’re easy to contact, your customers are more likely to trust you for their holiday needs.

Use these five rules to get you started for the holiday season. You’ll be prepared to wow your customers and build loyalty, and set yourself up for great sales in the new year.

Founder Spotlight: Blake Miller Of Think Big Partners

Blake Miller, Partner of Think Big Partners, is passionate about helping entrepreneurs build, launch, and grow their companies. Follow him @imbmills.

Who is your hero?

Elon Musk.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

I’ve been fortunate enough to have to phenomenal mentors (in addition to my partners at Think Big), who have taught me so much about business in general. But the best advice I’ve ever received from them is: Be a good partner, work like nobody else will, and being nice goes a long way.

There’s a reason why we are called Think Big Partners. We want to work with people who have a partnership mentality. Being a good partner can mean a lot of things, but one of my biggest takeaways is that you don’t have to win all the time. Give a little before you get.

My favorite quote and something I live by is, “Spend a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

I’ve learned that you need to write everything down. EVERYTHING. Proposals, statement of work, and small or large agreements. Even write down something as simple as when you’re in a meeting. Take a journal and take notes. Write down who was in the meeting, the date, and the key takeaways. It never ceases to amaze me how fluid memory is about what was agreed upon and what was expected. When someone “remembers something different,” you can respond with, “Nope, actually it was this, on this date, and this is exactly who was in the meeting.”

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

I’m not a morning person at all. I’ve always been a night owl. Until recently, during the first hour or so of my day, if I’m not scheduled for a morning coffee I catch up on reading. I like to know what’s going on.

However, for the past month, I’ve been trying to change my habits and get something important done during the first part of my day. It’s been working well and helping to take pressure off of my day.

What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

Sell something!

Start to create a solution to a problem people are willing to pay for. This helps so many things: product-market fit, cash flow, and traction. These things will also help you raise money from investors.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Learn at the very least the fundamentals of programming, even if it’s just HTML/CSS. Knowing how to use Word, Excel, etc. is not a skill anymore.

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

Success means having a positive impact on a person, commerce, and a skyline. We are already seeing success in impacting people and commerce through the entrepreneurs we get to work with everyday.

TheBankCloud Disrupts The Digital Banking Industry

Every industry is being overturned by technology, and banking is no different. At the Angel Capital Expo tomorrow, there are a couple of startups looking to disrupt the way banks offer apps and financial services to their customers.

One of those companies is TheBankCloud, a cloud-based service that enables banks to innovate quickly. The enterprise company offers an app marketplace and a backend infrastructure to help banks build their own apps.

TheBankCloud isn’t the only company looking to help banks innovate faster, and of course all companies face competition from the status quo. It’s probably a safe bet, though, that in the coming years banks will handle customer service in ever changing ways.

Check out our Q&A with founder and CEO Alfy Louis.

What does your company do?

We’re a portfolio of Sales tools & Banking Apps, aggregated in a Marketplace to serve key areas of sales, advice, servicing, and transactions. Apps are integrated with TheBankCloud platform, which is composed of an adaptive banking integration hub, single sign on, device management (including BYOD), software provisioning, and operational services. The platform enables partners to seamlessly integrate and activate their Apps in the most cost-effective way.

Who are the founders, and what are their backgrounds?

Alfy Louis, was EVP sales and Services for D+H (couple of Billion dollars company serving the banks), was the global VP strategy, Operations of HP Services, and VP global strategic sales and VP business Intelligence for HP.

Tim Evans, was the global banking industry lead for HP and the head of the Innovation Center for HP

Maurizio Greco, was the CTO of Finantix and an entrepreneur with couple of successful start ups

What problem do you solve?

Banks are under extreme pressure to innovate and modernize their applications to generate new revenues, however, innovation is very hard due to the fact that it requires integration with Banking back end systems known as Core Banking Systems.. These systems are owned by handful of companies that make it extremely difficult and expensive for any one to integrate their innovation with these core systems … in their attempt to protect their revenues from eroding. by doing so they stand in the way of innovation..

Our mission is to simplify this integration and build it once and use it with every innovator out there. In addition we will bring new innovation ready to be used in a form of applications and offer it as a services.

Why now?

Pressure is mounting for the banks to cut cost and innovate due to the low interest rate, increasing cost of sales and operations as well as the growing demand for mobile technology.

What are some of the milestones your startup has already reached?

we assembled an awesome team of experience, energy and innovation along with extremely experienced board of advisors
We completed the overall architecture of the entire solution and validated it with one of the top System Integrators.
Completed two banking applications to digitize the sales effort for the bank
Sold 100 licenses to a channel partner
Formed strategic partnerships with 12 partners to sell their applications on our marketplace.
Forming a strategic go to market partner that has access to over 25000 banks ..

What are your next milestones?

raise funds to complete the development of the back end technology
Market, sell and deliver 1000 licenses

Your Employees Are Not Like You

I recently heard behavioral analyst Steve Sisler speak at an event for the Colorado Chapter of Entrepreneur’s Organization. Prior to the event, he asked us all to take two tests: a personality assessment tool that measures dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness (or DISC profile) and the Innermetrix Values Index, which measures individual drive and motivation.

I’ve always been skeptical of these types of tests, but there was something about Sisler that made him seem credible. He picked a few people out of the crowd and asked to see their DISC graph. Rather than state the obvious, he quickly pointed out aspects of their behavior that shaped their entrepreneurial efforts. He even guessed that someone was an avid poker player, just by looking at his graph. Below are the three main things I learned from his talk that CEOs need to stop doing to their employees ASAP (or risk holding the entire company back):

Stop thinking about your employees as if they’re like you. They’re not. They’re not motivated the same way as you are and they don’t process things the same way you process things. Sisler said, “We don’t see people as they are, we see them as we are.” Individuals are all wired uniquely, and it’s up to you to discover and understand exactly what makes each of your people tick. Jason Eckenroth, CEO and Founder of ShipCompliant, which provides regulatory compliance and supply chain automation for the U.S. alcohol industry, had this to say about his experiences working with Sisler: “I have begun to see people for their nature and to judge less if their approach is different than the approach I would take. My company would not exist if it were filled just with my clones. Instead we have a great mix of booster rockets, maintainers, safety and project managers.”
Stop rewarding employees the same way you want to be rewarded.
As the CEO, its easy to try to reward your employees in the way that you’d like to be rewarded. That’s natural. But unfortunately, it doesn’t always work. Unique individuals need unique rewards. For instance, I’d rather make ten thousand cold calls than give someone a performance review. It is just really difficult for me. Besides all the obvious reasons why it’s important to give regular performance reviews, Sisler said that some employees crave this kind of direct, ongoing feedback. They need to hear aloud that they’re doing a great job. But for others, it terrifies them. It’s up to you to know which of your employees need which kind of feedback.
Don’t match a person to a position; match a personality type to a role. We often sign up for jobs we’re not well-suited for (such as me giving performance reviews). It’s essential to understand not just what your people are capable of, but how to put them in a role that’s going to allow them to be the most naturally effective. Eckenroth told me that because he started understanding his people better, he was able move people to the right positions and approach them with greater empathy. “It is unnerving to have someone so easily point out your strengths and weaknesses but this actually empowered me. I could more easily manage against that weakness. It helped me quickly focus on my team member’s strengths, and to quit pushing them in areas that only highlighted their weaknesses.”

How do you quantify the value in understanding your people? What drives them? What bothers them? What makes them operate? What kinds of things do they need to hear to know they’re on the right or wrong track? If you need help figuring it out, you can find more about Steve Sisler here.

Sarah Schupp is the CEO and founder of UniversityParent.com, the #1 site for college parents to find everything they need to help their student succeed. Follow her on Twitter @Sarah_Schupp.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Where Do You Go For Quick Tech Advice?

Question: Your absolute favorite place to get business tech advice in a pinch? (e.g. Quora, Twitter, etc.) Why?

Hop Onto HubSpot

“When I need to learn about business tech in a hurry, the first place that I always look is HubSpot. They have a very complete knowledge base on all things related to Internet marketing. Their white papers and case studies are especially helpful because they give real-life examples of how companies can use different strategies in conjunction to move closer to their organizational goals.”

– Lawrence Watkins | Founder & CEO, Great Black Speakers

Read Feld Thoughts

“Brad Feld is the most consistently awesome source for tech startup advice. His blogs and books explain the details behind choosing co-founders, pitching investors, hiring early employees, compensating board members, and more. And his past and present leadership with top tech startups, accelerators, and venture capital firms lends huge credibility to his words.”

– Neil Thanedar | CEO, LabDoor

Keep the KISSmetrics Blog

“The KISSmetrics Blog is phenomenal at taking difficult technology and digital marketing techniques and breaking them down into step by step instructions. I love the no-nonsense approach they have to writing how-to, and also how they don’t feel any need to pack in a bunch of keywords so they pop up on Google News. They focus instead on writing truly useful content for tech businesses.”

– Seth Kravitz | CEO, Technori

Look at Your LinkedIn Network

“I have a very smart and diverse network, and within minutes of shooting off an inquiry, I’ll get at least a dozen fantastic responses. The best thing about this approach is that I know I can trust these answers because they are grounded in real expertise and experience.”

– Alexandra Levit | President and Founder, Inspiration at Work

Take It to Twitter

“I usually turn to Twitter when I’m looking for advice, since I have a vast network there. It’s especially helpful when I’m looking for suggestions of new websites and tools either for my company or for a client. I’ve found people on Twitter to be one of the most immediate sources of advice and often quite accurate in terms of what I’m searching for.”

– Heather Huhman | Founder & President, Come Recommended

Utilize Advisers and Partners

“Anytime we run into a “wall”, the first thing I do is pick up the phone to call business advisers and partner companies, like our distributors. We love Quora and other sites for generic answers, but advisers and partners have a much greater feel for the context in which the issue exists. Their intimate knowledge of our business allows us to quickly and creatively uncover the core of the problem.”

– Aaron Schwartz | Founder and CEO, Modify Watches

Try Zappos Insights

“Zappos launched a new site called Zappos Insights where entrepreneurs can tap into the Zappos team and a network of fellow entrepreneurs for support and insights. Whether it’s tech advice or culture issues, it’s awesome.”

– Luke Burgis | Director, ActivPrayer

Create an Email Group

“Rather than wasting time on Twitter, I send an email to a small group of people that have been helpful before. Some are friends, some are acquaintances, others are those who helped me develop my sites. But usually within 20 minutes, not only do I have an answer to my question, but I have some one to help implement it if need be. Consider using social media to find these contacts, and then get more focused.”

– Sean Ogle | Founder, Location 180, LLC

Use Community Groups

“Join Facebook and LinkedIn groups that have some solid tech experts in them. This way, you can reach out in an emergency to get some quick advice. You’re also building relationships at the same time.”

– John Hall | CEO, Influence & Co.

gThrive Brings High-Tech To Growers

There are 7 billion people in the world today, and population estimates say we could reach 8 billion in about 10 years. (Check out this world population clock. The numbers are a little dizzying.)

We’re going to have to feed all those people, but as the population grows, farmland is disappearing rapidly.

Agriculture is ripe (get it?) for disruption, and gThrive is one of the companies providing it.

For those of us who are not growers, it can seem pretty simple. Stick a seed in the soil. Water it. Watch it grow. If we think hard about it, maybe we’ll consider potential pests or soil conditions, but for the most part it seems pretty cut and dry.

Yet, with large fields to manage, it is impossible for growers to know the condition of all of their soil. It’s also hard to gauge how much irrigation a certain patch might need, but water is expensive and can’t be wasted. Drones are increasingly being used to aid in farm work, but they can’t read these soil conditions from the sky.

That’s why Bruce Borden and his team came up with the gStake. The wireless, battery operated stakes boast sensors that read the soil information and transmit that data to web and phone apps.

Currently, the stakes work with Google maps. The location of each stake is noted with a color coordinated system that tells the grower how much water is in the soil,

Angel Capital Expo

if there’s enough fertilizer, and if the temperature varies too much.

Yet, the technology has proven difficult to create, and most of gThrive’s competitors are bigger, bulkier, more expensive systems. gStake is the first stake sensor that is inexpensive and movable, providing more value for the growers who can move them around the field.In our high-tech world, it seems like such a simple solution. Of course we should be able to read the ground like that, right?

Each gStake combines 5 different software systems, from the sensors to the transmitters to the apps that read it all. Yet the finished product looks simple and non-threatening, which is key to disrupting an entrenched industry like farming.

The stakes have already been through a prototype run and are now in some field trials in California. Borden sees possibility in the high-turnover, water-sensitive California crops like lettuce. For the average consumer, gStakes mean we can better predict the quality of the produce we buy. No more watery lettuce!

gThrive is presenting at the Angel Capital Expo on Thursday.

The 6 Skills That Made These Entrepreneurs Successful

I’m not sure if there are any other occupations out there that require as many skills and abilities as it takes to be an entrepreneur. If you’re a pilot, you need to be familiar with the operation of your aircraft – but you don’t have to source its parts, build it and then sell it to an airline in order to be successful. If you’re an engineer, you might draft plans – but then you pass your designs off to others to see them brought to reality.

That’s not to say that these fields aren’t important or challenging – just that they’re not as all-encompassing as entrepreneurship. When you’re a solo business owner, every aspect of your company’s operation falls on your shoulders. You’re a visionary, yes, but you’re also a project manager, team leader, administrative assistant, sales person and more, depending on what the day calls for.

Given how complex the work of an entrepreneur can be, I want to take the next two weeks to break down some of the skills that you must have to be successful in this type of business. And since I’m a sucker for case studies, I’ve paired each skill with an example from a great entrepreneur throughout history.

Hope you find them helpful when it comes to cultivating your own skill as a business owner!

Never Be Satisfied

The best entrepreneurs are never satisfied with what they’ve already achieved. They’re innovators through and through, which is why you won’t see them stop and rest on their laurels. Even if they experience what the rest of the people in the world would consider to be “success,” entrepreneurs are already scheming away over how much bigger and better their next projects will be.

Entrepreneur: Milton Hershey

You’re probably pretty familiar with the name “Hershey,” but what you might not know is that this entrepreneur didn’t get his start in chocolate. In fact, the young Milton Hershey first experienced success with the Lancaster Caramel Company, based off a unique recipe he developed throughout his apprenticeships. Though the company was successful, he saw a brighter future for chocolate and sold his caramel company for $1 million in 1900 (roughly $25 million in today’s dollars).

Hershey tasted success with his first company, but it wasn’t enough for him. Cultivate this same sense of never being satisfied if you want to make it to the top of your industry as well.

Be Ambitious

Entrepreneurs don’t change the world through small actions – they do it through ambitious projects that radically alter the status quo in their industries. Because of this, the “holy grail” of all entrepreneurs is a product or service that’s so disruptive that it changes the core way people view, interact with and label the world around them (just as we don’t “conduct internet searches,” but instead “Google” for answers on the internet).

Entrepreneur: Mark Zuckerberg

When it comes to ambition, is there anyone better to look towards than Facebook titan Mark Zuckerberg? Zuckerberg didn’t necessarily start out with the goal of changing the way social interactions occur on the internet, but once he realized the potential of his fledgling social network, his ambition took over – pushing the company forward to more than 1 billion registered users around the world in 2013.

When it comes to entrepreneurial ideas, don’t just think small – think global. Think big and shock the world with your outrageous ideas.

Be Fearless

If you want to succeed in business, you can’t let a little thing like fear stand in your way. Yes, running your own business can be scary at times, but if you let that fear overtake you and prevent your forward momentum, you don’t stand a chance at finding entrepreneurial success.

Entrepreneur: Sara Blakely

Sara Blakely is the founder of Spanx – the billion dollar women’s undergarment company that’s become a household name. When Blakely first came up with the idea for her flagship product, she knew nothing about garment manufacturing, nothing about the patent process and nothing about retail. But she didn’t let the fear of the unknown stop her. By researching and outsourcing tasks when necessary, Blakely’s product line took off, making her the youngest self-made female billionaire in history.

If you get scared, find a way around it. Fear, when left unchecked, can seriously impede your process and threatens to derail your business entirely if it isn’t managed.

Take Risks

It’s not exactly revolutionary to say that entrepreneurs need to be risk takers. But the thing is, the best business people don’t just take risks for risk taking’s sake. Instead, they assess the situation and then take calculated risks that are designed to maximize their success while minimizing their overall exposure to unnecessary risk.

Entrepreneur: Mark Pincus

Before founding Zynga, the million dollar social gaming company, Mark Pincus took a major risk in walking away from a guaranteed funding source for his first company, Freeloader. Because the terms of the deal would have required Pincus to hire a CEO of his investor’s choosing, he opted to take a major risk and walk away from the deal – even though he had just a few months of cash left.

In the end, Pincus’s gamble was successful, as he was able to secure funding from another source and then sell off the company in order to provide startup funding for Zynga. It was a calculated risk, for sure, but a risk all the same – the exact model you should strive to emulate in your own business endeavors.

Follow Your Intuition

We all have a certain amount of in-born “gut instinct,” but only those entrepreneurs who choose to hone this sixth sense and rely on it to guide their business decisions will be truly successful.

Entrepreneur: Steve Jobs

Really, is there any better example of intuition at work in entrepreneurship than that of Steve Jobs? What’s fascinating about him isn’t the number of products he sold or the number of sales records he broke, but his seemingly-instinctive ability to develop concepts that consumers didn’t even realize they wanted yet. Before the launch of the iPad, the tablet market was stagnant. So much so that entering the field was a risky proposition. Yet somehow, Jobs reworked the concept to create the iPad, building an immediate fervor for a product that had no initial market interest.

Interestingly enough, Jobs recognized the role intuition played in his success. In an interview with Walter Isaacson published in the New York Times, Jobs attributes the development of his own powerful sense of intuition to time spent wandering around India at the age of 19:

“The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do,” he said. “They use their intuition instead … Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.”

You don’t need to drop everything for an international sabbatical in order to develop your own intuition. Instead, take the time to listen to your inner voice and allow the information it gives you to find its way into your work every so often.

Know Your Vision

Finally, entrepreneurs have a way of taking what they see in the world and twisting it into the visions they have in their heads. They don’t accept reality as it is and work from there. Instead, they see reality and distort it in their minds – allowing them to cultivate visions and make breakthroughs that ordinary people could have never envisioned.

Entrepreneur: Bill Gates

One of the best examples of entrepreneurial vision is Bill Gates – the man who’s widely credited with both launching the personal computer revolution and with developing the world’s first piece of software (alongside business partner Paul Allen, of course) in 1974. At the time, “computers” as we know them now didn’t exist. Gates and Allen actually developed their code by borrowing time on the mainframe computers owned by educational institutions and large corporations.

To make the leap from this type of computing arrangement to the idea that PCs could be owned and operated by individual households around the world was truly an instance of vision at work.

Maybe your vision of the future won’t have the impact of the PC revolution, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be important for you, your business and for the world. Learn to see what isn’t there yet. It’s a critical skill that all entrepreneurs must master in order to experience success.

Do you relate to any of these entrepreneurs in the way you’ve handled your own startup business challenges? If so, share your thoughts below.

This post originally appeared on the author’s blog.

Sujan Patel is the founder and CEO of Single Grain, one of the top Digital Marketing agencies in San Francisco, CA. With more than 10 years of Internet marketing experience, Sujan leads the digital marketing strategy for companies like Sales Force, Yahoo, Intuit and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons.

Cariloop: The Expedia For Senior Care

It’s going to happen to all of us.

There will come a day when our parents become dependents, and it becomes our job to care for them. Sometimes that means they will live with us, but it’s more than likely that we will need to find some kind of assisted living or retirement community. And, it’s possible those care options could be hundreds of miles from where we live.

Steve Theesfeld spent several years working for Sunrise Senior Living, and in that time he realized that it’s impossible for patients and family to get good, quality information about geriatric healthcare options. It wasn’t the organizations’ fault, necessarily. They often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing and branding, but they do it in outdated ways that end up being inaccessible.

With this understanding, Theesfeld founded Cariloop, described to me by CEO Michael Walsh as an “Expedia for senior care.”

Cariloop’s platform enables family members to get all the information they need about local options, pricing, and availability. They also provide direct access to the providers to facilitate easier admission.

Today the Cariloop team will pitch at the Health Wildcatters’ Demo Day. They’ve spent the last 3 months going through the accelerator, learning how hard it can be to build a business while essentially going back to school.

In true Texas form, Health Wildcatters takes its name from risk-taking oil entrepreneurs who take big chances in where they drill. This kind of mentality rubbed off on the Cariloop team.

“There is a good way to do things and a disruptive way to do things,” Walsh told us when we asked about the one thing he learned during the accelerator. “Entrepreneurs need to put everything they have into differentiating themselves, building something’s that better than everyone else’s, and sharing their passion with the world.”

After Demo Day, the team hopes to get some sleep. But, after THAT, they are already hard at work on some new features they will release in January. They’ve also signed a partnership with the Texas Organization of Residential Care Homes, which represents some 250-300 homes in the state.

For about Cariloop, check out the website and follow them on Twitter.