It’s not easy to start your own business, and unless you’ve done it before you often have no idea where to begin. Do you need a business plan? Do you need a location? How do you finance your business? How do you determine the legal structure for your business? Do you need to register a business name? Every business owner has struggled with these questions.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and there is no better way to start than by learning from others who’ve been through this process multiple times. When we learn from others, we learn from their mistakes, successes, and decision making processes so that we can refine our own.

We asked 10 respected small business experts to share what they believe is most important when starting a business. Here’s their advice.

1. Plan, Prove and Protect

Brian Moran, Small Business Edge

With over 20 years of experience publishing business magazines and other business related content, Brian Moran has learned a lot about entrepreneurship and starting a business. He breaks-up his advice into three parts:

1. Have a GPS plan on where you want to go with your business. It needs to show how you will get there and then have a backup plan for when things go south.

2. Prove your concept as quickly as possible. Prove that someone will pay money for your product or service.

3. Watch your cash flow. Starting out, you will have a LOT more expenses than receivables. Guard your money & your time. Protecting both is the key to success.

2. Develop a Long Term Strategy

Liz Jostes, Eli Rose Social Media

As a small business owner, Liz Jostes often encourages entrepreneurs to not focus on immediate absolute perfection, but rather to focus on fully fleshing out a strategy in order to understand whether or not the strategy worked. Especially in a world of instant gratification via social media, Jostes says that entrepreneurs’ attention spans are too short.

My best pieces of advice are to first, get started and keep moving forward, and second, to do more with less. People need to get to know you, build trust with you, and then have a need for whatever you are selling before they are ready to buy. So keep doing what you are doing. Plan for the long game. Know that what you are doing today will pay off months from now.

3. Do Less But Do It Well

Emma Jones, Enterprise Nation

Author, small business expert, and founder of the small business network Enterprise Nation, Emma Jones, says that she typically sees entrepreneurs trying to take on too much at once. She warns against doing everything at a minimal level, and like Liz Jostes, encourages entrepreneurs to focus on a few things with all of their energy.

There are only so many hours in a day, and small business owners have to perform all the same business tasks that a larger company would, but with a fraction of the staff. When it comes to marketing your business, don’t get caught up in “the next big thing”. You are better off putting the time or budget that you have into doing a couple things very well instead of trying to stretch that same amount of time or budget across 5 social media platforms, blogging, creating videos, and the like.

4. Get Real Paying Customers

Barry Moltz, Author, Speaker, Consultant

Barry Moltz, a respected small business expert, author and consultant, keeps it very simple and clear when advising small business owners. He focuses on proving the concept before investing large amounts of money into the company, and clarifies that proving the concept means getting your real target audience on board. Entrepreneurs usually tap into their close circles in order to get feedback or users, but Moltz argues that this can be biased:

Get real paying customers first! Relatives and close friends don’t count.

5. Create a Game Plan

Steve Strauss, MrAllBiz

Senior columnist for USA Today and small business expert Steve Strauss offers seven steps for small business owners on the best way to get started with their business. He believes in practical, real-world methods that work for most types of companies, and emphasizes that each decision should be critically questioned to be sure it’s the right decision.

1. Self-evaluation: Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?

2. Business Evaluation: How viable is your idea?

3. Legalities and Formalities: The nuts-and-bolts are critical!

4. The Business Plan: Your roadmap for a successful journey.

5. Get Funded: There are a lot more options than you may know about.

6. Set Up Shop: This is the fun stuff!

7. Trial and Error: Learning from your mistakes, and successes, is important.

6. Know Your Role

Doug and Polly White, Doug & Polly

Columnists at Entrepreneur and small business experts Doug and Polly White advise small business owners to focus on preparing for the long run, and understanding the different scenarios they might face down the road. The Whites say that it is extremely important for small business owners to be in control and understand their role in the business right from the start.

1. Possess the requisite skills to do the primary work of the business (or if you possess only some of the required skills, you can partner with someone who has a complementary skill set). It may sound like remedial counsel to say that before starting a business, the owner should ensure that he or she could do the primary work of the business.

2. Have a plan for performing the ancillary functions. If you love baking cakes, don’t open a bakery. Get a job as a baker. If you are going to start a company, you’ll have more to do than just the primary work. If you are running a bakery, you’ll have to wait on customers, order supplies, set up a bookkeeping system and administer it. You will perform administrative functions and have an IT infrastructure.

3. Realize that growth means you will have to let go. The time will come when you’ll face a choice. You’ll have to delegate doing the primary work of the business to others, stop growing or hire someone to run the company while you continue doing the primary work of the business. Before you launch your new venture, know which path you’ll take. Be prepared to deal with success.

7. Document Your Key Business Processes

Denise O’Berry, Idea to Done

Denise O’Berry, a small business expert helping small businesses since 1996, explains that small business owners often keep everything in their minds, making the good ideas or improvements hard to execute and easy to forget. By documenting everything when forming or ideating for your new business, you will be more likely to be able to execute that idea.

Document your business processes. We can keep a lot of information in our heads. But that doesn’t mean we should. No matter what size business you own, things get done in a certain order. Taking the time to write those things down will help free up your mind for other important business issues. On top of that, having them written down will allow you to hand them off when you’re ready to hire someone to take on the task.

8. Be Objective

Rieva Lesonsky, Small Biz Daily

Rieva Lesonsky, two time CEO, small business expert, and former editorial editor for Entrepreneur urges small business owners to be more objective when starting their company. She suggests looking at everything through an outsider’s lens in order to remove biases and truly make the best decisions.

1. People will disappoint you. Don’t take it personally.

2. You always need more money than you think you do. Budget carefully.

3. Invest and don’t skimp on technology! The most current hardware & software really helps you be more productive and efficient, even if it’s a little more expensive.

4. You’ll get less sleep than you think you will.

5. All that said, it’s worth it.

9. You Need Passion, Dedication and Perseverance

Evan Carmichael, Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist

Successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist Evan Carmichael says that in order to start a successful business, an entrepreneur must have unmatched passion and willpower for the project. Carmichael acknowledges that entrepreneurship is tough, mistakes are made, and a lot of sleep is lost- which is why he says that only the dedicated, passionate, and willing truly succeed in the end.

Being a successful entrepreneur isn’t about having an outgoing personality, having funding or other resources, or having the best connections. None of those things matter. What successful entrepreneurs have in common are: 1) they had an idea that they were passionate about, 2) they did something about it and took action instead of sitting on it and watching someone else get rich from it, and 3) they persevered and had the conviction to follow through and not quit when times got tough.

10. Listen to Yourself

Paul Segreto, Entrepreneur/Podcaster

As a seasoned entrepreneur, blogger and podcaster, Paul Segreto is familiar with the emotions that many entrepreneurs feel when starting their own business. He says that while sometimes those emotions can get in the way, they can also be used to help propel our companies forward. Overall, Segreto emphasizes the idea of our own internal voices as guides:

A time comes in your life when you finally get it. When in the midst of all your fears and old hurts you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere, the voice inside your head cries out – “ENOUGH!” This moment is the turning point that leads to success and happiness.

Do you have questions or other tips you can offer entrepreneurs and small business owners? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

If you are ready to create quality branding for your business that inspires trust and confidence in your business, consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives to give you great options. crowdSPRING’s Logo Design Service offers a step-by-step creative brief that helps you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project:

The challenge of this project was to create a logo with a hip, cool, intriguing feel for an unique brand of cat furniture.  There were lots of great designs to choose from including this quirky and delightful take by sbastian.

Let us start the slow clap for sbastian. Check out more great work on sbastian’s profile page.
Nicely done, sbastian, nicely done!

I’ve been an attorney for over 20 years and have represented many startups, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. I’ve seen many smart entrepreneurs and small business owners make critical legal mistakes that threatened the survival of their business.

Fortunately, most legal mistakes are minor and can be fixed. But there are legal mistakes that can destroy your small business or startup. Knowing those mistakes, and learning how to avoid them, can mean the difference between your business succeeding or failing.

In the following video, I talk about 10 of the most important legal mistakes that many business owners make – and what you can do to avoid those mistakes.

Starting a business? Consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives for professional logo design, company naming, and more.

Protecting your brand is an important part of building your business and maintaining your customers’ trust. Crucial brand elements like your company’s name, logo and tagline should be protected so that no other company can enter the market and use your identity to sell their product or service. One of the earliest steps you can take to protect your brand is to register your trademark.

In the following guide, learn the basics of trademark law and 5 tips for leveraging trademarks in your business:
 

What is a Trademark?

Trademark law prevents businesses from operating under business names – or using logos – that are likely to be mistaken for the name of an existing competitor.

For a more complete definition, here’s how the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office defines a trademark: “any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.”

A service mark is similar to a trademark – but it’s used to distinguish the services of one provider from services provided by others (and to indicate the source of the services).
 

What’s the difference between copyright and trademark law?

Copyright and trademark law both protect intellectual property – but they protect different things. Copyright protects works such as poetry, movies, writing, music, video games, videos, plays, paintings, sheet music, recorded music performances, novels, software code, sculptures, photographs, choreography, and architectural designs. Trademarks are names, logos, sounds, shapes, colors and even smells that distinguish the source of goods or services of one party from those of another party.

Example: A computer software program may be copyrighted. The name of the software can be trademarked.
 

If a trade name or logo is protected by copyright law, is it automatically protected by trademark law?

No. A trade name or logo design might be protected by copyright law, but is not protected by trademark law unless it is actually used in commerce. This is because trademark rights arise only through commerce (such as when you offer items for sale and use the trade name or logo in your marketing materials or on the products).
 

Must a trade name or logo be registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to be protected by trademark law?

No. You are not required to register a trade name (or logo). You can acquire common law rights simply by using the trade name or logo in commerce.
 

Do you have to be a U.S. citizen to register a trademark?

No. But you must disclose your citizenship in the application.
 

How Long Does a U.S. Trademark Last?

U.S. Trademark registrations filed today have a 10 year term. NOTE: There are periodic requirements to maintain an active registration and you must follow those requirements or risk losing your trademark registration.
 

Can you sell or assign a trademark to another person?

Yes. If your mark is registered, you can (but don’t have to) record the transfer with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
 

Is a U.S. trademark or use solely in the U.S. sufficient to acquire trademark rights around the world?

No. Trademark rights are territorial. If you’ve registered your trademark in the U.S., you can generally enforce it only against those who infringe it in the U.S. Many European countries have adopted the Community Trademark (CTM) – a registration under that common system allows the enforcement of rights in all of the signatory countries. The CTM doesn’t replace national trademark rights in the signatory countries, but it does coexist with those rights.

If you own a U.S. trademark or have applied for one, you can seek registration in any of the countries that have joined the Madrid Protocol by filing a single application – called an “international application” – with the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization.
 

What Should Small Businesses Do To Avoid Violating or to Leverage Trademark Law?

Here are five practical tips about trademark law and your trade name or logo:

1. Do a trademark search before you settle on a trade name (company name) and/or logo.

You can search (for free) the federal trademark database – Trademark Electronic Search System. One good alternative: Trademarkia, allows you to search trademarks for free – and can help you file your trademark application. You can also leverage Google, Bing and other search engines to look for companies using the name you intend to use for your company or product. Don’t forget to do a domain name search to see if someone is using the name as their domain.

It’s always a good idea to hire a trademark search service – even if you think you’re a good researcher. Professional search costs several hundred dollars (and can cost thousands of dollars depending on their coverage), but covers many more databases than you’ll have access to, will often include an international search, and will typically be much more thorough. Although more expensive than many others, this is the company I often used when working with clients on trademark matters.

Intellectual property lawsuits can be very expensive. Take care to make sure that you’re not exposing yourself to unnecessary risk.

2. Register your trademark.

You are not required to register a trade name (or your logo). You can acquire common law rights simply by using the trade name or logo in commerce. However, registering the trade name or logo can help. Among other things, it notifies others that you assert rights over the trade name or logo and that you’re serious about protecting your rights. The registration date also contains the date you first used the mark – which serves as evidence against other parties you might later allege violate your trademark rights. Moreover, when you’ve registered your trademark, you can sue those who infringe your mark to recover damages and also attorneys’ fees and punitive damages.

You can hire a firm or attorney to help you register, or do it yourself. The forms for registering with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can be found here. If you need answers to specific trademark questions about U.S. registration, you can also contact the Trademark Assistance Center at 1-800-786-9199.

3. Maintain your trademark if you’ve registered it.

If you’ve registered your trademark, continue using it in commerce. Don’t forget to use the “®” symbol once your registration is approved – this lets everyone know that your trade name or logo is registered. If you haven’t registered, you can use the “tm” trademark symbol to let people know that you assert trademark rights in the trade name or logo but that it’s not officially registered.

4. You can file a trademark application before you use a mark in commerce.

This is especially helpful to startups – you don’t need to wait to use a trademark in commerce – you can file an Intent-to-Use application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

5. Understand the Permitted and Prohibited Uses When You Use Another Company’s trade name or logo.

Often, especially when companies enter into partnership agreements with each other, the partners must use someone else’s trade name or trademark. For example, if I have a small electronics store and advertise Sony products for sale, I may use the Sony logo in the advertising I place in the local paper. Make sure you have rights to use the trade name or trademark. Don’t assume that you have unlimited rights – you most likely do not (even if you’re authorized to resell a particular company’s products or services).

Similarly, if you allow other parties to use your trade name or logo, make sure you carefully define how they should use the trade name or logo – and also specify any uses that are not permitted.

If you get into a jam or are unsure about what to do – consult an attorney.
 

Continued Reading

If there are other small business legal issues you’re interested in reading about, please leave a comment and let me know. You might also be interested these posts:

• 10 Legal Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Small Business And How To Avoid Them
• Small Business Legal Issues: Copyright Basics

Please remember that legal information is not the same as legal advice. This post may not address all relevant business or legal issues that are unique to your situation and you should always seek legal advice from a licensed attorney.

Image credit: Saulo Mohana

Small businesses make up 99.7% of all businesses in the US, making them a vital part of our economy. And it’s not just the US that benefits from small businesses. Countries all over the world benefit from the innovation, new business, and fresh ideas that startups bring to their economies and business culture. It’s no wonder that entrepreneurship is becoming more and more popular! In the US alone, the rate of entrepreneurship has increased by 15% in the past two years, according to The Kauffman Index.

If you are an entrepreneur planning to start a new business this year, take a look at some important statistics about starting your own business.

1. 77% of small businesses are started with an entrepreneur’s personal savings or finances. [More insights: 3 Common Myths About Starting a Business].

2. 42% of startups fail because they failed to meet a market need. [More insights: Tips on Defining The Size of a Market for a Startup Business].

3. 74% of tech startups fail because they scaled too fast. [More insights: How To Avoid Failure: Two Common Small Business Mistakes and Successful Entrepreneurs Know That Failure Is Rarely Permanent].

4. About 50% of all small businesses fail within their first 5 years. [More insights: The Science of Bad Decisions and How You Can Avoid Making Them].

5. It takes about $80,000 per year to run a startup. Most of that money comes from debt and equity.

6. The average revenue of a small business is $3.6 million. That number increases to $5.03 million if the business has a website. [More insights: How Marketing Velocity Can Help You Increase Sales and Revenue and 10 Web Design Best Practices and Tips for Small Businesses].

7. 62% of businesses in the US only have 5 (or fewer) employees. [More insights: The Psychology of Hiring Great People].

8. More than 50% of small businesses have a Chief Financial Officer, or someone else that holds a similar position.

9. Over a third of the US is employed by small businesses that each employ less than 100 people.

10. 42% of small businesses are S-corporations, and 23% are LLCs. While these types of corporations are similar, there are some key differences entrepreneurs should consider. [More insights: 10 Legal Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Small Business and How To Avoid Them].

11. Over 40 million small businesses have Facebook pages. 75% of that 40 million pays for promoted or boosted posts. [More insights: Is Small Business Marketing On Facebook a Complete Failure? and 22 Ways Brands Can Use Facebook Live Video to Drive Business].

12. 94% of small businesses use smartphones as their main phone service. 49% of these businesses use their smartphones to do business 7 days a week.

13. 51% of small businesses are reluctant to use new technology because it takes too long to implement and learn.

14. On average, 85% of small business owners say that they struggle to hire because candidates lack adequate talent. [More insights: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Employees].

15. 543,000 new businesses are started every month. There’s a lot of competition out there!

16. Businesses with two founders raise 30% more investment funding than businesses with a single founder. [More insights: Startup Tip: Ten Suggestions For Raising Start-Up Capital from Angels].

17. Immigrants make up for 12.5% of US entrepreneurs.

18. 51.6% of small businesses are run out of a personal home.

19. More than 50% of all small businesses have virtual offices, with their employees working remote. [More insights: The Surprising Ways a Distributed Team Can Help Your Company Succeed].

20. It only takes 6 days to start a business in the US. That’s a shorter wait than a lot of other countries.

21. About 51% of small business owners have a bachelor’s degree.

22. In 2016, the most effective small businesses will each spend more than $2 million on content marketing. That number is expected to grow in 2017. [More insights: How To Create Content Marketing Unicorns and Why Content Marketing Is Essential For Successful Startups and Small Businesses].

For many entrepreneurs, the rewards of starting a new business outweigh the risks. But you still need every advantage that you can get. We hope that these insights help you to succeed with your business idea. Good luck!

If you are ready to start your business, consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives to give you great options for names, logos, and more. crowdSPRING’s Logo Design Service and company naming service offers step-by-step creative briefs that help you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

Image source:Annie Spratt

The UK is one of the best places to start a small business, with lower corporate taxes and a startup-friendly business culture. But it’s never easy to build a small business, especially if you have never done it before. A million questions might pop into your head: do you need a business plan? A location? What should you name your business? How do you finance your business? Are there legal issues you must consider? How do you create a logo? Every business owner has struggled with most of these questions, and more.

There is no better way to begin your entrepreneurial journey than by learning from others who have been through this process multiple times. When we learn from experiences entrepreneurs, we can study their mistakes, successes, and decision making processes so that we can create or refine our own strategy.To help you get started, we collected advice from 10 UK based respected small business experts.

1. Test Collaborations

Shed Simove
Motivational Speaker

Over 434,000 businesses in the UK are partnerships. Even more small businesses in the UK partner with other companies or influencers for marketing campaigns or other deals. And even if a company does neither, all businesses require collaboration with others. Motivational speaker Shed Simove told us that too often, entrepreneurs enter into agreements or partnerships that turn sour. Simove suggests testing the waters first:

Working relationships are PIVOTAL to the success of a business. Before you work with someone new, if at all possible, give them a small job or task to do first, to check if you and they have the same work ethic and way of operating. You can save yourself huge pain down the line by staggering a job into concrete parts or collaborating on something small before committing to working with someone new on a larger project or with them long term. This strategy also means they can get to know you too, and see if they like working with you as well. If everyone gels, amazing, then you can feel more confident about jumping in longer term with them.

2. Network Smarter, Not Harder

Jim Connolly
Jim’s Marketing Blog

As a marketing expert, Jim Connolly is well versed in all marketing strategies. A popular tactic for entrepreneurs is to attend conferences or networking events where there is a potential to speak to large groups of people. However, Connolly believes that entrepreneurs can network more efficiently by building a target circle, and giving each person specific, special attention.

Stop wasting your time swapping business cards at networking events. The people attending these events are there to sell to you, not to buy from you and very, very few well-connected people waste their time attending them…Here’s a suggestion: Draw up a list of the 30 most influential people in your marketplace.  These people could include high quality prospective clients or maybe influential introducers; introducers are people who can recommend you to lots of buyers.  Then, put a plan together that will allow you to EARN their attention.

 

3. Build a Tribe

Sallee Poinsette-Nash
Tall Guides

Authenticity is a popular trend that swept branding messages worldwide in 2016, and has continued to be important in 2017. Entrepreneur Sallee Poinsette-Nash says that a huge part of authenticity is creating and being involved in a community, which is also where you find your target audience and customers.

The best opportunities come via people so proactively seeking out communities and people with similar interests and values to you is a must. The most successful (and enjoyable) way of building authentic relationships is to contribute generously to others. When you do this, you’ll often receive exciting opportunities in return. So what community is it that you’re looking to attract? Whatever you decide, stand for something and then build your tribe around it.

4. Stay Focused

Ben Towers
Towers Design

As a young entrepreneur, Ben Towers has accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. In a video discussing the path to his success, Towers explains that he always had a clear idea of what he was doing- even if the path seemed foggy or his experience was minimal.

Have a clear strategy on where you want to be. Know exactly where you want to be, and go out and do it. Work out every step. Everything you do should be a part of that end goal- stay focused.

5. Cater to a Real Need

James Caan
Hamilton Bradshaw

A huge issue that many entrepreneurs face is building a small business based on an idea that nobody cares about or needs. If people don’t need the product or service, then they won’t be inclined to pay money for it. James Caan of Hamilton Bradshaw writes that there has to be a very clear market for the product or service- before the business is started.

If you’re thinking about starting a business, you need to consider the necessity of your product or service. If people aren’t going to feel as though they need it, it will not succeed. You need to find a way of filling a gap and identifying an issue in the market which you can then solve through innovation.

6. Be Confident

Peter Jones
Peter Jones Blog

As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you need to be able to pitch both yourself and your business to customers, investors, family, friends, and even nonbelievers. This requires confidence, especially when those people give you feedback that you weren’t expecting or would rather not hear. According to serial entrepreneur Peter Jones, confidence is key.

If you don’t believe in yourself or your idea, why should anyone else? Gain confidence through gaining experience, skills and knowledge. Change your perception of failure to realize that it provides feedback. Feedback provides essential learning to help know what not to do the next time.

7. Eat Your Own Dog Food

Mark Wright
Climb Online

One of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Mark Wright, says that you cannot expect people to pay for your product or service if you wouldn’t. Too often, entrepreneurs or small business owners don’t believe or use their own product. This causes doubt in the customer’s eyes and distances the business from their target audience.

Ultimately I am firm believer of the concept of “eating your own dog food”. That basically means that you should use and believe in your own product or service.

8. People Value Transparency

Melody Hossaini
Speaker, Consultant, Blogger

Inspirational speaker Melody Hossaini believes in the transformation of business trends, saying that small business owners and entrepreneurs should be wary of how the world is changing. According to Hossaini, people now value brands that are more transparent rather than private– which changes the way that brands can interact with their consumers.

We are moving away from a ‘private’ world in so many ways – this is of course evident most greatly in social media and how we ‘share’ so much of our lives, ourselves and our work instantly across so many platforms. We literally ‘share’ things we see and things we are thinking about. The culture is shifting and opening possibilities for people to hear or see something and want to connect relevant people to it- whether through a ‘@mention’ on social media or saying in person ‘Oh sounds great – you should speak to this person or that person’. If we continue to keep things to ourselves out of fear, the only thing we will be left with, will be untapped potential.

9. Don’t Do It Alone

Thomas Oppong
All Top Startups

Founding editor of All Top Startups and expert on small business, Thomas Oppong, introduces the idea that everyone needs help at some point in the lifespan of their business. It’s important for entrepreneurs to understand that having help is okay, because running a business all alone is too much work and requires too many different talents.

You cannot succeed alone. Even solopreneurs rely on other freelancers to build a complete product. And more often than not, the people who help along the way to the top help broaden our capabilities and skills. You cannot do it all by yourself.

10. Listen to Yourself

Richard Branson
Virgin

One of the UK’s most well known entrepreneurs, Richard Branson, reveals that entrepreneurship and owning a business will always be scary- even for well seasoned, successful entrepreneurs like himself. Branson encourages entrepreneurs to take risks- saying that big rewards usually come from the biggest risks.

To set up a business in the first place you have to be brave. You may end up mortgaging your flat or giving up a good job and you may end up falling flat on your face. But without being brave, you are not going to achieve anything.

11. Know Who Your Target Is

Victoria Olubi
The Tutoress

It’s important to have a clear understanding of who you are going to sell to because it gives you a direction for all of your marketing efforts. Experienced entrepreneur Victoria Olubi emphasizes choosing a specific target before starting a new venture in order to avoid lead generation or revenue issues.

My biggest tip for entrepreneurs starting out is to get clear on who your ideal client or customer is. Often enough, people start businesses without having a clue who they’re targeting and it causes problems later down the line. The sooner you’re crystal clear with who you’re targeting, the easier it will be to find ways to get in front of that prospective client or customer.

Do you have any questions or more tips you can offer entrepreneurs and small business owners? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!

If you are ready to launch your business and want help creating quality branding for your business, consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives to give you great options. crowdSPRING projects offer step-by-step creative briefs that help you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project:

The challenge of this project was to create a logo for a brewery that included the elements of a river, grain and hops. This design makes us want to put up our feet and crack open a cold one.

Let us start the slow clap for snopy. Check out more great work on snopy’s profile page.

Nicely done, snopy, nicely done!

Time and time again, experts in entrepreneurship and business (often with little to no operating experience of their own) offer formulaic advice on what startups must do to succeed.

The truth is that there is no one way to “correctly” start a company. Startups are the epitome of unpredictability and extremes. For every example of a successful company that proves a myth wrong, there will always be one that will prove it right, especially in today’s world of rapidly expanding technology and connectivity. That is why it is imperative for entrepreneurs to critically examine all advice and “truths” about startups. With countless articles and opinions, it can be hard to decipher who’s right.

Fortunately, many startup myths revolve around three common topics (business plans, money, and unnatural hustle). Many aspiring and even experienced entrepreneurs blindly believe those myths to be true and either take too long to start their business or never feel confident enough to get going.

In the following video, I talk about 3 common myths about starting a business and proceed to blow them up:

I’m rarely surprised when a young entrepreneur or small business owner hasn’t fully identified how their new business will make money. But I’m always surprised when that entrepreneur or small business owner has a tough time describing the potential customers for their new business’s products and services. After all, without customers, there is no revenue.

If you try to sell your products and services to everyone in the world, you will waste both time and money.

When you choose a market, you should consider five main factors:

• 1: How many customers are in the market?
• 2: Can these customers pay for your products or services?
• 3: Do these customers have the need you solve?
• 4: How many competitors are competing for your customers’ business?
• 5: How does your business compare to your competitors?

In this video, I discuss each factor:

Companies want their logo to be instantly recognizable, easily interpretable, and timeless. Overly complex logos often fail to achieve those goals.

Web designers often talk about restraint — not putting everything, including the kitchen sink, on a page. The same should be said about logo design. After all, there are some exceptional examples of simple logos that are instantly recognizable, easily interpretable, and have withstood the test of time. Here are four examples:

The original Apple logo showed Isaac Newton under the apple tree. Apple then moved to the rainbow apple logo (1976-1998). A monochrome version has been used since 1998 (the silver logo was introduced in 2003). Rob Janoff, the graphic designer who created Apple’s original rainbow-striped logo, apparently had created a version similar to the current logo – back in 1976, but Steve Jobs picked the striped version instead.

The Families and Marriage logos were designed by Herb Lubalin, creator of several well-known fonts, including ITC Avant Garde Gothic, ITC Ronda, ITC Serif Gothic. Notice the smaller second “i” in the Families logo. Neither has frills, shadows, color or reflection of passing trends. Both are very powerful and meaningful.

The Amazon logo is very simple and clean (the above design is the version of the logo as used from 2000 – for a pictorial history of the Amazon logo, click here). The arrow, from “a” to “z” is clever – it suggests you can find anything you need at amazon.com. It is clever in another way – it represents a smile that customers would experience by shopping with Amazon.

The IBM logo was designed by Paul Rand, who created numerous logos for well-known companies including ABC and UPS. According to IBM, the horizontal stripes represent “speed and dynamism.” Notice that there are 8 stripes (8 bits?).

What are your favorite simple, but effective logos?

If you are ready to create a quality logo for your business that inspires trust and confidence in your brand , consider enlisting the help of our network of over 190,000 creatives to give you great options. crowdSPRING’s Logo Design Service offers a step-by-step creative brief that helps you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

Image Credit: Kristian Bjornard

Technology has helped close the gap between small businesses and startups and the larger, better-financed competitors they have set out to disrupt. Today, inexpensive and free small business marketing tools, outstanding small business applications from Google, and crowdsourcing have made it possible for startups and small businesses to level the playing field. In some situations, being smaller can even be a competitive advantage.

In this post, we’ll discuss five designs that startups and small businesses should crowdsource to further level the playing field with against better-financed and larger competitors.

There are literally dozens of different types of designs that can be crowdsourced. To get a few ideas about how other businesses have leveraged crowdsourcing for design, you can read 99 designs you can crowdsource on crowdSPRING.

Why should startups and small businesses trust crowdsourcing to meet their design needs?

In offering tips about lean marketing strategies, I wrote:

Small businesses and startups have minimal brand recognition, are often located in geographic or demographic areas that limit their marketing options, and most have small (or non-existent) marketing budgets.

Crowdsourcing empowers startups and small businesses to avoid the time-consuming process of finding a graphic designer, negotiating a contract and a fee for the work, and the wait to review one or several design choices. Simply put: crowdsourcing is quicker, less expensive, easier, and offers you far more choice than working with a single freelancer or agency.

What types of designs should startups and small businesses crowdsource?

1. Logo Design

Startups and small businesses often make the mistake of using a poorly designed logo or an off the shelf generic logo from a $99 logo store. This is a costly mistake.

In an earlier post examining Branding Secrets of the World’s Best Brands, I discussed a few reasons why startups and small businesses should have strong branding (including a strong logo):

The logo is one of the most important elements of a brand. As you think about your logo, keep your audience and products/services in mind because you want your logo to reflect your company. A good logo builds trust and a strong logo will help to pull your brand together.Think about the logos of some of the world’s most admired brands (Apple, Google, Amazon). How do you feel (emotionally) when you see one of those logos?

By making your logo the main theme of your marketing and advertising activities (online and offline), the logo will become associated with your business and will help you to better communicate with prospects and customers.

Logo design projects on crowdSPRING start at $199. When you crowdsource your logo on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with thousands of logo design projects), see work from dozens of talented designers ( more than 200,000 designers from nearly 200 countries work on crowdSPRING), use simple but effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Logo crowdsourcing tip

If you are looking for a color logo, consider the messaging that color sends to your customers. Do the colors reinforce and strengthen the intended core message/personality/mood you’re trying to communicate through the logo, or do they distract or neutralize? For example, blue often communicates trust, loyalty and freshness. The color blue is common in banking or finance. Green represents life, nature and cleanliness. Also consider colors that work well with dark and white backgrounds. Because logos are often printed in black and white, chose a logo design that is viable and as strong or stronger in black and white.

If you’re interested in additional tips on getting a great logo for your business, the crowdSPRING community has created an outstanding guide and I encourage you to read it – 10 Logo Design Tips. There’s also an excellent guide for buyers who want to effectively manage their design projects on crowdSPRING.

2. Web Design

More than a third of small businesses are unhappy with their website. A quality web presence is not just a good idea for most small businesses and startups – it’s critical. As I wrote in an earlier post offering small business marketing tips for web design:

Most businesses, from one person start-ups to small and mid-size businesses to international conglomerates, need to have a presence on the Web. A strong website can help a small business to more effectively market its products or services  – even if the small businesses’ customers are all local. A strong website can also help individuals and businesses to promote their brands online, including on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Classmates, Bebo, Yelp, Foursquare and others.

Web Design projects on crowdSPRING start at $899 (for 1-5 designed pages). As with logo design, when you crowdsource your web design on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with thousands of web  design projects), see work from dozens of talented designers, use simple but effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

In addition to web design, startups and small businesses can crowdsource the design of landing pages (for example, design variations for A/B testing), blog themes, headers for their websites or blogs, widgets and applications, email templates, icons and buttons, and banner ads.

Web design crowdsourcing tip

Focus on the right details at the right time. Don’t get caught up in details before they become relevant. When your project is for web design, for example, do not get caught up in minor icons or colors – creatives can easily customize iconography to your liking, but a design takes a lot of hard work and brainstorming. In fact, color iterations can be discussed in the post-project wrap-up after you pick the winning design. Focus on the details that are most relevant to get a good foundation for the design and leave your final tweaks until you wrap-up the project.

3. Flyer Design

Many startups and small businesses worry about the often high cost of flyer and brochure design and settle for poorly designed, amateur-looking or generic flyers and brochures.

Flyers and brochures help you get your message out about your product or service. Well designed and effective flyers can make a huge difference in making sure that your marketing dollars are well spent.

Instead of using templates that your potential customers have seen from many of your competitors, why not design totally custom flyers for your products or services? This is your chance to stand out from the crowd and show why you’re different.

Print design projects on crowdSPRING start at $399 and allow startups and small businesses to get outstanding flyer and brochure design on their smaller budgets. When you crowdsource your flyer or brochure design on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with hundreds  of flyer and brochure design projects), see work from dozens of talented designers, use simple and effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Flyer design crowdsourcing tip

Take printing costs into consideration. What resolution do you need for the finished product? Price out the printing costs so that you understand how much you’ll need to spend to print brochures. For example, an unfolded 8-1/2 x 11 size sheet of paper is often used for product or service sheets. It can also be tri-folded for a brochure. Some companies use an 11 x 17 size brochure, folded in half, as a  product catalog. If you’re looking at multiple pages, also consider how you’ll assemble the finished product.

4. Stationery Design

When you send someone a letter or meet someone for the first time, your stationery and/or business card is often one of the first impressions someone will have about you. Unique stationery and business card design can help you to more effectively promote your brand, product or service.

Many small businesses make the mistake of printing cheap looking stationery and business cards in an effort to save money. How do you feel when you’re handed a generic and unimpressive business card?

You don’t have to sacrifice quality or choice if your budget is small. Stationery design projects on crowdSPRING start at $299. When you crowdsource your stationery design on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with thousands  of stationery design projects), see work from dozens of talented designers, use simple but effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom stationery designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Stationery design crowdsourcing tip

Avoid design by committee. The committee process (a litany of compromises over the final look and feel of a design) often produces an identity that is as mushy and bland and ultimately, not memorable.

Pick a small group of people whose opinions you really trust, in-house or not doesn’t matter. In fact, people outside your company can be better than insiders. Get their input, weigh it against your own thoughts. Then make your decision.

5. Banner Ads

Businesses of all sizes, from one person start-ups to small and mid-size businesses to international conglomerates, need to find ways to extend their marketing messages. One of the most effective ways to reach new customers is through display advertising on a variety of networks including Google and Facebook. In 2016, companies spent more money on digital display advertising than search advertising in the US for the first time ever.

Display advertising relies heavily on a variety of sizes of banners to display for both desktop and mobile users. Banners are intended to work the same way as traditional advertisements. When consumers see banner ads, you want the banner ad to persuade the consumer to choose the product or service you are marketing.

Effective banner ads can substantially improve your click through rates (CTR) and your conversions from display advertising.

Banner ad design crowdsourcing tip

You should always be testing your display ads with different variations to see if you can improve your CTR and ultimately, your conversion rate. Many companies post banner ad projects with multiple awards so that they can buy several different variations of banner ads and A/B test the advertising. Buying multiple variations costs a bit more, but even small improvements in CTR and conversion rates can more than pay for the added cost.

How can you leverage crowdsourcing to develop a strong portfolio of banner ads?

Banner ad projects on crowdSPRING start at $299. When you crowdsource your banner ads on crowdSPRING, you’ll set your own price (we’ll give you suggestions based on our experience with hundreds of banner ad projects), see work from dozens of talented designers, use simple but effective tools to manage your project, and choose from an average of 110+ original custom designs. And you are at all times protected by crowdSPRING’s 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Do you have suggestions about other designs that should be crowdsourced by startups and small businesses or tips about crowdsourcing design? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

Image source: Frontline Creative

A strong brand increases the value of your company, creates an identity and motivation for your employees, and makes it easier for you to acquire new customers. A brand represents how people know you (or your business), and how they perceive your reputation or the reputation of your company. In today’s noisy world, a strong brand is more important than it has ever been.

A great brand starts with a strong name and logo, but there’s more to a brand than just the visual elements. Unfortunately, many small businesses don’t prioritize branding early in their company’s history. This is a mistake. Poor branding impacts your business in many negative ways – and can even threaten the survival of your business.

We asked four successful and respected entrepreneurs and brand experts to share their stories about how branding influenced their lives and helped them grow their businesses.

1. Ryan Foland, Influence Tree

Personal branding expert, youth marketer, and speaker Ryan Foland thought back to his first few years of speaking engagements when we asked him to talk about his experience with branding. He started out as a public speaker in training, with a passion for business communication and a desire to share his ideas with larger audiences. As a beginner, Foland only had the skills and the training.

I spent three years of my life going to Toastmasters and mastering the craft of becoming a public speaker. I was winning speech competitions. People said they really liked my speaking style. I had a credible job at the University of California, Irvine and I came up with multiple ideas that I thought would reshape the world of business communication. As I became better and better at speaking, I started to go out into the world to find speaking gigs.

When Foland began to pursue paid public speaking gigs, he found himself lost among the hundreds of other people being paid to do the same thing. He felt stuck and realized that the reason he wasn’t getting gigs wasn’t because he was a bad speaker or had bad ideas. Foland wasn’t getting gigs because nobody knew about him. When people would search for him on the internet after meeting him, he had an underwhelming presence.

I knew that there were lots of professional public speakers getting paid and traveling around the world. I wanted to be one of them. I saw them online. I subscribed to their newsletters. I believed that I could do it, too. However, the more I tried to be like those people, the further away the reality seemed to get.

In order to compete with other public speakers, Foland began building a personal brand. He created an online presence that would better connect him to his audience and would make him seem accessible and real. Foland quickly began to see the benefits of his time and energy spent on branding.

After one year of hyper focus on building my personal brand, I went from 200 social media followers to over 100,000, got verified on Twitter and Facebook, was featured on Huffington Post, became a contributing writer for Fortune, was named a Top Youth Marketer by Inc. Magazine, and recognized as a Top Personal Branding Expert by Entrepreneur. I landed not one, but two TEDx talks, was paid to speak in New York, Washington D.C., Oregon, San Francisco, and was flown to Portugal to keynote after the Minister of Economics at the country’s 30th anniversary for their flagship government supported entrepreneurship program. All of this was a direct result of discovering and building my personal brand. I focused on creating valuable content, being active on social media, building my skills in a narrow field of expertise. The benefits were tangible and real. So real, that I launched InfluenceTree.com with Leonard Kim to help others learn how to build their personal brand and experience tangible results of their own.

2. Aaron Scott Young, Business Coach, Author, Speaker,

Podcaster

As a business strategist expert and Chairman of Laughlin Associates, Aaron Scott Young sees many different brand images and strategies every day. Young has noticed one common theme in successful brands: the idea of conveying trust. According to Young, when consumers trust companies, they buy from them. In order to become a trustworthy company, you have to build a brand that shows a “human” side of the business. When your business feels more like a friend than a company trying to profit, you know that you have an edge on your competition.

At Laughlin Associates, we’ve worked with over 100,000 business owners. The thing that sets the average owner apart from the truly successful is a personal brand. People buy from those they know like and trust. That means a business owner that will share their personal side, that will let their uniqueness shine through, will attract more and better clients. A great personal brand is the single greatest marketing advantage in the current business climate.

3. Michael Rava, Blogger, Entrepreneur, Marketer, Investor

As a specialist in digital transformation and full-stack marketing, Michael Rava is an expert in building a strong brand. Rava regularly works with companies to help them transform their online presence and form a cohesive, unique brand image. In his advice to entrepreneurs and small businesses, Rava emphasizes stability, uniqueness, and delivery.

Branding for me is a promise made by an organization to the audience. The brand promise tells who you are and what you believe in – what unique value you provide. Branding provides a competitive advantage for brands having a stable asset, economic value and sets expectations.

4. Cher Jones, Socially Active Training

Social media trainer and branding expert Cher Jones told us that she focuses her branding strategies on her social media presence. Not only does Jones’ entire personal brand depend on social media to grow her customer base, but it also helps the companies she trains foster a more personal connection with their audiences. According to Jones’, social media is a company’s first impression on a customer and sets up their entire perception of the brand itself. It allows for a deeper, continuous connection- of which should be taken advantage.

Your brand is open for business 24-7. People google you before they take your call, respond to your email, say yes to your meeting or consider you for the job. When you invest your time, energy and resources to develop your brand online, you will give yourself superpowers. You will open doors you didn’t know existed, enter conversations you are not physically present for and attract opportunities that can change the game. How you show up on LinkedIn and other social media networks that are relevant to your business, matters. Your website, matters. The posts you share, the content you create, and the way you connect with your network all matter when it comes to how people experience your brand online.

These stories are not unique. There are hundreds of thousands of companies and business owners in the US and around the world who are successful because they spent time, money, and energy on building their brands. They create strong first impressions and stay in the minds of their customers long after the product or service is used.

Branding is not just another marketing tactic. It will be the central core to all of your marketing strategies. Before you spend more money on marketing or launch new campaigns, take a closer look at your brand and consider whether your brand properly reflects you and your business. If it does not, invest some time and a small budget to fix this problem.

If you are ready to launch your business and want help creating quality branding for your business, consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives to give you great options. crowdSPRING projects offer step-by-step creative briefs that help you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average. 

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project:

The challenge of this project was to create a modern CSI logo for a sheriff’s department that says “investigating” without screaming “cop” from across the room. We thought this design was a smokin’ hot standout.

Let us start the slow clap for annasmoke. Check out more great work on annasmoke’s profile page.

Nicely done, annasmoke, nicely done!

A small business that doesn’t set clear long-term goals is doomed to fail.

It’s not unusual for small business owners and entrepreneurs to focus on strategies and tactics at the expense of also setting appropriate goals. Often, this happens when you see someone else successfully executing a strategy or tactic – and you try to duplicate their success by doing the same thing.

Learn why it is important to set clear, specific goals for your business, the difference between qualitative and quantitative goal setting, and examples of marketing goals to get you started:

Almost all supermarkets share a common layout. Many competitive products (toothpaste, for example), have similar packaging. Do supermarket and toothpaste companies lack imagination?

It’s possible, but a different explanation is more likely.

Smart businesses apply science to marketing. Relying on psychological research, these businesses adapt marketing strategies to maximize revenues and profits. When companies unlock the innermost secrets of how and why people buy things, interesting patterns begin to emerge.

For example, there’s good empirical data showing the best times and days to send marketing emails to maximize opens and click-through rates. However, as people have grown to more heavily use mobile devices, the science of email is gradually evolving. New research suggests, contrary to conventional wisdom, that many brands can benefit from sending email campaigns at night.

How can you apply scientific wisdom to improve marketing for your business? Let’s look at two approaches.

1. Let data drive your decisions.

Many marketers develop campaigns based on intuition. Guerrilla marketing campaigns fit this mold. A marketer believes, based on experience or a “gut” feeling, that a stunt might work, and they invest time and money to execute it.

Similarly, landing pages are often designed based on aesthetic look and feel, not on their ability to optimize user conversions. Paradoxically, the best looking designs are not always best. Sometimes, aesthetically better designs simply don’t convert as well.

In contrast, marketing as a science looks to optimize campaigns and marketing tactics to maximize returns on investment. It has become easier and more practical to apply science to marketing because marketing technology has exploded. For example, smart companies routinely A/B test landing pages in an effort to optimize conversions.

A number of years ago, for example, major publishers were losing print subscribers and wanted to find ways to convert print subscribers into digital subscribers. Many experimented with the decoy effect, also called the asymmetrical dominance effect. The decoy effect occurs when people tend to have a change in preference between two options when a third, asymmetrically dominated option is presented.

One of the best examples of the decoy effect was an old subscription page of The Economist.

The first option at $59 seemed reasonable. The second option at $125 seemed expensive. The third option offered options 1 and 2 (web and print) for the same price.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, tested this phenomenon with his MIT students. When presented with all three options, zero students chose option 2. Most chose option 3. When the second option was eliminated, most students chose option 1 (online subscription only).

Data can be very useful, as the above example, shows, but can have its own biases, as The Harvard Business Review cautions:

Data and data sets are not objective; they are creations of human design. We give numbers their voice, draw inferences from them, and define their meaning through our interpretations. Hidden biases in both the collection and analysis stages present considerable risks, and are as important to the big-data equation as the numbers themselves.

More importantly, as Albert Einstein famously said, “not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

Tips: To optimize how you use data to help you make decisions, you must ask the right questions and focus on the relevant data. For example, if you’re wondering why or when your customers are leaving your site, consider what data you have that can help you answer those questions. You can look at customer complaints, payment history, the funnel customers follow when browsing your site, poor customer service experience, frequency of usage, etc.

 2. Create and execute controlled experiments.

Do you remember having to write a hypothesis for your science experiment in school? If you have school-age kids, you’re probably helping them do this now.

The goal of a hypothesis is to help explain the focus or direction of the experiment. A hypothesis is a prediction.

An experiment is structured as follows:

1. Formulate a hypothesis
2. Design and execute an experiment to prove/disprove the hypothesis
3. Analyze the results
4. Accept, reject or refine the hypothesis

Experiments can help you apply lean marketing principles to conduct quick, low cost tests to develop and scale your marketing strategies.

Let’s walk through an example. A few years ago, our friends at Basecamp wanted to test various design concepts for one of their software products, Highrise. Here’s what they wrote:

We have assumptions about why some designs perform better than others. However we don’t know exactly why. Is it the color of the background? Is it the headline? We hope more iterative testing of the winners will help us get that information. If you have any theories please add them in the comments.

The team created a variation on their original design and A/B tested that variation. They found that the newly designed long form had a 37.5% increase in net signups compared to the original form. That’s a terrific improvement in conversions.

One very useful place to run experiments, if you run an online e-commerce business, is your pricing page. People have long assumed that customers want more choice. It turns out that for most customers, that assumption is wrong. People are more likely to purchase when their choices are limited.

Tips: If you’re struggling to figure out what to test in the first place, we recommend you read this helpful post from Optimizely – 71 Things to A/B Test. We use Optimizely at crowdSPRING to help with our A/B and multivariate testing and recommend them. Another good option is Visual Website Optimizer.

How do you feel about marketing as a science? Do you believe marketing is mostly art or science?

Every business, from startups to small businesses to the largest companies and agencies in the world, must have a strong brand to succeed in today’s noisy marketplace.

It’s true that a brand is more than a logo, but a strong brand starts with a great logo. But when it comes to logos and other written digital and print marketing materials, there’s a lot of confusion about typefaces, fonts, and the law. You can face heavy fines and get into a lot of trouble if you don’t have a license to the fonts and typefaces you use.

crowdSPRING has helped tens of thousands of the world’s best entrepreneurs and small businesses with logo design (and other design and naming services). We know a little bit about fonts, typefaces, logos and the law. Plus, it helps that before starting crowdSPRING, I was an intellectual property attorney (in fact, I’ve had my law degree for the past 22 years).

Whether you’re a business owner or designer: if you want to avoid running into legal problems with your logo, this video is for you. I talk about typefaces, fonts and the law. You won’t be an expert, but you will know enough to ask the right questions.

Many entrepreneurs and small business owners look up to and emulate successful entrepreneurs. After all, it makes sense to learn from people who created their own success stories.

Successful people share a number of habits that make them successful. This includes the things they do in living their personal lives, and how they run their businesses.

We’re written about this previously in 7 Habits of Highly Effective and Successful Entrepreneurs.

Today, we’re taking a closer look at some of our role models and their simple habits. Emulating these habits doesn’t guarantee success, but it could be a good place to start.

1. Mark Zuckerberg,
Facebook

One of the most successful entrepreneurs, Mark Zuckerberg, has a daily habit so simple that it seems trivial. He took note from Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, who used to wear the same black turtleneck every day to avoid making unnecessary decisions. Zuckerberg puts this theory to the test each day with a gray t-shirt and hoodie.

I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community … I’m in this really lucky position, where I get to wake up every day and help serve more than a billion people. And I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.

There’s a science to it too! According to lots of different studies, “the aggregate total of the decisions we make throughout the day impacts our ability to clearly see the upsides and downsides of some of the decisions we must make”. Read more about decision making in The Science of Bad Decisions and How You Can Avoid Making Them.

2. Evan Williams, Twitter, Blogger, Medium

Serial entrepreneur Evan Williams makes it a priority to put his health first by establishing a daily workout time. While most entrepreneurs suggest working out first thing in the morning to boost energy levels and make sure it gets done, Williams found that for him, a different time worked better.

My focus is usually great first thing in the morning, so going to the gym first is a trade off of very productive time. Instead, I’ve started going mid-morning or late afternoon (especially on days I work late).

3. Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

When Ferriss constructs his weekly schedule, he makes sure that his schedule is flexible. He doesn’t believe in multitasking or long, rigorous days. Instead, Ferriss maximizes his success by maximizing his motivation.

I don’t have to do anything in this schedule. I choose to do them because I like them. None of them are financially-driven or unpleasant obligations. If the chance to do something more fun comes up last-minute, I can cancel all of them.

4. Joel Gascoigne, Buffer

Many entrepreneurs have evening routines which help tie up loose ends and wind them down after a long day at work. CEO of Buffer Joel Gascoigne uses his nightly routine to disengage from the hustle and bustle of his daily life and focus on himself, taking time to reflect on his day. His routine seems almost meditative and helps him prepare to recharge his mind and body for the next day.

Disengage: An activity to allow total disengagement from the day’s work. For me, this is going for a 20 minute walk every evening at 9:30pm. This is a wind down period, and allows me to evaluate the day’s work, think about the greater challenges, gradually stop thinking about work and reach a state of tiredness.

5. Jason Fried, Basecamp

Like most of us, Basecamp founder Jason Fried tries to avoid all notifications that have collected on our phones and desktops overnight. But unlike other entrepreneurs, Fried acknowledges that it’s pretty difficult to avoid checking your phone or inbox all morning and instead does a buffer activity between waking up and answering messages. He also makes sure he eats breakfast!

I try not to grab my phone and check emails first thing. I used to do that, and it’s just not good for you. Instead, I’ll go and brew some tea and try and relax a little bit. But the computer’s always kind of pulling me toward it, so I end up looking at e-mail sooner than I’d like to.

6. Liz Ryan, Human Workplace

CEO of Human Workplace Liz Ryan notices that when she spends all day working without a break, she is less productive and more prone to distraction. So Ryan compensates for it by building some time into her day for mindless activities so that she can stay productive during the hours that she is working.

So I take a break every day and poke around on YouTube, listening to old songs I love and new ones I haven’t heard. Then I post a new song every day on LinkedIn: jazz or rock or 70s’s funk or glitch-hop or whatever strikes me.

It’s important to take good care of yourself so that you have the energy to take good care of your business.

We love experimenting with different productivity hacks and routines, and learning from the experts who have mastered their routines.

What are your favorite routines or daily habits that help you be a successful entrepreneur?

Image source: The 5th

If you are ready to launch your business and want help creating quality branding for your business, consider enlisting the help of crowdSPRING’s network of 200,000 creatives to give you great options. crowdSPRING projects offer step-by-step creative briefs that help you outline your company’s needs and allows you to select from over 100 entries on average.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we recognize this gem submitted in this logo project:

The challenge of this project was to create a logo for a company that designs and distributes quality lighting fixtures. Now they have a quality logo to help them shine brighter!

Let us start the slow clap for chrommatina. Check out more great work on chrommatina’s profile page.

Nicely done, chrommatina, nicely done!

Every small business and startup must negotiate with employees, vendors, customers, and others.

If negotiation sends chills down your spine or you want to become a better negotiator, this video is for you.

I’ve negotiated with thousands of people over the past few decades (for 13 years as an attorney and for the past ten as an entrepreneur and business owner). Here are my 10 proven tactics to help you negotiate better:

1. Know Your Objective. Know what you want BEFORE you negotiate.

2. Prepare. The more you know about the other side – the more options you’ll have during the negotiation.

3. Never Be Intimidated. If you allow yourself to be intimidated, you’ll have difficulty getting your needed concessions during the negotiation.

4. Pay Attention To Perception and Emotion. How the other side perceives your negotiating positions and tactics – and your emotional responses – will strongly influence their participation and responses during the negotiation.

Watch the video for more detail on these four tactics, plus six more:

As I wrote previously in 10 Tips for Naming Your Startup or Small Business, coming up with a great company name for your new small business or startup can be challenging and time-consuming. Coming up with a memorable tagline can present an even greater challenge.

A tagline is supposed to communicate to your customers and potential customers what sets you apart from your competition and also your brand’s focus. If you’d like some additional background on branding, you might want to check out the Branding category of our Small Business Resource Center.

You’ve probably seen and heard some of the most influential taglines of the past 50 years:

Got milk? (California Milk Processor Board) – 1993

Just do it (Nike)- 1988

Think different (Apple) – 1998

The ultimate driving machine (BMW) – 1975

Why did those taglines capture the attention of a wide audience and how did each become so memorable? Money provides a partial answer. Each of the companies/organizations that promoted one of the above taglines spent huge sums of money establishing their brand – and the tagline.

You can leverage crowdSPRING’s community of more than 200,000 designers and writers to come up with your tagline, or you can come up with one on your own. Whether you leverage crowdSPRING’s community to help with a memorable tagline or slogan or come up with one on your own, you might find the following 10 tips useful:

1. Make it unique.

Unsuccessful taglines often are too generic. If your competitor can use your tagline and it would still work well for them – you should keep working on the tagline until you find something that only you can uniquely use.

2. Make it simple.

You wouldn’t want to have a complicated company name, so why would you create a complicated tagline? A good way to test for simplicity is to ask your friends, family, and new acquaintances whether they understand what your company does after they see or hear your tagline.

3. Make it concise.

The best taglines explain what your company does and are short. Worry less initially about how the tagline sounds and focus first on a rough statement – you can always tweak until you get it just right. Aim for no more than five worlds. Five words are easier to remember than 20 words.

Some good examples: “Email marketing software for designers and their clients” (CampaignMonitor), “Where work happens.” (Slack) and “The World’s Largest Junk Removal Service” (1-800-Got-Junk?)

4. Make it timeless.

As tempting as hip taglines are, they will quickly become dated. There’s a reason each of the above taglines from Nike, Apple, and BMW has survived the test of time – they’re simple and timeless.

5. Keep it consistent.

One mistake companies make is to regularly change their taglines because they become tired of their current taglines and think that their customers and potential customers also have become tired of that tagline. This is a mistake and can lead to confusion. If your tagline works – even if you think it’s boring – stick with it if it’s working well for you.

6. Keep the focus on your audience, not on your company.

The most memorable taglines are about your customers, not about your company. If you focus your tagline on your company, your customers will wonder how it relates to them. On the other hand, by placing the focus on your customers – you’ll create a stronger brand association. Nike’s “Just do it” and Apple’s “Think Different” are great examples of placing the focus on the customers and potential customers. One common mistake companies make is to make promises in their taglines (which put the focus on the company). Don’t make promises – communicate benefits instead.

7. Keep it relevant to your company’s audience.

The memorable taglines above are sexy but not very descriptive. They’re memorable in part because each company/organization spent huge sums of money marketing and used those taglines in their marketing. Since you probably don’t have access to the same marketing budgets, your goal should be different.  You should use your tagline to identify what you do and to identify the benefit to your customers.

8. Make sure it matches your other branding.

Many entrepreneurs and small businesses think that a logo IS the company’s brand. It’s not. A logo is part of what defines a brand. A tagline, like a logo, helps to define your brand. Make sure that the style, voice and other elements of your tagline match the style, voice and other elements of your logo design. Because your tagline will be part of your overall branding, you’ll want the tagline to reflect your company’s personality.

9. Keep it positive.

There’s a huge body of research showing that negative statements generally don’t sell very well. Keep your tagline positive and focus on benefits.

10. Inject appropriate personality.

Insurance companies speak with a different voice than software companies. That’s OK. Keep in mind your company’s voice and personality, and make sure that the tagline reflects that voice and personality.

What’s your favorite tagline/slogan of all time?