How can young business owners leverage their mentors and professional contacts that might be just out of reach for them? What are your recommendations? This is such a relevant question, especially in the conversations that you and I have had in the past, because really, my solution to this is meeting people just like you, Nettie, and finding people that you can click with that might be a little older than you or they might be your same age,

  I was barely 17 when my nephew, Dylan, was born and it was 7 ½ years before there was another niece to put my attention to. In those 7 ½  years, I graduated high school, graduated college, got married, moved across the country to California and back to Maryland, and I started my company, now The Sappari Group. I was 24 years old. I had started working at a young age, being entrepreneurial from the get go. At 10

  How do you onboard correctly in today’s virtual world? The answer I give to everybody – carefully, intelligently, nicely, and with confidence. There are three elements to a really well-rounded onboarding program. You’ve got the organizational onboarding – making sure they have the paperwork. You have the technical onboarding – making sure that they have the laptop and the hard things that they need to have. And then there’s the social onboarding that goes along with it. If you

Do you ever feel this way? You did all the “right” things. You created the vision board, the strategic plan, set the goals, posted on social media daily, sent out the letters, cheered on your team… And STILL, you didn’t reach your goals? What’s up?? Why does this happen? To say the least, it’s a frustrating place to be.   Leading up to The Strategy Symposium, I was feeling like this. I had set the goals, made the plan, engaged the team,

  What kind of debts do businesses typically have? Businesses may have a line of credit, which may be unsecured debt, which means essentially there’s no collateral backed by that loan. They may have debt that is backed by collateral, such as real property, for example, as with a property-flipping and renovation business. The loan is typically secured by the property. There are other kinds of secure loans that are secured by personal property as opposed to real property. Personal

Flexible Scheduling Years ago, I saw a quote on Facebook that really stuck with me. It said, “Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.” (Lori Greiner) Eschewing the corporate life and work structure for the “freedom” of working for themselves – but then becoming chained to their new work paradigm more deeply than before. I know that many of you can relate to that deeply. Over the years, and especially more

  Why is it important for a business to have an emergency response plan for an emergency before it happens? Most business owners are busy building their business, and they’re not always thinking about what if something happens. So, having a partner in place to help you in the case of an emergency is important for keeping your doors open for your clients and for your employees. After all, we know when your business is closed, you’re not making money.

How do you access the information to operate and grow your business? Then, and perhaps more importantly, how do you then pause to apply that learning in a strategic way – all while facing the challenges of everyday operations and an overabundance of information? Every day, you have the opportunity to pause and plan, set goals, and check in on your progress.  However, it is difficult to find the time, gather the people, and clear the space for this kind

  What’s one thing that businesses need to be paying attention to right now? It is advertising. Sometimes social media service businesses might not need to quite venture into advertising when they start out. But when they expand and want to grow, and when you jump into social media, you might think that because it hasn’t been around very long, you can do a lot of organic stuff still. And that is a great way to get started. Learn social

Brian Rassi of Enstigate recently reminded me of a quote he keeps nearby in his office,  “To know and not do, is to not know.” 1 Yes, the first part is to know, and the second is to do – but without the doing, you are right back to the beginning.  If you do not take action on what you know, then you miss an integral step.  So what’s missing? What’s keeping you from the action? Perhaps what is lacking