Here are the best articles we found for the month of April:
How to Start a Consulting Business: Your One Page Business Plan
Clarity is the precursor to confidence. Once you establish clarity on your services, audience and motivation; you’ll be able to confidently move forward with the next steps. I address how to get clear on your services in the article How to Start a Consulting Business: 3 Steps to Finding Your Idea, so I suggest checking that out in addition to the guidance provided in the business plan.
Be sure not to skip defining your “WHY” – the purpose, the cause, or the belief that drives you – this will become a valuable differentiator as you grow your business. And, if you need help crafting yours, Simon Sinek literally wrote the book on it, but you can also check out his brief YouTube video that provides some valuable tips. Read more here.
How to Market Your Landscape and Lawn Care Business
Setting up a landscape and lawn care business demands working, planning, and strategizing. Once your business is fully set up and ready to go, the next important step is going to be to market your lawn care business.
Marketing plays a huge role, especially when you have a landscape and lawn care business. In order to do well, turn a profit, and grow your business, people have to know about the existence of your company.
Putting together a marketing plan is the best way to make this happen. With that in mind, though, there are some matters to be aware of. Some important matters regard knowing how to promote your landscape and lawn care business and also knowing how to get clients. Avoiding marketing mistakes is also vital; so is knowing whether or not to hire marketing talent. Read more here.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Clubhouse
Upon its launch last March, the social app quickly became popular among investors, who hold regular, live audio-only discussions, called “rooms,” in some cases within various topics of interest to groups called “clubs.”Business owners soon followed, building a roster of virtual educational events and places to hone their storytelling skills, commiserate about entrepreneurial life, and share experiences with the likes of high-profile users like Daymond John and Jason Fried.
If you can get an invitation–Kristin Marquet Chester, owner of New York City-based Marquet Media, recommends starting by asking your closest friends and then making requests on social media if needed–here are three types of rooms and clubs worth checking out for entrepreneurs. To find these events in the app, search for the relevant speakers or the name of the club. Read more here.
Best Time Tracking iOS Apps for Freelancers in 2021
Finding the best time tracking app for freelancers can be a challenge, to say the least. There are many options on the market; some of them provide the basic clock in/out time cards while others have more advanced features like reporting and automation.
When evaluating the freelance hour tracker app options, you should prioritize what’s important to you. Is cost on the top of your list? Most apps offer monthly subscriptions; these can quickly add up over the course of just one year. Are ease of use and the ability to track your hours/wages a priority? Evaluating the best time tracking app for freelancers really depends on your business.
Thankfully, we’re here to help. We’ve compiled a list of the best time tracking apps to choose for your freelance business. Read more here.
Why All Entrepreneurs Should Rethink Their “Why” in 2021
Adaptation has always been a natural consequence of problems and chaos. A change comes, and organisms are tasked with an option: fight or disappear. It’s a system that has worked within nature for billions of years.
In a big way, the Covid-19 pandemic has been this sort of change catalyst. All of the parameters by which we operate are different now. Entrepreneurs who want to survive and become stable again must evolve their goals, aspirations, and the methods through which we achieve them. Instead of seeing a challenge, you have to see an opportunity and proactively make the right game plan. At the center of this entrepreneurial evolution is an incredible opportunity to reevaluate your “why.” Read more here.
Case Study: Oscar Jimenez Relies on ezClocker for Accurate Timesheets
When Oscar Jimenez first came to the United States from Costa Rica in the late 1990s, he did what many new immigrants do: he looked for work. “Construction was available at that time, so I did a lot of side jobs here and there,” he says. He eventually found steady work in a construction crew. But one day, the foreman, realizing he was overstaffed, let him go. The timing couldn’t have been worse: Oscar’s wife was pregnant with their first child. “It was very scary,” he says. “We had some savings, but not enough to last more than three months without employment.”
Oscar knew he had to find work fast. He’d learned a lot about carpentry during his time working construction, so he went to the local grocery store and put up a flyer that read, “Handyman for hire” on the community bulletin board. He cut tear-off strips into it that listed his contact information. Then he waited for his phone to ring. Read more here.
If you missed last month’s link roundup please check it out here.