Member Since 2018
IronMonk Solutions
New York City Area
Tech entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience in various markets. Founder of IronMonk Solutions and Little Dragon Media. I am passionate about entrepreneurship, fintech, philanthropy, health, fitness, and new technology.
Let's discuss tips for raising enterprising kids as a mentor, coach or parent.
If you are getting yourself ready for what may be the biggest change in your lifetime, there may be some things you can do before you take the jump.
Simply put, not every entrepreneurial project is a million-dollar idea.
Talent and grit are both just as important and necessary for people to succeed.
If you think it's right for you, here are some of my top tips on how to become a digital nomad and get the best experience out of it.
A negative mindset can be poisonous in the workplace. It can lower morale, decrease productivity and spread to other members of the team, leading to toxic work culture.
Creating a lean startup will improve your chances of survival by allowing you to make a timely pivot when you determine the current course is off track.
Whether your schedule allows for flexible working hours or you hold a 9-to-5 job, you may find that your energy wanes throughout your workday. Whether it's from decision fatigue, stress or just a natural productivity slump, sometimes you just need a boost of energy to keep you going for the rest of the day.
With the internet, social media, streaming services and more at our fingertips, it's easier than ever to start your own side hustle centered on curating your own content. As the demand for content—especially niche content about a specific subject or area of expertise—continues to grow, thought leaders and creators can establish themselves in the online space and even develop a loyal following, leading to potential revenue opportunities through advertising and sponsorship deals.
With technologies, knowledge and events constantly advancing, consumer values and behaviors naturally shift over time as well. In order to keep pace, businesses small and large must evolve alongside their audiences if they want to ensure they don’t become irrelevant in the market.
One of the main purposes of a business website is to convert website traffic into revenue. This means creating calls to action (CTAs), building sales funnels and curating interesting, valuable content for those browsing your website.
If you're a business owner, investing in financial assets is necessary to put your hard-earned savings to work.
Now is still a good time to capture the growth potential online business can offer.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council suggest the information you should try to find when researching your business’s competition.
As with any business idea, to get yourself started you will have to invest time and effort in various aspects of the idea-to-execution process. This is especially true in the gold and precious metals business.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the steps you should take when seeking an investor for your business.
If you put together longer, more effortful articles, your work will, on average, be handsomely rewarded with SEO-boosting links.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council list the factors companies will want to consider if they want to improve their website UX.
Thanks to the growth of digital marketing and e-commerce, it has never been easier to transition into a fulfilling remote career online.
It can be hard to pinpoint exactly how much of your sales or leads are generated by SEO alone.
A few simple tricks can help you regain that lost motivation.
While momentarily popular content can create a buzz for a week or two, only evergreen articles or videos can bring an audience back again and again.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss why open-source software meets small business needs better than tech from major corporations.
Weekly standups and regular reports are great ways for leaders to check in with their teams. These are times to briefly share updates and ask about any concerns or questions the team may have before the day or week begins.
We all know that plagiarizing is wrong, but few know that you can unintentionally plagiarise or republish content, even if it's your own, and get penalized for it.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explore some possible negatives of shifting your entire business model to the cloud.
If you want to create rankable content these days, you need to provide exceptional value for your reader. Finding the right keywords, and using them strategically, is an essential step in today’s search engine optimization (SEO) process.
Good business advice can come from anywhere, at any time in an entrepreneur's journey. Some of those lessons will come directly from mentors and fellow business leaders; other times, they're learned through firsthand experience. No matter the source, some tips can be so impactful that they influence the course of an entrepreneur's business.
The key to success for most startups is having adequate funds for growth. In many cases, this means finding investors and raising capital to get your business off the ground.
We should encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, but not glamorize it to the point that everybody and their grandmother wants to be an entrepreneur.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain how to encourage employees to play an active role in shaping organizational culture.
Google My Business (GMB) is no longer optional — it's an essential part of any business's online presence and often the first place customers look for up-to-date information about your company. In the age of Covid-19, this is more true than ever.
Not every method is going to work the same for every person.
Ethical dilemmas are commonplace in society, but when a business experiences one, the impact (and potential fallout) can have a wide reach.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain how to craft SEO content that will withstand trends.
As entrepreneurs start getting more involved with their businesses, it’s not uncommon that they find there's less time to spend on themselves. Unfortunately, being a successful business owner can often mean spending many hours engrossed in work without taking personal breaks. The result is almost always burnout, which can have negative effects on your health and well-being.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their predictions for upcoming advances in encryption tech.
Without a marketing funnel, you don't have a blueprint for generating leads.
With the advent of social media, companies are now closer than ever to their buyers' feedback. However, these buyers may or may not be charitable with their opinions. Occasionally, a business may encounter a consumer who wasn’t happy with their experience or the product itself.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain the first steps a business should take upon discovering a negative review.
No matter what type of business you're in, your team will undoubtedly encounter problems with creativity and inspiration sooner or later. It’s difficult for any human being to always be “on” creatively, and these uninspired moments can happen during the most inopportune times.
Building positive relationships with your customers is essential to running a successful and sustainable business. That’s why many business owners rely on customer relationship management (CRM) tools to connect with clients and nurture ongoing interactions.
Organizations may carry with them a long history, but sometimes, it may be necessary to revamp the way a brand appears to the public. Successful rebranding keeps the core promise of the business but reinvents how the consumer sees them. While some companies may benefit from that traditional appeal, many others realize that consumers prefer a business that they see as modern and innovative.
Many entrepreneurs will concede that their worst problem is overthinking complex decisions. The issue with overthinking is not only that it stifles creativity and innovation; it also erodes your confidence as an entrepreneur and can make you second-guess yourself.
No matter how stressed or busy you get, the right habits can keep you moving forward.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their favorite resources to help you stay abreast of industry changes.
Sensitive information is stored and accessed digitally by businesses every day. While it's a lot more convenient for companies to have data stored digitally, unfortunately this also means these files are more vulnerable to attacks from hackers. Malicious users can gain access to a company’s data in several ways, including phishing, a method which takes advantage of unsuspecting employees as a gateway.
Email marketing and content marketing are inextricably tied.
When you’re trying to get a business off the ground, you don’t always have a lot of resources at your disposal. In order to gain some momentum, it may then be necessary to “cut a few corners.” However, this doesn’t mean you have to betray your ethics, as there are a few elements of business you can reasonably (and legally) cut or save money on to help give your business the kick-start it needs to get going.
When surrounded by others, it can be difficult not to compare your successes to everyone else’s. Unfortunately, this competition can lead to stress and can easily create situations where you feel insecure about your path in life. But remembering that success looks different for everyone is just one step to maintaining your confidence.
Even the best, most informative content won't amount to much unless it's accessible to a broad, diverse audience.
Being a leader is more than running meetings and managing a team. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master, and there will always be room to grow as a mentor, coach and source of inspiration to your employees.
Building a brand takes a lot of time, effort and resources—but so does monitoring the competition. No business can perform both at the maximum possible effectiveness, and so compromises must be made. Companies must balance their time and other resources to ensure they can achieve both.
Thanks to the explosion of tech, there are many new skills a small business owner must learn in order to be successful in the modern world. However, there are also a whole host of necessary basic skills that stand the test of time.
The goal of any recruitment effort is to find a candidate who would be a good fit for the company. This would mean that the hire would not only be proficient in their role, but would also do well within the specific company culture. But beyond an interview, how can leaders ensure new hires will be the right choice?
There are few industries that transform as quickly as digital marketing. What was popular only a few years ago now seems antiquated.
Young Entrepreneur Council members look ahead at consumer IoT device trends they expect we’ll see more of this year.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer some effective ways to keep users coming back to your mobile app.
Last year's challenges were too many to count, but one of the most ever-present ones was the shift to an online workforce. Remote workers are nothing new—they've been around for at least a decade in some form or another. However, they've been mostly contractors and freelancers, not full-time employees.
Entrepreneurs, especially when first starting out, often fall into the trap of overwork. While any successful business needs a firm hand to guide it, your body and mind have their own needs as well. Taking time off for relaxation and socialization in a non-work environment is critical to maintaining your health and the productivity you need to run a growing company.
Google Search's latest core update is now live, and like clockwork, webmasters and business owners are once again up in arms about their rankings. It seems that with every PageRank overhaul, Google's proprietary algorithm knocks countless small websites off the top-tier search engine results pages.
Businesses are in an unenviable position of having to find the most talented individuals in their field and entice them to work at their organization. In many cases, finding qualified candidates has come down to creating the right ads and vetting candidates properly.
Nothing drives SEO success like providing relevant, precise answers. With a properly formatted FAQ section, you can deliver the informational content your audience needs without triggering any penalties or red flags from Google.
With the holidays approaching quickly, many are ready to set their “out of office” messages and relax and recharge. It’s important for employers to encourage this balance and promote the use of paid time off around the holidays. However, if everyone takes off at the same time, it may leave you with a skeleton crew and piles of work for when employees return, making for a not-so-happy start to the new year.
Blogging is a great way to share information and valuable content with your audience. It also brings a great chance to send potential consumers your way based on your search engine optimization (SEO).
LONG-FORM ARTICLE EMAILED TO KELSEY
Trying to get people interested in your startup may seem like fighting a losing battle. The early stages of a startup have several challenges to getting customers involved in the business. Advertising to a large market can be expensive, and you have to figure out if your strategy will even work with your core audience. Standard marketing campaigns can be useful, but audience responses can be lackluster for something they've seen dozens of businesses try before.
Entrepreneurs can be easily distracted. Whether it's new ideas popping into their heads or the demands of their businesses, distractions abound and can easily steal away your focus.
For an infographic to be effective, it must adhere to basic principles of logic and design.
When you set out to pitch your idea to an investor, you usually go through the most common questions that they're likely to ask. Discerning investors are careful about where they put their money, but a well-prepared entrepreneur can quickly answer a surprising amount of what they ask.
With most people working from home and away from their office’s internal server, data security is a pressing concern for employers. Companies and employees must make security a priority and understand how to keep their data safe when they’re working outside of their business’s secure network.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips for getting things back on track when your business is going through a turbulent period.
It's often said you only get one chance to make a first impression, and that holds true for your company website. The visual appearance and written copy on your sign-up and landing pages must be compelling enough to grab a visitor's attention and convince them to take the next step in their relationship with your brand.
Staying motivated as an entrepreneur takes a lot of effort. In several situations, business owners find themselves struggling to point themselves in the right direction, whether in their profession or in their personal life. In both of these cases, your inspiration dictates the drive you have to accomplish your goals.
As a business owner, it’s important to know who your competitors are so you can keep up with the market. However, it’s just as beneficial to show your support for other small businesses, regardless of their industry. This is especially true in today’s economic climate, when many entrepreneurs are struggling to stay afloat.
When a business hires an executive, it expects to get someone who can perform in managerial positions. Because leaders are such a vital part of a company's operations, choosing the right candidate for an executive-level position is even more crucial than in other departments.
Growing a business seems like a simple prospect, and it can be deceptively simple on paper. However, once you start to delve into the heart of the matter, you realize that a service-based business requires some deep thought before you can scale it.
Where you’ll find the best return on investment depends on the audience you’re looking to advertise to.
Everyone wants to be successful, but not many people understand what success brings with it or what it means exactly. Success is a personal thing -- where one person may see achievement, another may see settling for what they can get. Success is a goal, and there are many roads to get there, but not everyone's version of success is the same.
These 20 entrepreneurs from YEC discuss their favorite market research tools and why you should be using them.
Some entrepreneurs who want to scale their companies and fast-track their growth hire a business coach to help them get there. These professionals often have years of business experience themselves and can help you take your business to new heights with their insights.
Artificial intelligence is an extremely valuable tool that can save your business time, energy and money. However, implementing AI can be a big challenge for any company. From choosing the right AI-powered tool to setting up the right data inputs and workflows, the process of adopting AI can be stressful and cumbersome, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the inner workings of this technology.
Young Entrepreneur Council members share some upcoming tech trends they believe will have an important impact on business leaders.
Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the past year's most pressing technology concerns and how we should address them.
When a business advertises for a position, you can be assured that there will be a flood of applications coming in. If you're a young entrepreneur with a small company, you'll be doing most of the application sorting yourself. The first step is determining which applications suit the character, demeanor, and qualifications you're looking for.
Whether you’re job hunting or starting a business, it’s important to play to your strengths throughout your career. By zeroing in your natural interests and aptitudes, you’re more likely to find the right opportunities and achieve success. That’s why it’s a good idea to continually refine and improve upon your core strengths.
Reach new audiences and stay on top of your prospecting while working from home.
Congratulations! You’ve just had a great pitch meeting with an investor. But holding an investor’s attention during your pitch is only the beginning of securing a deal. The real challenge lies in staying top-of-mind afterward.
Online reviews, and how you respond to them, can make or break your business.
As a manager, you likely have a long list of responsibilities and many demands on your time. This may leave you with little time for unplanned meetings or additional questions from your team members, let alone time to complete your own work.
Businesses are increasingly focusing on wellness in the workplace to increase employee productivity and overall satisfaction. Choosing a wellness program for your company is an important first step, but you’ll also need to ensure that it runs smoothly and that your employees get the most out of it.
A successful email marketing campaign depends on a strong subject line and a reputation for non-spammy, value-added content.
In today's world, every business knows that consistent, quality content is the key to engaging consumers. Publishing giants like BuzzFeed have mastered the art of drawing people in with engaging headlines and interactive features, and encouraging repeat visitors with well-researched, valuable articles.
A marketer's job is a challenging one in today's always-on, digital-first world. Not only do they have to come up with an appealing brand image and message, but they have to figure out how to adapt marketing collateral to countless different channels and learn best practices for each one.
Great leaders don’t simply tell their team what to do; they lead by example and “walk the talk.” Staff members are much more willing to listen to instructions and respect leadership if their boss is doing the same.
Business legal matters can be intimidating, but these tools can help you understand and streamlining the process.
Ultimately, Bing’s ranking algorithm is not dissimilar to Google’s.
A strong daily routine can make all the difference in a team's productivity. Things like creating a to-do list at the start of each day and blocking off time for "deep thinking" work often help people get organized and feel more focused throughout the workday.
Having a side hustle is a great way to develop a creative outlet outside of your regular career. However, these projects can consume a lot of your time, energy and money. That's why it's important to consider the required commitment and effort – and the potential return – before going all-in on your idea.
You don't need to spend a ton of money to build a great business website.
Stress is common when you’re in a management position. With countless tasks to complete, employees to manage and business operations to oversee, it’s no surprise many leaders end up feeling overwhelmed at one point or another.
Transparency in business has become a practice that’s favored by not only consumers, but by employees as well. When leaders are transparent with their team about the business, it builds a sense of trust and equips employees to make informed decisions. However, sharing more information than necessary can be distracting at best, and detrimental to company culture at worst.
Contribute to relevant Reddit discussions to establish yourself as a thought leader within your niche.
A strong creative team can help your business develop great ideas and soar to new heights. However, simply having the most talented or innovative people on board isn’t enough. They must not only be willing to make unconventional moves, but they must also place trust in their other team members.
Leading a business can be like a roller coaster: There will always be ups and downs. No matter how smoothly things run most of the time, the occasional problem is inevitable, and when one pops up, your team will turn to you for guidance.
Trust is essential in a team, especially in times of change. Leaders need to believe employees will carry out their tasks properly, and employees need to believe heir leaders are taking them in the right direction. But trust between people isn’t a given -- it has to be earned.
Your relationship with your customers shouldn’t exclusively be transactional. To build a bond that leads to customer loyalty, you have to thoughtfully connect with them and continue the conversation with them.
Content is still king, so be sure your content provides value and original insights.
18 leaders from YEC discuss what elements business leaders should keep in mind before selling their company.
Customer service is vital to any organization, and investing in it can make all the difference in attracting and retaining clients. But the true return on those customer service investments -- whether you're hiring and training staff or increasing your support channels -- can be hard to quantify with a single number.
Keep your brand identity consistent in the face of aggressive scaling.
There are no shortcuts to successful SEO.
Accessing capital is one of the biggest challenges many new entrepreneurs face. From loans to investments, securing the proper financing is a long and taxing process, but it can be overcome. Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explained how they worked through their funding challenges.
Spending time alone and focusing on the year ahead are among the most effective strategies.
Today’s consumers demand transparency and honesty in brands they buy from. They expect their voices to be heard, which means attracting and retaining customers is all about listening to your audience. It’s important to consider the interests of your consumers and, more importantly, implement their feedback into your products or business model. To help you do this, we asked a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members for their best advice on how to truly listen to your customers. Their best responses are below.
Ultimately, pop-ups are bad from a user experience perspective and an SEO perspective.
Time management is one of the most challenging parts of being an entrepreneur. When you're a business owner, you don't have the luxury of getting all your tasks laid out for you. You have to formulate those tasks, assign importance to them, and schedule them so that they can get done in a reasonable window, all while finding ways to keep the entire business running and growing.
Today, keyword research is more of an art than a science.
Businesses run on money the way engines run on fuel. Knowing how to effectively save money, especially when a business first gets started, is a great way to build capital to help the company grow. Funding is usually one of the most significant hurdles for a new business to overcome. Unless the company already has an angel investor, this stumbling block might be the one that dooms the enterprise in the long run.
The startup world is highly volatile and investing in precious metals is an excellent risk management tool.
Consumers want video content that captivates and inspires them.
Both vendors and content creators have a lot to gain from the distributed networking power of affiliate marketing.
The answer is a resounding yes.
Exploring and adapting to the latest trends and using them to your advantage can help separate your brand and your message from the noise of your competition.
Don't get left behind as we enter the next era of search.
IronMonk Solutions is a digital marketing agency with a special focus on SEO, Paid Ads, UX and CRO. We have helped hundreds of clients, from small startups to large scale organizations, improve their digital ROI through cutting edge UX and marketing campaign management.
Internet