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Simply put, not every entrepreneurial project is a million-dollar idea.

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Talent and grit are both just as important and necessary for people to succeed.

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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.

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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. As a leader, it's critical to have a positive mindset to effectively work through difficult situations and keep your team on the same page. Below, 12 members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss how to exude more positivity at work and why these practices are especially crucial for those in leadership positions.

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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.

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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. If you're unsure where to look for relief, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council have some strategies that may help. Below, they each share one thing that helps them regain productivity when they're in a slump.

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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. However, for those unfamiliar with the process, it can be difficult to figure out how to monetize your content, especially early on. To help, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss their top tips for monetizing your content.

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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. But how can business leaders predict or discern what their customers will do or think next? Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council experts offer their advice on what entrepreneurs can do to keep up with customer behaviors and opinions and ensure their brands are shifting to meet changing needs.

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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. But there are multiple ways to optimize your website for conversions and usher potential consumers to your sales page. To help you do this, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council provide their top-recommended "tricks of the trade" to boost website conversions below.

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If you're a business owner, investing in financial assets is necessary to put your hard-earned savings to work.

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Now is still a good time to capture the growth potential online business can offer.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council suggest the information you should try to find when researching your business’s competition. Every business faces competition. In order to succeed in the marketplace, companies must do what they can to stand out from each other. An important step in this process is analyzing the competition to figure out what they do well — and what they don’t — so you have a better idea of where your company stands and what you need to do to get ahead. To help get you started, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared a list of helpful pieces of data or information you’ll want to find out when studying your competition and why those things will help you succeed.

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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.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the steps you should take when seeking an investor for your business. When bringing on an investor to your business, you’re doing more than securing financial assistance — in many ways, you’re bringing on a business partner. To protect their investment and ensure they make a quick return, investors will likely want to have a hand in the business and how it runs. In the same way you wouldn’t bring on a co-founder without first making sure they were the right person for the job, you’ll want to vet potential investors prior to any sort of agreement. In order to vet them properly, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members recommend taking these 10 steps before sealing the deal.

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If you put together longer, more effortful articles, your work will, on average, be handsomely rewarded with SEO-boosting links.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council list the factors companies will want to consider if they want to improve their website UX. While your business’s first attempt at creating a website may have focused on necessary product information, your logo and color scheme and basic functionality, it may not have truly considered how your visitors use the site and, therefore, may not have produced the positive results you were hoping for. To get the most out of your website, it’s vital that you take a look at the full user experience first. To help guide you, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer 14 factors all companies should consider when redesigning their websites and why these particular factors can have such an impact on the way your users experience your business.

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Thanks to the growth of digital marketing and e-commerce, it has never been easier to transition into a fulfilling remote career online.

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It can be hard to pinpoint exactly how much of your sales or leads are generated by SEO alone.

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A few simple tricks can help you regain that lost motivation. If lately you’ve been feeling disengaged at work, like you’re lacking motivation to complete daily tasks or like you’re just generally unhappy with how your career is going, you may have fallen into a work rut. While easy to fall into, ruts aren’t always easy to get out of, especially if you don’t have the right mindset or the right strategies in place. To provide some guidance, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer 13 tips for how to effectively pull yourself out of a work rut and get reengaged with your career goals. Try these steps to see where your newfound motivation takes you.

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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. 

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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. But while many companies know that checking in with their teams on a regular basis is a positive thing, some may just be hosting these meetings as a way of going through the motions. In order to get the most out of these meetings, you have to be intentional, which is why 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council each shared one thing leaders can do to make weekly standups more useful and meaningful for them and their team members.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss why open-source software meets small business needs better than tech from major corporations. To be an effective business, it helps to have the right technology at your disposal. Because of their name recognition and broad advertising reach, major tech corporations like Microsoft and Google may be the first thought of businesses big and small looking for the right software to meet their needs. However, they may not actually be the best choice. Especially for small businesses with limited staff and often even more limited budgets, open-source software may be exactly what they need. To explain why, nine Young Entrepreneur Council members list off some of the specific reasons why open-source software may be able to help small businesses in ways major tech companies never can.

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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. 

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explore some possible negatives of shifting your entire business model to the cloud. The pandemic opened up new possibilities for remote work among companies big and small. Some organizations are even interested in remaining remote or utilizing a hybrid work model by implementing a cloud-based system. While this model can have some major advantages, including minimizing costs and increased accessibility, cloud computing can also have major drawbacks. To help you make the decision that’s best for your company, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council explained some disadvantages to consider before going completely cloud-based.

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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.

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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 experts of Young Entrepreneur Council each have their own pieces of game-changing advice they’ve discovered along their journey. Below, nine of them share the best lessons they've learned that they want to pass along to fellow small business owners.

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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. As founders seeking capital quickly learn, finding the right investor is often all about who you know. To that end, nine Young Entrepreneur Council members shared their top tips for building and maintaining relationships with experts in your field. These industry relationships can open countless new doors for you when it comes time to seek an investor for your business.

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We should encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, but not glamorize it to the point that everybody and their grandmother wants to be an entrepreneur.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain how to encourage employees to play an active role in shaping organizational culture. Cultivating an empowering and supportive culture for employees is one of the most important parts of building a team. A company's culture should be created for and by its staff, so involving your team in the development process will help you reap the best results. To help you do this, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared 10 creative ways to encourage employees to foster their own company culture. Here’s why these tactics are so effective, and how you can implement them in your workplace.

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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.

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Not every method is going to work the same for every person. These days it seems like every working professional is trying to hack their productivity. From multitasking to juggling more work adeptly, these productivity hacks claim that they can help individuals do more in a shorter span of time. For many business owners who are strapped for time, these hacks seem like the perfect solution. However, many of them aren't worth the time that someone may dedicate to them. While these hacks work fine in theory, their effectiveness levels vary from individual to individual. Below, 11 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss several popular productivity hacks that they personally find highly overrated.

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Ethical dilemmas are commonplace in society, but when a business experiences one, the impact (and potential fallout) can have a wide reach. In many cases, ethical dilemmas are challenging to work through because the risk and reward aren't as clear-cut as other types of decisions. This complexity becomes even more convoluted with businesses, as other businesses, customers and employees can all be affected. Below, eight leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council examine some of the more common ethical dilemmas business owners may face and offer their advice on how to overcome them.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain how to craft SEO content that will withstand trends. In a world of changing algorithms and content trends, it’s important to prioritize search engine optimization (SEO) to keep up with competitors and get found by your audience. When creating content, you’ll want to appeal to current trends so you’re actually able to reach your target audience. However, it's also important to follow proven best practices that give your content staying power, no matter how many times search algorithms are updated. To help, members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared tips for creating long-lasting, SEO-friendly content. Follow their advice to publish pieces that stand the test of time.

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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. But how does an individual take back their personal time? To help, eleven experts from Young Entrepreneur Council offer their suggestions on how entrepreneurs can reclaim some of their time for much-needed rest and relaxation.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their predictions for upcoming advances in encryption tech. Privacy and security are becoming increasingly important in today’s highly digital business world. With many employees working remotely and technology rapidly advancing, encryption technology will need to advance just as quickly. To that end, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared what they predict will be some of the next big steps in encryption technology in the near future. Keep an eye on these developments to see what kind of effect they’ll have on privacy and security for you and your business.

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Without a marketing funnel, you don't have a blueprint for generating leads.

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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. However, it can sometimes be difficult for a business owner to separate their personal feelings from the criticism of the brand. For some tips on how to deal with this issue, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council look at how businesses can avoid taking customer criticism personally and extract the necessary feedback to grow and improve.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain the first steps a business should take upon discovering a negative review. No one likes to receive bad reviews or negative feedback from customers. Often, business owners may feel they’re personal attacks or a competitor trying to start trouble. Rather than responding with patience and an open mind, some businesses lash out and become defensive. While it may feel justified in the moment, the only thing you're doing is adding fuel to the fire—and potentially making the customer angrier.  If you want to handle a negative review tactfully and efficiently, try one of these strategies recommended by the members of Young Entrepreneur Council.

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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. If deadlines are looming and work is piling up, leaders can take it upon themselves to help their teams get reinspired. However, this is easier said than done, especially without the right techniques. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council examine some techniques they've used to motivate and inspire their teams to reignite their creativity.

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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. With so many options on the market, leaders may not know where to start in their search for a great CRM tool. Below, 15 experts from Young Entrepreneur Council shared their favorite CRM tools and why they’re so effective.

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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. Businesses who choose to rebrand can breathe new life into their enterprise and change how consumers view their products or services. However, rebranding is a risky choice since it could backfire if poorly done. To help, eight experts from Young Entrepreneur Council suggest several critical steps businesses should take to ensure successful rebranding.

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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. In the world of business, this lack of self-confidence could spell disaster. The best way to avoid overthinking is to focus on the problem at hand and recenter yourself, but doing so requires a bit of effort. To help, these 12 experts from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss a few practical ways to recenter yourself and avoid overthinking as an entrepreneur.

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No matter how stressed or busy you get, the right habits can keep you moving forward. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to battle stress, busyness, and likely even exhaustion from time to time. While these episodes might feel discouraging, they’re not permanent, and you’ll be able to push through and find motivation again.  The ability to keep up your energy and mental stamina begins with good, healthy habits. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared habits they adhere to in order to maintain productivity. Try some of their tips to get you through the rough patches in your business.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their favorite resources to help you stay abreast of industry changes. The tech industry is notorious for moving quickly and abruptly. If you want to stay relevant in the field, you’ll have to be able to identify and adapt to changes and new trends.  However, keeping up is a daunting task, even for the most seasoned tech professionals. For newcomers, it’s important to build up a collection of reliable resources to help maintain industry knowledge.  For guidance on where to start, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared their favorite platforms and resources to help you stay up to date with industry changes.

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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.  However, there are also a number of ways companies can protect themselves and their data from such attacks. Below, nine professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss how companies can guard against these attacks and why every business should make their digital security a priority.

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Email marketing and content marketing are inextricably tied.

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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. For guidance on where to begin, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer a few suggestions on how to save money in the early days of your startup and why you should do so to provide better service to your customers and successfully grow your business.

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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. So what are some other ways you can avoid falling into a comparison trap and instead build healthy connections with your peers? Below, 10 professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the tips they’d recommend for avoiding unnecessary comparison with others and successfully connecting with peers.

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Even the best, most informative content won't amount to much unless it's accessible to a broad, diverse audience. 

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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. In your quest to become a better leader, you’re bound to hear about countless fads and trendy tips for “modern” managers. However, there are some pieces of business advice that will never get old. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared a few of the timeless leadership tips that have been important to them throughout their careers and why.

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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. However, how companies balance these responsibilities differs. Some prefer a more brand-centric approach, while others prefer to know what the competition is up to. Below, eight experts from Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in on how they think businesses should approach competition monitoring and how to balance these demands to best benefit the company.

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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. Every small business owner who wants to succeed in managing their organization’s day-to-day operations needs to have a proper grasp of these skills. But which ones are the most vital ones to focus on? Here, nine leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council examine the skills they consider the most important for proper small business management and why they're essential to keep a company running efficiently.

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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? One strategy is to give the potential new employee a trial period during which you are able to evaluate their performance and personality. Below, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips for how to conduct an effective trial period and ensure you’re setting the candidate up for success.

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There are few industries that transform as quickly as digital marketing. What was popular only a few years ago now seems antiquated.

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Young Entrepreneur Council members look ahead at consumer IoT device trends they expect we’ll see more of this year. The internet of things (IoT) has been a booming sector of the tech industry in recent years. As people are now spending more time at home than ever, the need for connected devices has taken on new importance and relevance.  Because of this need, 2021 will likely be the year that consumers and businesses alike upgrade their smart home and office technology. Below, 12 members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared their predictions for which IoT devices will have the greatest impact on the consumer market in the coming months ahead.

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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. With the widespread focus on remote work still necessary, business leaders need to find a way to capitalize on the growing remote workforce. To help, nine professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss practical ways business owners can make the most out of this revolutionary change.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer some effective ways to keep users coming back to your mobile app. Everyone with a smartphone or tablet uses mobile apps, and businesses have increasingly seen the value in creating their own. However, it’s hard to stand out in crowded app stores where many competitors are doing the same thing. Even if you do get people to download your app, the real challenge lies in getting them to come back and continue using it. To help, we asked 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council how they recommend engaging and retaining mobile app users. Here are their suggested strategies and why each is so effective.

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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. Unfortunately, not all business owners see it that way, and eventually those long hours will take their toll on their mental and physical well-being. Here, eight experts from Young Entrepreneur Council look at what entrepreneurs can do to put their own happiness and health above their business' needs.

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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.

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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. However, some organizations have refined their candidate sourcing. They've streamlined the process to ensure that they only get those that are already qualified for the position. In such a case, it's just a matter of choosing the most viable candidates. Narrowing down these candidates is a lot easier with filtering early on in the process. Here, 10 experts from YEC explore their preferred methods for locating the ideal candidate for their businesses and explain why those strategies work so well to net them the best individuals for the job.

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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. 

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A company’s valuation relies on the entire economic value of the whole business unit, taking into account investor agreements on how much the company is worth. Finding the sweet spot of your company’s valuation can make or break someone’s decision to invest in your company entirely.  We asked 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council their top tips for determining a company’s valuation prior to fundraising proceedings. Here, they explain why these tips are key to raising a successful round of capital and the future valuation of your business. 

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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.  To address this problem, we asked eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council for their own creative solutions. Below, they detail the balance between encouraging their team to take time off and leaving the company short-staffed during the holiday season.

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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). Whether it’s through video content or copywriting, blogging can be an essential tool for attracting potential leads and connections to your business. That's why we asked nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council how to take your blog to the next level and the best way to implement those strategies for maximum effect. Here’s what they recommend.

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LONG-FORM ARTICLE EMAILED TO KELSEY You have a great idea for a startup. You know there's a gap in the market and you have the funds to start financing your business. Now all that's left to do is to land your first customer. Making your first sale as a brand-new company isn't always as easy as it sounds, though -- it requires extensive market research and a deep understanding of what messaging and marketing channels will resonate most with them. If you're embarking on the sales journey for the very first time, it helps to know what methods and strategies other entrepreneurs have used to grow their customer base. Below, seven business owners share their best tips for acquiring your startup's first customer.

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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. The solution is to think out of the box when developing your promotional campaigns. These 10 leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council walk us through how they created unique, out-of-the-box promotions that helped their business immeasurably in the early days of development and explain why they worked so well.

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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. However, in many situations, you'll need to have all your wits and focus on you if you're trying to resolve a problem. Developing a method to maintain concentration when you most need it is crucial to the success of your business and yourself as a business owner. To help, we asked 11 members of YEC what they usually do to achieve uninterrupted focus. Below, they share some of their secrets, as well as valuable advice on how other entrepreneurs could incorporate these behaviors into their schedules, helping them achieve better focus.

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For an infographic to be effective, it must adhere to basic principles of logic and design. 

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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. However, sometimes, a businessperson may encounter smart questions that they never prepared to answer. Intelligent questions indicate investors that are on-the-ball, and who could be a priceless addition to your business. Ten members of Young Entrepreneur Council share some of the smartest questions they've gotten from an investor and how they handled them.

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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. To help, we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council for their best advice on how to keep corporate files safe while working from home. Below, 12 of them shared their insights for remote workers and employers.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips for getting things back on track when your business is going through a turbulent period. Every business endures trying times at some point. Your job as a leader is not to prevent every possible issue that might arise, but to properly prepare so you can keep your footing when unexpected challenges inevitably occur. To help you, we asked 15 members of Young Entrepreneur Council how leaders can regain order among their team and operations during a chaotic time. Here’s what they recommend, and why it’s so effective.

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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. This can be easier said than done, so to help, we asked 16 members of Young Entrepreneur Council the following question:

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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. But how do you know when you or someone in your team might need a boost in motivation? What happens when you lose that compass that points to success? Here, 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share some of the clear signs that someone might need a motivation boost and discuss the best methods to deal with this lack of direction in business or personal life.

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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. We asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council why it’s important for small business owners to support one another and how to do it. Here are 10 practical ways they recommend lifting up your fellow entrepreneurs.

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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. Having the wrong individual in your executive core could cause severe damage to workers' morale and productivity. Developing a vetting system that can choose the best individuals for these jobs is, therefore, essential. Here, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council examine the most effective vetting processes they've used in their own businesses to determine whether a potential executive hire is a good fit for their leadership.

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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. In any business place (but especially in a service-centered organization), time is money. You can only be present so often at locations that need you to be there. As the business grows, these locations multiply, while just one of you remains. How does an entrepreneur deal with this? Eight experts from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss how they grew their own service-based companies, offering actionable advice for any entrepreneur who wants to follow the same tactics.

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Where you’ll find the best return on investment depends on the audience you’re looking to advertise to.

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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. So, while typical entrepreneurial resources such as business books or self-development webinars might offer a textbook definition to success, there's a lot they leave unsaid when it comes to the personal aspects of succeeding. Below, 11 experts from Young Entrepreneur Council share some of the things they see in successful professionals that no guide bothers to explain when you're on the road to success.

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These 20 entrepreneurs from YEC discuss their favorite market research tools and why you should be using them. Without a proper view of the market, a business has no chance to resonate with the consumers most likely to buy their product. In the past, the best way of interacting with consumers was to simply put out an ad in the most-seen public medium at the time and hope it would land on fertile ground. Thankfully, the approach has changed in modern days, and now we have a lot more tools to offer us in-depth insights into what our ideal customers like and dislike. Using this as a basis, we can adapt our marketing attempts to appeal to those customers. The question now is, how do we obtain that data? Market research tools go hand-in-hand with e-commerce and internet marketing. Visitors to a website provide the best and most accurate picture of the kind of people the website already attracts. Using this data as a baseline, a business can feed it into an analytics engine and get back valuable information about the kind of customers already coming to its site. Based on those results, the business can then adjust its marketing push to reach out to a broader demographic or drill down into converting more of those visitors to buyers. There are many layers that marketing data reveals that can be priceless to a business looking to raise its conversion rates. Today, a business that doesn't depend on market research to guide its advertising and marketing is at a distinct disadvantage to other companies that do. The companies that make the best use of available tools will be more successful in reaching out to their ideal customers. Here, 20 associates of YEC discuss their favorite market research tools and explain how those solutions can help any business achieve its marketing goals.

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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. If you’re on the fence about hiring a coach, take it from the members of Young Entrepreneur Council: It’s worth the investment. Below, 10 members shared one of the biggest benefits they’ve experienced from hiring a business coach and why they suggest others follow suit.

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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. To help you, we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council how they’ve overcome some of the biggest hurdles of employing AI in their business. Their best responses are below.

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Young Entrepreneur Council members share some upcoming tech trends they believe will have an important impact on business leaders. The world of technology is evolving faster than ever. With so many new tech trends emerging, it can feel impossible to keep up with them all. However, identifying and investing in the right ones can give your business a competitive advantage and set you up for success. That’s why we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council what tech trends more entrepreneurs should prepare for and what concrete actions they can take to move in the right direction. Their best answers are below.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the past year's most pressing technology concerns and how we should address them. The past year has seen unprecedented changes to public health and the global economy. Many facets of daily life and work moved into the digital realm, and the shift highlighted some underlying business technology issues that are getting in the way of productivity, communication and security. As successful business leaders, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council understand how important it is to have functional, up-to-date technology. That's why we asked a panel of them to share what they view as the biggest business tech problem of the past year. Here are the issues they're concerned about and the innovations they believe will help solve them.  

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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. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time and budget to dedicate to this kind of task. Luckily, there are ways to speed up your sorting process while still allowing the most suitable applications to go through to the in-depth perusal stage. Eight contributors to Young Entrepreneur Council examine the techniques they use to sort applications when they have limited time and budget.

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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. To that end, we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council how they recommend capitalizing on those existing strengths and making them even stronger. They shared their best strategies below.

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Reach new audiences and stay on top of your prospecting while working from home. 

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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.  To ensure a lasting good impression, you’ll want to keep the conversation going with investors post-pitch. A panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared effective ways to continue the discussion after your meeting.

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Online reviews, and how you respond to them, can make or break your business.

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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. Regardless of your workload, though, it’s vital to make yourself available to your employees. It not only ensures that everyone is able to carry out their daily tasks efficiently, but it also builds confidence and trust between you and your team members. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council share 10 ways you can make yourself available to your team, no matter how busy you are.

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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. We asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council to share their best strategies for leaders looking to successfully implement wellness programs in their organizations. Below, they share 10 ways you can ensure your company’s initiative goes off without a hitch.

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A successful email marketing campaign depends on a strong subject line and a reputation for non-spammy, value-added content.

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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. While the average business likely doesn't have the need or the resources to publish dozens of daily pieces like BuzzFeed, there's value in striving to become a publishing powerhouse that meets consumers' desire for a steady stream of content. That's why we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council what companies can learn from these media conglomerates that garner tens of millions of unique daily visitors. Here are a few publishing lessons and tips they believe business leaders can benefit from.

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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. To keep up with the demands of the modern marketing industry, professionals should consider adopting and incorporating certain habits into their workflow. We asked 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council what habits they recommend marketers pursue to help them boost their career. Here's what these experienced business leaders had to say.

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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.  So what behaviors are best for encouraging strong work ethic, relationship-building and leadership development? We asked a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members what habits leaders can adopt to set a good example for their team. Read on for their best recommendations.

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Business legal matters can be intimidating, but these tools can help you understand and streamlining the process. Starting a business means dealing with some standard legal matters, like registering your business and complying with tax regulations. This can be overwhelming for new entrepreneurs, especially if they're not familiar with these legal processes. While it's always advisable to consult an experienced business attorney, there are countless resources and online tools available that make it easier to find the information you need. To help you, we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council which tools they recommend to make the legal side of business less intimidating for small business owners. Try one of these suggestions when you're faced with common business legal tasks.  

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Ultimately, Bing’s ranking algorithm is not dissimilar to Google’s.

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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. There are plenty of small habits like these that can help you be more efficient at work, but they're easy to forget when you're caught up in the daily grind. That's why we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council what habits managers should instill in their team to help them become more productive and focused. Read on for their best responses, and why you should encourage these daily habits among your team.

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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. To help you determine if your side hustle is worth pursuing, we asked a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members how an aspiring entrepreneur can test the idea's viability. Ask yourself these 10 questions to find out.

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You don't need to spend a ton of money to build a great business website. A high-quality website can attract customers and give them a positive experience with your company. If you don't have much web design experience, you may be concerned about the cost and time it might take for someone else to build the site for you. Fortunately, there are tons of website building tools that allow you to create your own business website, even if you don't know how to code. Many of these platforms offer plenty of sophisticated features without the hefty price tag, while also being user-friendly. To help you explore your options, we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their favorite low-cost, high-quality website builders. Check out these DIY tools before you outsource the job.

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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. One of the most effective ways to combat stress in the business world is by improving your adaptability, so you’re ready to take on whatever is thrown your way. Below, 16 members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared their best tips for becoming more opportunity-oriented as a leader.

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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. So how do you determine how transparent to be with your employees? Below, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share some questions and considerations for leaders.

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Contribute to relevant Reddit discussions to establish yourself as a thought leader within your niche.

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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. To help you strike the right balance, we asked the members of Young Entrepreneur Council to share the most crucial ingredients needed to build a successful creative team. Their best answers are below.

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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. Rather than panicking during a company crisis, leaders should have a plan for addressing the issue quickly and transparently. To help you create a plan of action, we asked a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members how they recommend moving forward in such instances. Below they shared nine strategic approaches you can take to handle a crisis with competence and calmness.

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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. So how can you effectively build trust among your team during times of uncertainty? We asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council how leaders can earn and keep employees' trust during a pivot or critical point in the company. Their best responses are below.

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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. To help with this important task, we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council how they recommend keeping customer conversations productive and positive. Follow their tips to help you build strong, long-lasting relationships with your buyers.

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Content is still king, so be sure your content provides value and original insights.

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18 leaders from YEC discuss what elements business leaders should keep in mind before selling their company. Selling a business is a significant step and one that entrepreneurs usually spend hours agonizing over. There are just too many uncertainties when it comes to a transaction. Is the estimation of value correct? Are you exiting the market at the right time? How do you ensure that you get the amount that you think the company's worth? Growing a business from humble beginnings to the point where it commands a decent value takes time, effort and a bit of your soul. For many small entrepreneurs, it's like selling a part of themselves. For an entrepreneur to be able to sell their company, they need to sever the emotional bonds they have with its growth and approach the sale without emotion. The best way to do this is to examine the elements that make up the sale critically before even putting the business on the market. But what features are the important ones to consider, in this case? Eighteen business owners from YEC delve into the elements they think entrepreneurs should consider before they decide to list their business for sale, and why those elements are so crucial to the decision.

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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. While data isn’t everything, you’ll need some figures to determine the success of your investment and the next steps to take. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council share 10 ways you can make your customer service ROI figures measurable and impactful.

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Keep your brand identity consistent in the face of aggressive scaling.

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There are no shortcuts to successful SEO.

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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.

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Spending time alone and focusing on the year ahead are among the most effective strategies. The holiday period has a lot of emotional curves that can drain you. Getting back to work after the season might find you feeling listless and unable to function. Some entrepreneurs may take months before they get back into the groove. Sadly, waiting this long is not feasible, and getting back to your best performance needs to happen in a matter of days if you want to make the most of the new year. To help young entrepreneurs deal with coming out of the holiday season, we asked 13 professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council what strategies they employ to recharge and recenter themselves after the stress of the holidays is over.

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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.

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Ultimately, pop-ups are bad from a user experience perspective and an SEO perspective.

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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. For an entrepreneur to maximize their productivity, they need to set strategies in place to help them manage their time effectively. To help, eight contributors to Young Entrepreneur Council share their most effective strategies for putting a clear framework in place to maximize productivity during a work day.

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Today, keyword research is more of an art than a science.

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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. However, with a little bit of know-how, an entrepreneur can implement effective methods to save money, even in the early days of a company's operation. Below, seven professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council describe their proven methods for saving money while trying to get their business off the ground.

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The startup world is highly volatile and investing in precious metals is an excellent risk management tool.

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Consumers want video content that captivates and inspires them.

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Both vendors and content creators have a lot to gain from the distributed networking power of affiliate marketing.

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The answer is a resounding yes.

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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.

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Don't get left behind as we enter the next era of search.