John Rampton

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Here are three soft skills you should always look for when recruiting a new employee and some questions you can ask to determine whether they have them.

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While a business’s goal is always to please its customers, there will likely be times when a customer will end up dissatisfied with the end result of a particular project or product. The way a business responds to this situation can often determine the future of that client relationship and whether or not they will continue to work with that business moving forward. In order to ensure your client’s happiness with the final result—and save the relationship—consider the following advice. Here, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council each recommend one step you should take to help resolve the issue when a client isn’t happy with you or your team’s work and discuss the impact it will have for the future.

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As a leader, it’s your job to ensure that no matter where your team members are, they’re communicating effectively.

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While the cloud is perhaps most notably recognized as a convenient way to store and access data, there are many other benefits of this technology users may not automatically think of—namely when it comes to business growth. From streamlining project management to reducing retraining time, there are a multitude of ways business owners can leverage cloud technology to help them scale. Here, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council share nine of the most effective ways to use cloud technology to grow your business as well as other benefits you may gain by doing so.

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Podcasting has become an increasingly popular medium for businesses to build their brand and connect with audiences. However, launching a successful podcast requires more than just recording and uploading episodes. Many podcasts fail to gain traction and reach their target audience, leaving business owners wondering what went wrong. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members share essential tips for podcasting successfully. By following these tips, businesses can maximize the potential of podcasting as a marketing tool to achieve their goals.

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You want your team members to work in high gear no matter where their chairs are located. To make that happen, here are three workplace tools I recommend implementing and how to choose the right ones for your business.

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No one enjoys having difficult conversations—especially with their boss. However, whether it’s about a problem with a co-worker, a mistake that’s been made or a disagreement on a project, difficult conversations are often necessary in the workplace and can help you and anyone else involved move forward and grow as a professional. But, that doesn’t make approaching your boss with a problem any easier. To help you learn how to do it right, eight leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council offer their advice. Here, they share tips from a leadership perspective for how to approach your manager or boss with a difficult conversation in a way that reduces your anxiety and allows you to succeed.

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Due to the monotony of everyday life and the frequent stress that comes with living in the modern world, many people often have trouble getting into a creative headspace or just thinking creatively in general. This comes as bad news for those in the business realm, as the ability to think creatively is essential to the problem solving and innovating necessary to succeed as an entrepreneur. So what can be done to improve your ability to think creatively? The members of Young Entrepreneur Council have a few recommendations. Below, they share eight actions someone can take now to start improving their creative thinking skills over time and explain why taking these steps is so effective at achieving the intended results.

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Certain business trends may be popular among the entrepreneurial crowd, but that doesn't mean they're all worth pursuing. As the business world continues to evolve, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest trends. It can be even harder to identify which of those fads will help your business and which just aren't worth your time. To that end, a group of successful entrepreneurs shared their thoughts on seven trends they believe business owners should steer clear of in the coming year. These insights can help small-business owners make informed decisions and set themselves up for success while avoiding common pitfalls that could stem from following these trends.

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In the new year, consider these happiness-inducing leadership strategies to help change the way your organization feels about work.

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Establishing goals for team collaboration and engagement requires a little more thought and planning than, say, setting a target for customer churn.

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Social media isn’t the only place to find the latest trends. When taking a look at the business world as a whole over the last 12-month period, you’ll find a number of trends and initiatives that took hold of a large number of organizations. Whether it’s increased flexibility or organic lead capture, these trends grew popular for a reason—but will their popularity carry over into the new year? To share their predictions, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council each discuss one business trend they saw really take hold in 2022 and why they think we will—or will not—continue to see this trend in 2023.

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Leaders need to invest the time, energy and resources necessary to build trust among the members of their team. That support can foster teams that produce results for brands time and time again.

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Prospective employees aren’t just looking for the biggest salary and most generous benefits package.

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While there are several ways for managers to perfect their skills, employee feedback reveals how their behaviors influence the team.

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Releasing a mobile app is often an exciting next step in many entrepreneurs’ journeys after their websites are up and running successfully. However, in the excitement of building and launching their mobile app, it can be easy for an entrepreneur to forget one of the most fundamental aspects of creating this technology: protecting it. With cases of cybercrimes only predicted to rise in the coming years, not making cybersecurity a priority puts your app—and those who use it—at risk for data theft, lost money, fraud and much more. Here, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the precautions companies can take to safeguard their mobile apps against cyberattacks and cybercrimes. Taking even just one of the following precautions can put you and your business in a much more secure place.

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When a young professional is looking to find a mentor in their industry, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Depending on where they are in their career journey, they may or may not already have access to a network of established professionals who have the desire and time to take on a mentor-mentee relationship.  Luckily, you don’t have to already know someone in order to start working on the mentorship process. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council each share one step a young professional can take today to get started as well as explain how these steps will help anyone find the perfect mentor.

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Those hazy, lazy, crazy days of summer invariably alter the normal rhythm at work.

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Summer always has a more leisurely rhythm that permeates personal and professional lives. Rather than fighting the slowdown, look to capitalize on it.

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Letting go of traditional leadership ideas is often the most difficult hurdle to overcome, but it’s vital with hybrid teams.

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As a leader, it’s natural to want to reward high-performing employees when they’re already doing so well and they’re likely having the biggest impact on the company’s bottom line. However, focus and support should also be given to average or low-performing employees to benefit not only the company, but also the employees as they continue on their career journeys.  Sometimes, a little acknowledgment and a listening ear is all an average or low-performing employee needs to perform at their best. Here, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the things a leader can do to help support and manage an average or low-performing employee and why these things are important.

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Marketing is both an art and a science. It requires acute attention to detail, in-depth analysis, an understanding of mass psychology and a level of creative thinking that not many people possess. There are, however, several things that the best marketers all have in common. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss these things and explain how they make marketers so good at their jobs.

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As employees find professional reward in far more things than their paychecks, you have an opportunity to get creative.

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While trends don’t always stick around, some of what’s occurring in the labor force show signs of permanently transforming the employer-employee relationship.

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Ensuring efficient business operations is a key component of leadership.

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By recognizing the signals that your business needs additional staff, you can help prevent or mitigate the loss of talent, quality and revenue.

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Implementing time management techniques can help you catch your breath and make challenging days seem less impossible to deal with.

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While your role brings with it prestige and the opportunity to make an impact, it’s not without its headaches. 

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Launching a new product on social media can be a great way to go to market, but that’s only if you design an effective social media campaign. From creating content to scheduling, building awareness of your new product on social media requires a lot of careful planning and consideration. To help get you started, 14 members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer their best tips for successfully launching a new product on social media.

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Get a handle on the minutes that make up your day and you’ll improve how you manage your time.

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When your business starts to grow, it's an exciting indicator of success. However, it can also be an indicator that organizational changes need to take place. If your business has outgrown its current location, it's time to start considering moving into a new office space. There's a lot to think about before making such a significant change, though. To help, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) members answered the following question:

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Holiday shopping can be a stressful time for many people. Customers are worried about items being in stock, finding the perfect gift and avoiding long lines when searching for help or checking out. Given the nature of the holidays, customers may be more anxious or demanding than usual. It’s important for leaders, therefore, to properly train employees to handle the expectations of holiday shoppers to keep them happy. To help, eight Young Entrepreneur Council members shared their best tips for customer service professionals working this holiday season.

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A company that works with its employees’ newfound values instead of against them may be able to retain its top talent. 

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Regardless of the current location of your team members, it’s still important that leaders establish some productivity routines for their employees.

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No employee is immune to burnout—not even your "A" players—and especially not during trying times. As an employer, you may sometimes notice that the employees who are always on their game have been reaching a point of exhaustion. Some employees may even seem bored with their work and like they are craving something new. If your top performers need a little extra motivation, try these tips recommended by the members of Young Entrepreneur Council. Below, nine of them give their best advice to employers who want to reverse team burnout and get their staff back on track.

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Keeping up with the trends is a job in and of itself, let alone figuring out ways to use the trends in marketing.

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The happiness of its employees can make all the difference in a company's success. The success of a business largely relies on growing sales, stellar customer service and, just as importantly, the positive attitude of its employees. Happy employees are likely more engaged, productive and willing to learn than unhappy ones. This means that team motivation and productivity can skyrocket under the right conditions, but how do you get your employees to that level? As a leader, it's important for you to promote the mental well-being of your employees if you want to see business thrive. Below, 14 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share the ways in which employers can help support the positive mental health of their employees and why it's so important to do.

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It’s important to have a few productivity strategies for your team to utilize. This will give them a chance to have more freedom, while also taking on more responsibility to still complete their projects on time.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss characteristics all top tech companies share and why. All companies start off in the same place—no clients, no reputation, no proven track record of success—but when you think of any top tech company, there’s usually a reason why they made it there.  As technology continues to progress and the need for technology companies grows, more and more business leaders are going to be looking for ways to emulate that success. To take some of the guesswork out of the equation, these 12 leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the traits all successful tech companies seem to have in common and why. Consider these traits when determining the right path to success for your business.

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It’s so important to build a brand strategy based on the specific needs of your target audience, and then craft that strategy to navigate the challenges in your niche.

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Workplaces can often experience collective burnout, and to no surprise, this also includes leaders. In order to keep everyone productive, leaders must be able to implement policies that allow for successful work-life balance and workplace productivity.

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Engaging with your target audience and loyal customers yields a hefty amount of consumer trust. The more you utilize the social media engagement tools available to your business, the better your business will do.

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As it has with many other parts of running a business, technology has granted business leaders the tools that can make recruiting a much simpler process. Today’s tech can help gather and sort applications, offer communication tools to ensure recruiters have a safe and secure location to speak with their potential hires and many of them even provide contract services that can help speed up onboarding. But with so many options to pick from, these recruitment tools aren't necessarily known to everyone. Below, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the most valuable software and solutions they use in their recruitment processes and why these tools help get the right talent into their businesses.

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Make the decision to make fewer decisions. Making decisions is a necessary and frequent part of any businessperson's day. The decisions they make can have a significant and fundamental impact on their company’s future. However, making those decisions can have a profound effect on the entrepreneur as well. Having to consider each facet of a problem to come up with a viable solution takes significant mental energy — especially when it happens multiple times a day. To help ease some of that decision fatigue, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council examine the following question:

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There are several strategies leaders can utilize to improve their company culture. Some techniques are more complex than others. But, the majority of these strategies are actually very simple when leaders have a people-first mentality.

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You need to make sure the company is in the right shape and that future buyers will respect your legacy.

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It takes a lot of mental fortitude for an employee to approach their employer for a raise. There's no playbook for managers and business owners to know how to gauge whether an employee deserves a raise or not. The factors as to whether an employee deserves to earn more can be approached in several different ways. From the addition of value to the support they provide, each plays an integral part in determining whether a raise is warranted. That’s why we asked 10 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:

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