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Hint: organization and time management go a long way. Any leader, entrepreneur, business owner, or working professional will be the first to tell you that there aren't enough hours in a day to get everything done. No matter what industry you work in, the feeling of being overwhelmed with various tasks that all seem to have the same level of priority is a common one. However, if you don't get a handle on things, you can find yourself burning out fast. Organization and time management are a couple of key factors to focus on when you want to maximize your efficiency at work. But what are the best ways to get organized and manage your time? Here, 13 professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in with their best advice. Whether you’re just getting started or are already running your own business, here’s how to get more work done in less time.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council list the tech skills company founders need to get their businesses off the ground. Even if you’re not opening up a technology-based business, it’s hard to open any kind of business today without at least a few basic tech skills under your belt. And while hiring help for more difficult technical projects down the line is both acceptable and recommended, when you’re just starting out, odds are you’ll need to tackle technology on your own first. However, you don’t need to be a tech genius to get started. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council list a few of the basic skills all company founders should have to start a business and explain how these skills will get you up and running successfully.

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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’re stuck in the past, your business is going to suffer. 

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A business website is an important and essential way to establish your company’s digital presence, share your message and display your brand. However, designing a website from scratch requires a lot of planning and consideration. As successful business leaders, many members of Young Entrepreneur Council have experience creating effective business websites from the bottom up. Below, 10 of them shared what they believe should be the first considerations you should make when designing a new website for your business.

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With 2021 now at a close, it's the perfect time of year to start looking forward to the year ahead and setting goals for success. As you set your personal resolutions, don't forget to focus on your career aspirations for the coming year too. From earning a promotion to taking the lead on a project or upping your skills in a specific area, there are plenty of career goals you can set for 2022. Below, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their top tips for anyone who wants to crush their career goals in the year ahead.

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There are changes you can make to your company’s website today to improve its visibility and start outranking your competitors.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share the top tools that will help any company improve their remote work process. Whether it was communicating important information or collaborating on multiple projects at once, many companies faced new challenges as they made the switch to a remote or hybrid work environment. Luckily, there exist a multitude of tools and tech solutions that can help struggling companies improve the way they work remotely. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council suggest 12 of the solutions they use for their own companies and explain why they recommend you implement them to make your remote work processes a little more efficient.

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Whether you're an entry-level employee, a CEO or anything in between, if you're passionate about your career, sometimes downtime can get pushed to the side. Instead of burning yourself out on work, however, there are ways you can use your downtime wisely. Some of the most successful professionals in the world use their downtime to practice self-care, focus on ways to build creativity and learn new things. Here, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council share the things they believe every professional should be doing in their downtime if they want to truly succeed in their career and improve their life.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council recommend taking these steps before using content made by your audience. One of the easiest ways for any business to produce content is to make smart use of the content their audience members have already made. This user-generated content (UGC) not only is a great way to get your audience engaged with your brand, but it’s also an effective strategy to find free content for your business’s social channels. According to a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members, however, there are a few things you’ll want to be sure you do before you use any UGC. Below, they’ve listed 13 of the steps you’ll want to take and explain why taking them is so important.

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Make sure your technical metrics are up to snuff. If they aren't, you might be bleeding traffic.

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In business, conflict is bound to be a daily occurrence. While no leader desires conflict, as entrepreneurs they often experience it on a day-to-day basis. Differing opinions, struggles with working relationships and team management issues can all lay the foundation for potential conflict, and not all leaders are equipped to handle it. In order to get more comfortable with conflict then, leaders must be proactive and develop a plan to overcome their fears. To help, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared 14 ways leaders can get more comfortable with conflict and be more successful as a result.

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Confidence is an important feeling to have if you want to succeed at work, in relationships and in everyday life. It's also a trait that seems much easier to possess than it actually is—Sometimes it takes a step outside your head and comfort zone to achieve it. Whether you're a fairly confident person looking to step into the best version of yourself or someone who has very low self-confidence, there are little ways you can work on building it up every day. Below, 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips for how to increase your confidence in the workplace.

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In an era when cybercrime and data breaches are more prevalent than ever, businesses can't afford to ignore data security. From phishing and ransomware attacks to careless password practices, there are countless ways for thieves to penetrate your company's digital walls and access sensitive information. That's why all businesses should implement any strategies they can to improve the security of their company data. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members offered some quick and easy solutions that will help you shore up your defenses. Follow their tips to make your business more secure.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share the innovative apps and software that help them better manage their work. When it comes to getting work done, a myriad of tools are out there, all designed to save you time and effort. But with so many options on the market to choose from, with many having the same features and benefits, you may feel overwhelmed when trying to select the right one for you and your team. To help narrow down your choices, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members each shared their favorite software or app for managing their daily, weekly or monthly tasks and why they simply can’t live without them.

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Long-term brand recognition and customer loyalty are common goals of almost every business. To create this kind of longevity, business owners will need to create brands that people like, remember and trust. As successful business leaders themselves, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council understand what it takes to build a company that withstands the test of time. Below, they shared eight key steps you can take to cultivate a truly timeless brand.

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You don’t have to wait to start your journey toward success. People often say that the key to success is to become a lifelong learner. This is because as you continue to learn new things throughout your life and career, you’re better able to adapt, innovate and grow — all of which are necessary components to a successful business. And continued curiosity around your passions can make for a fulfilling life. To get started, follow these steps recommended by the members of Young Entrepreneur Council and begin your journey to becoming a lifelong learner today.

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When an entrepreneur starts a new business, it's never with the intention to give up on it one day. The sad truth, however, is that running a business unfortunately doesn't always equate to success, and a particular business venture may not work out how you’d planned. After trying so hard to make your business successful, it can be difficult to think about moving on to something else or to know exactly when to throw in the towel. To provide some guidance, eight members from Young Entrepreneur Council shared a few of the signs that will show you when your business may no longer be worth your time.

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The customer lifecycle lasts years, not days.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss why doing these things could do more harm than good for your business. Even the best businesses are bound to get a bad review at some point, and yet, for new business owners, this can be a difficult reality to face. No business leader wants to hear that a customer had a bad experience with a product or service, especially after all the time and effort put into getting it just right. This situation can lead entrepreneurs to become frustrated or dejected, and they may end up responding in a way that they come to regret later on. If you want to resolve the situation, retain your customer and boost your company’s reputation, there are certain things you should never do in response to a bad review. Below, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council list several of these “don’ts” and explain what you should be doing instead.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council list some common missteps companies make with social media engagement. Achieving high social media engagement rates is a valuable goal for any modern company. Likes, shares and comments all give companies a quantitative way to measure how positively they’re perceived by their audience members. But in striving for these numbers, companies can overlook certain mistakes that, when resolved, would actually end up helping their efforts in the long run. Below, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members list some of the most common mistakes companies make when it comes to engaging their audience on social media and explain what they should be doing instead.

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Influencer marketing has become one of the primary ways brands advertise their products since the rise of social media. However, when celebrities and influencers become embroiled in scandal, the brands they represent end up dropping them. In addition, the pandemic has changed the way customers have been interacting with brands, forcing many to rethink their strategies. It's apparent that influencer marketing is changing, but what direction it's headed in isn't exactly clear. To share their insights, members of Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in with their predictions for the future of influencer marketing in the coming months and years.

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At a time when consumers crave authenticity in messaging, personal branding strategies have never been more important. Celebrities and big brands tend to make headlines often in this regard, offering the rest of the world valuable opportunities to learn and grow from their mistakes or successes.  Below, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council each shared a brand or personality they believe has a top-notch branding strategy. Here's what the panel thinks others can learn from these influential individuals and organizations.

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The central objective is to find eager talent who are happy to grow with your company.

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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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Whether working from home or in an office setting, it can be easy to get distracted from work. Grabbing coffee with a co-worker or taking a quick break to surf the web can quickly turn into time lost from the task at hand. Even too much work can lead to overwhelm, frustration and, ultimately, procrastination. While managers want employees to take breaks when needed and have some freedom with their workloads, it can be challenging to balance all this while also fostering productivity. For leaders looking to help their teams achieve that balance, try encouraging your employees to take up these daily habits, suggested by a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members. Below, these experts list the habits they’ve instilled in their own teams to help them gain more focus and boost productivity.

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It’s the Wild West right now when it comes to startup projects in the NFT space.

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Transparency is often boasted as a defining quality of successful business leaders. Oftentimes it helps team members feel valued and comfortable enough to share their own opinions. But can too much transparency have negative effects on company operations and employee morale? Keeping information from being distracting or detrimental to the workplace requires evaluating the situation to determine when you should be a transparent leader. Here, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council share when it's time to draw a line on being open with positive and negative news.

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Chatbots can enhance the customer experience on your company website if they’re designed well. But all too often, these little bots have features that disrupt the user experience, resulting in bounces and a feeling of poor customer service. Avoid creating annoying and frustrating customer experiences with chatbots by following the insights from these 10 YEC professionals. They’ve pinpointed the most irritating features and designs of chatbots and offered ways to instead maximize their usefulness.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tech hacks for getting time back in your workweek. With today’s abundance of technology, working professionals have more options than ever for streamlining their days. There are countless tools and devices that increase efficiency in the workplace, and it's often easy to start implementing them in your daily routine. It's just a matter of knowing how to leverage those tools for maximum productivity. Below, 10 members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared some simple, yet effective ways to use tech to shave hours off your workweek. Here’s why these hacks are so helpful and how you can implement them for yourself.

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Gauging how happy and fulfilled employees are in their jobs is important for small business leaders to do in order to determine the health and strength of their businesses. The more satisfied employees are, the more likely they'll stay with the company long term and the higher their productivity will be. But how can you know if your staff is enjoying their work, especially when they may not feel comfortable expressing their true feelings with their superiors? To help, 10 small business experts from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) answered the following question:

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There are some business leaders who instantly light up a room when they walk into it. They have this charisma that draws people to them and makes others want to listen. However, if you don't feel like you have this type of personality naturally, you don't have to give up on being able to make a positive impact on others. With a few simple techniques, you can be a business leader whom others look up to and wish to be.  Below, 13 professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council offer their best advice for how to be a positive influence even when charisma doesn't come naturally to you.

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Customers convert when they trust a product, believe in the message and understand its value.

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To be great leaders, they’ll first need a great leader. Companies thrive when their employees are able to take ownership of their actions and understand that they have a direct impact on the business’s success. However, some employees may not have the skills they need to become leaders, while others may lack the confidence or the feeling of support from their employers. Empowering your employees to become leaders starts with you. To offer some guidance, 12 members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer advice on how you can cultivate a culture of leadership in your workplace and empower your employees to go above and beyond for themselves and the company.

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Everyone experiences changes in their lives, whether big or small, and the stress that comes along with these changes can either hurt you or allow you to grow stronger. One of the best ways to manage this stress is to learn to be more adaptable. When you're able to adapt, you're less likely to feel stressed by minor or major changes that happen in life. Here, 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council explain how you can adapt to whatever comes your way so you can fight off the stress of new circumstances.

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Most entrepreneurs set daily goals for themselves in order to move their businesses forward. Yet setting those goals and meeting them are two completely different things. Loss of motivation, fatigue, listlessness and a general lack of energy are common barriers to accomplishing goals, but they are also challenging to overcome without the right strategies. Pushing past fatigue and lack of motivation takes a unique investment in yourself in order to see your tasks through to the end. To offer some guidance, nine associates of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss their strategies for accomplishing their daily tasks even when they don’t feel motivated to do so.

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Unlike before, today's crypto market is being propelled by institutional adoption and big money entering the field rather than retail investors piling in out of FOMO. 

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council share some important insights every entry-level tech candidate should know before joining the field. You’ve completed your education and training, you’ve done research on the job market and you’re ready to start applying for positions in the tech industry. But before you do, it's important to know how the industry operates. Like every industry, the technology sector is unique, but it's also evolving and advancing quickly, which means hopeful candidates will constantly need to evolve their skills in tandem. Keeping these facts in mind will allow you to not only find the best-fit position for you, but also map out how your career may look in the future. Below, 13 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share a few other insights job candidates will need to keep in mind if they want to enter and succeed in the tech space.

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Disagreements will happen from time to time, regardless of how well a team works together. However, conflicts shouldn’t result in destroyed relationships or grudges. It’s important for professionals to know how to prevent a situation from escalating and get their point across without becoming rude or arrogant in their words and actions. While resolving disagreements on a positive note can take a bit more work, the end result is a happier relationship and overall workplace. Below, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council examine the best strategies for dealing with disagreements in the office and how these methods can help the conversation move forward.

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One of the biggest influences on a business and its employees is a positive attitude. Leaders who have a positive mindset and are pleasant to be around get the most out of their peers and employees. A happy attitude is infectious, and when workers are in a good mood, they yield good results. But if you aren’t where you want to be in your career or you’re unhappy at work, getting to that frame of mind consistently can be difficult. Below, 14 members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss the ways professionals can keep a positive attitude and take charge of their own happiness at work—even if they're not in love with their job.

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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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When it comes to creating a valuable email newsletter for your customers, you need to consider the value of the content within it. For the newsletter to create real impact, it should include a wide range of topics and content types, as some readers will respond to certain types of content differently than others. Here, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the components every newsletter should include in order to pique and maintain reader interest. Ensure these components make it into your newsletter design plan to help you build a list with impact.

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If you run a small business, there are financial precautions you can take to safeguard your livelihood from an economic downturn. As we've seen over the past year, the market can turn on its head virtually overnight.

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Building a brand is an essential part of starting a business. The brand should accurately reflect what the company is, what it offers, its values and more. Along with a brand, however, comes the story that lets consumers understand the “why” behind your company. To help you develop that story, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members shared the most important components of a captivating brand story and how to leverage them. Follow their tips to craft a story that will engage your audience and build a loyal following.

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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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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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Many entrepreneurs learn early in their careers that they are never going to be the best at everything. When it comes to running a business, most entrepreneurs do some things really well but can be terrible at something else. However, strengths and weaknesses are all part of the human condition, and even the most seasoned business owner is not without weakness. However, you can always be more intentional with how you approach your weaknesses. With the right plan, entrepreneurs can shed some light on their weaknesses and work to improve them. To offer a few strategies, eight leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of their tips for turning weaknesses into strengths and how that can positively affect your business.

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Whether you’re a business leader or just someone trying to improve their life, surrounding yourself with positive people can be an important part of personal development. Aside from offering support when you most need it, positive people can also challenge you to grow and evolve as an individual, all while giving you the confidence you need to take action. But how do you find these positive people and make them a part of your inner circle? Twelve experts from Young Entrepreneur Council examine some of the steps you can take to locate and attract positive people to stand in your corner and challenge you to grow in both your personal and professional lives.

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You need to be able to accept risk and always be willing to adapt to a changing market if you want to succeed in this industry.

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To appeal to today’s on-the-go world, many businesses have considered the value in creating a branded mobile application for their customers. In theory, it's a great idea—but app fatigue is very real, and if you don't want users to delete your app after a few uses, you need to give them a good reason to keep coming back. Many members of Young Entrepreneur Council have experience building and deploying successful business mobile apps, and they understand what it takes to create something engaging and long-lasting. To offer their insights, a panel of members shared some important steps businesses should take when building their mobile apps. Follow their tips to ensure your app becomes a regular habit for those who download and use it.

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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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In business, time is money, and it can be easy for entrepreneurs to overload themselves with work. But with so many demands on their schedules, every task can begin to seem important and too much information can get out of hand. In these cases, it’s vital that entrepreneurs pause and take a moment to figure out how to best manage their time. When projects pile up and a sense of overwhelm is building, the experts from Young Entrepreneur Council recommend following this advice. Below, they’ve offered several actionable tips for entrepreneurs looking to better prioritize their time and avoid information overload.

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A precious metals professional lives and dies by their reputation.

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Your energy levels are a key factor in how productive you are during the day. For an entrepreneur, maintaining high energy levels throughout the workday is necessary for maximum efficiency. But with so many things playing a part in how energetic we feel, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly how best to manage those energy levels for work. To provide some guidance, eight leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss several tips for keeping energy levels high to maintain peak performance and accomplish more in your day. When you feel your energy waning, follow this advice to help you stay on track.

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Finding a core audience to market to is a crucial part of making a business profitable. Many marketing departments spend thousands of dollars building a picture of their ideal customer to inform how and where they should market. Once they do that, it's just a matter of unifying their content and media planning to target their product's most viable buyers. But how exactly should they go about this? What’s the best way to unify these two plans? To offer some guidance, eight professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council examine some of the strategies they recommend for combining content and media planning to target a specific market and explain why they’re so effective.

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Members of Young Entrepreneur Council offer their firsthand insights on leveraging social media effectively this year. Social media is one of the most powerful tools business owners can use. How you leverage your accounts can make all the difference in terms of your overall success and business growth. As 2021 moves forward, it’s important for entrepreneurs to know how to maximize their social media use to achieve success throughout the year. To help, 15 members of Young Entrepreneur Council use their firsthand experience to share some of their best social media tips for today’s business owners.

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During the interview process, there are some red flags that will be immediately apparent to an employer. Unfortunately, there are also a few of them that may slip by unnoticed, and it's only after the hire starts working that the company realizes they may have made an error. These post-hire red flags aren't the end of the world, though. By approaching the issue proactively and identifying the best way to mitigate any potential damage it may cause, this type of situation can usually be easily rectified. To help, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of the red flags that companies may not notice until later and how business leaders can properly respond to them.

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If you're an entrepreneur, perhaps the worst thing you can do is sit on nothing but cash savings.

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Everyone feels down from time to time, even entrepreneurs. Constantly surrounded by others who are seemingly experiencing success, business leaders can sometimes have a hard time reminding themselves of their own potential. This mental hurdle can be a massive one to overcome, but the key to feeling knocked down is having plans and strategies for how to get back up. Below, 11 members of Young Entrepreneur Council share their best tips and personal methods for dealing with this type of negative thinking.

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Entrepreneurs share their favorite tools, apps, and software for managing and interacting with customers. Connectivity is of the utmost importance in the modern world. In business particularly, social media, email, and other outreach methods have the potential to engage consumers like never before. In such a highly connected society, a business that doesn't leverage these tools for consumer engagement is at a disadvantage compared to its competitors.  This is why many businesses utilize several channels of communication to ensure that their customers always feel engaged. But what sort of tools do they use to accomplish that job? Here, 18 members of YEC discuss their favorite tools, apps, and software they use to drive customer engagement efforts and connect with their audiences.

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Being an entrepreneur and owning your own business is an end goal for most people. It's a thrilling end result -- the fact that you're your own boss, you set your own hours, and remain accountable only to yourself can be a heady mix. Yet, the benefits of the position usually overshadow the more pertinent considerations that would-be entrepreneurs overlook. Although there are significant benefits to being a business owner, there's also a considerable amount of background work that rarely gets highlighted but needs to be done. These 12 members of YEC look at these extraneous factors that new entrepreneurs tend to overlook before embarking on starting their business and explain why these elements are so critical to your success as a business owner.

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If you’re looking to expand your business, franchising your business could be a great option. Growing a company by franchising can offer many benefits—but you need to be aware of the drawbacks, too. To determine whether or not you should franchise your business, we asked members of Young Entrepreneur Council the following question: What’s one tip you have for business owners who are considering franchising their business?

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In today's uncertain market, entrepreneurs and business owners are starting to pay attention to precious metals as a safe haven in their investment portfolios.

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18 entrepreneurs from YEC look at the main reasons why an organization should get insurance. New entrepreneurs sometimes look at business insurance as a luxury, not a necessity. For a lot of small-business owners, business insurance is a gamble -- it covers the business from liability and in the event of property damage, but unless either of those happens, it seems like wasted money. Before a company decides to avoid insurance altogether, the owner must look at what the insurance offers in more than just economic terms. Insurance also deals with how efficiently the business can operate. Businesses that have the assurance that they’re covered in any eventuality may be more inclined to take risks and innovate. Insurance, by design, can help or hinder a business. By focusing on the important details that impact a business’s everyday operation, an owner can determine whether insurance is a crucial consideration for the long-term health of the company. In some industries, insurance can save the company tens of thousands of dollars in liabilities. Some professionals require coverage before they’re allowed to open a firm in some states. If your industry requires that you have business insurance, you will need to examine what each of the providers offer with their policies to ascertain the level of coverage they provide. An additional element that business owners ought to consider is what the insurance covers. Some insurance companies only offer the bare minimum of coverage. Their policies don’t cover damage to assets or the building, and may only offer third-party coverage to individuals the business may have caused damage to. It’s vital that a company that takes out business insurance know what their insurance can cover and whether they may need more than the basic third-party coverage. To help, 18 associates of YEC discuss what a business owner should consider when deciding on business insurance and why these elements are crucial to the decision.

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The backbone of a company is its employees, but the brain of a business is its leadership. The best leaders inspire and encourage the employees working under them, but even these leaders need positive reinforcement from time to time. While a lot of this reinforcement comes from those above them in the hierarchy, it has special meaning when the employees under them reach out to show their appreciation. So what are some appropriate ways employees can show their appreciation for key leaders and everything they do? Below, eight professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council share ways employees can recognize the positive impact of leaders and give them a much-appreciated "thank you."

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When you understand your customer, you can better tailor your products and services to their needs. The most reliable way to get to know who your customers are and what they're looking for is to get that information directly from them. But how can you persuade customers to give you the comprehensive, actionable feedback you need? Luckily there are tried-and-true methods for establishing a dialogue with your customers so you can serve them better. Below, eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council share strategies business owners can use to get concrete feedback from their customer base.

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It's no secret that the holidays are among the most hectic times of the year for businesses. Everyone wants to close off the year well, and the holiday season makes for some fantastic business opportunities, but staff also looks forward to spending more time with loved ones and away from work. However, this year has been challenging for many people. Most businesses adopt an "all hands on deck" approach to the holidays, and this year is no exception, as the state of the world has encouraged companies to juggle an uncertain future in addition to the holiday rush. Here, nine professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council weigh in on how businesses can successfully manage the extra holiday workload while already in crisis mode.

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Self-doubt can be debilitating for some individuals. If you're trying to advance your career, the belief that you’re not good enough can quickly put an end to those aspirations. It can make you feel less confident about your abilities, which in turn can make you seem less trustworthy and dependable to others. If you can't believe in yourself, will anyone else? Sadly, self-doubt feeds a negative feedback loop, leading to a spiraling of emotions that may leave you scrambling to find a way out. To help guide you, thirteen experts from Young Entrepreneur Council share some valuable tips on how professionals can seek to conquer self-doubt, and explain why these suggestions can be so practical at helping you overcome this debilitating mental state.

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Prices can make or break a business, and deciding on what to charge for a particular good or service varies by the company. Finding the "sweet spot" for your pricing takes a bit of market research and a lot of trial and error, especially for new entrepreneurs. Sometimes, their approach to pricing structure can change over time, evolving to account for further information they learn in their journeys as business owners and new key considerations that affect a company’s pricing model. That’s why we asked 12 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:

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The end of this year is right around the corner, and smart business owners will already be setting up plans and goals for the coming first quarter. Planning helps a business take stock of what it's achieved thus far and what it can hope to accomplish in the first quarter of the new year, given its available time and resources. With proper foresight, a business can set itself up to succeed by making smart decisions and knowing where to invest its resources. Given the challenges we've all faced this year, seeing a tremendous Q1 performance next year will bolster confidence. Below, eight contributors to Young Entrepreneur Council offer valuable advice for planning for Q1 of the new year and explain how they set themselves up to succeed.

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Precious metals are often dogmatically assumed to be a risk-free store of wealth during times of economic uncertainty. As true as this may be, that doesn’t mean that precious metals investing is for every retirement investor.

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Silver is a safe-haven asset that generally follows the price movement of gold. Investing in gold or silver IRAs can help protect your wealth from shocks in the equities market like we saw during the March 2020 Covid-19 crash.

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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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For entrepreneurs, nothing sounds sweeter than being given the freedom to choose our own financial future.

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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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Strategic debt is a tool to improve one’s long-term financial situation.

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17 professionals from YEC share the best websites for locating fresh talent. There has been a change in how companies approach the idea of outsourcing. In recent years, businesses have grown less fond of doing everything in-house and more open to hiring freelancers to lend them a hand. This new reality in the world of employment has spawned a massive explosion of websites that cater specifically to professionals providing talent to companies. Searching for local expertise, in particular, can help to enhance the region and support the local community. Additionally, local contractors are easy to get in touch with, either though message or by direct phone call. Occasionally, you may need someone familiar with the region you're operating in, which is why outsourcing to a local freelancer is the right call. Many companies overlook local talent because they have the misconception that imported talent is automatically better. Knowing where to look to find the best in local talent might encourage you to reconsider your opinion on hiring locals to work for your company. Many of these websites offer businesses access to a wide pool of qualified candidates, as well as the possibility of fine-tuning their search so as to identify the most relevant candidates. Filters you can get access to include the location (for local or regional talent), ratings, and expertise. All of these are critical factors in determining whether a freelancer or professional will fit the business's needs. However, not all of these websites are built in the same vein. Seventeen professionals from YEC share valuable advice on the best websites for finding outside talent -- local or not – and explain why those resources are vital to their own businesses.

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No allocation strategy is free from risk, but there are steps you can take that may safeguard your wealth in uncertain times.

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Leadership is a battle for constant improvement. In modern business, there is a particular need for competent leadership. However, leaders don't retain their positions by being complacent. One of the most effective methods of self-reflection is by asking yourself searching questions and answering them truthfully. The catch is that this requires you to be entirely honest with yourself. But what are the questions that would encourage you to be better? What should you ask yourself to develop into a more effective leader? To help, these 13 experts from Young Entrepreneur Council share the questions they ask themselves daily in their bid for self-development.

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The internet of things (IoT) is growing at a rapid pace, but sadly, security protocols for those devices are still in their infancy. Customer data security should be a significant concern for IoT companies. At present, there are several glaring holes in security that can be addressed with some dedicated effort. A few IoT companies have even patched out security vulnerabilities. The future holds a lot of promise for these devices, once their manufacturers can work out how to make them fully secure for consumer use. Here, eight leaders from Young Entrepreneur Council predict what they expect to see in the industry over the next few years and discuss how IoT companies can better safeguard their consumers.

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Professionals, regardless of their work environment, sometimes find their focus flagging. If you're someone who has to deal with divided attention between multiple tasks, the amount of effort you put into a job will start telling on your psyche before too long. To deal with this situation, you'll have to figure out how to retain your focus and discipline within the workplace. Luckily, there are several approaches to reestablishing your focus at work. Productivity is linked to your mindset and your environment, after all. Below, 14 professionals from Young Entrepreneur Council discuss some of their favorite and most effective approaches.

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As a busy professional or entrepreneur, you’ve probably wished there were more than 24 hours in a day. While you might not be able to find huge chunks of free time, you can always find a few extra minutes a day, which adds up to a few extra hours in a week. Over the course of their careers, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council have found some great hacks to add some time to their busy schedules. If you’re looking to get back three to five hours of your time each week, try out their nine best tricks.

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Don’t view real estate investing through rose-colored glasses.

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Keep your content honest, original and insightful to stay in Google’s good books and drive long-term SEO success.

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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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The precious metals market continues to look promising for investors.

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Many a company had to reinvent themselves and especially their customer interactions in order to stay in business. Listening closely to your target audience is often the first and best step your organization should take when planning a major shift. Listening and implementing the received feedback shows precisely how important an empowered community of consumers is. It doesn't matter which industry your business is concerned with, a community of users linked by the same likes or taste can be an influential demographic. However, building an empowered customer community isn't something that occurs accidentally. It requires a lot of long-term planning. To help, eight experts from Young Entrepreneur Council share what they believe are the crucial steps in developing an empowered customer community that a business can count on.

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Running a business is no easy feat, and with each new challenge that arises, an entrepreneur risks becoming buried under the weight of the responsibility. There's no way that an individual can stop the flood of responsibilities, so the only option that a new business owner has is to find an effective and efficient process for managing the situation. Some strategies designed to help leaders avoid being buried under the responsibilities of a business work far better than others, but it's challenging to know from a glance which ones are good and which ones aren't. These eight members of Young Entrepreneur Council look at the most effective strategies they use to avoid becoming a victim of their business's increasing demands.

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Today, the yellow metal is a blue-chip investment amid rising global tensions, the preeminence of nationalist parties worldwide and widespread market uncertainty following the longest-ever market expansion period.

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Hedge your bets against market uncertainty by investing in alternative assets.

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This type of investment has the potential to net significant rewards, but also comes with its share of challenges.

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There are several factors that could negatively impact your retirement account in 2020, and many of them are within your control.

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The Fed's control over interest rates raises questions about the country's true economic health.

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Are your nerves up to the task of being a founder?