20 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Entrepreneurs

Stuck in a productivity rut? No worries. We’ve curated a list of must-read productivity tips for small business owners that can help you work more effectively than ever:

1. Don’t Multitask

Contrary to popular belief, multitasking is not beneficial to productivity. “Time management experts estimate that focusing on one thing at a time will double productivity, work output, and performance. And when you’re running a small business, that can mean the difference between success and failure. Force yourself to do one thing at a time by setting a clock or timer for a certain amount of time, and then focus on that one task until it’s complete,” according to Money Crashers.

2. Take a Breather

When feeling overwhelmed, it may be time to take a break: “Be sure that through all the hassle of increasing productivity that you don’t forget to be refreshed every now and then. Make sure that you allow time for yourself to recollect. Overworking yourself will only cause you to be less productive. Take some time off every now and then.”

3. Capture Creative Ideas

The retention of creative ideas are often lost in a busy schedule, according to American Express OPEN Forum: “The world renowned scientist Dr. Linus Pauling once said, ‘The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.’ Most leaders and entrepreneurs are visionaries who generally don’t lack good ideas; however, capturing all these ideas is often a challenge for busy people. Evernote is a popular, free program for collecting ideas. (Here’s a list of other tools to consider.)”

4. Give Immediate (and Private) Feedback to Employees

According to Gaebler.com, “None of us wants to work all day on a project only to find that we have wasted our time. 

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5 Success Tips from Award-Winning Entrepreneurs

Every entrepreneur faces challenges, and many of them will tell you it's how you handle those challenges that will determine success or failure as a business owner.

Here, five tips for success from business owners who know what growing and winning are all about. Consider these words of wisdom from Entrepreneur Magazine's Emerging Entrepreneur of 2011 Adam Nelson and Entrepreneur of 2011 award winner Lee Rhodes.

 1. Put your networking skills to work. "Find people you can learn from," says Nelson, founder and inventor of the Good Nite Lite, who first created his product to solve his son's difficulties falling asleep. "What you may not need from them today, you may need tomorrow."

2. Don't be swayed by naysayers. When Rhodes was pushed by bankers and experts to start manufacturing her hand-blown glass candleholders in China to save money, the experiment backfired. "We lost a fortune," says Rhodes, founder of Glassybaby, which donates a percentage of revenue to programs that help cancer patients. "I listened to people who didn't understand Glassybaby. It's all about the story and there was nowhere to fit 'Made in China' in my story."

3. Keep taking risks. "Our personal motto is: 'Fail cheap, fail quick,'" Nelson says. "Don't be afraid to try."

4. Hire your weaknesses. "Remember as an entrepreneur, you're probably a big-picture person and the details aren't as important, but they will be and it'll come back to haunt you," Rhodes warns. "If you're not good at [something], make sure you have someone beside you that is, as you grow."

5. Don't be afraid to share your idea.

The 5 Riskiest and 5 Safest Business Startup Ideas

How Much Risk Are You Willing to Take?

The first question to ask yourself when you decide to start a small business is, What business should I start? Or, better yet, What business should I not start? We asked IBISWorld, the world's largest publisher of industry research, to tell us which businesses are least likely to succeed in the U.S. economy today, and which are the most likely to succeed.

Here are five businesses you should not launch now under any circumstances, unless you have in mind some tax scheme that involves a quick trip to bankruptcy court.

Once you've seen our list of the five riskiest businesses, be sure to check out the second part of our slideshow featuring the five LOWEST-risk businesses to start.

Risky Idea #1: Carpentry Contracting

Carpentry is, of course, inextricably tied to the housing industry -- and we all know how well that's going. New-home sales in the United States are at their lowest level in nearly 45 years, according to Department of Commerce data, which means that most contractors around the country are still getting nailed by the economic slump.

It doesn't look like the situation will improve significantly anytime soon. Few occupations have been hit as hard as this one. In 2006, about 1 million people were working as carpenters, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today there are fewer than 750,000, and the number continues to decline. Perhaps the only thing left for carpenters to build these days is a new career.

Risky Idea #2: DVD, Game, and Video Rental Stores

It's hard to imagine a worse business to start than a video rental store. The last time we set foot in one was nearly 10 years ago, when Harry Potter was still wearing Y-fronts. The video rental business was hard enough when times were good; now it's downright impossible.  

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The Ultimate Guide To Resources You Will Need To Startup

It’s crazy starting up, isn’t it? There are a number of things that require your attention and almost all of them at the same time. Bogs you down completely, making you go helter-skelter looking for resources to help you in your tasks.

Well, the good thing is that I’ve been there, done that. I’ve gone through this myself and totally identify with your current mental state.

And that made me put together this ultimate guide for awesome resources you will need for each aspect of your startup. Right from getting you started to helping you manage your operations and down to helping you grow.

So let’s get started.

STARTING UP

Idea validation: you have plenty of ideas, but do not know how viable they are and whether there is a market big enough for it. You also need to make sure you choose the right path. And this is where you need a startup coach who can not only validate your ideas, but also give you the answers to all your problems. That’s where I step in. Email me to have your ideas validated or if you’re looking for answers to a specific problem.

Company Name: you need to have a company name that is sticky and catchy, short, functional, and tells a story. There are many ways to generate names – core function of your company, benefit that it offers, mash-up of the founders’ names, or simply through crowdsourcing. If you really must pay to get it done, one such service is Namella.

Domain Name: you really must get creative in selecting the right domain name. Unless your company name is really unique and is not really something from the dictionary, it may work. 

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3 Tips to Startup Success

At Science, we are fortunate enough to meet hundreds of entrepreneurs each year. And as you might imagine, we sit through a lot of early-stage pitches -- some good, most…horrible. There's no doubt that confidence is often key -- but maybe not for the reasons you expect.

Although I've met many great entrepreneurs who lack external confidence and a great many lesser entrepreneurs who have confidence in spades, I can say without a doubt that the confident entrepreneurs often walk away with funding.

It doesn't mean their businesses are better or their skills superior. Rather, it simply means that they are confident selling themselves and their vision. When you invest in someone with confidence, you're investing in someone who can typically get investors on her side and sell her vision to the staff. Importantly, that entrepreneur will likely also have a better chance of selling the business to a buyer in the future.

The best example of this is an entrepreneur who I met in Los Angeles right after raised a very early, very big $10 million round before the company was started. Over drinks with his new investor, the entrepreneur boasted about having lost venture investors more than $100 million in the past five years, and once again he couldn't believe that someone just gave him $10 million. I pulled the new investor aside and asked if he was crazy, considering the startup's track record of losses. He said he was confident in the entrepreneur's abilities in this business.

Within two years, the entrepreneur sold that company, raised more money and started another. I cannot attest to the quality of his businesses, but I can speak to his high level of confidence and the fact that he seems to be on point.

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