Procrastination is an odd compulsion. Everyone has experienced it, but the underlying reasons can be tough to pin down.

After all, procrastination delays the very activities that bring people closer to their goals -- whether that is building a thriving business or stronger triceps. So why do not humans just sprint toward that brighter, fitter future?

The science.
Scientific studies of procrastination have spiked over the past 20 years. Researchers once considered the issue a basic time-management problem, but they now view it as a complex and highly individual phenomena.  

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Most working class Americans are employed by companies that either require or offer retirement savings options in the form of a 401(k), 403b), or pension plan. Because these contributions are automatically deducted from the employee’s paycheck, saving for retirement tends to be a rather painless process. Over time, the cumulative effect of regular monthly contributions leads to a nice sized nest egg that can be used in the retirement years.

But for entrepreneurs, the story is a little different. With no steady paycheck or employer-sponsored plans, many of these hardworking individuals forgo retirement contributions.  And though it may not seem like a big deal in the early years, this misstep can prove to be dangerous and irresponsible as entrepreneurs age.

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A new report is saying that almost half of people recently hired (41%) used an online job board to find work and 61% flagged automatic job alerts as helpful. What is more, a full 14% found their present job using social media. The findings from How Do People Find Jobs? published by the B2B research firm, Clutch, highlights how today’s candidates are connecting with small businesses and vice versa.

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The standards for small business success have unquestionably gone up. Todays small businesses must do a lot more to stay competitive than their predecessors. Myriad businesses, however, take this notion a bit too far. Once they discover yet another resource or strategy with the potential to elevate their success, they jump all over it. This is partially due to the many online articles urging business leaders to devote more effort to virtually every element of their businesses.

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So what sets those who actually take the plunge from those who only dream? What pushes a keen hobbyist or excellent amateur into actually becoming a business owner? A recent study of more than 400,000 people out of MIT came to decisive answer, and it is not the one you are probably expecting.

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Here are three popular things that are actually not mandatory for all small businesses:

1. Aggressive Marketing

It is easy to go overboard with marketing. With so many tools available, your gut instinct is to try anything with the slightest potential. Even if you stand to lose money, you want the assurance of knowing you are doing everything you can to gain the interest of your target audience. And it is difficult to ignore a marketing tool that has worked marvelously for other small businesses. If they had to do it all over again, these businesses would likely spend 10% of their time developing their products or services and 90% marketing them.

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Here are 15 examples of great integrated marketing campaigns that work by combining content, digital and website marketing, with traditional marketing methods like PR.

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Switching careers can feel intimidating, but you have got to make some moves if you’re spinning your wheels at your current job. Tech industry jobs are hot right now, and you can make great money once you’ve got the know-how to compete with other tech candidates. Here’s a breakdown of the fields with the best opportunities.

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Smart companies are not just those that have intelligent leaders. They also have systems, tools and proper planning in place that allow every department or function to run together seamlessly. To become a smart company, you need to integrate smart ideas into every facet of your business. Here are some tips from members of the online small business community.

Manage Your Website Effectively
Your website is one of the most important tools your small business has. To manage it effectively, you need access to the right tools. In this WP Buffs post, Brenda Barron provides a full explanation and walk-through of GoDaddy Pro, so you can see if it may be helpful for your business.

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Spreadsheets have long been an important tool for businesses. You can use them for just about anything. This includes budgeting and planning out important marketing campaigns.

No tool seems more synonymous with spreadsheets than Excel. Microsofts tool allows you to easily fill in spaces and create tables. But it also takes advantage of some more advanced features. However, starting from scratch will not give you a productive business.

You may want to take advantage of all that Excel has to offer. But maybe you don’t know exactly how to get started. So templates become a great option. Check out some sources for Excel business templates that can help you in 15 different areas of business operations.

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Cybersecurity remains one of the most challenging issues for small business owners. And the problem leads small business owners to seek out managed service providers to present them with solutions.

But a new report from Continuum says the state of cybersecurity among small businesses in 2019 still needs to improve. The data suggests great opportunities for service providers who offer cyber security as part of their package.

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Chatbots are all the business buzz – and for good reason.

They give customers of any-size business critical answers to pressing questions quickly.

They can:

Boost your average order value.
Accelerate the buyers’ journey.
Reduce your customer service costs.

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There can come days, however, when it all feels the same and very old.

That is when we steel ourselves and insist on being creative.

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If you want to change your circumstances, you need to change the way you think. You have to stop believing that you are stuck in your situation and passively accepting that you’re incapable of doing anything about it.

Many people allow themselves to be caged by their fear and anxiety. For these people, an inner critic always seems to be whispering in their ears, keeping them from succeeding. The truth is, negative thinking will shackle you to a life that’s both mediocre and unfulfilling. If you want to stretch yourself to your fullest potential, you need to escape your self-imposed prison of negative thinking.

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Whether you are a freelance photographer, own a hardware store, or have another type of small business, a great website is essential for your companys success. As a webmaster who has worked on building or marketing over 100 small business websites, I know what it takes to create great and engaging business websites.

If you are looking to build a new startup website or make your current site more effective, here are 10 key steps to getting started and helping your small business website compete effectively in the online marketplace.

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Running a business is often about setting goals and putting in the long hours and hard work to achieve them. Regardless of what type of business you run, it’s likely that selling more has a frequent, if not long-term, place on your to-do list. It’s a goal that requires staying up to date on new techniques, honing strategies, and being in touch with the latest industry news.

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Secure-computing engineers generally view these schemes as sound in theory and productive to deploy. But in practice, it can be dangerous to rely on a sole element to act as the check on the whole system. Undermining that safeguard—which has proven possible in many companies implementations—strips a device of critical protections. Worse still, manipulating the enclave can make it appear that everything is fine, even when it's very much not.

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Small-business owners were victims in 43 percent of data breaches tracked between Nov. 1, 2017, and Oct. 31, 2018, according to a 2019 Verizon report. The report tracked security incidents across all industries, but the most vulnerable sectors this year were retail, accommodation and healthcare.

What does the issue look like on a national scale? If we take the sample size of infected sites SiteLock said they found in 2018 -- approximately 47,244 out of 6,056,969 checked -- and apply that percentage to the country’s estimated 30.2 million small-businesses websites, minus the estimated 36 percent that do not have one, then we can loosely estimate the amount of infected small-business websites to be around 150,757.

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Micro influencers are social media personalities with anywhere from 2,000-50,000 followers. The numbers vary depending on the source, but their importance is universal. They are a great cost efficient way to provide targeted advertising for small businesses with limited budgets

Here is what you need to know about how these people can benefit your small business.

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Running a small business may not seem too challenging from a distance. After all, it is a small business, so how much operational and management work could there be? But since I started my own agency, I’ve realized that running a small business or firm is not as easy as it looks.

The good news is that there are plenty of best practices small businesses can follow to save time and manage their tasks more efficiently with the help of automation.

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Your 6-Step Guide to Successful Project Management

1. Define your goal and get buy-in from all project team members.

As you do this, you will want to determine each team member’s role and responsibilities. In this step, also consider how the project will affect your company and how you’ll measure the projects impact.

2. Determine the project deliverables.

What key tasks do team members need to accomplish to move the project along the path to completion? You will also need to identify which deliverables depend on other deliverables, so you can establish a timeline that puts tasks in a logical order.

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Effective Aug. 19, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is raising its monetary-based small business size standards for inflation by an average of 8.4%, an adjustment that the administration expects will allow 90,000 additional companies to participate in its loan and contracting programs. The SBA said that this increase could result in $750 million more total contracts awarded to small businesses and as much as $65 million more in small business loans.

In order to be considered a small business under current SBA guidelines, most general, heavy and civil construction companies cannot have more than $36.5 million of average annual sales receipts.

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Time is said to be spent or invested. But without time management, it can also be squandered.

Is your to-do list constantly growing? Do you feel like there are not enough hours in the day to meet your family, work and social obligations?

For a business leader, time management is especially problematic given their magnitude of responsibilities and limited hours in the day. Lost time is not only never found again, but not managing it strategically harms the executive's well-being, effectiveness and organizational performance.

My team and I had the opportunity to lead coaching sessions for executives of public and private companies worth billions. And one thing is clear-- how you manage your time leads to success or failure.

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High-profile entrepreneurs like Stitch Fixs Katrina Lake and The Riveter's Amy Stern Nelson are using Stories to answer questions about everything from managing cash flow to storing breast milk during business trips.

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The climb to the top can be tough going for anyone. But as women, there are particular hurdles that can make the journey upward toward positions of power and influence -- in myriad spheres -- especially challenging.

Here, in 50 inspiring quotes, businesswomen, role models, activists, entertainers, authors and politicians share their thoughts on leadership and success -- and what exactly those words mean to them.

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By now, you have probably heard of 23andMe, the biotech juggernaut that is revolutionized the DNA-testing industry. Though the company has its fair share of critics, one thing is for sure: 23andMe has experienced tremendous growth, claiming more than 10 million worldwide customers as of this writing.  A lesser-known fact is how much its employees love working there. In fact, it was named among Glassdoors Best Places to Work for 2019.

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The entrepreneurs on Inc.s second annual Female Founders 100 list have transformed every major industry in America. Meet the boundless dreamers making the biggest difference in 2019.

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A new free analytics tool introduced on Sept. 10 by the Atlanta-based lending platform Kabbage analyzes the live data of more than 200,000 companies in an effort to give small business owners a way to assess how their businesses are performing in real time. It’s daring to meet the demands of the ever-changing world of small business.

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How do you hire, onboard, and retain a great team?

You start by viewing your company through the EQ lens to discover your organizational obstacles―the elephants standing in the way of your company's success.

Attend this webinar, How to Attract, Hire, and Retain Unicorn-Level Talent, as headhunter and executive coach Caroline Stokes delivers a blend of recruiting and emotional intelligence strategies essential to helping you identify and tackle your elephants and acquire and retain key hires―those unicorns―that will help your company stand out, stay resilient, and drive growth.

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Graphic design is an essential aspect of any marketing campaign or emerging business. You can't brand a business without design tools. When you are starting a business, contracting designers for a website, marketing materials, flyers, a logo, and countless other business expenses can add up fast. At some point, you have to be willing to take on some of the creative challenges yourself.

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- Forty-three percent of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses, but only 14% are prepared to defend themselves, according to Accenture.
- These incidents now cost small businesses $200,000 on average, reveals insurance carrier Hiscox, with 60% of them going out of business within six months of being victimized.
- More than half of all small businesses suffered a breach within the last year.
- Today it’s critical for small businesses to adopt strategies for fighting cyberthreats.

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In other words, press coverage is priceless, but where do you start? To find out more, we asked 16 marketing experts and entrepreneurs to share interesting and cost-effective ways to get media coverage.

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Learn how the easy availability of big data can help SMBs compete with big businesses.

- Data is now easier to collect and cheaper to host, making it accessible to nearly every business.
- The availability of data helps small businesses compete against big corporations, but they may still struggle to use that data in practical ways.
- Three ways small businesses can use big data to grow include checking on credit data about your business, monitoring supply chain data, and keeping an eye on artificial intelligence and automation innovations.

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Small business owners have plenty of changes to deal with as 2020 begins — higher labor costs for many companies and some owners will discover that they have to comply with new laws that aren’t on the books in their own states.

As of Jan. 1, there are higher minimum wages in a quarter of the states and new federal overtime rules. The IRS has new W-4 forms owners will need to get used to. Plastic bags are on their way out at stores and other businesses in a growing number of places around the country. And California has new laws on freelancers and consumer privacy that can affect out-of-state companies.

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Small business pay checks are growing at a fast pace as job gains slow

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Small businesses are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy and account for 99.7% of all employers.
Small businesses work with large enterprises as vendors, customers, competitors or partners.
Large businesses can learn from small business ingenuity, innovation, agile management, customer service, workplace culture and diversity.

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The first weekly roundup of 2020 starts with some motivational quotes to get you up and running for the new year.

Once you are all pumped up, an article about the economy should also get you excited. The report says all 50 states have improved their GDP since the 2016 election. And if the rally of the stock market on January 2, 2020 is an indicator of things to come you can expect even better numbers.

The optimism for the coming year is also being shared by business leaders. Over two thirds or 76% of them say they see similar or more profits in 2020. The data comes as part of a survey that polled 940 business owners in this article.

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The deadline for filing taxes in the United States is eight weeks away, but new research has shown that small businesses are already being hit by tax season–related cyber-attacks.

Research conducted by Proofpoint indicates that attackers are aggressively jumping into tax season, with the deployment of two main attack strategies.

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While small businesses make a huge impact when put together, individually they are often operating on small budgets. Which means small business owners need to be aware of every penny.

If you look at the worldwide cost of bad data, it is overwhelming. $3.1 trillion. If you operate a small business, you might just brush that huge number off. But the reality is, when studies put the cost of bad data at $100 per data record, it can add up quickly. Even if you only have 100 contacts—because 20% of your database is likely bad.

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GetMyBoat, is a startup that calls itself the Airbnb of Boats. This app lets interested people rent boats in many different countries. Small Business Trends contacted Val Streif, marketing manager for GetMyBoat, to find out what makes this enterprise successful.

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We had to terminate all of our employees. We talked about different options, like furloughing employees, which is a temporary termination. We talked to tons of other business founders and really leaned on legal advice to the extent that we could. In the end, we had to terminate all of our employees, which we thought was the best for them, because they could file for unemployment very quickly. When the seven-day wait period for filing for unemployment was waived, we felt that was the best way forward.

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We are in the midst of a difficult time in history. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a health crisis, and both the economy and jobs are suffering as a result.

While many of us can work from home, others cannot. But if a silver lining exists, perhaps it’s this: Now is the perfect time to learn a skill or launch a new career. Affiliate marketing gives you that opportunity.

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As an entrepreneur, you've likely had to embrace change lately so you not only continue to succeed, but you also find ways to dominate during unprecedented times. One of the best ways to gain a competitive edge is to stay on top of trends so you can create new opportunities and stay ahead of your competitors.

With that in mind, here are five trends all small business owners should embrace in 2020 and beyond.

1. Employee health and wellness must become a priority.
2. AI will continue to change the business world.
3. Mobile marketing will be used more creatively.
4. Younger consumers will declare World War Z.
5. It is time to go cashless.

Email marketing continues to be one of the most powerful tools for growing your business. (Need proof? Check out stat #1 below.)

And although email marketing has been around for decades, it’s everchanging.

New email marketing tools — like AMP for Email — pop up all of the time. Marketers are taking innovative approaches to email marketing. And email marketing benchmarks change every year.

Want to see how your own email marketing strategy compares and what other businesses are doing to innovate?

Check out this ultimate list of email marketing statistics to find out how you stack up and see email marketing benchmarks to compare your results.

General email marketing statistics and usage
79% of small businesses say email marketing is important to their business strategy. [AWeber]

60% of small businesses say their email marketing strategy is effective or very effective. [AWeber]

64% of B2B marketers use a dedicated email marketing platform. [Content Marketing Institute]

40% of B2B marketers claim that email newsletters are the most important tactic in their content marketing strategy. [Content Marketing Institute]

43% of small businesses have 500 or less email subscribers. [AWeber]

42% of small businesses with over 500 subscribers have effective or very effective email marketing strategies. [AWeber]

46% of emails are opened on mobile devices. [Litmus]

61% of consumers prefer to be contacted by brands through email. [Statista]

On average, consumers spend 2.5 hours checking email on a typical weekday. [Adobe]

As the Covid-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the retail industry, some are asking a curious question, namely: will companies boost their spending on branding in the aftermath the crisis?

What I find strange about this question is the assumption that branding is something you turn on and off, like a light switch; that it is somehow a conscious decision or undertaking that brands embark on as necessary or when it best serves them. I suspect this is because we’ve long confused the concepts of branding and advertising. They are not the same.

Advertising is what a brand says about itself to consumers. Advertising is a conscious effort on the part of a brand to promote itself, its products and its services. Advertising can be bought and sold. Advertising is transactional.

Branding, on the other hand, is a very different thing. Branding is what others think and say about you. And it’s informed by a wide range of inputs, far beyond what a brand says about itself. More critical is what a brand actually does or doesn’t do. Branding reflects the sum total of every organisational action, set against the backdrop of culture, all of which reveals the true character of a company. Branding cannot be bought or sold. Branding is transformational.

Verizon Business today released findings from a recent survey, Small Business Response to COVID-19 to better understand the impact small business owners and decision makers feel COVID-19 has had on their businesses. The survey, conducted by Morning Consult, focused on 500 small and medium businesses that are currently open or plan to reopen. One of the survey’s key results is that small businesses have renewed confidence, with 68% believing they can recoup COVID-19 related losses.

Key Survey Findings:

As businesses grapple with the economic impact of COVID-19, these responses highlight the assistance small businesses feel they need, the communities they feel most supported by, and the changes they have made to adjust to the new normal.

1. A Renewed Confidence
The small businesses that have weathered this pandemic to date express an overall optimism and the financial wherewithal to eventually reopen.

68% of small businesses believe they can recoup COVID-19 related losses
46% (nearly half) of small businesses that remain open say their businesses will be able to stay open for more than six months if the pandemic continues in the same way
48% of small businesses say it’s unlikely they will need to resume operations with a smaller staff
While 78% of small businesses indicate declining sales, less than a quarter (24%) say that they have missed or withheld any payments of bills (rent, utilities, etc.).

A small, overlooked federal agency is shouldering a massive relief effort for the nation's small businesses and their workers left reeling by the novel coronavirus. The U.S. Small Business Administration has committed to auditing every sizable emergency loan it approves, yet nearly two months since the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program was launched, the agency has yet to make public the recipients of taxpayer aid.

A price strategy is every bit as important as what you have got to sell. After all, they dictate what you will charge for the goods and services you have on the market. In the end, getting these pricing strategies right is a bit of a balancing act. You will need to find that sweet spot between market demand and maximum profits.

1. Competition Based Pricing Strategy
If you are selling things that are similar, this is the pricing strategy your small business should be looking at. Here’s how competitive pricing works. First off, this works best for products rather than services. It works when the price for those products has reached a balancing point between your business and others.

This pricing strategy starts out using the going market rate to set a price.

2. Value-Based Pricing
Basically this is pricing based on what customers are willing to pay.

There are several steps to this pricing model. You need to do a bit of detective work here to find a competitive product. Next, you will need to list all the ways your product is different. Stress the financial value on these differences. This is a reasonable way to defend your pricing strategy.

Unless Congress extends FFCRA past its December 31 deadline or increases the number of weeks past 12, many parents have used up this time anyway. You can not run your business without employees, and employees will find it very difficult to work without schools. And if they extend FFCRA leave, it may help your employees, but your business needs people to run.

Coming up with a business idea and starting a business can seem overwhelming and complicated. There are so many things you have to consider from coming up with an excellent idea to registering a company, all the way to business planning, fundraising and much more.

That is why we have put together this in-depth guide to take you by step by step through how you can start a business.

More info - https://entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk/starting-a-business/