The Pomodoro method really is great, but it isn't the end all be all when it comes to time management. One of the important aspects of the Pomodoro method is that there is a clear start and stop time of your task. Another way that I like to use this methodology is with an app called brain.fm. It allows you to play brain wave music to help stimulate your productivity. That alone is good enough, but it also gives you a timer. Just focus on your task until the timer ends and the music stops. 30 minutes or an hour goes by in a flash when you're hyper-focused on a task. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

What are some things that first time entrepreneurs should consider? In general or before quitting their day job? I wrote a book on this topic with legendary investor Brad Feld. We based it on hearing more than 20,000 opportunity pitches. On Dragons Den on Shark Tank and first hand in our decades in the seed stage startup industry. We found entrepreneurs should not quit their day jobs until they have: - found something you are obsessed with - enough money to live for 6 months - found an unmet market need that they have unique insight on - tested it with early adopters - confirmed that your solution could add exponential value to those early adopters We also found that access to early adopters was a key Barrier. One often mitigated when the founder is also a customer (ie member for the customer segment). For more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y16VJ4L/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_OmMxzb6AF69QA Hope that helps. Onward and Upward Dr. Sean Wise, BA LLB MBA PHD Partner, Ryerson Futures A seed stage fund and accelerator

As a consultant and writer, I need to juggle a lot of different deadlines and demands. I've found that the best app for me is Asana. It's customizable, so I can adapt it to every project while maintaining a cohesive calendar with all of my deadlines. That said, I also pair Asana with an old-fashioned notebook and pen. Instead of writing to-do lists, I write have-done lists. At the end of the day, I benefit from a clear picture of what I've accomplished that day — it allows me to step away from my work with a clear mind, knowing that I've tackled a fair number of projects. If you need help managing your projects, feel free to reach out for my input. I've written about productivity for Fast Company, Inc. and Entrepreneur — I would love to share more thoughts with you.

This is a loaded question! Depending on what you do of course the answer will vary. Im the founder and CEO of a Robinhood marketing agency, dubbed www.Unthink.me - We bring big business marketing tools and strategies with small, growing companies. My schedule is very different than that of a CEO in my position. For example, I am very hands on the projects we have, just the way I started my business, as it grew my name got very attached to the brand and thus a lot of our clients hire because they want me to help on a campaign or project, so I wake up around 4am, check my email and my SLACK - which is how me and my team communicates and keeps our conversations seperated from client's convos and per project. I respond to emails and check our Hubspot platform, hangout with my kids then around 9am head to the office where I have a 1 hour coffee & convo with entreprenurs all over the world through a seperate #SLACK channel. Then I check TRELLO - for project management work and follow up on issues I see through Slack as well. I use my Text Messenger App a lot actually to send myself notes through text - i don't open them up until I am ready to take care of them, since I text other people, this is a clever way for me to easily get reminded of a task w/o getting annoyed with the reminders (this would be an awesome app btw! If you're looking for ideas, lets get this one going!) Aside from those that dictate how I work, I use Dashlane a lot to save me time entering passwords, etc - especially for other clients. That's about it, maybe Google Calendars, but don't use it unless is for something way ahead in time.

Laws regarding import/export in targeted country Where you will incorporate (is a new entity needed or can the business continue to run under the current entity). Taxation issues (if any, for instance VAT). There is not enough detail provided to answer further, this is just a starting point and not legal advise.

The first thing you should do is isolate your target market. Asia, India, SA are extremely wide if you're at that beginning stage of just looking at prospects. Once you've narrowed down a couple of regions, then you can do a more in-depth research on the key distributors in these markets. If you need more help in preparing this, you can book a call with me here on Clarity.

I would be shocked if a company of that size didn't patent a ton of things that involve their Kindle business -- paperwhite is a big selling point to them so if they didn't patent it originally, I'd expect that to have bought it or licensed it from whoever did.

There are no lenders that offer a fixed rate SBA business loan because SBA's fixed rate loan program is only for real estate backed loan. The SBA 7A program which is for non-real estate business acquisitions are variable rate loans. They are available as 10 year fully amortizing loans but they do not have a pre-payment penalty so you can pay them off early or refinance to a non-SBA loan at a later date. Book a call with me if you need more SBA info or want to discuss other lending options.

Making a new company will cost some money up front with no certainty of commercial success. A simple workaround, if you both know and trust each other, is to make a shareholder's agreement for the company to be incorporated and a contract saying how the shares will be divided. Since you're the developer, writing code before you incorporate puts the risk on your partner since the work will be your property until you put it into a corporation in which he is a shareholder. The critical thing is to determine how many shares you will get for the work you've done and what exactly he has to do to acquire his shares. You'll also want to know what your responsibilities will be after the business is up and running and what compensation you'll get for 'working in the business' at that point. I've helped a lot of people unravel their partnerships because these things were not thought through properly at the beginning and would be happy to discuss your specific situation in a Clarity call. Thanks and good luck. David C Barnett

Hello! This is a very good question, my name is Humberto Valle, and I'm the founder of www.Unthink.me a small globally known inbound marketing agency. We have helped many tech-related companies such as Software Developers who work on equity as well as traditional payments. For our marketing agency, we have also taken equity in combination of 'cash' payment. So yes, there are many opportunities for startups to hire or partner with an individual or agency on equity. The trick, I would assume is where in your lifecycle do you approach someone to work with you/for you for equity promise? At the end of the day, marketing agencies are not a hail mary approach to growing or making a company sustainable - its all about management and strategic market fits - if your plan is to hire an agency to have them do what you want, you may not find anyone who would be interested, possibly not even for payment. It is very understandable that you want to save your burn rate but you have to be respectful of someone's skillset - for example you mentioned doing 75% equity and the rest based on results - so commission? A good established marketing agency is not in the business of a startup, so unless they have a CEO who gets distracted, any good leader will not take on 'external opportunities' from what they are doing right now - aka a marketing agency won't work on hopes and dreams - which is what this is right now. As a business owner, startup entrepreneur and leder of your team you have to make critical decisions and hiring and spending on marketing is one of them. For example, I would consider myself to be globally recognized ( not a lot but decently enough) on topics that revolve around marketing strategies - my suggestion to you would be to look into marketing agencies and hire them directly while you are also focusing your expertise (is it manufacturing? logistics? sales? what is it? focus on that and outsource/partner the rest such as for example you could look for an existing expert in cosmetic distribution or connections at some of the larger retailers, give them that structure (% equity + commission %) butkeep that that equity to a minimum (don't offer, ask for them to value their own worth and negotiate from there)

If you're willing to simply get by while you work on your dream, look for an opportunity to get paid to work on that dream. Look around. There are jobs that are incredibly boring and even afford the chance to read while you're on the job. That would be a great time for research, catching up on emails, etc Night watchmen, late night store clerk, overnight hotel front desk person. You see these roles all the time and hardly notice. Good luck David C Barnett

Yes; if you do a presale, those buyers will get the book immediately upon release. Include a message in either the front or back matter that encourages them to leave a review once they finish the book. You should also encounter them to join your mailing list, that way you can continue to build a relationship with them.

I will never recommend you to stop ever. Stopping is not the solution, pivot also may not be the solution. All you need is to 'Focus' and little motivation. You thought it right, you need a mentor, a consultant or a guide who can identify your strengths and let you focus upon it. A daily dose of motivation will take you towards your aim. You may talk to me if you need any further advise, I am expert into it. Many thanks Shishir

Impressions typically refer to the number of views or visits your profile or page received during a certain time period. For example, I received a few hundred impressions on my Clarity profile this past month, but as you may also see I don't get calls, that's because people email me or google me instead and reach out to me or my marketing agency www.unthink.me that way. If you are trying to grow calls, don't take that approach, instead consider SEO value, and see it as inbound generation. I get a lot of great results from Clarity, but I have been here since it launched. I have also been on Quora for a while now, just last month I received 4k+ views on my responses and profiles, but as far I know we haven't received leads from any of the answers I have published there, I know they are helping people because of the up likes and the follows and the number of views. Impressions are only basic data that make a larger picture - regardless of what you are expecting out your effort. :)

As an agent for 20 years, I have represented several life coaches. much of the 'niche' you create is based on your own personal life experience. for example, i worked with someone who started off teaching young men to have confidence. later he realized that what he had learned from all those coaching sessions is that he really understood how men worked. so he transitioned his coaching towards women and how they could improve their dating skills, because he had so much insight on the male human psyche. hope that helps, happy to discuss further. good luck.

Linux + MariaDB (Fast MySQL). Enterprise level throughput + scalability. Cost == $0. Well, cost included with whatever hosting you're using. I run a private hosting company. Some of my machines are running 250,000+ uniques/hour + have been for months. MariaDB can handle whatever load you throw at it... Well... so long as your coders know how to write high speed code. Most coders are clueless about this. Tip: Pay for expensive developers up front + you'll save huge amounts of money avoiding rewrites.

Likely you best rethink this. You've already used the work "employees", so you've already proved your workers aren't 1099 contractors. The rules a person must meet to be a 1099 contractor. 1) They have no supervision. 2) They have no set hours. For example, I have a 1099 contractor who runs one of my businesses. His direction is "get all the orders out as fast as you can." He has no set hours. He has no set workplace. Sometimes he works from his home, while he travels, sometimes in the business office. This is a true contractor. If you meet these criteria you're good. If not, you best search for what happened to Microsoft when they paid a bunch of employees on 1099 for years. When you read this suit, you'll be inspired to avoid their mistake.

You're going to want a comprehensive marketing strategy that determines where your likely customers spend their time online and you'll want to focus on one to two channels that you will work to their maximum benefit until you feel they are saturated. You probably also want to think about enabling technologies that will allow you to scale your inputs so you don't have to wear yourself out services clients while your business development suffers. There are a lot of "it depends" in your question. It's not enough to "find" if you don't have an engagement strategy of what you will do when you find them. I'd be happy to talk through this with you and point you in the right direction. All of my work is related to B2B sales of this nature.

At Gun.io we're about to replace our legacy home-grown system for these items with Hubspot. So far we are happy with it. It doesn't do _everything_ but it does enough and it's easy enough to use for non-technical staff. We got it up and running with about a month of dedicated work, mostly on developing the content.

Mistakes are good for those who learn from them but there is no logical explanation why you would choose to go through a long expensive and time consuming learning path filled with mistakes and 'lessons' when you can just learn as you go from an experienced individual who can help you reduce that path and minimize errors. When I was launching my first startup, I reached out to a few connections of mine, including Craig (from Craigslist) and Aaron (CEO of Jobing.com) - it was them two whom I worked with shortly and still failed that startup. It wasn't that the idea failed, but I learned so much on different perspectives that I completely abandoned what I had to refocus and launch a completely different business. Sold that business a few years later. When you reach to mentors however, it's important for you to consider their history, their connections, their level of involvement and the closeness to your own business model - have they launched something similar? do they own a business which you can partner with once you have built a relationship with this mentor and built a good product? Also, don't go with hard headed individuals who think they know best - no one knows best, what they are supposed to bring to the table is an experienced different perspective on the same situation you are going through now that they have gone through themselves - give you their perspective, introduce you to the right people, give advice and let you make your own decision with all things considered. I have a friend who launched a very innovative mobile app, I think it could be huge if well played, but due to them having influence from so many 'mentors' they screwed up their own growth and now the guys are doing 'marketing' to try to get revenue - not realizing that in it self is a business that distracts from the long term. My name is Humberto Valle, I'm the founder of Unthink, a digital marketing agency that is now globally known as the most helpful. If you would like to get in touch or need anything related to marketing please visit us at www.unthink.me.

Just do it. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Actual implementations are rare as Purple Lemmings. If you do something... anything... to move your startup to the first sale mark, you're well ahead of most. Only real consideration is massive action generates massive cash.

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl is the tool I use for this. You can download a single video or an entire playlist. You can also use Firefox + http://www.downloadhelper.net extension. The Downloadhelper extension also allows scraping HTS streams, by playing them + recording the stream + dumping the stream into a file.

First define what you mean by boosting + your goal of boosting. For example, if you're running paid traffic to your agency home page, consider if this is useful (monetizes). Likely best to "boost" (I'm guessing you mean running traffic to) artist pages + then have artist pages point to a category (containing related artists) + have category pages reference your home page. Google the term siloing for more information about various silo strategies. Start with how you expect to monetize your efforts + design your site silo.

Hey there - I work with entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley but mostly with what I call the Big Dreamers - people that would never be able to hold down a job, but can go out there and do something magical with their unusual talents. I am working on 2 books with different people, marketing their products with them and coaching Executives. Startups suck, man. Teams don't work, engineers don't stick around, you need connections for money and yes, it is risky. So what should you do? Three words: Online Home Business. Many examples exist of regular people - Dads, Moms, even teenagers - that started up a blog/website/social media/youtube channel with a passion of their own and posted fun, fresh, unique content regularly building an audience over time and making a tidy income - more than by driving for Uber or having a retail job. The best ones cross six figures and more with a little luck and good timing. I knew an example where this young man loved Disney and all things related - so he built a Disney fan website and got all this ad-click money plus affiliate marketing money and before he knew it he was on the news. So what's your burning interest? Let me help you figure it out and position yourself in a spot where you can actually still spend time with family and friends but live a comfortable lifestyle. I can help you understand your talents and how to relate them to the wide world out there! Call me and we can get started right away! Sincerely, Arjun Buxi

Hi, I've helped a lot of entrepreneurs with partner issues. The fact is that equity is divided in whatever way you negotiate. Rights such as first right of refusal are normally dealt with in the shareholder's agreement. Certain clauses or rights can certainly be unattractive to investors but these agreements can always be amended. Again, it's what you manage to negotiate for yourself. Arrange a call and I can help you with the specifics of your situation. You may find these two videos of mine informative: This one on partnership agreements https://youtu.be/WvLFlct227o and this one on share structures https://youtu.be/1EjKjSAd1F8 Cheers David Barnett