Starting Your Own Business with Successful Entrepreneur Erica Douglass

In early June, I embarked on a radical experiment: I gave up email for 30 days. Here are my results…

When I started the trial, I felt completely overwhelmed by email, and I just wanted a way out. I was waking up every morning to an incessant barrage of PR people, sales letters, chain emails, people wanting me to write about their product, companies wanting me to promote them without compensation, and–generally–a bunch of junk. Not “spam”, really, because it was sent by real people (sadly.) But a ridiculous pile of useless crap that wasn’t easily filtered.

Since my email address is public, and my blog is popular, it seemed like every day I’d end up on some list that I didn’t ask to be on. People would sign my email address up for everything from political updates to PR posts about seemingly random companies sent from a “do not reply” address.

In short, my email inbox was a micro-Hell waiting for me every morning. (more…)

I’ve lived in California for my entire adult life, beginning way back when I was a naive 18-year-old living in the dorms of San Jose State University. (Talk about culture shock…coming from a small farm town in Indiana to the inner city of downtown San Jose!)

In 2009, after living in the Bay Area for nearly 10 years, I decided I wanted a change of pace. San Diego called my name, and I’ve been here since. But now I’m ready to move on…and I’m sad to say the reason why. (more…)

There is a complete disconnect between people ages 18-25 and the people who hire them (employers–that’s us!) This is a huge problem–one that we as employers need to recognize, and respect, before we lose an entire generation of young workers.

What’s Wrong With Us?

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Something has to change, because this is killing me. It’s taking over my life, and it’s slowly but surely sucking my soul away. And yet, getting rid of it may prove to be one of the most difficult feats I’ve ever attempted.

Before I tell you what it is, let me share with you a typical day in my life as of right now. I want to show you exactly what the hell is that I’m going through. (more…)

How to hire an employee. I’ve spoken a lot about hiring employees here on erica.biz, and why it’s so important to start hiring early, especially if you are just starting out and you don’t have a lot of free time to pursue your business. But many people I speak to don’t know how to hire an employee.

With this post, I’ll take hiring an employee step-by-step and show you exactly how I hired someone to help me out at home. (more…)