Starting Your Own Business with Successful Entrepreneur Erica Douglass

Erica’s note: Several members of my community recently asked me how to hire a virtual assistant. I figured an awesome virtual assistant would be the best person to answer your questions, so I invited Laurie Cantus from YourGoToGirls to write a guest post. If you have more questions, make sure to check out her free teleseminar–the link to sign up is at the bottom of this post. Here’s Laurie: (more…)

Let’s hope you never get this guy as your
customer. But when you do, here’s what to do. Erica’s note: I’m at BlogWorld Expo for the next few days. I figured this would be a great opportunity to introduce you to a new blogger who is an amazing writer. His name is Alex Wu and he recently quit his job as an economist to become a professional psychic intuitive and blogger at IntuitiveWu.com. Here is his guest post:

As you become increasingly successful in your business, you will likely become a target of criticism and attack. People you don’t even know may leave nasty comments on your blog, send you highly critical emails, or even post article-length personal attacks directed at you on their blogs.

You’ve worked hard building your success from the ground up. After all that you’ve been through, being the target of attacks and criticism feels like a slap in the face. (more…)

Wow, it’s October! It seems like I just wrote my July update. Here’s what I have been working on in the past quarter, as well as those much-requested income numbers.

(If you’re new here, welcome! I set 3-5 major goals every year publicly on my blog and update my progress every quarter. Here are my goals for 2010.) (more…)

“What do you think of this idea for my new startup?”
“Eh, yeah, it sounds pretty interesting.”

Ever heard this before? If you have, your startup may be barking up the wrong tree. (more…)

The hiring process — hiring employees — is an incredibly difficult, time-consuming process. It’s only slightly less painful than firing employees (or laying them off…sadly, I’ve had to do both.)

Which is why, as entrepreneurs, we tend to put hiring employees off until the point where the business is breaking down. You know that point…when papers are flying off your desk and you’re getting past-due notices and the phone is ringing off the hook and someone is yelling at you and then, only then, do you look up from it all and think “Oh, God, I could really use an assistant right now.”

That happens to be exactly the worst time to hire someone.

Today, I want to share a different perspective on hiring. Hopefully, this will motivate you to hire someone before the crap hits the fan and you decide you’ve really picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. (more…)