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7 Tips for Startups & Small Businesses from Our First 200 Posts!

August 2nd, 2010 | KikScore & KikReport,Small Business,Small Business Tips | 1 Comment »

On Friday, we passed the 200 blog post mark on the KikScore blog.  For us folks that are working on the blog on nights and weekends, I think that is a pretty special achievement seeing that we hit that 200 posts mark in well under a year’s time since this blog was launched late in 2009!  So to my fellow writers, I say thanks and great job.  But much more importantly to our readers and the community we say thanks.  We hope that the next 200 posts will be even better.

So to mark this occasion I thought it would be nice to give some our our tips and lessons learned for small businesses and startups through our prior posts.  So here they go.

1) Stay Positive & Remember Why You Are In Business – The road for small businesses or startups is paved with many roadblocks.  The key is to keep your chin up and do not let those obstacles get you down.  To that point, we talk about the continual need for small businesses and startups to be optimistic in a post that makes its point from a spilled margarita.  Also in addition to staying positive, it is important that you remind yourself why you are on this entrepreneurs journey.  We actually discuss that need to keep in mind the influences of the entrepreneurial spirit in your day to day business.

2) Launch Early – Every startup engages in that internal discussion of when should we launch our product and when is it really ready?  For every startup it is a little different, but I think we would likely come out on the side of launching as early as you can.  We actually discuss this debate about when is the time to launch your new product and whether you should wait until it is just right.

3) Get & Act on Customer Feedback – As a small business or a startup, it is critical that you have the tools to gather customer feedback.  But perhaps just as importantly, you business needs to analyze and then act on that feedback. This is a post that describes some of the tools that are available for getting customer feedback.  Also we laid it bare to give you an idea about how we were looking at customer feedback when it came to our own KikScore product features.

4) Stay Focused & Have a Plan – With so many distractions for your startup or your small business, it is often a challenge staying focused.  We covered steps to address this issue with two posts that highlighted ways to stay focused with an analogy to the great SNL skit “More Cowbell” and tangible actions that your company can take to keep your team focused.

5) Have the Right Team – This point is so important because without the right team, a company will fail.  The right players, in the right position with the right game plan help increase the chances for startup and small business success.  These points were highlighted in our posts about the US World Cup Team, building the right team, lessons from team building from the NFL Draft, and learnings from the recent Lebron James fiasco.

6) Be a Leader and Roll Up Your Sleeves –  Following on the right team, each of the team players in a startup or small business need to be leaders and be proactive, relentless and constantly trying to push the business forward in big ways!  Wall flowers are generally not the best for startup and small business teams, instead you have to be able to wear multiple hats, improvise when necessary, be creative and always be aggressive.  Our two part series on small business and startup leadership discussed this important topic in more detail here and here.

7) ABP – Always Be Pitching – Our tips to startup and small business is get out there and talk about your business, your product, and get feedback.  Do not be one of those people that is always talking about themselves, but at the appropriate times at networking events, with contacts, with key players and potential mentors talk about your business so you can get different ideas and also potentially get introductions to people and companies that can help you build and grow your company.  We had posts on this topic about elevator pitches and again an internal lesson at KikScore we learned from talking to people titled, Why Didn’t We Think of That?.

We have many more posts and hope to have many more in the future. Please let us know if you have any thoughts or tips for small businesses and startups!

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One Response

  1. BizSugar.com says:

    7 Tips for Startups & Small Businesses from Our First 200 Posts!…

    We have officially passed the 200 post on the KikScore blog in well less than a year. This post includes 7 management and strategy tips for Startups & Small Businesses from our first 200 Posts!…

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