Posts Tagged ‘JJ Ramberg’
Win Big - Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:00 - 3 Comments
Start Small Win Big Finalists: They Started Small, But They’re on Their Way to Big
For eight weeks, from January to March, approximately 2,000 SUCCESS readers challenged themselves and their small businesses by participating in the 2nd annual Start Small Win Big contest. In April they submitted their results to the judging panel of SUCCESS editors and small-business expert JJ Ramberg, who hosts MSNBC’s Your Business, a weekly show devoted to small-business issues. Now, it’s complete. The judges have handpicked five finalists who are moving one step closer to the grand prize and making their small business go big.
Eight weekly assignments were sent out and posted on the SUCCESS blog—steps designed by Ramberg to help small-business owners recognize and understand what makes their businesses work and grow, and how they can succeed. With step-by-step instructions, tips and SUCCESS expert-driven articles as resources, the weekly assignments ranged from refining an elevator pitch to tapping networks and polishing social media strategy. (Read all the steps on SUCCESS.com).
The Challenge posed, well, challenges to each person and his or her business, but every week, the contestants dedicated themselves to grow, both in their business and in personal development. As in starting a business or running with a big idea, it took motivation and purpose to really carry out the Challenge’s goals.
Now, one of our handpicked list of five finalists will meet two distinguished mentors, Darren Hardy and JJ Ramberg, who have entrepreneurial expertise and know how to reach success, and will be featured prominently in the August 2013 issue. Two runners-up also will be featured in the magazine and each finalist will take home a SUCCESS Personal Development Prize Pack valued at up to $1,000.
Meet the five Start Small Win Big finalists, who we think have unbeatable potential to grow and reach true success—all from starting small. Choose your favorite by “liking” their photo on SUCCESS magazine’s Facebook page.
- Start Small Win Big: Your Next Steps
Can you believe it has already been eight weeks since we began the 2nd annual Start Small Win Big entrepreneur challenge? We can’t either. As the SUCCESS contest draws to a close, it’s time to evaluate your week-to-week homework assignments and draw conclusions that you can share in your Start Small Win Big final submission for [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 8 Action Plan
Step 8: Take a closer look at your social media strategy. Every business, no matter how big or small, should be on Facebook or Twitter. And if you’ve been participating in the ‘Start Small, Win Big’ entrepreneurial challenge, your small business is probably already active on both. There is, however, one common pitfall of many [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 7 Action Plan
Step 7: Tap your network. Your network is everything. It’s how you find good employees, figure out which lawyer to hire, and how you get people to take meetings with you. Ask any angel investor or venture capitalist and they’ll tell you that, nine times out of ten (or really 999 out of 1,000), they [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 6 Action Plan
Step 6: Put systems into place to keep your staff focused. When you’re just starting out a business, generally things work a little ad-hoc. There’s not much of a need for systems because it’s likely just one or two of you working together and so it’s relatively easy to keep track of everything. Also, it’s [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 4 Action Plan
Step 4: Understand your finances. A couple of months ago I spoke to a woman who owned a struggling stationery business and I asked her how much longer she thought she could survive based on how much cash she had available in her company. She looked at me like I had just landed from Mars. [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 3 Action Plan
Step 3: Look at metrics. It’s week three and it’s time to set tangible goals to measure your success. To set your goal, you need to know the key drivers of success for your business. For example, do you want to sell more products? Set your goal for increasing the number of units sold. Do [...]
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 2 Action Plan
Step 2: Keep it simple. A couple of years ago at my company Goodsearch.com, we started asking each other a simple question whenever we’d put together any marketing materials.It was: “Would Michael’s mother understand this?”
It turned out to be a great litmus test. So often, we make things more complicated than they need to be. It’s understandable. As small business owners, we’ve all worked hard on our offerings and are excited about every single feature we’ve developed—whether as part of a product or a service. It’s hard to imagine not including all of this in all of your materials. But, talking about too much gets confusing for an outsider who CONTINUE READING
- Start Small Win Big: Your Week 1 Action Plan
Start Small Win Big: Your Week 1 Action Plan
January 21, 2013
Editor’s note: This is the first of eight installments for SUCCESS’s 2nd annual Start Small Win Big entrepreneur challenge.
Welcome to the best eight weeks of your small business and welcome to Week 1! Let's get started with Step 1: Refine your elevator pitch.
This week’s assignment is to prepare five pitches– one that fills 20 seconds, one minute, five minutes, 20 minutes and one hour. Grab the notebook you'll use to collect your thoughts and assignments for this entrepreneurial challenge, and start writing with our tips below. Then, we encourage you to share your one minute pitch with us on the SUCCESS YouTube channel, where you’ll meet your fellow Start Small Win Big contestants. CONTINUE READING
- Running a Business is Hard. Here’s Help.
By now, I hope you’ve all read about SUCCESS’s 2nd Annual Start Small Win Big Entrepreneurial Challenge in the February 2013 issue. If you haven’t entered, well here’s my strong encouragement that you do.
Why? Well, running a small business is hard work. And, it’s difficult, when you have so much going on — from developing your product or service, to selling it, to dealing with your finances, to figuring out who is going to take out the trash — to find the time to step back and really think about what triggers you need to pull to make your company a success. This eight-week contest gives you an excuse to do just that.
You can find the first article announcing the contest and giving you some tips to get you on your way on SUCCESS.com.
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