Lean business practices
Lean Marketing: Five Cheap Ways To Market Your Startup
Ross | March 28th, 2011Every startup wants to get attention for their product or service. But it’s not easy for a young company to get attention, and can often be very expensive. In this short video, I offer five suggestions to help you get attention for your startup. Do you have other suggestions of ways startups can get attention [...]
Lean Marketing: Customer service strategies for small businesses and startups
Mike | March 14th, 2011Of the many things businesses can do well (or fail at) none is more important than customer service. Although the marketing textbooks, don’t consider it to be one aspect of a solid marketing plan, this key function should be considered as a part of your marketing and approached the same way you would approach any [...]
Tips for Creatives to Succeed on crowdSPRING
Audree | January 31st, 2011Hello Creatives! I’ve been hanging around cS since September of ’08 – first as a creative, then as a member of the crew. I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned about how to find success when participating here on cS. I was a designer, but much of this information will apply to [...]
Lean Marketing 101: Setting Goals
Ross | January 18th, 2011A few weeks ago, I wrote about Lean Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses and Startups. That post resonated with small business owners and entrepreneurs looking for inexpensive ways to market their businesses. Many asked if we could share more lean marketing strategies and tips. Today’s post starts a new series in the crowdSPRING Blog – Lean [...]
Traveling lean: tips for small businesses and entrepreneurs
Mike | January 17th, 2011(Fortunately) we don’t have to travel a great deal here at crowdSPRING; we do the bulk of our communication with partners, funders, and customers over the phone, via email, or on Skype. However, when we do travel we are ever constrained by our limited travel budget, over-extended scheduling, and our pesky insistence on convenience, creature [...]
Ten small business tax planning tips for 2010!
Mike | December 20th, 2010Well it’s that merry time of year again. We’re gonna rest a bit, enjoy the slow pace for the next couple of weeks, take the opportunity hang out with friends and family, perhaps even sip an egg nog. Let’s see now, what else are we looking forward to? Ah yes – tax planning! The end [...]
Tips for small business: 7 biases that can effect your decision making
Mike | October 18th, 2010Einstein once said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” Common sense, Einstein was arguing, can often be the enemy of rationality, science, and fact-based decision-making. We are all guilty of this; every day our decisions are tinged by favoritism, rules of thumb, partiality, heuristics, predilection; call it what you will [...]
How I Stay Efficient – My Three Hour Rule
Ross | February 16th, 2010Some people are more efficient than others. There are many reasons for this: ability to focus, complexity of the work, distractions, etc. But while some have unique skills and intellect to get things done quickly, most people must develop systems to help them improve their efficiency and balance many diverse tasks. Some rely on to-do [...]
