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Thelonious Monk was a fantastic jazz musician, and an amazing band leader. Did he run a tech startup? No. But he could have with all these words of wisdom.

It’s a no B.S. manifesto. Each gig, each song, and each band mate was mission critical to Monk. And our startups need to be treated the same way. It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness. But as founders we have to gather, support, and grow great teams or risk losing the whole endeavor.

Below is Monk’s complete, original list of advice for band members. But let me break it down for you and swap a few musical references with the proper modern startup terminology.

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT A [JOB TITLE], DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IT.

So many of us founders debate ov...

Ask any startup marketer out there and they’ll tell you: email marketing is the gold standard of early-stage marketing strategies. If marketing is the car that gets your company where it needs to go, email marketing is the Volvo. It’s affordable, it’s reliable, and it’s known for unbeatable performance.

“Email marketing is the best and most affordable way to market anything to any audience, and in a highly personal way.” says Cyberwalker Digital Founder (and email marketing expert) Andy Walker. “The return on investment is better than any other technique to reach customers. And it works for brand building and generating direct sales.”

But let’s not kid ourselves: email marketing strategy is notoriously difficult to get rig...

You could be a video marketing rockstar. Just imagine it. Using a combination of animated brand overview videos, live-action vlog posts, high-quality screencast tutorials—and much more—you regularly deliver visual content that educates and entertains your potential customers and keeps them coming back for more.

Doesn’t sound half bad, does it?

But let’s be realistic. You’re more likely the “one hit wonder” equivalent of video marketing. Maybe you’ve got that sweet animated explainer video on your landing page, or perhaps you’ve got a handful of live-action client interviews collecting dust on your testimonials page. And that’s it. You stopped there.

Don’t get me wrong – these are good things, and even if you did stop with just one killer la...

When people talk about the transformative innovations shaping business in the 21st century, you may hear them talk about the influence of automation or the impact of increasing globalization. But one of the most revolutionary aspects of the digital revolution often goes unmentioned: social media.

Because so many of us tweet and post and share day in and day out on our personal accounts, it’s easy to think that social media is… well… easy.

But social media has completely transformed the way businesses connect with their audiences. And as any Founder who has struggled and failed to drum up an online audience for their brand can tell you, effective social media strategy is deceptively hard to get right. It takes a delicate balance of str...

It’s one of the oldest truths in marketing: in order to get customers’ attention, you have to live where your customers live. And today more than ever before, where customers live is on social media.

According to a study by marketing firm MediaKix, the average person spends 2 hours per day on social platforms. As the post helpfully points out, that amounts to 5 years and 4 months over a lifetime – enough time to fly to the moon and back 32 times or run 10,000 marathons.

With numbers like that, it’s no wonder that paid social media advertising has supplanted radio and possibly even television as the new darling of the advertising world. Mediakix predicts that social media advertising spend will hit close to $36 billion globally in 2017, and ...

People are constantly bombarded with ads in their day-to-day lives, and as a result, they’ve learned to tune them out. The same is true of sales pitches. Even when we’re forced to sit through them, we’re naturally on the defensive, which is why it’s important to replace the traditional sales pitch with a more personal, client-focused experience.

For any business development strategy to reach its full potential, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the customer or company you’re selling to and understand their goals and objectives. What are their needs, and can you adeptly provide a solution without causing friction? Instead of taking the approach of a hammer seeking a nail, look at the problem your customer is facing and tailor your sol...

They say nothing worth having comes easy – and that definitely holds up when it comes to acquiring customers for your startup.

Customer acquisition doesn’t just happen. Customers don’t just fall into your lap, ready to hand over their money. A customer’s business isn’t something that is owed to you – it’s an honor that has to be earned.

In a lot of ways, says growth marketer and Ghost Influence Founder Brian Swichkow, customer acquisition is a lot like going on a date. “The internet is the bar. Your website is your house. Your email list is your bedroom. Customer acquisition is, well… you know,” he says.

Cue the Marvin Gaye song.

So what does it take to, ahem, close the deal with respect to acquiring customers? Brian joins us to explore jus...

Everyone knows brand building is an essential component of building a company. “That’s not on brand,” you hear people say. Or: “This is going to be great for our brand.”

There’s brand essence, brand style, brand ambassadors, brand story…. But, when it comes to defining what a brand is – let alone how you build one – things start to get a little murky.

What is a brand?

Part of that stems from a confusion between two similar, related, yet distinct terms: branding and brand.

Your company’s “branding” refers to the collection of visual and verbal assets associated with your company. That includes things like your logo, color scheme, messaging platform. These are the cues that signal to customers that they’re interacting with your company.

Your...

As a bootstrapper, I had a complicated relationship with the topic of acquisitions. I rejected the idea that an Exit Strategy was an important part of running a great business.

First, I believe that entrepreneurs are conditioned by our media, society, peers and their investors (if they have them), to think that selling their business is the ultimate manifestation of success.

Now that I have experienced the arc of scaling a profitable business and achieving a positive cash exit, I see the alternatives to selling more clearly.

On the one hand, I have appreciation for the commitment and vision it takes to turn down a lucrative, flattering, possibly life-changing offer in exchange for continuing to roll the dice and play the game.

On the other ...

If starting a company is a race (and it is – it really, really is) then launch day is the starting line.

Everything you do before your product launch is the warm-up. (The very essential, very unskippable warmup). Everything that comes after? It’s the frantic, mad dash to the finish line, whatever and wherever that might be.

Your product launch is the inflection point. It’s the point to which everything before it leads up, and everything that comes after comes out of. And a successful product launch starts with a successful product launch strategy.

We all want our product to start out of the gate strong. But what exactly goes into a successful product launch? Stuart Brent, Co-Founder of MapPlug, has an idea or two on the subject. Not only h...