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One thing I’ve noticed on the rise in my chosen field of real estate is the use of teams. Born in the mid-1990s to compete with individual agents, there are now between 35,000 and 60,000 active units working in 2016 according to research done for our 2017 Swanepoel Trends Report.

Still, real estate team-building isn’t without its potential barriers, including an absence in standard industry norms. But these aren’t exclusive to real estate teams; any time a group succeeds, managing those wins and the growth that comes with them presents added complexities.

Team dynamics, structure, and drivers remain fairly consistent no matter the team size. For leaders making the leap from smaller teams to larger factions, it’s important to pro...

We’ve all been to networking events where we’re bored to tears by the same mindless conversations. You swap credentials (and probably a few not-so-humblebrags), but the connection never goes beyond skimming the surface.

Networking is the first step of building a professional community, but you need to develop meaningful relationships to actually make an impact. In their book, “Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter,” Young Entrepreneur Council co-founders Scott Gerber and Ryan Paugh advocate for a move beyond the typical boring, dead-end interactions.

In the chaos and noise of the social media age, the demand for authentic, credible voices — otherwise known as superconnectors — is at an a...

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

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I was having a second coffee with an ex student, now the head of a marketing inside a rapidly growing startup. His company had marched through customer discovery, learning about the customer problem, validated solutions and was now scaling sales and marketing. All good news.

But he was getting uneasy that as his headcount was growing the productivity of his marketing department seemed to be rapidly declining.

I wasn’t surprised. When organizations are small (startups, small teams in companies and government agencies) early employees share a mission (why they come to work, what they need to do while they are at work, and how they will know they have succeeded). But...

Do you have a startup business and are looking for an effective online team to keep it rolling?

You have probably been thinking about how you are in need of hiring affordable, reliable talent for your company. However, a lot of startup business owners fall into the same old traps when hiring effective remote workers for their business, causing their company to slow down on the road to success.

There are five top mistakes business owners make when looking to build an effective online team. I want to discuss how you can avoid these mistakes and create the dream team for your business as quickly as possible. Then you can begin building your business on a foundation of great workers.

#1 – You Don’t Know What You Need Outsourced

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Much talk has been thrown around regarding the importance of diversity; however, as Dave McClure of 500 Startups noted, “There’s a soft bias toward doing things that are familiar.” In general, that means statistically more “white male nerds” get hired and receive funding “–I think we are making progress,” Dave said, “Now it’s brown and yellow nerds that get funding.”

As a small startup, your first hire can make or break your team, and as teams grow, there is a natural tendency to bring on people who remind you of yourself. What are actual ways to make sure you are hiring a diverse team in backgrounds as well as skillsets?

SheWorx recently attended the Uber x Vettery Women in Tech event with:

• Alexandra Wilkis Wilson (Co-Founder...

When you meet someone, you know whether there’s a connection. Shared experiences, interests, and values can quickly bond total strangers.

Brands aren’t people, of course, but branding is about humanizing a brand in a way that helps consumers connect with it.

Today, brand authenticity and trust top shoppers’ priority lists. Sixty-four percent say shared values influence their authentic brand relationships, and 63 percent prefer to buy from brands they perceive as honest.

Just look at Warby Parker. “We believe everyone has the right to see,” its slogan proclaims. By selling designer frames with a socially conscious and a frictionless customer experience, the scrappy eye wear brand found friends in an overpriced, impers...

“Mom, I want to become an entrepreneur just like you.” How would these words make you feel? Or maybe you’ve already heard them. If so, how did you react? At first, you probably felt proud. Not only does your child look up to you, but he or she is also eager to learn about business at a young age. While typical kids are playing video games, yours is planning for the future — and that’s impressive.

But then, the nerves probably kicked in. What if, after pouring tons of time, effort, and emotion into building a company, things just don’t work out? The disappointment could be devastating to your child.

I was in fourth grade when I told my entrepreneurial parents that I, too, wanted to become an entrepreneur. First,...

As we build out our early-stage product (and find great folks to Alpha Test it) we’re naturally working on all of the things related to the back-end (e.g. data, modeling, etc.) as well as the front-end (e.g. design, UI/UX, etc.).

The exciting and yet challenging thing at this point is that we have a completely carte blanche environment and anything that we do initially isn’t inherently wrong or qualitatively bad.

Of course, on the flip-side, we can’t be sure that we’re doing anything right or well either. The only answer, of course, is the combination of rapid experimentation in conjunction with early customer interviews, which is what great startups will do naturally.

Some of the most poignant and powerful lessons-learned so far have also...

In case you were hiding under a rock, or happened to have plans this week, we hosted a Live Event and Q&A with Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal. The event was in partnership with General Assembly and Yahoo Small Business, and gave our audience a front row seat to the future of tech.

Peter discussed the state of entrepreneurship and how to build a business that hasn’t been built before. He emphasized the need to escape the rat race of competition and tackled tough questions from startup founders and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Check out the video and get an insider view into the mind of a man that has co-founded and founded billion dollar businesses, and had the vision to be the first outside investor in Facebook.

Jim Hendrickson has successfully started 4 companies and he has bought and sold 7 more, consistently building them to the double digits in sales and returns. He sat down with us last week during a Clarity Live session and gave us his best advice on why it is important to build an exit strategy. Below are some of his tips on the art of successful exits:

Exit strategies improve the odds of success for a business. Whether it be liquidation, selling the business, an acquisition, or an IPO, it is important to think about your exit ahead of time, and doing so will lead to improvements in many other areas of your company.

Management

Exit strategies can help conquer and shine a light on bad management situations. Understanding how you want to exit ...