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Empower Your Team to Be More Productive with This Intuitive Tool

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Whether you’re a team of two or 2,000, monday.com can help your business cultivate a transparent and collaborative environment.


3 min read

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.


A successful business is sort of like a Big Mac in that it relies on a secret sauce to pull all the fixins together. In this case, that “secret sauce” comes in the form of effective, teamwide collaboration and communication.

Teams can take all sorts of approaches to concocting the metaphorical sauce recipe that works best for them. As a manager, maybe you organize bi-weekly check-in meetings, send out teamwide progress emails every morning, organize daily scrums and communications training sessions, or abide by an open-door policy to encourage transparency. And to be sure, all of these approaches can improve collaboration so that you make deadlines and centralize workplace processes. But are they really unlocking your team’s true potential for productivity in the most intuitive, convenient sense?

Say hello to monday.com, the team management tool that can help you do just that. The platform was launched in 2014 with the intention of fostering a culture where team members aren’t just productive, but feel like they’re part of something bigger than their job description. This sense of ownership and empowerment cultivates a productive environment where individuals stay engaged and on top of their work, all while using a product they love.

To see its vision through, monday.com places both teamwide projects and individual duties on a simple (but not simplified) task board that serves as a beautiful, centralized space for managing and streamlining different workflows. Tasks’ progress are visualized as colorful columns, which can be tagged to monitor progress and inscribed with notes for additional context. You’re also given the option of integrating other productivity services like Dropbox, Slack, Google Calendar, and Trello within monday.com to further streamline your workflow and organize your files. (Custom integrations can be set up, too — just reach out to one of monday.com’s certified partners for more information and a quote.)

Image Credit: monday.com

monday.com’s format is unique in that everyone gets the same view, which increases transparency for employees, allows managers to easily distribute resources, and — perhaps most importantly — breaks down silos between different departments. With monday.com, you’re not just collaborating on initiatives, but fostering a culture where everyone feels invested in them.

So go ahead — scrap those clunky Excel files, put the whiteboard in storage, and cancel tedious team meetings that no one actually finds useful. Whether you’re a team of two freelancers or a global institution of more than 2,000 individuals, tech-savvy or otherwise, you’ll be able to see the big picture on monday.com’s beautiful, flexible, and scalable dashboard.

By signing up for monday.com, you’ll join a community of more than 35,000 paying teams, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, that includes the likes of NBC, WeWork, and Uber. Don’t misconstrue those big names for a hefty price tag, though, because you can start using monday.com today for free.

Think monday.com is the right team management tool for you? Create your account to begin your free two-week trial.

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Startup Life Cycle in One Chart

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Startup Life Cycle in One Chart

Small business startups go through a typical life cycle of three stages.  I’ve observed this startup lifecycle time and again. In fact, I have gone through it myself.

If we recognize the three stages, it’s the first step to getting through them successfully.

Before I go further, let me say I’m not talking about the standard development stages of a high growth startup. Venture capitalists and entrepreneurship professors often talk about this.  But they are thinking about the Facebooks, Googles and Ubers of the world.

I’m referring to small business startups — the ones you and I and millions of the rest of us start. Our small businesses have a life cycle, too.

And while the first and last stages are great, the middle stage is not always pretty.

Defining the Startup Life Cycle

It helps to understand a small business life cycle by reflecting on a law of physics: the first law of motion.

The first law of motion is a principle identified by Sir Issac Newton centuries ago. You’ve probably heard of Newton’s first law, paraphrased as:

“A body at rest tends to remain at rest. A body in motion tends to remain in motion. “

Sound familiar?  This is describing inertia and momentum.

In the simplest terms, when it comes to business:

Momentum = good

Inertia = bad

Inertia is a major obstacle to success in a small business startup.  It’s not helpful in any business. But it impacts startups and small businesses to a greater degree.

Why? It’s because we have fewer resources available to combat it.

After the initial rush of starting the business, we reach a point where we max out our resources. We’ve dug deep. We’ve squeezed out every last ounce of energy and resources.  And suddenly we have no more to give. We have no more money, no more people, no more time to put into our businesses.  Yes, we’ve used it all up.

Simply put, we get stuck. After the initial excitement of getting the business off the ground, we can’t seem to make forward progress. We can’t seem to get big things moving again.

Our businesses become like boulders chained to our ankles.  We push and we pull. That boulder budges a few feet but it doesn’t roll along the way we want.  If you are a hard charger or Type A personality, it gets frustrating.

Oh, we’re busy — we’re slammed.  We may be profitable and able to make payroll.  That’s not the issue.

Rather, everything starts to feel hard.  Growth doesn’t come as easily as we want it to.

We struggle to make forward progress in our business growth, profitability and success.  We feel mired down, like wading through mud.

That’s inertia we’re battling. In fact, inertia is a natural part of the startup life cycle.

As I said at the beginning of this article, most of us as entrepreneurs go through these three stages in starting and operating a small business.

Let’s walk through the three stages, so you know what to expect.  And if you are in one of the stages currently, see if the experience sounds familiar.

Startup Stage 1:  Launch

We start out with grand plans.  We entrepreneurs have big ideas and we’re bursting with energy at first.

After all, we’ve created something from nothing.  We’ve done more than most people will ever do. We took a leap, started a business and got it off the ground.

When I first started my business, I had so much energy I had difficulty channeling it.  I loved my business  so much!  I was ready to take on the world.

And if I was gone from my business, I couldn’t wait to get back.  I probably spent too many hours on it. But it was a labor of love.

Other entrepreneurs I’ve talked with describe a similar experience.  We’re all filled with excitement when we first start a business.  It’s almost like going through a manic episode (but in a positive way).  We’re focused and we’re on fire.

We’re all Davids ready to trounce Goliath!

Startup Stage 2:  Trough of Reality

While the launch phase is exciting, at some point we fall into … the Trough of Reality.

To describe this stage, I have to give a nod to the Gartner Hype Cycle.  The Hype Cycle is famous in business circles for describing the growth of new technologies.  After the initial peak of excitement and high expectations, at some point the new technology hits the “trough of disillusionment.”  That’s the point when:

  • Interest in the new technology starts to wane.
  • Expectations get scaled back.
  • Some producers of the technology fail.

It’s quite similar in a small business.  But in the case of business owners, it’s not so much disillusionment. It’s that we come face to face with reality.

The Trough of Reality is the point where we start to get customers. By this point we probably have employees or outsourced workers and services.

All our energy gets caught up in day-to-day work.  We are buried in minutiae.  We have bills to pay; a payroll to meet.

In short, we’re no longer just dreaming about a business. Now we have to operate it. Yikes!!!

Owners end up with a classic case of working IN the business when they should be working ON it.

My own business went through the Trough of Reality. There were several years where it seemed like we merely existed. Yes, we squeezed out a profit.

But as I look back, those years were a struggle. I did a lot of freelance writing and consulting work on the side to subsidize growing my digital publishing company.  Twelve hour days – heck 14 hour days — were nothing.

We survived, of course. After 15 years we’re still here — and thriving.  But back then I worried a lot. I wasn’t having fun. And it took all my energy.

Some businesses wallow in the Trough of Reality for years.  They manage to pay the bills, but growth is slow.

But even if you don’t want growth — let’s say you are a self-employed freelancer content to stay at a steady pace of work — your quality of life suffers. You may personally feel beaten down by business pressures.

Call it burnout, call it exhaustion, call it lack of motivation. You long to spend more time with family, or on hobbies or outside interests. Yet you just can’t work up much extra energy for your business or your life.

As owners, our businesses start to feel like that boulder chained to our ankle. And the boulder is barely moving.  It’s hard to get that boulder rolling along steadily again.

Startup Stage 3:  Momentum!

The good news is, there comes a stage where things turn around. It is when you feel like everything “clicks.”  Your business starts firing on all cylinders. Amazing things happen.

Business picks up. Sales roll in faster and more consistently. Revenue seems to take less effort to generate.

  • If you have a team, they are able to operate on their own. They start coming up with new ideas you never would have thought of.  Your people make more of the decisions. They achieve things without you being involved in every detail.
  • If you are a solo owner or freelancer, you develop systems that enable you to manage it all better. That word of mouth you developed through the first two stages of your business?  It now starts to generate sales steadily. You learn how to say no and focus your time to get the highest psychological and financial rewards.

At this stage of the small business life cycle, the owner can start taking longer vacations and holidays.

Your days feel more rewarding — less of a drag. You have more energy, or so it seems.

Your creativity peeks through once again. You experience renewed interest in a hobby or activity you used to love.

In short, you’ve broken through inertia. The boulder (i.e., the business you’ve built) now starts moving along of its own momentum.

How did you you do it?  By sticking with it. By continuing to come to work everyday.

You did it by making daily decisions. Perhaps you hired the right person here or there to help.  You discovered new tools to drive efficiency. You put systems and processes in place in your business.

Your offerings are now proven. And you’ve built up a customer base.

Most of all, you’ve learned valuable lessons. You know what to do and what not to do — the lessons of experience. That makes things easier and more rewarding.

The combined force of all these things helps break through inertia.

The momentum is back.

And it’s a wonderful feeling!

The Startup Lifecycle Makes You Stronger!

If you are currently in the Trough of Reality, you are not alone.  Others are at that stage with you.

That’s important to recognize.  It’s easier to get through a challenging time if you know it’s not unique to you.

Millions of your peers got through that phase of the startup lifecycle. They survived and thrived.  You too can get through it.  And when you do, you and your small business will emerge all the stronger for it.

Like the old saying by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

This article, “Startup Life Cycle in One Chart” was first published on Small Business Trends



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The One-Stop-Shop Platform for Your Online Course Business

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Image Source: Pexels on Pixabay

If you’re running a business selling online courses, you can’t help but wear a myriad of hats. Depending on the phase you’re in with your business, you’d have to be the marketer, the product creator, community manager, web developer, and more. It can be overwhelming to say the least. That is why, if you want to streamline and optimize your online course business, you need a tried and tested online tool—one that can accommodate your growing needs as a business owner. Kajabi is one such tool.

The platform is often touted as a one-stop-shop solution, an all-in-one tool for online business owners, or an all-encompassing software to run a digital business. For this reason, we decided to check it out to see if it lives up to the hype.

The result? We were super impressed with what we saw. Therefore, if you’re thinking of starting an online course business (or you’re already running one), you need to check out what Kajabi has to offer.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: TIPS FOR CREATING A SUSTAINABLE HOME BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

 

Overview of Kajabi

kajabi 1

Kajabi is a knowledge commerce platform that empowers thousands of people to share and monetize their knowledge.

Through Kajabi, you can create websites, manage your users, market your business, create your products, and more. Moreover, industry leaders such as Chalene Johnson, Brendon Burchard, and Billy Gene use this platform.

 

Kajabi’s Key Features

Kajabi’s features can be grouped into four main categories: website creation, product creation, community management and marketing. Here’s how each one works.

 

1. Website Creation

The platform allows you to create websites for your online course business. Moreover, you could create a website for almost any type of online business with this platform. Through the site, you can create landing pages, homepages, static pages, a blog section, and so on.

Because Kajabi’s Premiere Framework theme allows you to customize your website into a myriad of layouts, you can create a beautiful site for your online course business in minutes.

Additionally, Kajabi has several pre-made layout presets available that users can choose from. Once you have chosen a layout preset, you can start adding content and customizing the theme’s styles.

kajabi 2

This is a screenshot of Kajabi’s website creation page.

 

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Here’s how it looks when you edit your pages using Kajabi’s editor.

 

2. Product Development

There are numerous product types that you can create through Kajabi. Among the many products are mini-courses, evergreen courses, email marketing courses, and evergreen training.

And because of Kajabi’s pre-made product templates, users can upload online course content without having to do much setup.

You can set your price, create offers, encourage upsells, and even send automated emails to people who abandon your checkout pages.

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This is Kajabi’s blank template for creating products.

 

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Here’s Kajabi’s Mini Course template for creating products.

 

3. Community Management

Kajabi’s People tab houses a good bit of its community management features. For example, it can show you the purchases made by a specific user and when they joined your community. In addition, you can offer them discounts, send them passwords, and so on.

 

4. Marketing

You can run email marketing campaigns, publish blog posts, set up automations, and even create events through Kajabi. These are just some of the platform’s main marketing features. What’s more, Kajabi even allows you to collect payments from your customers.

Another Kajabi marketing feature that’s worth mentioning is that they allow their users to create pipelines. They even have several pre-made pipelines:

  • Freebie
  • Sales Page OVO (Opt-in Value Offer)
  • Product Launch OVO
  • Coaching Campaign OVO

With these pipeline templates, you won’t have to set up your marketing funnels from scratch. You just need to pick a template, customize it, and add your content. Of course, if your funnel is a bit more complicated and none of the templates on the site fit what you’re looking for, you can also create your funnel from scratch.

kajabi 6

One of Kajabi’s key marketing features is the email sequence.

 

Minimal Learning Curve

From the Kajabi dashboard, all the way to the specific feature that you’re looking to use, you’ll notice immediately how easy it is to figure out how the platform works.

For instance, you’ll see all the key functions categorized and bundled up in one place. Moreover, even the words they use to label and describe their features are easy to understand.

Kajabi 7

Here’s a screenshot of Kajabi’s dashboard.

As you can see from the screen captures, it’s very easy to understand how the tool works. Even someone who’s fairly new in the platform will have a good idea of what they’re supposed to do on the pages they’re on.

When you think about how the knowledge commerce industry is often visited by people who want to make money out of their passion—but aren’t necessarily exposed to the workings of digital marketing—it’s crucial for them to have a platform that they can understand and use to monetize their passion.

 

Customer Support and Training Materials

However, if you do happen to come up against a roadblock and you need help with your Kajabi account, you’ll be happy to know that Kajabi offers a myriad of support options:

  • 24/7 Chat Support
  • Knowledge Base
  • Phone Support
  • Video Tutorials
  • FAQs

 

Pricing

For as little as $149 per month, you can sign up for Kajabi’s basic package to start using the tool.

This gives you access to a good bit of Kajabi’s most useful features to help you run a successful online course business. For example, you’ll immediately gain access to creating landing pages, pipelines, your website, marketing emails, and so on.

However, if you’d like more advanced features, you can opt for Kajabi’s Growth Package at $199 per month, or the Pro Package at $399 per month.

Simply click this link to learn more about Kajabi’s pricing packages and their features.

 

What’s Next?

Because of the multifaceted nature of running an online course business, you need to have a reliable online tool, a tool that can cater to your needs.

Kajabi’s numerous features are geared toward helping you advance, organize, and streamline your online course business. Accordingly, you no longer need to sign up for various third-party apps. Kajabi has everything you need and then some.

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5 Tips for Getting More Online Reviews for Your Small Business

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A good old-fashioned ‘thank you’ online or in person goes a long way toward convincing customers to give you ‘stars.’


6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


Is your small business struggling to get reviews online? It’s hard to compete with the big guys who have hundreds, even thousands, of amazing online reviews about their products and/or services. And that fact is made all the more important because these days, almost nobody buys something without first checking out the online reviews.

Related: Online Reviews Are the New Social Proof

In fact, according to a survey conducted by Bright Local, 86 percent of consumers polled said they read reviews for local businesses.

So, if your potential customers are coming across your small business online and running away in the opposite direction once they see your lack of endorsements, what can you do to turn that around?

If your online business profile is still looking lonely, with only one or two reviews, check out these five tips to get more online reviews for your small business.

1. Create an email campaign.

One way to encourage more online reviews for your small business is to create an email campaign. If you already have an active email list, you’re off to a great start. Your email subscribers are your biggest fans, so chances are, if you send them an email asking them to leave your business an online review, they’ll do it.

If you haven’t built an email list yet, get started by signing up with an email marketing software and adding a popup on your website to encourage people to join your list. Plus, if visitors can place an order from your website, you should already have their email addresses to add to your email list.

Related: 5 Surefire Ways to Improve Your Site’s Online Reviews

To get the most responses, send a triggered email campaign. This means your online review email will send automatically any time a customer places an order, like what happens in the example below from Everyday Art.

Online review email example.

Image credit: Fresh Relevance com 

Sending an email right after consumers’ purchases, while the positive experience is still fresh in their mind, will get you the most online reviews.

2. “Ask” them in person.

Now, by in person, I don’t mean asking every single person who walks through your doors to leave a good review for your business online; that would be time-consuming and exhausting. Instead, gently encourage your customers to leave an online review in various places around your physical location. There are a number of ways to make the most of your space to generate more online reviews including:

Your regular customers who walk through your doors might not have checked you out online beforehand, but by advertising offline that you want more online reviews, you’ll be able to reach all of your customers — new and old.

3. Reply to every online review.

When asking people to review you online, you open yourself up to bad reviews, too — and that’s okay. Just remember to respond to every review, in a calm, helpful fashion and seek to turn any poor review into a positive experience. What’s important is that you shouldn’t respond just to negative reviews; you should respond to positive reviews, as well. Replying to your reviews will show other future customers that you’re active in your online communications.  

In fact, according to a study in the Harvard Business Review, replying to customer reviews results in better ratings overall. Through their studies, the researchers found that users exposed to management responses — for example,users who read your response to a negative comment from another user — left ratings 0.1 “stars” higher than those who had not.

This finding applied in the same way to responses to positive reviews. Additionally, customers who read management responses were also less likely to leave a trivial or unsubstantiated negative review.

4. Share glowing reviews.

Another way to get more online reviews is to share the glowing reviews you’ve already received. When others see that people are leaving you great reviews, they’ll be more inclined to do so themselves. In fact, according to Psychology Today, people look at what others are doing to learn what’s correct. That’s social proof in action.

So, share your best reviews on social media, as in this restaurant example:

Social media review example. 

Image credit: Instagram 

Not only does this tactic work to generate more online reviews for your business, it also helps to advertise your business and get more customers through your doors.

5. Go above and beyond in customer service.

You can use all the tips and tricks in the world, but if your business is giving poor customer service, you’ll never get online reviews — or else you’ll get a ton of scathing ones. The easiest way to get more online reviews for your small business is to go above and beyond for your customers. Most people don’t leave a review for a pleasant but mundane experience, but people will be more likely to leave a great review for your business if you’ve provided them with an amazing experience.

So, try to make your customers’ day by saying “please” and “thank you,” sending a personalized thank you note in their online order, giving a small discount to apologize for a customer service issue and so on. Customers will remember your kindness and return the favor by leaving you a five-star review.

Related: How Online Customer Reviews Help SEO and Drive Sales Growth

Over to you

With these tips for getting more online reviews, your small business will stand out from the crowd online. Patrons will be lining up at your business because they’ve heard nothing but good things about you. Customers will be happy. And you’ll have just one more task for immediate future: thanking your customers for their kind words and the extra sales their favorable reviews will prompt,



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Giant Introduces Robot Greeter at Supermarkets, How Can Your Business Use Automation?

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Take Me to Your Carrots -- Robot Greeting Customers at Local Giant Grocery Stores

Giant Food Stores announced Monday it will be introducing “Marty,” a robotic assistant, into 172 of its stores across four states: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

The announcement comes as part of a plan by Giant’s Dutch parent company, Ahold Delhaize USA, to introduce approximately 500 robots into its stores, which include Giant, Martin’s and Stop & Shop, The Washington Post reported.

The rising demand for convenience in the grocery store industry has sparked the testing of artificial intelligence technologies in order to improve the shopping experience for customers. Other retailers such as Target, Amazon and Walmart have either been testing or are currently using AI to improve their customer experience. Walmart announced plans to utilize 360 autonomous robots in stores across the country by the end of January.

Nicholas Bertram, president of Giant Food Stores, boasted an excited response from customers at its pilot locations. “Bringing robotics and AI from a research lab to the sales floor has been a very exciting journey, and we were thrilled by the customer response in our pilot stores,” said Bertram.

“We recognize an opportunity to have a robot that could give us an assistance in the building to our associates. The robot can’t do the work of the associates but he can report out information and data to us that is a value, not only to us as a business, but to our customers,” Patrick Maturo, manager of store optimization for Ahold USA, told PennLive.

Powered by a rechargeable lithium battery, Marty moves around the store autonomously using image capturing technology to relay useful data back to store associates and customers. “Marty does not replace our associates – instead, he allows members of our team to spend more time engaging with and assisting customers,” Ashley Flower, a spokeswoman for Giant, told PennLive.

Approximately 50 percent of current work activities are technically automatable by adapting currently demonstrated technologies, according to a January 2017 report by the McKinsey Global Institute. The report assessed the different jobs that could be created through 2030, and compared that to the jobs that could be lost from automation.

The impact of automation varies based on a nation’s income level, wage rates, demographics and industry structure. Generally, those occupations requiring only a secondary education, or less, will see a net decline from automation, while those occupations requiring college degrees and higher will grow, according to the MGI report. Furthermore, the report indicated that workers of the future will spend more time on activities that machines are less capable of, like managing workers and communicating with others.

The MGI report also noted that basic economics of labor supply and demand indicate wages may stagnate or fall for occupations in which labor demand declines. As a result, the necessary skills and capabilities required within the job market are changing, requiring more social and emotional skills and more advanced cognitive capabilities.

Republished by permission. Original here.

Image: Badger Technologies

This article, “Giant Introduces Robot Greeter at Supermarkets, How Can Your Business Use Automation?” was first published on Small Business Trends



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Practical Tips for Creating an Engaging Blog for Your Business

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In the digital age, there are many effective ways to build brand awareness. Maintaining an active social media presence can go a long way toward this goal. Also, purchasing ad space on relevant websites can help make prospective customers aware of your business. However, once you get people to your website, you’ll need to entice them to stick around. And creating a thought-provoking and engaging blog can prove immensely helpful in this endeavor.

If you’re new to the world of business blogging, the following tips can help start you down the right path.

 

RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO CREATE A BLOG: A SIMPLE GUIDE FOR BEGINNING BLOGGERS

 

Stick to an Update Schedule

If you want your business’s blog to succeed, it’s imperative that you commit to a regular update schedule. However, when deciding on the right schedule, select one you’ll be able to stick to. Promising daily updates, for example, is simply unrealistic for most business owners.

Update schedules vary from blog to blog. However, the most successful ones produce at least one update per week. This will give your audience a reason to regularly visit your website. Moreover, it will ensure that you don’t overextend yourself by promising to create more blog posts that you can actually produce. You want to create an engaging blog, after all.

Should the test phase of your blog prove fruitful, committing to multiple updates per week might be something to consider.

Updating your blog on a regular basis can also have the added benefit of boosting your site’s search ranking. When compiling search results, update consistency is among the factors prominent search engines take into account. Unsurprisingly, sites that go long periods between updates aren’t often among the first wave of results. As anyone well-versed in account-based marketing can attest, search engine ranking is often vitally important to small business websites.

 

Write With Authority

When composing blog posts related to your business or the consumer base it serves, take care to write with authority. You want your readers to be confident in the information you share. Consequently, it’s important that you write in a voice that conveys strength, intelligence, and an advanced understanding of the subject matter.

This will help your audience feel comfortable accepting the facts you present. It might even turn them into paying customers. To prove that you’re worthy of such trust, you’ll need to fact-check yourself whenever you’re unsure about something. In other words, take preventative measures against inadvertently spreading misinformation.

 

Enlist the Aid of Guest Bloggers

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Enlisting the aid of guest bloggers can benefit you in two ways. For starters, handing off blog-writing duties to another person will provide you with an occasional break. This can allow you to recharge your creative circuits.

Secondly, getting a guest blogger who’s a popular figure in your industry can prove helpful in bringing in new traffic. However, even if a guest contributor is just another member of your company, periodically entrusting someone else with your blog will provide a fresh perspective. This can help keep things from getting stale.

 

Experiment with Keyword Integration

If you want to give your search ranking a shot in the arm, consider experimenting with keyword integration in your blog posts. This practice entails including popular terms that correspond to your business or its parent industry.

Make sure that you use this strategy both in your titles and in the body of your posts. For example, if you own a web design company based in Minneapolis, MN, including something along the lines of “best website designers in Minneapolis” can effectively boost your local search ranking.

When integrating relevant keywords into what you hope will be your engaging blog posts, however, do so in moderation. Furthermore, take care to integrate them into the content in an organic fashion. Shamelessly shoehorning keywords into your posts detracts from their substance. Moreover, it is likely to turn off readers who realize what you’re doing.

In addition to drawing the ire of your audience, keyword stuffing can earn your site negative attention from the web’s most prominent search engines. Sites that are deemed guilty of keyword stuffing can expect to see their search rankings plummet. Therefore, if maintaining a decent ranking is important to you, it doesn’t pay to take this gamble.

 

An Engaging Blog Can Boost Your Business

A regularly updated and engaging blog can be a boon both to your business and its website. In addition to keeping your regular visitors informed, a well-written and engaging blog can also be an effective tool for drumming up new interest in your enterprise. Despite the many advances made in the field of digital promotion in recent years, there’s simply no substitute for an engaging blog.

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How It Helps Companies Stay on Top of SaaS Management

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The biggest challenge that IT departments face in 2019 is keeping up with their ever-growing technology stack. SaaS management solution Torii goes a long way toward helping IT managers consolidate and centralize SaaS ecosystems.

You likely have hundreds of SaaS applications in your business ecosystem. Therefore, it’s hard to track costs, risks, access permissions, usage, and overall practicality. And IT departments often don’t even know when someone has registered the company for a new web app. How are you to remain in control?

 

RELATED ARTICLE: WHY EVERY BUSINESS—INCLUDING YOURS—NEEDS CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

 

What Is Torii?

Put simply, Torii is an autonomous IT platform. It turns a company’s cloud-based software stack into a readable, user-friendly dashboard for more effective SaaS management. Moreover, it improves your SaaS management on three fronts: visibility, workflow, and automation.

Stay on top of your company’s SaaS management with a robust dashboard. Turn numbers into actionable insights with easy-to-read visualizations and reports.

Did two team members just pay for licenses for competing tools that do the same thing? Did someone leave your company, and you need to make sure they can’t access any information relating to the business? Understand how your team uses your applications. Additionally, manage your software subscriptions and control which tools specific members can access.

Need certain SaaS management actions to take place instantly? Simply deploy the integrated bots. Automate tasks like renewals, downgrades, upgrades, and access changes. You’ll do this by combining relevant triggers with a list of supported actions.

Here’s a closer look at Torii’s main SaaS management features.

1. Insights

One of Torii’s primary goals is to make sure you don’t overspend on unnecessary software.

On the “Insights” page, Torii shows you an overview of your entire software library. This includes the total number of users, applications, and expenses over the last 12 months.

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You can drill deeper by hovering your mouse over each section and clicking “See all.”

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Doing so will allow you to assimilate the finer details of your infrastructure’s SaaS usage. For instance, you’ll be able to see user accounts and the total cost of each app.

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Under the “Usage” tab, you can gauge the importance of each tool. This metric is based on the number of times the tool was utilized in the past 30 days. You’ll also be able to determine whether employees are still using an application.

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For more in-depth information, click on the application’s name. You’ll then see details such as the number of active users, renewal date, and more. You can also change the application’s status on the spot. Do this by using the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the page.

 

Torii Identifies App Owners

Today’s business app users increasingly make tool selection decisions independently and unilaterally. Therefore, IT can no longer take full ownership of the tech solutions under its purview.

However, Torii works by identifying every software product’s in-house “owner.” This team member will be IT’s point of contact when it comes to all decisions and activity regarding the product’s use.

Knowing the owner of every application your organization subscribes to can help you to understand how it fits into your organization.

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2. Workflows

Torii comes with a built-in workflow builder. This helps IT managers understand everything that occurs in the company’s software stack.

The most common use of workflows is to discover apps as soon as they’re added. This makes you a better software gatekeeper, as it allows you to keep a watchful eye on any new cloud-based app.

Once discovered, IT managers have the ability to set the software’s status. For example, it could be “discovered,” “in review,” “sanctioned,” and so on.

In turn, the app’s owner receives a notification that the IT department has discovered a new application. The app owner also gets a form to fill out to get IT’s approval.

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You can customize this form by editing the introduction. You can also specify the information fields that the app’s owner must complete.

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This should prompt the staff to carefully vet whatever software they want to integrate into the company’s IT infrastructure.

Remember, it’s a lot easier to monitor apps as soon as someone adds them. Given the risks of GDPR noncompliance and cyber breaches, waiting till later is a risk that IT departments simply cannot take. Additionally, these procedures provide a way to minimize the costs of inefficient and unnecessary software. These are just the basics of effective SaaS management.

 

Create an Onboarding Workflow

To create an onboarding workflow, navigate to the “Workflows” tab from the main dashboard. Then click “New Workflow.”

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The rest of the steps involve selecting the workflow’s trigger and adding a string of actions to be performed. Torii’s user-friendly interface makes this a quick process. What’s more, you won’t need to write a single line of code.

 

Automated Offboarding Makes SaaS Management Easier for IT Managers

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Torii enables automated “offboarding” workflows. These are designed to revoke a user’s access to apps they no longer use. Torii triggers this workflow when a user has not used a specific app for more than 30 days. This saves the business money by preventing payments for unused seats of employees who, for example, no longer work in the organization.

 

3. Reports

In addition to providing you the data and a dashboard for executing changes, Torii also helps you make data-driven decisions with actionable reports. These give you a clear view of your company’s application usage and expenses. There are currently two types of reports you can generate with Torii:

 

Risk Analysis

SaaS management in a software ecosystem with hundreds or even thousands of apps comes with cybersecurity, governance, and compliance risks.

Torii makes sure you have all your bases covered with the Risk Analysis report. This gives you an assessment of each third-party application’s risk level based on their permissions.

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Expense Analysis

You can comb through Torii’s Expense Analysis report to identify your most expensive software investments.

Of course, just because an app is the most expensive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most wasteful. But if you’re trying to cut costs, inspecting the utility of your expensive tools from top to bottom is definitely a sound approach.

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Whenever needed, IT managers can easily download a CSV file for the expense analysis report. Utilizing this feature will ensure that your IT team and your finance department are on the same page.

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Take note that almost every section of Torii has a “Download CSV” button in the same spot. This makes it easier for your IT department to communicate crucial information, both within the department as well as throughout the organization.

 

4. Users

Speaking of owners, each user could be associated with an indefinite number of applications on the Torii platform. This goes for app access and use as well as ownership. You can easily view which user owns which apps by looking at the app icons under the “Owner of” column.

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If you wish to cancel a user’s ownership of certain apps, you can request their voluntary withdrawal. Alternatively, you can forcefully remove app ownership with the one-click offboarding tool.

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Torii also keeps a complete record of every user who has ever become a part of your IT ecosystem. These user accounts are sorted into three tabs: current users, past users, and external users.

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5. Expenses

To view the financial side of your software infrastructure, simply go to the “Expenses” page. This will show you a complete view of your company’s expenses.

If you’re using an ERP such as NetSuite, Torii will automatically pull all your business’s SaaS costs. This it does by analyzing invoices, transactions, and credit card statements via API integrations.

The expense analysis report shows how much you spend on each app per month. Then the Expenses page gives you a broader overview of your software budget.

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Does Your Company Need a Manual Integration Option?

For businesses that don’t have an ERP solution that Torii can integrate with, the platform offers a manual integration option. Click on the “Upload Expense Report” button on the top right. Torii will provide you with a downloadable template that ensures readability. The platform will automatically match the expenses in the file to the SaaS applications. Then it will present the expenses report as seen above.

The bar graph shows total expenses for software over the past 12 months. This enables you to identify months with unusual spikes in terms of software costs.

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The screenshot above shows an example of a spike in expenses from September to October, which appear to also relate to November and December. You can dig deeper by viewing the report for September when the spike occurred and see what caused it. This should help you identify the apps that might have contributed to the increase.

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To find more apps that could have contributed to the increase in software spending, Torii also has a handy “Trend” feature. This feature shows how much each individual application costs over time. It comes in the form of a line chart that makes it easy to spot applications that are becoming costlier.

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6. App Integrations

Finally, Torii lets you integrate the various applications your organization is using. This allows you to weave together multiple applications. By creating more connections between different software via their API, you can create a SaaS infrastructure that communicates better with itself. This process will allow you to further streamline your SaaS infrastructure.

For example, Zapier is an automation service that integrates with hundreds of other SaaS products. If your organization is using Zapier, Torii lets you configure and utilize these automation integrations from within Torii’s platform.

All you need to do is open Zapier from Torii’s “Applications” page. Then go to the “Integrations” tab, choose the integration process you’d like to create, and press “connect.”

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As it stands, Torii supports thousands of different services in its database. This yields countless possible application pairs you can use for automated tasks.

For expandability, you can also integrate Torii with a number of third-party services. These include cloud-based productivity platforms like G Suite as well as CRM software like Salesforce.

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Get a Grip on Your Company’s SaaS Management with Torii

As your software infrastructure grows and evolves, so must your IT management.

Torii has everything you need to get a better grip on your company’s SaaS management. It allows you to identify who’s using what. It shows you which apps have access to which systems. Torii also makes it easier to plan your software budget, automate software onboarding and offboarding, and more.

Overall, Torii is a smart investment for any company that has a large collection of software.

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12 Alarm Clock Apps That Will Get Your Butt Out of Bed

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Smartphones and tablets are good alarm clocks, but these apps make them great.


7 min read


This story originally appeared on PCMag

There was a time when many items littered my nightstand. There was a lamp, a stack of books and comics I had every intention of reading, a point-and-shoot camera in case my dog climbed into the covers and did something adorable, and even a landline phone for those late-night calls that wake one with dread. Also, a back scratcher.

Today those items are gone, save for the lamp so I don’t stub my toe, and the back scratcher, because I still have a back. They’ve been replaced by my iPhone and its plethora of apps to keep me busy, including those that turn my smartphone into a kick-ass futuristic alarm clock.

Amid this collection for iOS and Android, whether phone or tablet-sized, features can vary wildly. But they all tell the time and get your butt out of bed in the morning. Or after a nap. Some do it gently, some do it harshly, some do it with new-age special effects, and some make you work to wake. Whatever you’re waking needs, you’ll find them here.

Rise Alarm Clock ($1.99, iOS)

Rise Alarm Clock ($1.99, iOS)

Rise isn’t about making you feel jangled in the morning. The multi-lingual app bills itself as a “work of art that wakes you up.” The lovely, minimalist settings require swiping up and down and left and right, but it’s filled with soothing alarm sounds with names like Grandma’s Clock, Gentle Chimes, and Jungle Morning. You can also wake to any song stored in iTunes. Setting multiple alarms for all different (or repeating) days and times is a breeze — though that feature requires a $0.99 in-app purchase. You can set the colorful clock option to monochrome and dim it down with a swipe. Snooze it with a shake.

Alarm Clock Xtreme & Timer ($2.99, Android)

Alarm Clock Xtreme & Timer ($2.99, Android)

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via PC Mag

Have you heard of those apps that won’t let you drunk-text someone until you do some math problems to prove you’re sober? That’s one option of Alarm Clock Xtreme, which aims to stop excessive use of the snooze option. It’ll even decrease the time between snoozes, so it’s not always that magic default 9 minutes. It can wake you gently with gradually growing volume. Hitting snooze can involve a shake, the side buttons, pushing the screen, or the previously mentioned math. It all comes with a sleep tracker, stopwatch, and timer option as well. If you don’t mind advertising in your clock, you can get a free version.

Alarm Clock for Me (Free, iOS or Android)

Alarm Clock for Me (Free, iOS or Android)

Alarm Clock for Me believes in customization, offering themes for the look of the digital digits, with names like Ultrasonic, Retro, Digital, Worky, Odometer, and C-Motion Clock. On start it’ll ask for Location services to be turned on, so it can also offer you weather updates. Inside the app is the full set of alarm options like using your own music and various snooze options, plus a sleep timer for cutting off music as you start to snooze, a timer, and a shake-to-turn-on-flashlight option. Unlike some other alarm clock apps, this one supports background alerts so you’ll get an alarm even if it isn’t running all night. The app comes with very annoying advertising, though — you’ll need to make a $3.99 purchase on iOS or $1.99 on Androidto be rid of them.

Timely (Free, Android)

Timely (Free, Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

Google liked this Android alarm clock app so much that it acquired its Zurich-based developer, Bitspin. Where it’s different is in using a cloud sync (via your Google account, naturally) so all your devices have the same alarms. It’s a beautiful clock app suitable for tablets, using gestures to set alarms, color schemes for the clock to suit you, challenges to ensure you’re up, a flip-to-snooze, and the option to quiet an alarm when the handset is picked up.

Sleep Cycle (Free, iOS or Android)

Sleep Cycle (Free, iOS or Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

Sleep Cycle is all about rest. This sleep analyzer app uses the phone’s or tablet’s microphone and accelerometer to track your snoozing and finds the best time (during your lightest sleep period) and method to wake you up. It’ll show how your sleep quality compares to the rest of the users of the app. If you’re still asleep, pick up the phone or tap it to snooze, but each snooze gets shorter if you use the Intelligent Snooze feature. iPhone users can sync the data into the Apple Health app, and it will talk to Philips Hue smart bulbs to come on at wake time, in simulation of sunrise.

Loud Alarm Clock (Free, iOS)

Loud Alarm Clock (Free, iOS)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

Is there much mystery around what makes this alarm clock stand out? As long as you leave the app on-screen all night, it will play — nay, blare — a sound at a preset time to wake even the soundest sleeper. While you can use your own music from iTunes, the app comes loaded with annoying noises like nails on a chalkboard and a fire alarm. The alarms can be randomized so you don’t get lulled into sleeping through a sound to which you’ve grown accustomed.

Alarmy (Sleep If U Can) (Free with ads, iOS or Android / $8.99 Pro edition on Android or $7.99 on iOS)

Alarmy (Sleep If U Can) (Free with ads, iOS or Android / $8.99 Pro edition on Android or $7.99 on iOS)

Is Alarmy the most annoying alarm ever? You’ll probably think so if you set it up for its best feature: you have to get out of bed and take a picture with your Android phone of a pre-set location in the house that matches a previously taken shot. Naturally, that place should be far from your bedroom. If that’s not enough, the alarm can also go into a shake-to-wake or calculations mode before you are allowed to turn it off.

I Can’t Wake Up! ($2.99, Android)

I Can't Wake Up! ($2.99, Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

If you absolutely can’t wake up, you need more tasks while the alarm is running. This is the alarm app with ALL the tasks. Memory puzzles, tile ordering, barcode scanning (put the barcode somewhere else in the house so you have to get up), rewriting text, shaking, math problems, and more. The app will play music during the snooze interval, which you may need to calm down after all that task completion. There is a free version with lots of ads.

AMdroid Alarm Clock (Free, Android)

AMdroid Alarm Clock (Free, Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

From one-time alarms to recurring to countdowns, each alarm in the AMdroid app has its own settings. That can include challenges for waking, setting alarms that only work in specific locations, even setting it up so alarms do NOT go off during major holidays so you can sleep in. The app integrates with Android Wear smartwatches, so you can use voice commands to the wrist to set new alarms.

Sleep as Android (Free, Android)

Sleep as Android (Free, Android)

Sleep as Android has your back, from notifying you the night before about your optimal time to go to sleep to the next morning’s alarm. It offers up white noise like ocean waves, crackling fires, and chants. Put the phone in the bed with you and the accelerometer measures how fitful or restful you are, then attempts to wake you at the best moment. It works with smart bulbs to wake you naturally at day break. Then come the alarms, with task options like shakes, math problems, scanning QR codes, entering Captcha codes, even counting sheep (which seems counterproductive).

Uhp Alarm Clock Pro ($1.99, Android)

Uhp Alarm Clock Pro ($1.99, Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

Like many others, Uhp has features like showing you the weather, playing music from Apple Music to wake you, etc. And it has a requirement to get you out of bed by making you walk somewhere as the alarm goes off and confirm it. The difference is, Uhp will post to your Facebook or Twitter account to embarrass you if you don’t get going.

Walk Me Up Alarm Clock (Free, iOS or Android / $1.99 Pro version on Android)

Walk Me Up Alarm Clock (Free, iOS or Android / $1.99 Pro version on Android)

Image credit:

via PC Mag

If all you need to do is walk a little to get the waking juices flowing, Walk Me Up uses your phone’s accelerometer to make sure you actually walk a certain number of steps so you can’t just cheat it with a few shakes. There’s also an “evil mode” for disabling the snooze, among all the usual stuff. The app has ads, but you can ditch them for $1.99.

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Mike Peters’ Rollercoaster Journey from Young Millionaire to Flat Broke to Running a $1 Billion-Plus Business

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Problem solver, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Mike Peters shares his story for the first time.


11 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.


Mike Peters will never forget the day his mother-in-law came to visit his family in Florida. She wanted to bathe his young daughter, but the water wouldn’t turn on. Embarrassed, Peters pretended he didn’t know why. The reality was he didn’t have the money to pay the utility bill.

“How did I get here?” the 30-year-old wondered. As a teenager, he’d been a rising tech star. He developed and sold his first software at age 13. At 16, he turned down a job offer from Microsoft. By 23, he’d saved $1 million.

But his dot-com startup, a messaging platform, burned through that cash along with $6.5 million Peters had raised from investors. In three years, his company failed to make a single sale.

Fast forward to today and Peters has bounced back and made enough money to last a lifetime. He’s the founder of the Yomali Group, an international e-commerce solutions conglomerate with over $1 billion in revenue. “My body is covered with scar tissue from the mistakes I’ve made along the way,” says Peters as he reflects on the ups and downs. “I made almost every mistake in the book.”

In high demand during the dot-com days.

Peters grew up in a middle-class family in Hod HaSharon, a small city near Tel Aviv, Israel. His computer obsession started early, and at age 10 he got his first, an Atari 800XL. He taught himself to code and created an accounting spreadsheet tool before Excel existed. He sold it to a neighbor for $500 — a lot of money to a 13-year-old. 

Peters’ first home in Hod HaSharon, a small city near Tel Aviv, Israel.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

At 14, Peters enrolled in the computer science program at the Open University of Israel. He convinced his parents to let him drop out of high school to complete his studies and work in the field. In 1991, he hosted one of Israel’s first bulletin board systems (BBS), an early iteration of today’s websites on which visitors played games and exchanged messages.

A Microsoft recruiter discovered the talented teen and offered him a job. The company wanted him to permanently relocate to the United States, but Peters was only 16, and he turned down the offer.

Instead, he accepted an Israeli-based gig developing software, which ironically brought him to the U.S. for six months. “I was 17, making bank doing what I loved in Laguna Beach, California. It was everything I’d dreamed of.”

Forced by the military to postpone his dream.

A week before his 18th birthday, Peters flew home to fulfill his duty as an Israeli citizen and join the military. “My friends didn’t understand how I could leave my comfortable lifestyle to lie in ditches and fire guns,” he says. “I had no choice. It was the right thing to do.”

In the artillery forces, Peters wouldn’t touch a computer for three years. “I had to put my life on hold for my country,” he says. “That’s when I learned life doesn’t always go your way.”

Peters joined the military a week before he turned 18.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

“I hated almost every minute of the army,” says Peters. “But in retrospect, those three years made me who I am today. I developed perspective and perseverance, and learned the importance of having the right mindset.”

Every four months Peters rotated between the border surrounded by enemies, Gaza, where he had a few close calls, and training. “The military teaches you to always be a student,” says Peters. “Most people think they’ve learned everything after university. They end up working for those who never stop learning. Formal education eventually ends, but self-education never stops. The more you learn, the more you earn.”

Finding love — and losing $6.5 million along the way.

Peters fulfilled his commitment to the military at 21, then spent the next two years at a cybersecurity company while selling software on the side. He’d been saving since he started working at 16, and reached $1 million by age 23. Peters decided to launch his own startup, a customer messaging platform.

That’s how he met his wife, Orit (pronounced Oh-reet) Tenenbaum. His company’s recruiter recommended her as a quality assurance manager, even though she was a 21-year-old fresh out of training. Peters gave her a shot, and she excelled. When they started dating, they kept their relationship secret, which wasn’t easy — especially when Peters moved to Silicon Valley for the company.

It was 1998, the peak of the dot-com era. Peters’ startup had raised $6.5 million from big-name investors. “At the time, the tech industry was all about eyeballs and downloads — and figuring out revenue later,” says Peters.

His company was no different. Three years later, the $6.5 million was gone. They’d spent it all building the business without making a single sale. Peters had also spent most of the $1 million he’d saved.

Peters married his wife, Orit, in Israel before returning to the U.S.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

After the startup shut down, Peters returned to Israel to marry Orit. The newlyweds decided to start over in the U.S. “My father-in-law was concerned about what would happen if I failed again. I told him I would just keep trying,” says Peters.

“I don’t know a single entrepreneur who failed 10 times in a row. That rarely happens. The problem is that most people quit after the second or third failure. I knew if I kept trying, eventually I’d succeed.”

From broke to really broke.

At 27, Peters moved to New York City with his new wife and their remaining savings: $5,000. They rented a tiny studio in Times Square for $2,000 per month. “That was a lot of our money, but I wanted to force myself to figure things out,” says Peters. “To be successful you have to burn your boats, leaving no option of going back.”

For the next few years Peters worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week. Despite his software development experience, he settled for website development projects because he didn’t want to go back to investors.

For the first few years in New York City, Peters worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

After their son was born in 2003, the couple moved to Florida, where they had their second child, a daughter. They had no family, friends, or support there. “I could’ve made more at McDonald’s for the hours I was slaving away,” says Peters. “I had to look my wife in the eyes and tell her it was going to work out — even though I didn’t know how. Web development wasn’t my passion, but it was a way to keep the lights on until I found my passion.”

Except he couldn’t keep the lights on.

Shortly after their water was cut off, their car was repossessed and their house foreclosed on. “I couldn’t support my family, and my marriage was on the brink of collapse. Orit took the kids back to Israel, while I stayed in Florida to figure things out.”

His wife and children wouldn’t return for a year. “I questioned myself so much during that time,” he reflects. “I experienced imposter complex, and started thinking it was just luck that made me successful when I was younger. I spent long nights feeling like a loser who couldn’t support his family.

“Nobody talks about the hard times,” says Peters. “But every entrepreneur experiences them. Not just bad sales — I’m talking about broken marriages, losing everything. It takes the right mindset, perseverance, and passion to overcome the challenges. But with that, you’ll be unstoppable.”

“I owe everything to my supportive parents and the army, which taught me to get back up every time I fell down.”

Scaling a business with clients’ money.

When Peters began hiring freelancers to help with coding, things slowly started to improve. Four years later, hundreds worked for him. He began building different software, using clients’ money as financing to develop a new business model. His employees wrote all their code in a generic way so they could reuse it to create their own versions of the platforms they built for clients.

Peters transitioned to selling that software as a service. “Selling your time has a low ceiling. To double revenues, I had to double the workforce. So instead, we started selling subscriptions.” The bottom line increased significantly.

He later pivoted again, this time as an online retailer. “Our clients sold products online, and many of them outsourced the majority of the work to us,” says Peters. “We were making five figures while they made six.” The bottom line exploded again.

At this point, Peters had many services under one business. “Every business needs focus. You can’t be everything to everyone. We hit a ceiling trying to do everything under one name.” Peters spun out into eight stand-alone businesses under one umbrella, the Yomali Group.

Today, his businesses include an affiliate network, CRM platform, payment processor, business process outsourcing and call center, physical fulfillment automation, big data analytics, software development, and shopping websites — all helping businesses sell more online.

The three steps to business success.

“I’ve over-promised and failed to deliver, made bad hires, and failed to see the big picture,” says Peters. “A partner stole $1 million from me and an employee created a competing company using our code. It’s my mission to share what I learned from those experiences — so others don’t have to learn the hard way.”

Peters says there are three levels to business success. “The first is hard work and putting in the hours. You need to love what you do to sustain it.” He says you can build a $1 million business if you pour 10,000 hours into it. “If you spend seven hours a day mastering your craft, that will take you four years. But if you dedicate 14 hours a day, you’ll get there in half the time.”

Second, Peters says mindset differentiates a $1 million business from a $10 million one. “You need grit, to believe that nothing is impossible. Do whatever it takes and don’t take no for an answer.”

To exceed $100 million takes leverage, such as using distribution partners and affiliates, monopolizing a small niche, and using others’ time and money like Peters did.

Peters has made it his mission to share what he’s learned and help others avoid his mistakes.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

Legacy over currency.

Their third child was born in 2011. Now that he’s made all the money he’ll ever need, Peters divides his time between family, business, and helping others.

“No amount of money beats knowing you impacted others,” he says. In January 2019, Peters was invited to join the board of the XPRIZE Foundation, which is dedicated to solving big world problems. The elite group includes filmmaking legend James Cameron, publishing icon Arianna Huffington, and Google co-founder Larry Page. 

Peters with his wife, Orit, and their three children.

Image credit: Courtesy Mike Peters

Despite all of his successes, Peters has found the most happiness helping others. “My legacy is my driving force. I want to leave this planet better than when I came into it,” he says. “Empowering entrepreneurs to do great things creates a chain reaction that benefits many. That’s why I devote my time to building tools and services for them — it makes all the scar tissue worth it.”

Connect with Mike Peters on LinkedIn or learn more about his company here.

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