March 26, 2018

4 min read

This story originally appeared on PCMag

The tragic accident in Tempe, Ariz., last Sunday evening that killed Elaine Herzberg as she walked her bike across the road should have never happened. But the same could be said of the 197 pedestrians struck by cars and killed in Arizona in 2016, and the more than 40,000 people who died in car accidents in the U.S. during the same time period.

Herzberg’s death caused a stir because it was caused by one of the self-driving Volvos Uber was testing in the Phoenix area. Because self-driving tech is new and not completely trusted, this one roadway death out of thousands every year has been intensively covered by media, scrutinized by traffic safety experts and caused considerable hand-wringing among companies that are heavily investing in autonomous technology. It should spur questions about the technology — and government regulators into action.

A video of the accident from inside and outside the vehicle released on Wednesday clearly shows that neither the car’s sensors nor the human safety driver behind the wheel saw Herzberg. The car did not slow down or swerve to avoid hitting her. Even though the Volvo XC90 comes equipped with a range of sensors and driver assist systems — including pedestrian and cyclist detection with auto brake (above) — and the Uber vehicle was outfitted with more sophisticated sensors such as lidar, the vehicle inexplicably never detected Herzberg as she crossed a darkened road.

Her death demonstrates that self-driving tech in its current form isn’t ready for public roads. But it also proves why we desperately need federal regulation to protect people and autonomous vehicle innovation.

Autonomous tech testers flock to Phoenix

Companies like Uber, Lyft and Waymo have flocked to Phoenix because of Arizona’s lax laws on autonomous vehicle testing. That prompted California to relax its regulations last month, although the state requires self-driving vehicles tested on public roads to have safeguards like remote operation.

States like Florida, which has favorable weather, and Michigan, home to the U.S. car industry, have also adopted a laissez faire approach the autonomous vehicle testing in hopes of attracting or retaining automaker and tech company dollars.

Meanwhile, self-driving car advocates have been waiting on Washington to give guidance on autonomous regulation. The Obama administration and former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx laid the groundwork in January 2016 with a series of voluntary safety guidelines and by offering $4 billion in federal funding to foster the testing and development of self-driving technology.

After power changed hands in D.C. a year later, the federal government and Congress delayed picking up the baton for several months due to partisan bickering and lobbying by special interests. Now, self-driving car policy has effectively stalled on Capitol Hill.

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has said that the USDOT won’t stifle innovation but she hasn’t shown leadership on self-driving cars. More than a year into the Trump administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the division of the US DOT that supervises motor vehicle regulation and was tasked under the Obama guidelines to oversee autonomous vehicle policy, still doesn’t have an administrator. Overseas, China and Germany have made development of the technology a political priority.

This will continue to leave states to figure it out for themselves — and in the current Wild West environment perhaps more accidents like the one that killed Elaine Herzberg. Collateral damage will also occurr to self-driving technology and the semi-autonomous driver assistance systems since they’ll likely be viewed with even more suspicion by the public due to this mishap.

There’s little doubt that self-driving cars will ultimately save lives and will need to be safely tested on public roads, but with sufficient federal regulation and oversight of the technology. Until then, more people will continue to die on U.S. roads every day. And that too is a tragedy.

March 25, 2018

1 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

With cryptocurrency growing in popularity, you may want get a cut. But you have to be smart about investing your money in something so risky and volatile.

Related: Watch Out for These Cryptocurrency Scams

As of August 2017, more than $225 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen, according to research compiled by CryptoGo, a cryptocurrency exchange. In 2013, the total amount of stolen Bitcoin was valued at $3 million, and in 2016 this number reached a whopping $95 million. Phishing, exploitation of software and storage and hacks are the top three ways cryptocurrency is stolen.

So what can you do to prevent yourself from becoming a victim? For starters, do your research on the type of cryptocurrency you wish to invest in. It’s also important to investigate exchanges and storage methods, so you can figure out how to best protect your money. Using antivirus software and multi-factor authentication codes are also things you can do to protect yourself.

Related: 4 Pros and Cons of Investing in New Cryptocurrencies

To learn more, check out CryptoGo’s infographic below.

March 24, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Have you filed your taxes yet? If not, you better hurry — April 17 is just around the corner. With the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was put in place last year, taxes might seem a little scarier than usual, especially for small businesses. However, there’s no need to stress. Payroll and HR solutions service Paychex has come up with a complete tax reform checklist to make sure your business is fully prepared.

Related: 10 Tax-Savings Hacks That Small Business Owners Often Miss

The first step in getting your business ready is simple: don’t panic. To keep yourself at ease, contact a financial consultant or accountant who can help. The next step is to understand your employees’ situations and how the new law affects them. Some impacted areas to keep in mind are individual tax brackets, personal exemptions, standard deductions, itemized deductions and child tax credits. This jargon might sound daunting, but with a few Google searches or the help of a professional, it’s easy to grasp.

Related: 5 Tax-Deduction Changes in the Trump Tax Plan You Need to Know About This Tax Year

Next, it’s vital to keep doing your research and understand your state’s policies and how they’ve been impacted by the tax reform. Make sure to thoroughly review the new policy changes and consult an expert with any questions.

To learn more, check out the infographic below.

March 23, 2018

18 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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Lesya Liu is a social media strategist and a photographer. She specializes in combining art and marketing to create compelling storytelling, both visually and textually.

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Instagram, the photo- and video-sharing platform, is undoubtedly the hottest social media outlet on the market right now. In fact, it’s doubled its user base in just two short years, to 800 million, 500 million of whom are daily users.

Reports consistently show that Instagram has the most engaged community on the internet: The platform’s posts receive more engagement than any other social network out there — 84 times more than Twitter, 54 times more than Pinterest and 10 times more than its older sibling, Facebook.

Related: 14 Eye-Opening Instagram Statistics

And all that engagement isn’t limited to organic (meaning non-sponsored) posts. Three-quarters of Instagram users take actions such as making a valuable website click after looking at a sponsored post.

So, marketing on Instagram should seem like a no-brainer to any business owner, right? Yet, most business owners remain hesitant to jump on the Instagram bandwagon.

Even though the majority of businesses are already present on the platform, it’s evident from their efforts that Instagram is more of an afterthought than a viable marketing strategy. Low-quality images and content and an overall failure to create a cohesive story line are some of today’s most widespread offenses.

Certainly, this is not to put all of the blame on business owners. They’re busy people who want to maximize the results they get for their efforts; they want a clear purpose and ROI. So, while marketing gurus scream from the rooftops about the importance of being on Instagram, entrepreneurs are left wondering, What’s in it for me. How do I track traffic? How do I track sales? How can a collection of pretty images translate into a real revenue for a company?

And then there’s the biggest question of all: How do I interpret the analytics I get to ensure Instagram is an effective part of my marketing funnel?

Related: 10 Tips for More Instagram Followers

What Instagram is — and isn’t.

Instagram offers you, as a business owner, the opportunity to post beautiful photos of your products and of influencers — famous and not so famous — using or wearing your products. It lets you include comments from customers (hopefully) urging others to buy those products.The platform also enables companies to make direct sales. What Instagram is not, however, is a selling machine in and of itself.

In fact, few businesses make money directly off of their presence on the Instagram platform. Unless you’re getting paid for promotions and shout-outs, chances are you won’t necessarily enjoy a clear-cut ROI from your efforts, either.

However, Instagram can be a very effective part of your sales funnel, if used correctly. Like any other social network, Instagram is an awareness channel, a relationship-building channel. 

So, if you’re wondering how awareness and relationship-building can advance your company: First, take advantage of the highly engaged Instagram community. Think of the likes and comments counts not as a vanity metric, but an opportunity to leverage, to your business’s benefit, the engagement these comments represent.

Then, make sure that your Instagram presence is aligned with your overall branding. That way, once people land on your Instagram profile, they can be confident that they’ll again see what they’ve seen from you everywhere else.

Related: Feel the Customer Love With These 9 Instagram Stories Tips Straight From the Source

Once you’ve got those two major goals covered, follow the specific advice points below.

Nathan Chan, the editor-in-chief, however, says of the magazine that it’s “not growing quite fast enough.” During an interview I did with him on The Social Media Current, Chan told me, “We started crushing on Instagram purely from just getting very, very good and finding out what’s working, and just consistently providing an amazing content.”

Of that content, Chan mentioned “having amazing entrepreneurs on the front covers of our magazines, building that social proof, also having great design [and] using social media — like Instagram.

“I think when you do great work,” Chan continued, “people are going to be naturally attracted to you. You’re going to build that authority. That’s how you build your credibility. You just become an expert …”

Becoming an “expert” was something I myself have made it my job to do. Because I work with companies to turn their various levels of presence on Instagram into a sales machine, I can offer advice on becoming the kind of strategic and focused business owner Chan described. That advice? Keep reading …

Tracking is your new best friend.

Tracking results is where savvy entrepreneurs separate themselves from amateurs who are only going after an ego boost. What does “tracking” entail? It means having a healthy obsession with the statistics available to you through Instagram business tools, third-party Instagram analytics tools and your website analytics tools (Google Analytics, most likely).

Related: 10 Instagram Tools to Help You Build Your Following in 2018

Getting started: step by step

1. Start by paying attention to the behavior on your profile. This is the first step to better Instagram marketing, and can answer such questions as:

2. Recognize what types of posts get you the most traction. Determine:

In an interview for my blog, Jessica Hirsch of @cheatdayeats suggested staying on top of trends and paying attention to industry leaders. “There’s a lot of talk about Instagram changing and adding features, so it’s important for both personal and business accounts to evolve and grow with it,” Hirsch told me. “I do my best to test them out, and before I know it, it becomes part of my new routine. And I think Instagram sort of rewards accounts that adapt well to the changes.

“I think it’s important to move forward with that mindset and understanding to continue to grow on Instagram,” Hirsch added.

Related: 13 Expert Tips to Help You Build Your Instagram Following

3. Pay attention to the growth of your audience. Prioritize quality over quantity here. Play by the rules and don’t risk your Instagram presence by buying followers on Instagram or involving bots.

Make sure that the people following your brand are the right audience fit. Does your Instagram following overlap with your business-target audience? If your ideal audience is middle-aged men, then “likes” and “follows” from young females won’t translate into sales in real life. A quick look through your follower list should give you a pretty good idea whether or a not a scenario like this is the case.

If you do sign up for (or convert your existing profile to) an Instagram business profile, you’ll be able to get most of the analytical data you need without leaving the app. Instagram (contrary to popular belief) wants you to succeed, because if you win, it wins.

That’s why the platform is eager to provide you the insight you need to make better content and business decisions. So, explore your audience demographics, such as age, gender and locations; see when your audience is the most active on the platform.

What you can achieve

Go for reach and engagement. If you consistently deliver high-quality content to the right target market via Instagram, you’ll achieve two things:

• Strengthen the connection with an existing audience, because its members will come back for more content;
• Enjoy high engagement levels that will help you leverage the Instagram algorithm, thus creating even more exposure for your content.

Not only will you deepen existing relationships, you’ll cast a much wider net with a little help from the platform itself. How? Through leveraging the notorious Instagram algorithm to your benefit! (notorious because people don’t like the non-chronological order of its newsfeed).

Again, Instagram is not after you. It’s in the platform’s best interest to show engaging, relevant content to its users, so that they stay longer on the platform. That’s why the algorithm’s only job is to scour through the platform and find awesome content, which will be shown to more and more people.

Related: How to Make Your Instagram Account Impressive

What started as a three-month-long European sabbatical with her boyfriend (now husband) Jacob Taylor turned into a blog about their amazing travels. “There was no strategy when we first started our Instagram,” Selena Taylor told me in an interview. “The plan was to share photos from our adventure with friends and family, but since we both love photography, it quickly turned into a passion project for the two of us. It wasn’t until we used hashtags for the first time, and our photo was reposted within minutes by a larger account (@dametraveler), that we started paying attention to the potential Instagram had to reach others who were traveling or wanted to travel.

Selena and Jacob found ways to improve their photos and style while simultaneously interacting with others who were on the road; and, “Things just grew from there,” Selena said. “When we started our Instagram, no one was using the word ‘Influencer’!” 

But then things heated up: The couple was first approached by sponsors when their account had around 10,000 followers.

These days, the duo satisfy their wanderlust while making money through strategic partnerships with big brands. Continued Taylor: “It all depends on the project, but typically our trips are sponsored in exchange for promotion, or we’re hired by a hotel or tourism board for paid photo and video projects.

“It’s really important to us that we feel passionate about the place and the content we can produce,” she told me. “We’re also always considering our audience — will they respond to the content and the destination? Our favorite compliment is when people tell us they were inspired to go somewhere that they never would have thought to travel to.”

Image credit: @finduslost

However, the couple wouldn’t have been able to earn income through sponsored blog posts and Instagram posts if they hadn’t been very clear on their audience and the aesthetics of their own brand, Taylor said. She described “a lot of pressure” to constantly produce more, “but we’ll always prioritize quality over quantity.”

What’s happened since has been the couple’s ongoing effort to improve their photos, share guides from the cities and countries they’ve visited, guest-blog and create videos. “We fell in love with the creative aspect of what we started together,” Taylor said.

To get in on this, pay attention to Instagram’s “Explore” section, where Instagram curates images relevant to the viewer’s interests and the handles he or she is following. This is also where all of the best content is displayed, though you might have noticed that not all posts have thousands of likes. Instagram’s updated algorithm now customizes your Explore section to your interests and finds handles of all sizes to show to you.

Something similar could work for your business: Even if you don’t have an impressive following, but your engagement rate is great in proportion to your following, your content will appear in the “Explore” section for relevant interests, among some of the top content creators. (And that’s all you need, really.) 

In short, get to know Instagram’s algorithm by leveraging the information that the network provides. Post content that provokes engagement from the right people at the right time, i.e., when they’re on the network.

As Foundr’s editor, Chan, told me: “We use Iconosquare to know when to post and the most engaged and liked images on our feed. We look out for follower growth. If our account is still growing daily by at least 700 new followers, we’re on the right track.”

Related: How to Evaluate Your Instagram Profile Performance

Track your website traffic from Instagram (Wait: You can track that?)

What’s even more important to track is the traffic flow going from Instagram to your own channel. While Instagram is an awesome platform, you don’t own it; thus, your business presence and following there is at the mercy of the next algorithm change.

So, be strategic and try to direct as much of this Instagram traffic as you can to the channels you do own and have control over. Send visitors to your website.

This will take some effort on your part: If you simply insert your website URL into your Instagram bio, you’re missing out on a lot of insightful data. 

Here are several moves I recommend to gain the insight you need from Instagram analytics. 

1. Build a special landing page. 

This is a page created specifically for people to “land on,” meaning the first page they see on your site.

Home pages tend to create an aerial view of the company, with tons of links going in multiple directions. Keep in mind that these people have already had a first touchpoint with your brand on Instagram, and that they clicked on the link to learn more.

Plus, remember that Instagram traffic is mostly mobile, so ensure a pleasant mobile experience on your mobile page by not cramming a ton of stuff onto it.

Make it as clear as possible what you want your visitors to do.

You can do this through a brief email sign-up form, to continue the conversation with them and build a longer-lasting relationship, which in turn may open up opportunities for direct sales.

Your landing page also needs to have a unique URL not found in any other way, except for a link in your Instagram bio. This is how you’ll know that all of the traffic coming to this page is, in fact, coming directly from Instagram. And, that will tell you exactly how many people clicked on that link.

Related: Instagram Analytics: Which Metrics Really Matter?

2. Include a trackable link. 

Use URL shorteners such as bit.ly or ow.ly, or better yet, Google URL Builder (which lets you create uniform and universal UTM links). If you needed any further proof of the importance of this step, know that Foundr uses UTM parameters as much as possible. (“UTM,” by the way, refers to URL parameters which marketers use to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.)

What does this achieve? When you go into the Acquisition tab in your Google Analytics, you’ll see traffic acquisition from all sources, including what percentage of it is social and what percentage comes from Instagram.

Once users switch between applications (from Instagram to an internet browser in this case), the technology will strip away the data that comes with it.

It will count Instagram traffic as “direct,” meaning it had no referral source, when in fact the visitor was referred from Instagram. See now how you could have been unfair to Instagram as a marketing channel this whole time because your analytics did not give this platform a proper credit?

Related: How to Create a Killer Instagram Ad in Under 10 Minutes

So, what exactly were those visitors doing at your site?

Through the combination of a special trackable link and an exclusive landing page, you’ll see exactly what Instagrammers are doing on your website. Not only will you know how many people came from Instagram, but you’ll be able to see how long they stayed on any given page.

You’ll also see whether they took any next steps, and which links engaged them most. From there, you can track visitors’ engagement and behavior by how much time they spent on a given page, whether they clicked anywhere else on your website and what the bounce rate was (the percentage of people that left the site from the same page they entered, without engaging with the content on any other page).

The information you gain will be a huge hint about how engaging customers’ first experience with your website has been. You can also easily analyze people’s interest in learning more about your offering by collecting email for a newsletter or a webinar signup. (If they sign up, you’ve done something right!)

And, now, that sweet word for every entrepreneur … sales.

If you’ve got something to sell and your operation is relatively low-ticket, offer visitors a discount code right away. You can then divide the number of instances where a coupon is used by the total number of people coming from Instagram, to gain a simple and straightforward conversion rate. Once again, that’s:

Instances where a coupon is used (divided by) the total number of people coming from Instagram = conversion rate

You can then use all of this insight to work backwards and polish your sales funnel. If fewer people from Instagram are visiting your website than you would have liked, you’ll need to craft a more engaging Instagram profile bio for your business and a more enticing offer for them to click on.

What’s important is, if they do come to your landing page but don’t spend enough time there, or go anywhere else on your site, you’ll know you have to rework and optimize your landing page. Conversely, if people do spend a lot of time on your site, engaging with it and reading different pages without converting into paying customers, you’ll know you’ll need to polish your sales message.

That way, you can focus on addressing those visitors’ hesitation, or simplify your sales funnel and make things more straight-forward.

Related: 14 Free Tools Every Solopreneur Needs

That constant loop of feedback

Interestingly, website behavior can also hint at what your followers on Instagram want to see more of when it comes to the content you produce. Taylor, of @finduslost, shared this process with me, writing that: “When it comes to Instagram engagement, we’re always paying attention to what is resonating with our followers. I check our Google Analytics daily to analyze our blog traffic and the channels our readers are coming from.

“To me,” Taylor continued, “the most valuable information to pay attention to is how long the average user is spending on our site, what posts they are clicking on and where they are going next. I use this data to inform my content decisions, and I also keep it top of mind when making adjustments to my website design.”

Checking your Instagram analytics every month.

Once you’ve completed all these steps and put a simple process into place for the behavior analysis I just outlined, you’ll see the traffic you get from Instagram, the quality of this traffic (how engaged these people are) and, finally, the means for calculating the conversion rate at which this traffic converts into paying customers.

Do this calculation at least monthly to gain a clear picture of your Instagram performance. With this process in place, you’ll gain an understanding of the areas that need optimization to improve your metrics — whether that means higher traffic volumes, more engagement on your website or an increase in sales. Once you know these metrics and how much money your business made directly from visitors who came from Instagram, you can easily justify using this platform as as an effective business tool.

In sum, Instagram may trick many business owners into the perception that it’s a simple tool, that it’s cutesy or even juvenile, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, as a business owner, you should recognize how this platform can provide you with an immense exposure to the right people.

You just have to find them and strike up a conversation that will enable you to take them through your sales funnel.

Then, once you begin to track results, you’ll find that marketing on this platform will become almost effortless. With the rich insights you’ll gain from your Instagram analytics, you’ll begin to see Instagram marketing as a constant feedback loop, where you gain more understanding of your audience members and their content needs, which in turn will bring more traffic to your website and (hopefully) a bunch of new conversions of your visitors into actual paying customers.

March 22, 2018

8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

We are the result of our repeated behavior. Or as Aristotle put it, “Success is not an action, but a habit.”

Here, top entrepreneurs and members of The Oracles weigh in on the one mental habit that drove their success and how to cultivate it in yourself.

Lewis Howes

Image Credit: The Oracles

1. Visualize your goals.

Since I was an athlete in high school, I’ve envisioned my goals as if they were already happening. I’ve used this visualization practice for decades now, and it’s supported my athletic career, my business achievements, and my current endeavor to make a massive global impact through the media.

There’s no right or wrong way to visualize your goals. It’s a matter of setting time aside every morning or night to close your eyes and play a movie in your mind of what your life will be like when you’ve achieved your dream.

This practice primes your mind to believe your end goal has already happened, so when the time comes to perform, you’re confident and ready. —Lewis Howes, former pro athlete, global top 100 podcast host, NYT-bestselling author of The School of Greatness, and creator of The Millionaire Morning; follow Lewis on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube

Barbara Corcoran

Image Credit: The Oracles

2. Update your mental tapes.

We all have old tapes in our head that we put on replay whenever a new opportunity arises. I was a terrible student in school, so for years, the tape that ran in my head reinforced old, negative beliefs about myself. I would play the tape and go into a meeting convinced that I was not likely to succeed or get what I wanted.

I soon realized that my old tapes had outlived their usefulness and were getting in my way. So, I formed a new mental habit of updating the content of these tapes. I swapped out, “You’re not very good at this!” for “You’re just amazing! Show them what you’ve got!”

Recording over my old mental tapes was the one habit that has contributed most to my success. —Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group and Shark on “Shark Tank”

Sharran Srivatsaa

Image Credit: The Oracles

3. Rewire your beliefs in just five minutes a day.

While visualization and goal-setting are essential, one simple, daily practice can bring your goals to life. Set aside five minutes each day to write your goals down in the present tense with a specific result, as if you have already accomplished them.

For example, you may write, “We have 2,500 clients paying us $99/month for copywriting services,” or, “We operate 32 buildings and generate $128,000/month in rental income.”

The act of writing and rewriting your goals daily from memory rewires your nervous system to create a unique singularity of focus. It also gives you total clarity on what your subconscious should be focusing on every single day.   —Sharran Srivatsaa, angel investor and president of brokerage (western region) at Douglas Elliman; grew Teles Properties 10X in five years

Jonathan Gilinski

Image Credit: The Oracles

4. Arrive 15 minutes early to everything.

Punctuality alone will get you very far in life. Growing up, I made it a point to be early to everything. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was priming myself to become a successful businessman.

My motto is, “The tardy salesman never makes the sale.” This couldn’t be more true. Being late to a meeting inevitably starts the discussion off on the wrong foot. It’s very hard to recover from that poor first impression. Being late essentially says, “My time is more important than yours.” These are words no businessperson ever wants to hear.

For those who have not cultivated this essential skill and are perpetually tardy, my suggestion would be to make a conscious effort to arrive 15 minutes early to everything you do. Whether it’s your gym class, a dinner reservation, or the business meeting of your dreams, be early.

This will give you time to collect your thoughts and soothe any anxious feelings you may have. As the great philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “In the ordinary business of life, punctuality is … necessary.” —Jonathan Gilinski, serial entrepreneur, executive director of CapsCanada, and founder of Capsuline; follow Jonathan on LinkedIn and Twitter

Shaun Rawls

Image Credit: The Oracles

5. Go for ‘No.’

Everyone yearns to hear “Yes,” but the way you handle hearing “No” will make you great.

Most people only set their sights on “Yes” targets throughout their day; they worry about hearing “No,” and feel deflated when it happens. But in trying to avoid “No,” you place too much pressure on yourself, leaving you uptight, not having fun, and ultimately, less successful.

I learned that “No” is an important part of the “Yes Process.” Embrace it. Rather than avoiding “No,” I learned to “Go for No!” It became my primary goal to reach each day. The difference between “Wanting No” and “Avoiding No” made all the difference. My natural fear of rejection practically went away. I became better, faster, and made a lot more money. 

Remember: all of the “Yeses” you want are buried in a sea of “No’s.” Set a goal for how many “No’s” should you target each day. “Go for No!” I bet it’ll become the number one habit that builds your empire. —Shaun Rawls, lifelong entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Rawls Consulting

Kenny Rueter

Image Credit: The Oracles

6. Remove all distractions.

I’ve always been fond of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

This summarizes how I like to approach business, my software platform, and life. With so many available distractions, the true essence of progress is deep thought, coupled with simplicity. To achieve simplicity, you must remove the unnecessary.

Give this a try: log your daily activities for a few days. After a fixed period, assess. You’ll be astounded by the amount of unnecessary and time-consuming distractions you have in your life.

Remove these distractions, and you’ll have time for the life-changing deep thought and profound advances in your career that can only come if you make room for them. —Kenny Rueter, co-founder of Kajabi

Sweta Patel

Image Credit: The Oracles

7. Put yourself in a bubble.

Growing up, my friends were preoccupied with trending news and pop culture. Since I threw my TV out at 16 years old, I became somewhat of an outcast. Instead of mimicking the distracted behavior of my peers, I put myself in a bubble and only surrounded myself with other driven individuals.

Defying the “norm” and focusing on my greater mission made it harder to relate to the average person. However, to pursue excellence, you sometimes have to distance yourself from the average.

Ultimately, the willingness to make the social sacrifices necessary to prioritize my mission helped me succeed more than anything. I’ve since made so many more valuable connections: people who root for my success, want me to win, and see my business thrive. Focus your time on the things that matter; it will change your whole perspective on people and business. —Sweta Patel, founder of Silicon Valley Startup Marketing who has advised over 200 early stage startups and high-growth companies; connect with Sweta on Facebook and Instagram

Marina Rose

Image Credit: The Oracles

8. Invest in yourself and take action.

Success is the ability to do what you love every day. To be successful, you have to know what you love, who you are at your core, and be courageous enough to take action.

Investing in yourself requires perseverance and determination. You can do anything you set your mind to, but to achieve your goals, you must be willing to face your fears. You may feel scared investing in yourself. However, not investing in yourself is actually worse, once you realize what your inaction has cost you: opportunity, time, learning, and your potential. 

The only difference between who you are and who you want to be is the action you take and what you do. —Marina Rose, QDNA®, founder and developer of Quantum DNA Acceleration®, a revolutionary technique for quantum growth in health, life, and business; connect with Marina on Facebook

Want to share your insights like those above in a future column? If you’re an experienced entrepreneur, please get in touch here.

Want to suggest a future topic for these entrepreneurs to answer? Email suggestion@theoracles.com, and it’s very possible we’ll make your suggestion the focus of a future article!

Follow The Oracles on Facebook.

March 21, 2018

4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Over 2017, major media outlets published innumerable articles discussing the challenges that most cannabis businesses face when trying to raise money — especially taking into account that traditional small business loans are not available for an industry that is still deemed illegal by the federal U.S. government. While the challenges remain very real, things are changing rapidly, with the pace of investments ramping up quickly and conditions for these marijuana businesses ameliorating consistently.

Let’s take the Viridian Cannabis Deal Tracker, a unique database that tracks capital raises and M&A activity in the cannabis industry, as reference. As per Viridian Capital Advisors’ data, the first five weeks of 2018 saw investments in marijuana companies exceed the $1.2 billion mark, matching deals for all of 2016. Furthermore, in the first 60 days of the year, the cannabis industry has gotten almost $2 billion in new funds — year-to-date through March 2. This compares to $456.6 million in raises for the first nine weeks of 2017.

Now, the marked surge in investments coupled with a substantial rise in the size of the average raise (which went from $6.2 million in the first 60 days of 2017 to $15.5 million in the first 60 days of 2018), signal not only an increased interest in the cannabis industry, but also better conditions to raise money for cannabis companies, and thus, an larger desire to do so. The argument is pretty simple, though: More liquidity means more opportunity.

Interestingly, Viridian’s president Scott Greiper told me that the larger players in the investment space are either funding public companies up in Canada or backing private companies in the U.S. — but not a lot in public companies in the Land of the Free.

“Penny stocks, public over-the-counter stocks in the U.S. are dissuading the larger investors from putting money into public companies here,” Greiper said.

Sophistication of a certain kind

One of the most interesting trends for entrepreneurs coming into the cannabis industry is the ability to raise money from people beyond their uncles, parents and friends. “Access to more sophisticated investors has improved materially over the last couple of years,” Greiper agreed.

“That talks not only to the amount of capital coming in, but to the fact that investors are willing to place larger bets on earlier stage companies. So, the ability to get funded is better today than it was over the last three or four years.”

In addition, investors are willing to take equity in companies, instead of just debt, like they used to. Let’s take a look into what that means.

Equity raises on the rise

Beyond the fact that money going into U.S. cannabis companies is largely attracted by private companies, the other big underlying trend here is the transition from debt-backed raises to equity-backed raises. As the Tracker shows, roughly 85 percent of the raises completed over the first 60 days of the year used equity structures, up from 72.9 percent in the same period last year.

“This reflects a change in investor risk tolerance, i.e., the fact that investors are pursuing the financial upside as equity investors, rather than just trying to protect their downside risk as lenders,” Greiper noted.

As Greiper explained in my Entrepreneur Press book, Start Your Own Cannabis Business, “Back in 2014, most companies were raising debt. No matter what kind of debt, the fact of the matter is that, for an emerging growth company without a lot of existing revenues, cash flow, or big backlog of forward revenues, you may be in a position where you can’t either service the debt and keep it current, or pay off the debt when it comes due (…) And this is a real problem, because then someone else will own your company.”

Take a look at the chart below, shared by Viridian:

“In 2014, many companies could only get loans. Either straight loans or convertible loans,” Viridian’s vice president Harrison Phillips added. Now, equity raises are much more common.

Learn all about funding a cannabis business in Start Your Own Cannabis Business, available for pre-order following this link.

Picture by Javier Hasse.