November
20, 2018

4 min read

Spending time at a hotel during the off season doesn’t need to be like a scene out of The Shining. In fact, if you can home in on the right destination, off-season travel can be some of the most fun, rewarding and — yes — cost-effective vacationing you can do. Plan your trip right, and you’ll be able to gain access to hotels, restaurants and events that are too crowded (or expensive) during the tourist-swarmed high season.

Related: 21 Ways to Get Inspired (Infographic)

Over the winter, Long Island’s East Hampton — home to celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jerry Seinfeld and Martha Stewart — is chock full of activities for budget-minded travelers looking to unwind. Besides possessing some of the most gorgeous beaches on the east coast, the swanky town is packed with all the arts, shopping, eating and drinking the savvy vacationer could want.

Here are five reasons an off-season trip to the Hamptons is the perfect way to recharge.

1. Killer accommodations

A quick scan of booking.com or Airbnb will demonstrate the obvious: It’s way cheaper to find a place to stay in East Hampton over the winter. We suggest checking out Journey East Hampton, which maintains the hip and sophisticated spirit of the Hamptons without the stratospheric cost.

Image credit: Journey East Hampton

All the rooms feature a cozy lounge area, ultra-modern bathrooms and an insanely comfortable bed courtesy of Serta Simmons’ Tomorrow Sleep mattress. Guests can enjoy craft cocktails in the lobby bar or step outside by the bonfire and warm up with s’mores. You can’t do that over the summer. (Well, you can — but people might look at you funny.)

2. Easy travel

Unless you’ve been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours on end on 27 East, it’s almost impossible to comprehend the agony of driving out east during the summer months. But get this: Not only is the one-shot route to the Hamptons mostly clear in the off-season; but once you arrive, the town’s country roads — usually backed up with beach-goers — are incredibly fun to wind through. If you’re the type who finds spirited driving a Zen-like activity, East Hampton’s windy roads can be your nirvana. In fact, in her book, Drivetime, Professor Lynne Pearce, of Lancaster University notes that driving can “positively direct and structure thought.”

Related: 3 Important Changes That Can Save Yourself From Burnout

3. Unique activities

As one of the hottest travel destinations on the East Coast, East Hampton in the high season can be a touristy mess. While certain activities are off limits over the winter (now is not the time to take those surfing lessons), there’s still lots to do on the chilliest of days.

Ice skating at Buckskill Winter Club, cider tastings at Wolffer Estates and special screenings of live theater from the Metropolitan Opera at GuildHall are all totally worthy daytime options from December through February.

4. Trendy restaurants

Try to make a reservation at locals-only Italian favorite Nick & Toni’s during the summer, and you’ll be lucky if you can sit after 4 or before 11. During the off-season, however, you can rub elbows with some of the town’s biggest names. (Alec Baldwin is a regular.) Typical waits at Bostwick’s Chowder House, a casual, locals-approved seafood spot, can be well over an hour from May through August. We much prefer walking right in and scoring one of their legendary lobster rolls immediately, thank you very much.

Related: 11 Habits of Truly Happy People

5. Natural beauty

Fighting for towel space on one of the Hamptons’ iconic beaches is hardly a calming experience. But a brisk, centering, off-season morning stroll on Indian Wells Beach or Atlantic Avenue — both open during the winter and blissfully uncrowded — is just the opposite, and sure to recharge your creative spirit. Science backs this up as well; in his research on the psychological and cognitive effects of the outdoors, neuroscientist David Strayer has found that time in nature enhances higher-order thinking, restores attention and boosts creativity. For even more inspiration, visit the 16-acre garden at LongHouse Reserve with sculptures by acclaimed architect Buckminster Fuller. It’s the ideal place for smartphone-addicted cubicle dwellers to unplug, unwind and invigorate.

November
19, 2018

7 min read

In this ongoing column, The Digest, Entrepreneur.com News Director Stephen J. Bronner speaks with food entrepreneurs and executives to see what it took to get their products into the mouths of customers.

Chris Hunter is one of the guys responsible for Four Loko, the formerly caffeinated alcoholic drink that was blamed for causing a few deaths, and which the government then cracked down hard on.

Four Loko is still on the market today — and apparently selling well — but Hunter, who was 25 when the brand was created, has since moved on to other businesses. His current pursuit is leading Koia, a plant-based protein beverage company. Quite the career pivot, right?

The beverage brand launched nationally in Whole Foods in 2016 and has since expanded to the shelves of more than 4,000 U.S. stores. It expects to have $10 million in sales for this year. Koia’s products include five flavors of its original protein beverage, as well as three fruit infusion flavors. The company plans to introduce a keto line in January.

Related: How This Alcohol Industry Newcomer Created a Japanese Whiskey Brand for the U.S.

Entrepreneur asked Hunter about his career shift, what interested him about Koia and his advice for launching a product.

Chris Hunter

Image credit: Courtesy of Koia

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you go from Four Loko to Koia?

My life had evolved. I was in my early 30s and my first son was born. Life was just different than it was back then. I was looking for something I was a little more aligned with. Craft beer was really popular at the time, and it still is, so I found a small craft brewery outside of Chicago that was creating an alcoholic root beer. I formed a relationship with the creator and founder — essentially we brought in this company and brand under a subsidiary of [Four Loko parent company] Phusion Projects — and we created the brand Not Your Father’s Root Beer. We ended up selling that brand to Pabst shortly after.

At that point life was changing again, and my second son was born. He was born dairy intolerant, so we became a dairy-free household. My wife was studying to be a nutritionist. We were starting to eat a lot differently. My workouts were changing from when I was younger, from typical gym days to now doing yoga and triathlons. I was much more aware of health and wellness in general.

I started investing in some small, better-for-you companies and products, from meal delivery kits services to a product called Raw Nature 5, which was the original form of Koia. It just so happened that the product was in my gym, and I had been drinking it.

Why was an attractive product to you?

As I started to do my due diligence, Raw Nature 5 was a really bad name, and it had this really bad bottle and label. But it was selling really well. It was only in 30 stores in Chicago. I started to dig into it a little bit more. One store told us it was their best-selling product, and it was selling for six bucks a bottle. I stopped into a Whole Foods and noticed there was a good amount of shelf space dedicated to this product. As I was standing there, I watched a consumer basically pitch the product to another consumer.

A bunch of industry veterans, including Mark Rampolla who created Zico, invested in the product, so I invested alongside them. I was the local guy who had some entrepreneurial experience, so I formed a good relationship with Raw Nature 5’s co-founders. As they started moving along, the company got into a difficult situation — it was running out of money.

Image credit: Courtesy of Koia

We collectively decided to pull Raw Nature 5 off the shelves, because it wasn’t a scalable product at that point. There wasn’t a process in place to sell it nationwide. But I believed in the product so much, so me and other investors decided to invest what was a significant amount for us. I talked about wanting to bet on myself and take the reins. So I came in to help pivot the company and co-found the new company and new product, which we collectively rebranded as Koia.

Related: 5 Ways Switching to Plant-Based Diet Boosts Your Productivity

What can other entrepreneurs learn from your experience of launching into Whole Foods?

There’s multiple ways to go to market. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. A lot of companies will saturate one particular market like New York or L.A. or wherever and prove out their story and then launch nationally. We were fortunate that we had an opportunity to launch nationally with Whole Foods. You can’t really turn that down, but it’s an expensive way to go. We had to take on investment and grow the company quickly.

My advice would just be to think through what you want the final outcome of your company and product to be and what route to market best fits that, whether it’s a regional build or national rollout.

What has been the company’s greatest challenge, and how were you able to overcome it?

The natural food beverage industry has a ton of new products launching, so it’s a crowded space and there’s a lot of noise around it. It’s a difficult route to market. How we overcame it is we added an extraordinary amount of support to any retailer that we’ve launched at. When we had the opportunity to launch with Whole Foods, we didn’t have the mentality of, “Oh great, we’re done, now let’s sit back and watch what happens.” We hired merchandisers. We did a lot of in-store demos. We did price reductions. We did everything in our power to make sure that consumers were exposed to the brand.

We made sure that the labeling really spoke to our selling points that there’s 18 grams of protein and only 4 grams of sugar in the entire bottle. That draws people in right away. They’re intrigued. We were confident that once people tried our product, they would like it and become repeat purchasers. That’s an expensive thing to do, but I believe that’s the right way to go to market.

Where does the name Koia come from?

As we came up with the name Koia, we used a branding agency, and looked into our belief as a company and what we wanted to stand for. We honed in on blue zones — places in the world that people live longer than others. What we started to look at is there’s these five common trends with people that live in blue zones. One of them is they eat a primarily plant-based diet, which clearly fit with Koia. It fits with our mentality as a company. The name Koia is derived from one of those blue zones, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.

Related: This Beverage Entrepreneur Got His Start by Simply Asking a Big Company to Let Him Sell Their Products

What is the most unusual thing about working in this particular niche?

What’s interesting to me that it’s such a small industry. It seems like everybody knows each other, but it’s also such a friendly industry. I’m just shocked at how many other companies and brands we collaborate with are open to doing that. Other companies we talk to share their stories of successes and failures, and we try to figure things out together.

How do people react to your past with Four Loko?

People want to understand how I went from that to this, because it’s pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. To me there’s no right or wrong. I’m not ingrained in one way of eating or drinking versus another. It’s about options. What it ultimately boils down to that I like to work on things I’m aligned with, and Koia is aligned with my life and my lifestyle right now.

November
17, 2018

2 min read

According to an infographic by Business Backer, 93 percent of employees feel that trust in their boss is essential to being satisfied at work. Employees who aren’t satisfied might be tempted to work with less excitement, to miss work or cause problems within the workplace.

That’s why, if you want to keep your business running smoothly, it’s important to build trust with your employees. Good leaders use all sorts of communication tricks to learn what their employees are feeling, adapt based on those feelings and then clearly explain what to do next.

This infographic breaks down 10 proven ways to build trust, which include:

1. Show them the big picture. If your employees can understand the company’s direction, they can contextualize their efforts and see why they’re important. That’s why you should always introduce company goals, ways of working and role expectations for every new employee.
2. Set clear expectations. This goes back to the first point. But if you can define exactly what’s needed, then your employees can be more focused and trust that their efforts are worthwhile. You should ask them to recap what you’re telling them and ask if your expectations are achievable. That way, everyone is on the same page about what comes next.

You can learn about the other strategies in the infographic below.

November
16, 2018

8 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Amazon recently opened two of its three Amazon 4-star stores, making its collective brick-and-mortar experiences tally up at over 100 locations between Amazon Books, Amazon Pop-Up, Amazon Go and now Amazon 4-star. These investments from Amazon have customers, competitors and commerce-driven professionals alike speculating the future and the present of what Amazon is up to, but one thing is for certain … physical retail is here to stay. Make no mistake, however, that Amazon’s investment into this space is unlike anything we have seen in the past.

Related: Why This Online Clothing Company Started Sharing Its Profits With Brick-and-Mortar Stores

Merging its extensive consumer and inventory data generated from Amazon.com with futuristic ideas of what brick-and-mortar retail should look like, Amazon has opened its 4-star stores in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, a suburban town just outside of Denver, Colo., and most recently in Berkley, Calif. Presumably, these stores blend in with others if you were to simply stroll by and take a quick peak, but blending in with other retailers is exactly the opposite of what Amazon 4-star delivers.

In a recent interview I had with Cameron Janes, vice president of physical stores for Amazon, he explained that Amazon 4-star has been “built around customers and will continue to operate with consumers at the core of every decision we make.” Expanding on this, Janes stressed that “with data leading decisions, humans have approved every single product in our stores.”

With the human touch often dismissed in our technology-centric world, how is an online marketplace giant like Amazon welcoming the human touch in their physical storefront experiences? And what can other business leaders learn from this?

Below, consider four tips to take away from the newly introduced Amazon 4-star stores.

1. Customer insight should drive every decision businesses make.

Amazon 4-star stores have a curated mix of products that are only rated at four stars and above by customers on Amazon.com or are recognized through sales data as top selling or top trending items. Collectively, these details reflect what customers across the globe are buying and loving — ultimately helping to narrow down expansive product searches for customers and deliver trusted consumer finds. This approach to identifying the inventory assortment available at Amazon 4-star stores is something any business leader can learn from, but too often businesses dismiss data generated from their customers. At Amazon 4-star, however, this data is proactively reviewed and then applied to the decisions made regarding immediate and future inventory assortments — among other decisions, as well.

Related: What Small Retailers Can Learn From the Industry’s Push Towards AI and Big Data

Genna Gold, senior manager of local business outreach for Yelp, explained to me that the value of consumer ratings “have changed the way consumers evaluate where to spend their time and money.” Expanding on this, Gold shares that “reviews support customers in their purchasing decisions when they’re already in buy mode, which makes them highly transactional.”

According to a BrightLocal survey of over 1,000 U.S. consumers, 85 percent of respondents trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Amazon 4-star is smart — to say the least — to bring this review strategy into its physical environments. Supporting these 4-star or higher ratings are actual customer testimonials, which Amazon 4-star displays via printed review cards merchandised next to each respective product in combination with digital signage that is updated in real-time and highlights the price, customer ratings, product details and Amazon Prime price savings. The main takeaway here, however? Past customer purchases are what help push future customer sales.

2. Be where your customers are and know who they are.

When it came time for Amazon to identify where it would open its first three Amazon 4-star stores, it knew one thing mattered most.

“Whether it’s in a mall like our Colorado location or is free-standing such as our Soho store is, we just wanted to be where our customers are,” explained Janes.

The Colorado location marks Amazon’s second physical store within Park Meadows, Colorado’s largest mall. Joining an Amazon Pop-Up, the Amazon 4-star store benefits from already having established data on the local demographics of this particular area. And local — believe it or not — is an important factor in the Amazon 4-star strategy.

As Janes explained to me, “In each of our Amazon 4-star locations, customers will find products curated specifically to their regional market. In our Colorado location, for example, we feature ‘Trending Around Denver’ items that have been top-performing items sold in that area. We’re able to change this frequently based on sales data to proactively accommodate local customers and ultimately better support each unique, local environment.”

As it turns out, being where your customers are is only one piece to the retail puzzle for Amazon. Knowing who they are is just as important — and as Amazon 4-star shows us by example, supporting customers with real-time inventory insight and product offerings in direct response to historic sales, local market trends and real-time data can help achieve this. Business leaders across all categories can use this same strategy in their own efforts to achieve stronger sales success.

Related: Alibaba’s Futuristic Supermarket in China Is Light-Years Ahead of the U.S. — and Shows Where Amazon Will Likely Take Whole Foods

3. Focus on your customers, not your competition.

When challenged with whether other merchants impacted Amazon’s decision-making in opening physical stores, Janes confidently stated that “we don’t focus a lot on the competition.” Instead, Janes stressed multiple times that what Amazon does focus on is “our customers.”

With a customer-centric strategy leading their decisions, Amazon recognizes that for most consumers, the stores will be the first physical interaction they have with Amazon. As a result, employees are trained to put customers first — plain and simple.

“What matters to Amazon is customer obsession. We obsess over their experiences and want the employees within Amazon 4-star to do the same,” Janes explained.

To help support its customers, Amazon 4-star designed its stores with an easy-to-navigate floor plan that highlights various categories of products that include consumer electronics, kitchen products, home decor, toys, books, games and more through simple merchandising strategies without distracting displays. Using both traditional signage and digital signage, customers shopping within an Amazon 4-star store can easily gain product knowledge, customer ratings and even suggested products to complement other items based on past customer purchases. This clutter free approach to merchandising has another benefit, as well, which is allowing employees to easily see throughout the store and more easily support customers as a result.

“Our merchandising is simple because it doesn’t need to be complicated. We answer the most obvious questions that customers want to know through our signage and there’s a clear line of vision throughout any point of our store. This helps our employees engage more easily with customers and view the entire store to identify who may need assistance at any given time,” explained Janes.

Expanding on this, Janes shared that “it’s a responsibility for our employees to know about our inventory so that they can make sure our customers end up with the right products based on what they need.”

This customer-centric approach is not futurist like many of Amazon’s other commerce strategies, but then again today’s modern merchants are not necessarily known for customer service anymore. Amazon is re-inventing how customer service looks in brick-and-mortar environments — as well as that despite competition, the customer should always remain top-of-mind.

4. Incorporate technology in combination with the human touch.

Amazon 4-star stores are highly curated and represent a direct reflection of their customers, but this doesn’t happen by observation alone. Amazon depends greatly on technology and data to identify what are top selling items and must-have products for its stores. Additionally, Amazon 4-star is the perfect destination for consumers to engage with tech products such as Alexa to help customers identify if it’s a purchase they want to make. Collectively, these experiences help Amazon 4-star deliver stronger customer engagement opportunities and sales alike. But, the human touch is not dismissed in these actions since every product being sold is in fact based on past human choices thanks to technology.

Related: Amazon Opens 4-Star Store in New York City

Through technology, Amazon has gained more clarity about who its customers are, what their customers want and how they can better support their customers in their end goals, which is to purchase products they both need and want. Conveniently enough, when putting the customer first, Amazon also reaches its goal, which is to continue to be a leader in the world of commerce — not just online.

As you aim to reach your own goals in business, consider who is really leading your decisions. Is it exclusively technology? Or do you welcome the human touch, as well?

As Janes explains best, aim to create something that is “data driven yet human approved.”

November
14, 2018

2 min read

Last week we reported that the NFL was teaming up with developer Epic Games to bring all 32 team uniforms to one of the most popular video games in the world, Fortnite. The reasoning, it seemed, was twofold: current fans would be excited about wrapping their characters in the “skins” of their favorite players, and potential fans would be exposed to a beleaguered league that needs all the new viewers it can get. They stated the outfits would be available in the game’s Battle Royale Item Shop starting Nov. 9, with no end date mentioned.

Related: Developing an App or a Game? Take a (Retro) Lesson From ‘PAC-MAN.’

The skins have now been removed from Fortnite’s online store, Epic Games announced on Monday via Twitter. But in the short time they were available — items in the store cycle in and cycle out — some unscrupulous players created sick, controversial scenarios utilizing the uniforms. Yahoo collected a rundown of what we’re talking about.

There’s Michael Vick, dog abuser, carrying a pooch.

Ohhh shit dont do him like that pic.twitter.com/uCk6SGt5RX

— Fake SportsCenter (@FakeSportsCentr) November 10, 2018

Aaron Hernandez, convicted murderer, with a gun.

Ok fortnite pic.twitter.com/1FqmZP8vrZ

— NAMING MY SON MITCH (@FlowsAndolini) November 10, 2018

Jason Pierre-Paul, who damaged multiple fingers in a Fourth of July fireworks accident, playing with sparkers.

And, finally, O.J. Simpson ready to “murder opponents.”

@StoolGametime OJ Simpson skin so I can murder these opponents and try to get away with the W! pic.twitter.com/QrR8T6v2mW

— Thankful Matt Speck (@The_Speck24) November 10, 2018

November
13, 2018

6 min read

Wish you could shed a few pounds? You’re not the only one. According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of all American adults surveyed said that they were trying to lose weight. (Emphasis on “trying” rather than “succeeding.”)

It seems so simple to just eat less and exercise more, right? But as all too many of us know, it ain’t that easy. We get busy, we’re exhausted, so we shove bad things in our mouths to save time, to get a quick energy boost, or, let’s face it, because a lot of bad things taste great! The planning and willpower it takes to radically change our lives in order to fit into last year’s jeans usually last as long as that Häagen-Dazs bar in our hands.

But here’s the thing: you don’t actually have to do anything radical to lose weight, says Jonathan Dugas, Ph.D., health and research consultant at Vitality Group and an endurance coach. Dugas says that we all can reap huge health benefits by making a couple of small changes in our lifestyles. Here are nine tips he offers to help you lose weight without being miserable.

1. You can’t outrun a poor diet.

Image credit:

Don Emmert | Getty Images

“The first important point is that you can’t out exercise a poor diet. While being active does mean you burn calories, being overweight or obesity is strictly a function of diet and not activity levels. As such, we try to help everyone be active for the health benefits, but eat healthily for the weight benefits. It is important to remember that weight loss really is a marathon and not a sprint. Individuals who are more overweight or obese can experience more rapid weight loss, but that is because they have more weight to lose. Managing expectations is key to staying the course and achieving one’s goals.”

2. Pick a diet. Any diet.

Image credit:

Enrique Díaz | 7cero | Getty Images

“The key to diets is that, by design, they all create an energy deficit, and to lose weight a deficit is required. So, if one adopts a diet and follows it, then they are almost certain to lose weight, although the amount of weight they lose, and whether they lose more fat than muscle mass, will vary widely. Do not be afraid to abandon a diet and try a new one if it is not working for you. Expect to do some trial and error before you find one that you feel like is a good fit for your lifestyle.”

Related: Exercise Is One Thing Most Successful People Do Everyday

3. Skip working out for now — and skip those smoothies!

Image credit:

Foment | Getty Images

“It’s not uncommon for an individual to have a wakeup call and get motived to take action. The tendency, however, is to be too ambitious and try to fix everything at once. This can be problematic. If weight loss is your goal, focus on weight loss. That means changing your dietary habits to achieve that daily and weekly calorie deficit, but it also means you do not increase your physical activity. Not only does adding more workouts just soak up bandwidth, but the increase in energy expenditure will actually drive appetite up. For most of us, we feel justified indulging after a workout because we feel like we earned it. However, a 16 oz. sports drink (~100 calories) and an energy bar (200-300 calories) is all it takes to match the 300-400 calories you just burned at the gym. And forget about the post-workout smoothie, those babies can run you in excess of 500 calories easy.”

4. Eat what you make and take what you make.

Image credit:

Luis Alvarez | Getty Images

“We are surrounded by very convenient and affordable, yet calorie-dense, food options. In some situations, these make sense, for example having to catch an early flight and eating breakfast at the airport. However, preparing your own food, even if you do not choose the healthiest ingredients 100 percent of the time, will almost always result in lower intake. Therefore, opting to prepare your own meals when you can is a big win. The key is understanding that few of us can do this all the time — and that’s okay. Instead, set some weekly goals like bringing your lunch to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Your bank account will thank you, too.”

Related: 5 Ways Switching to Plant-Based Diet Boosts Your Productivity

5. Be social.

Image credit:

Thomas Barwick | Getty Images

“Cooking for one or two can seem like a lot more effort than just eating out. Instead, leverage the power of your social network and rotate dinners with your friends. And I don’t mean extravagant dinner parties with all the trimmings. Chances are you aren’t the only one who wants to do things a little healthier, so set out some criteria with your buddies and agree to cook for the group one night a week. All it takes is two or three of you and suddenly most weeknights can be covered, plus you get to hang with your friends.”

6. Limit, but don’t eliminate, alcohol.

Image credit:

franckreporter | Getty Images

“Enjoying a drink isn’t a crime, and it won’t wreck your health. Drinking in excess, however, can derail your weight loss efforts in a hurry because alcoholic beverages can be extremely high in calories. Limiting alcohol in any way will help. For some that means not drinking on certain days of the week, for others, it means simply stopping at one drink, or maybe giving up beer for wine. Find an approach that is comfortable for you.”

Related: 10 Healthy Habits for People Who Work Remotely

7. Don’t drink your calories when you can eat them.

Image credit:

Dmitry Ageev | Getty Images

“When given the opportunity to eat your calories instead of drinking them, always choose the former. Water is really always the best choice, but there is a long list of zero and low-calorie beverages. At around 150 calories per can, sugary beverages like sodas, sports drinks, and juice (yes, juice), are the primary offenders here. Even just two a day is like having an extra sandwich at lunch.”

8. Get professional help.

Image credit:

bymuratdeniz | Getty Images

“Consider accessing a pro. Dieticians train specifically to help people manage their weight. If you are overweight or obese, dietician services might even be covered by your health plan, but you’ll have to investigate to be sure. But even if you aren’t, consider the professional insights, support, and accountability an investment in your health and future. A typical approach is between 3-6 months, so while being healthy is a lifelong commitment, getting help from a dietician isn’t.”

Related: 11 Strategies for Eating Healthy on a Business Trip

9. Don’t be afraid to change.

Image credit:

Raquel Lonas | Getty Images

“Don’t be afraid to change course if something is not working. Getting to the right mix of habits and behaviors that fits with you almost certainly will require trial and error. To that end, be willing to change it up if you feel like something is a dead end.”

November
10, 2018

2 min read

If you’ve ever watched Entrepreneur’s original series, Elevator Pitch, then you’ve probably seen smart founders make dumb mistakes while pitching their ideas to potential investors. They might flub an answer or get tongue-tied, or they might just be a little boring. Other times, you might notice that something seemed off about a pitch, but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

Investors are gambling every time they put money into a new project or idea. Your job when pitching is to prove to them that you’re worth the risk. That means you’ll need to not only show them the possible upside of what they have to gain, but also be clear about what they could possibly expect to lose and their odds. In other words, you need to give them a holistic view of what you do, not just the one good idea.

You might have pitched an investor yourself and thought you crushed it, only to hear that the investor isn’t interested. If that’s the case, there’s a chance the pitch was missing one of 10 essential elements.

This infographic by Buffalo 7 breaks down 10 slides you should have in your next investment pitch deck. If you’re not presenting formally, though, you can still keep track of these aspects in your head and make sure you cover each one. They include:

1. The vision, where you concisely explain your idea.
2. The problem. Why is your vision necessary or helpful?
3. The opportunity. What is the market size, and how can you position yourself to earn a share of it?

This is just the start, though. Check out the infographic below to see the rest of the slides you need when pitching investors.

November
9, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Small businesses are losing business and potentially harming their reputations because of SEO spam cyberattacks. These attacks are known as search engine poisoning (SEP) attacks. As the name implies, the desired outcome (i.e., action on objective) of this attack is to poison your website results on search engine result pages (SERP).

Related: Malware Hits Everyone From Small Businesses to Big Government. What Are You Doing About It?

To understand this attack, we have to step back to the basics with SEO. SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the work that goes into your website to help you rank higher when customers search for your business online. Search engines like Google and Bing use special software that quickly reviews or “crawls” the content on websites and then serves up the most relevant sites for a particular query. When your site’s keywords are properly optimized, you’ll get more visitors, which ultimately means more potential customers and more income.

There are all sorts of tricks and tips to improve your SEO ranking — but that’s another article for another time. These SEP attacks materialize in what is known as SEO spam. It’s when an attacker injects your site with unwanted links and keywords. Hackers can insert links anywhere on your website, and depending on the tactics they employ, they can embed these links into the meta data or into your website’s content. Hackers use basic HTML anchor elements to link to other pages. Some of the more common locations might be header and footer files because they load with each request, or in specific widgets or menus. But, we see them sprinkled in titles and content in the body as well.

Perhaps the most pervasive of SEP attacks is the injection of pharmaceutical ads, but these days you can see injections for things like casinos, fashion and a wide range of other industries — including things like services to write your school papers. In all these instances, attackers find a way to inject spam keywords, often attributed to backlinks to their sites of choice.

Related: How to Protect Your Personal Brand’s Website From a Cyber Attack

For example, if a local Seattle marketing consultant’s website experienced SEO spam, it could soon stop showing up in relevant search queries, such as “Seattle marketing consultant” because search engines would instead pick up fraudulent or malicious keywords. In digital marketing, we call this “losing your ranking,” or being knocked further down in the search results for a truly relevant query. Ultimately, this form of cyber attack can cost small-business owners and entrepreneurs business because customers are no longer finding them online.

This type of attack is so effective and interesting to attackers because it’s often very difficult to detect (e.g., they are often injected in code that renders off screen) and built on an affiliate business that cares only about impressions, not conversions. What this means is that attackers make money based on the traffic (impressions) they generate for their customers. As long as they are generating traffic, they are happy. It’s such an effective attack that in a recent study we conducted of 60,000-plus infected sites, we found over 73 percent of the infected sites were affected with this malware type.

Negative impact of SEO spam

SEO spam can also hurt a business’s reputation and mislead potential customers about the content of the site. This is because negative and incorrect keywords could direct straight to the business’s website, giving off an unprofessional or even fraudulent appearance. For example, a high-end salon could have the incorrect keywords “cheap sunglasses” associated with its website. If this happens, visitors may think the site is a scam, or misinterpret what the business actually is. One of the ways that Google will punish your site is flagging it as potentially compromised:

Related: 7 Surprising Places Hackers Hide

Here are a few tips that should help small business stay ahead of SEO Spam threats:

1. Register with Google’s webmaster tools. It’s easy, and it’s free. Google is one of the largest search engines and its software is constantly crawling the web. If you register with their tools, it will alert you when it finds an issue — a full 48 hours before it flags it to the public or begins changing how your site shows up in search results. This is a great preventative step that costs nothing to enact.

2. Proactively protect your website. Websites are under attack on a daily basis, whether you deploy something on the server, application or in the cloud; you must deploy some form of a protective solution. My recommendation is to go with a cloud-based firewall, as the name implies it is a wall that helps keep attackers at bay. It actively adapts to attacks and helps keep your site spam free.

3. Deploy a monitoring service. These types of services monitor your website proactively and identify red flags or warning signs, which you would never see or recognize on your own, including monitoring for SEO spam. This is complementary to Google’s webmaster tools. Partnering with a security provider helps provide peace of mind to small-business owners knowing they have a team with expertise to help them in case anything should go wrong.

4. Monitor keywords: This is a great way to get cross-functional teams involved: Have your marketing teams actively monitor your traffic and keyword performance. They are often on the front lines and should be able to notice suspicious behavior like a spike in keywords in industries you don’t participate.

Security is very nuanced and constantly evolving. The online threats and issues we were dealing with just a year ago are different today. While this form of cyber attack isn’t discussed as much as phishing or malware attacks, it’s absolutely something all website owners should be aware of. Consider following the simple steps above to ensure no SEO spam is living on your website. Also, remember the value of good SEO optimization to keep new relevant visitors coming to your site.

November
7, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued a stern warning: End humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels within a decade or become directly responsible for not halting irreversible climate change.

Related: #5 Ways Through Which Biotech Entrepreneurs are Going to Enhance Human Lives

Clearly we have to pay attention to climate change. And, here, one of the biggest areas we can change is the power sector; that’s because, currently, 33 percent of the world’s power comes from oil, while coal is responsible for 28 percent, and natural gas, 24 percent. Cutting out fossil fuels and switching to cleaner, renewable sources of energy could do a lot to impact climate change, but we may need to rethink some parts of our power grid.

Power grids in industrialized countries were developed to convey a steady stream of electricity to as many people as possible and provide that steady stream of energy in the most reliable way possible. While that was certainly a noble cause, the architects of this system failed to take into account that such ease of use would result in ever-increasing demand for power, which would in turn result in tons of carbon dioxide being dumped into our atmosphere every year.

In the United States alone, 35 percent of CO2 emissions comes from power generation.

Now we know better, but doing better isn’t looking as easy. Today, decades after scientists first sounded the alarm bells about climate change, alternatives to coal and oil are still costly and have poor adoption rates. Worldwide, only 3 percent of our power comes from renewable sources, 7 percent from hydroelectricity, and a measly 0.2 percent from solar.

Solar adoption is on the rise, but it can be cost prohibitive for many people. Just a few solar panels can power an entire home or office, and 1 gigawatt of solar power generation can prevent 690 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. But even a standard system for a small house can cost an average of $13,188, while a system for a large house can be more than $20,000.

And even at those prices, there are complications and regulatory hurdles that can make the cost savings negligible, further discouraging adoption.

What Europe is doing to further blockchain’s positive impact on the environment

Already in Europe, there are multiple villages in the Netherlands where blockchain technology is being used to generate, share and store renewable energy among the homes, each of which has different combinations of energy production technology. Residents have solar panels, heat pumps and more and are governed independently of the main power grid.

So far, these power co-ops are able to produce about 90 percent of the power residents need, drastically reducing their reliance on fossil fuels.

In Europe, too, Eurelectric, the trade association of electric distribution operators for the continent, has been monitoring blockchain’s progress in modernizing the power grid and recently released a report about its findings. The report concluded that asset ownership of the power grid would remain an important task, and blockchain technology would be unlikely to change that aspect of the electric companies’ business model.

What blockchain could do

Blockchain could, however, impact the generation side of power distribution.

In fact, in 2017, a pilot program was launched using IBM’s blockchain framework to stabilize the power grid in Europe, a first step in incorporating renewable and clean energy solutions into the power grid. One of the main problems with implementing new sources of power generation is that they can be unpredictable in the volume of power they will output in a given day.

That means that on a cloudy day, a power grid would have to be able to shift from solar to an alternate source or battery backup. This is where blockchain smart grids come in handy on “dumb” existing power distribution networks — the smart grid can tell when there is a shortfall in one part and switch sources without the need for constant human intervention.

Related: 5 Industries Likely to Be Disrupted by Blockchain

In undeveloped areas of the world, blockchain smart power grids can be used to solve the “last mile” problem in universal power adoption, by pulling power from multiple nearby sources. It can also give people the power to choose where their energy is coming from. Users on smart power distribution grids can choose how much of their power to gain from renewable sources based on market availability, cost, reliability and other factors.

This is an alternative to just relying on power distribution operators to sell them whatever those operators are generating. Smart grids can also help people make the most efficient use of their resources by forecasting energy needs and storage use.

Want to learn more about the potential of blockchain smart power grid technology to move your business forward? Check out this infographic from Lition:

November
6, 2018

5 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Instagram isn’t just for sharing selfies, brunch photos and cute pics of your cats. This popular social media platform can actually drive sales for your business. In fact, according to a study of 2,000 Instagram users by Dana Rebecca Designs, 74 percent of millennials surveyed, 63 percent of Gen Xers and 54 percent of baby boomers said they had made a purchase based on Instagram.

Related: 6 Ways to Convert Your Instagram Audience into Customers

Still, if you have an ecommerce business, you can’t just slap a photo up on Instagram and expect to make a bunch of money. So, how can you improve your posts and convince users to buy your product? Here are a few simple tips to help you become a selling-sensation on Instagram.

Create a business account.

If you haven’t switched your regular Instagram account into a business account, you’re missing out on a ton of features that will boost your conversions. Not only are you able to measure your results and learn more about your followers and what types of posts they like but you also get features that are designed for selling. For instance, business accounts have the ability to add a link to their Instagram Stories so that users can “swipe up” to buy.

Standard Wines uses the “swipe up” Story feature to lead its followers to its website to shop.

Image Credit: Sprout Social 

Some 15 percent to 25 percent of Story viewers,, according to the Brandwatch blog, swipe up to follow a link and engage directly with a brand’s website. That’s a ton of potential new customers you can attract using this convenient and engaging feature. Don’t forget, though, that not everyone is aware of the feature, so occasionally include a call-to-action telling people to swipe up to buy.

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

Add a link in your bio.

Not only does your post need a stunning image, but it also needs a caption that will speak to your audience members and a call to action to lead them to take your desired action. If you want to increase conversions on Instagram, tell people where to go and what to do next — don’t leave it up to them to guess.

Instagram doesn’t allow you to place links in your posts (only in your stories if you have a business account), but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a call to action. Add a link to your website in your Instagram bio and remind people in your posts to check out your website by clicking on the link in your bio.

Use Instagram Live.

Instagram Live is a great strategy to use if you want to boost your sales. Instead of just posting a photo of your product on Instagram, you can use Instagram Live to show off your product in action.

Sephora uses Instagram Live to show off what it sells. It does live demonstrations of the product so that make-up fans can see exactly what they’re getting before they buy, which helps ease the mind and makes it easier for them to click that “Add to Cart” button.

Image Credit: Later.com guide to Instagram marketing 

Instagram Live is also a great way to connect with your followers and customers. Users can comment and ask questions in real-time, which helps them build a trusting relationship with your brand. The more users feel connected to you, the more likely they’ll be to become a customer.

Run Instagram retargeting campaigns.

Many businesses are missing out on the opportunity to convert users who previously visited their site and expressed interest but left without buying. Usually, those potential customers would be lost forever, but with Instagram retargeting, you can “follow” those users who abandoned you and show them targeted ads on Instagram to convince them to return.

Not only does Instagram retargeting keep your brand top of mind, but it allows you to show highly-specific ads to users at the perfect time. For instance, if a visitor is browsing the shoe section of your website, but leaves without buying, retargeting can follow that user to Instagram and show him or her an ad for your shoes. Instead of users abandoning your site, or their carts, for good, they’ll be reminded to return to you and place an order.

Share user-generated content.

Connecting with Instagram influencers is an awesome way to show social proof and increase conversions. But, if you want a completely free social proof strategy to drive sales that’s just as effective, share user-generated content.

Secret Wood, a handmade jewelry company, regularly reposts photos from happy customers showing off their beautiful new piece.

Image Credit: Secret.Wood Instagram page 

When you share photos from your satisfied customers, other users on Instagram who were previously curious, or perhaps hesitant, will be more willing to buy from you after seeing how others are using and enjoying your product. Bonus: Your customers will love that you featured them on your Instagram; just be sure to give them appropriate credit.

Related: 7 Easy Ways to Win More Conversions on Social Media

Over to you

Now that you know how to rock Instagram with posts that convert, this social media platform will be your new favorite place to win sales. Don’t wait any longer; start using Instagram now and watch users and followers transform into loyal and frequent customers.