The 8 Factors Blog | Practical Motivation and News for Start Ups

The world ends in 5 days

The 8 Factors Team — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:00:17 +0000

The world of Oakland not being a start-up HUB will be over. In 5 days HUB Oakland will meet its Kickstarter goal if you want it too. If you want to change this city, and many others like it, this is the chance. Click here to make it happen! I have worked to help Oakland entrepreneurs and small business in other cities like Oakland for 20 years. This is the missing link, a place where people can physically office together, work together, ideate together, share short cuts together, and do it themselves. As James Brown said, “I don’t want nobody to give me nothin, just open up the door and I’ll get it myself”. Oakland’s HUB will be similar to many others that exist in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and other major cities. What will be totally different is that it’s being launched by

No Working From Home!

The 8 Factors Team — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:00:01 +0000

“No working from home!” Seems silly doesn’t it? Especially coming from Yahoo, an internet company that was vital in the creation of the internet as we know it today. To say “No working from home!” seems so top down, so old school, so 1980’s, so anti-technology, so anti-freedom so anti…….INTERNET. Why did this happen? Hard to know. Story one was that Yahoo wanted people to physically be together to increase collaboration, teamwork, and leadership. Story Two was that VPN analysis showed that people who worked from home weren’t doing enough work. The second version of the story implied that the go-to-the-office employees believed that the work-from-home employees weren’t carrying their own weight. To me, both stories are weird. There are usually two versions of every situation, and then there is the truth. What I do know is that Yahoo has a new

FREE Business Course

The 8 Factors Team — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 18:12:56 +0000

Is anything really for free? Of course not. Things are given away for free all the time ( t-shirts, pens, cups of ice-cream) with the hope that it will capture your attention so that something can be sold. Sometimes it’s not a bad deal because you get a nice t-shirt, or pen, or cup of ice cream that is FANTASTIC, and you don’t buy anything. As a small business person, I never feel good about watching that happen, but it happens everyday. I am offering a FREE 8 week, live streamed course that has attracted 150 in less than 12 hours. If you are running a business, thinking about running a business, or in a job fantasizing about running a business, then this FREE business course if for you! It only requires 1.5 hours a week, and I guarantee it will be great.

15 Ways to do an Informative Business Assessment

The 8 Factors Team — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 09:00:51 +0000

The best way to know if your business is on the right track is to use a business assessment. Assessing your business should be part of your daily routine, but . . . Is it worth conducting the same assessment every day for the entire lifespan of you business? Is it necessary to find (or purchase) highly formal assessments that take hours to complete? Not at all. Business assessment is a strategy that should be implemented daily with a wide variety of assessment practices. We’ve generated a list of # assessments that you can conduct to maximize the amount of useful data you collect on your business performance. Many of the assessments may surprise you in their simplicity, and you might already be doing some without realizing it. Others aren’t so common and may only apply under certain conditions. We’ve included formal and informal, elaborate and primitive, traditional and non-traditional.

The Only Business Framework that Really Works!

The 8 Factors Team — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:46:32 +0000

You’re looking for that fail-proof secret to running a business, aren’t you? Well, let us know when you find it! On a more realistic note, we have an idea that dramatically increases your chances for long-term success. And, yes, it requires time and effort. But that’s okay with you, because you’re a real business owner who’s already proven that you’re hardest worker in downtown Berkeley . . . or in that shopping center in Houston. The point is, you can do this. You’re willing to do this. And that, friends, makes all the difference. Ready to be set apart from the competition? It’s simple. The best way to build a business framework that really works is to build a network of frameworks. That’s it. That’s what most people don’t get, and why they’re always disappointed with every so called framework the

What is an Intrapreneur and Why You Should Hire at Least One

The 8 Factors Team — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:38:00 +0000

It’s a common misconception that entrepreneurs are the opposite of employees. Truth is, some employees exhibit as much of an entrepreneurial spirit as people who go out and start their own companies. The cool name for this type of employee is intrapreneur. In 1985, Gifford Pinchot made the term popular when he wrote the book Intrapreneuring. Dictionary.com offers a helpful definition: “an employee of a large corporation who is given freedom and financial support to create new products,services, systems, etc., and does not have to follow the corporation’s usual routines or protocols.” This idea might be very scary for many small business owners, but you shouldn’t be. Here are the benefits to having an intrapreneur on your team: Intrapreneurs are self-starters. There’s nothing worse than wasting your time and energy begging people to get to work on time or to stop taking gossip-breaks every ten

Entrepreneur at Work: Soccer4 + My Yute Soccer

The 8 Factors Team — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:03:12 +0000

Education and Entrepreneurship Originally from San Diego, Joanne da Luz first came to the Bay Area to attend grad school at Stanford, where she got her teaching credential and Master’s degree in Education. For nearly 20 years, Joanne has been a high school math teacher and academic director. Joanne’s work in education led to her being on the founding team of a public, charter high school. Her interest in entrepreneurship quickly grew, and she wove it into her math classes as a trained entrepreneurship teacher. Eventually, Joanne went to the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center in San Francisco to develop her own business plan. That original business plan, however, came at a time when the economy wasn’t conducive to a for-profit, small business. So in 2008, Joanne and her partner Rovel Sparkes started a non-profit organization that provides free soccer camps for children in Oakland, called My Yute Soccer. “I

How to Run a Business like a Grammy Winner

The 8 Factors Team — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 08:45:02 +0000

How do they do it? How do celebrities get millions of fans to spend billions on concert tickets, mp3 downloads, and band tee-shirts? More importantly, how do small businesses get in on the action? They don’t call it the music business for nothing. Record companies and recording artists are under the same pressure to sell as any other industry. Some of them are wildly successful and get the chance to strut down the red carpet. Others fail miserably and fade into oblivion, only to be featured years later on VH1′s top 25 one-hit blunders wonders list. So The 8 factors is taking you backstage to get your small business red carpet ready. Here’s how to run a business like a Grammy Winner. Pick Your Category You’d never know it by watching the live show on TV, but there are about 81 different categories for

Why Small Businesses Need Social Media

The 8 Factors Team — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:40:36 +0000

If you’ve been waiting it out to see if this social media wave is just going to pass over us and crash into the internet ocean, never to be seen again, watch out! Social media is here to stay. If you want to be able to say the same for your business, you better grab a surfboard and ride that wave like the rest of us. Here’s why small businesses need social media. It’s Free! You can dive into social media with zero money down. Gone are the old days where you had to pay for ad slots in print publications, on radio, or TV. Unless you choose to promote your posts, with Facebook ads or promoted tweets, for example, that’s one cost of doing business that you can eliminate. Of course, social media still requires human capital. You have to be willing to put in a few hours

How to Respond to Bad Online Reviews About Your Small Business

The 8 Factors Team — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 08:02:40 +0000

Who wants to read negative, online comments about their business? Certainly not small business owners. At least those big, international corporations have thousands of positive reviews to balance out the negative. And they usually have the branding and funding to bounce back from bad PR. It’s not the same for small businesses. People like us can’t afford to let negative, online reviews go unchecked. The problem is that bad reviews can put small businesses behind the 8 ball. Should you ignore them? Delete them? Try to defend your business? Those might be your first reactions, but we’ve got one big idea about how to respond to bad online reviews about your small business. Use it as an opportunity for something positive. Running a small business will be more difficult and stressful than it has to be if you don’t master the art of turning obstacles into opportunities. Unfavorable customer reviews can become