Tiffan Clark's Page

Trust in a mentor/mentee relationship plays a key role in the success of the mentorship experience, and can also have an impact on the long term success of the business. According to Anthony Hughes, director of JumpStart’s mentoring program, “until you have a relationship that is rooted in trust, you cannot have an open and honest discussion about the challenges that face the business.” But how can a mentor build trust with an entrepreneur he/she is mentoring? Here are eight ways to do just…

People often use the terms management and leadership interchangeably. This is especially true for start-up businesses, where the founder must be leader, manager, office administrator and head of operations all at once. But when it comes to leadership, small businesses can incorporate a variety of styles or methods. These approaches can produce very different outcomes—and can mean the difference between unproductive employees with a high attrition rate and happy employees that want to grow…

One of the most significant decisions an entrepreneur must face is how to fund their startup. With a number of options available, it is important to know the benefits of each in order to determine the best approach, because what may be good for one business may not work at all for another.

Bootstrapping

Many entrepreneurs start by being completely self-sufficient, essentially pulling their business up by the bootstraps and using existing resources to fund it.…

The term “pivot” became part of the entrepreneur’s vernacular after being introduced in Eric Ries’ best-selling book The Lean Startup. Used to describe how startups change the direction of their business in order to survive, this term is most often heard when describing tech companies. But the reality is that most successful small businesses, regardless of industry, don’t end up running the exact business they started. Somewhere along the way, they’ve had to pivot.

It’s not…