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5 Steps to Make 2012 Your Best Year for Your Business By Learning from 2011

01.05.12 By Raj Malik

Raj Malik is CEO & Co-Founder of KikScore, an exciting startup that helps small online businesses use their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness to increase sales and close more leads. Raj is a contributor to his company’s blog at blog.kikscore.com, a past speaker at SXSW and is passionate about helping small business and entrepreneurs succeed.

It is early January and 2011 is just behind us in the rearview mirror.  The economy is still making it hard for many businesses to grow and build momentum.  As we start January and the new year we can do two things for our business planning for 2012: You can yet again try to create a brand new strategy for the new year or you can pause, look back and do some serious reflecting.  Reflect on what?  There is a massive amount of data, feedback and information from the operations of your business from 2011.  How about you take that information and create a plan for 2012 based on the good, bad and hard lessons learned from 2011? Read more from Raj Malik

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6 Ways to Make Better Connections with Your Customers By Paying More Attention

11.29.11 By Raj Malik

Raj Malik is CEO & Co-Founder of KikScore, an exciting startup that helps small online businesses use their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness to increase sales and close more leads. Raj is a contributor to his company’s blog at blog.kikscore.com, a past speaker at SXSW and is passionate about helping small business and entrepreneurs succeed.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban has said:  YOUR CUSTOMERS OWN YOU.  But take a close look at your business do you realize that without your customers your business basically would not exist and would be worthless.   The problem that many of us face as small business owners is that we often use the excuse that we are too busy to actually engage our own customers.  Better yet we even say that we have other more pressing priorities than talking to our customers after they buy from our businesses. Read more from Raj Malik

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6 Business Strategy Tips for Small Business Owners

08.29.11 By Raj Malik

Raj Malik is CEO & Co-Founder of KikScore, an exciting startup that helps small online businesses use their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness to increase sales and close more leads. Raj is a contributor to his company’s blog at blog.kikscore.com, a past speaker at SXSW and is passionate about helping small business and entrepreneurs succeed.

I have been on this journey of a small business owner that has a startup business now for a couple of years.  There have been a lot of ups and downs, long days and nights, major challenges, successes and yet the path is still long.  Now I could just fold up shop and give up saying its too hard or I want to do something else, but I honestly must say I love this journey.  Along the way so far I have learned a lot of different things about myself, our business, about having partners and launching a brand new product into the market.  I would like to share a few of my lessons learned that may help you on your business journey. Read more from Raj Malik

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5 Skills & Traits Every Entrepreneur Should Nurture for Success

07.25.11 By Raj Malik

Raj Malik is CEO & Co-Founder of KikScore, an exciting startup that helps small online businesses use their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness to increase sales and close more leads. Raj is a contributor to his company’s blog at blog.kikscore.com, a past speaker at SXSW and is passionate about helping small business and entrepreneurs succeed.

There are hundreds of thousands of books, blogs, textbooks and journals on what you need to have as an business owner to succeed.  Some of these books that try to inspire business owners include everything from Jack Welch’s Straight from the Gut to Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins.  In this post, I want to give some practical tips from experience on skills and traits that I have seen that increase the chances of an entrepreneur and business owner actually succeeding.  Here are some of those traits and skills: Read more from Raj Malik

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5 Steps on How to Cut Distractions and Focus More on Achieving Your Business Goals

06.29.11 By Raj Malik

Raj Malik is CEO & Co-Founder of KikScore, an exciting startup that helps small online businesses use their own track record of reliability and trustworthiness to increase sales and close more leads. Raj is a contributor to his company’s blog at blog.kikscore.com, a past speaker at SXSW and is passionate about helping small business and entrepreneurs succeed.

As I talk to more and more entrepreneurs and startup founders, I hear one consistent operational challenge that these businesses face.  The challenge actually is faced by companies big and small and is not unique to startups and entrepreneurs.  It’s a very basic challenge and that is keeping your business, your team and the company’s strategy focused and away from unnecessary distractions.  So often lack of focus turns into a major hurdle for businesses to successfully implement, execute and achieve their strategy and goals.  The less focused you business is the harder it is to succeed.

Read more from Raj Malik