Crowdsourced Business Advice: Part 1

I love Quora. It’s a great way to get sucked into just learning a bunch of things about really random topics, which I guess I could say is my hobby.

What is Quora, you ask? Here is their official description:

“Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. A vast amount of the knowledge that would be valuable to many people is currently only available to a few — either locked in people’s heads, or only accessible to select groups. We want to connect the people who have knowledge to the people who need it, to bring together people with different perspectives so they can understand each other better, and to empower everyone to share their knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the world.”

And

“Quora has content you will feel good about having read. Quora helps you understand why the world works the way it does, why people behave the way they do, and what we can all do to make the world better. Quora provides a personalized feed of insightful answers to questions you hadn’t realized you should ask.”

I love this to just satisfy my own general curiosity about the world, but listen up: it has some pretty good info for you small business owners too. So, today’s random topics that I could imagine disappearing into for an hour or so are:

What habit/decision has saved you a large/huge amount of money?

Or

Who are some famous people whose careers got ruined because they are jerks?

Or

What's the best way to know what other people really think of you?

See what I mean? This post kicks off a series we are going to do highlighting “crowdsourcing” real world business advice for small businesses. Stuff like this What was the biggest mistake in your first entrepreneurship venture?

Next post: Best advice for an entrepreneur from Quora: A Curated List

Attitude of Gratitude for Entrepreneurs

This time of year it’s natural to think about gratitude. And each year we seem to talk about how we need to get better about being mindful of this every day, in life and in business.

Turns out, being grateful is also good for business. We came across a great article in Entrepreneur that listed some pretty real benefits to developing an attitude of gratitude. First, gratitude shifts your mindset. There is always something to be grateful for even when things don’t go the way want. Positive people see positive things (and we believe see positive results).

Gratitude creates solutions. Because you’re consciously choosing to focus on what you do have and not what you don’t, you’re seeing how to get out of a problem and get into a solution pretty quickly.

Finally, gratitude is contagious. Choosing to be around positive thinkers, and those able to see the big picture (and find the good in it) are the ones people want to be around (and hire).

That was definitely not the only article we found that sang the praises of how an attitude of gratitude works for entrepreneurs.

If you’re one of those people (like us) that like to take action to get into the right mindset, maybe start with a notebook next to your bed. Before you turn the lamp off, jot down 3 things for which you’re grateful. Even if it’s as simple as my I’m thankful for my favorite TV show, or the person who let me into their lane this morning - it’s progress.

Thank you for reading!