While you shouldn’t evaluate the meaning of your life every day, you must put aside time to do it on a regular basis. Otherwise, you fall victim to the momentum of daily activities and obligations without asking yourself, “Am I happy?” For years, I didn’t do this.

It seems like it should be simple, but to start your own business and set up the basic working environment is more complicated than it seems. This requires you to ask some key questions and to give some honest answers. So here are the questions you should be asking before you start your own business.

Behind every great startup you've ever read or heard about exists a team of passionate, talented, and motivated individuals. The question is how do you get the most talented people to help you - especially when you may not be able to pay top-notch talent and the value of the equity in your company may not be clear.

Whether you are marketing to consumers or marketing to businesses, understanding the landscape of digital marketing is a must. These trends impact how individuals digest information’s and should be understood as you craft your marketing efforts. As marketers plan ahead for where to invest their marketing budgets in the year ahead, interest in the latest innovations and trends increases yet more. Keep these trends in mind as you craft your marketing strategies.

Entrepreneurs dream of having their company appear on the front page of a major publication or doing an interview on a major network. Public relations can certainly create breakthrough moments, but in most cases it is simply an important part of an overall marketing strategy. Many marketers see public relations as only handling rudimentary communication activities, such as issuing press releases and responding to questions from the news media. But in reality, in a time when customers are inundated with thousands of promotional messages everyday, public relations offers powerful methods for cutting through the clutter.

Figuring out the right pricing for your startup is a challenging, yet crucial, part of building a successful company. The way you price your product or service can make or break your startup. So, it’s important to understand the pricing landscape of your market and how your company fits into it to get your startup’s pricing right.

A vision statement describes what you want your company to become in the future. It should be aspirational and inspirational. Ideally, the statement should be one sentence in length and should not explain how the vision will be met.

So what makes a book one of the best books for entrepreneurs? Overall, the best books for entrepreneurs must show every element of the journey from struggle to success.

Mastering these basics of selling - whether it is just you or your team - is the foundation for success.

You're the CEO, so you think you know more about the business than anyone and for the things you don't know - you'll figure it out along the way. After all, you've got a business to run, so you have to move quickly and aggressively. Not quite actually. It’s a blessing to acknowledge when you come across something you don’t know, not a curse.

As any entrepreneur knows starting a new business is a simultaneously horrifying, humbling, gratifying and exciting experience. These terms can also be used to describe the process of hiring a team to help you grow your startup. While every business owner wants to bring in the best talent and hardest working employees, the financial realities of running a startup can often be a huge hindrance in attracting those team members and compensating them fairly. That’s why, as a startup owner, you may need to get creative when it comes to what and how you pay your team.

There is an incredible burden on startups to maximize marketing dollars without compromising quality. It's a fine line, and one that not every entrepreneur understands. On one side, you're being told you won't succeed unless consumers know your products and services exist (which takes a heavy marketing and advertising investment). On the other, you understand that you don't have a large budget and spending too much on a launch campaign can doom you from the start. However, somewhere in the middle there is a sweet spot that should allow you to reach a large audience with a conservative budget.

When figuring out how to become an entrepreneur, one common question is why does one entrepreneur succeed and one with the exact same idea fall short? Certain entrepreneur characteristics are the difference between success and failure.

As entrepreneurs we all have things we would be happy to work on 24/7 and things we'd love to avoid doing if we can help it. The things that we'd rather not do, often take up a lot of our precious time because we drag it out either because we're not exactly sure of how to do it or we just really don't want to do them. Knowing what you don’t like and what you are not good at is an important step to not only improving your company, but to making your day more rewarding. Entrepreneurs, especially in the beginning, are expected to do everything.

Identifying where your skills can be supplemented or complemented can quickly accelerate your company’s growth. Once you recognize these areas, you can plan accordingly. Look for a variety of resources whose experience balances yours. Find support from specialists or those with extensive experience in an area you are lacking. Their ease and efficiency will translate into your own effectiveness. Being candid with yourself and your constituents is not a weakness. It is a strength. Leaders, who recognize their deficiencies and encourage others to do the same, gain respect, solve business issues more efficiently and set the foundation for well-run companies. There’s also a good chance your day will be much more enjoyable.

If you know enough to properly manage international technical resources, an emerging company can highly benefit from the economics of working with offshore resources for technical services. But it takes real effort to realize the benefits and minimize the risks. Offshoring can be low cost, but it’s important not to be low involvement. If managed well, you can realize greater production at a much lower cost. If not, the headaches can cost you more.

When figuring out how to become an entrepreneur, one common question is why does one entrepreneur succeed and one with the exact same idea fall short? Certain entrepreneur characteristics are the difference between success and failure.

Behind every great startup you've ever read or heard about exists a team of passionate, talented, and motivated individuals. The question is how do you get the most talented people to help you - especially when you may not be able to pay top-notch talent and the value of the equity in your company may not be clear. Nowhere is the creativity of the entrepreneur more on display than when we need to attract talented people to join your venture. After all, we are asking people - especially at early stages - to make a leap. Sometimes that leap is just to an idea. Sometimes that leap is undercapitalized. Sometimes that leap is from the friendly confines of the corporate world.

Businesses make purchases every day, but making those purchases from your company is a different story. Marketing to businesses is a function of the use of a variety of tools and techniques to set your company apart from others. B2B marketing requires you to employ a variety of techniques to position your product or service above your competition.

In the chaotic world of entrepreneurship, it is rare that entrepreneurs assess how they work, and how they organize and execute their days. We are often running from fire to fire and don’t think about the ways we can be more efficient, more balanced, more rested and more effective. Many entrepreneurs wear this frenetic pace like a badge of honor. In an environment with so many moving parts, you would think that we would be looking for ways to get more organized and structured. It is actually quite the contrary. Entrepreneurs are always on the move.

Years ago, establishing a unique value proposition was easy. Today, with the advent of technology and competition from all over the globe, the ability to hone in on and communicate - to customers, investors and employees - why your product or service is unique requires the creativity of the entrepreneurial mind.

Figuring out the right pricing for your startup is a challenging, yet crucial, part of building a successful company. The way you price your product or service can make or break your startup. So, it’s important to understand the pricing landscape of your market and how your company fits into it to get your startup’s pricing right. Pricing is a balancing act that involves psychology, art and science. You must price high enough to make a profit and low enough to attract customers. Understanding the different pricing strategies and best practices can help you find the approach, and ultimately the prices, right for your business.

Since we believe that what we're doing is so unique, everyone will have the same perspective and want our product. And since it hasn't been done before, we think it's just a matter of time before we get into the market that our product will be at the top of everyone's mind. Wishful thinking.

Social media has become less of an optional marketing opportunity and more of a priority. In fact, platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become integral parts of brand awareness, content distribution, lead generation, and customer acquisition strategies for businesses. This is especially true for startups working with smaller budgets and grassroots campaigns.