Creating a business plan is one of the best fundamental things you can do to promote success in your business. A business plan will help you stick to, well, your plan for your business. It also helps you think about things you haven’t thought about before and things you should know for your business.

I’ve started several businesses and they’ve all failed because I didn’t have a business plan in place. Once I decided to take this latest business seriously, I filled out a free business plan sheet and it’s been one of the best fundamental things I could do for myself and my business.

It’ll help you hone in on your ideal client and get you thinking about the products, verbiage and places to market. Which, in turn, means more revenue in your pocket. It also helps you think about places you’ve never thought to market to before.

Instagrammers. Influencers. Tastemakers. These are a lot of the buzzwords that have been circling the marketing realm in the past few years. It may seem super daunting and corporate but influencer marketing is something that can be scaled back to work for your small business. But how?

Getting your brand out of the shadows and reaching out to Instagram influencers can be terrifying. You’re putting yourself out there and you're getting visible. The idea of this makes a lot of us recoil and want to get back into bed. (Try to resist that temptation and hear me out. I know it’s hard!)

But, it can also bring invaluable results to your business. By creating meaningful collaborations with Instagrammers, you can increase your brand exposure, grow a community  and build trust in your brand. Let’s get started!

Starting a new business means introducing a whole new set of tasks to your plate, and the crazy part is, you don’t even know what half of them are yet.

The first few days will be busy as you set things up, such as your domain and social media accounts. Maybe you’ll write a business plan. Then comes the hard part, as you settle into a routine.

When you set up a product-based business, you spend a lot of time thinking about the product itself. You’ll devote time to planning how to market and communicate it to potential customers. But often, packaging is last on the to-do list, because it’s seen as a practical way to protect and ship, and nothing more.

You’ve heard it a million times. “I want to work less and make more.” But do you actually know what it takes to make this happen? The entrepreneurs who are making bank are NOT lazy. They are strategic, methodical, and extremely patient.

• Do you think Pat Flynn went from being laid off to earning over $100k per month revenue overnight?! Are you kidding?

• Do you think Oprah went right from waitress to world-recognized thought leader?! Heck no.

• Do you think Marie Forleo rolled out B-School her first year in business?! Absolutely not.

Their careers didn’t fall out of thin air. They spent years perfecting their craft, tweaking their processes and making shifts towards their big dreams.

We’re no different. We absolutely want world domination (for all female creative business owners). But we know the tide won’t shift overnight.

Figuring out how to be productive as a small business owner is a job in and of itself. If you’re like us, then you’ve tried ALLL the systems! Some are free (like post-it notes, the notes app on your phone, notebooks and notepads) and some are paid (expensive software or paid apps that you think will do the trick). For some reason, they’ve all failed — and you may feel like you’ve failed all of them. Because for a lot of us (especially us creatives), our brains only work a certain way.

Seriously — for us to be productive, organized and put together we have to have the moon in a certain phase, standing on one foot, in a finger towards the north wind kind of pose. You feel us?

Owning and operating your own business generally means that you end up wearing lots of hats. You’re not only the director of pushing out and creating all the content, but the one who markets it, organizes getting paid, communicates with clients, and so much more. It can get really overwhelming, but if you put systems in place you can save time, earn more, and work less. Organization and systems will help you focus on what you love, and also let you take care of the necessities. We’ve gathered our top 15 productivity tools *(HINT: 8 of them are free!) and today we’re letting you in on how we use them and how they could be big influencers in your business too.

Raise your hand if selling to your favorite store tops your business bucket list? But as exciting as it is to see your products on the shelf of a store, there’s a whole new set of challenges that come with developing wholesale and retail partnerships. One of the not-so-sexy sides of developing a wholesale/retailer business? You have to get comfortable with having some awkward and, at times, unpleasant conversations.