So you’ve decided to grow your business. You might already be thinking about best practices to avoid common pitfalls when scaling. But this doesn’t mean that your business will be immune to challenges.

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley,” wrote Scottish poet Robert Burns. Even the finest, most well-thought-out plans sometimes have to be set aside for reasons outside of your control.

You’ve decided to become a freelancer. You’re the boss of your own time, your business, and the projects you choose to work on. There’s a lot going on, from finding new clients to managing your workload. The truth is… you kind of have to do everything, especially when you’re just starting out.

Old email addresses, duplicate contacts, misspelled names… these are the bane of your marketing and sales efforts.

After all, your CRM and marketing tools are only as strong as the data you’ve got in them. If you have poor-quality data in your databases, you’re setting up to fail in your sales and marketing initiatives. Your customer data is the most valuable asset your organization has, so it’s important to ensure it’s serving your business’ bottom line as much as possible.

With the technological developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution impacting how we all live, work, and relate to one another, a rapid pace of change is happening across all businesses.

As a small business or startup, you’ve got a lot on your to-do list: increasing awareness of your brand, converting leads into customers, and supporting customers post-sale. And, of course, there’s all the admin behind the scenes.

Despite huge investments in data, you might be surprised to learn that most executives don’t trust their company’s data. It might be that they’re skeptical of the data they’re using, or simply don’t know how to interpret the information at hand.

In fact, Havard Business Review reported that 90% of business leaders believe data literacy is crucial for company success. However, only 25% of employees feel confident when working with their organization’s data. 

Piecing together a project timeline template usually involves a Google Doc and mediocre formatting skills. Then comes assigning tasks to teammates and promising to hit the agreed-upon delivery date. But a few weeks go by, and the timeline falls apart. Higher priorities pop up, and deadlines slip past without much progress.