Self Made Archive

Bill is responsible for sales at his company and considers himself a tenacious worker. Whenever he discovers a new prospect, he enters him or her into the system. From there, he will attempt to contact that person by phone, through email and even via office visit if possible. However, after a number of failed attempts, Bill is likely to toss the person into the sea of dead prospects.

With just days until the midterm elections, you can definitely count on one demographic group to show up at the polls: women small business owners. By an overwhelming margin -- 86 percent -- women entrepreneurs intend to go to the polls to cast their ballots across this nation. And who will win their support? They plan tovote for candidates who have a pro-business agenda that supports policies to help entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses.

The small business community, including self-employed and micro-businesses, welcomed a major benefit this tax year: a new, streamlined IRS home office standardized deduction. The new, standardized deduction is available to small business owners and the self-employed as an option for the 2013 tax year (returns filed in 2014).

As the first inside salesperson for PTC, a Needham, Mass.-based software company, Brian Halligan got his start cold calling until his “fingers bled,” he quipped during a recent interview with me. Later, when a venture capitalist enlisted him to bring the PTC playbook to a host of portfolio companies, he realized that old industry standbys needed a drastic overhaul if marketers hoped to cut it in an increasingly social-centered world. So in 2006, he and Dharmesh Shah, a classmate from business school, launched HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company that Halligan touts as the accessible solution for “normal” marketing guys like himself.

You do your best as a self-employed professional, but some days you are simply swamped by too much competing for your attention. When a flood of items compete for your attention, each item can loom larger in importance than it actually is. Here is a classification system to help you maintain perspective: