If there's anything that has made me the proudest of putting this event together, it's this lesson right here.

Starting a business is hard, and getting customers to pay for your service or product can be a huge challenge.  There always seems to be, what I like to call a deal with the devil, around every corner.  Those are the people who see the value in the product, but they have no desire to pay what you're asking.  They want a discount of some sort.

And I've learned this too many times to falter from it.

They will always be your biggest pain in the ass clients, period.

I learned this lesson the hard way in my first business.  When people wanted something just one-off of what I offered, I would make the exception.  However, even though they were supposed to be less work, they always ended up being more.

I had a huge realization that I have lived by since then.  It's disrespectful to those who are valuing what you offer.  So who are you...

For some reason the Rockwell song from the 80's is blasting through my head as I write this.  'I always feel like, somebody's watching me, and I have no privacy.'

This isn't my first time at the entrepreneur rodeo.  In fact, I've been here many times.  I'm also not one of those perpetual starters who never finishes.  I have sold several of the companies I have started.  However, each start comes with another challenge of having to prove I am fully capable of being in that ring.

Life is about evolving, and you should be doing the same in business (just like I talked about yesterday).  So if you started the same business over and over again, it just wouldn't be interesting.

And even when you think you have proven yourself enough, you discover more people who don't know who the hell you are, let alone your product and service, and they're not going to buy in immediately.

It's frustrating because you know (and I knew) you may have the best of whatever...

he Entrepreneur Summit was created because I was getting sick of waiting for someone to create the type of event that I wanted to attend.    I love Dallas but found many of the events featured the same speakers.  I wanted different, and I wanted to connect the start-up and small business communities.

I had two choices when I created this business.

1. I could play it safe and put little money on the line and do what everyone else was doing.
2. I could put the money down for an event that I wanted (while still being conservative, mind you), but create the event that I saw was needed.
   I met with hotels and started setting a budget and was shocked at how quickly things added up.  As I made a list of potential speakers, I thought why not go for the mac daddy of Dallas Entrepreneurs with Mark Cuban.  I reached out to his agent and learned his fee is $150,000.

I had to take it down a notch, but things were still adding up quickly.

When it was all said and done, my...

I have to apologize for pretty much disappearing over the last three months.  In a few other posts I talked about grabbing onto the things that terrify you and trying something new.  To knock out one my biggest fears in 2016, I decided to take on an event.  Of course in Erin fashion, I couldn't take on a standard event.  I had to go big.  Originally, the idea was to have it be an extension of The Starters Club, but as I worked through the target market, I realized I had to make this its own company.

What I thought would be a great side project, turned into becoming a beast of a business.  I want to get real with you for just a minute because as I lay out all the great things that have happened after the event, I want you to realize that there were days when it felt like extreme hell getting there.  I cried.  I cried a lot.  I literally sent emails about a month before the event to friends half-joking, asking if I could quit.

'Why', you...

It's great to think grand.  After all, as Donald Trump once said: As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big.  (This by no means is linked to my political affiliation.)

However, when starting a business, although it's great to think big, and big is needed for long-term goals, starting out simple will get you where you need to go, faster.

There are many moving parts in a business, and even with the best research and mentor in the world, there will be parts you didn't even know were there until you need to deal with them.  The further you stretch yourself, and the more you're trying to juggle, the harder it is going to be for you to gain momentum.  Here are three different perspectives of your business where simplicity is going to be the best decision you can make.

1. Your product or service.  I speak from experience on this one as I tried to get really extravagant with my product offerings.  If someone said they needed it, I...

This one is a bit heavy on my heart today because as I prepare my taxes for 2015, I have a giant write-off from a company I invested in several years back.  Long story short, I should have known better.  However, I made a pretty big rookie investor mistake.

I invested in a product versus a person.

That may not make a whole lot of sense.  After all, it's the product that will be purchased, and it's the product that the whole company is based around.  But what I learned was that even with the greatest of products, if a person behind the scenes isn't willing to work, your product is worthless.

I saw the signs, but I chose to turn the other cheek.  I thought the product would rise above the mess, but it never did.  Now I will never see that money, or the promised return.  I just owe a little less on my taxes.

A similar topic was brought up this morning at a networking event.

How do you get people to buy into your product or service when you're just...

While at an event last night this simple, yet life changing question was brought up.

A woman who now has a very high position at a Fortune 100 company was asked one of her tips for making hard decisions and pushing herself.  Her answer was simple, whenever she gets to a pretty difficult decision, she asks herself:

Why Not?

It's so simple, yet so profound because it's the opposite of what I see most people doing.  We usually talk ourselves out of it, thinking we're not good enough or not qualified enough.  We run all the bad things that could possibly happen through our head.  We could look foolish. We could lose money.  We might leave that great job and then may not get a chance to ever go back to it.

But what would happen that if every time you really wanted to take on something you switched the self-talk from thinking of all that could go wrong, to just saying why not?

Could you fail?  Absolutely, in fact, there's a good chance you might.

But...

Facebook Ads are an incredible way to build your business, and they've been a great resource to build my list, along with my clients and students.  However, if not done right, you can spend a lot of money very, very quickly and have nothing in return.

Here are a few tips and tricks in getting Facebook Ads to generate the results that can completely transform your business.

1. Never run ads for popularity sake.  This can mean a page like, website click, or boosted post that leads to nothing.  You always want to drive the ad to something that you can own.  That would be either a purchase of something or an opt-in to your list.  The problem with things like page likes is that sure, it can make you look really popular, but then you'll have to pay extra money to have those people even see your posts.

When you run conversion ads, your page will start to grow as an added bonus.  So don't waste your money on vanity campaigns.

2. Test, test, and just when...

Shalon Ironroad helps people get organized and prepared to hire someone to start helping in their business.

When you realize that you’re ready to finally make that leap and hire someone to help you take some things over, what are some steps you can take to get yourself ready?   The biggest mistake people usually make is to not make a plan before hiring.  Delegation is a huge fear for a lot of people, and people think it’s something that they need to get over.  However, there’s a reason why you’re hesitant, and you need to get over that in order before you hire.

There are usually two types of people who hire a VA.  The first is someone is so out of control and overwhelmed, and they need someone to come in and really help get things straight and more organized.  The second is someone who has their systems in place, and they’re ready to take on extra projects and just need a person to come in and take over so they can do...

Yes, we're right now right smack dab in the middle of the holidays, and I will say this week, right now is by far my most favorite time of the year.  This is a moment when a big old reset button is allowed with no questions asked.  This week is where it all begins, the set-up of changes, upgrades, and newness that comes with a new year.

It's a time to look back and see what worked well, and see what didn't work at all.  That's what I always tell my clients and students that business really is; just doing more of what works and less of what doesn't, and repeating.  It's really not that hard of a formula.

So this is the week when we decide what's going to be on our agenda for 2016. If you read my post from a few weeks ago, I challenged you to take on something that really scares you.  That freaks you out.  Something you knew that was going to push the needle, but you have been avoiding it for fear of the unknown, and the fact that you didn't have all...