Marketing is a force of nature, evolving along the same principles as any living species. A good marketer today thinks like a gardener knowing it requires the same discipline to grow a successful marketing campaign as a healthy garden.

The other day when I was out for a run I had one of those déjàvu moments where I felt like I had heard something before, but I was not sure where. I was listening to the Marketing School Podcast with Neil Patel & Eric Slu, on the 4 Fundamental Things You Need to Master in Marketing. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that they were reading a chapter from a horticulture book on how to grow a good vegetable garden.

BY JOHN RAMPTON IN ENTREPRENEUR.COM

5 Lessons for First-Time Entrepreneurs I Learned the Hard Way

Now that I’m well past my first-time entrepreneur experience, I can reflect on what I learned during that period in my life. In doing so, my tips might be able to help some of you first-time entrepreneurs out there get past barriers a little more quickly, get launched faster, and avoid some pitfalls along the way.

I’ve failed many time. I can remember several times where I didn’t even have enough money in my bank account to pay off the minimum payment on my credit card.

Years later and a healthy bank account later I can share with you a few things I should have known but didn’t. Here are five tips that I wish I knew before I started that would have potentially saved me from failing several times:
1. Ask a lot of questions.

There were many places where I thought I knew what I was doing that would have been better served if I had asked questions instead of assuming. I thought if I asked questions that maybe someone might think I was stupid or might not take me seriously in the business and investment worlds. In actual fact, I should have spoken up and asked more questions because this would have saved me time and money as well as potentially got me funding faster.

Think about growing your business like starting a garden. You want to create an environment for it to thrive. Proper strategy, placement and maintenance are key components that you need to control of if you are going to succeed.

1.) It All Starts With a Good Strategy

A good marketing strategy is your foundation, similar to the soil in your garden. It needs to have a good base first then comes design and other elements required to supply nutrients so that everything can grow. Whether you need a new design or already have something to work with is determined by your companies needs and areas for growth. Without a good foundation, all other inbound marketing or ongoing maintenance will be a waste of time because nothing will be able to grow.

BY Tony Xu in TechCrunch

I come from a small-business family. My mom has owned three small businesses; most recently, a medical clinic in the South Bay. But it was in her first business, a Chinese restaurant outside Chicago, where I saw firsthand the challenges facing small-business owners.

When politicians say that “small businesses are the backbone of America,” it’s no exaggeration. The latest U.S. Census data shows that 90 percent of all businesses in the U.S. have fewer than 20 employees, and 99.9 percent have fewer than 500. Small businesses provide 55 percent of the jobs in the U.S., and that number hasn’t changed significantly in the past century. It’s safe to say the U.S. economy wouldn’t run without small businesses.

Unfortunately, for most of its life, Silicon Valley has failed to address this critical segment of the economy. Sure, there are the few exceptions: Square helps them take money without relying on cash; Expensify lets smaller companies act a bit bigger; Gusto (formerly ZenPayroll) helps them with benefits and payroll; Weebly helps them build a site. All these services add value to a small business’ bottom line.

But these are all supporting ongoing business operations and finding ways to cut costs, rather than adding a real way to make money. And many startups aren’t even focused on small, local businesses at all. So why is Silicon Valley ignoring the biggest segment of businesses in the country?