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A common question in SaaS is whether or not to require credit cards up front. I think the decision is easier than people make it seem.

A tricky topic that every founder hopes to face is how much to pay themselves as the company grows. There are so many complicating variables.

Innovation is often talked about as an entirely positive thing, but it comes with a significant cost. This post explores when it makes sense to innovate, and when it doesn't.

More and more companies are going remote, and that's great! But Less Annoying CRM has decided to stay in-person-first. This post explains why.

This post contains an internal policy write-up for an employee equipment budget. You can use this as a starting point for your own policy.

In retrospect it's obvious, but maybe you've never thought about this: If your growth rate slows down, your churn will improve. Here's why.

Asking good questions in a 1-on-1 meeting with employees is an art form. The right questions will uncover valuable insights about your business.

As you hire more people, you'll likely find yourself in more meetings. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel...

It's common for first-time founders to want their early hires to run their respective departments as the company grows, but it's normally not that simple.

This discussion with Lesley covers a variety of topics related to the tactical issues she's working on at her bootstrapped startup.

Conventional wisdom says to validate a business idea by pre-selling the product to customers. I'm not so sure.

People who make money producing content often aren’t the experts they pretend to be.

As a leader, communicating change is an essential skill. Here's how I do it.

Switching to a freemium model can threaten existing revenue streams for an established business. Here are some ideas for dealing with that.

Freemium can be a great marketing strategy, but how can you afford to provide good support when 95% of your users aren't paying?

Most of the time, when a customer gets angry, it's not because you did anything wrong, it's because they were expecting something other than what happened.

Freemium is an increasingly popular marketing strategy for online businesses. Unlike a free trial which ends after a set amount of time, freemium has an indefinite free period.

It's common to think that good customer service means 24/7 availability, live chat with instant responses, etc. The truth is, none of that is necessary.

A question I get often from new founders is about process. People who worked at large companies are used to having a process for everything and they want to emulate that.

There's a lot of debate about whether remote employee compensation should depend on cost of living. Let's explore...

Have you ever heard of a customer service rep making $125,000 per year? At Less Annoying CRM, that's the going rate for someone with experience. In this post, I'm going to explain why.

Making a podcast doesn't have to be hard or expensive. I've gotten my workflow down to about 10 minutes per episode.

No matter what your business does, you'll have to be comfortable working with a blank slate.

Most of the time, making customer service more efficient also makes it worse. This post explains how to save time/money while making support better.

It's tempting to let data drive every decision you make at a startup, but there are many questions that data can't answer.

Remote-first companies often rely on asynchronous communication for improved productivity, but it's impact on company culture can be a problem, especially when people disagree.

The idea of "maximizing shareholder value" is commonplace in business, but have you ever thought about what it really means?

Twitter can be a scary place for newcomers. This post explains how to get started growing your network.

Businesses can't succeed without relationships. This post explores the three main channels for developing those relationships:

Sococo allows businesses to create a virtual office for remote employees, but its success comes down to how you use it.

Most products aren't purchased impulsively. Deciding to buy something is a journey, and your marketing needs to appeal to people at different stages of that journey.

Raising money from investors is one of the most fundamental startup topics, but most people don't really understand how it works. This post explains it from start to finish.

If you have multiple accounts for web services like Gmail, Instagram, or Twitter, it can be a real pain switching accounts by logging out of one and in to another. This article shows you how to solve that problem.

This video gives a simple overview of what cookies are, why they're necessary for the internet to work, and how they can sometimes be used in a way that violates user privacy.

In the early stages, every business needs to be focused on becoming profitable. But what happens once you have enough?

Every founder struggles with the transition from entrepreneur. This post examines what the two roles are, and how you move from one to the other.

This post explains how to sign up and activate Google Workspace so that you can have send and receive email from your custom business domain.

This video explains how to update your DNS settings for your domain to point at your website's server.

This video walks you through buying a domain name for your business website.

DNS is one of the most fundamental building blocks of the internet, and yet most people have never heard of it. Let's fix that.

This tutorial walks through how to set up a brand new website for your business in just 15 minutes using Squarespace.

There are countless website hosts out there. This post dives into which are best for beginner, intermediate, and advanced small business websites.

It only takes 12 minutes to set up a new business site with Carrd. This video walks through all the steps, and gives a few additional pointers.

Creating a logo for your business doesn't have to be difficult. This posts walks through four different ways to get a logo quickly and affordably.

If you're not a designer, picking your brand colors can be daunting. But it doesn't have to be hard. Here's a simple way to get your color scheme figured out.

How much time should you spend working on making your business's online image aesthetically pleasing? The answer is to find the right balance.

Small businesses often try to mimic the business practices of large corporations which sets them up for a competition they can't win.

Life changed for everyone in 2020 when the pandemic forced us to go remote. Here’s what Less Annoying CRM did to keep the company culture strong even without in-person interactions.

Every website exists for a reason. This post explores what that reason is for your site, and how you can create a call-to-action to get your site visitors to complete your primary goal.

Technology has been driving business growth, but the vast majority of the gains are going to giant corporations. What can small businesses do to thrive in this ever-changing world?