Become a Job Creator

During the political seasons, the term “job creator” becomes an often-cited and much-politicized phrase. But with national political campaigning at a less frenzied pace, we wanted to go back to this term and unpack what it means to us at Acton. Done correctly, job creation is one of the...

Lessons Learned: Identify and Question Assumptions

Weaknesses in a business strategy can often be traced to its underlying assumptions. Guest contributor and Acton alumnus Chris Weaver (’08) shares his own experience recognizing that a client’s commonly held beliefs about its customers were wrong–and had stalled his project and potentially their business expansion initiative.  Identify and Question Assumptions...

Lessons Learned: In Email Marketing, Your Subscribers are Your Customers

With success, it can be easy to focus on your company’s wants, needs and desires. But this is often done at the expense of your customers. Is that really the best strategy? Nathanael Yellis (’09) shares the positive experience his non-profit organization had when he chose to think about what...

Your Customer’s Shoes, IPO Quiet Periods, and Love for the Night Owls

Entrepreneurship in the News: August 2012 With Olympic victories and losses, national political conventions and hurricane threats in the news, it’s easy to miss some of the smaller and less sensational stories that apply to entrepreneurs. So we’ve pulled together a few that caught our eye to share with...

Be Unusual To Be Successful

You want your company to stand out against all of the other companies that are just like yours. What do you do? Ed Perry comments on how to garner more word-of-mouth marketing. Sunday morning I sat in The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on South Lamar in Austin, Texas...

Seth Godin’s Death Spiral

Your business is declining.  You’re losing customers.  What do you do? Don’t make matters worse for yourself by falling into a “death spiral.” This is a re-post from best-selling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin’s blog. For businesspeople interested in fresh marketing ideas, this is a great blog to visit. You’ve...

Your Customer As An Investor

Why should you take investment money from your customer? Read this article by Master Teacher Ed Perry to find out. With current economic conditions, banks have become very strict making it really tough to get loans. Venture capital (VC) has become scarce, and angel investors are cutting way back...

Customer Feedback

At Acton, our students are our customers (for more on this view, click here).  We rely — thrive even — on our students’ feedback.  To this end, Acton students fill out detailed, online surveys every week, even during Pre-Matriculation.  This allows us to make changes quickly and effectively.  They...