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3 Inspiring Stories of Accidental Entrepreneurs

Being an entrepreneur is about much more than a job. Many business owners feel their venture is a life calling. Some entrepreneurs take years to plan their transition from employee to CEO. For others, the change happens by force of nature.

When someone sees the demand for a product or service and finds themselves up for trying out a new idea, what happens next?

An accidental entrepreneur is born.

These individuals come in all shapes and sizes, from the investment banker who becomes a philanthropist to the retiree who’s ready for his second wind. As business owners, we can learn a lot from their inspiring stories.

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3 Lessons Learned from Awkward Business Moments

Failure is serious business. As an entrepreneur, you’re investing immense time and resources so that your company will make it. It’s no laughing matter, tough to handle, and emotionally nerve-wracking.

We’ve written about failure before, providing information on Why Most Entrepreneurs’ Ideas Fail. We’ve also discussed The Most Valuable Lessons from Failure.

Now, the story comes full-circle with three awkward business moments that you can learn from. If things go wrong, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try, try again.

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5 Tips for Learning to Love an Angry Customer

This is a guest post by Stefanie Amini, Marketing Director at WalkMe.

In a perfect world, all customers would be content and satisfied. In reality, you will come across customers who are angry, upset, and frustrated. As a small business owner, it’s pretty important to learn how to handle this anger. If you can’t handle dissatisfaction, you’re bound to lose customers and get even more complaints.

Thankfully, there are several things you can do to cope with angry customers so they keep using your services and gush about your support!

Here are 5 tips for dealing with angry customers:

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Work At Home? We Want To See Your Office

Many of our customers and friends work from the comfort of their own homes. They make calls, perfect their products, and build great software all from their private lairs.

At Grasshopper, we only get to talk to you via phone, email, or video chat, and we’ve had enough! Now, we want an inside peek.

Do you work from home? If so, what does your home office look like?

Share a photo with us for a chance to win!

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6 Resources To Color For Conversions

If you take a look around the web, you’ll see a rainbow of color. Businesses are painting their sites in blues, reds, yellows, and oranges. Look at this post. You’re looking at a green and black Grasshopper logo, as well as an image of bright beach huts bathed in different hues.

Some of the colors around the web are chosen deliberately, while others come from the “web status quo.” Links, for example, are usually represented in blue. When people see blue-colored text, they know what to do—click, click, click.

Keeping the “web status quo” can be a great choice, but it should always be done deliberately.

If you’re in charge of design decisions for a startup or small business, how do you choose which colors to use?

Here are 6 great resources that can help you use color to jazz up your stuff. If you do color right, you’ll see more online conversions.