This week in small business: Plenty of lists to put on your refrigerator door

This week’s top content from around the online world features a lot of lists. Lists as short as one item to lists as long as 50 items. So you have no excuse to be listless this week.

Sorry.

Leadership, management, and productivity

To outsource, or not to outsource; that is the question! And Nash Riggins lists and explains 20 advantages and disadvantages of small biz outsourcing to help us answer that question.

As we enter the season of March Madness, John Greathouse’s article, “These Sports Are Precursors To Business Success,” makes good reading.

Here’s some timely encouragement and coaching from Tamiko Cuellar: “Women Leaders: How To Make The Leap To Owning Your Own Business.”

Entrepreneur Kelsey Humphreys talks to “happiness” expert Gretchen Rubin and gives us a blueprint for redesigning our lives for success and happiness.

Aaron Agius tells us how to get our marketing and SEO teams to play nice with each other in his Entrepreneur article.

Want to compete against the big boys and girls? Pius Boachie offers four tactics to help you take your bite out of the apple.

Scott Shane tells us how our smart phones can cut our accounting costs. Can you hear him now?

“You don’t get any points in life for doing things the hard way.” – Tim Fargo

Marketing and sales

Need to top off your tank of social media marketing tips? Here are 50 from Carlo Pacis.

And, one specific area where many of us can use tips, is in developing a social media marketing schedule. That’s what Steve Hamm does here.

Anyone charged with leveraging social media to market a startup will find Arachika Kapoor’s article useful.

Do it wrong and social media will actually hurt your business, warns Pia Silva.

Good, practical advice is found in this Deirdre Kelly article on creating Instagram lead ads.

I love short lists, so I’m a big fan of Jim Keenan’s “The One Thing Sales Organizations Should Do To Increase Revenue In 2017.”

Looking for a succinct primer on how to approach online marketing for your small business? This article by Jayne Kendall is it.

Writing for the StarTribune, Harvey Mackay contends that sales is everyone’s job – no matter the business.

Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation

Marguerite Ward takes us on a tour of the eight books Elon Musk credits for his success.

The reasons we’ve been given why so many startups fail are a bunch of hooey, says Ron Shah.

For an industrial-strength dose of inspiration, check out Peter Daisyme’s list of 50 entrepreneurs to watch in 2017.

“I’ll try.” That’s one of the 50 things entrepreneurs never say in this thoughtful list pulled together by Andrew Thomas. And like a nice cabernet and good steak, that article pairs nicely with Andrew Deen’s “5 Essential Qualities Every Entrepreneur Should Have.

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” – Thomas Edison