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You can’t grow your business without facing a few obstacles along the way. Leading a business often comes with its own unique challenges, some more difficult to navigate than others. What separates great leaders from good ones is the ability to face those challenges, overcome them and come out stronger and wiser on the other side. No matter the challenge, there’s always a lesson to be learned that can either overwhelm you or help your business grow. But learning those lessons can often be a challenge in itself. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council leaders detail the lessons they’ve learned from some of the most difficult business situations they’ve faced and how they became all the wiser for it.

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When your task list becomes overwhelming, try one of these methods for prioritization. Company leaders are no strangers to competing priorities. At the helm of the business, they must have their focus split between multiple areas or departments at any given moment. But when they’re only able to tackle one task at a time, how should they determine what to prioritize first? As successful business leaders themselves, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council shared a few of their best tips for effectively organizing and prioritizing a task list and why these methods have worked so well for them.

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Conflicts remain within Big Tech behemoths on their cannabis messaging. 

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For these business leaders, hindsight is 20/20. Starting a business can be an intimidating undertaking, especially when it’s your first one. You’re often feeling imposter syndrome in full force, and no matter how much planning and research you do ahead of time, rarely does any aspect of business go how you’d expect.  Because of this fact, for many entrepreneurs, hindsight is 20/20. Now with established careers and businesses, they can better reflect on what may have gone wrong or what they could have done better when they first started out. Below, a panel of 14 Rolling Stone Culture Council members share the lessons they wish they had known when starting their businesses and how that knowledge may have helped them grow along the way.

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To find the right match, you’ll need to look beyond their technical skills. When it comes to finding the right business partner, not just anyone will do. However, they also may not be the type of person you think you need at first. While many entrepreneurs will assume they need to find someone with superior technical skills like marketing or sales to help drive their business forward, it may be the nontechnical skills that make all the difference. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council leaders share 15 nontechnical skills you may not realize you should be looking for in a business partner, and why having these qualities at your side could make for the perfect match.

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You don't need a brick-and-mortar store to make a lasting impression on your customer. By taking advantage of lighting, scents, displays or direct customer service, retail has a straightforward way of creating a memorable experience for its customers. When your business is online-only, however, you don’t have a physical environment to leverage — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to “wow” your customers. Below, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council recommend nine methods for leaving a lasting impression on your audience — and all you need to get started is a little ingenuity.

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These brands are great examples of how to tell your story right. Effective branding occurs when a consumer can think of a company and an image immediately comes to mind. These companies can evoke certain feelings and produce certain thoughts in customers’ minds all while telling a story well enough to convince those customers they need that product or service. All of these elements are what make a brand memorable, and to achieve that status for your company, you’ll need to study other successful brands. To help you, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council shared a few examples of brands that really nailed their respective stories and how they did it.

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The most valuable information at your disposal is what your customers think of you. No matter what type of business you run, your customers always have an opinion. From being completely happy with your service to thinking your product needs a total overhaul (and every opinion in between), your customers’ opinions can be as diverse as they are. It’s the companies that know how to harness this feedback to inform their decisions that are able to please their customers the most. The first step, however, is to collect that customer feedback. Below, 11 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council suggest a few ways of doing that and what you should be doing with the feedback once you have it.

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These popular trends may have enough staying power to last well into the future. While the Covid-19 pandemic has had its fair share of negative effects, it has also been responsible for a number of positive cultural shifts, especially in the e-commerce space. Stay-at-home orders and social distancing forced consumers online and caused companies to pivot, adapt or fail — and that meant major digital changes were made to the traditional shopping experience.  But while many business owners (and customers) are ready to get back to normal, nine leaders from Rolling Stone Culture Council list some of the pandemic-era e-commerce trends they think will stick around for the foreseeable future and why they’ve been such valuable changes to the retail status quo.

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Offering a top-notch customer experience is more important than ever, but you need the right strategies first. When designing a better customer experience, many organizations today are focusing on convenience. Whether it’s companies finding inventive ways to deliver their products or working to make their customers’ lives easier, convenience has a positive effect on customer satisfaction.  But to make sure you’re delivering the best overall experience, you’ll need to start with a few simple steps. Below, 10 Rolling Stone Culture Council members each shared one thing leaders can do to maximize convenience and create more happy customers.

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Creating a mutually beneficial partnership means laying the groundwork for success upfront. When businesses partner together — whether for an ad campaign, product launch, promotion or any other reason — both should reap the rewards. But to ensure it’s a successful endeavor for all parties involved, there may be some necessary planning to do. While the process doesn’t need to be complicated, there are some important steps to be taken and considerations to be made before either business will feel satisfied. To shine some light on those steps, 13 members from Rolling Stone Culture Council list some of the key actions to take to make sure your next partnership is a successful one.

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The only certainty about the future of work is change. An important part of an agile work culture is increasing flexibility in order to adapt to the changing needs of your employees. As the pandemic and its effect on the workforce have proven, change is inevitable and it’s important now more than ever for companies to adopt more agile practices and policies. Luckily, agile work cultures aren’t exclusive to any one industry, and any company at any time can start to build one. To help get you started, seven leaders from Rolling Stone Culture Council each suggest one step companies can take to build a more agile work culture and explain why it’s important to do in order to keep up with an ever-changing workforce.

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Free apps, tools and products still need to be highly appealing to entice users to keep coming back. When a platform is free, you might assume everyone will want to take advantage of it. However, if a customer isn't spending their hard-earned money on that tool or app, it can also be just as easy for them to forget about it. It can be difficult to encourage repeat engagement in the era of app overload, but there are a number of ways you can get users to engage with your business’s free platform. Below 11, members of Rolling Stone Culture Council shared the techniques that have worked for them. Follow their recommendations to build a loyal base of repeat users.

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Cannabis businesses should rethink their approach and meet customers where they're at.

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The culture space is nuanced and unique and entering it doesn't always turn out exactly how you think. It’s easy to come into any business with preconceived ideas about that particular industry; however, many industries in the culture space are complex and ever-changing. Once you start to build a company, you’ll likely learn there’s much more to each industry than meets the eye.  Realizing you had misconceptions about your industry may lead you to rethink certain strategies and decisions about your business. Fortunately, it's rarely too late to change course based on the knowledge you learn from experience. Below, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members shared some myths and misconceptions they had about their specific industries when they started out, and how those assumptions were later proven false.

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Even if you're feeling video call burnout, there are ways to motivate yourself to connect in the digital world. With the pandemic still ongoing, it’s difficult to know when the world will return to “normal" and in-person networking can resume. Until then, many professionals will remain working — and connecting — fully remotely, which can lead to the dreaded burnout known as "Zoom fatigue." In this distant environment, finding the motivation to forge connections day after day can be a monumental task. To help, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members shared a few networking strategies that have worked well for them when they’re not in the mood to connect.

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Leaders in the culture space have a unique opportunity to shine a light on the underrepresented groups they serve. The benefits of a diverse and inclusive brand are many, for consumers and companies alike. However, this representation doesn’t happen accidentally. Rather, organizations must take specific action to help lift up underrepresented groups, such as women, people of color and people with disabilities. Businesses in the culture space are uniquely positioned to use their influence to amplify the voices of those underrepresented groups. Below, the members of Rolling Stone Culture Council share 10 specific ways culture leaders can promote inclusivity and diversity in their branding.

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Your team may be stressed, but empowering them to experiment can keep them moving forward. Working through the pandemic has caused many professionals a lot of anxiety. Even though this free time affords people more opportunity to achieve their goals, they aren’t often seizing it because they're stressed about their health, their families and their jobs. As a leader, it's important to empower your team to use this time to continue growing, learning and evolving, even if they're preoccupied with just "staying afloat" right now. Below, 15 members of Rolling Stone Culture Council explained how to encourage your team members to experiment and innovate during difficult times. Follow their recommended steps to keep everyone's morale high and creative juices flowing.

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Don't let the silos of your day-to-day work hinder your ability to collaborate as a team. Collaboration is often the key to creativity and progress in business. However, busyness can sometimes get in the way of purposeful collaboration across an organization. Finding time to brainstorm and work with other teammates can be a challenge when you’re bogged down with a lengthy to-do list, but it’s essential to prioritize cross-team communication if you want to move your business forward. To offer guidance on where to start, a panel of Rolling Stone Culture Council members shared tips for breaking down the silos of your day-to-day work and improving collaboration within your organization.