Cats. Enigmatic, aloof, contrary - affectionate, loving, loyal. There are so many adjectives that can be applied to our feline friends.  And with a little under half of U.S. households (43%) owning one or more cats (totaling almost 86 million)1, it’s clear they’ve got a place in our hearts. But what can entrepreneurs learn from the cat’s attitude to life? Well, quite a lot actually.

It’s very easy to get overwhelmed when you first start using social media as a business tool. I definitely struggled to get to grips with the sheer volume of platforms, terminology, best-practice advice and, of course, apps that all promise to help streamline and make the best use of your time.

Recently I’ve been feeling a little too self-satisfied with my efforts at social media marketing. My Twitter page has been going from strength-to-strength, I’m starting to get a handle on scaling content and scheduling across all the social platforms I run, and I’ve got big plans for Facebook. Truth be told I was starting to think I’d really cracked it.

We all know the importance of happy and engaged employees. They’re the lifeblood of my business and have propelled me from a struggling start-up to a growing, profitable company. But motivating employees can be hard – especially when you don’t have the capital to compete with large businesses on salary.

In an age where time is precious and the average attention span is less than a goldfish’s (yes, really), consumers want their content fed to them in a fast and easily digestible way. I’ve found that video has proven to be extremely beneficial for my business – especially when it comes to promoting the products and services I can offer in a short, succinct and consistent way.

Everyone who uses Twitter wants more followers. It’s almost an eternal quest, especially if you use it for your business. More followers equals more engagement and more engagement equals more business, right? Well, not necessarily, especially if your followers aren’t really interested in you or your product. There are tons of fake and ‘follow me and I’ll follow back’ accounts, neither of which provide any value, even if they do make it appear to the outside world that you’ve got loads of followers.

If your business is anything like mine it probably started off in your spare room or at the kitchen table. It's free of charge, the commute takes no time at all and you can work in your PJs if you want - what's not to like? But as you (hopefully) expand and grow, the chances are you'll need to branch out into an office, especially as you start to employ people and arrange meetings with clients.

Finding the right staff is a big challenge for any business, but especially so for smaller companies. And once you've found the perfect employee, getting them to stay is another issue altogether.

We've read tons of time management tips over the years, but rarely find anything that's a rare game changer. Sure, the apps are great - Evernote helps capture new ideas, and CamCard saves time off of converting business cards to contact list. But telling us to delegate where we can, prioritize a to-do list and only check your mail twice a day just doesn’t seem to work that well, even though for some it may makes total sense.