Everywhere you look there are motivational posts and inspirational articles about how to achieve everything you want in life. They have cool titles like "10 Ways to Achieve Your Dreams" or "The 3 Daily Habits Every Billionaire Keeps Doing."

But success and achievement isn't always about what you should be doing. Achieving your goals isn't always about good habits and being disciplined. Sometimes you have to let go...

These days it seems everyone is calling themselves an “entrepreneur.” There’s a lot of talk about leaving your job, following your dreams, making money while you sleep, and living with passion.

Each of those things is fantastic. But, there are a lot of things aspiring-entrepreneurs AREN’T hearing. There are things no one will tell you about starting a business, and I think it’s time somebody tells you.

By now, there should be no question that you should have a blog for your business. Blogs boost your sales and credibility, improved SEO, and add personality to your brand.

But if you're not a writer, how do you come up with fresh content? What topics do you write about that will drive sales, bring in new clients, and boost your bottom line?

Stop Motivating People and Start Helping Them

I recently published this post about how impossible it is to be truly different in this world. I mentioned that the things which make us unique are often the things we hide because we don't want to be embarrassed or made fun of.

Our quirks are our personality.

And, in that post, I encouraged, well, challenged really, you to share something about you.

So, to lead by example, I decided to come up with of things that I don't share that often. Some of them might be embarrassing, other might just be quirky, but they're all things about me that my friends appreciate (or only tolerate) and which make up Ellory Wells.

70 Things You Might Not Know About Ellory

Sameness. Background noise. Irrelevant. Ignored. These words slap me in the face and terrify me as an entrepreneur. Like the "emo" kids and "goths" of yesteryear, we're all trying to be different, but we all look the same.

Let me explain.

As I see it, this the only way you can stand out, make a difference and possibly avoid the death sentence of obscurity.

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You don't have to be a thrill seeker or race car driver to have the need for speed. When buyers bounce from websites that take longer than 3 seconds to load, your company's revenue is directly tied how long people have to wait before they get what they came for.

No one likes waiting. When Microsoft came out with the original Xbox, they revolutionized the gaming industry by eliminating loading times. No more waiting around for graphics to render on the screen, we could get right into the game.

Even if you don't sell products directly from your site, making your website faster will be critical to your success. If you've ever tried to read a blog post or news article only to arrive on the site and have it not load quickly, you know what I'm talking about.

But there's good news! Most small businesses, bloggers, podcasters, and artists can give their site a speed boost without spending a penny. Over the past several years, I've tweaked and tested dozens of tools and techniques for making a website faster. I've found the best and came up with this list of...

12 Tools to Make Your Website Faster

We're coming up on the two-year anniversary of a project I started with high expectations. That project, however, failed miserably.

Success isn't about always winning. In fact, the most "successful" people out there are the ones who fail the most. Today I want to share about my project, why it failed, and why it might not be a failure after all.

In December of 2015, I transitioned from using PayPal to handle my website's payments to using Stripe. I've been with PayPal for four years.

Why did I switch? Should you switch too?

Let's break down the differences between Stripe and PayPal and see which solution is the best for your e-commerce business.

Do you ever feel like you should be getting more results from what you're doing? Have you looked around, seen the progress your friends, and wondered when it will be your time to finally make some money from your hobby? From your "side hustle?"