OPEN Forum Articles

The 10 Worst Things About Owning A Business

Barry Moltz — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:15:00 -0400

From Barry Moltz:

Most of the time, being a small business owner is one of the many fulfilling experiences in the world. But then there are days where I wish I could just get a job! Having your own business has many frustrations that are out of your control.

Here are the top 10 worst things about owning a business and how to fix them:

1. Customers that say they will buy my product “next week” but then never do

If you really don’t want to do business with me, I would appreciate the courage to simply tell me “no.” You won’t hurt my feelings by saying your business situation has changed. Solution: Call, write, tweet or text, even in the middle of the night. I appreciate a quick "no" much more than a "yes" that never comes.

2. People that make tons of money with no apparent business skill

Lottery winners I can cheer for. Dumb people in business with a bad idea and even poorer execution that strike it rich just make me cry. But as Jean Couteau said “We must believe in luck. For how else can explain the success of those we don’t like?” Solution: Work hard and play the lottery.

3. People that don’t respond to my e-mails or phone calls even after I have worked with them

These aren’t cold calls or people I have never met. These are people that have paid me money or I have had lunch with several times. Solution: Let go and forget them quickly. I don’t want to do business with anyone that isn’t interested. If you don’t want to talk, send me an e-mail to buzz off. I won't be insulted, I will be relieved!

4. Customers that don’t tell you they can’t pay their bill

If you can’t afford my product, don’t buy it. Don’t have me keep calling you with no reply looking for the money you owe. Solution: If circumstances have changed since your purchase, tell me. We will work something out. Lack of communication only leads to frustration and expensive conversations with lawyers.

5. People that are always late for meetings

Who taught you to tell time? If you are not a doctor or the cable guy, you need to respect a meeting time. Solution: Dial your cell phone and say you are going to be late so I don’t wonder if I got the date wrong or you are stuck under a bus somewhere.

6. People that cancel a meeting less than an hour before it is scheduled to start

In this fast paced world, schedules can change quickly. However, don’t routinely change your mind about meeting me an hour before we are to get together. Please remember that I have not yet mastered teleportation, so I typically need to leave 45 minutes to get to the meeting location on time. Solution: Look ahead at your schedule and cancel the day before if you are no longer interested or your schedule has changed.

7. Banks that reduce my line of credit even though my business is profitable and I have never missed a payment

Most banks do not want to take the risk of lending money to small businesses in this economy. However, don’t cancel my line of credit just because my business falls into the wrong industry sector that has a high default rate. Solution: Treat my company as an individual customer (like you promised when you got my business) and look at the merits of each individual loan.

8. State and Federal governments that require a myriad of regulations to run a business

All I want to do is sell my products and services to other people who want to buy them. The variety of laws to be followed and taxes to be paid by a business owner are mind boggling. Solution: Stop trying to balance the government's budget on the back of my small business. If you leave my business alone, I can prosper and pay more taxes to you based on my profit.

9. Insurance companies that charge 25 percent more each year but reduce their benefits by 50 percent

I always have dreams about a business like health insurance where I can raise my prices 25 percent a year and offer 50 percent less services in return. Insurance is now the second largest cost for small business owners. Solution: Look at alternatives every year from different insurance carriers. It’s the only way to keep the cost reasonable without passing every increase onto your employees.

10. Employees that quit their job simply by not showing up

If you no longer want the job, please show up on your last day and politely quit. Don’t just leave during lunch and never come back. Please give me a week’s notice so the people left at the company don’t suffer in your absence. Solution: Call, write, tweet or text so I can hire someone else.

What is the worst thing about running your business? What is your solution?

6 Ways For Business Travelers To Get A Good Night’s Sleep

Kentin Waits — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:30:00 -0400

From Kentin Waits:

Business travelers are true road warriors. They navigate a never-ending obstacle course of airport security, taxis, hotel check-ins and eating on the run and still manage to put in a full day’s work. But after all the logistics, what’s the best way to relax and get a good night’s sleep?

Here are a few rules of the road business travelers can follow when it’s time to unplug.

1. Schedule for sanity

We rigorously adhere to our schedules 99 percent of the time. Yet, when it’s time to travel for business, we completely disregard our normal wake and sleep cycles in a rush to save $50 on airfare.

If your employer allows any wiggle room in your travel budget, choose a flight itinerary with reasonable departure and arrival times. Consider leaving a day early or staying a day late if it prevents a red-eye flight. Or, try to schedule your itinerary with arrivals no later than 6:00 p.m. This gives you enough time to retrieve your luggage, get to the hotel, unpack, have dinner and turn in at a (relatively) normal hour. Departures before 10:00 a.m. will only stress you out and leave you sleeping the night before with one eye on the clock.

2. Pack proactively

Add a few sleep essentials to your travel kit:

Disposable foam earplugs
A sleep mask
A large binder clip

The earplugs block out most ambient noise, but still let you hear your alarm or wake-up call. They’re perfect for dampening the sound of slamming doors and noisy late night hotel guests.

The sleep mask helps tune out other distractions and of course, block light.

Why the binder clip? Because hotel curtains never seem to close completely. Binder clips are perfect for securing curtains panels together to keep the light out.

3. Choose your room

You take time to choose your hotel; it’s time to get just as picky about your room. All hotel rooms are not created equal. Experienced travelers know which real estate to avoid:

Rooms near the elevator
Rooms near the vending or ice machines
Rooms close to the lobby or breakfast area

For obvious reasons, all of these locations tend to be noisier than average. Also steer clear of rooms close to delivery areas or dumpsters, or your wake-up call will sound a lot like a service truck.

Depending on how full the hotel is, most clerks will happily work with guests and oblige special room requests. Don’t hesitate to make your preferences known—it’s a quick and inexpensive way to significantly increase your chances of getting a good night’s sleep.

4. Get defensive

Once you’re settled in your room, there are a few simple things that can defend your peace and quiet.

First, make use of the Do Not Disturb sign. Housekeeping staff start their rounds early and you don’t necessarily want to be first on their list.

Second, check that bedside alarm clock. You’d be surprised how often alarms programmed by previous guests aren’t turned off as part of the room cleaning routine.

Finally, run just the fan from the AC or heater unit to create a little white noise in your room. This can help block out any hallway and parking lot disturbances through the night.

5. Remember your routine

Business travel not only throws off our sleep and wake cycles, it disrupts nearly every routine we have. Sticking to a few constants like exercise, diet and regular work hours can help with relaxation. Avoid the more common pitfalls that come with travel—overeating or over-caffeinating and pulling all-nighters to catch up on work.

6. Unplug

Our hyper-connected world often works against us when it’s time to sleep. Digital devices can disrupt rest in a couple of ways.

First, there’s the temptation to answer e-mail, read texts and check social networking sites 24/7 because these resources never shut off.

Second, the light from our digital devices interferes with how our minds prepare for sleep. Our cycles of sleep and wakefulness are called our circadian rhythms and they’re regulated in part, by lightness and darkness. Plugging in right before bed tells our bodies that it’s not time to rest. Try powering down a full hour before you turn in for the night—it’ll help promote the proper rest that precedes quality sleep.

Rest can be hard-won even when we’re not on the road. Learning a few methods to unwind and making space for sleep is only becoming more important as our lives get more complex. Remember quality down-time and a deep, rejuvenating sleep is the basis of true productivity. Now, shut off your computer and get some shut-eye.

Kentin Waits is a freelance writer and marketing specialist based in Portland, Oregon. His work has been featured in US Airways magazine and top-rated blogs such as Wise Bread, the Consumerist, and MSN SmartMoney. When he's not writing, Kentin runs a small online antiques business.

The 3 Secrets To Extremely Loyal Employees

Mike Michalowicz — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:45:00 -0400

From Mike Michalowicz:

In the business world there is always a lot of talk about the importance of customer loyalty. But employee loyalty is every bit as important. Many people overlook the importance of employee, but to do so can be detrimental to your business. If you have not considered the issue before, there is no better time than now.

There are many reasons why having loyal employees is a must in your business. They are the backbone of the company, and the ones that will ultimately make or break your product or service. They represent your company and will either put your business goals into action or snuff them out before you can even figure out the root of the problem.

Employee loyalty should be at the top of every entrepreneur's list, and it should be integrated into your business strategy. It’s that important!

Here are a few secrets that I have learned about gaining employee loyalty:

Evaluate

The first thing you need to do is recognize that some people are naturally loyal, while others are not. So, fire those people who are not loyal. Replace them with people who have a history of being loyal in their prior positions. If they were loyal in the past, they will most likely be loyal in the future. Being loyal is a work ethic that people either have or they don’t, so it’s not really something you can teach or train them.

Reciprocate

The biggest secret is to give loyalty first. If you want employees to go above and beyond for you, you must go above and beyond for them. The best leaders get this. They fight for the team, and in return, the team fights for them. This doesn’t mean that you have to give them more financially. There are many non-financial rewards you can give that will help build loyalty, such as giving respect and praise, having an employee of the month, being flexible when they need time off, and listening to their suggestions and feedback.

Simplify

Those leaders who gain loyalty do it by removing barriers for everyone else. Their primary job is to continuously make everyone else’s job easier. If your employees see you trying to help make their job easier, they will be much more loyal.

Lines of communication

Often times, as business leaders, we tend to focus all of our attention on the consumers and our bottom line. But what we must realize is that when we turn some of that attention and focus to our employee loyalty, it will automatically help us reach those other goals. Employees who are loyal will provide better customer service and will be more apt to helping your business grow.

Another important issue when it comes to having loyal employees is keeping communication flowing. The businesses that focus on keeping their employees informed and in the know help to make them feel more a part of a team. When you take the time to clearly communicate with your employees, letting them know your expectations, their job duties, and provide feedback, they will be more loyal.

Putting it into action

To put this in action, take some time to focus on your employee loyalty. Work at building a loyal team and doing what it takes to make that happen. It may take you coming to terms with the fact that you need to replace a few people, or that you need to work on your own actions toward your employees. When you evaluate what needs to be done and get it done, everything else will fall into place.

How To Get Stellar Service In A Casual Spot

Hannah Howard — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0400

From Hannah Howard:

Great, formal service means pulling out chairs for the ladies, serving from the left and presenting the wine cork. It means all the bells and whistles.

But quality service can also happen at the most casual of places. Giving great service is less about sticking to a rulebook or starching tablecloths than about making customers happy, regardless of the environment.

Often the assumption is that a laid back vibe and wonderful hospitality are mutually exclusive. Customers might appreciate that they don't have to keep their voices at a murmur, or remember which fork to use first. But they won't appreciate a cooler-than-thou, eye-rolling, knuckle-popping server who won't give them the time of day or their chicken pesto sandwich.

The challenge is not just to navigate the space between uptight and sloppy, but rather to create a culture that fosters both casual-ness and attention to detail. This is tricky, but also quite possible.

Pitfall 1: No structure

Casual can mean freewheeling. At my corporate steakhouse, every job position came with mountains of paperwork, rules and manuals. There was practically a sanctioned way to tie your shoes.

At an infinitely more relaxed wine bar where I worked, off-the-cuff instructions were the only kind. Official procedures—official anything—were nonexistent. It was up to each employee to figure out what to do and how to do it. This is a dangerous situation for any business owner, even if you happen to have hired yourself a company full of self-motivated hospitable overachievers. Most everyone needs some structure to thrive.

To create clear direction, define what's most important to your company. Then make sure everyone who works for you knows this, understands and can integrate it into what they do each day. If you're all about your eclectic wine list, make sure your employees understand the nuances of all those funky Hungarian reds and crisp Portuguese whites. They should know how to converse cordially to wine snobs and novices alike. They should know which pairs perfectly with fresh goat's milk cheese, how to present a bottle tableside and how to engage each person who walks in the door.

No matter if you pour heavenly nectar into each customer's glass. If the staff doesn't understand how to be warm and professional, guests will enjoy a less special drink in a more welcoming place. And they will enjoy it more.

Pitfall 2: Anything goes

When a wine bar server asked the owner if she could add some bright pink highlights to her blonde hair, the owner replied in the affirmative. They had both come from fine dining restaurants where such things are verboten, and were happy to allow some wiggle room for self expression.

I'm all for pink hair! I love watching the fashion show that is the hipster waitstaff in my great neighborhood diner. But individuality is a virtue only when it's not interfering with customer experience. I had to tell a server who worked for me that her skirt was too short and her cleavage was too exposed a few times before deciding to implement a uniform.

Uniforms are not the only way to go, and they're not for everywhere. But like any parenting book will advise, it is important to set limits. Where lines are drawn is up to you, and should be in service to presenting the very best face of your business to the public.

Anything can't go. Maybe rainbow hair goes, but lip rings are out. Maybe it's ok to say "hi," instead of a more formal "hello," but it's still important each customer is welcomed warmly. Maybe chatting with guests about films and hairstyles is a-ok, but only after food is served and water glasses refilled.

Pitfall 3: Respect is missing

One of the worst experiences anywhere is to see a manager berating staff in public. It's pretty clear that doing this is a terrible move. To build a friendly environment for your customers, first foster one with your team.

You're the owner; you care deeply about your business. It is second nature for you to treat customers with kindness. The trick is to enable your staff to feel the same sense of pride and ownership that you do. If they feel respected and value, it is much more likely they'll treat guests with respect and appreciation. Your people are your businesses' biggest asset. They can't shine with positivity if they don't feel positive about what they're a part of.

Even though show plates and tableside serving might feel stodgy, caring a lot about each guest's experience is non-stodgy and absolutely imperative. Since it's not in the fancy touches, show you care in other ways. Get to know your customers. Pour them a bit of something you think they'll love, on the house. Show them some love.

Do great work

Less formal should never mean less good. Without the fluffy formality, you are boiled down to the essence. The essence better be something quality. If you're serving funky cheeses or selling financial services, remember that a casual environment makes it all the more important that your product shines. The formula is barebones: great service, great food. That leaves little room for error, but plenty of room to do something special.

Location-Based Content Can Help Your Marketing

TJ McCue — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:30:00 -0400

From TJ McCue:

Location, location, location is the mantra you hear from any real estate professional about how important it is to have the right spot. It might be more accurate to say, “location-based content” three times as the new catchphrase.

If you are a local small business or a larger franchise owner with multiple locations, you’ll be interested to know that you can show up high in search and social results based on how people share content. You see, consumers are sharing content that is directly related to a location or event or venue. Yelp, Foursquare and other up and coming platforms let you say, “I am here now sipping a latte at Starbucks on Main Street, Seattle.” The location is inserted automatically. And that local-flavored content is surfacing in the search results.

What can you do?

Get a smartphone so you can see what your customers see when they look at your website.

Get with a local search expert. I have read and recommendDavid Mihm for both beginner and advanced level local SEO ideas. He runs a Web design and SEO company, but he produces an amazing Local Search Ranking Factors report once a year.

Start creating localized content.

According to a recent brand study by Valuevine called “The Local Blind Spot for Consumer Brands,” 53 percent of mobile searches have local intent (as reported by Bing). The study covered many large consumer brands, but I think it presents some great opportunities for small and medium sized businesses to keep an advantage over competitors.

The study explains that most social media monitoring tools are keyword-based. That is, they monitor keywords that appear in various social streams and within search results. What is missing is the local aspect. Valuevine highlights this gap because their business model is based on location analytics, but it is a missing piece of the online marketing equation. At the simplest level, you could simply monitor the location-based services on your own or set Google Alerts with locations in them.

Some points covered in the study:

There are a growing number of third party sites gathering content about business. Think Yelp, Citysearch, Foursquare— and the list grows daily.

As smartphone usage increases, the volume of consumer content rapidly expands. In 2010, Foursquare reported 381 million check-ins. All of that shows up in social streams and in some search results.

Brands are unaware and not listening to these local sources.

Consumers are increasingly accessing local content. That means their search either starts by them typing in the location along with a specific search term like “Coffee Shop” or “Chinese Cuisine” or their smartphone does it for them because it knows where they are and they need only put in the term.

The point of this post is to highlight how location-based content may be the new black, as the saying goes. Even if you decide not to have a website (which 40 to 50 percent of small businesses do not depending on which study you read), your brand is still found online by consumers who are on the go. The question is: What are you doing to reach a mobile consumer with local content?

Guru Review: Drinking From The Fire Hose

Matthew E. May — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0400

From Matthew E. May:

There's one thing the world today has no shortage of: Information. Just about everyone these days suffers from T.M.I. (Too Much Information). The ubiquity of social media and the smartphone has created a 24/7 flood of information overload. And while we need information to make sense of the world and to make good decisions, more often than not we're overwhelmed by the sheer volume rushing at us.

It's like trying to drink from a fire hose. And, the question isn't how to shut off the valve—because that simply isn't going to happen—but how to make meaning out of it all? How do you find the truly essential nuggets of information and use them with confidence?

Those are the key questions at the heart of a new book by Christopher Frank and Paul Magnone called Drinking From The Fire Hose: Making Smarter Decisions Without Drowning in Information. Christopher Frank is the vice president of business-to-business and communications research at American Express, and Paul Magnone is the director of global business development and alliances at Openet.

With Google+ entering the social media mix, adding yet another stream of always-on information and bringing with it a whole new set of decisions for both individuals and businesses, the timing couldn't be better for Drinking From the Fire Hose.

Big idea:

The explosion of data has the potential to impair decision making and cripple judgement, and the solution is deceptively simple: Learn how to ask the right questions at the right time. Whatever field you're in, asking smarter questions will expose you to new information, point you to connections between seemingly unrelated facts, and open new avenues of discussion and dialog.

Key takeaways:

The authors demonstrate how to transform data into information, and information into knowledge and insight, by asking and answering seven key "Fire Hose" questions:

What is the essential business question? Identify the one vital piece of information you need to move forward, and determine whether what you're looking at exposes or conceals that vital information.

Where is your customer's North Star? Uncover your customer's needs and wants in your existing data. Make sure that data amplifies rather than muffle's the customer's voice. "Put the customer's voice front and center in any presentation," write the authors.

Should you believe the squiggly line? Step away from the data—don't use short-term data to make long-range plans. "We call this over-reliance on short-term data the Squiggly Line syndrome," write the authors. "If you make the time frame small enough, the data almost always appears as a squiggly line...the numbers are almost always less volatile over the long term."

What surprised you? Take a hard look at the numbers on the page, not the number you expected to see. Use your intuition to spot mistakes and your natural skepticism to look for surprises. Don't dismiss every number you can't explain as an outlier.

What does the lighthouse reveal? Define the criteria that are meaningful to your business, identify the "Lighthouse" data—the critical information that will keep your business out of danger—and create beacons. Develop a strategy that is defensible and can scale based on Lighthouse examples.

Who are your swing voters? Swing voters, or swing customers, offer the greatest opportunity for growth with the smallest expense. To find them, categorize your customers as favorable, neutral, or unfavorable. Define your neutral customers as a leaner, neutral, or defector. Profile each segment, and target each with a dedicated message. Continually reassess those categories and segments.

What? So What? Now What? The "what?" is the data; the "so what?" is a discussion of what that data means, and the "now what?" drives the discussion on what you should really do about it. So: find the data that matters, ask yourself what it really means, and take action based on that meaning.

Liked most:

The authors not only provide straight-line, practical, useful advice, they provide compelling examples and untold stories drawn from their experiences with numerous start-ups as well as iconic brands like American Express, Microsoft and IBM. They also include recent events outside the business world. The authors' unpacking of the Iceland volcanic ash cloud incident of 2010 that grounded planes and stranded travelers will astound you when you realize how exorbitantly expensive decisions were made in the absence of relevant and meaningful data.

Too, the organization of Drinking From The Fire Hose makes extracting the key takeaways a breeze, as the authors do it for you at the start and end of every chapter. I attribute this to the authors' statement that they are "businesspeople first and authors second." In other words, they practice what they preach—the "What? So What? Now What?" is abundantly clear, accessible, and actionable.

Best for...

Anyone struggling to get a handle on the flood of information (and who isn't) will appreciate this seven-dimension heuristic for enabling better fact-based decision making.

What people are saying

"Frank and Magnone have created an insightful and groundbreaking model that will likely be built upon for years to come. As data continues to grow exponentially—useful information remains elusive. The framework presented herein presents a methodology that is critical for separating the knowledge from the noise and then shows how to apply it within our processes to make more effective business decisions." —John Rizzuto, Research VP, Gartner

10 Lessons From The Inc. 500

Kate Lister — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:30:00 -0400

From Kate Lister:

What do the following words and phrases have in common: government services, IT services, business services and California? They’re the words that bubble to the surface if you do a content analysis of the just released 2011 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing small companies.

I always look forward to the annual Inc. 500 list, which expanded to the Inc. 5000 in 2007. I follow it not so much because I’m interested in the companies that make the grade, but because it lets me put a finger on the pulse of entrepreneurship.

This year was particularly interesting because companies are ranked by their three-year revenue growth, and this year’s winners would have to have achieved their growth during the recession.

I used Wordle to create a picture of the words that most commonly appeared in the descriptions of this year’s top 500. If you’re not familiar with Wordle, it’s a simple word cloud tools (they call it a toy) that allows you take a chunk of text and instantly create a image based on the words that appear most frequently.

Can you say "service"?

The Inc. 500 list lumps products and services together, but there’s heavy emphasis on the latter, as you can literally see thanks to Wordle. The “products and services” sector dominated the list with 39 percent, or 198, of the Inc. 500 entries.

We all know that we’re a service economy, but what was surprising in the list, was the composition of the category. Almost a third (62 of the 198) were involved in government services, up from only 35 in 2007. Obviously, some smart entrepreneurs managed to rake in their share of federal stimulus monies that poured into the economy over the past few years.

The balance of the 198 sector winners provided products and services (again, with an emphasis on the services) in:

Information technology: 22 percent
Business: 19 percent
Consumer: 15 percent
Financial: 12 percent
Environmental: 2 percent

Location matters

Almost a fifth of all winners were based in California, more than double the next two most common states, Virginia and New York with 7.4 percent each. Together, California, Virginia, and New York plus Florida and Texas accounted for about half of the Inc. 500 winners.

Year-over-year changes

But what about the recession? I decided to look back and compare the composition of the list before the recession, in the middle it, and most recently.

Aside from the big increase in government services, a couple of interesting industry changes bubbled to the surface:

In 2007, 10 percent of the Inc. 500 was comprised of human resource companies. In 2011, only seven companies (compared to 50 in 2007), made the list. The labor and talent shortages that dominated the minds of business owners before the recession obviously took a back seat to economic woes.

Before the recession, the word “marketing” showed up a lot in the list. By 2008, it was lost in the noise as companies focused more on survival than growth. In 2011, the list once again prominently featured "marketing"—perhaps a harbinger of economic recovery.

Flaws

That’s all interesting, but I think we have to recognize that the Inc. 500 “competition” has a few flaws. One is that growth percentages can be skewed in favor of those who did poorly in the first year. Second, I’d be more impressed if the growth was based on profits, rather than revenue—the latter without the former just doesn’t do it for the former-banker in me. And third, many of the applicants, who pay $125 to apply, do so entirely for the publicity value of being able to brag about the fact that they’re an Inc. 500/5000 company.

Opportunity

Still, the list holds a wealth of data gems, competitive information, and business plan fodder that simply isn’t available elsewhere. Best of all, the Inc. website offers lots of tools to help you in your search. Here are some ideas of how you can use it in your business:

1. Compare your per employee revenue to that of others in your industry. Stratus Building Solutions tops the list at $9.1 million per person. A more typical rule of thumb is $100,000.

2. Use the per person revenue to help project your own employee hiring needs.

3. Evaluate the trend of companies in your industry that make the list and use it to show investors to build enthusiasm for your business.

4. Use it as a sanity check when projecting your own growth.

5. Look for downward trends that might portend trouble for your business.

6. Compare your eating, sleeping, commuting, social networking, and work habits to those at the helm of fastest growing companies.

7. Check out the multi-year winners to see who has the greatest staying power.

8. Compare your business to others in your state, region, and industry. Do you measure up?

9. Pick your favorite winners and commit to reading their blogs, and following them with other social media.

10. Read and reread the inspiring stories of those who have struggled and won.

Some of the nation’s most recognizable companies have had their place on the list including 7-Eleven, Toys 'R' Us, Zappos.com and many others. While not every entrepreneur aspires to the fast paced growth it takes to make the cut, it’s hard not to be inspired by those who have.

How To Conduct Business In The Middle East

Shira Levine — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0400

From Shira Levine:

Ramadan and Eid are over, which means back to business in the Middle East. For many western companies and entrepreneurs doing business in the Middle East, this last month was uneventful and slow, as observant Muslims shutdown during day in honor of the holiday. For many Muslim business owners and entrepreneurs the month amounted to limited hours of operation during the night, or, not at all. Unlike Judeo-Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, Yom Kippur and Passover—which typically interrupt the business week for a day or two—Ramadan is much longer lasting. (This year Ramadan lasted from Aug. 1-30with Eid on Aug. 31, and many businesses don't officially return to work until Sep. 10.)

Keeping good business relations within a global marketplace is critical to success, so it’s not a bad idea to familiarize with a little etiquette for working well with Middle East clients. I spoke with David Hanzal, president of Technologies International, LLC, a reseller of educational equipment for universities that have offices throughout the Middle East, about how he successfully keeps on top of things as a non-Muslim doing business in the Middle East.

Business and personal are interchangeable

Religion and family are typically prioritized over work. The western notion that business is business and personal is personal doesn’t apply. Business in the Middle East is personal.

“It is seen as very disrespectful to just dive into business,” says Hanzal. “You don’t interrupt someone unless it’s something that may cause a financial problem, or affect the way they provide for their family. You also have to have patience and not demand an immediate answer.”

Follow the laws of the region

It would be highly inappropriate to bring alcohol as a friendly gesture or order alcohol during a dinner meeting (unless you’ve otherwise been given the cue that it is OK). Everyone has their own levels of observance, and country laws and flexibility differ.

“Bringing a bottle of booze is a great way to end any relationships in the Middle East,” says Hanzal. “Avoid eating or offering from a pig too. It’s considered a dirty animal."

Address clients respectfully

In the Middle East it is preferred to use titles and surnames.

“I’m always addressed as Mr. Hanzal, or, Engineer David,” says Hanzal. “It is proper to use full name in e-mails and a Mr./Mrs. when meeting in person. If you are a male and planning on doing business with a woman, be very cautious when shaking hands. Only do so if she extends her hands first. Don’t spend a lot of time looking her in the eyes, and certainly do not touch her. (Frequently when doing business with a female client, other men will join the meeting as well to insure respect.)”

“Avoid using your left hand when touching things, it is seen as unclean. Never cross your legs and show the sole of your shoes; this is an insult.”

Be patient and wait your turn

When your business associate is ready to talk business, they will. Business is often conducted over a meal or in the company of a client’s family for Hanzal so he never leads the conversation toward business, rather waiting instead for his client to set the tone. Hanzal suggests taking time getting to know a client. Discussing sports, family and any hobbies are very welcome—the Middle East peace process less so.

“Enjoy your conversations, enjoy getting to know them on a personal level, and just understand that it is an honor for them to let you to into their life,” says Hanzal. “It will go a long way in your business relationship knowing that you respect them. They will not only be a good business associate of yours, but will also consider you a good friend, which also is an honor.”

Be aware of the Middle East workweek and weekend

The workweek is typically Saturday to Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday as the weekend. However, in the UAE it is Sunday through Thursday.

“Do not bother anyone on Friday, it is their most holy day,” says Hanzal.

Be prepared to negotiate

Westerners are notoriously uncomfortable with haggling. When selling goods or services, negotiations are very much a part of the culture.

“A better price will always be asked for no matter what is being offered,” says Hanzal. “I see people come in on their first project and lose their shirts because they didn’t anticipate there would be negotiations.”

Don’t necessarily go in with an inflated price though. “Keep it reasonable, but make sure you’re comfortable with some wiggle room when closing the deal,” he says.

Plan ahead during the holidays

After years of doing business in the Middle East, Hanzal knows that to be most the effective, he should get as much work done as possible before Ramadan.

“I bank as much work as I can before everyone shuts down and stops working, because often I won’t get a response until Ramadan is over.”

Don’t get too comfortable during Ramadan

While that month affords him a generous amount of free time, when the holiday is over, the workload returns with much longer hours and can be doubly hard. In the west, observed Judeo-Christian holidays are often a welcomed breath of fresh air for those who don’t partake. Non-Muslims in the Middle East must craft a balance of vacation and productivity.

Prioritize privately

After Ramadan there is a lot of catching up to do. Prepare with lists that outline what needs to be done immediately.

“There is an understood sense of “we need it yesterday” in the Middle East,” says Hanzal. “I prepare a list of the most pending issues and address them first, but I am careful not to let anything seem less important. I am firm that all issues will be addressed.”

Arrive early even when your client is not

Arriving early is a tremendous sign of respect in the Middle East.

“Foreigners are especially expected to be on time,” says Hanzal. “The truth is they are rarely on time themselves [but] they kind of consider you late if you come on time and on time if you come early.”

Don’t worry, you’re probably not being yelled at

A raised voice doesn’t mean someone is angry or argumentative. High voice volume (culturally) is often merely a tool for asserting power and leadership.

“Meetings can get crazy sometimes,” says Hanzal. “Don’t be intimidated. It’s a good way to figure out who is running things.”

What has been your experience doing business in the Middle East?

Image credit: xiquinhosilva

4 Successful And Creative Facebook Contests

Todd Wasserman — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:30:00 -0400

From Todd Wasserman:

Years ago, if a marketer wanted to run a contest, he’d have to run print ads and hope that people would take the time to fill out an entry form and then mail it in. The Internet made things easier, but you still assumed that consumers would somehow find their way to your website.

Facebook adds another layer of ease to the process: Consumers are already there doing something else. If the promotion looks interesting enough, filling out an online form isn’t that big a deal. Rodney Mason, the chief marketing officer of promotions agency Moosylvania, says Facebook-only promotions have a lot of advantages. “One would be the ease of use,” he says. “You can also connect with people who've already opted in for past promotions, and everybody's on there all the time.”

But Facebook didn't just add ease of use to contests, it totally changed the motivation behind entering them. Nowadays, the prize seems secondary. The main appeal of Facebook contests is to communicate something about yourself.

These four highlighted contest campaigns illustrate this. In each case, users get more out the program than a gift certificate or whatever the nominal prize is: They also get a forum to define themselves to like-minded people. Maybe the best prize you can offer these days is bragging rights.

1. Contiki Vacations' “Get on the Bus” Promotion

Travel companies have a natural advantage when it comes to promotions because, after all, planning a vacation is often half the fun. Planning a free vacation is even more fun. Contiki, a travel firm that caters to the 18-35 year-old demo, dropped a promotion in mid-February that let winter-weary Web surfers imagine their perfect vacation. The winner got one of eight vacations worth around $25,000. The promotion harkened back to Contiki's roots—in 1961, a young New Zealander named John Anderson arrived in London for a European journey. Lacking money and friends, he came up with a clever plan: He put a deposit on a minibus and found a group of people to travel with him. After the trip was over, Anderson tried to sell the minibus, but no one wanted to buy it, so he advertised the European trip again and Contiki Holidays was born.

Accordingly, the “Get on the Bus” promo challenged fans to get a crew with four friends together, choose a trip and then try to get as many votes as possible in order to win. Yes, that's right, votes not Likes. Bob Troia, CEO of Affinitive, the agency that created the promo, says just as the program was launching, Facebook changed its policy about the use of Likes, which prompted the use of votes instead. Nevertheless, the effort, which ran from February 23 through March 31, garnered 8,000 Likes for Contiki and generated more than 10 million ad impressions through Facebook shares, Likes, tweets and blog coverage. One reason for the success was a feature that let users and their friends create a bus, which incorporated music, movies, Likes and interests that users had in common via their Facebook profiles. Says Troia: “We wanted to go beyond 'enter and win' and create an experience.”

2. Maybelline's "Show Us Your Red Lips"

More proof that consumers are looking for experiences as well as prizes: Maybelline New York ran a promo for its Super Stay24h lipstick in Switzerland that offered the chance to be the face of the product on the Facebook Page in Switzerland. Despite that modest payoff, the promotion got 183 responses in three weeks. Part of the reason was that the contest was pretty easy to enter: All you had to do was take a picture of your lips. A lot more people—9,000—voted in the contest than entered it, leading to a dramatic jump in the product's Facebook fans. Before the contest, the Page had 3,000 fans, but when it was over, there were 13,000. Perhaps you don't need a huge prize to lure contestants, just the chance to strut one's stuff before some peers.

3. Coca-Cola's "The Recycling King"

For whatever reason, Israel seems to be on the cutting edge of location-based Facebook promotions. First there was the Coca-Cola Amusement Park promo in Israel last summer that let kids "like" park attractions by checking in using RFID-enabled bracelets, and now there's the Recycling King program. Give Coke and agency Publicis E-Dologic an A for effort: The two tracked down every recycling bin in the country (there are 10,000 or so) and registered them on Facebook Places. Users then competed to see who was the "Recycling King," by checking in to the most bins. The program proved to be popular. Users uploaded more than 26,000 pictures of themselves recycling, and there were more than 250,000 checkins.

4. Blocket.se's "The Funniest Classified Ad on Blocket"

Let's face it, Swedes aren't known for their sense of humor. To Americans, at least, the country summons images of black-and-white Ingmar Bergman films and disposable furniture. But apparently, the Swedish populace likes a joke as much as, say, the Finns. Realizing this, Blocket.se, the Craigslist of Sweden, ran a contest for "The funniest classified ad on Blocket." The contest sought real ads which users could submit by uploading an image. Blocket's jury chose 20 finalists, and then Facebook users could vote for their favorite among the list and follow the results.

Thanks to the rib-tickling stunt, the site received 31,000 new fans in 18 days, and 34,000 people installed the Blocket app. The winner? An ad for a Volvo that had been driven into a ditch. The seller wanted the buyer to retrieve it from the ditch. Oh, those Swedes!

5 Rules You Must Know Before Outsourcing

Patel, Neil, KISSmetrics, VP of Marketing — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:00:00 -0400

From Patel, Neil, KISSmetrics, VP of Marketing:

More and more businesses are discovering the benefits of outsourcing. This includes cutting project costs and increasing productivity, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. When you outsource, you save a large amount of both time and financial resources that typically go into managing employees and dealing with the legal and tax issues involved. Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week has raised awareness of this practice even at the solo-entrepreneur level. However, before you jump in and give your website login codes to someone in the Philippines, here are some good rules to follow.

1. Cheaper isn’t always better

I have had some wonderful outsourcing stories where I’ve paid as low as one dollar an hour for tasks to be completed. (It’s a great “brag stat” to share at the cocktail table.) However, a lot of the time, you may not be able to find someone who can professionally work on your projects for an insanely low sum. When I have something crucial I need to get done, I look at all options and am willing to pay a little more. It’s still far more inexpensive than an in-house employee or a local freelancer.

2. Overseas isn’t always better

There are plenty of projects where knowledge of the English language or American culture is not a factor. PHP work, Web design and even bookkeeping can be outsourced to a variety of countries.

However, when the project involves writing and editing, then it pays to be a lot more vigilant. For content writing, in particular, you are better off hiring someone domestically. That same company in Malaysia that you hire for coding might offer SEO articles, but you are very likely to not get something quality back. Even if everything is grammatically correct, the articles are more likely to be below the standards of what you want your website or publication to say. Be willing to spend a bit more when you are creating communications for your brand.

3. References are helpful but complicated

This is one of the most overlooked issues in outsourcing. Whenever possible, you should work with someone who has completed projects with people you know and trust. However, this is by no means enough assurance to assume the person or company will be a good fit for you.

For one thing, the quality you get from a contractor can depend heavily on your relationship with them. There was one website company I regularly hired that gave me phenomenal work for years on end, but somehow seemed to drop the ball when referred to other people. They were always upfront and honest with all clients, but their time to complete projects took longer, and they were much harder to reach for discussions.

What I ended up realizing was that I had built a quality relationship with them over years of friendly Skype messages and being an important client when they were low on volume and really depended on my business. I had unknowingly “earned” great service just from being in the right place at the right time. The new clients I had referred to them didn’t have this status, so they didn’t get the same treatment.

Now something like this isn’t very common or even predictable, but it’s reason enough that you should never assume someone is in the clear just because they did a great project for a friend of yours.

4. Get multiple quotes whenever possible

It amazes me how many people hire the first person to contact them to take an assignment. If you’re in a pinch, sometimes you have to take whoever seems good enough at the time, but you should make it a practice to calmly and reasonably choose the ideal contractor. This is why places like Elance, Freelancer.com and oDesk are so great.

You want to compare things like how long a project will take, whether they want to be paid hourly or by a flat fee, and what relevant experience each contractor has. There was one time when I needed an 80 page e-book to be proof-read for simple grammar mistakes. One guy wanted $30 an hour and wanted to spend 12 hours analyzing every nook and cranny of the piece to make it an English Literature masterpiece. A woman who contacted me two days later wanted $15 an hour and said she could have it done in two hours. I picked her, and she did a phenomenal job.

If I had rushed to pick someone right away, I probably would have gotten a deal better than the first guy, but would not have found the gem that I ended up with.

5. Protect your passwords and security

When you outsource website work, especially direct coding, you will have to have a measure of trust with your provider. They will need logins to upload their work, unless you have them send you all HTML and PHP files separately. Assuming you do your due diligence, you’re unlikely to have some vindictive programmer who destroys your site and tries to sabotage your business.

However, you should still stay very cognizant of who has your passwords, logins and any other access to private information. Keep an Excel file of who has this information and change it frequently enough that a programmer you had two years ago will not necessarily have the access codes to your life.

Outsourcing is a skill that you get better at the more you do it. There are also advancements in technology that make outsourcing even easier and more effective. For tasks that are paid hourly, companies like oDesk will have the contractor install software that verifies that the time is being spent on the job instead of surfing the Internet and checking Facebook. Also, through screen captures and video conferencing, it’s a lot easier to check up on assignments and make sure they’re being done correctly. You’ll learn much of this through networking and seeing what other entrepreneurs are doing to improve their outsourcing and project efficiency.

Augmenting Reality: Physical World, Meets Virtual World

Andrew Blum — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:30:00 -0400

From Andrew Blum:

Delivered by FedEx.

Occasionally, a technology familiar from science fiction actually makes the leap to everyday reality: video conferencing, space tourism and powdered fruit drink, to name a few. But get ready to add another to the list: “augmented reality,” the techies’ term for superimposing information—restaurant reviews, historical snippets, the location of the nearest doughnut shop—onto the live image captured by your cell phone’s camera.

Behind the clunky term is an intuitive idea. Point your phone at a place, and information about that place appears on the screen. Hold it toward a painting in a museum, and explanatory text becomes visible. Crave a latte, and an arrow—like an electronically painted-on first-down line in a televised football game—points the way. It’s as if your smartphone became a magic monocle.

Buck Rogers may have dreamed up the technology (and fighter pilots have been using a very expensive version of it for years), but what’s making augmented reality, or AR, available now is the convergence of online databases (like Google Maps) with powerful handheld devices like the iPhone and Motorola Droid. All have fast processors, built-in cameras, GPS and—the final, crucial element—electronic compasses, so the phone knows not only where you are, but also which direction you’re facing.

Yet, more important than any new technology is our new sensibility. Consumers have become accustomed to getting information on the go; in fact, we demand it.

“People really grasp this idea of cross-channel communication, of having online information connected to the real world,” says Denise Gershbein, creative director at Silicon Valley-based Frog Design, which has a booming practice in what’s known as location-based services. “We’re at a place where our expectations are in line with our abilities and our desires. Augmented reality is not a sci-fi leap of faith anymore.”

Maarten Lens-FitzGerald grasped that insight before nearly anyone. In January 2009, banking company ING Group hired his Amsterdam-based mobile innovation consultancy, SPRXMobile, to create a cell-phone application to guide Dutch consumers to ATMs. But rather than putting Euro symbols on a Google map, SPRX had a more ambitious suggestion: Why not build it using AR?

“It was so easy to grasp. Literally, my mom got it right away. It’s like, ‘Can you see that on the screen?’ ‘Oh, wow!’” Lens-FitzGerald recalls. “But nobody was doing it.” ING gave them a green light.

SPRX spun off a separate company called Layar, which hired programmers in India and China to begin building the application. They also began to grasp what they were really creating: not just a tool for finding ATMs, but a new type of information platform through which any type of information could be “seen.” If a Web browser is a program that points your computer at a faraway computer and then renders its information, then an AR browser like Layar’s merely makes that pointing literal, in a way that would work just as well for ATMs, apartment rentals and just about anything.

Layar’s custom application for ING was the first use of what became an entire platform. They launched last June with a handful of local content partners, including ING, the Dutch real estate site Funda, the temp agency Tempo Team and Hyves, the Dutch Facebook. At the time, Lens-FitzGerald saw revenue in a development model: “We’d build it for you and earn money that way.”

That changed when they saw the response. A simple demo posted on YouTube ricocheted around the Web garnering hundreds of thousands of views, and their three-person shop was deluged with requests from around the world.

So they opened up. Rather than gathering content from all corners of the world, Layars would provide developers with instructions for creating AR layers—or, as the company calls them, “Layars”—on their own. “We don’t know what’s cool and relevant in Japan or South America or the U.S., but you do,” says Lens-FitzGerald. “With the open platform you can make the New York Layar because you know where it’s fun to eat.”

The platform launched globally in August 2009 with 70 Layars from around the world—everything from Sapporo Hotspots to Trulia, the American real estate listings site. By press time that number had grown to 375, with 1,200 more in development, and Layar was being preinstalled on new phones sold by carriers around the world.

Layar has a new business model in mind. Rather than building newfangled websites, they’re looking at becoming a sort of iTunes store for AR, distributing paid and free content and facilitating payment processing. Yet, thanks to their success at leveraging programming talent globally, they remain a 20-person outfit.

“I still can hardly believe that we’re the biggest in the young AR field,” says Lens-FitzGerald. “I’m still cycling home every day.”

Andrew Blum writes about architecture, technology and infrastructure. A correspondent for Wired and a contributing editor for Metropolis, he is currently writing a book about the physical infrastructure of the Internet, to be published in 2012. He lives in New York.

Illustration of Layar founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald by Mario Hugo.

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IRS Makes It Cheaper To Pay Late

Mike Periu — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:15:00 -0400

From Mike Periu:

Every once in a while, we receive some good news from the IRS. Today is one of those days! The IRS recently announced changes to the interest rates used to calculate underpayments and overpayments on income tax payments sent to the agency. The bottom line is that underpayments will accrue interest charges at significantly lower rates than before. The new changes go into effect on Oct. 1, 2011.

When the IRS doesn’t receive payments due on time, there are two types of charges incurred: penalties and interest. There is a long list of penalties depending on the nature and reason for not paying the full amount of taxes due—that’s a topic for another article. In addition to the penalty, you will also have to pay interest from the date the tax payment was due usually until the day in which the IRS receives the amount of underpayment. Late payments can happen for several reasons. In some cases a company simply fails to send the full amount due to an error or a lack of funds. In other cases, estimated taxes are sent to the IRS late or are grossly inadequate.

How much interest do I have to pay?

Section 6621 defines the interest rate to be charged on underpayments. The IRS sets this interest rate on a quarterly basis. It consists of the sum of two numbers: The Federal short-term interest rate and a fixed percentage amount.

Federal short-term interest rate

The Federal short-term interest rate is published monthly and is available on the IRS website. The rate for daily compounding is the appropriate one to use because the IRS ruled as such in Notice 88-59. Rather than just taking that interest rate, the IRS requires that the rate be rounded. Because rates are so low, they are currently rounded to zero. This has left the false impression that only the fixed percentage amount is interest rate. When rates go up, so will the short-term interest rate.

Fixed percentage amount

Starting with the fourth quarter of 2011, the IRS has announced that they will reduce the fixed percentage component of the interest rate. For non-corporate tax payers, it is generally defined as the sum of the Federal short-term interest rate plus 3 percentage points. For corporate tax payers with small underpayment amounts, the interest rate calculation is the same. For corporate tax payers with large underpayment amounts, the interest rate is the calculated as the sum of the Federal short-term interest rate plus 5 percentage points.

These changes represent a reduction of a full percentage point across all three categories when compared to rates for the third quarter of this year. If you miscalculated your company’s estimated tax payments and as a result owe a tax underpayment of $100,000 for 6 months, this new formula reduces the interest due from $3,000 to $2,500. You won’t be able to retire on the savings, but if your business operates on a 10 percent margin, then the savings are equivalent to the profits on a $5,000 sale.

In addition to reducing the interest you must pay for underpayments, the IRS has also reduced the interest rate that they pay you for overpayments. You can’t win them all.

The full details on interest payments can be found in Section 6621 of the Internal Revenue Code and more information on this change can be found in IRS Revenue Ruling 2011-18.

12 Ways To Turn Professional Setbacks Into Successes

Scott Gerber — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0400

From Scott Gerber:

Recently I was asked by Donna of Texas: What are your tips for turning setbacks into successes?

Below are answers from the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that provides young entrepreneurs with access to tools, mentorship, community and educational resources that support each stage of their business’s development and growth.

1. You're always a student

If you want to turn setbacks into successes, then you need to learn from them because you're always a student. No matter how successful you are, there will always be larger obstacles. Confront them by viewing each as a learning experience.

—Dan Schawbel ( http://twitter.com/danschawbel ), Millennial Branding ( http://personalbranding.com/ )

2. Make it an opportunity

Look at every failure as an opportunity. It's fun game to play when you're at your worst to try and figure out how exactly you can turn a bad thing into an advantage you wouldn't have otherwise had. If you stop and think about it, you'll probably come up with something. Act on it, benefit, and your fear of failure will largely disappear.

—Colin Wright (http://www.twitter.com/colinismyname ), Exile Lifestyle ( http://exilelifestyle.com/ )

3. Separate yourself from the situation

A setback is only a setback if we call it that. Events happen, and then it is the meaning that we attach to them that create our experience. Be mindful of this, as it's not the event itself that "good" or "bad." Oftentimes, as I'm sure you've experienced too, what seems "bad" at first glance ends up leading to an extremely positive experience.

—Jordana Jaffe ( http://www.twitter.com/jordanajaffe ), Embarkability ( http://www.embarkability.com/ )

4. Setbacks only slow you down

Setbacks are merely hurdles standing in your way. They are inevitable and unavoidable at times. As soon as you recognize this, you will begin to navigate through setbacks accordingly. As long as you keep your eyes on the desired outcome, you will get there eventually.

—Logan Lenz ( http://www.twitter.com/loganlenz ), Endagon ( http://endagon.com/ )

5. Memorize the lesson

Don't quickly recover and hurry off to your success. Take the time to study and fully understand your setback. As painful as it may be, this is the way to squeeze all the juice from the valuable lessons setbacks present.

—Lisa Nicole Bell ( http://www.twitter.com/LisaNicoleBell ), Inspired Life Media Group ( http://www.lisanicolebell.com )

6. Change the packaging

Perception is reality! It's all about what it looks and sounds like. So wrap your setback in a totally "new and improved" packaging of what the setback has taught you and now, how you're stronger, wiser and better than others as a successful survivor of that setback.

—Devesh Dwivedi ( http://www.twitter.com/Break9to5Jail ), Breaking The 9 To 5 Jail ( http://www.breakingthe9to5jail.com/ )

7. Be honest and make it right

If you make a mistake or hit a setback that has an impact on others, it's important to be upfront, honest and make it right. If they know what's going on and see that you're trying to fix the situation, people tend to be incredibly forgiving. If you deny responsibility, lie, hide, shut down, blame others or simply get angry at the world, you'll compound the issue.

—Elizabeth Saunders (http://www.Twitter.com/RealLifeE ), Real Life E® ( http://www.ScheduleMakeover.com/ )

8. Look at the big picture

Treat setbacks as speed bumps on the path to success. Victory would not taste so sweet if there were no hardships along the way. If you change your mentality to embrace setbacks and view them as part of the big picture, then you will react more favorably when they arrive.

—Anthony Saladino ( http://twitter.com/cabinetkings ), Kitchen Cabinet Kings ( http://www.kitchencabinetkings.com/ )

9. Jack of all trades, master of none

A head of a Fortune 500 company told me unsuccessful entrepreneurs are usually jack of all trades but masters of none. You must concentrate on being successful with one business versus wearing numerous hats for numerous businesses. Synergies will allow you to branch out but having numerous disconnected businesses will not allow proper growth.

—Michael Sinensky (http://twitter.com/msinensky ), Village Pourhouse ( http://www.villagepourhouse.com

10. Admit your mistakes and share your lessons

Don't hide behind your setbacks and failures, but rather showcase them as lessons you have learned. Blog about how you overcame these challenges and help others avoid them. This is a great way to boost good will about your business.

—Lucas Sommer ( http://www.twitter.com/audimated ), Audimated ( http://www.audimated.com/ )

11. Update your approach

Every setback is really feedback—it shows you what isn't working about your approach and gives you the opportunity to change it, before there's a real problem. Take advantage of the information that a setback provides to tweak your methods and expectations.

—Thursday Bram ( http://www.twitter.com/thursdayb ), Hyper Modern Consulting ( http://www.hypermodernconsulting.com )

12. Learn to bend with the wind

As a business owner you're going to fail at some point and have a few bumps in the road. Sometimes failure or bumps are the best thing that can happen to your business so evaluate, learn from it and then move on. Those that learn to to bend when the wind blows don't break in the end.

—Ashley Bodi ( http://twitter.com/businessbeware ), Business Beware ( http://businessbeware.biz/ )

5 Interview Questions Every Small Business Owner Should Ask

James Clear — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:30:00 -0400

From James Clear:

Hiring is one of the most important and critical tasks for any small business owner. After all, your business is only as good as your people.

But how do you know who the good people are? And how do you determine which candidates will perform to your expectations? Anyone can put on a good show for a few hours during an interview. What you want are people who will still be good in a few months.

Nothing is certain, of course, but the five questions below will help you see deeper into the candidate's mind and make the decision that is best for your business.

1. Give an example of a time when you had to make a quick decision

Small businesses are, by definition, small. That means that everyone has to share the responsibility. You need employees who can take initiative when necessary and make a decision when it needs to be made. This question forces candidates to demonstrate that they have had to deal with these make-a-call-and-make-it-now circumstances.

2. Give an example of a time when you exceeded expectations

This question gives the candidate a chance to brag about their accomplishments, but the real value can be found in analyzing their approach and thought processes.

Some candidates exceed expectations because little is expected of them in the first place. Others exceed expectations because they understand the root causes of a problem and the nature of the circumstances...and then they take action based on those understandings.

You'll know if you’ve found the latter based on how the candidate describes the problems faced and their approach to the situation.

3. Convince me that you can adapt to a wide range of people, situations and environments

The goal of this question is two-fold.

First, employees that can adapt to a variety of circumstances are crucial in a small business environment. At some point, it's likely that they will be asked to do something that is outside their normal job description. Employees have to be OK with that and capable of handling such a change.

Additionally, you are asking them to convince you of something. This will give you an insight into how persuasive the candidate can be. Persuasion is critical in small business. In many situations, you are competing against businesses with more money, more resources, and more contacts. If you can't be persuasive, then you will lose.

4. What have you done that demonstrates initiative and willingness to work?

In all likelihood, your employees will be trained on-the-job. It is important to hire individuals that take action and aren't afraid to get into the thick of things. There are few rotational leadership programs or well-organized training courses in small business. Employees need to be ready to jump in and willing to work through the sticking points when they come along.

Moreover, running a successful small business is all about trust. You need employees that you can depend on and believe in, even when you aren't around. If you fill your office with individuals that are self-motivated and take action, then you can be sure that business is moving forward.

5. Why should we hire you?

In a small business environment, candidates will have to prove themselves over and over again. Give them a chance to prove themselves right away.

This question is the perfect way to open things up and allow the candidate to show you what they bring to the table. It's also an opportunity for them to display talents that you might not have thought to ask about during the interview.

Sometimes the most compelling qualities are hidden within our stories. A good hiring manager can pull those stories out as the conversation progresses and this question helps to accomplish that.

James Clear is the founder of Passive Panda. He is an award-winning writer on business strategy and entrepreneurship and has delivered speeches in the United States, the UK, and Switzerland.

Top 10 Business Tipping Etiquette Rules

Katie Morell — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:00:00 -0400

From Katie Morell:

There is nothing more awkward than fighting over a bill with a client. Both of you want to make the situation painless by putting down a credit card but the other won’t let you. Then, there’s the aspect of tipping. If they paid the bill, you may offer to pay the tip and then be on the receiving end of a look that says, ‘Do you seriously think I’m too cheap to give 20 percent?’

Tipping situations can be confusing. And if you spend an entire day (or series of days) with a client, numerous tipping opportunities will inevitably arise: Taking cab rides, meeting hotel greeters, ordering take out, checking luggage at the airport, and parking in valet—just to name a few. (Check out this related story: Tip Sheet: Debunking Dining Etiquette)

How should you handle such situations? Here are 10 tipping rules to live by:

1. Always tip 20 percent, regardless of service quality

This can be a toughie (especially if you experience poor service), but before stiffing a server, consider this: A restaurant worker’s compensation is based around tips. Depending on the city and state, servers can make around $2 per hour. This is only legal because they are expected to meet minimum wage (or higher) in tips during each shift.

“I see tips as part of a server’s salary; they need them to pay their bills,” says Jacqueline W. Sales, founder and owner of HAZMED, Inc., an environmental engineering and IT consulting firm in Lanham, Maryland.

If you’re part of a large group where gratuity is included, Sales recommends still paying attention. “Sometimes restaurants will automatically add a service charge of 15 or 18 percent on a big group, but it is good tipping etiquette to bring that up to 20 percent.”

Instead of punishing poor quality with a skimpy tip, Sales suggests explaining the situation to the restaurant manager.

2. The invitee always pays the meal and the tip

Pay attention to whom does the inviting in a business scenario—it is always that person who pays for everything, including the tip.

“If you’ve been invited to something, don’t offer to tip and don’t leave money for a tip—it implies that you don’t think they will pay enough,” says Shelley Davis Mielock, chief image expert at Mieshel Image Consulting in Lansing, Michigan.

Sales takes a slightly different approach. In an effort to ensure servers receive a good tip, she will gently convey concern to her host. “When they tell me, ‘it’s my treat,’ I usually say, ‘I generally leave 20 percent, so I can help if need be;’ to that, they usually answer by saying they do the same and will take care of it—that always makes me feel better because I don’t want to be embarrassed in a restaurant that I frequent,” she says.

3. Don’t skimp cab divers

Imagine this scenario: You and a client land at an airport and hurriedly hop in a cab on the way to a business meeting. You’re a little late and the fare comes out to $10.75. You give the driver $11 and leave. Ouch.

“Taxi drivers should always be tipped 15 percent of the full fare, and I suggest bumping that up to 20 percent if they are handling your luggage,” says Rachel Wagner, a certified corporate etiquette consultant, trainer and speaker in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

4. Carry a lot of cash

Before every business trip, Wagner makes a trip to the ATM, takes out $20, walks to the corner store and changes it for 20 $1 bills. She then puts the wad into an easily accessible part of her purse and heads to the airport.

“You don’t want to fumble through your wallet when trying to tip someone or give a bellman a $20 bill and ask for $17 back. As a host, you need to be prepared for tipping situations with lots of $1 bills,” she notes.

5. Take care of client’s tips for bellmen, skycap, etc.

If you and your client check into a curbside airline counter, take care of your tip and theirs. “Say to the skycap, ‘thanks for helping us with our bags,’ and give them money for you both; make sure you are in charge of the interaction so your client won’t resist,” advises Davis Mielock.

The same goes for hotel scenarios. Wagner suggests a $1-$2 tip for doormen, and never less than $2 (or $1 per bag) for bellmen who help you up to your room.

6. Don’t forget about restaurant carryout workers

Are you supposed to tip a whopping 20 percent for a carryout restaurant order? Wagner says no, that 10 percent suffices, but more is always welcome because usually those employees are on the same pay structure as full-service servers.

7. Tip hotel housekeeping staff

Like restaurant servers, the salaries of many hotel housekeepers also rely on tips. Wagner recommends leaving $2-$3 on your bedside table each day of your stay. “Make sure to do it every day, because different people may clean your room on different days,” she says.

8. Don’t tip high-level employees

This one can be a little confusing. If you have a great experience at a restaurant, you may be inclined to exchange favorable words with the establishment’s owner—which is fine, just make sure not to give her/him a tip. “It’s offensive to tip owners of restaurants,” says Davis Mielock.

9. If you can’t tip, send a note/gift

Some establishments will not accept tips under any circumstances. In these cases, Davis Mielock recommends sending a nice card or small gift as a sentiment of thanks.

If you’re client is adamant about paying for a meal or tipping your server, let them. “You don’t want to get in a fist fight with them; just say thank you and send them a nice note,” she says.

10. There’s no such thing as over-tipping

In a generous mood? Feel free to dole out the dough.

Says Davis Mielock, “A waitress might look at you like you’re crazy when you give her a 50 percent tip, but don’t worry, it’s totally fine and very nice, in fact.”

Millionaires Hooked On Facebook—Start Selling To Them Now!

Mike Periu — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:00:00 -0400

From Mike Periu:

According to the latest official statistics published by Facebook, the social networking website has over 750 million active users around the world. Fifty percent of their active user base is logged into Facebook on any given day. If your company has tried to use Facebook as a marketing channel to reach average consumers, odds are the results haven’t been as expected.

Using Facebook as a marketing channel isn’t yet a proven way to generate sales—I’ve written about this before. New research, however, indicates that there are new incentives for businesses to keep trying.

A recent study by Spectrem Group, a consulting and marketing firm specializing in affluent consumers, indicates that the number of millionaires on Facebook is increasing rapidly.

According to the study, the number of millionaires, defined as people that have at least one million dollars in net worth not including the equity of their principal residence, has nearly doubled in the past 9 months. (Approximately 46 percent of millionaires are now using Facebook.) Even more compelling is the increased usage of Facebook among ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWs)—UHNWs are generally characterized as having a net worth of $5 million to $25 million not including the equity value of their main homes.

Millionaires making a comeback

Despite the general state of the economy, millionaires continue to do well. During 2010, the number of millionaire households in the United States grew by 600,000 to a total of 8.4 million. This is a significant improvement considering that during the housing and financial crises in recent years millionaire households plunged by nearly one-third. If current trends continue, we should see a return to the peak number of millionaires—9.2 million households—within the next two years.

Selling to the rich

This rebound in the net worth of the most affluent segment of our society is important to small business owners. Selling to rich people is a good thing! They have large amounts of disposable income, can provide valuable referrals and connections and they aren’t as price sensitive as other segments of the population. Who wouldn’t want to sell to this type of customer?

Given the latest trends in Facebook usage, this can provide an effective channel to reach potential millionaire customers.

The rich are different

So what are millionaires doing on Facebook and how can you leverage their activities? They aren’t playing Farmville (well at least they usually aren’t). As would be expected, they are looking to be productive with their time. Educational and informative content in “user-friendly, consumable chunks” is popular among high net worth individuals with around 25 percent looking for this type of information on social networks.

As a small business, consider producing this type of information about your product or service. If what you sell doesn’t lend itself to this market, considering developing premium versions of what you sell. At the moment, the use of Facebook as a channel to target high net worth individuals is open. Over time, it will become saturated. You have a window of opportunity to establish a position and capture the attention of this very attractive customer base. Take advantage of it.

Don’t ignore the changing demographics

While Facebook may have a reputation as the place for your kids to “hang out” online, the reality of who uses Facebook is changing. The demographic profile of the newest users is far more attractive than the initial early adopters which consisted of college students with limited disposable income. Start selling now!

Check Your Modesty At The Door

Cameron Herold — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0400

From Cameron Herold:

When people are envisioning their future and that of their company, they often downplay their potential successes to avoid coming off as conceited or pompous.

I am not one of those people.

When I put together my Painted Picture, I see myself swimming in success. My speaking calendar is full, my roster of clients has grown and includes really awesome startups, companies beg me to sit on their boards, heck, even my home life is balanced and amazing.

If you know me personally, you know I am not a cocky, arrogant braggart—so why all the sudden bravado?

Because having big dreams means setting lofty goals. And lofty goals ensure success, even if you don’t quite achieve them. Before you laugh, let me explain.

If you picture yourself in a sparkling, modern new office, or see your image on the cover of Fast Company, you’ve set the bar pretty high. You’ll need to work hard to get there. You might even fall short, but undoubtedly the effort you put in trying to make these visions a reality will have you moving in a positive direction.

What’s the benefit of picturing your company growing by a steady 10 percent a year? Or envisioning a future where you’ve hired 10 new employees? You can achieve these ‘goals’ with just a small bit of effort.

Some might call grand visions of success as egotistical. I call it confident optimism. If I had suggested three years ago that I would be where I am now (a thriving speaking businesses, an impressive stable of clients, phenomenal DVD sales) I would have come off as conceited to a lot of people.

I’ll admit this has been a hard sell to clients in the past. When I try to get them to write down some of these lofty goals in their Painted Pictures, be it appearing on an iPod commercial or landing Fortune 500 clients, they balk. “People who read this will think I’m delusional,” they say.

“Let them!” I reply. History is littered with doubters who scoffed at big dreamers. It never stopped visionaries like Henry Ford or Sam Walton. In fact, I bet it motivated them.

Do you think Steve Jobs lets modesty temper the vision he sets out for Apple? He’s famous for sharing his far out visions, and then creating an environment where achieving them is the only option. Engineers or managers that think his ideas are unattainable simply don’t last.

So forget the humility, you need to pump yourself up in your own Painted Picture. If you aren’t going to do it, who will?

How To Form Great Marketing Partnerships

Susan Kuchinskas — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:30:00 -0400

From Susan Kuchinskas:

As a business owner, you may be used to wearing many hats. But two heads are better than one. Partnering with compatible companies—or even your competition—can expand the power of your campaigns.

Here's what you need to know.

Look for new places your prospects are

The idea of a marketing partnership is to find new segments or new ways of connecting with potential customers, according to John Paul Engel, principle of Knowledge Capital Consulting. For example, his client Global Rhythm is a music magazine that features the best musicians in the world.

Engel suggested the publisher contact embassies, offering to create a magazine issue devoted to the music of their country.

"Embassies like to throw parties," Engel notes. "What could be better than bringing in artists from their country and throwing a party for them?" The embassies also introduced them to local companies that would sponsor the issues at $35,000 each.

Find the first point of customer contact

Is your product or service part of a chain of life stage events? If so, you can get ahead of your competition by partnering with companies higher up the chain. For example, a jewelry store is one of the first businesses in a chain of purchases that leads to a wedding.

"If your business is wedding related, the leads from a jewelry store would provide you with a large number of qualified prospects at little or no cost," Engel says.

This tactic works for online marketing, too. One of Engel's clients was a camping store that wanted to sell tents online. Paying for search ads next to the keyword "camping tent" would cost several dollars per click. So he looked further up the chain to where people researched their camping trips, and purchased ads against the keyword "national park."

"We got millions of impressions that led to hundreds of thousands of visitors and sold over 6,000 camping tents in two months—and it cost $12,000," he says.

Provide social proof

Expect potential partners to check you out. You need to provide evidence—the social proof—that you have the experience and capability to hold up your end of the partnership. If you want to work with local businesses or organizations, that may mean a visit to your office or store. Increasingly, social proof includes your online presence via your website, social media accounts and search results.

Engel received e-mail from a woman in Nigeria with a mission related to youth and health, two things he is passionate about. But when he researched her organization online, her Web address didn't work and her LinkedIn profile was marginal.

"Before you reach out for partnerships, you have to have a website, business cards and a message that comes across fairly clearly," Engel says. "I need to know more information about you, and you need to communicate more effectively."

Let charities do the heavy lifting

Charitable organizations and non-profits are always looking for new ways to engage their donors. You can get them to send out press releases, newsletter articles and e-mails mentioning your business in return for a percentage of your profits, goods or in-kind services.

To promote the new book he co-authored, Guerilla Marketing Goes Green, Shel Horowitz, an author, marketing consultant and copywriter specializing in small business, worked with Green America, donating a percentage of the first month's sales.

"They gave us nice exposure on the website and to 94,000 subscribers to their newsletter," Horowitz says, and a search showed 1.7 million mentions of the book.

It's vital that the organization's values are aligned with your own, Horowitz advises. "Green America fit like a glove,' he says.

But be aware that some non-profits may have such a deep bureaucracy that it's too cumbersome to work with them. The first org that Horowitz approached couldn't come to an agreement with him. Green America, on the other hand, took just two phone calls to make a deal.

Depending on the size of the organization and whether it's national or local, you might contact the executive director, director of community relationships or director of donor relationships.

Be creative and explore

You can think of a way to partner with almost any other business, Horowitz says. For example, a dry cleaner could team up with the Italian restaurant down the street.

"Italian food often leads to messy clothes," he says.

The dry cleaner could provide the restaurant with coupons for a discount, saying, "You don't want tomato sauce to stain your tie." The dry cleaner, in turn, could offer discount coupons for the restaurant saying, "Celebrate your clean suit."

Find partners with a broad reach

Pauline Bartel, president of Bartel Communications, had a new marketing concept: The Bartel Years is a roster of symbols for a century of business anniversaries. She also offers The Bartel Way, an integrated marketing and public relations strategy that positions products and services within the context of celebrating a business anniversary.

To get attention—and social proof—Bartel knew she needed a partner that was in touch with her target market (and was about to celebrate an anniversary). She found it in her area's Chamber of Commerce.

"I realized that by partnering with the Chamber, I was creating an advocate. If this campaign went well, the chamber would spread the word about my services to members and beyond," Bartel says.

She offered her services pro bono for the Chamber of Southern Saratoga County, which was marking its 40th anniversary. The resulting campaign was incorporated into all aspects of the yearlong celebration—and of the Chamber's marketing and communications.

The campaign was a huge success, winning industry awards and leading to more than 1.5 million positive print and broadcast media impressions.

Bartel says, "The marketing campaign for our new concept and services positioned Bartel Communications as the business anniversary experts, providing my firm with a unique business niche."

Image credit: Helena Eriksson

OPEN Forum Guide: How To Create Stellar Blog Content (Part I)

Laurel Donaldson — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0400

From Laurel Donaldson:

Steve Strauss once said, “A well-written blog and $2 dollars will get you a cup of coffee.” A very valid point. There’s a surfeit of voices on the Internet, all vying for their 15 minutes in the Google searchlight, and without good craftsmanship, SEO and rigorous self-promotion, your blog is bound to get lost in the vacuum. OPEN Forum offers guides on how to craft a blog and more crucially, how to promote it. Now the experts weigh in on the art of creating content.

Check the framework

Before you go foraging for ideas, gathering links or voyaging out with your iPhone video cam, it’s important to make sure that the basics of your blog are established. As our experts emphasize, make sure you’ve developed a consistent and individual voice. Courtney Colwell stresses the importance of cultivating your inner editor. Check your material for personality, authenticity, and conversational ease, and then edit posts and headlines for readability, searchability and catchiness. Even if your blog serves a marketing or sales purpose, your aim is not to sell something but to engage your customers and audience in a dialogue.

John Jantsch says to think about building stories. “Customers are squarely in the content collaboration camp and it’s your job as a marketer to start building stories with your customers.” Prepare to offer a variety of content in different formats (text, images, video, audio) and remember to post frequently—if not obsessively.

Now you’re ready to start filling the foundation with sweet content. John Jantsch also suggests that you “first shift your thinking about content creation to that of an author…Think about the entire body of work that you may need to complete to write your book or tell all the major stories about your business. That allows you to stop obsessing about what to write today.” It can be useful to identify 7-10 themes or “buckets” that you’ll fill up with content.

Go offline

Offline interaction is a great way to find inspiration while building a live community that’s loyal to and engaged with your content. “It is no longer enough to create content about your business and products to gain audience attention,” says Shashi Bellamkonda. Expand your horizons and go live into the world. Attend local events, exhibitions, fundraisers, fairs and then “be sure to broadcast the content on your website, blog and Facebook Page for maximum reach.” This is also a great marketing opportunity. People like to hear (or see) their own voice. If you send them a link of a story where they’re quoted, they’re bound to pass it along to their friends and post it on their Facebook page.

You can also organize your own events or activities. As Chris Brogan recommends, create experiences and then talk about them. “Do you sell an all-natural beverage? Set up a food truck, travel around New York City and hold tastings. Capture it on video, put the video online and use Twitter to start a conversation with your consumers.” Aim towards creating an event that’s fun and that has a content-creation angle, something that you can document and post about later. Involve a Web or social media platform so that you have live data and responses streaming from the event itself.

Become a multimedia pro

Becoming versed in the various multimedia modalities available to you is crucial to your content mix. “The beauty of multimedia is that it ranks higher in search, giving your content a better chance to be seen than if it were just plain text,” says Shashi Bellamkonda. Learn how to effectively use video and create audio podcasts. Harnessing the power of RSS technology is also great a way to curate content from the Web (and save yourself tons of time).

How To Write Off Startup Costs

Barbara Weltman — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:30:00 -0400

From Barbara Weltman:

Some businesses, such as consultants, may be able to get up and running on a wing and a prayer. More typically, it costs money to get things set up right before the doors open for business. The average cost of starting a restaurant is nearly half a million dollars (without purchasing land). Startup costs mean you’re laying out funds before any revenue starts to come in.

The problem

Ordinary and necessary business expenses generally are deductible by your business. But what about expenses you have before you open your doors? You’re not yet in business, so there’s no business to deduct them. However, certain costs associated with starting a business can be deductible, either in the first year of business or over time. These are called startup costs in tax law and the same deduction rules apply whether the business is a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation.

What are startup costs?

These are costs that normally would be deductible if you’d been operating at the time you paid or incurred them. These do not include the cost of purchasing a business or franchise, or other capital costs, even though your startup capital may be used to cover the purchase price.

There are three categories of deductible startup costs:

Investigatory expenses made to decide whether to go into business and which business to buy or start. Costs in this category include surveys and analysis of potential markets, products and labor, as well as travel costs to look at businesses or business sites.

Business startup costs after deciding to go forward but before the business begins to operate. These include advertising, training employees, traveling to line up vendors, distributors and customers, consulting fees and fees to set up accounting books.

Pre-opening costs are any other costs paid or incurred before the day that the business starts.

Again, not all costs associated with starting a business fall into these categories. Costs that normally must be capitalized in addition to the purchase price of a business, such as legal fees to buy property, are not immediately deductible. Instead, they become part of the cost basis of that property. Costs for building out a store or restaurant are also not deductible as startup costs (although there may be other write-offs available).

How much can you deduct?

Startup costs paid or incurred after October 22, 2004 can be deducted up to $5,000 this year if the business starts in 2011. If costs exceed $5,000, that dollar limit is reduced by one dollar for each excess cost. Once expenses exceed $55,000, no immediate deduction is allowed.

Expenses that cannot be immediately deducted can be claimed over a period of 180 months. For example, if a business opened its doors on January 1, 2011, and had $60,000 in startup costs, no immediate deduction could be claimed. However, $4,000 ($60,000 ÷ 180 x 12) is deductible in 2011.

Bottom line

If you’re thinking of starting a business, keep good records on what you’re spending money on, such as travel to see potential vendors and lunches you take them to. Save receipts and keep good notes about what the expenditures are for. Then you’ll be able to maximize the write-off for your startup costs.

The tax law treats you as automatically electing to deduct startup costs if you’re eligible to do so; no special election is required. But you can opt not to deduct them immediately and instead amortize them over the 180 months, or merely capitalize them (add them to basis). Newly issued final regulations explain how to make this election. It’s best to work with a tax advisor to make sure you get all the write-offs you’re entitled to.

9 Business Fundamentals To Always Remember

John Mariotti — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0400

From John Mariotti:

When times get tough, it’s easy to lose sight of fundamentals that lead to success. This is true in both large and small businesses, but especially in small ones. Small businesses often have a much smaller margin of error without getting in serious trouble. Sometimes the loss of a single customer can sink a small business.

Whether you are big or small, these 10 simple fundamentals still apply and they work in good times, but are especially important in tough times.

1. “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer”

The late Theodore Levitt said that a long time ago and he was so right. I’d add the words “happy and profitable” at the end.

2. Whatever you sell your customer—a product or service—make it high quality and be reliable

Reliability is an under-rated attribute that is very valuable.

3. First, take care of the customers you have, with the products and services that made you successful

Then look for more things you can do for those same customers, within what you are good at doing. Expand very carefully, because with opportunity, comes risk.

4. Charge a fair price—neither too high, nor too low.

The former will cost you sales; the latter will cost you your business.

5. Always consider what is most important to your customers

Usually it’s to get what they expected in quality, service, on time, and at a fair price—with an occasional new idea thrown in. Measure every decision on how it will affect those deliverables.

6. Know your costs, and charge enough to cover them and make a profit

If you don’t, you won’t be in business long. And if you don’t watch out for this, who will? If your costs are not competitive enough to do this, figure out why and do something about it.

7. Manage your cash flow very carefully

Running out of cash kills more small businesses than anything else. Learn to make a cash flow projection worksheet and use it.

8. Stay focused on doing what made you successful and keep your eye on competitors

Common mistakes are expanding into new areas too rapidly: taking the wrong kind of business—just because you can sell something to someone, doesn’t mean you should—or compromising on quality, service and reliability.

9. Hire the right people

That means people with the skills, experience and attitude (a very important, often overlooked point) you want. Train them well and communicate your expectations and what they are responsible for doing, and getting done (accountable for).

When you realize you have hired someone “wrong,” do not delay in dealing with it. There are few things that can poison an organization faster than having one “bad apple” in the bunch. Firing someone is hard; not firing someone who should be fired, is worse. Give them fair warning, time to improve (and tell them what needs improving) and if they are not making it, do the right thing and cut them loose. You’ll be doing them a favor too. Note: If you happen to hire someone with a bad attitude, it’s even more urgent to deal with that mistake and get them out of the business. A bad attitude can be contagious.

In closing, you may have heard that “the customer is always right.” That’s wrong. “The customer may not always be right, but the customer is still always the customer.”

Without customers, you have no business, so take care of them. But don’t be afraid to make a profit. Business is a competitive game where the score is kept in money. If you win, you get to play again. If you lose—“game’s over!” And those rules never change.

Why Resistance Is Key To Growth

Rajesh Setty — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:30:00 -0400

From Rajesh Setty:

What do most people do when they face resistance? Resist it.

Sadly, most people don’t even realize that they are resisting—because the kind of resistance I am talking about is emotional.

Try this exercise next time you see someone you know. Just ask them: "How is everything going at work?" and watch how they respond. Mind you, I did not say listen to what they say, I said watch how they say it.

Generally, the response will be about some challenges they are facing but, most importantly, you can see the frustration, annoyance and sometimes even anger at something. It is almost as if they are asking that the current sticky situation go away and everything becomes smooth again. On the other hand, ask the same person if they want to grow in their career and the answer will be a resounding: Yes!

Resisting resistance is to resist growth. Growth without resistance is an oxymoron. Whether you like it or not, resistance and growth are two sides of the same coin. If you want growth, you better get comfortable with resistance.

Look at your expertise. Think of how you became an expert. I am sure it was because you kept going with the same dedication even as things got complicated and the going got tough. You had to sweat through the journey but the results were sweet.

Before my entrepreneurial journeys, I used to consult for a customer relationship management company. We had a six month long project coming to an end and the last step was to migrate the data from the old system to the new system. We planned to start the data migration on Friday at 4pm. From our initial planning, the data migration tasks would be complete by Saturday 6am (it was an all-nighter) and our hope was that we could do a quick round of testing and go home by noon on Saturday.

Everything was fine until about 3am on Saturday morning. We had an endless supply of coffee and the mood was still great. Then, something happened. One of the team members could not take it anymore. I think she was half asleep and instead of deleting some old data, she mistakenly deleted the entire database. Long story short—we had to work almost the next thirty six hours without sleep to get everything back in order before people started their work on Monday. I have to say we learned a lot.

The story I am telling you is more than 14 years old. The project was more than six months long but what I clearly remember from this project is this weekend when all hell broke loose. There was unbelievable resistance we as a team overcame it.

That’s the bonus of resistance—actually overcoming resistance—it creates fond memories for a lifetime.

So, let’s look at three things we can do to capitalize on this knowledge. Here we go:

1. Move away from easy work

Easy work in general will offer you less resistance. The more you crave and enjoy easy work, the less the opportunities to face resistance in your career and your life and hence less opportunities for growth. I am not saying that you refuse to engage in easy work at all. One option is to do all the easy work quickly and move on to harder tasks.

2. Gravitate towards hard work

Moving away from easy is the first step and the task is not complete unless you follow this step of consciously gravitating towards hard work. Tough problems offer a lot of resistance otherwise they won’t be tough problems. There is an old saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going." I would like to add that the tough not only get going, they are also the ones that are growing.

3. Have a Plan B

There is one side effect of moving away from easy work and gravitating towards hard work—you may not win all the time. In fact, in some cases you might just fall flat on your face. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. Knowing this, all you can do is to have a Plan B so that you can activate it when the need arises.

Image credit: Breast Cancer Fund

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He also creates and sells limited-edition prints at Sparktastic. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/rajsetty.

Keeping The Holiday Marketing Spirit Throughout The Year

Rick Jensen — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:00:00 -0400

From Rick Jensen:

Whether or not you’ve already set the foundation for your holiday marketing campaigns, you’re likely thinking about how you’ll make the most of the (traditionally) lucrative shopping season.

The six weeks from late November through the end of December can account for anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of your annual revenue, according to the National Retail Federation. And let’s not forget the 2010 holiday season where online sales reached $32.6 billion, marking an all-time record, according to data from comScore.

While it’s fun to start crafting your holiday taglines and thinking about the campaigns that will drive traffic to your business, don’t lose sight of the importance of connecting with your customers throughout the year.

When you’ve established a good rapport with your customers on an on-going basis, your marketing messages will break through the holiday noise they’re hearing from your competition. It will also help you make the most of your campaigns regardless of the season.

With this in mind, here are three actions you can put in place today to establish a foundation that will make the most of the 2011 holiday shopping season and build stronger customer relationships throughout the year.

1. Engage

You should consider every customer interaction an opportunity to build a lifetime customer relationship. So when a customer visits your business, whether it’s online or in person, do all you can to engage them and personalize the experience.

Make them feel like a VIP, regardless of how much they spend, and not just another cash register transaction. Also, determine if your products and services really are an appropriate match for their needs. If not, be forthcoming in redirecting them to a more suitable vendor. This action will payoff in terms of strengthening your reputation.

These long-standing relationships save your marketing dollars because, as you know, it’s easier and less expensive to reach existing customers than acquire new ones. But even more important in today’s world of social media—where getting recommendations from your friends, their friends, and a bunch of people you may not even know is as easy as posting a question on Facebook or checking out a reviews site—is the benefit of word-of-mouth marketing.

2. Entice

Regardless of whether a customer made a purchase today, entice them to return to your business. Essentially, make it worthwhile, and easy, for a customer to become part of your inner circle. You do this by giving them something they want and can’t easily find elsewhere such as freely sharing your expertise and providing information that’s relevant to them.

Along with relevant content, offer them a coupon, an invitation to a special event, or special offers and discounts that are only given to those who register to receive e-mails and newsletters from you. When you lead your conversations with the customer benefits, you will inevitably entice customers to stay connected to you, strengthening your brand and your bottom line.

3. Earn

Once you’ve engaged your customers and enticed them to join your inner circle, you need to continually earn the right to connect with them via e-mail and other forms of social media.

To make sure your messages are wanted and welcome, remember to connect with customers in the medium they choose. Some may opt to follow your Facebook business page or Twitter feed while others may prefer to hear from you via e-mail only. Honor their preferences and don’t assume you have an open door to reach them at every possible online destination without first asking for their permission.

Also, don’t overstay your welcome. Consider the frequency and timing of your messages and remember that it’s better to be missed than omnipresent in their inbox. This way, your campaigns will be opened and acted upon as opposed to being deleted, or worse, forcing customers to unsubscribe.

As the holiday season approaches, consider it an opportunity to establish ties with customers that will allow you to converse with them throughout the year via e-mail, on social networks and in person.

How To Gear Up For The Next Natural Disaster

Katie Morell — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:30:00 -0400

From Katie Morell:

Anything can happen—at any time and in any region of the country. I’m not trying to be a fear monger here, but I’ll bet that up until a few days ago most East Coasters would have bet big money against ever experiencing an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week.

But it happened.

What do these disasters mean for small business owners? Doom and gloom for some, according to Tom Hammond, executive vice president of operations for BOLT Insurance Agency in Farmington, Connecticut.

“About 25 percent of small businesses do not recover from natural disasters. These storms can take a person’s lifelong passion offline all because they don’t have a plan in place—it’s all about being prepared,” he says.

Here’s how to make sure you’ll be part of the 75 percent that survives.

1. Make a plan

Sit down with your management team and hash out how you will react to a weather disaster, terrorist attack, etc. As part of the plan, think about where you will store your records and establish an off-site location, advises Hammond. Create a detailed inventory list of your contacts, assets and financial records. Store them outside of your office.

Next, assign tasks to specific members of your team. “Who is going to grab your external hard drives in the event of a flood? Who is going to be the lead client liaison for e-mailing customers and staying in touch? Who is going to be on top of job schedules/who does what when? Who is in charge of the phone tree? All of these things are important to plan out and assign,” says Shaun Walker, creative director of HERO|farm, a marketing firm based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Pass out the plan to employees or put it up on your website—it needs to available to everyone.

2. Secure proper coverage

You have insurance and live in San Francisco, so it must cover earthquakes, right? Not necessarily.

“You may need to apply separately for natural disaster coverage; umbrella coverage usually doesn’t cover everything—make sure you have a conversation with your insurance professional to ensure you have the right type of coverage,” says Hammond.

Coverage doesn’t just include your building falling down when a tornado or hurricane strikes, it can also include loss of income, loss of assets, and in the case of virtual businesses, loss of connectivity.

What are the biggest misconceptions about buying disaster coverage? “That it will be too expensive to afford and that they have time to put it off,” he says. “In reality, insurance is a vital part of running a business and isn’t as expensive as you may think—just make sure to shop around and get multiple quotes from multiple carriers.”

3. Record employee information/secure a conference number

Lets say a hurricane hits your office at 5 a.m. on a Tuesday. Your employees are woken up the rain and have no idea whether or not to come into work. In this case, it is vital to have phone numbers for each employee.

“A few years ago when Hurricane Gustav hit, we had a difficult time contacting our employees—90 percent of the population of New Orleans is on AT&T and everyone was on their phones, so the service was non-existent,” says Walker.

He recommends carrying a list of alternate numbers (employee’s family members, etc). “We also have a conference number so that the day after everyone evacuates, we will have a check-in meeting where people can call in and say they are OK,” he adds.

4. Stay in touch with clients

Keep clients up to date with e-blasts, suggests Walker. “In the e-blast, we will explain how we are prepared for the storm and still how we are thinking of them and dedicated to their business.” He also recommends setting up e-mail away messages with the same information.

Use Twitter to keep clients and employees updated—using hash tags, he adds.

5. Use the storm to your advantage

If you find yourself off-site for a long period of time, Walker recommends networking in your new environment. “Bring business cards and meet people in your new area,” he says. “See the storm as an opportunity, not as a hindrance.”

5 Reasons Entrepreneurs Benefit From The Merger Growth Strategy

NICOLE VALENTINE — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:15:00 -0400

From NICOLE VALENTINE:

Many people think mergers and acquisitions are for the big boys with the big money. But entrepreneurs who grow their businesses through successful mergers are reaping the benefits, and here’s why.

1. Capital, cash and credit

How are you going to scale your business in today’s challenging economy? It’s getting harder and harder to obtain lines of credit and loans from banking institutions. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy reported that bank lending to small businesses fell by $15 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Merging can make your company more valuable, putting you first in line for rounds of financing. Richard Levychin, CPA and partner at KBL, LLP, a firm that has advised on many mergers (including reverse mergers, where private companies go public), says, “The formula for a successful merger should be 1+1 = 3, 4 or 5. An ideal merger increases revenue, reduces overhead and redundancies, enables the company to attract more capital and increases the value of the owner’s equity in the company."

2. Customers

Peter Drucker once said, “The purpose of business is to create a customer.” I say the purpose of a merger is to create a more satisfied customer. Combining customer lists is the first step. The work continues with an assessment of how the merged company plans to build deeper relationships by passing down the benefits created by the merger. Ask yourself during the merger process, “How does my customer win?” If you can point to more customer service offerings, better pricing, innovative products and an improvement to the customer experience, then your merger makes sense.

3. Management talent and experts

Merging presents the opportunity to team up with experts who bring their vision, management and technical know-how to the table. The ability to leverage management capabilities is a skill and an asset. When Corey Kupfer and Brian Hamburger merged their law firms to create Hamburger Law Firm, LLC, two rainmakers with decades of M&A and corporate experience were tasked with operating on themselves. Kupfer credits the success of the merger to “a cultural fit, shared vision and values and complimentary personalities and leadership styles.” The two entrepreneurs play well off each other, and as a result, are free to focus on their areas of strength. “In a successful merger, you should ideally never have to look back at the merger documents,” says Kupfer. A merger is a business partnership that thrives because of the ongoing synergy of the team.

4. New markets

Merging with another company provides the opportunity to increase market share and expand into new geographies and sectors. Suveen Sahib, Group COO and CEO, Americas of EBS Worldwide, a marketing and technology company, merged his company that had a premerger value of $7 million to create a company valued at $15 million. Sahib says, “EBS Worldwide started in India and now has a footprint in the U.S., allowing for its global clients to benefit from our strong position in these regions and our large suite of services.”

5. Product development

Joining forces with another enterprise can create innovation in manufacturing, distribution, design and research and development. Before the EBS Worldwide merger, the company offered two service lines. Now they offer five service lines. Before the Hamburger merger, regulatory, compliance and securities clients were going elsewhere for M&A services. Now these clients can benefit from Hamburger’s M&A capacity.

Merging smaller companies is just as difficult as managing the union of larger ones. Merging results in the combination of assets and liabilities, so your due diligence process is the time to kick the tires and work with outside experts to discover and detect business information valuable for your decision. Michael Carter, president & CEO of BizEquity, created an online company valuation resource that enables entrepreneurs to understand what their businesses are worth prior to beginning merger discussions. “Get educated, get positioned and get connected before going down the M&A path”, says Carter.

In every analytical exercise, one can point to benefits and risks. In my experience, getting beneficial business results via merger depends on a combination of brains, guts and heart—qualities already inherent in today’s entrepreneur.

Some recommended resources:

Anatomy of a Merger: Strategies and Techniques for Negotiating Corporate Acquisitions by James C. Freund

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William L. Ury

The Art of M&A: A Merger Acquisition Buyout Guide by Stanley Foster Reed and Alexandra Reed Lajoux

OPEN Cardmember Nicole Valentine, Esq. is the president & chief strategy officer of Synergy Business Development, a strategy company focused on growth opportunities for entrepreneurs, providing advisory services in the areas of joint ventures, strategic partnerships and business development.

Small Business Week In Review

Tara Fuller — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:45:00 -0400

From Tara Fuller:

Each week, OPEN Forum's editors round up the most compelling entrepreneurial news and advice from our contributors and others. Here are this week’s highlights:

Wisdom From Apple’s New CEO

Some thought the day would never come, but alas, it did. Steve Jobs left his beloved Apple, and in the hands of none other than Tim Cook—whose name might not be as notorious as Jobs’, but it soon will be. Wondering what direction will go in now? So are we. But judging by Cook’s thoughts on intuition and hard work, Apple will continue to be as innovative as ever.

What To Do When The Wrong Person For The Job Is You

Entrepreneurs tend to dive headfirst into their businesses, often forgetting to think about the implications of truly running a business. This isn’t always the case, but if it is, you need to have the ability to realize when it’s time to dethrone yourself and put your business in the hands of someone who can make sure it flourishes.

What’s Happening To Hewlett Packard?

According to the stock market, Hewlett Packard has lost its mojo—dropping nearly 50 percent per share recently. But worry not, stock holders, they have a new strategy up their sleeve: leaving the tablet and computer market. This may seem radical, and risky, but there are several reasons your company should consider getting gung-ho about your strategy as well.

Infographic: The Social Network Decision Tree

The world of social media can be a confusing maze if you don’t know where to start (and you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, or with who). But Guy Kawasaki makes it easy in his social network decision tree, an easy guide for selecting between Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

4 Lies Business Owners Tell Themselves

As a business owner, it’s good to be positive, but it’s more important to be realistic—especially when it comes to your own operations. Don’t fall victim to the four common lies business owners tell themselves—no matter how unique your product is, there’s bound to be competition.

Why Being Passionate About What You Do Is Extremely Dangerous

Mike Michalowicz — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:00:00 -0400

From Mike Michalowicz:

As an entrepreneur, you have heard repeatedly that if you follow your passion in business you can’t go wrong. I too have touted the benefits of having a passion for your business, and while it is a great thing to have, for many reasons, it is also a double-edged sword that does more harm for your business than good. When it comes to passion, it really needs to be kept in check in order to succeed.

Getting started

When you are first starting a business, passion is absolutely necessary. It is what will drive you to take the leap and set the wheels in motion. But make no mistake here, if you put a deaf ear and a blind eye to your customer, all in an effort to stay true to your passion, it may be the death of your business. In other words, passion is the spark to start the fire and get the business going. But rarely (in fact, I can’t think of it ever happening), does a business play out to be exactly what you first expected.

Passion is good for starting your business because it brings about a sense of persistence—which is the raw, natural desire to stick to it and see it through. However, with the essence of passion and persistence, you need to pay attention to and observe your customers closely in order to see what they really want. For example, it is important to make sure there is demand for your product or service before investing a lot of money to bring it to market. You can do this by testing it, which may prove that a spin-off or something closely related is in demand.

Going with the flow

Where passion in the entrepreneurial world becomes a downer is when people get so wrapped up in their passion and feeling good that they fail to realize that they are not actually succeeding on the business side of things. Just because what you are doing makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside doesn’t mean it will always pay the bills at the end of the day. Nor does it mean that it is giving customers what they need or want in order to keep them coming back for more.

This is where being able to be flexible comes into play. You start out with your passion leading the way and setting the ground work, but then you have to get out of your own way so your customers can lead you in the direction that your business needs to go. Having the ability to adjust to customer demands and desires will bring about success. What you have to realize is that it may not always match up to what you first had in mind or on what your initial passion was focused.

Choosing a route

Is passion important in business? Yes, there is no doubt about that. But it can’t be the only thing going on or what remains the focus once you get your business going. Passion can get you started, so use it to spark the flame, but don’t use it exclusively to fuel the business.

Let passion serve as the underlying current in your business. But be willing to adapt, grow and change to meet consumer demand. Otherwise, you will find yourself with an expensive hobby instead of a successful business. You have to also focus on the business side of things in order to really get ahead. Let passion guide you in getting started, but don’t let it keep you from reaching the top!

Mastering The Art Of The Press Release: 5 PR Pitches You Shouldn’t Send

Maggie Hoffman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:30:00 -0400

From Maggie Hoffman:

In the food biz, press releases can be a great tool for spreading the word about your client—if you go about it the right way. We receive dozens of pitches a day, and we’ve seen it all: pitches that lead to excellent feature stories, pitches that make us cringe and pitches that just won’t go away.

Here are five of the most common pitching blunders we see, along with a few suggestions on what we'd rather get.

1. The super-specific pitch

What we get:

We get a lot of pitches from restaurant PR and wine/spirits PR suggesting stories on a single dish, a single drink recipe, a single bottle of wine for a specific holiday. We appreciate your research, but immediately fear that another publication will print what you’ve suggested. We want to offer something different from everyone else!

What to pitch instead:

Send out a ‘feeler’ pitch with looser suggestions, giving the press a sense of your client, a broad suggestion of something that might catch their eye. If you’re a restaurant, perhaps that’s a complete list of new dishes for the season and a helpful career history of your chef. If you’re a gallery, perhaps it’s a longer-term calendar that will allow us to get ahead in our planning. If you’re pitching a wine story, suggest grapes, but not specific bottles yet. Start a conversation with the press and more authentic, interesting coverage will result.

2. The way-off topic pitch

What we get:

If you sell washing machines, consider if the person you’re contacting writes or edits a media outlet that covers washing machines.

What to pitch instead:

Read a few days worth of every website, magazine and newspaper you’d like to contact and search for your topic of interest. Send your pitch only to those people who have demonstrated that they cover what you’re selling.

3. The late pitch

What we get:

An invitation to cover an event the morning of or the day before. A notification that it's "National [X-type Food] Day!" on the day of. We have no time to do anything with this information.

What to pitch instead:

If you’re throwing an event you’d like us to cover, please let us know about it 5-10 days in advance. If you’re suggesting we write about your client for National Flavored Vodka day, float the idea to us 10 days ahead.

4. The edible pitch

What we get:

A few dozen mini cupcakes, or perhaps an entire thawed leg of lamb that you'd like for us to taste. Unfortunately, we eat every single day for a living. Our lives are filled with tastings, most of them scheduled well in advance. We don't have room in our waistlines to squeeze in a half dozen cupcakes without notice, much as we'd like to try them.

What to pitch instead:

We appreciate the whisky-filled donuts you delivered to our office, but they will probably spoil before we have a chance to write about them. Before sending perishable goods, it’s considerate to check in with us and see if we’re interested so that we can schedule a good time for you to ship and for us to taste them.

5. The repeat pitch

What we get:

If your pitch didn’t work for us the first time, don’t send it again. Don’t ‘check in with us’ about it, and don’t—please, please don’t—call us to see if we got it. If we didn’t answer, it’s because it didn’t fit with our coverage. Unfortunately, we just don’t have time to answer every single pitch we receive.

What to pitch instead:

Wait until there is news—a new product, a new menu item, new hours of operation, before you write us again. If at first you don’t succeed, try someone else instead.

How To Get Started With Meditation

Matthew E. May — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:00:00 -0400

From Matthew E. May:

Following my column Boost Your Brain And Give It A Break—At The Same Time, I received a number of comments and e-mail requests from readers wanting to know how to get started with meditation. I thought I'd share with you how I got started, my routine, and what the effect has been on my thinking and creativity.

I got involved in meditation by accident. I was researching my 2009 book In Pursuit of Elegance, and was looking into the proverbial "quiet mind." I was also exploring how our patterns of thinking influence our creative problem solving capabilities. My research took me to UCLA neuropsychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, to whom I introduced OPEN Forum readers in my article The Neuroscience of Change—Or How To Reset Your Brain.

It was Dr. Schwartz who introduced me to meditation. I was more than a little surprised when he told me he meditates for one full hour every day without fail. I found it fascinating that a devoutly religious neuroscientist did that—and I figured there must be something to it, so I asked him to teach me how. It wasn't just curiosity, though. I had an ulterior motive.

Like most writers, I imagine, I tend to suffer from chatter brain. If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night, it’s nearly impossible for me to turn off my thoughts. Sometimes the ideas are good, but often it’s just the same old loop being replayed. I wanted to find a way to eliminate the things that might be getting in the way of genuine focus. I really wanted a way to still my overactive mind.

Here’s what Dr. Schwartz told me to do:

"Sit still in a chair, in a quiet room, for 20 minutes, and just watch yourself breathe. Pick a time and a place when you can be reasonably sure no one will interrupt you. Close the door to minimize outer distractions. Sit comfortably in a chair, or cross-legged on the floor, with your hands resting in your lap. You can close your eyes, or you can keep them open but unfocused. Place your attention on the inner rim of your nostrils, where you can feel the subtle movement off air as you breathe in and out.

Now, ‘watch’ your breathing go in, go out, go in, go out. Make a mental note for each in-breath and out-breath like this: ‘breathing in,’ ‘breathing out.’ Or just ‘in’ and ‘out.’ Try to be aware of the entire in-breath, from the time it starts to the time it stops. This is the time to make the mental note ‘breathing in,’ if that's your choice of note. Don't worry about the exact words, it's the process of observing yourself that's critical. Then try to be aware of the entire out-breath, from the time it starts to the time it stops. This is the time to make the mental note ‘breathing out.’

"Now, if you suddenly notice that your mind has wandered away from your breathing, just make a mental note of that. For example, ‘wandering, wandering,’ or ‘thinking, thinking,’ or ‘imagining, imagining’. Then gently bring your attention back to an in-breath or out-breath, and continue observing and making mental notes of those observations."

I made it for all of about 30 seconds before my mind started to buzz off to faraway places. But I didn't give up. The next time I did it, I maintained my mindful awareness for almost two minutes. On the third try, I made it to nearly five minutes. Over time, I gradually increased the time to where I could make it to about 30 minutes.

Eventually I discovered that the 20-minute mark is my "sweet spot." I added some gentle Zen-like instrumental music to the process, which some say only adds distraction. But for me, it works. The 20 minutes of meditation leaves me in a quiet calm, and prepares me for another Eastern practice I conduct daily, that of hansei, or reflection.

I spend about 10 minutes a day conducting hansei, immediately following a meditation. Here's what I do:

Review experience. I answer a few simple questions as they relate to my day:What was supposed to happen? (What did I think would happen?) What actually happened? What accounts for any differences or gaps between what I thought or expected to happen and what actually happened?

Look for patterns. I note any recurring themes from previous hansei, and write down any potential connections among seemingly unconnected things. I always carry a notebook with me to do that.

Riff and project. I try to think of a few "what if?" ideas that come to mind based on the first two steps. I jot down opportunities to test out those new ideas. Sometimes I take my "what ifs" and turn them into "if-then" hypotheses: what do I think will happen if I do (X)? I'll make some quick notes—to-dos, to-donts, etc.—that will initiate my thoughts and provide some preliminary direction.

I find that a bit of mental nothingness followed by some mental somethingness really sets the stage for my more creative moments, and allows my mind to more easily and often find "the zone," or that "flow" state.

Try it and let me know what you think!

Next week, I'll share with you yet another mind-quieting technique I've toyed with, called neurofeedback training. In fact, I'll share with you how to "paint your brain."

The Key To Immediate Happiness

Stephen Shapiro — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:00:00 -0400

From Stephen Shapiro:

Imagine the following scenario. You are single and live just outside of New York City. Your employer wants you to work in London for a few years. You are excited about the prospect of living overseas and are interested in the job. Assuming that the costs of living for New Jersey and London are roughly equivalent, which option would you choose?

Option 1

You stay an employee of the NYC office and are “on loan” to London. You continue to pay your mortgage/rent in New Jersey, but can rent/sublet your place to someone during your absence. The company pays all of your expenses in London: housing, food and travel to and from the U.S. They cover the difference in taxes between the US and UK. Basically you have no expenses for the three years you are there, affording you the chance to sock away 100 percent of your salary. Your stay is temporary. After your time overseas, you will return to the U.S.

Option 2

You transfer from the NYC office and become an employee of the London office. You are paid in British pounds just like all other British employees and you pay U.K. taxes—which are higher. Although you sell your house in New Jersey and have no expenses in the U.S., you need to cover all of your expenses in London. There is no guarantee of a job in the NYC office should you decide to return to the states.

Financially, option No. 1 is a significantly better deal. But when faced with this situation in real life, I chose option No. 2.

Why?

While I recognize that finances are important, I place a higher value on my happiness. And the best way to effectively leverage that happiness is to live life fully immersed in the present.

What does that have to do with my choosing scenario No. 2?

I have found that when we engage in a temporary or transitory activity, the mindset is different than when we are settled into a seemingly more permanent option. Temporary situations can create a “holding pattern” where we wait for a “better” option down the road. Temporary employment is not your real job. Temporary housing is not your real home. These give the illusion of “here today, gone tomorrow.” Why take it seriously? Why invest your heart and soul into activities when you will eventually be leaving. Living in the moment can be difficult when you are waiting for your “real” life to begin.

Although from a financial perspective, the permanent option may not have been a great decision, it was the right one for me. I had the most spectacular three years of my life. London felt like my home. I lived there like a native. I acted as though there was no return to the U.S. This forced me to be present to what I was doing and to take full advantage of England.

I am not sure that I would have had the mental conviction to live in that same manner had I chosen the temporary solution. I may never have felt settled. The thought of leaving might have lingered in the back of my mind, negatively impacting my experience.

Instead, I formed new social circles. I dated. I lived as though I would be there forever. London became my home. A little more than three years later, I was back in the U.S., without a traditional job and salary (this is when I launched my own business).

“Permanent” situations tend to give the illusion of future stability, even though that is an illusion.

Where are you living like you are in a temporary situation?

Have you ever been in a job that you didn’t like? Did you daydream continuously about leaving, yet three years later you are still in the same job? How might your perspective change if you thought this were a permanent option? Perhaps instead of dreaming about the future, you would be present to what you can do today in your job. Look for new opportunities internally. Do the best job you can. Find ways of adding more value. If you are focused on leaving, seeing this job as a temporary option, you will be miserable. And the odds are, you will lose your job because of poor performance. That’s when you will begin to daydream about how great your job used to be.

We see this phenomenon in relationships as well. While there are many reasons why people marry, there is a psychological shift that many undergo upon saying those two little words: “I do.” It creates a more predictable and stable life with a clearly defined future. And many marry for that reason—for the perceived stability they gain. To love, honor and cherish till death do us part. It gives us the appearance of certainty. But of course, that too is an illusion.

How often do you live with uncertainty? How much of that uncertainty is created by you in your mind? How much does this uncertainty ruin your present moment experiences?

Being present, without worrying about the future, is not easy. Could I have chosen option No. 1 and treated London like my home? Quite possibly. If I knew I was leaving, I might have been hungrier to experience everything England had to offer in the brief time I knew I would be there. However, to get me settled into the proper mindset, it was better for me to take what seemed like a permanent option, even though it was just as temporary.

To be clear, the temporary option is not necessarily a bad one. In actuality, I prefer to rent knowing that I can move more easily. I value flexibility over stability in that situation. And for some, entering into marriage can lead to complacency and the eventual demise of the relationship. But marriage does not need to be the beginning of the end. If you truly operate from the perspective that “this is it” and you want to make the most of your life and marriage, the (seemingly) permanent option can be wonderful.

It’s all in the mindset.

The reality is, everything is temporary. But what if living with this transient mentality diminishes your happiness now? Where in life are you living the “temporary option?” Where are you waiting for a better option to come along? Where is this not serving you well? Maybe it is time to choose the “permanent option” so that you are living fully in each moment.

Maybe this is the key to immediate happiness.

5 Big Reasons Your Ideal Customer Isn’t Choosing You

Ivana Taylor — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:30:00 -0400

From Ivana Taylor:

It’s all about getting chosen. And when customers aren’t choosing you, running a business seems more like a drag than a dream.

If your sales aren’t at the level you wish they were, then your ideal customer isn’t choosing you. Here are five big reasons why, and what to do about them.

1. You are targeting too broad an audience

Saying that “everyone” is your customer actually reduces the number of customers who are interested in your product. It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. Which would you rather buy for your once in a lifetime ski vacation: generic sunglasses off the shelf or $200 sunglasses with snow-glare eliminating lenses? I’m not an expert on sunglasses, but I’m willing to bet that there isn’t a $180 difference in cost or features between the regular $20 sunglasses at the retail store and the $200 sunglasses at the specialty ski shop. The profitable difference is in the specific needs and wants of the skiing enthusiast.

A quick and easy way to find a market niche is to use Google’s keyword tool. Simply enter the broad keyword first and then look and see what other specific segments appear that you might be missing. If you’re selling dog collars, you might decide to focus on personalized dog collars, for example.

If you’re selling widgets that can be used in broad applications, start by singling out each application and start listing the features and benefits of your widget for that specific application. Even though the features will be the same, when you put your focus on the application, you’ll start to see subtle, but important differences emerge that can make a huge impact on your sales. Then choose the application or the audience that sees the greatest value in your product or service, and focus solely on them.

2. You're targeting the wrong audience

This can be tricky, especially if you have competitors that look like they are successfully selling the exact same thing as you are. Market research is the tool you’ll want to reach for in this situation. The research you’ll do depends on the circumstance.

If you already have a handful of happy, profitable customers, then you will want to do customer interviews. Look to a market research professional to help you because this situation requires an objective third party who can extract valuable insights from customers. You will want them to ask questions about the circumstances that made you the best choice and what value you provide. They will also ask questions about your customers’ business and what is important to them when they are choosing a resource. This kind of exploratory research will take some time and require an investment, but finding just the right alignment of customer to offer will pay off.

If you are a startup and don’t have customers, you will want to do a broad survey. You might decide make a list of possible customers; say between 10 and 20 different types or groups—smaller is easier and better. Treat this as a focus group. Create several different offers that you will show each group, then sit down and have an open conversation about each offer with this potential customer. First ask them what is important to them when they are looking to purchase a product or service like you are offering and write down what they say. Then show them your offer(s) and ask them to rate on a scale of one to 10 how closely your offer matches their ideal. When they give a rating that is seven or less, ask them what they would need to see to make it a 10. You can show them more than one offer if you like, but make sure that you focus on what’s important and how you can adjust the offer you have. Do not get into conversations about what is possible or impossible right now. Just assume that you can give them everything they want. The purpose is to find out what they want. You can adjust the offer later. This is an inquiry and not a sales conversation.

3. You don’t have enough price points

Before you mess with pricing, you must be sure that you are targeting the right audience. Price is often a default reason for not choosing something. Because people aren’t going to get into an analytical discussion with you about “sunglasses,” it’s easier to say that $200 is just too expensive. And it is, if you aren’t a skiing enthusiast.

Create offers at low, medium and high price points. If you are only offering a single product or service at a single price point, you will want to look at ways to create both a lower value offer as well as a higher value offer. In his book 1% Windfall, Rafi Mohammed talks about a restaurant that offered lower priced items early in the evening for families and also high-priced “Chef’s table” offerings for those guests who wanted a special experience.

Consider bundling. Bundling means that you create a product mix that your customers can buy as a single offer. Bundles often look like kits; say a dinner and a movie kit. Where you sell a DVD with a recipe and all the ingredients and wine.

4. You aren’t speaking to them

There is a common perception that content on websites or promotional materials in the second person—speaking directly TO the reader—is unprofessional and too “salesy.” This is simply not so. Test after test shows that copy that speaks directly to the audience sells and converts prospects to customers. If your industry is stuck in “corporate-speak,” then you have a huge opportunity to connect with your target audience by speaking and writing in a way that says that you know and understand their applications or frustrations.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Then create a list of all the things that are important to your customer when they are choosing a product or service like yours.

Create a list of features that address what’s important to them, and then write out the specific benefits to the customer based on their application.

Write as if you were informing, educating or presenting. This will keep your tone professional.

5. You aren’t telling them why to choose you

Tell your customers exactly what your competitive advantage is. Tell them what sets you apart and show them the details. Don’t be afraid of pointing out differences between you and competitors by using a chart or table—this only increases your credibility. Write an article that outlines the 10 reasons that you are the right choice for a specific target customer or application and then keep repeating those points in your marketing materials. It may sound salesy to you, but your customers will appreciate it.

See which of these reasons are holding your customers back from choosing you and make the adjustments. You’ll see an immediate increase in sales and profits.

Attract Fiercely Loyal Customers With These 5 Strategies

Liz Strauss — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:00:00 -0400

From Liz Strauss:

Every day another new term is cropping up to describe how we connect to customers—and I bet you could add to the list. We’re told to leave behind broadcasting and push marketing to become trust agents in the world of viral videos and permission marketing as we join the thank you economy to build a fiercely loyal community of brand evangelists. Whew! What's with all of that?

In the spaces between the words lies the same question that's been building businesses since business building began: Are you looking for more customers?

Let’s be clear about that. I don't mean more traffic in your store or more pageviews on your website. I'm not even thinking about that wonderful word attention. We give attention to many things and never act on them.

What builds a thriving business is a community of loyal, engaged and participating customers—real people who want to be part of what we do. If that’s your goal, these five strategies work.

1. Make an environment where people feel they belong

People don't stay where they aren't valued. Design your online and offline environment so that people recognize their values everywhere they look. Everyone wants to have a home. When people feel at home, they connect.

2. Give people a reason to come

Make every offer and every ounce of content relevant and engaging to the people—living, breathing, individual human beings. Don't sell me your products and services. Teach me how to buy them. Show me how they will make my life and work easier, simpler and more meaningful. Be critical to my mission, and I'll be ready to invest in you.

3. Offer authentic conversation and ongoing relationships

Let them know a real person is there to greet them. Leave room for folks to add their perspective. Listen more than you talk. Learn more than you teach. Data might tell you what customers are doing, but it won't tell you why. Customers will tell you what they're thinking if we ask them one at a time. If we start with a beginner's mind—admitting we know hardly anything about our customers—we'll find that our customers are brilliant about showing us what delights them and what makes them change their mind.

4. Offer unexpected, exciting experiences that they get to design

Invite them to suggest, design and even lead new initiatives. Let them teach. Let them learn. Let them play and...surprise them. Customers are people who help build our businesses. Those are the things that make folks feel good about who they are.

5. Celebrate your heroes—the people who bring you great business ideas and great business friends

Tell them why you value their business by pointing out the values you share. Be unforgettable, grateful and more generous than anyone might have imagined. You’ll find that you’ll attract customers who reflect those attributes right back.

It's not hard to see that what attracts and keeps customers today is what has been attracting and keeping customers since business began: caring about them. Customers are the people who build our businesses. They fuel our growth even fast with their loyalty. No asset outweighs the value of a community of fiercely loyal customers.

Loyalty is a relationship. If you want to attract customer fans, be a fan of your customers as best you can.

How do you attract and keep customers by being loyal to them?

30 Ways To Boost Sales Without Discounting

Annie Mueller — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:30:00 -0400

From Annie Mueller:

You don't have to cut profit margins just to make the sale. Discounts can be a great tool, but they're also expensive. Worse, if your customers start to wait for you to discount, they're counter-productive to your business.

Fortunately, there are lots of other tools in the sales toolbag. Here are 30 of them.

General methods

1. Future-use coupons

Use wording such as "For every $50 you spend tonight, you get $10 off your next purchase of $50 or more." Your customers have an incentive to spend at least $50, and you'll get an additional $50 in purchases when they apply their future-use coupon.

2. Product packages

Package a selection of products according to a theme (color, season, gift idea, topic, whatever) and sell as a special package.

3. Seasonal specials

For restaurants, this translates into promoting food that is in season. For others, use whatever major holiday is approaching. Promote the products or services—or create new ones—that somehow connect with the season, and put them front and center.

For restaurants

4. Free meal night

One day or night of the week, pick a random customer who gets an entire meal for free. People will come for the chance at a free meal, and for the cost of one free meal, you increase sales on a slow night.

5. Live music

Entertainment not only draws people in, it makes them want to linger, have another cup of wine, maybe some dessert, coffee...

6. Contests

Any kind of contest can draw people in, but smart contests also make them want to purchase. Feature a new sandwich, at regular price, and hold a "Name that Sandwich" contest. The winner gets a free sandwich, but everyone else pays.

7. Bring-Your-Own night

For delis or cafes that don't serve alcohol, have a BYOB night. Extend your hours and provide glasses.

8. Family entertainment

Hire a clown, a magician, some dude who makes balloon animals. Let him wander the restaurant, or rope off a small area for "the stage." Publicize the whole thing as family night and have your staff promote kid-friendly selections from the menu.

9. Upsell

Have you trained your staff in the power of suggestion? Many restaurants do, but you might have overlooked it. Wait staff or counter staff should always have an upsell suggestion at the ready. "Would you like fries with that?" is only the beginning.

10. Offer samples

Customers who are afraid to try something new will try a free sample, then, often, purchase a full order.

11. Offer a take-home option

Sit-down restaurants could easily increase sales by promoting take-home packages. Put together a "take-home lunch" offer. It could include an entree, side and dessert, be packaged for travel, and include heating/serving instructions. You're saving customers the trouble of figuring out lunch the next day. Try a "take-home dinner" option, too.

For online sellers

12. Free info products

Digital information products like e-books and white papers can be distributed without additional cost. Make them a bonus for purchasers.

13. Shipping

Offer free shipping or faster shipping for purchases made within a certain time or over a certain dollar amount.

14. Bulk order rewards

Customers who buy in bulk get a reward of some kind, such as a free customer club membership or a free T-shirt or other promotional item.

15. Features

Highlight a particular item and put it front and center. Sales will increase just because it is "the featured item" even though it isn't discounted.

16. Customer reviews

Gather positive customer reviews and put them beside the product or service being offered. Testimonials are powerful.

17. Cross-promotion

For B2B businesses, offer a cross-promotion opportunity, such as a directory listing or advertising spot for customers who purchase within X hours or over X dollar amount.

For retail stores

18. Freebie night

"Every Monday, our 117th customer gets a free T-shirt!" Or a free coffee mug, or a free gift of your choosing.

19. Trade-in night

"Bring in your old ____ and get $X.00 off the purchase of a new ____." Or, "Bring in your old _________ and we'll dispose of it/recycle it for you for free."

20. Charity donations

"For every $50 you spend tonight, we'll donate 5 percent to ABC Charity." Or give them a few charities to choose from. Or make it based on the total sales for the day or night.

21. Personal shopper service

Take your staff through some training on assisting customers in making their shopping decisions, and then allow customers to make appointments with these newly trained personal shoppers.

22. Club membership

Create a customer club with particular benefits (newsletter, coupons, special events, extended hours) and offer free membership with any purchase over a set dollar amount. Otherwise, membership should cost something.

23. Free gift with purchase

This promotion alone nets those beauty product companies thousands of dollars.

24. Express check-out

Have a dedicated check-out line for purchases over a fixed dollar amount.

For service providers

25. Give a guarantee

Make it risk-free for your customers. "Buy today, and we'll give you a 90-day money-back guarantee." Risk prevents people from buying. Remove the risk and you increase the sales.

26. Partner up

Find a related, complementary business and put together packages that include your service and their products.

27. Make it convenient

Working people often find it difficult to get things done during "business hours" because they're working, too. So offer an "at your convenience" option for those customers. For an additional fee, you'll extend your hours or make special arrangements for weekends, nights or holidays.

28. Free consultation

This is the service provider version of the free "personal shopper service" that retailers might offer.

29. Add-ons

Have a list of add-ons for every service purchase, and make them quick and easy. "For only $10 more, you can add on XYZ service. Would you like to do that?"

30. Rewards and levels

Offer rewards, but tie them to dollar amounts or commitment levels. The greater purchase or commitment garners the greater reward.

Annie Mueller is a freelance writer based in St. Louis. She covers small business topics with a focus on lean/zero budget start-ups, business blogging, and simple (sane) ways business can use social media without selling their souls to Facebook. Her work can be seen online at Investopedia's Financial Edge blog, Young Entrepreneur, Wise Bread, Organic Authority, Modern Mom, and her own site, AnnieMueller.com. Find her on Twitter: @AnnieMueller.

10 Killer Apps For The Coworking Professional

Zoe Fox — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:00:00 -0400

From Zoe Fox:

Imaginative freelancers and open-minded collaborators come together each day to bounce ideas and innovate in coworking spaces. These shared offices rent desks to solo workers and tiny companies. Whether you're new to coworking or a veteran of the space, there are plenty of digital tools that can transform the work experience, whether that be by connecting with experts or better managing finances.

We took a look at the tools coworkers and coworking spaces are using to maximize productivity. Here are the top 10.

1. Cobot

Cobot is a sleek, easy-to-use coworking space management software developed by Co.up in Berlin. The service offers invoicing, membership agreements, room bookings and other resources for members.

If your space likes the easy accessibility of keeping shared information stored in Google Docs, Cobot might be a good fit. If you're unsure if the service is right for your coworking space, you can try it for free for 30 days.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks was designed to help businesses get paid by their clients with ease—the FreshBooks team understands that people go into freelancing hoping to avoid such a tedious chore. "Our job is to make sure they do as little of that paperwork as possible," says Stuart MacDonald, chief marketing officer of FreshBooks.

The service works with a number of different payment providers, sending online invoices to your clients. MacDonald says the service is ideal for people who get paid for their time and expertise, like artists, designers, developers and writers.

3. HipChat

HipChat is a group-chat service that's ideal for remote teams, and it's lauded for its simplicity. "Hipchat is the easiest to get people started, which is important for us because we're not limited to just tech-savvy folks," says Alex Hillman, cofounder of Independents Hall.

You can access your chat room through a desktop, Web or mobile application, so it's easy to connect no matter where you're working.

4. iTeleport

Do you find yourself switching computers often? iTeleport is a great iOS app for accessing your home base computer remotely. Whether you switch between desktop or laptop to iPad or iPhone, you'll never be without your needed information and documents.

5. Loosecubes

Coworkers love their jobs and love their spaces. If you're on the road and don't want to return to the old era of the coffee shop, try Loosecubes to find available desks near you. "Being able to cowork, even when you're miles away from your home coworking space, is a great perk of this global community," says Beth Buczynski, author of Gone Coworking.

Toby Morning, chief evangelist of Citizen Space, considers Loosecubes and similar services Liquid Spaces and Desk Wanted to be great marketing tools for his space, constantly attracting new coworkers.

6. Mavenlink

Mavenlink is a Google app for product management that works seamlessly with your other Google extensions, streamlining group collaboration, budget tracking and file sharing.

"I wanted a tool for people to connect with each other even when they’re not at Link [Coworking], and Mavenlink does that very easily," says Liz Elam, Curator of Link Coworking.

7. Ohours

For freelancers and small business folk looking to connect with experts in their fields, Ohours is a great way to find people. Experts host open office hours, using video chats to connect across the globe. The service is also used to arrange face-to-face meetups. Open office hours are a great way to learn about new industries, without investing in a grueling crash course.

8. Socialcast

Socialcast is a microblogging and sharing platform connecting people in real discussions. Industry professionals can engage in messaging, town hall meetings and polling. The program even includes analytics to measure the strengths of your network.

9. Wave Accounting

If you're done dealing with loads of different receipts, try Wave Accounting, a free online accounting app for small business. The app is ideal for people who may not have the resources to hire accounting personnel.

Wave is also ideal for collaboration. It's easy to grant partial or full access to different users to view your records. "I can let my bookkeeper see my business accounting without showing how much I paid for my wife's birthday present," says Rob Maurin, Wave's senior director for marketing and community.

10. WorkFlowy

If you're a master of the simple to-do list, Workflowy might be the app for you. The speedy, simple interface is perfect for people balancing lots of tasks simultaneously. The service comes with no predefined formatting constraints, so it feels as seamless as jotting tasks on a sticky-note.

The future of digital coworking

While there are tons of tools out there, Angel Kwiatkowski, founder of Cohere, believes the community is missing an overarching network for coworkers to connect. "We need help finding or developing a tool that allows for members of different coworking communities in far away states and countries to find one another and collaborate," says Kwiatkowski. "I'm hoping that in the next year, we'll have a great digital tool at our disposal that would allow a member of Cohere in Colorado to easily search out another coworker in say, Pakistan, who might be able to help with a problem or share ideas on a project."

Are you a coworker using a tool we didn't mention? Tell us about it in the comments.

Building A Winning Mobile Commerce Website

Presented by AT&T — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:30:00 -0400

From Presented by AT&T:

If you want to engage on-the-go shoppers using smartphones to purchase everything from clothes to computers, your business needs a fast, easy-to-use mobile commerce site.

Customizing your mobile website for the smartphone’s natural limitations—smaller bandwidth and smaller screens—may be easier than you think.

Use the following tips to rework your site:

Simplify

Find ways to slim down your full-sized site, like using smaller graphics and images, shorter shopping pages and streamlined navigation options. A cluttered site can confuse shoppers and make it harder to navigate, especially on a smaller screen. Go with a vertical orientation rather than a horizontal so visitors just have to scroll down instead of from left to right.

Avoid multiple click-throughs

Click-throughs eat download time, so make it easier for shoppers to find what they need without forcing them to click on several links. For example, a prominent shopping cart icon on each page can get shoppers to the most important part of the website quickly.

Add a site search tool

The “Search” tool can be a welcome ally for many shoppers since mobile-friendly websites tend to have fewer product categories and navigation options than their 17-inch screen counterparts. Consider adding site search as a recurring feature on every page of your mobile website, so shoppers can reduce the number of clicks and find what they need faster.

Add an auto-suggest feature

Misspellings are bound to happen, so consider an auto-suggest feature with your search results that provides the most popular matches for commonly misspelled words. Timesaving features like these are not only appreciated by shoppers, but can also increase the likelihood of return visits.

Streamline checkout

Checkout is often the most time-consuming and data entry-intensive part of the online sales process. This can be especially frustrating on a mobile device with a smaller keypad, and frustration can lead to lost sales. Limit non-essential fields and allow shoppers to create passwords and profiles so their personal information is saved. This allows auto-fill for future purchases.

Keep shoppers on your site

Many customers like to comparison shop before making an online purchase. While opening multiple browser windows on a laptop is easy, it’s more time-consuming on a mobile device. Consider adding a price comparison tool to your mobile site to help keep shoppers on your pages, but make sure that your prices are competitive, or your efforts might backfire.

Test your site on multiple phones

Before you start promoting your mobile commerce site, look at it on multiple platforms—including leading systems like Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7—to ensure that all of your potential customers get to see your business at its best, even when they’re on the go. Do pages render properly and do images load quickly? Have a team member click on all links to make sure they work and try purchasing something. If it takes too long or is confusing, see what can be easily fixed. Online services, like AT&T's mobile website creation tool, are available that can help you turn your website into a mobile commerce site quickly and easily.

Redesigning your website from a mobile perspective can also help you improve the user experience on your main website, since reducing time and increasing ease of use are likely to be appreciated by all of your customers.

The Recipe For Business Success

ELIZABETH GIGNILLIAT — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:15:00 -0400

From ELIZABETH GIGNILLIAT:

Twelve years ago, I left my corporate job to fulfill my lifelong dream of attending professional cooking school. Now I run Parties That Cook, a mobile culinary events company that stages hands-on cooking parties and corporate team-building events in four cities. We grew to a staff of over 100 by following this recipe for business success:

1. Provide fanatical customer service

Respond quickly to clients. If you don’t take care of your customers, someone else will. Strive to give clients more than they expect. Happy clients are your evangelists and make the best marketing advocates for future business.

2. Embrace employee autonomy

Give your employees as much autonomy and responsibility as they can handle. Encourage your employees to pretend the business is their own. Reward top talent with equity compensation.

3. Choose partners carefully

Partnerships are like marriages: they take work, even more so if you don’t see eye-to-eye on the direction and success of the company. In an ideal partnership situation, priorities, objectives and business roles are outlined upfront. Hire an attorney to draft a partnership agreement (like a pre-nuptial agreement in marriage) and clearly spell out all exit scenarios in case it fails. Ideally, you and your partner should each have an attorney so that your interests are protected.

4. Make the right decision for the right reasons

It is more important to be respected than liked. As a business owner, sometimes you have to make difficult decisions that are unpopular. Always try to take the emotion out of your decisions and ask yourself: “What is the right business decision?”

5. Leverage CEO resources

Get support from a board of advisers or join a CEO group where you can share resources and ideas for your business. EO, Vistage, Pacific Community Venture are three valuable organizations.

6. Hire slow and fire fast

Interview carefully and ask pointed questions. Loyalty is one of the most important qualities in a staff member. If someone does not work out, do not agonize over it. Let them go and move on. Your job is to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off (as outlined in the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins). I find many of my best staff through informational interviews. Whenever possible, I test them as contractors on a project basis before permanently hiring them.

7. Cover your weaknesses

Consider hiring a team with opposite Meyers-Briggs scores from you. That way, you can feed your strengths and have your weaknesses covered by a quality team.

8. Watch your back

Monitor your competition and do everything you can to stay ahead of them.

9. Rebuild company infrastructure

Tough times are an opportunity to focus on priorities, be creative and streamline business operations. Take a step back and assess your business infrastructure. Make the necessary changes that will help position your business for the future. Recession is the mother of invention!

10. Work on the business, not in it

Most businesses fail because the owner remains a technician well after the business is up and running. Ideally, at that point, the owner should be working on the business vs. in the business (this is outlined in the book “E-Myth” by Michael Gerber).

11. Learn from your mistakes

The only real mistakes are the ones we don’t learn from. James Joyce was right when he said, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” Embrace your mistakes; when you fail, you practice success. “Oops" is the mantra of champions. Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.

12. Build process

The best way to protect your company’s value is by creating processes that capture that value. Process has been a huge key to our growth and one that has let us successfully operate in multiple cities at the same time. If you don’t create a process, you can’t transfer that value.

Over the past 12 years, Parties That Cook has grown, but not without pains. Unfortunately, I learned many of these tips the hard way. Don’t feel like you need to go it alone, there are resources out there—just remember to ask for help when it’s needed.

OPEN Cardmember Bibby Gignilliat is the CEO and Founder of Parties That Cook, a company that provides hands-on cooking parties and corporate team-building events in private homes and professional kitchens throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, Portland and Seattle.

How Lethal Performance Used Customer Service To Move To The Fast Lane

Kate Fisher — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:00:00 -0400

From Kate Fisher:

Talking with Jared Rosen and Jonas Cooper of Lethal Performance, you can hear the enthusiasm in their voices. The two friends share a passion for their business, commitment to their customers and willingness to embrace new technology that drives sales—even through a rocky recession. In fact, focusing on their customers and great customer service is what brought them such success.

The two started Lethal Performance after Rosen—a Ford Mustang owner and enthusiast—was online researching aftermarket performance parts for his car. He discovered chat rooms and forums filled with potential customers. “There were lots of people out there looking to purchase specialty, niche items,” Rosen recounts. “So we decided to put together a website, do some marketing and see if we could drum up some sales.”

From zero to seven million

With only some garage space and less than $10,000—their only startup capital was the few thousand dollars they each invested—they got their website up and running and started marketing themselves in the online forums dedicated to their target market: late-model Mustang owners.

“Our first month, we did $2,800 in sales. By the sixth month, we’d done $44,000 in sales,” Cooper says, reviewing his records. “Fast forward to last month, which was $756,000. Every month where sales went up we were surprised that people were buying so many car parts, and it really hasn’t stopped since 2005.”

Even during the economic downturn, when Rosen’s “other job” as a real estate broker took a huge hit, Lethal Performance sales continued to climb. “When everyone out there was lamenting ‘the economy, the economy, the economy,’ we saw only growth year after year,” Rosen notes.

“It just keeps blowing us away,” Cooper jumps in. “Our first year we did a little over $100,000, and last year was closer to $7 million. That’s in the span of five years.”

Thriving, not just surviving

One big factor contributing to their continued growth is their marketing. These two have a keen understanding of their audience and their brand image; they maintain a consistent message and persona—right down to their telephone hold audio: energetic, heavy-leaning instrumentals often voiced over by up-tempo marketing messages.

Over the last few years, when the competition scaled back their marketing, Lethal Performance took a different approach. “That’s when we decided to go full blast with all the marketing and advertising stuff we wanted to do,” says Cooper. “When other people were turning it down we amped it up, and that’s actually when things really turned our way.”

Knowing that their customers are part of a strong community that likes to share their discoveries has also proved invaluable…particularly in their online marketing. “Viral marketing accounts for upwards of 70 percent of our traffic,” notes Cooper. “YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook—the viral stuff has been huge for us, especially with the explosion of social media.”

But they’re not content to stick with what’s safe. “We’ve explored other avenues totally unrelated to our industry to help us market our products.” Rosen explains, “We’ve done some cross-branding with mixed martial arts, which has become such a huge sport followed by so many people. We’re involved with a couple of really well-known MMA fighters, and although I wasn’t sure having a little logo on their shorts was gonna bring us a million hits on our website, it has helped.”

Reputation, reputation, reputation

Customer service and satisfaction are paramount in a market where the culture is heavily influenced by customer recommendations. So even though Lethal Performance employs only a team of six, they provide personal service to each client.

“We’re known for offering top-level customer service,” Rosen emphasizes. “People call up and they know us on a first-name basis. That’s helped us build our customer base. They’ll keep coming back to us no matter how many cars they go through, ’cause they feel at home. That’s important.”

Word spreads far and wide among car enthusiasts when they find a product or company they can rely on. That’s why Lethal Performance has customers even in the Middle East and Europe. “From what we hear from clients there, it’s very difficult to find companies that can actually deliver product in a timely fashion internationally,” says Cooper. “So being able to get all of our product ready to go, shipped out and tracked from door to door, that’s been huge for us—especially internationally.”

Quickly fulfilling and shipping orders, whether domestic or international, is key to customer satisfaction. “There are a lot of items that people want right away, and it’s very important that we have them and get them out the same day,” Cooper explains. “FedEx was kind enough to come in here and basically integrate our entire warehouse for us. So it’s streamlined our shipping process tremendously. In terms of domestic shipping, FedEx is all we use—that’s the only way we’re willing to ship to people. The service we get from them is like the service our customers expect from us.”

Small = nimble

Maintaining a small, tight crew has afforded Lethal Performance with the agility that otherwise often falls prey to the bureaucracy of big-business competitors. And they take full advantage of their speed.

“The big guys carry huge brands, but we were able to quickly pick up and present newer emerging technologies in our industry—products from smaller companies that don’t have huge marketing budgets and aren’t in with the big companies yet—from some mom-and-pop vendors who make really, really cool products but just had no way to bring it to market,” Cooper reveals with a hint of pride. “We were able to really help them get a foothold in the marketplace and put their product out in front of hundreds of thousands of people. And I think we’ve helped launch some pretty successful companies.”

The guys make quick, well-informed decisions and don’t waste any time getting word out about new products. Cooper says candidly, “Basically, we can turn on a dime. Jared will get a call from someone, and we’ll look at the product for a few minutes, have a conversation about it, and then we’ll make the deal. The next day we’ll send an e-mail blast out, and just go all out to try and market the product. First-to-market is a very big thing for us.”

Kate Fisher is a Minneapolis-based writer and editor.

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Wisdom From Apple's New CEO: It's All About Intuition And Hard Work

Michael Schwalbe — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:00:00 -0400

From Michael Schwalbe:

Much wisdom about Apple's inner workings—and life in general—can be gleamed from interviews with Steve Jobs. His Stanford commencement address, in particular, is one the most highly watched inspirational speeches on YouTube, trailing only Al Pacino and President Obama.

In light of recent news, much media attention has now shifted from Jobs to his successor Tim Cook. Consensus is that Apple is in good hands, but that Cook is no Steve Jobs—in particular when it comes to creative vision, personal gravitas and negotiating chutzpah.

But, taking a look at Tim Cook's commencement address at Auburn University, it appears Cook may also have some wisdom to share on both life and Apple.

In addition to displaying his extreme modesty and humility—Jim Collins would approve—Cook shares a few golden nuggets worth reviewing.

Below is a summary of some of the best quotes from Apple's new CEO Tim Cook:

On intuition

"I've discovered it's in facing life's most important decisions that intuition seems the most indispensable to getting it right."

"Intuition is something that occurs in the moment, and if you are open to it, if you listen to it, it has the potential to direct or redirect you in a way that is best for you."

On preparation

"In business, as in sports, the vast majority of victories are determined before the beginning of the game. We rarely control the timing of opportunities, but we can control our preparation."

"Intuition is critical in virtually everything you do. But, without relentless preparation and execution, it is meaningless."

On hard work

"As current events teach us, those who try to achieve success without hard work ultimately deceive themselves, or worse, deceive others."

"For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have to prove it right."

“For all of us [at Apple], intuition is not a substitute for rigorous thinking and hard work, it is simply the lead-in. We never take shortcuts. We attend to every detail. We follow where curiosity leads.”

On failure

"Take risk knowing that risk will sometimes result in failure, but without the possibility of failure, there is no possibility of success."

"I know of no one who has achieved something significant without also in their own lives experiencing their share of hardship, frustration and regret. So, don't believe that something in your past prevents you from doing great work in the future."

On life

"Paint in your mind the most grand vision where you want to go in life. Prepare. Trust in, and execute on your intuition. And don't get distracted by life's potholes."

"Let your joy be in your journey, not in some distant goal."

"Give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately unfolds."

"It's good to plan for the future, but if you're like me and you occasionally want to swing for the fences, you can't count on a predictable life."

One more thing…

"A quote that has always resonated with me is one by Abraham Lincoln. He said, 'I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.' "

“If you are prepared when the right door opens, then it comes down to just one more thing. Make sure your execution lives up to your preparation.”

Well, Mr. Cook, your chance has come. You are now at the helm of the largest company in the world with possibly the largest shoes in the world to fill. Godspeed.

This article is by workplace psychology wonk and writer Michael Schwalbe. You can follow him on Twitter @michaelschwalbe. His work contributes to the knowledgebase of the Behance team, who run the Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think tank, the Action Method task management application and the Creative Jobs List.

From Journalist To Entrepreneur: The Story Of Paul Von Zielbauer

Katie Morell — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:15:00 -0400

From Katie Morell:

To label Paul von Zielbauer’s life trajectory as ‘extraordinary’ would be a major understatement. He’s been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, worked as an embedded journalist in Iraq, uncovered military justice secrets from Washington, D.C., and traveled extensively—all before launching a wildly successful company that has not only earned the acclaim of Oprah and National Geographic, but also helps residents of Third World countries.

Lets start from the beginning.

von Zielbauer was born and raised in Aurora, Illinois, a city of around 180,000 residents located 40 miles west of Chicago. He went to Iowa State University with one dream: to be an aerospace engineer. It wasn’t meant to be. “I failed at that pretty quickly; the organic chemistry weeded me out,” he says. Instead, von Zielbauer studied English and later attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism with a new goal: to work for The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

“It’s the golden perch of journalism and as a young guy, I didn’t have a preference, I just wanted to make it to the highest level newspaper,” he says.

In 1999; just a few years after graduating from Columbia, working in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar and paying his dues at a smaller paper; he landed a position at The Times Metro desk, a dream come true. His work included a four-part series on the prison healthcare system in 2005, in which he was nominated for a Pulitzer.

“When you go through a series like that and it is over, it is like giving birth,” he says. “You feel a little postpartum-like depression. I started thinking about what else I would do with my life.”

Change of direction

Before he could give it much thought, The Times transferred him to its Baghdad bureau for a three-month rotation. It was 2006—a terrible time for Middle East violence, and the bureau was nowhere near safety. “It was a pretty dicey proposition; we were not in the Green Zone,” he says. “At times, I would go to interviews in armored cars and other times I would go in normal cars with armed guards in front of me; I always knew that I could go through a traffic circle and a car bomb could go off—that level of stress was always there.”

von Zielbauer returned home unscathed and went back to Iraq the following year. After his second tour, he wanted to stay in the States and moved down to Washington, D.C. to cover the military justice system. “It was fascinating and I really enjoyed the learning curve; I got the opportunity to meet people on congressional committees and to develop sources to tell me things before others knew,” he says.

After 18 months, the assignment faded away and von Zielbauer was back in New York feeling restless. Through his travels in journalism and during vacation time, he’d met persons involved in development organizations and had an idea for a company that would mix development and travel. He let the idea ruminate and continued journalism work.

Leaving journalism

When he first started out, von Zielbauer had made a promise to himself that he’d never stay somewhere just because of prestige, especially if he felt he could be better utilized elsewhere. In 2009, he quit The Times and dove headlong into the company he envisioned (which he had launched the year prior), Roadmonkey, an adventure travel company that combined expeditions with community service projects.

“I wanted to combine adventure travel with something meaningful; and I remember paging through travel magazines and reading articles about men and women who started small businesses doing something creative that got them out in the world—I always admired them and it always left a burning sensation in my stomach,” he says.

New title: Entrepreneur

Passionate about his cause, von Zielbauer got busy, but soon faced a few challenges. #1: translating journalism skills into those of a small business owner. “I had to identify the skills I didn’t have and learn them really fast,” he says.

On his side were the skills of a seasoned reporter: the ability to go into a new place and scope it out quickly—great for a company like Roadmonkey—but not as much skills such as sales and marketing. “When you are an entrepreneur, you care about the customer’s experience, closing a sale, scalability—all things I had only heard about,” he says.

How did he learn the necessary skills to run a business?

“I talked to people who knew way more than I did, just like in journalism; I interviewed them,” he says.

Success

Today, Roadmonkey is highly successful and von Zielbauer has coined a new term: ‘adventure philanthropy,’ which explains exactly what the company does. Based in Wyoming, the company leads several expeditions per year to places like Vietnam, Nicaragua and Tanzania. Roadmonkey develops relationships with organizations on the ground and, as part of each expedition, includes a community service project for participants. For example, the Tanzania trip includes a Mt. Kilimanjaro climb and the building of a farm in Zanzibar. His business has attracted the attention of everyone from Outside to USA Today to BusinessWeek.

How do they make money?

“People pay us a fee (usually from $2,700 to $6,200 per person) to go on our expeditions; that is our income,” says von Zielbauer. “Then, we ask each participant to raise $500 to $700 from their own social network, and that money goes to help fund the non-profit organization on the ground.”

What does the future hold for Roadmonkey?

“We recently brought on two partners, and we are working to create a Roadmonkey community,” he says. “Next year, we plan to offer a few domestic expeditions to places like Hawaii, Maine and West Virginia. They will be shorter and cheaper.”

Prepare For Active Duty: Tips From A Veteran Government Contractor

Karen-Michelle Mirko — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 13:30:00 -0400

From Karen-Michelle Mirko:

Recently, I had a conversation with one of our Cardmembers, Wayne Gatewood, founder of Quality Support, about the National Veterans Small Business Conference in New Orleans. His company is a program and project management consulting firm that works almost exclusively with the U.S. government. Our conversation was about service-disabled, veteran-owned businesses like his, but the ideas he shared serve as a good reminder about what small businesses need to learn about pursuing contracts with the government.

Take advantage of applicable certifications

Service-disabled, veteran-owned status is a certification that can provide added options for certain government contracts and federal programs. A number of certifications exist for qualifying small businesses—such as women-owned, small businesses—and can help give an added edge when competing with other businesses. (You can find more information about small business certification here.)

Commenting on his own experience as a certified service-disabled veteran business owner, Wayne pointed out that “there are a lot of people who really want to give service-disabled veterans an opportunity, and the program is a solid one that has put a lot of veterans to work.” Likewise, he acknowledged that other programs offer similar opportunities to various types of qualified small business, such as women business owners, minorities and others. In particular, there is a push to certify women-owned businesses. (For more information, you can download the OPEN Insight Guide Government Contracting: Women in Procurement.)

But as positive as Wayne is about the benefits of certifications, he strongly recommends that small business owners—whether veterans or otherwise—see certifications for what they are: a slight edge. He cautions business owners against building unrealistic expectations about what certifications can do for a business, and reminds that they are not a golden key that will open every door.

Know the regulations

One thing that can help open doors, Wayne advises, is learning about and staying well-informed of government contracting procedures and practices. It’s up to every business to understand the regulations that apply to them—a task that can be daunting for first-timers. Wayne likens pursuing government contracting to active duty: “If you’re out in operations, you never pass the demarcation line unless your pack is full. You have to have a compass, you have to know the terrain. It’s the same thing when you work to support the government. You better have the right tools in your pack—and those tools are knowledge.”

Keep learning

To help make it easier to start out with “a full pack,” our newly launched special feature on OPEN Forum—Victory in Procurement for Government Contracting—aims to help small businesses do more business with the government, whether they are first-time contract seekers or more advanced contractors. The special feature consists of three tracks that guide users through the process based on their level of expertise: beginner (just starting out), ready to register (need helpful hints), and advanced (seeking new opportunities).

The site also offers a resource library with specialized information for various types of small business owners, including veterans, as well as information about upcoming government contracting events, success stories and more.

I hope you’ll check out the site and be inspired to get started, or to strive to improve your chances of winning these valuable contracts to grow your business. Please e-mail me at KarenMichelle@openforum.com to let me know what you think of this special feature on OPEN Forum. We’re always happy to hear about your experiences with government contracting.

Should You Start Pricing In Foreign Currencies?

Mike Periu — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:45:00 -0400

From Mike Periu:

The U.S. dollar has taken a beating lately. Since July, it has fallen significantly in value against the Yen, Euro, Pound, Canadian Dollar and Gold among other currencies and commodities. This downward trend may be accelerating, but it isn’t something new. Back in August 2000, a single U.S. dollar could be exchanged for 108 Yen, 1.1 Euros, 0.67 Pounds 1.47 Canadian Dollars or .0036 ounces of gold. How things have changed.

This decline in the value of the dollar causes important problems for U.S. companies at various levels.

Change in the value of the U.S. Dollar
	Over the last:
Relative to:	Week	Month	9 months	Year	2 years	Ten years
Yen	1%	-4%	-6%	-10%	-18%	-29%
Euros	0%	1%	-7%	-11%	-2%	-37%
Pound	1%	-2%	-5%	-4%	0%	-9%
Canadian dollar	0%	2%	-1%	-4%	-11%	-33%
Gold ounces	1%	-19%	-24%	-33%	-48%	-85%

For companies that buy from foreign suppliers, the cost of goods sold increases

Foreign suppliers that price in dollars are raising their dollar-denominated prices to compensate for the decline in the dollar relative to their local currency. Foreign suppliers that price in their local currency leave U.S. buyers fully exposed to fluctuations in the value of the dollar. For the foreseeable future, this makes foreign purchases more expensive as the value of the dollar trends downwards.

Given the current state of the economy, it’s very difficult for a U.S. company to raise prices. Therefore, companies that buy from foreign suppliers will have to absorb the losses due to currency fluctuations or run the risk of alienating customers through price increases during a quasi-recession. Neither option is attractive.

For companies that export and set price in dollars, money is being left on the table

By maintaining prices in dollars at a time when our currency is declining, companies are giving an automatic discount to their foreign buyers. Over the past year, for example, the dollar has declined 11 percent relative to the Euro. This means that a company selling a product for the equivalent of $880 could have generated $1,000 in revenue per unit by simply pricing in Euros.

Strategies for dealing with a declining dollar

One solution to these problems is to develop a pricing list in multiple currencies (for exporters) and to peg U.S. dollar prices to supplier currencies (for importers). To make this happen, business owners need to address the following:

1. Strategy

As a business owner, it’s a matter of calibrating your assumptions about the different effects of pricing vs. not pricing in foreign currencies and determining if the anticipated net benefit is worth the effort.

2. Policy

You need to make decisions regarding when to adjust for currency, how to communicate this change to customers, how to address customer concerns and complaints, and how to train employees on the changes.

3. Technology

This is actually the simplest issue to address. Multi-currency online shopping carts and accounting software are widely available. Many consulting firms and developers are available to asset you in managing the issues associated with tracking and accounting for multi-currency sales.

Benefits to a declining dollar

A declining dollar isn’t bad news for everyone—it can help boost unit sales. As the dollar falls relative to other currencies, the relative cost to a foreign consumer of buying an imported U.S. product or service goes down. As those sales are generated abroad and saved in local currency bank accounts, they automatically appreciate in value when measured in dollar terms. So when you repatriate that capital by transferring it to your domestic bank account, you will see a boost in the value of the revenues generated.

For many companies, addressing the decline of the dollar by pricing in foreign currencies or pegging prices will be a profitable solution.

Does this impact your business? Have you considered pricing in foreign currencies? What challenges have you faced in the process? Share your comments below.

Livestreaming: A Great Marketing Tool For Every Business

Shira Levine — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:00 -0400

From Shira Levine:

If the major television networks haven't yet profiled your business, you might consider Livestream, a video platform that functions as both a virtual TV studio and an embedded video player—which gives users the tools necessary to produce and broadcast wireless HDTV.

We spoke with Livestream co-founder Phil Worthington, who created the service as a tool for organizers of conferences, concerts, red carpet and marketing events to connect with their audiences.

“Live streaming can be an effective marketing tool for these event owners, and as an industry it's grown 600 percent [since] last year, validating that assumption,” says Worthington. “[We’re for] anything that has a built-in audience, that’s looking to expand its reach.”

An industry that grows 600 percent certainly is enticing, but as a small business you want to make sure a service like Livestream is what you need and that you know how to use it to it’s fullest.

“It's not a magic bullet for everyone,” says Worthington. “There needs to be content behind the broadcast, but if there's something going on, and someone out there may be interested in it, then it's a great way to reach those people and have them engage your brand, and each other.”

Livestream’s goal is to “democratize” live television. That means removing the biggest barrier for entry into the medium: high cost equipment. Eliminating something as costly as a satellite truck, which prices at hundreds of thousands of dollars, puts live broadcast production in the hands of the masses.

“We used citizen journalism as our champion use-case, and although we still empower this segment, we have since realized that one-time events are the bulk of our content, [so we’ve] focused our energy reaching and serving that customer base.”

Livestream is just four years old—with a staff of less than 100—yet during its rapid growth has opened up four offices around the world.

“Our CEO, who brought us all together, was based in New York and we had access to investment there,” says Worthington. “None of us wanted to move to Silicon Valley, which was against the grain for a tech company four years ago. One of the other co-founders is from Bangalore and wanted to go back, which presented a unique opportunity for an offshore development team that could still be closely managed by a person we trust. Los Angeles opened later, when we realized the value of having a local sales team to service the film and music industries over there. A fourth team in Ukraine also joined us as part of a software acquisition we made.”

Could live streaming be the way to go for your next business event? The key is to keep it simple and follow these three steps:

Identify whom you’re trying to reach

Be realistic, but also aim to exceed expectations. For example, when streaming concerts, Livestream provided custom channel pages for the band Foo Fighters and singer David Gray, which integrated live chat, Twitter and Facebook. During the 2008 presidential election, Livestream partnered with Indianapolis Star. And on New Year’s Eve, the company collaborated with the Times Square Alliance, which streamed the celebration live from New York City.

Communicate with your audience in language that is simple, clear and easy to understand

Now that you potentially have everyone’s attention, it’s up to you to be concise and clear with the content you're sharing. Facebook’s live streaming channel that broadcasts from it’s Palo Alto headquarters uses Livestream for announcements and interviews.

Tailor your message, your service to the needs of your targeted audience

Sharing your keynote speech and the innovations of your businesses at a conference or expo should stay focused on those two agendas. Adding more to the mix when you’ve got the Internet watching and listening will only confuse people and go off task.

Image credit: Livestream.com

3 Costs Even The Lean Can Cut

Elaine Pofeldt — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:30:00 -0400

From Elaine Pofeldt:

Small business may be in for a rough ride ahead, thanks to lots of insomnia-inducing financial news. Moody’s Analytics just lowered the U.S. economic outlook through 2012, with chief economist Mark Zandi saying that the odds of a recession— already one in three—will rise if stock prices continue to drop.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to grow your company now. Even if you did a lot of budget trimming during the Great Recession, finding more ways to keep your overhead down can liberate some of the cash you need to reinvest in your business. At the very least, keeping a close eye on your spending will help you build a financial cushion in case a slow economy causes customers to start paying you late.

Here are three ideas you may not have considered recently.

1. Switch to a bank loan if you can

Credit card financing can be useful for short term purchases. However, if you’re using it in lieu of a bank loan, you may be adding to your overhead unnecessarily.

The National Small Business Association’s Mid Year Economic Report found that small business owners in established businesses are paying higher interest rates on credit card financing than six months ago. The number of entrepreneurs paying an interest rate that is 20 percent or higher jumped from 13 to 19 percent over the past six months. The good news: The number of small business owners using bank loans rose a bit, from 45 to 49 percent.

If you haven’t approached your banker lately because you thought there wasn’t any shot of getting a loan, maybe it’s time to schedule a sit-down.

2. Make your overhead more flexible

Look at the fixed costs on your balance sheet and try to turn them into variable costs, whenever possible, advises John Torrens, an assistant professor of entrepreneurial practice at Syracuse University and owner of a company that provides early-childhood special education services. Just as in your household budget, bringing some flexibility to your monthly financial commitments can give you room to adjust to a fast-changing economy.

For instance, at one point Torrens moved some of the well-established therapists on his staff from salaried positions to fee-for-service roles, where they got paid based on how much they worked.

“People didn’t mind being paid a fee for service,” he says. “They had more motivation to work more.”

For newer members of his team, he stuck with a salaried model, so they had time to build up a steady client base before moving to the fee-for-service model. Worth noting: Workers who switched to the fee-for-service plan did not lose benefits at his firm—benefits were still available to those who worked a minimum of 30 hours a week.

3. Choose projects that will help your marketing efforts

You can reduce what you spend on your promotional efforts if you focus on winning jobs that can help you pull in more customers. If your business is young, taking on an assignment from a big-name client that you can mention on your website’s customer list or on your LinkedIn profile can go a long way toward bringing in new business—without any added spending on your part. That’s a factor worth considering, even if the job itself is not the most profitable one available to you at the moment.

If business is slow, consider doing volunteer work that will help you raise the profile of your company. You never know what potential clients you’ll meet at a charitable event that’s popular among business professionals in your area, whether it’s a golf fundraiser or the science fair at the local public school. And once again, you won’t have to spend any money on this type of informal self-marketing—reducing the need to buy costly advertising.

Flextime Is No Time To Panic

Susan Sobbott — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 11:00:00 -0400

From Susan Sobbott:

Many small business owners who reject employees’ requests for flextime believe that such an arrangement will be inefficient and too costly for a company of their size.

But let me tell you from experience that a carefully managed flextime program will not only help you retain key employees, but also can hold down costs and boost workplace morale and company loyalty.

We know that family demands today place enormous stress on employees. To address their balancing issues, a growing number of businesses with fewer than 100 employees offer as many as six different flextime options, according to the Survey on Workplace Flexibility.

What do these small business owners know? That denying flextime requests can backfire. For example, the 2009 Shriver report found that 86 percent of women who left a workplace cited a lack of flexibility as a key reason for their departure. When valued employees quit, time and money are needed to recruit and train new hires.

When I first began granting flextime to employees here at American Express, I found that two myths were quickly dispelled:

First: There wasn’t a run on the bank, so to speak, by other employees rushing for the same flextime deal. Most employees preferred to work at the office.

Second: The biggest impact was on those who didn’t participate in these flexible arrangements. These full-time employees became more positive about the workplace. They felt greater loyalty knowing that a flextime program existed because that signaled a strong commitment to employee needs and provided options should they need them down the road.

A flextime program’s success depends largely on trust, commitment and how well it’s managed:

Scope the employee’s abilities before granting flextime. Also, be realistic about the tasks assigned, given the person’s new schedule and capacity. If an employee’s track record shows a history of not delivering, flextime is a not good option right now.

Agree on a trial period as well as a review when the trial period ends—and periodically thereafter. An employee needs to know from the start that flextime’s duration is based on customer feedback and business results, and that performance will drive sustainability of the program.

Set clear deliverables and deadlines. Be clear about what you want and by when. This process will force you to be a little more buttoned-up, but that’s essential for being a good leader and manager, anyway.

Establish methods of employee participation. Many small-business owners believe that interactions will break down when flextime employees aren’t in the daily flow. I’ve found that communication doesn’t go away. In fact, with the use of basic technology, communication can be more focused and frequent. Your employees just need to find a new routine.

Be transparent about checking in. Let the employee know that you’re going to randomly check in, just like when you stop by their desk on location. Be authentic. You don’t want flextime employees to think you’re sneaking up on them.

Verify that the deliverable you set is still at the top of the list. It’s not enough just to call. Probe when checking in. Ask about obstacles and let the employee know you’re going to contact customers that the employee services. You want to make sure that your customer base is receiving the same level of access and service they have come to expect.

Delegate the tracking of progress to the employee. For instance, ask for an e-mail or voicemail once a week with updates on pending projects. Or request that the employee produce a daily or weekly report—whatever works best for you. Remember, employees like clarity around objectives, and tracking helps them as well (as long as it’s not onerous).

Create feedback mechanisms to evaluate the quality of submitted work and your leadership of the new arrangement. Open dialog helps identify emerging issues so that they can be fine-tuned and resolved.

Before assuming you don’t have the bandwidth or budget for flextime programs, think about where you’ll find the time and money to find and train a new hire when the employee who was denied flextime makes the only choice he or she feels they have to address family needs.

Do you offer flextime options for your employees? Share your comments below or email me at susan@openforum.com.

5 Lessons From Sam Walton

Laurel Delaney — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:30:00 -0400

From Laurel Delaney:

Sam Walton (1918-1992) was a self-made billionaire. In 1945, he bought a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas, and began to put his own innovative retail approach to work. He scoured the area with his pickup truck, buying up goods from anyone with a blowout offer to make. Then he sold them in his store, dirt-cheap. Merchandise flew off the floor. He'd make half the profit per item of comparable retailers, but sell three times as much and make a greater overall profit.

This simple but brilliant strategy enabled him to expand to fifteen stores in fifteen years' time. Walton became the largest independent variety store operator in the U.S. When he started Wal-Mart in 1962, the lessons he learned from his success with Ben Franklin went with him.

It was some years before Sam Walton and his daring retail techniques that eventually led to revolutionizing retail distribution were taken seriously. A few astute executives, like Harry Cunningham, then CEO of K-Mart, tried to warn his management early on that Walton posed a serious potential threat. They ignored his warnings and were caught with their pants down when Wal-Mart began to offer intense competition.

Sound all too familiar? Think right now about companies such as Nokia, HP and Blackberry. Alerts are everywhere that consumers are rapidly changing their technology habits, especially PC and smartphone use. If companies don’t pay attention to potential threats in the marketplace, they will be shamefully left behind. Fortunately, Wal-Mart did not have this problem. Today, Wal-Mart has sales well over $400 billion and is still growing rapidly due to its rigorous global footprint.

If you haven't read Sam Walton's published memoirs, Sam Walton: Made in America, you should. Here's just a sampling of his positive, creative thinking that we can benefit from as we grow our businesses from local to global:

1. On Wal-Mart's key to success

"It (competitor's poor profits) all boils down to not taking care of their customers, not minding their stores, not having folks in their stores with good attitudes, and that was because they never really even tried to take care of their own people. If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you're taking care of the people in the stores. That's the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart's success."

2. On capturing ideas

"Go in and check our competition. Check everyone who is our competition. And don't look for the bad. Look for the good. If you get one good idea, that's one more than you went into the store with and we must try to incorporate it into our company."

3. On ignoring others' opinions

"If we fail to live up to somebody's hypothetical projection for what we should be doing, I don't care."

4. On Sam Walton himself

"When Sam feels a certain way, he is relentless. He will just wear you out. Week after week after week—until finally everybody capitulates and says, well, it's easier to do it than to keep fighting this fight. I guess it could be called management by wearing you down [MBWYD]."

5. On his employees

"I sure owe it to them to at least hear them out when they're upset about something. Partnership involves money—which is crucial to any business relationship—but it also involves basic human considerations, such as respect."

Why did Sam Walton succeed? Because he listened to himself, which most of us don't do. Because he ignored negativity from critics, which most of us also don't do. He parlayed his superior intuition and persistence into the largest discount retail empire in the world. A gift of business genius like Sam Walton's is one-of-a-kind, but we can all learn from his original philosophies and strategies as we work to turn our own dreams into reality.

How To Plan For A Crisis

Tom Harnish — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:00:00 -0400

From Tom Harnish:

Bad weather, a devastating earthquake and chemical or industrial accidents can cost you plenty—even put you out of business—if you aren't prepared. But properly handled, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put it.

Ultimately, a crisis can be an agent for change that leads to increased flexibility and adaptability, and can help reduce the impact of future crises. Planning for, and management of, a crisis is possible.

Crisis planning

Preparing for the unknown may sound like a futile exercise, but you need to plan for how you will continue to operate, or temporarily shutdown in an orderly way, regardless of the problem.

Systems: How will you keep automated systems operating, and create manual backups when you can’t?

Infrastructure: How will you maintain infrastructures ranging from electrical supply to supplier deliveries?

Public Relations: What is your public relations plan that communicates that you are aware, in control, and doing something?

For example, do you have a call ladder? You call two people, each of them calls two people, and in 10 steps, over a 1,000 people can be in personal contact. You can use the concept for employees, suppliers and even customers.

Training and simulation are keystones in disaster planning.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), American Red Cross, The national Center for Disaster Preparedness through Columbia University, and the Center for Disease Control all offer free disaster planning courses online.

Training isn’t enough, though. The maxim that “practice makes perfect” is true. Unless you test your plans, you really can’t be sure they’ll be effective.

NASA has a telework program, for example, that’s an integral piece of their Continuity of Operations plan. So periodically, they declare a simulated emergency and designated telecommuters sign in from home.

Crisis management

When the worst does happen, you have to manage both the actual problem and perceived problems. Communication can be either the solution or the problem.

When a murderer added cyanide to Tylenol capsules, killing seven, Johnson & Johnson pulled $100 million of product off shelves and their CEO appeared on TV to explain what they were doing. Sales quickly returned to pre-crisis levels.

On the other hand, when toxic gas escaped from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal India, communication breakdowns before, during and after the disaster only made matters worse. Crisis plans and emergency instructions were only available in English. Senior executives were put under house arrest and cut off when they arrived in India.

Management and staff blamed each other, records were changed in a massive coverup. Amazingly, sabotage was found as the probable cause, but popular reporting was allowed to ignore that “virtual certainty.” Twenty-five years later, the company is still struggling with repercussions including fines and even jail terms for two executives.

The bottom line: make communication a priority. Even when it's tempting to ignore phone calls while putting out the "figurative or literal" fire.

Crisis recovery

Properly handled, you can benefit from a crisis. Besides offering the opportunity for examination and change, a study by the University of Oxford found that post-crisis stock prices on average increased by 5 percent for the companies that were prepared. Companies that fumbled lost as much as 15 percent.

Good management can be more effective than insurance in mitigating the impact of a catastrophe. Your business shouldn't fail because Mother Nature is acting up or a man-made disaster occurs.

Create a crisis management plan that’s appropriate for your organization. Test it. Refine it. Communicate it. And use it when the time comes, because it will come. Even as this is written, there’s another hurricane headed for the East Coast.

5 Ways To Turn Free Speaking Into Paid Business

John Jantsch — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:30:00 -0400

From John Jantsch:

Getting in front of an audience hungry for just the kind of information you’re the expert at providing might be today’s best selling opportunity. Throw in the fact that you can reach audiences virtually using Web technology and you’ve got the makings for a lead generation tool that can’t be ignored.

The key, of course, is to make your time on stage as valuable to your business goals as it is to the audience in attendance. You won’t get asked back if you simply pitch your wares.

Here are five tips to help you turn your free speaking into business without turning off the audience or the host.

1. Think about sponsor’s needs

You can create your own workshop events, but one of my favorite strategies is to approach two potential groups and offer to present great information to their clients and networks at the same time. The key here is that you have a topic that is very hot and seen as very valuable. This is not a sales presentation, it’s an education and value add tool.

Approach your two partners with the idea that you’ll present a great topic, they co-host the event and offer it to their customers. One of the most attractive aspects of this approach is that both hosts get to cross promote to each others attendees as part of the deal. You simply get referred in as the expert. (Every time you do this, you will get asked to speak at an event one of the attendees is involved with as well.)

2. Sell the free too

Even though you are willing to do these events for free, you are a highly sought after speaker willing to waive your fee only if they permit you to elegantly reveal that there is a way for attendees to acquire your products and services and that you will also be offering free stuff in exchange for contact information of those interested in the free stuff.

Make it known that you have no intention of selling, merely informing. This approach raises the value of your presentation and gets you what you need as a lead generation opportunity. This can be a deal breaker for you or the sponsor. If you over-promote, don’t expect to get asked back—if they won’t allow you to acquire leads, don’t accept the invitation.

3. Don’t hold back

Don’t be afraid to give away all of your secrets. Some folks suggest you should just tell them what they need—not how to get it done. I don’t agree. If you tell them how, some may think they can do it themselves, but those who really want what you have will realize through your specific details, how tos and examples that you do indeed possess the knowledge and tools to help them get what they want. Educate and you won’t have to sell!

4. Offer some bait

In some cases, people will rush up to you after a thought provoking presentation and ask how they can buy. But in case they don’t, make sure you give all attendees a valuable reason to share their contact information for the purpose of follow-up. You can offer them the slides to your presentation, a free resource guide related to your topic, or a more detailed report based on the topic, in exchange for business cards. If you don’t have this preplanned, you’ll find you won’t get a second chance to wow these folks.

It should go without saying that you should also have a follow-up process. Write a hand-written note, add them into a pre-written drip e-mail campaign on the topic, or call them up after the event to measure their engagement.

5. Don’t hide the candy

When I first started speaking in the manner I’ve described here, I would pour my heart out, mindful of not selling, and then come to the end and there would be an awkward moment when I knew people wanted to buy something, but I didn’t have an offer.

If you provide great information and a clear road map to solve someone’s problems, you’ll often find them wanting you to reveal how they can take the next step. But here’s the key: in that environment, they want a deal for acting right now.

Not every audience or speaking engagement will present this opportunity, but I’ve found that in a straight free speaking gig—where I’ve been given permission to introduce my products and services—being prepared to do so is a good idea.

Image credit: jwyg

“Shop Small” Resonates With Local Consumers

American Express OPEN — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 09:00:00 -0400

From American Express OPEN:

According to the Small Business Saturday Consumer Pulse from American Express OPEN, consumers are realizing the value small businesses bring to their communities and the economy. Thanks in part to initiatives like Small Business Saturday—a day to support the small, independently owned businesses we can’t live without—consumers are “shopping small” to support their local economies.

Small business sentiment on the rise

According to the survey based on July 2011 data, 89 percent of consumers surveyed said they believe that small businesses contribute positively to their local communities. Ninety-three percent said they believed it’s important for people to support the small businesses they value in their community. Additionally, 87 percent responded that small business success is a critical element of overall U.S. economic health.

Nearly half of those surveyed indicated they thought the strength of the small business economy is the same or better than five years ago.

Spending locally

The study also demonstrates that consumers are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to spending at local small businesses. On average, 33 percent of their monthly discretionary spending is spent at locally-owned, independent businesses, with just over $100 per month spent at their favorite store.

When asked to choose the primary reason for shopping at a small business, consumers largely cited the familiarity as being important. Twenty-three percent chose “The people that work there are friendly and greet me by name,” while 22 percent selected, “The people that work there know me and make recommendations of products and services they think I will like” as their reasons for shopping small.

Taking the pulse on “buying local”

The American Express OPEN Small Business Saturday Consumer Pulse—an online survey of 1,000 consumers ages 18 and older, reporting customer perception of locally-owned, independent stores—reveals the impact small businesses have on local communities and examines consumer spending trends. The survey was conducted by Echo Research from July 26 – July 29, 2011. Breakdowns by age and gender for certain questions are provided.

For key findings from the survey, download the American Express OPEN Small Business Saturday Consumer Pulse Fact Sheet.

Shop small on small business saturday

More than a hundred advocacy, public and private organizations are joining American Express OPEN in declaring the Saturday after Thanksgiving as Small Business Saturday. This year, Small Business Saturday is November 26, 2011.

Design Inspiration: 7 Galleries Of Excellent E-Commerce Sites

Jacob Gube (Mashable) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:30:00 -0400

From Jacob Gube (Mashable):

Have you ever contemplated the expansion of your small business through the launch of an online store? The first phase of any new venture, big or small, is to generate initial ideas and scope out what's already out there. Having a good vision of your soon-to-be e-store at hand will help you communicate better with your designer. Knowing what's possible will also allow you to determine your desired outcomes.

When it comes to website design, one of the best and easiest ways to get ideas and inspiration is to browse through Web design galleries, which are sites that aggregate and present beautiful websites.

Below, you will find seven Web design galleries that feature excellent, high-quality e-commerce website designs. At the end, I've also included a brief list of articles and papers about e-commerce design that you should read to equip yourself with some fundamental knowledge, should you choose to pursue the creation of your own online store.

1. ecommr

This website catalogs excellent e-commerce user interface designs. If you would like to see various interface components, such as designs of product pages and add-to-cart buttons, check out this top-notch gallery. There's an index for website properties such as "banners" and "navigation" so you can quickly find inspiration for specific sections of your site.

2. CartFrenzy

CartFrenzy is a website gallery that only features first-class e-commerce Web designs. To help visitors navigate and browse through the site, designs are conveniently categorized into industries like Fashion/Clothing, Office Supplies and Travel. The site is maintained by top Web design blogger Steven Snell of Vandelay Design Blog.

3. Cart Craze

Cart Craze, a Web design gallery that's been in existence for less than a year, is steadily building a big and beautiful collection. They regularly update their collection, posting 14 to 23 new designs a month. Look at the site's top rated e-commerce sites, a gallery view of websites that have garnered the most user votes.

4. eCommerce Gallery

This site, which has been up since 2008 (a millennium in Internet time), presents top-quality e-commerce Web designs to help get your creative juices flowing. The website is managed and owned by James Paden, an e-commerce specialist with more than ten years of Web design and development experience.

5. Shop websites (siteInspire)

SiteInspire, a Web design gallery site, has a special section that features only beautiful and high-quality online stores. The site is operated by Kulor, a small Web design and development consultancy firm located in London.

On the right sidebar, you can select a category (greyscale, organic, etc.), type (corporate site, promotional, etc.), or theme (architecture, education, etc.) to locate e-commerce examples that will be most relevant to you.

6. eCommerce Collection (Pattern Tap)

Pattern Tap, an interface design gallery website, has a collection featuring e-commerce-related designs contributed by the site's users. Inspirational items in the collection include specific e-commerce interface components, such as site navigation and buttons to full screenshots of excellently designed product pages.

7. E-Commerce CSS Gallery (StyleTheWeb)

This section on CSS Web design gallery site StyleTheWeb has a few wonderful e-commerce web designs. Online e-commerce websites that have made it into this design gallery range from Web hosting services to e-mail marketing Web apps.

Here are five articles and papers related to ecommerce design that could help you design and build an excellent e-commerce site:

15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design: Smashing Magazine, a premier design blog, has an article discussing errors commonly found in existing online stores.

Shopping Cart Design: Improved User Interaction Lead To Conversions: If you're wondering how important your e-store's design is, read this case study that discusses how an online store managed to increase sales by 94 percent through site design improvement.

Hidden Secrets of the Amazon Shopping Cart: A popular model for many e-stores is Amazon.com because the site is remarkably successful. This article investigates the design of Amazon.com's shopping cart.

10 Absentee UX Features on Top e-Commerce Sites: This article is based on findings of a study conducted on 100 e-commerce websites.

E-commerce User Interface Design for the Web: This academic paper provides suggestions for designing e-commerce user interfaces.

Are You Funding A Business Or A Lifestyle?

PAMELA BAUER — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:15:00 -0400

From PAMELA BAUER:

In my 15 years of serving the small business community in Rochester, New York, I've seen a lot of business owners come and go. The ones who are successful have a strong understanding of their own capacity for growth and the ability to outsource the job if necessary. It's important to honestly assess your goals. Denial is dangerous; if not for your checkbook, then definitely for your health.

Here are four signs that you are funding a lifestyle rather than a business.

1. Your goal is to be the boss

If allowing others to take the helm—the way the founders of Dell and Apple did—is not a comfortable option for you, then chances are good that you should stay a lifestyle business. Consultants are more apt to be successful on their own (or with a small staff) because they are so personally involved in their product...them! They really do need to be their own boss. And they need the flexibility a lifestyle business gives them.

2. You feel stuck

If you have been trying to increase your sales for several years to no avail, you are probably the wrong person for the job. This doesn’t mean you can’t grow, it just means you aren’t going to be the one to drive that growth. A client of mine who was a licensed electrician believed that if she could get a government contract and become a preferred vendor for the local schools, she could become a general contractor, spend less time doing the electrical work and still make a lot of money. Implementation required her to take on a significant amount of debt, which she spent hiring employees and buying equipment. By the time she realized her lifestyle wasn’t conducive to a big, cumbersome company, she was filing for bankruptcy. Had she stayed at the level of a subcontractor and maintained as a lifestyle business, she would have fared much better.

3. You are a micromanager

Get honest here. If you have to be involved in all areas of your business and firmly believe that "If you want something done well, you have to do it yourself," then you're probably a micromanager. You will drive yourself and your employees crazy if you try to grow too big without some kind of help. You may need to bring on a partner or hire a CEO with a history of taking companies to the next level.

4. You need concrete evidence before you can make a business decision

Growing means being able to implement resources based on assumptions about a future event. If you get the assumptions wrong when you are small, it is easier to readjust, but as you get bigger, so do the consequences of not getting it right. You need confidence and faith in the abstract to go forward.

One of my clients owns an manufacturing company, and a few years back he expanded his business. This expansion required him to bring on more people, incur more debt and make more of a time commitment. He wasn’t able to visualize his company scaled up, so he kept doing things the same way he had when he was small. Fortunately, he quickly realized that having some personal time and financial freedom was what he desired and a bigger company wasn’t working for him. So he scaled back and now has exactly what he enjoys: a business that sustains just enough revenue and employees to maintain his lifestyle.

Most successful transitions are made by founders who recognize that the very qualities that got their companies to this level won’t take them to the next—qualities like risk-taking or having a strong ego. These very qualities that gave you the gumption to start your company can turn nonconstructive once you hit a certain size. Business owners either give up some control over their life, or stay a lifestyle business. And, in the end, they live the life they were really dreaming of all along.

OPEN Cardmember Pamela R. Bauer, E.A. is the President/CEO of Abacus & Co of NY Inc., an accounting and business consulting company out of Rochester, New York, specializing in small business .