At the end of the first few months, I would end up with less than $50 dollars in my bank account.  Reality woke me up when I almost had to borrow some money from a friend to make ends meet one month.  So much for having the world figured out!  My “living the dream” was fast becoming a “nightmare.”  Out of necessity, I started to focus on my personal finances.

Two years later I had cut my rent to 6% of my pre-tax salary and my new apartment building had a gym, a door-man and was 1 block away from the subway station.  My bank account balance never got down to $50 dollars at the end of the month again.  Now, I was much closer to living the dream!

As leaders in early stage businesses, we constantly have to evaluate the return on investment (ROI) of our decisions.  Do we invest in online vs offline advertising, do we invest in branding vs technology, do we invest for the short term or long term, etc.  Every decision we make for our business is scrutinized as pros and cons are weighed.  Why then, do we find it so difficult to translate that thinking to our own personal financial lives?

The ROI of my personal spending decisions was killing me.  Once reality hit, I started treating my personal finance decisions like business decisions. This involved scrutinizing my spending habits like they were investment projects – what was the expected financial and happiness return for the spend.  Slowly but surely, I dug myself out of the hole and returned to financial stability.

The first step was focusing on compounding returns.

A healthy portion of my discretionary spend was based around after-work drinks which I had convinced myself were good from a networking point of view.  Doing some quick math one night I realized that it was more like a one time project that only yielded the pain and suffering of a hang-over the next morning.  In fact, most of the networking occurred during the first hour if at all – after that things went down hill.  So I found discretionary spending projects that had compounding returns – like cooking classes, which continue to pay off every single night.  This way less money was spent while yielding greater returns over the long haul.

The second step was focusing on auxiliary costs.

I had a good idea of how much I was spending on activities, but not how much I was spending on the supporting activities.  For example – A trip to the driving range cost $30 dollars, which was easy to slot away in my head as not overly expensive.  However, as I slowly focused on the auxiliary costs, I realized that I was spending money on lots of other things while I was there … renting a few golf clubs, buying an extra buckets of balls, enjoying some lunch, as well as spending the next week fantasizing about playing a great deal more golf.  All of a sudden, it wasn’t just $30 that were spent at the driving range, it was closer to $100.  Yikes – I was severely undervaluing the cost of that one activity.  Sadly, it was the same with a great deal of other activities.  Taking into account the total cost really made a difference.

The third step was focusing on the time horizon from investment.

Slowly I realized that it was important to focus on how much time the pleasure could be enjoyed.  While I loved spending $5 dollars at Starbucks on a Friday treat, the joy only lasted about 30 minutes.  However, I could get the same amount of enjoyment from buying a $5 dollar e-book from Amazon and spend a full week reading it.  Now instead of a having a Friday treat, I had a weekly treat!

Focusing on these three steps definitely helped me focus on the ROI of my personal finances as well as bringing more stability to my life.  My advice would be, start by focusing on one aspect of your spending and go for the small wins.  Slowly but surely, just like interest rates, the benefits will accrue naturally.

Sebastian Gutierrez is the co-founder and CTO of LetsWombat.com.  Outside of his day job of connecting brands with event audiences, he loves to explore NYC food spots, art galleries, and help fellow entrepreneurs succeed.  Follow him on Twitter here.

It’s no secret that human beings are creatures of habit and that we operate the majority of our life on somewhat of an autopilot. We are often consciously unaware that we are doing the same things, thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same emotions that we did yesterday, last week and often times, last year.  I read recently that we are having as many as 60,000 thoughts per day and up to 95% of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday.  Is this really a surprise??  So, how do we counter balance the inevitable sameness of our daily routines caused by habitual patters and repetitiveness in our lives?

One solution I’ve used effectively is to have an accountability partner.

An accountability partner is a person who holds you accountable for DOING what you know you have to do to get the new things that you want in your life.  For those of you who used to go to work for someone else there was an accountability to your employer; they ensured that you showed up everyday to do your job.  They didn’t personally care whether or not you did because if you didn’t you’d probably have been fired and they would have found someone else who would show up to do the job.  An accountability partner works in much the same way as did your employer.  You have a job to do, you know what it is, when it starts, what the requirements and expectations are; they simply hold you accountable,  ensuring that you do what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it.  You still have to do all the hard work.

But when you do the work, you get the results – hallelujah!!

Here’s a quick guide for Accountability Partner Success:

- not personally attached to any of your results (no spouses, parents, best friends or pets)

- willing to enforce consequences (you set your own consequences) for not fulfilling obligations

- supportive and encouraging (they need to understand the “why” behind personal development and growth)

Do what you’ve never done. Get what you’ve never got!

Heather White is a business development advisor who helps clients strike the sweet spot between grounded self-care and accelerated profitability. A sought-after speaker and trainer, Heather travels throughout North America injecting vital energy into companies with a vigorous drive for expansion.

1. Dropbox

This powerful product ends the challenge of storing and syncing files and documents on different devices and computers. The free offering comes with 2GB of space, with paid plans for a fee.

2. Google Docs & Apps

Allows you to create and collaborate on documents that you can access anywhere. If you have a business, your e-mail address needs to end with @YOURDOMAIN.com which you can do for free through Google Apps.

3. Evernote

Great for taking notes and drafting blog posts. Keep everything you need in one place and access it from anywhere. The platform also comes with powerful apps so you can take it on the go.

4. HARO

Find reporters who are looking for certain information & quotes for stories in your field that you can help them with. If the reporter likes your information there is a good chance you will get featured in their story. There are hundreds of opportunities each day!

5. Quora

A well done and extremely comprehensive Q&A site where you will find answers from high-level entrepreneurs, ceo’s and executives. Of course you can ask your own questions and provide answers too!

6. Google Alerts

Set up alerts to monitor your business, your industry, your name or anything else. Great way to find out if anyone is talking about you or your business. This is a must so you can respond to any criticisms, customer complaints or thank someone for a great write-up of your business.

7. Free Conference Call

Use this free tool to attend and hold conference calls, webinars and more for free. You can easily collaborate with clients, employees or business partners. One of the best features is the free built in recording capabilities which allows you to save and reproduce the material for whatever you need.

8. Square

An easy way to accept credit cards right on your iPhone, iPad or iTouch. The app is free and you pay per transaction just like you would through paypal. There is no easier way to accept credit card payments on the go for your business.

9. Twitter Chats

If you are an entrepreneur one of the premier tools for personal branding and networking we have available to us is Twitter. One of the best ways to utilize this tool is through organized online discussions with other people on Twitter surrounding certain topics or hashtags called twitter chats.

10. Hootsuite

A must for small business owners who are active on social media. Manage accounts like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Facebook and more all in one place. If you’re logging into each of your accounts individually then you are wasting valuable time each day!

11. Skype

Call or video chat with anyone else in the world who also has Skype for free. A must for doing international business in this growing global economy.

12. Mailchimp

A great way to build and manage your email list which is crucial for small businesses online. Your email list is usually your most valuable and important customers or readers. . You can use it for free for your first 2,000 subscribers to your email list.

13. Tumblr or WordPress

Two of the most powerful blogging platforms out there. With most small businesses running blogs today you will find they probably use one of these platforms for it. Tumblr is as simple as it gets while wordpress is more powerful but also requires more customization.

14. SCORE templates

Find business plan forms, financial templates, contract samples/templates and more. You can even ask a question to a local, volunteer mentor right through the website. SCORE has locations around the country and is a non-profit helping small business get the answers and resources they need.

15, Google Analytics

Analyze and monitor how visitors use and engage your website. Everything is customizable and it’s all free!

16. Doodle

Doodle eliminates the chaos of scheduling and saves you a lot of time and energy when you’re trying to find a time to bring a number of people together.  Instead of using just one option, Doodle enables you to propose several dates and times and the participants can indicate their availability online.

17. Wave Accounting

Wave is a 100% free (not just a free trial version) accounting app made for small business owners and freelancers. This free alternative to applications like Quickbooks, allows you to create and send professional invoices, track expenses, create reports, and eliminate accounting headaches.

18. Freshbooks

You can keep your time and expenses organized, send professional branded invoices, and even collect online payments by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck. It offers a free version with limited features that you can use forever.

19. Appointy

Schedule appointments, accept pre-payments, send reminder alerts, update personal calendars, offer discount coupons and more. There’s a free version with limited allowable appointments.

20. Remember the Milk

With this free tool, you can manage tasks from anywhere – via your desktop, your phone, etc. And it integrates with your Google Calendar so you’ll never forget the milk or anything else on your To Do list.

21. Mint

Don’t forget to get your own personal finances in order! Mint brings all your financial accounts together online or on your mobile device, automatically categorizes your transactions, lets you set budgets and helps you achieve your savings goals.

What free tools do you use in your small business?

Communication via text message is now so common that it can seem that we text more often than we talk. This goes for any age group, but is especially widespread among a younger generation of teens and twenty-somethings. Texting is now such a routine form of communication that we can easily engage in another activity while simultaneously sending off a quick message or finalizing plans with a friend. The ubiquity and immediacy of texting, however, opens a new debate of what is rude and what is acceptable. If a friend expects you to answer her text as soon as you receive it, wouldn’t it be considered rude if you don’t answer right away? Even if you choose not to respond promptly, shouldn’t you read the text to make sure it’s not an urgent matter? When reading and sending text takes such a short amount of time, it can be hard to simply ignore.

These questions demand extra scrutiny when in the context of dining. With these expectations, one might feel caught between two potentially rude situations: disregarding messages that would normally merit a prompt response, or brushing off friends or family at the table to check a text or a call in the middle of a meal. Another component that could justify phones at dinner is if fellow diners find it acceptable, and who also might be checking messages or reviewing calls.

Regardless of the number of reasons at hand to justify phones at the table, boundaries must be maintained. Above all, it disrupts the experience of face-to-face, real time contact between those we dine with, whether or not the value of this connection is fully understood or acknowledged. If we continue to justify the constant need to check our cell phones, respond immediately to messages, update our Facebook and Twitter status, or other online functions that require immediate attention, we risk increasingly dividing our focus until we are only halfway present in our real-life experiences. We accelerate the depletion of true engagement with and awareness of our surroundings when we have no boundaries for when and where we can use our phones.

Not to mention, bringing a cell phone to the table is still a rude gesture, whether at home or in a restaurant. The presence of a cell phone tells those you are with that they are less important than an incoming call or text, and that you are unwilling (or unable) to give them your full attention. At a restaurant, it is disruptive to diners at surrounding tables to hear a phone buzzing or ringing, or a voice loudly answering. It is disrespectful to the restaurant staff, who work hard to create an ambiance and experience for all diners, only to have it unsettled and unacknowledged by the distraction of cell phones.

There are few moments every day when we are disconnected from technology or unreachable by phone. Because of this perpetual connectivity, I think it is becoming increasingly more important to deliberately step away from the constant updates and incoming information streaming into our phones. As challenging as it can be to switch off for more than a few minutes, exercising those boundaries are key to maintaining our authentic, genuine relationships.

As President and founder of Corporate Class Inc., Diane has been on a 30-year journey as an image management expert. Diane has garnered international acclaim working with the who’s who in the business world. She has consulted with political leaders and celebrities, prepped guests of Royal families and prepared attendees of the G20 summit.  

Automated workflow series brought to you by:

Part 1: Success Sooner: Automated Workflows Help You Focus

Part 2: Success Sooner: Get Rid of Routine Work and Increase your Income

Part 3: Success Sooner: Solving ‘Crispy Stories’ Caused by Collaboration Problems

“It could be anything,” — a VP, the first time he saw a graphical automated workflow

So far in this series, we’ve defined workflow automation, examined some use cases, and discussed how to choose the right tool. In this final installment, we’ll expand the use case idea to show how specific uses actually derive from over-arching ideas. For example, a vacation request is really a change request, and so any workflow that you’ve designed for change requests will also define the process when one of your people just needs a couple of days off.

Your organization might have some “departments,”  but there are business activities that need to happen across every work area. One such activity is a finance process. A typical finance process includes several steps:

1. Setting parameters of need
2. Determining initial budget
3. Obtaining bids
4. Choosing a vendor
5. Writing up Scope of Work (SOW) (often with a  revisit to budget and parameters steps)
6. Getting the SOW approved (often by legal counsel in addition to management)
7. Generating/paying a Purchase Order
8. Having the work performed
9. Evaluating Return on Investment (ROI)
10. Capturing learning for next finance decision (next year, next project, etc.)

This same activity flow could happen within the IT team, when they need to purchase systems tools and/or services; within the HR team, when they are evaluating health insurance plans; or within the Marketing team, when they are setting up campaigns with various outlets. There is almost always a step for asking about budget, a step for consulting with legal, a step for running things through accounting, and so on, with typical bottlenecks along the way, such as CFO approval or running finalized deals through a finance committee.

Smart companies (lean, competitive ones who want to do more than push contracts around a desk all day and actually meet their business objectives) figure out a way to reduce friction in these duplicated processes. One of the most effective ways to reduce friction and achieve success sooner, is to automate some of this routine work.

If you were to spend an afternoon carefully thinking through exactly how your firm’s finance process works (see earlier posts for detailed questions to ask), you could design one workflow that could be deployed in any department. You’d have everything on one instance (no multiple solutions silo’d within departments), and everyone could work from the same data. This last bit becomes critical once you move past the “start-up” phase and need to document past funding allocations, respond to a compliance inquiry, or simply ensure that you are making sound financial decisions with solidly demonstrated ROI. With the right workflow in place, your teams could

• Address hidden bottlenecks;
• Know (explicitly) tasks and priorities, especially as things change;
• Streamline workflow processes; and
• Plan for accountability and audit trails.

Notice how the following workflow takes into consideration a sequence of tasks that are not necessarily department-specific.

As I mentioned before, a vacation request is really just a change request. Take a look at the following to see how this is true.

How could you design a similar workflow that could fit across your entire organization?

See the solution as a diagram, a flow, a computed process, so that when you are finished creating it, it actually goes to work for you automatically generating tasks, keeping track of their status and moving things along the queue.

If you are ready to try a workflow automation tool, here is one we liked. You can download the 30-day fully-functional trial of Comindware Tracker and see what it can do for you.

Download Comindware Tracker free trial

In an effort to figure out what exactly you want to learn during your download, the folks at Comindware are offering a prize to one of the first 10 people who leave a comment. The prize: premium online support with a 30-minute live online consultation so you can figure out what kind of workflow you need, and how to build it.

About the author: Kamille Nixon writes about how growing businesses solve their problems with tools built on a variety of types of databases, both graphical and relational. One of her articles made #5 of Information Management’s Top 10 Stories of 2011 .

All my life I have been an entrepreneur. It’s something that runs in my family. It’s a mentality. A drive. It’s wanting the most out of life and creating something.

I have always said that I wanted to be a millionaire by age 30. I don’t know…it’s just one of those things I’ve always talked about with my two older brothers who have always challenged me in the healthiest of ways. I think everyone needs that push…but it has to come from a good place. You will encounter enough people in your life that, although they might say they want the best for you and wish you the best of luck, there’s an underlying sentiment there that they really don’t…that’s just the truth. Hopefully, you have more positive than negative people surrounding you in your life. This will likely play a major role in your life–both business and personal.

Five months ago I lost one of the most important people in my life. You might say the most important person in my life. The person that brought me into this world, my mother. I think most of my hard work and steadfast dedication came from her, in fact, I’m sure it did. Don’t get me wrong, my father is extremely hard working and if I had to choose a father, I’d surely always pick him. But my mother, throughout her years, led by example.

I can’t put 29 years of my whole journey into an article but I will list the most important lessons I have learned as an entrepreneur that can hopefully help those of you who are trying to start a business and be ‘successful.’ As you read some of these reflections you may say to yourself, “Oh, yeah, I knew that.” And that’s great. I’m not pretending to be the voice of any new secrets to success or anything you haven’t heard of before. This is just my personal experience and lessons learned. While many of us entrepreneurs face similar experiences on our journeys, we can also say the same for how different some of our journeys are in building our businesses.

My name is Pablo Palatnik and I am the CEO of ShadesDaddy.com, currently one of the largest internet retailers of sunglasses in the world.

For the past 12 years or so I have been obsessed with selling things online. I remember being pretty broke in college working in a thrift store. I remember sorting through the incoming merchandise and thinking, “Hmmm…why are these Diesel jeans selling here for $7? I bet I can sell them for more.” So what did I do? I started buying them myself and selling them on eBay. Within a month I had a nice little business. I had that eBay account set up with my parents’ address in Miami and remember getting a call from my father asking me what I was doing because I had so many checks in the mail. I told him what I was doing…they were so proud. My parents thought it was a great idea.

I have many stories like that but that’s not what I’m here to write. I have started so many businesses…I couldn’t name them all. SOMETIMES, FAILURE WILL TEACH YOU MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE. It’s 1am on a Monday and I just got back from what I deem a real successful day. Not because of anything regarding my business (in a monetary sense,) but because of what I actually did today, which is what most entrepreneurs dream of when they start their business. FREEDOM TO DO WHAT YOU WANT, WHEN YOU WANT.

Do What You Love – Love What You Do

Cliche, right? It’s true. This may be THE cardinal rule of true success. For one, it should never feel like ‘work.’ I can’t remember the last time I woke up and said, “I don’t want to ‘work’ today.” I’m addicted to what I do. While some may call it being a ‘workaholic’, then I think if those people enjoyed what they do as much as I enjoy building my business, they would better understand.

You Don’t Know Everything

While you may start to build a business and it actually begins to work, don’t think that you’ve become a superstar and mr. know it all (or mrs.) Some may say I’m a stubborn person, and maybe I am…I have a strong mindset about how I feel about certain things and how they should be done. But guess what? I’m not Mr. know it all. I don’t have all the answers my business needs. Feedback is crucial to building a business, which leads to my next lesson.

Build a Good Team Around You

If you think one person builds a company, you’re wrong…oh boy are you wrong. A company is built by a team of people. If you want to build a good strong organization, then you need strong players. Think of your company as a sports team. Who wins? Those who have the best players that PLAY AS A TEAM (OK, scratch tennis from your mind though.) While that team needs a game plan to win, they are the people that will execute, and depending on who you have on your team, the outcome of the execution will be determined.

Plan and Strategize

Every company needs a game plan to keep moving forward. It must analyze data and really put a plan together so that you, as an entrepreneur can map out and guide yourself with. I currently plan what I will do tomorrow, the rest of the week, the rest of the year and the next two years or so to keep focused and have my own game plan. While of course things change, it creates a picture in your mind and gets you ready for what you need to do.

Let the Numbers Guide You – But It’s Not All About Numbers

I can’t begin to tell you how many times ‘they’ve’ (a number of people,) have sat me down to analyze our numbers, our bottom line. Profits, profits, profits, right? This is a business. At the end of the day, the numbers have to make sense in order for the company to keep moving forward. YOU WANT A HEALTHY BOTTOM LINE. This is what can determine if you can sell your company, if you can get investors interested in your company or frankly, the numbers can and most likely will determine if you stay in business. I’m not a numbers guy. I never was and may never be, although in my current position, you have to understand balance sheets & profit and loss statements. You have to understand a lot more than that.

My concern however, and mentality, has never been about what the numbers look like in terms of profits. They have always been about understanding the value of building a brand. How many people are visiting our website compared to last month? What about compared to 6 months ago? What about one year ago? How do our sales compared to last month? To a year ago? you get the point…IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT GROWTH. Are we growing in some core key metrics (that I consider to be core key metrics)? If we are…then we’re in good shape. It’s not just about numbers, but a number of different things that determine if you’re building a successful company.

Establish Good Relationships / Partnerships

You’ll learn and understand that without good partners, providers, whatever you want to call them, your business won’t reach its full potential. Working with companies (or individuals) who really like working with you, for you, etc, can make all the difference in the world.

There’s a saying that goes it’s not what you know but who you know. That may be true, and I think many times it is. But I also think it’s not just about who you know, but who you meet and what type of relationship you build with them.

Find a Mentor

This is something I’ve recently learned from one of my best friends who is also an entrepreneur. I have spent the past few months talking to him everyday about business, life, etc. I’ve learned a lot from talking to him about basic business principles to advances business principles.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Jerry Maguire. I think I have watched that movie over 30 times already? No joke. I think that movie hits on all aspects of life (I guess not death.)

For some odd reason the character ‘Dickey Fox’ really stuck with me. Sometimes I even say my mentor is the LATE GREAT DICKEY FOX as a joke. But I can’t tell you how many times I went to YouTube to found the short clips of what Jerry Maguire (the character) thought about in times of needs. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about.

In Conclusion

For privacy reasons, I can’t disclose the financials of my company nor will I disclose my personal finances.

I can tell you I’ve never been happier in my life and it’s not just about money, but success and the freedom that comes with it that is the most satisfying. I wake up every morning and I love what I do. I love going to my office, drinking my morning coffee and starting the day ready to kick ass, ready to think about ways to beat our competitors. The sense of accomplishment fulfills in incredible ways. Although the past few months of my life have been the hardest (dealing with a sick parent with Cancer,) they’ve taught me some of the most important lessons in life. Enjoy life. It’s short. Give everything to your work and it can give everything back to you.

Bio: Pablo Palatnik is the CEO of ShadesDaddy.com, one of the largest internet retailers of name brand sunglasses online which started in 2007. Follow on twitter @PabloPalatnik

Reason #1: Competitive advantage

Your brand is the public face of your business.  As the economic climate changes, it must change along with it.  A well planned and executed rebrand will enable your company to reflect current market dynamics and thereby gain competitive advantage, accelerate pipeline performance and become a leading voice of the industry.  Sidestep the competition and increase your market share through an updated image.  By revisiting your brand messaging, you can counter a loss in consumer confidence and/or decreased profitability.

Reason #2: Stimulate growth

Rebranding can serve to reduce the cost of operation and to cater more efficiently to current customer demands.  In markets where complex and confusing mixes of product portfolios frequently undermine brand impact via advertising clutter and media proliferation, a rebrand can combat incongruence and audience fragmentation to regain customer impact and promote growth.  As the company continues to grow, subsequent rebranding will ensure that customers hungry for change will keep coming back to see “what’s new.”  In this sense, the rebrand becomes a public expression of the company’s evolution and a constant check to potential outgrowth.

Reason #3: Long terms market expansion

When a small business prospers and expands, they and/or their products frequently require a rebrand or revitalization to reflect the larger, more sophisticated business it has become.  Any emergent company not employing this essential business strategy will inevitably be dwarfed by its competition. The modest brand offerings typical of the small company and its contingent budget restrictions will ultimately prove inadequate as that company grows and evolves.  However, budding economic prosperity and subsequent operational expansion are not the only facets of business growth and evolution that necessitate revitalization and rebranding.

Reason #4: Innovation = Profitability

Just as a company’s brand must reflect changes in size and market position, it must also reflect changes in technological innovation.  Constantly evolving at an exponential rate, technology and business prosperity are often inseparable from one another.  Any brand associated with technology or technological advancement, must keep pace with the industry of which it is a part.  Therefore, tech-dependent businesses, such as those associated with the internet or with computer hardware or software, might need to consider more frequent revitalization and rebranding.  If a company’s production line is subject to a constant, rapid rate of change, the wise owner and/or manager will subsequently revitalize his or her brand at a commensurate rate.  Again, your brand is the public face of your business.  When it fails to reflect the level of innovation your business has achieved, your customers will quite naturally assume that you have fallen behind the times.  Competitors who consistently rebrand their products and services—even those competitors who have yet to achieve your company’s level of technological acumen—will likely outperform you in terms of reputation and/or economic profitability.

Whatever your reason for rebranding—be it economic and operational expansion, technological innovation, or any other type of growth and/or change—your company’s brand must remain consistent with the latest and greatest your business has to offer.  Whether reflecting advancements in your product and/or service lines or the evolving nature of your business in and of itself, the process of rebranding is essential to communicate your level of quality to your audience of consumers. Furthermore, although taking the step to rebrand your business will, first and foremost, revitalize your consumer base, the change can also have quite a rejuvenating effect upon the internal culture of your company.  As your brand evolves to reflect new innovations in a constantly changing marketplace, your employees will inevitably be swept up in the momentum.  Launching a rebrand will call for new levels of worker support, knowledge and feedback, as well as affording them the opportunity to join in the creation of a new, positive business culture.  In this way, the process of rebranding not only brings the public face of your company in step with its internal machinations, but also, in turn, actively engages your management team and workforce to contribute to the new business culture that your new brand represents.

The business rebrand is about a great deal more than making your business look good. It’s about making your bottom line look good, too. So what is it that makes a company rebrand such a valuable proposition for your business? Please share your thoughts and comments.

Sookie Shuen is the community manager at Tomorrow People, a leading UK inbound marketing consultancy. She provides free advice and updates based on her experience of helping businesses evolve through a five step inbound marketing methodology. She manages all the online and digital community activities based around the Zoober Inbound Marketing philosophy. You can also find her on Google+ and Twitter.

Fast Company and Mercedes-Benz Sprinter want to find the brightest small or midsize businesses? that are looking to grow and have a plan for using a Sprinter van.

How:

Submit a :30-90 second video telling us about your business and how it could benefit from owning a Sprinter van. Our judges will select the business whose video presents the most compelling plan for using a Sprinter van to propel its overall business strategy. Submission deadline is May 31, 2012.

Prizes:

There’s more to know! Not only will our winner receive a brand new 2012 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, but will be featured in a video series promoting both Sprinter and the winning business. The winner will also receive a voucher worth $10,000 toward customizing the new van (all additional costs of customization are the winner’s responsibility).

Get the details and enter now!

Company Profile

When creating a company profile give a specific rundown of your offerings, purpose and company mission statement.

Create Your Own Group

LinkedIn Groups Are Virtual Trade Show Breakout Rooms

The power of LinkedIn Groups cannot be underestimated. Since every profession and discipline is represented at the virtual trade show that is LinkedIn, there is a need to have breakout rooms or separate sessions so that those with similar interests can come together for discussions and to share news on the topics that mutually interest them. At the time I wrote this, there were more than 730,000 groups on LinkedIn, with the most popular one having more than 320,000 members.

Functionality provided by LinkedIn Groups includes a discussions board, where it is possible to post a link to a web article of interest or simply engage in conversation. Through Groups, you can also do a member search and directly send a message to someone, provided they are using the default setting LinkedIn provides. In other words, by attracting your target demographic to your group, you can now directly engage with them regardless of your connectivity status.

How to Create an Effective LinkedIn Group

Before you think about creating a LinkedIn Group, you first need to create a mission statement that states who you’d like to attract and what your group will offer them.

Creating a LinkedIn Group is surprisingly simple, as is indicated by the sheer number of groups that exist. That being said, there is one very important thing to consider that will make or break your group: its name.

As a social networking site, no LinkedIn user wants to be sold to. Therefore, in the spirit of inbound marketing, the name of your group should NOT be your company name. On

Facebook or Twitter, it is wise to have a page or username that represents your company. On LinkedIn, however, you want to win the mindshare of your target audience and attract them to become members of your group. You can only do so by naming your group appropriately.

Once the name of your group is chosen, it is important to brand it in a way that will be attractive to the target audience, while maintaining consistency with your established look and feel.

How Promote Your LinkedIn Group to Earn Membership

Once you start a LinkedIn Group, what do you do next? It’s all about promotion, and that starts with introducing your community to relevant professionals in your own LinkedIn network. This is where you are already at an advantage if many of your employees are already established users with LinkedIn connections. Of course, your employees should only be introducing your group to those that are in your target demographic and would feel it is a valuable resource; otherwise, your innocent introduction of your group could be perceived as spam.

Using Your Other Social Media Assets to Promote Your LinkedIn Group

Promotion doesn’t and shouldn’t stop with just LinkedIn members: Once you begin to strategically engage in social media, you need to optimize your own website for social media. For the LinkedIn Group, it can be as simple as posting a logo and a link to your group in a prominent area of your website. In this way, your website visitors not only find out about your community, but they can also easily join it. If you have an email newsletter, don’t forget to feature your group’s logo there as well. An occasional tweet or Facebook post introducing your LinkedIn Group is another way to efficiently utilize social media to “advertise” your LinkedIn Group.

Jason Baudendistel is an Amazon #1 Bestselling Author, serial entrepreneur,Life coach,success coach, business coach, Linkedin consultant, and Internet marketing consultant.

This is especially true for those of us who don’t sell high-ticket items and cannot realistically compete using pay per click campaigns.

With that said, all of us who are reliant on Google as a source of income are probably well aware of a recent update to its algorithms known as, “The Panda Update.”

For those of you who aren’t familiar and plan on starting an SEO campaign in the future, The Panda Update is a series of algorithm changes Google has made that are designed to weed out all the bad sites on the internet, and only rank the sites that actually deserve to be ranked high!

Sounds great right?  Not necessarily.  In the past month sites from all over the world were bounced from the search engines, receiving penalties from Google, or losing high rankings.  Unfortunately, many of these people did not necessarily deserve this, and were the victims of performing SEO tactics that they may not have realized would get them into trouble.

Let’s face it; Google is cracking down on people that manipulate the search engines as best as they can, and they are only going to become more efficient with this as time passes on.

This means we must prepare and understand the rules of SEO if we wish to keep our sites ranked high and business flourishing.  The following rules are three guidelines you absolutely must follow if you wish to flourish in the post panda world:

1. Stay away from low quality links.

In the past, many people advanced in link building used programs such as Article Marketing Robot to build hundreds of links to hundreds of sites in a matter of minutes.  Linking to low quality blogs, directories, and sites that will post just about any link was a common practice. These days things have changed and Google is onto the game.  Sites that link to bad sites are a punishable offense in the post panda era and will have you losing rankings before you know it.  Focus on quality, not quantity!

2. Find quality sites that are in your niche.

We not only need to build quality links with high PR rankings, but we want to build high quality links that are in our niche.  For example, if I am a dating site, a high PR site in my niche would be receiving a link from Match.com.  In the post panda world Google is placing a bigger emphasis on this then ever.  In fact, one quality link from a major site with a good reputation will hold more value than hundreds of low quality links that aren’t in your niche.   Just think about it logically, if I am a dating advice website, and I am linked to Match.Com for an article I wrote, doesn’t it make sense that this link holds hundreds of times more value then if I were to link to hundreds of blogs or sites that are low quality which have nothing to do with dating?

3. Content, Content, Content.

Due to the fact that so many people over the years have manipulated the search engines by sending bad back links to their site, these days Google seems to be shifting back towards quality content as the most important aspect of a websites ranking.  It should be your goal to write information that is highly informative and provides a service to anyone landing on your website.  Nobody knows exactly how Google determines whether your content is quality or not, but you better believe it has algorithms in place to help make these decisions.  So update your blog and website at least twice a week with good, quality content, and you will find your rankings improving greatly over time.

When all is said and done, the game has changed a lot when it comes to SEO.   Cheating may provide a high jump in the short run, but in the end, the quality sites with great information are going to win out.  So stay white hat, and help yourself survive the post panda era!

Joshua Pompey is founder of the site therealonlinedatinggame.com.  If you want tons of free information on how to succeed at online dating, click online dating tips for men. Or learn free tips on how to create the perfect profile by clicking, online dating profile examples!