The Venture Edge

Why is it that most every business person I know has a regular old business card, you know, those 3 1/2 x 2 inch rectangular pieces of thick paper that we all like to give out to one another? I just grabbed a stack out of my drawer, and -- except for the colors, fonts, and arrangement of the design elements -- they're all pretty much the same. Senior Vice President at Umpqua Bank? Check. Associate Director of Sales at Hornblower Cruises and Events? Yup. Recruiting Manager at FortuneBuilders? Definitely.

This morning one of my clients sent me a really interesting open letter-to-the-editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine, Eric Schurenberg. Long story short, the writer of the letter -- Liza Kindred, founder and CEO of fashion consultancy Third Wave Fashion -- called Inc. magazine to task for its lack of women in the editorial pages of the magazine (everything but advertisements). According to Liza's assessment of the May 2013 issue: 

I just ran across an interesting video interview with the founder of live video broadcast site Livestream. In this interview, founder and CEO Max Haot discusses when he realized that the name he selected for his startup -- Mogulus -- was not a good one, and then what he did to select a new and then acquire the URL for his site (spoiler alert: it wasn't cheap!). 

Have you heard of Startup Weekend? Until a few days ago, I hadn't. But, based on just how big this thing is, I'm surprised that this is the case. 

It seems anytime anyone in Washington DC starts talking about the need to cut tax loopholes, the response is as immediate as it is impassioned: "But we can't do that -- it will hurt the Job Creators!" 

Crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com has been all the rage lately, but I have long suspected that the excitement (and the hype) has overtaken the reality. If you poke around these sites, you'll see some remarkable examples of companies doing extremely well pursuing their crowdfunding dreams. But look past those few examples which tend to be prominently displayed for all to see, and you'll find that the vast majority of these crowdfunding efforts don't do much at all. 

Prasad Kaipa and Navi Radjou are coauthors of the upcoming book From Smart to Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom (Jossey-Bass, April 2013). Kaipa is a CEO advisor and coach and a senior fellow at the Indian School of Business. Radjou is an independent strategy consultant and author of the NYT bestseller Jugaad Innovation. Prasad and Navi have agreed to write a blog post based on From Smart to Wise -- I hope you enjoy it. And be sure to check out the video at the end of the blog post.

I once had the pleasure of hanging out with Brad Feld for a bit in Boulder, Colorado when I was doing some work on one of start-up biz growth expert Jana Matthews' books. Brad is a very successful early stage technology investor and entrepreneur. I just noticed that Brad is running an interesting competition where he will select up to five entrepreneurs with innovative startups to live rent-free in his Kansas City house, which comes complete with the remarkable new Google Fiber Internet connection (which runs at a modem-melting 1 Gigabit per second -- about 100 times faster than what most Americans are able to conjure up on a good day. 

Since 2008, I have been working behind the scenes on a book about a little company by the name of Network Solutions, Inc (NSI -- the book will be published in May 2013). For much of the 1990s, NSI was the only seller of domain names -- all those .com, .org, and .net and other website addresses that make the Internet run. One of the best things about working on this project is that I had the opportunity to interview some of the early movers and shakers of the Internet -- men and women who played significant roles in its development and growth. One of those people is Esther Dyson, who served as the founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and was an early investor in dotcom businesses. Today she is an angel investor in a variety of start-ups, mostly in the areas of online services, health care/genetics, and space travel. 

In case you didn't get the memo, Daylight Savings Time is returning this weekend, and we're going to lose an hour from our already jam-packed lives. To help offset this loss, I was asked to come up with some ideas for ways to save an hour. These ideas were posted on the Inc. magazine online site this morning. Here are the first 11 -- to see the complete list of 24, you'll need to check out the article: 

I was recently browsing the Net and I ran across a listing in forbes.com of the 14 things successful people do on weekends. Intrigued, I decided to see if I was doing any of them myself, and if so, how many. Fortunately, the answers to these two questions were "Yes" and "More than 1." 

I have been watching the political gamesmanship surrounding the upcoming sequester of the federal budget with a mix of amusement and horror. Depending on who you believe, the sequester -- $1.2 trillion dollars in across-the-board budget cuts over 10 years, beginning with $85 billion this year -- is either going to be the trigger for our nation's next recession, or the best opportunity we have to move the country's government in the direction of fiscal responsibility and sanity. I am personally a member of the latter camp. 

Last week I was interviewed for the Money 101 show with Bob McCormick on KNX news radio in Los Angeles. When the producer contacted me before the show, he suggested I come up with a list of several simple tips for people who have a home-based business and are looking to improve it. I created my list and was ready to go when the interview started. As it turned out, Bob asked me to discuss just five of my tips, but here's my entire list of ten: 

One of the things I most enjoyed when I taught my class in Creativity and Innovation at San Diego State University a year ago was an assignment I gave to my students to invent some creative and innovative ideas for new products and services. Some of the resulting ideas were really great, and if my aspiring entrepreneurs put some time and money into them, I have no doubt that they could successfully take them to market. 

Usually when I post a new contest geared to small businesses, the prizes aren't bad, but probably not enough to make a huge difference in the success of failure of your business. However, the Dell Innovators Credit Fund is a different animal altogether. And if you're in charge of a fast-growing company that is in need of additional funding to fuel that growth, then the Dell Innovators Credit Fund might be right for you.

After my book Home-Based Business For Dummies was published a few years back, one of the most common questions I would get asked is this: "What business should I start?" While the question is a simple one, the answer is not so much. Why? Because it depends on a variety of things, including your own skills and passions, the amount of time (and money) you have available to devote to your new business, and the nature of the business itself. Some businesses by nature have the possibility of greater success than others. 

When I arrived home from meeting today with my Indian friend and colleague Prakash Idnani, there were two boxes from John Wiley & Sons waiting for me at my front door. When I saw the boxes, I immediately knew what was in them: my author's copies of my latest book, Writing Children's Books For Dummies 2nd Edition. While I know that the world is trending to ebooks, there's still something special about seeing your book in print (what in the trade is now often called a p-book), and getting to hold it in your hand. Not only that, but to me it's still far easier to flip through a hardcopy book and to mark it up, highlight favorite passages, and place little sticky notes wherever I need them. And last but not least, when I autograph a copy of one of my books for someone, it's a lot easier to sign a p-book than it is to sign an e-book. 

If you own a business that provides products or services mainly to customers in your community, then you're probably very familiar with Yelp.com and other review sites such as Angie's List and TripAdvisor. These sites provide a forum for consumers to provide review their personal experiences with businesses, detailing the good, the bad -- and sometimes the ugly. In the case of Fairfax, Virginia resident Jane Perez, it was mostly the ugly.

While no one I know truly has a crystal ball to use to help them predict the future, there are a lot of smart people out there whose job it is to try to come up with some idea of what consumers are going to do in the coming weeks, months, and years. One such outfit is trendwatching.com, which every year comes out with a list of 10 crucial consumer trends for the upcoming year. If you've got a business that sells products or services to people, then these are 10 trends worth paying attention to. Here's a sampling of the trends for 2013 -- you can find the full list at trendwatching.com. 

It seems like just about every big business that caters to small businesses is sponsoring a contest. Here's another one. In its Small Business Big Wishes contest, Intuit will be granting a wish each day for 15 days to some deserving small business, beginning on December 3, 2012. As Intuit says on its contest site, "If you're a small business owner who could use a helping hand to improve your business, this contest is for you." 

If there is a list of the Top-5 Rules of Entrepreneurship somewhere, you'd think this one would be in there somewhere: Don't try to take on the BIG guys. The history of business is replete, after all, with stories of big businesses that have eaten the lunch of much smaller businesses. For example, when Microsoft finally decided to get in on that thing called the Internet, and built a browser to compete against the one offered by Netscape. While it didn't hurt that Microsoft gave away its browser for free, people turned away from Netscape's browser in droves, leaving the relatively small company in its dust. 

I just finished reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about the stampede by many business owners to sell their businesses before January 1, 2013 -- the date capital gains taxes are due to increase in the United States. According to the article, the tax rate on capital gains will increase from today's 15 percent to at least 23.8 percent. So, for every one million dollars of gain, that's the difference between paying $150,000 in taxes today, or $238,000 in taxes starting January 1. That's an additional $88,000 going to Uncle Sam instead of into the owner's pocket.. Says compressed-gas business owner Bert Wolf, who recently sold his company to Praxair, ""It just made more sense for me to take my chips off the table and go do something else." Wolf went on to say that if he waited until after the tax increase to sell, he would have to expand the business at the current rate "for at least 3 or 4 more years to achieve the same after-tax sales dollar."

A lot of people (including me) like to tell prospective entrepreneurs that, when it comes to starting up a new business, the sky is the limit. Just come up with a good idea, add a dash of hard work and sticktoitiveness, and -- presto! -- you'll have a successful business on your hands before you know it. 

It's interesting how life and business works. As a writer, I am often working on a wide variety of projects -- from a biography on the woman who in 1873 planted the two navel orange trees that became a multi-billion-dollar industry in Southern California, to a book on the history of Network Solutions -- the company that during the mid-'80s set the stage for the dot-com explosion -- to a book on two-time America's Cup winner Peter Isler's sailing secrets. Lately, for some reason, the universe's mysterious synchronicities have put me squarely in the middle of the topic of women in business. 

It seems like not a week goes by that there isn't some contest out there specifically designed to attract the attention -- and participation -- of small business owners and entrepreneurs. Well, here's another one. 

If you use advertising to get out the word about your business, you've got some complex and important decisions to make -- particularly when it comes to deciding where to place your advertisements. Should you stick with the traditional paid media (television, magazine and newspaper ads), or jump on the earned media (word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family) bandwagon? Or maybe a combination of both? Before you decide, you should know something about current trends affecting the effectiveness of each of these approaches. 

As you may have noticed, I'm always on the lookout for cool new contests for small businesses. I just ran across a contest by the name of The Big Reboot, and I really like it. 

I love how entrepreneurs tick. Case in point: Kevin Daum. Kevin is a serial entrepreneur who has found both great success and its not-so-great counterpart. Throughout it all, his radar is always scanning the horizon for the next opportunity. And here's a great example.

I love, love, love trendwatching.com and their ongoing efforts to stay on top of the latest-and-greatest consumer and business trends. So it was with great excitement that I looked in my email in-box a few days ago and found their latest list of 12 new mini-trends. If you own or run a business -- or if you have plans to start one up -- it will be worth your while to check out these trends as they may have a significant impact on the markets in which you do business, or plan to do business. Here are five of my favorite mini-trends from the list:

Are you an entrepreneur? Check out this video from the folks at OnlineMBA.com and see what you think.  

As I have mentioned a couple of times before, I'm a huge fan of infographics. As the U.S. economy remains on the critical list, with no quick fix in sight, it seems to me that it's probably as good a time as any to look outside the box for economic indicators that might give us some hint of the future. 

I just ran across the Love a Local Business grant competition sponsored by financial software maker Intuit. The competition -- which currently runs from August 1 through September 15, 2012 -- lets fans, including customers, vendors, employees, and the community, determine who deserves some love in the form of $5,000 small business grants. The more votes a business attracts, the better its chances of winning a grant. 

Did you eat your Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich today? 

For some reason, I'm on the e-mailing list of an outfit by the name of OnlineMBA.com. Every once in a while, these folks send me a cool infographic that encapsulates a lot of interesting and useful information in an easily understandable way. Such is the case with the infographic Failing Gracefully: The Secret to Startup Success posted below. 

Your business may be well established where it is, but just maybe you're thinking of starting something new. Or maybe you're thinking of expanding your successful enterprise into some new locations. So where will you build your next business? If you believe a recent Thumbtack survey of more than 6,000 small businesses, you'll consider doing business in one of the following seven most business-friendly cities: 

I think the current outrage directed against U.S.-based clothing manufacturer Ralph Lauren is pretty interesting. If you're not familiar with the story, here's a quick summary. On July 27, the U.S. Olympic team will march in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London -- in uniforms manufactured in China. When word recently hit the media about this turn of events, members of Congress erupted -- roundly chastizing Ralph Lauren for outsourcing more jobs to China, and the U.S. Olympic Committee for allowing our athletes to wear uniforms made outside the United States. Typical was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comment that the Olympic Committee should “burn them and start all over again.” 

A week ago I had not heard about the Internet doomsday virus by the name of DNSChanger. However, the media has suddenly decided that it's something that deserves our attention, and I have seen a lot of press about it over the past few days. If your business (or personal, for that matter) computers are infected with the DNSChanger virus, then starting on Monday you will not be able to access the Internet. Period. According to the FBI, the virus at its peak infected up to 4 million computers. While that number has declined, there are still a lot of computers out there with the virus. And one of them could be yours. 

I was recently crusing the Inc.com website when I ran across an interesting article that I thought was worth sharing. The article -- The $4 Million Complaint Call -- was written by Ron Burley, founder of Broadcast Software International, a technology startup. Ron's company specializes in the development of digital audio and automation software for broadcast radio stations. Four years after founding his company, he had grown it to 16 employees with a customer base spread across 40 countries around the globe. However, Broadcast Software was at a crossroads in its life -- Ron could no longer afford to fund the company's growth by himself, and it desperately needed an infusion of outside capital. Unfortunately, investment in technology companies had dried up, and there was no outside capital to be found anywhere. If something didn't change, and soon, the company would likely collapse. 

Need a quick $250,000 to help fuel your small business? If so, you'll need to act fast. Chase and Living Social are giving out grants of $250,000 each to 12 small businesses selected under their Mission: Small Business program. But hurry -- you've got to get your application in (and attract at least 250 votes from the web-surfing public) by June 30, 2012! Here's some additional information from the Mission: Small Business site:

So, if you happened to read my most recent post, you are probably aware that this past weekend I returned from a 10-day business trip to the Philippines. While I was blown away by the extent of entrepreneurship in this country, there was one more thing that made a huge impression on me: the power of American brands, and the extent to which these (often gigantic) multinational companies tailored their offerings with great precision to appeal directly to their Philippine customers.

Yesterday I returned from a spur-of-the-moment business trip to the Philippines. What an experience, and what a country! Alive, vibrant, and constantly in motion. I quickly fell in love with the friendly people, the beautiful islands, and the terrific food. Although my experience was limited to Cebu City and surrounding municipalities (Carcar, Danao, Lapu-lapu, Mandaue, Naga, and Talisay), I believe that I got a pretty good feel for what the country as a whole -- at least the middle part, the Visayas -- has to offer. As promised in my last post, here is Part 1 of my impressions on the state of entrepreneurship in the Philippines.

By the time your read this post, I will be in the middle of a trip to Cebu City in the Philippines. I'm headed there with a client to do research for a book project. I have never been to the Philippines, and I am really looking forward to seeing what the current state of entrepreneurship is there. I fully expect to immerse myself in street vendors (and food), local shops of all sizes and kinds, and other sorts of enterprises. I plan to interview as many of the business owners as I can to get a feel for what's going on in this vibrant country. 

A couple of days ago, Millward Brown released its latest BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Study (that's quite a mouthful!). Ignoring for a moment the clumsy name of the study, I found the results to be fascinating. Globally, the United States dominates the top-10 slots, with just one non-U.S. company -- China Telecom -- squeaking into that exclusive group at position #10. I thought it was interesting that of the top-10 most-valuable brands, 7 were technology related (including communications providers), 2 were food and beverage related, and 1 was a drug -- tobacco, to be exact.

My friend and serial entrepreneur Kevin Daum recently kicked off a promotional campaign for his new book Video Marketing For Dummies, using a funny video that he put together with some of the book's coauthors to draw attention in the social media space. Kevin is an Inc. 500 entrepreneur has chalked up more than $1 billion in sales and two Amazon #1 best sellers. As I watched the video, I was reminded that this is about the fourth or fifth time that Kevin has reinvented himself -- and his brand -- since I first met him 10 years ago. At that time, Kevin was the founder and CEO of a thriving mortgage brokerage in the San Francisco area. Soon after we met, we decided to write a book together -- Building Your Own Home For Dummies. However, soon after the book was published, the housing market began to tank, and Kevin found himself out of the mortgage business.

As a slave to Fox News, I constantly hear that the government -- particularly the current administration -- is anti-business and anti-jobs. While I don't personally know if this particular administration is any more anti-business or anti-jobs than any of its predecessors, the business climate does vary from state to state within the Union. Always has, always will. This fact was backed up by a recent survey of more than 500 U.S. CEOs polled by Chief Executive magazine. 

I have been a fan of the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform for some time -- it seems to me to be a great way for entrepreneurs with good product ideas to raise the funding they need to get their ideas off the ground. However, while crowdfunding holds great potential for entrepreneurs, the appeal to date is I'm sure limited by the amount of money that platforms such as Kickstarter have actually generated for their clients. A quick look at the Kickstarter "Discover Projects" page, for example, shows several projects hovering at just a few thousand dollars, with some under $1,000. 

I've been a big fan of the iPhone photo app Instagram for the past six months -- it's fun to take photos, make a quick comment, and then automatically upload (with GPS coordinates) to my favorite social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and the usual suspects. So it was with great interest that I heard the news this week that Instagram was acquired by Facebook for a cool $1 billion. Not bad for an iPhone app.

Since the summer of 2008, I've been working behind the scenes on a book about Network Solutions, the company that used to hold the government-sanctioned monopoly for domain name registration. As a part of the project, I've done tons of research, and I have been amazed at just how quickly the Internet grew once email accounts and websites became available to businesses and individuals. According to VeriSign, there are currently 225 million domain names in use worldwide. Today, it seems that most everything we do somehow involves the Internet. 

With spring now officially sprung, the thoughts of many entrepreneurs and businesspeople are turning to getting out and boosting their business. Jason Selk PhD is the Director of Mental Toughness for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, and the author of 10-Minute Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and Executive Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2011). In his position with the Cardinals, he has had the opportunity to hone a variety of techniques that have made him one of the nation's business and performance coaches. Just in time for spring, Jason offers the following 5 Spring Training Tips for Businesspeople.

I recently read an interesting article on the trendwatching.com website about one reason why people buy some products and not others. According to the article, people embrace brands that are flawsome, that is, they behave more humanly and are not afraid to show their flaws. 

For those of you who have been hanging around the Internet for more than a few years, the name America Online should be familiar to you. Way back in the '90s -- before the emergence of Google, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest of the current crop of high-performing websites -- America Online was the cat's meow. That's all in the past now, but the company's founder -- Steve Case -- has become a vocal cheerleader for the virtues of entrepreneurship. Oh. And the company is no longer called America Online. It's just AOL.

Yesterday the University of Michigan announced that alumnus J. Robert Beyster and his wife Betty donated $15 million to the school's College of Engineering. Specifically, $9 million will be dedicated to endowing a fellowship program designed to fund up to 10 engineering doctoral students each year, $5 million will go towards the renovation of the Ford Nuclear Reactor Building on the University of Michigan Campus, and $1 million will be allocated to the Center for Entrepreneurship and the development of a curriculum to teach students about employee ownership. After earning bachelor degrees in engineering physics and engineering math in 1945, he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in physics at U-M in 1947 and 1950, respectively. Dr. Beyster went on to found SAIC in 1969 -- an employee-owned company (now public, and on the NYSE) that today has annual revenues in the neighborhood of $11 billion. 

It really is a small world. As I was getting ready to post a link to the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) 150k Challenge -- which will award a total of $150,000 to winners of three different entrepreneurship competitions -- I ran across an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal. According to the article, the age-old tradition of business plan competitions is increasingly being seen by the business schools that sponsor them as an ineffective way to spark the entrepreneurial spirit. Instead of resulting in new businesses, these competitions are in most cases simply resulting in some very well-written business plans. And that's not the outcome that the schools that sponsor business plan competitions are hoping for. 

Phil Simon is an interesting guy. Among other things, Phil bills himself as a "...futurist, insomniac, polymath, recognized technology and management expert..." and much more. If you take a few minutes to visit his website, you'll quickly see that he is indeed all that. Well, as it turns out, Phil has a new book out, titled: Learn from the Best: Lessons from Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google on Building YOUR Company's Platform. In the following guest post, Simon shares proven things your business can learn from this business Gang of Four.

I've been a full-time professional writer and author for about 15 years now. When I started out in the business, if you wanted to get published, you had to convince an established publisher to take on your book. In return for giving them the rights to publish your book for as long as they wanted, they agreed to pay you an advance and royalties. Aside from some marginal vanity publishers who you would pay to get your book published, this was the way the game was played. 

I was somewhat amused to learn today that Hansen Natural Corp -- the Corona, California-based beverage manufacturer -- has decided to change its name. Now, before I tell you what the company's new name is, let's first consider for a moment the feelings that Hansen's products evoke within most fans. Although Hansen has been has been around since 1935, it was the introduction of a line of natural sodas in the 1970s that put the company on the map nationally. At a time when most sodas were being crammed full of preservatives, caffeine, sodium, and artificial flavors and colors, Hansen's sodas were noticeably missing these fancy modern ingredients. Instead, Hansen's sodas used strictly natural ingredients. As a result, they became popular with people who decided that if they (or their kids) were going to drink sodas, at least they could drink sodas that were relatively healthy. The company's advertising reflected this natural message, leaning heavily on photos of green pastures and natural outdoor settings. 

According to the talking heads on my TV set, the U.S. economy has gone to hell in a handbasket, and nothing short of regime change in Washington will turn it around. Bad Santa is here to stay, and he's mad as hell.

Online game maker Zynga (Farmville, Words with Friends, Mafia Wars, etc.) went public yesterday, issuing 100 million shares of stock at the price of $10 each -- putting $1 billion in its pocket as a result. While that's a lot of money in anyone's book, Zynga's resulting market cap of $7 billion is about one-third of what was predicted last summer, when a number of analysts put the company's value at $20 billion. To add insult to injury, Zynga's share price fell 50 cents by the end of the day, to close at $9.50. 

It's my favorite time of year. No -- not Christmas, though that rates right up there. It's the time of year when trendwatching.com names its 12 Crucial Consumer Trends for the upcoming year, in this case 2012. If you've got a business and you want to meet your customers where THEY are, then this list is worth a look. Here are the top-five trends -- click here for the complete list of 12, along with detailed explanations. 

While it has been obvious for some time that Google isn't happy just being the best Internet search website around (Exhibit 1: the Android phone), I was a bit surprised to read today that the company is getting ready to unveil a new venture: a delivery service that would let people order items from local stores on the Web and receive them at their homes or offices within a day. Okay, that sounds nice and all, but why oh why is Google straying so far from its core business of helping me find out how many students applied to Dartmouth early decision this year, or a good synonym for "lyrical," or a creativity video that I can use in the MGT453 class that I'm teaching at San Diego State University? 

As you may know, I have been teaching MGT453 -- Creativity and Innovation -- at San Diego State University this semester. It's been a lot of fun, and I suspect I am learning as much about the topic as are my 51 students, most of whom are seniors who will be graduating in the summer of 2012. 

In case you didn't notice, next Saturday -- November 26, 2011 -- has been officially designated as Small Business Saturday. Officially designated by whom? Well, by credit card giant American Express for one, which has dedicated an entire Facebook page (with more than 2 million followers!) and more to the day. 

Ready for some good news on the entrepreneurship front? According to a report released last Thursday by the Kauffman Foundation and Young Invincibles, 54 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 -- the generation commonly known as the millennials -- want to start their own businesses. Okay, there's just one thing. Of this 54 percent, only 8 percent of them own businesses now, and only 11 percent intend to start businesses within the next year. And what about those other 38 percent -- the potential young entrepreneurs who want to start their own businesses but who don't plan to do so anytime soon? Why have they delayed their dreams of entrepreneurship? 

I am convinced that there is almost always a guaranteed market opportunity for a new product that fulfills the needs or desires of a large group of people, is reasonably priced, and that is reliable and works well. Such is the case with a new product that I just found out about: the Mailstop Envelope offered by Berkeley, California-based CatalogChoice.org. The Mailstop Envelope promises to do something that I personally am very interested in: shutting down the flood of grocery store circulars, catalogs, phone books, credit-card offers, and other junk that fills my mailbox every day. All you do is buy a Mailstop Envelope for the quite reasonable price of $6.75, fill it with up to 15 address labels clipped from your offending junk mail, and then drop the Mailstop Envelope into the mail. That's it -- CatalogChoice.org takes care of the rest. Before long, that flood of junk mail will slow to just a trickle.

I read in an article in the Wall Street Journal that pelletized ice cream maker Dippin' Dots just filed for bankruptcy. I was personally never a fan of "the ice cream of the future," but I can remember the first time I saw it, and how much my kids wanted me to buy it for them every time we went to the shopping mall. For several years, Dippin' Dots was hot. Now they're not, and the company's boom-and-bust story is a reminder of the need to continually innovate new products. 

According to a Wells Fargo/Gallup poll published today, more than one in three -- 36% -- of U.S. small business owners reported that they are moderately or very worried that they will go out of business in 2012. Not only that, but 32% reported that they are moderately or very worried that they will be unable to pay their employees in 2012. When asked what they think is the most important problem facing small business owners like them, the top-three responses were: Complying with government regulations (22%), consumer confidence (15%), and lack of consumer demand (12%).  

If you've ever doubted that the speed of business is on the increase, then doubt no more. I just read an article in the Los Angeles Times that a company by the name of Quadrant 2 has created a new Android smartphone app inspired by the recent Occupy Wall Street protests that are sweeping the nation, and now the world: I'm Getting Arrested. The idea is that before you attend your next protest, you set up the app with a customized message of your choosing (maybe something along the lines of, "If you received this message, it means I'm on the way to jail. Come bail me out!"). You can then enter the text message phone numbers of friends, relatives, and members of your legal team. Finally, if you find yourself in the process of getting arrested, then simply fire up the app and press the bullseye that appears on the screen for two seconds. Voila! Help is on the way. 

Let me first say that I do not work for mobile payment startup Square, nor do I own any of their stock or have any other financial interest in the company. That said, I think Square is on the leading edge of a revolution in how small businesses accept credit card payments.

I was heartbroken to hear the news of the untimely death of Steve Jobs. I haven't been affected this deeply by the death of a public figure since my working class hero John Lennon was gunned down on the streets of New York City in 1980. Here's a video that some Apple employees created almost 30 years ago, as a gift to their boss, colleague, and friend Steve Jobs on his 30th birthday. We have lost a true visionary, in a time of our history when true visionaries are in short supply. Godspeed, Steve Jobs, and thank you for helping to make our world a better place. 

For a complete description of each of these drivers of consumer behavior -- as well as numerous examples of how they work in the real world -- be sure to check out the original report. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm teaching a class in Creativity and Innovation at San Diego State University this semester. At yesterday's class meeting, while entrepreneur guest speaker Krista Kokjohn-Poehler was describing her creative process at Becky Bones, I considered two particularly important things that my students stood to gain as a result of their education: a network of potential business colleagues and partners among their fellow students, and real-world business contacts. In the case of my class, the second part of that equation -- the real-world contacts -- come in the form of the guest speakers who (like Krista Kokjohn-Poehler) have agreed to make presentations to my class.

A few months ago I received an email from Netflix notifying me that my price plan was going to be increased. Not just 5 or 10 percent, however, but an exact doubling in price -- from $7.99 to 15.98 a month. I like many other loyal Netflix customers (I had been with the company almost from the very beginning) were incensed by the move. We moaned, we groaned, we blogged, we posted, we complained. We did everything we could to express our displeasure to the Netflix powers that be. And while Netflix did listen to our pleas, the company made another boneheaded move: It split the company into two parts. Now a new company, Quikster, will handle the distribution of DVDs, while the distribution of streaming video will be retained by Netflix. Now, instead of dealing with one company, we are going to have to deal with two. 

Today Inc. magazine published some interesting survey data on the current state of small business today versus 2009 -- the depths of the U.S. financial crisis -- and, occasionally, prior years. In some cases the trend is positive, while in others it is decidedly negative. What's your opinion? 

I recently ran across an article on trendwatching.com about a possible resurgence in offline shopping -- that is, shopping in real, live stores instead of through online vendors such as Amazon.com. While it's hard to beat the convenience of online shopping, it just doesn't offer the same experience or level of satisfaction as offline shopping. 

Not sure if I already mentioned it, but today was my first day as a part-time lecturer at San Diego State University here in San Diego. The class? Management 453: Creativity and Innovation. All in all, I think the class went pretty well. Forty-seven students were officially registered for the class, but I'm guessing another 40 or 50 students showed up, hoping to crash. Quite a surprise. 

It seems like every time I turn on the news, some commentator or talking head is claiming that the U.S. economy won't get better until the government brings certainty into the financial or regulatory or tax or whatever [insert favorite excuse here] situation.

If you've been reading this blog for more than a month or two, you've probably noticed that I'm a big fan of contests for entrepreneurs. Not only do I think they're fun, but they can be a good source of cash -- and what entrepreneur can't use a little extra cash? Entrepreneur magazine recently ran a contest roundup, including a UPS Store Facebook contest (deadline = August 31, 2011), 2011 Avaya Small Business Innovators contest (deadline = August 30, 2011), Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur contest (deadline = September 9, 2011), and Cleantech Open Global Ideas competition ( deadline = September 30, 2011). 

I was very interested to read Kathy's recent post about India's Tata Nano -- a 2-cylinder, 33-horsepower microautomobile that made big waves several years ago when it was announced that the car would sell for 100,000 rupees, the equivalent of about US$2,500. While the company has achieved its goal of producing a "people's car" along the lines of Ford's Model T and Volkswagen's original Beetle, the company has thus far attained just a small fraction of its optimistic sales projections (sales of the the Nano stood at just 5,451 units for the month of June 2011, down 29 per cent from June 2010), and an opening has been created for competitors to leap in.

A bit more than a year ago, I wrote a blog post about a relatively new way to raise money to start up or grow an enterprise: Kickstarter. As I mentioned in my post, Kickstarter is "...a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers." Kickstarter leverages the power of online crowdsourcing to gather together potential investors for new creative and business ventures. As it turns out, Kickstarter is still around, and an increasing number of companies are getting the funding they need from the organization. According to a recent article, design company Studio Neat used Kickstarter to successfully fund two projects. The first, a miniature iPhone tripod called the Glif, raised $10,000 in just 30 days while eventually landing the company almost $140,000 -- far exceeding its original request. Studio Neat was able to ship the Glif to customers just a month and a half after the funding period ended. The second product -- a pen stylus for the iPad -- also raised about $140,000 via Kickstarter. Says company cofounder Tom Gerhardt,  “If Kickstarter wasn’t around I don’t think the Glif, or projects like it, would have even gotten off the ground. It’s probably naive, but we had more fears and perceived more risk going the traditional [VC] route.” 

Okay. I will have to admit that I have never tried Mirassou wine. So I don't anything about the quality or taste -- good or bad. But what I do know is that the Mirassou Winery has an interesting contest for entrepreneurs. According to the Mirassou Winery Facebook page, the company will award five $3,000 grants to individuals with bright ideas to help turn their ideas into reality. In addition, the five grant recipients will also be voted on at the Mirassou Winery’s Facebook page, with the highest vote earner being awarded an additional grant of $5,000. According to the company, the competition is inspired by the Mirassou Family’s winemaking legacy which "...is steeped in entrepreneurism, innovation and empowerment." 

I recently read an article in USA Today: Hackers target small-company sites. According to the article, since early June, a team of hackers has been using an automated attack to inject malicious code on some 20,000 to 30,000 sites, many of them small businesses that rely on the Internet to reach customers. That was 20 to 30 THOUSAND websites hacked by just this one gang in about a month's time. Why are small-business websites targeted in particular? Because few small businesses devote the resources necessary to secure their websites against hacker attacks. Specifically, a survey by Panda Security found that of the small businesses surveyed: 

About a month ago I received a nice letter from the Small Business Administration: 

I read Kathy's last post -- An American entrepreneur in the Middle East -- with great interest. About five years ago, I was hired by the Beyster Institute at the Rady School of Management, University of California, San Diego to write a book titled Entrepreneurs at the Crossroads: Success Stories from the Middle East and North Africa. After the book was published, it was widely distributed to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs-to-be in the Middle East and North Africa. The project was funded by the US State Department, which believes (probably correctly) that it's a good idea for our country to help support entrepreneurship in these volatile areas of the world because the more people who become successful businesspeople, the fewer people who will find terrorism a viable way of life.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I participated in a very interesting seminar here in San Diego: The Art of Science Learning: Shaping the 21st-Century Workforce. As many of you may be aware, the United States faces an innovation gap that is growing wider with each passing year. According to John Lechleiter, chairman, president, and CEO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, "A recent study ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness, but 40th out of 40 in 'the rate of change in innovation capacity' over the past decade. The ranking, published last year by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, measured what countries are doing -- in higher education, investment in research and development, corporate tax rates, and more -- to become more innovative in the future. The U.S. ranked dead last." The bottom line is that our nation is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to innovation, and this problem is getting worse, not better. 

If your company has been in business for at least four years, and if it generated annual gross sales revenues of at least $3 million in 2010, then you just might be eligible to be named Entrepreneur magazine's Entrepreneur of 2011. According to Entrepreneur magazine, "If you're making an impact -- on your industry, for your employees and in your community -- this is your award to win. Past winners have rocked our world with radical headgear, taken us back to basics with healthy snack ideas, and made innovative contributions to the sustainability movement. Now it's your turn. Tell us how you're making a difference with your business and you could be the Entrepreneur of 2011." 

On this Memorial Day, I am reminded that many of our veterans are having a particularly hard time finding jobs after serving in the armed forces. And according to recent news reports, this is particularly true for women veterans. If you happen to be in the position to hire new employees, please make a point to remember our veterans. During the course of my career, I have had the honor of working with many, and I can't imagine you could find anyone better skilled, harder working, or more dedicated to their jobs. There are a variety of job placement resources available for veterans, including VetJobs, G.I. Jobs, Veteranemployment.com, and many more. If you're a veteran looking for a job, be sure to check them out. And if you're an employer with a job, consider listing it with these organizations. 

Unless you've been living in a cave deep within some distant mountainside, you probably know that yesterday -- May 21, 2011 -- was the predicted date of Judgement Day, with the end of the world scheduled for October 21, 2011. Although it appears that Judgement Day has not yet arrived (the jury is still out on the end of the world), entrepreneurs have wasted no time offering a variety of products and services for those who believe that the End Time is drawing near.  

According to the Small Business Administration, 70 percent of Americans dream of one day starting their own businesses. And one of the most popular ways that people become entrepreneurs is by turning a hobby into a business.  

Robert Jordan started up Online Access, the first Internet-coverage magazine, and his venture landed on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies in the U.S. Jordan recently wrote a book -- How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America (RedFlash Press, 2010) -- for which he interviewed 45 highly successful company founders, each of whom started, grew, and sold a company for approximately $100 million or more, or took their company public for $300 million or more. According to Jordan, each of these entrepreneurs faced at least one crisis that could have killed their businesses. However, each overcame their business crisis and went on to great success. Robert Jordan's interviews uncovered a trait that these 45 highly successful men and women shared in common: Resilience. 

The new, new thing when it comes to Internet technology is cloud computing, or just the cloud for short. In essence, cloud computing is simply moving applications such as word processing, email, databases, and the like from the computer on your desk to a remote server far, far away from your office. If, for example, you use the popular Gmail, Hotmail, or AOL email systems, the computer program that runs these applications does not reside on your computer -- it actually lives on a huge computer located at the host's facilities. Similarly, if you use Google Docs, the word processing and spreadsheet applications you are using do not live on your computer -- they are hosted on Google's massive server farm. In addition to work applications such as these, an ever-increasing number of companies -- large and small -- are moving their websites and ecommerce platforms to the cloud. By doing so, these companies don't have to invest in buying the equipment and people required to run and maintain their own websites and ecommerce platforms, potentially saving a lot of money in the process. 

I read my blogmate Kathy Allen's most recent post, "Should your business sell on Facebook?" with great interest. While I agree with Kathy that, in general, the answer to that question is an emphatic NO!, I would like to elaborate a bit on Kathy's post. Why? Because Facebook clearly can be a tremendous opportunity for most any business today -- an opportunity that cannot be ignored. But not as an ecommerce platform. Instead, Facebook's greatest opportunity for businesses today is as a hugely leveraged publicity and PR platform.

The recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan -- coupled with the humanitarian and business disaster that followed -- has had me thinking about what would happen if a similar natural disaster happened here. An emergency, crisis, or disaster can happen at any time, and at any place -- and it can happen to you. And if your company goes offline for some period of time, the result could be a loss of business and the ability to serve clients. It's a double whammy: not only can an emergency put your immediate source of income at risk, but it can jeopardize your client relationships, creating problems that can undermine your business in the long term.

It's no secret that the U.S. National Laboratories -- fabled places like Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and 15 others -- have been at the forefront of technology innovation for decades. Collectively, the nation's 17 National Laboratories hold some 15,000 patents for a variety of innovations. However, only about 10 percent of these patents have been licensed for commercial use.

Patricia Sigmon is a successful entrepreneur, a sought-after speaker, and one of today's leading experts in the field of profit management. She is founder and president of David Advisory Group (www.DavidAdvisoryGroup.com), a boutique firm that specializes in helping CEOs and small and midsized businesses reengineer their business practices to generate more profit, cut inefficiency, and optimize their earning potential. Long story short, Patricia knows what she's talking about when it comes to how to squeeze profit out of a business. Here are six ways to boost your bottom line, adapted from Patricia's new book Six Steps to Creating Profit published by John Wiley & Sons. 

Many businesses today get a significant portion of their business via the Internet. And how do customers find these businesses? Often via a search on google.com. But guess what? Google recently made a change to their complex mathematical search algorithm --  a change that has sent many businesses from the top of the search rankings down to the very bottom. And for those businesses in this situation, the resulting dive in product sales has turned out to be a very unpleasant surprise indeed.

Sometimes an entrepreneur-to-be knows exactly what kind of business he or she wants to start -- it may have been a closely held dream for many years, or it may be an irresistable opportunity that recently popped up on the horizon. However, in many cases, new entrepreneurs don't really know exactly what kind of business to start -- they just know that they want to start their own business.

I just read an article in today's New York Times about a recent change in consumer behavior. It seems that -- contrary to America's usual use-it-and-toss-it attitude -- people are beginning to hold onto the things they buy for longer. Instead of trading up for the latest technology gizmo every year, or a new car every other year, or a new home every five years, American men and women are deciding that it might be better to hold onto the things in their lives that aren't broken. And for the things that are broken? Well, maybe it's time to get them fixed instead of throwing them out and buying new.

Here's a funny look at how NOT to pitch a venture capitalist. I love the text-to-video technology used in this video that was developed by xtranormal, a Montreal-based startup. It's a fun, fast, and cool way to make movies on the Web. As the company says, "If you can type, you can make movies."

Got a big plan, but just can't seem to find the time and resources to actually do something about it? Well, if that's the case, then Levi Strauss -- and its Dockers brand pants -- have got an offer for you. According to a Dockers press release, "The Dockers brand is challenging men to love what they do or get busy doing what they love by presenting one lucky winner with $100,000 (post tax!) in the “Wear the Pants Project” contest. The Dockers brand is also giving away an additional 43 “Man Grants” (total value: over $75,000 in services, tools, resources, or cash) each week through the end of November 2011. The contests are about encouraging men to take action – whether it’s that small project that never got done or a bigger life’s passion. To enter the contests, men must submit a plan for actualizing their dreams, whether professional or personal, on the Dockers Facebook page."

On Monday the White House, in partnership with the Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation, announced a new entrepreneurial initiative: the Startup America Partnership. Just in case you didn't get the memo, Startup America has secured the commitment of a number of very big companies and foundations to support a variety of different entrepreneurship programs.

I have lost count of how many entrepreneurs I have spoken with who have told me that the secret of their success was to throw out their carefully crafted business plan and to instead take advantage of the opportunities that came their way -- WHEN they came their way. Business plans serve a purpose: they help you determine what products and services your company might develop and deliver, who might buy them, and how much they will be willing to pay. And they can help you determine how much money you'll need to invest to achieve a particular outcome, and on what areas to spend it.  

I'm going to take a wild guess that you think you're pretty smart when it comes to your particular area of business. That is, if you've got a marketing firm, then you probably think you're pretty knowledgeable when it comes to all things marketing. Or if you've got a computer services company, you're pretty swift when it comes to questions about the computer industry.

I just LOVE top-10 lists. There's just something about them that get my attention every time. So today I'm going to double the fun by offering up Springwise's top-20 list of new business opportunities for 2011. If you've been feeling stuck in a rut in your current business, or if you've been looking for a business opportunity that offers a lot of upside potential, then this might be just the list for you.  

Have you been feeling more optimistic about the prospects for your business lately?  Well, according to the  Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index -- a measure of small-business owners' perceptions of their operating environments -- the expectations of small business owners for the next 12 months are the best they have been since July 2008. In fact, the index surged 24 points -- from -28 in July 2010 when the index was last measured, to -4 in November 2010. While a long way from the index's peak of 114 at the end of 2006, the trend is definitely moving in the right direction.

Now more than ever it's important to be sure that your product and service offerings -- and your marketing programs in support of them -- are hitting your intended consumer targets. There is no money and no time to waste in today's tough economy. A mistake or a misfire can easily result in financial losses that can severely damage -- or even sink -- your business.  

As you may (or may not) know, I was a professional contract negotiator for a number of years before I became a full-time writer and book author. As such, I have always had a fascination with the process of negotiation. In fact, my first book -- Negotiating to Win -- was all about (surprise!) negotiation. I am therefore pleased to present a guest post titled 11 Ways to Get What You Want in 2011 by Jim Camp, president and CEO of Camp Negotiation Systems, a negotiation training and management firm. His bestselling business book, Start with No (Crown Business), has been translated into 12 languages. You can find out more at www.StartwithNo.com. Here are Jim's thoughts on how you can be successful in 2011.  

I read an interesting statistic today. According to Steven Hipple at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans working for themselves has been on the decline over the past year -- dropping from 10.9 percent in the last quarter of 2009, to 10 percent in this the last quarter of 2010. While that might not seem like much, this decline adds up to hundreds of thousands of people who are leaving the ranks of the self-employed.

I was recently applying for a modest line of credit for my growing small business, and my commercial bank loan officer mentioned that, as a part of the loan-approval process, the bank had obtained an SBSS score for my business. What? An SBSS score? That was a new one for me -- and I've been writing books about business for more than 15 years now. This was definitely something I needed to know more about.

Almost a year ago I wrote a post titled "Free is the new black" about how savvy companies are giving away content on the Web -- and finding alternative ways to monetize their content. This model is now spreading to an industry near and dear to my heart: the publishing industry. And it's turning the old models of selling books upside down.

Yesterday, a Google employee leaked an internal memo from CEO Eric Schmidt announcing that every Google employee would receive a 10-percent raise AND a $1,000 in the New Year. While the memo says the reason for the raise and bonus was "...to recognize the contribution that each and every one of you makes to Google," I can take a wild guess that the REAL reason was to improve employee satisfaction in hopes of keeping employees from jumping ship to the competition. If this is really the case, then chances are this plan is not going to work.  

I've been writing books and articles on business and entrepreneurship for more than 30 years now -- the past 15 or so as a full-time writer/author guy. And just when I thought I had seen everything there is to see on the topic, I find out that isn't really the case at all. For example, until a week ago, I had never heard of Global Entrepreneurship Week, much less that this year it runs from November 15 through 21. Well, it's true, and I have once again proven to myself that the old saying "You learn something new every day" is definitely true in my case.

NEVER underestimate the power of an audacious marketing campaign. In today's San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, I noticed an article about a local hotel that has come up with just such an approach -- and it is getting the hotel noticed in a very big way.

Kathy and I were recently given the opportunity to review a copy of the Social Media Survival Guide : Everything You Need to Know to Grow Your Business Exponentially with Social Media  by Sherrie Madia and Paul Borgese (Full Court Press, 2010). It's no secret that social media has taken the online world by storm, but according to the authors, many top companies are dropping the ball. They site statistics that 73 of the Fortune 100 have registered a total of 540 different Twitter accounts, but that more than half of these accounts (52%) are rarely used, and fully 15% are inactive.

Dal LaMagna is a serial entrepreneur who experienced business failure after business failure before, through the power of perseverance -- and a great idea -- he started a venture that made him rich. First there was the time when he took a year off Harvard Business School in the late-'60s to try to make his fortune by converting two drive-in movie theaters into drive-in discos. They flopped. Then there was the square "LaMagna Lasagna Pan," designed to exactly fit a standard-size lasagna noodle. It bombed. And his decision to produce a horror flick about the inmates of an insane asylum taking over the local town? A nonstarter.

But what finally did stick was Dal's idea for a high-quality set of $15 tweezers, sold through beauty stores. 

While I'm not a big fan of government rules that restrict opportunities to only certain kinds of companies, if Congress has decided to do so, then the smart thing to do is to play the game. Last week the Small Business Administration finalized  rules for its Women’s Procurement Program. Believe it or not, the legislation was passed in 2000, under the Clinton Administration, and the Feds have just now gotten around to implementing it. Anyway, the legislation  set a 5% contracting goal for the federal government to do business with women-owned companies. Currently, about 3.5% of government contracts go to women-owned businesses. The difference represents more than $6 billion in new contract opportunities for women-owned businesses each year. And that's a lot of opportunity.

Today -- Sunday, October 3, 2010 -- marks the official end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP. As you may recall, TARP was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008, at the height of the U.S. financial meltdown triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis. The original plan was to authorize up to $700 billion in spending to buy up (surprise, surprise) "troubled" assets, which included those bad mortgages and other questionable financial instruments. As it turned out, the government ended up not spending anywhere near $700 billion and in July of this year, the Dodd-Frank Act put a cap of $475 billion on TARP.  

Have you ever wanted to know how to get your small business voice heard by the people who run your state and local governments? Amy H. Handlin PhD is deputy minority leader of the New Jersey General Assembly and associate professor of marketing at Monmouth University in New Jersey. She recently wrote a book -- Be Your Own Lobbyist: How to Give Your Small Business Big Clout with State and Local Government (Praeger, 2010) -- which contains valuable information for how small business owners and executives can get heard by government decision-makers by using the same tactics professionals employ. The following guest post -- 7 Lobbying Mistakes Small Businesses Make (And What to Do Instead) -- was written by Amy Handlin, a woman who has made ethics and open government her top legislative priorities during the course of 20 years in state and local government.  

Whether or not you like Obama's health care reforms, the resulting law is (still) in effect, and it is beginning to have tangible financial impacts on business -- impacts that you should be aware of.  

While many retailers have determined that offering shoppers as wide a choice as possible is the best way to get consumers to part with their hard-earned money (a typical grocery store, for example, carries 50,000 different products), some highly successful businesspeople are doing these companies one better. They're doing this by giving customers the ability to customize products to their exact specifications.

First, I would like to take time to congratulate my blog-mate Kathy Allen for her recent article in Forbes -- awesome job! Second, I had to laugh when I read the male engineer's quote in Kathy's latest post: " Excellent advice, even for those of us among the weaker sex." At least until I thought about it for a minute and realized that this assessment rings true. By many measures, in American business today women are increasingly pulling ahead of men.  

No one ever said that starting a business was easy, right? Well, starting a business is actually the easy part. It's the keeping it going and growing part that is difficult.

There's been a lot of talk lately about how the government needs to do everything possible to support small businesses with special lending funds (like the $30-billion fund currently under consideration by Congress), tax breaks, and more. Why? Because, as many politicians tell us, small businesses are "the engine that creates two-thirds of all new jobs."

I recently read an article on dailyfinance.com about the 10 biggest brand disasters of 2010. As I read through the article, I realized that entrepreneurs and small-business owners and execs can learn some important lessons from the missteps of these global giants.  

My father was a career Air Force officer who fought in World War II and the Korean War, and then ran top secret spy plane programs for one of those 3-letter government agencies. I was always proud to be an Air Force brat, and I have a deep-abiding respect for the men and women who put their lives on the line for our country. I was therefore very pleased to find out that the Entrepreneurship Program for Veterans with Disabilities exists, and that it is making a big difference in the lives of many disabled veterans -- and their families and loved ones.

I spent some time at Comic-Con again this year. The spirit of entrepreneurship is clearly still in full swing, despite the current economic situation. There are all kinds of new products, a waiting list for vendor space, a huge artist area where you can get your own art created in real time, and much much more. Check out the video for some scenes of entrepreneurship in action at Comic-Con 2010. 

If there's one thing I love about the Internet and blogs, its the immediacy of the information. Something happens somewhere in the world, and five minutes later you can not only find 10 or 20 articles reporting the facts, but even more bloggers reporting their own take on what happened -- often with insider information. Apple's iPhone 4 antenna problems are now widely known, as is the company's response, which was first to deny that there was a problem, then to pooh-pooh it, and then to hold a press conference last week in which Steve Jobs (who took a break from his Hawaiian vacation) admitted that there was indeed a problem and that Apple would provide "bumpers" to iPhone 4 owners for no charge to fix it.  

As you may know, I am on the board of SPORTS for Exceptional Athletes, a San Diego-based sports program serving athletes with developmental disabilities ages 5 through adult. Tonight was the night of our big annual fundraiser -- A Taste 4 SPORTS. During the course of the event, I was reminded that it's good for businesses to give back to their communities. People want to work for companies that do good things, and people want to buy from companies that support causes that they themselves care deeply about. The resulting impact to the bottom line is direct and positive 

As I have already mentioned here more times than I can keep track of, we're still in the throes of nasty economic downturn -- certainly the worst we've seen in many, many years. And despite everyone's hope for a rosier future, the near-term picture is still pretty bleak. According to government statistics, private payrolls rose by only 33,000 in May and 83,000 in June – not enough to sustain a recovery, and average wages and hours worked have both declined slightly. On top of all that, credit is still tight -- especially for small businesses. 

I would like to start by saying that I agree 100 percent with my blog-mate Kathy Allen's last post: It's the private sector, st...d! This so-called economic stimulus plan has become just another boondoggle -- welfare for an ever-growing list of special interests with cozy Congressional relationships. As soon as this river of cash runs out (which it apparently now has), then of course the result will be economic contraction. It's no coincidence that the economic term "double-dip inflation" is suddenly gaining increased attention in the press. 

I admit it. After years (decades?) of being wrapped in the thrall of the Microsoft/PC world, I am now firmly planted in the wonderful world of Apple. In my case, it started with my kids -- they're the ones who first brought iPods and iTunes digital music downloads into our home, back when I was still hooked on CDs and the Sony Walkman. Then it was my daughter who convinced my wife and I to buy her a MacBook laptop computer, and next my oldest son who bought himself a 24" iMac desktop computer. Finally, the last straw was when my wife bought an iPhone. While I had stood on the sidelines during this steady Apple-ization of the Economy household, I could stand by no longer. I bought my own iPhone, realized what an amazing device it is (no other phone comes close), and I have now taken an oath of eternal allegiance to Apple. To seal the pact, I recently ordered the new iPhone 4 and there's a shiny new 27" iMac i5 on my desk. 

This past Thursday morning I had the good fortune to have breakfast with Troy Hazard, a self-confessed (but non-repentant) serial entrepreneur. I was fascinated to learn more about this entrepreneur who founded 10 different companies in the span of 20 years. 

Sometimes -- either when you start your business, or when the business is well underway -- you may have the opportunity to partner with someone who brings something to your business. In some cases, a partner brings strength in areas that are weaknesses for you -- say, product development or personnel management -- and in other cases, a partner brings something every entrepreneur can always use more of: cash. Whatever the reason, partners can be a good thing or a bad thing for you and your business, and you've got to keep an eye on things to make sure there's more good than bad. 

If you're like me, you have probably enjoyed infomercials for years. I cut my young TV teeth on Ron Popeil and the Veg-O-Matic, Pocket Fisherman, Showtime Rotisserie, and much much more. However, when it comes to figuring out exactly whether or not an infomercial would be right for my business, or how to go about doing one, I'm lost. Fortunately, my friend and coauthor Kevin Daum was recently invited to appear on the Fox Business Channel to discuss this topic and to disclose some of the tricks of the trade. 

I just read an article in the local newspaper about a pair of entrepreneurs who have tried just about everything they could think of to fund their young business: Fiji Yogurt, a frozen yogurt franchise with four company-owned stores and one new franchisee. While the traditional sources of capital were tried -- and offered limited results -- twin brothers Cory and Kyle Miholich stumbled on a non-traditional source of funding for their business that was actually pretty effective: The Wheel of Fortune television game show. While the business partners can't yet reveal exactly how much money they made for their business because the show hasn't yet aired, according to Kyle, "We had a chance to win a million dollars, which we blew. Actually, my brother blew it on the first puzzle. But we were able to walk away with a decent chunk of change.”

My friend and coauthor Harvey Seifter -- former executive director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and expert on business and the arts -- served as guest editor (along with Ted Buswick of BCG) for a special issue of The Journal of Business Strategy. This issue -- titled: Creatively intelligent companies and leaders: Arts-based learning for business -- was just released online. Downloads of individual articles are available free of charge for the moment. Simply click on the article title, then download the document.

Most people realize that success as an entrepreneur is at least to some degree linked directly to one's competence. If you possess the skills you need to run and grow your business, then your chances of success are much greater than if you do not possess those skills. There's just one little problem: few people recognize their own incompetence.

I was green with envy when I read Kathy's last post about her visit to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the final launch of  space shuttle Atlantis. As someone who can still clearly remember Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong make man's first footstep on the Moon, I am extremely proud of our nation's achievements in space. But while I agree that NASA (and the space agency's bevy of government contractors) has accomplished remarkable things, I strongly believe that the time has come for us to turn over the task of manned spaceflight to private industry.

As you may have noticed by now, the Apple iPad is by most estimates a smash success. Apple sold more than 1 million iPads in its first month on the market, and the sexy gadgets continue to fly out of Apple Stores across the country. And now that Apple has established a beachhead in the marketplace, it appears that consumers are increasingly coming to the realization that they need either an iPad, or something like it. According to a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group, 50 to 75 percent of consumers worldwide will purchase such a device within the next three years, assuming prices migrate south to the vicinity of  $150 or so. Of course, with the sweet smell of Apple's success hanging over the industry, other companies are getting ready to launch touchscreen tablet computers of their own. Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and AsusTek all have units in development and close to market.

My friend and colleague Kellie McElhaney recently pointed me to a very interesting website, trendwatching.com. The site keeps track of consumer trends worldwide. I was particularly interested in a recent trend briefing on the role of status in consumer buying decisions, and the top-5 ways that consumers get their status buying fix.

Yeah. I know. I used to think that using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for my business was a waste. Who actually has time to read all those tweets and keep track of everything their Facebook friends have to say? Well, apparently a lot of people do. Social media is finally catching on as a way for businesses to reach current and potential customers, and to build brand loyalty and awareness. And nowhere is it catching on as quickly as with today's fastest-growing companies. According to a study of the usage of social media among Inc. 500 companies, conducted by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, America's fastest-growing private companies adopt social media marketing initiatives at much higher rates than other companies.

I have a friend, Eric Talner, who a year-and-a-half ago heard the entrepreneurial call. He decided to leave behind a very comfortable career as a school teacher, and start his own bus-transportation business. His business -- Nevertardy Transit -- is off to a strong start. Business has been so good that he was recently able to afford to buy his own bus, after leasing one since Day One. As we chatted yesterday about his business, Eric handed me one of his new business cards. "Wow," I told him, "this looks GREAT!" And his card does look great. He's got a new logo that looks totally pro, and the card is well-designed and distinctive. Then Eric mentioned how the logo and business card came about: he met a student at a local university business school who took on developing his company branding as a project for her MBA degree.

If you happen to have an Apple iPhone, you probably very well know the power of the app -- those little software programs that allow you to do things with your phone that you never imagined you'd ever do with a phone. On my own iPhone, I have apps that let me check my bank accounts (BofA), view weather radars anywhere in the country (Accuweather), track all my airplane flights in real time when I'm traveling (FlightTrack), view and download (or email) any file I choose on my desktop computer -- from anywhere in the world (SugarSync) -- find a taxicab (Taxi Magic), get recommendations for local restaurants (Yelp), book reservations at local restaurants (OpenTable), and much, much more. It's truly amazing what iPhone apps allow you to do, and it's the reason why I'll never switch to another phone -- at least until something better comes along. However, with more than 185,000 different apps currently available -- and more being added each day to Apple's iPhone arsenal -- I personally believe it's going to be a very long time before something better does come along.

A couple posts ago, I suggested that if you want your employees to act like owners (that is, fully engaged in their work), then you should treat them like owners by giving them real ownership (equity) in your company. Kathy wasn't so sure, suggesting that there are other ways to "share the wealth" without giving actual ownership to employees. I beg to differ.

Have you ever wondered why your employees aren't as dedicated as you are or don't treat your business as seriously as you do? In short, why they don't act like owners? If that's the case in your business, chances are it's because you haven't given them opportunities to share real ownership of the business with you.

On January 5, 2010, I posted about a new opportunity for funding for "pro-social" entrepreneurs and businesspeople: The Pepsi Refresh Project. To refresh your memory, PepsiCo decided to dump its $33-million advertising plan for the 2010 Superbowl, and instead use the money to provide funding grants to U.S.-based individuals, non-profits, and pro-social businesses to make a positive impact in their communities. Each month, Pepsi promised to award up to $1.3 million as follows: 2 Grants at the $250,000 level; 10 Grants at the $50,000 level; 10 Grants at the $25,000 level; and 10 Grants at the $5,000 level. Pepsi planned to accept 1,000 ideas each month, with the public voting on its favorites. At the end of each month, grants would be awarded to the top vote getters, and the process starts fresh for the next month. Now that the program is well underway, and with entrepreneurs looking for any possible funding alternative, I thought the timing would be good for an update.

A couple weeks ago I ran a guest post -- 8 Tips for Finding Angel Investors -- written by Arnie Koss who, with his twin brother Ron, started the country's first organic baby food manufacturer: Earth's Best Baby Food. The post was a big hit on the Internet, being tweeted and re-tweeted to more than 30,000 people in less than a week's time. This time I've got a guest post written by Ron Koss on the topic of How to Overcome Start-Up Fears. This is something that every entrepreneur has gone through at one time or another in their careers, and it can be a serious roadblock to your success. You'll find a lot more great advice to entrepreneurs -- including obtaining start-up and growth funding, and dealing with angel investors -- in his new book: The Earth's Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution (Chelsea Green Publishing, March 2010).

As you may have noticed, I have been following serial entrepreneur Kevin Daum's quest to attain New York Times bestseller status for his upcoming book Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle. The book is a sales book (specifically, a parable) based on the Passover passage about the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the son unable to ask. Coincidentally, Passover starts in a week.

Back in 2005, James Surowiecki wrote a book by the name of The Wisdom of Crowds. The basic thesis of the book was this: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." The book went on to become a bestseller, and it spawned a new movement: Crowdsourcing.

Continuing with our recent discussions about angel investors and FFF (friends, family, and fools) money, I just heard about an interesting new way to raise funds for new ventures: Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com). According to the website, Kickstarter is "...a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers." Kickstarter leverages the power of online crowdsourcing to gather together potential investors for new creative and business ventures. Current projects include someone building a Bussard fusion reactor ($3,099 pledged from 71 backers), a cinematic exploration of Calvin and Hobbes ($21,369 pledged from 302 backers),  a new video game by the name of Glorkian Warrior ($10,417 pledged from 109 backers), and 8-Bit NYC, a map of the city rendered to look like something out of Zelda ($3,374 pledged from 54 backers -- pictured at right).

In 1985, brothers Arnie and Ron Koss started the country's first organic baby food manufacturer. The company they started -- Earth's Best Baby Food -- was eventually acquired by H.J. Heinz for $30 million, but not before Arnie was removed as president of the company by the same venture capitalists who provided the funds they needed to survive and grow. The brothers recently wrote a book about their experience: The Earth's Best Story: A Bittersweet Tale of Twin Brothers Who Sparked an Organic Revolution (Chelsea Green Publishing, March 2010). The following guest post -- 8 Tips for Finding Angel Investors -- was written by Arnie Koss, a man who knows a thing or two (or three) about angel investors.

Dick Brass was a vice president at Microsoft from 1997 through 2004. According to Brass, his former employer has fallen far behind the competition when it comes to innovation. Instead of bringing us great new products like Apple's iPhone, Amazon's Kindle, Facebook, or Twitter, the company contents itself producing endless updates of its Windows operating system and Office applications. The result is that the company's dominance is slowly eroding, as it loses market share in Web browsers, high-end laptops, and smartphones. It's Xbox gaming system is no better than any of the other consoles, and its Zune music player can't hold a candle to Apple's iPod.

Today I ran across an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the January 18, 2010 New Yorker magazine. The title is "The Sure Thing: How Entrepreneurs Really Succeed." Whether or not you are a fan of Gladwell's work, he definitely has a way with words. He has a real knack for digging up interesting facts and weaving them into compelling stories. The main point of the article was that -- despite the popular myth -- successful entrepreneurs are NOT risk takers. Instead, they constantly strive to take the least risk possible.

As I was flying to New England today to meet with a new client, I was reminded of the power of the personal touch. Email, text messages, and even phone calls all help make businesspeople more efficient and effective. However, business is all about relationships, and the best way to build strong and lasting relationships is through face-to-face meetings.

As you may have noticed, I have posted a few times over the past year about the coming Green revolution in business. It's already well underway, and businesses of all shapes and sizes are getting on the bandwagon. Why? Because (1) customers increasingly want to buy Green products from companies that care about making the world a better place in which to live, and (2) companies are increasingly realizing that being Green can help attract quality employees, save money, and improve the bottom line.

It's no secret that some of today's largest and most successful businesses started out of small businesses, often in someone's home. In 1950, for example, Ewing Marion Kauffman started pharmaceutical maker Marion Laboratories in his basement with an investment of $5,000. In 1989, 39% of the company was sold to Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals for $2.2 billion. And both Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer started in garages -- the former in a Palo Alto, California garage rented by Bill Hewlett and David Packard, and the latter in Steve Jobs' parents' suburban Los Altos, California garage.

As I mentioned in my January 27, 2010 post, it was looking increasingly likely that President Obama would soon announce help for America's small businesses. That day has finally come. According to a White House press release, Obama will today announce a new Small Business Lending Fund, funded to the tune of $30 billion redirected from TARP. Interested? Check out the press release, then drop by your banker's office and get in line. I suspect this will be a VERY popular program.

You would have to be in a cave for the last couple of months not to know that Toyota has got some very big problems right now. First there was the recall of 4.2 million Toyota and Lexus cars late last year to deal with faulty floormats, spurred by the horrific crash of a California Highway Patrol officer and his family in San Diego in August 2009. Then there was the announcement last week that the company would recall 2.3 million more vehicles to replace accelerator pedals that could become stuck. Toyota considers the latter problem to be so serious that it has done something that I believe is unprecedented in the modern history of auto manufacturing. The company has halted production and sales of eight different models of its cars until it can work with its American parts producer to come up with a solution and then get new parts to its factories and dealers. This understandably has caused problems for dealers who have been barred from selling these cars, including Toyota'spopular Rav4, Corolla, Matrix, Avalon, Camry, Highlander, Tundra, and Sequoia models.

It looks like President Barack Obama will announce in his upcoming State of the Union address tonight that he made some mistakes during his first year in office. It is anticipated that among these mistakes will be the admission that not enough focus has been placed on getting the economy back on track. I suspect this new focus on the economy will be officially rolled out tonight. Because small businesses are considered to be a key engine of economic growth in this country (as well as the source of our greatest technological innovations), expect to see an emphasis tonight on programs that will reinvigorate small business. This could potentially be accomplished through a variety of means, including tax breaks, unemployment tax holidays, incentives for hiring new employees, improved access to capital, and much more. So, if you've got a small business here in the United States, tonight just might be your night.

As you may recall from a previous post or two, my serial entrepreneur friend and colleague Kevin Daum is on a quest to turn his next book -- Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle -- into a New York Times bestseller. To help keep him motivated, he has gone so far as to tattoo "New York Times Best Seller" on his chest -- backwards, of course, so he can read it in the mirror when he shaves each morning. Kevin is clearly enthusiastic about achieving his goal -- just as he is whenever he dives into some new entrepreneurial venture -- and he's pulling out all the stops to publicize his quest (which he has dubbed the Quest for the Jewish Superbowl Ring). However, based on his most recent blog post, its seems he has come down with a common entrepreneurial affliction: the in-between flu.

Today I fired up the Wall Street Journal app on my iPhone and was greeted with the following message: "Your trial period to subscriber access ends next week." You see, I have enjoyed reading the WSJ on my iPhone for free ever since I downloaded the app nine months ago. Unfortunately, that little pleasure will soon end, as Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation have decided that their bottom line needs a boost. However, I am not willing to pony up $50 a yearfor the privilege of reading this particular newspaper on my phone, so they will not be getting a boost from me anytime soon.

While I too hope that Google stands firmly on its principles (see Kathy's 1/13/10 post: Google and China: a study in integrity and business ethics), I'm not so sure that Google's threatened pull out from China has much to doat all about ethics or about standing on principles. Actually, I think it IS all about protecting their shareholders' investments in the company.

As Kathy pointed out in her post a couple of weeks ago, if you're involved in starting or running a business, then you'd better prepare for a bumpy ride in the new decade. In times like these, your business needs to stand out from the pack even more than when business is booming. If it doesn't, then you may have a tough time attracting the attention (and dollars) of your prospective -- and even your current -- clients and customers.

What if a large American business -- a VERY large American business -- decided to dump its $33-million advertising plan for the 2010 Superbowl, and instead put the money to work for a more useful purpose? And what if YOU -- could win a piece of this pie?

When Kathy and I decided to create this blog, we made a conscious decision to avoid giving employee-management advice that you our readers could find on other blogs and websites, or in our many books. So you won't find a list of the top-5 ways to reward your employees here, nor an essay on how to get your employees engaged in their jobs, nor 10 steps to creating a happy work environment. Instead, we decided to focus on giving you our own unique findings on the best ways to start and grow a GREAT business.

Okay. Let's say you're an entrepreneur who's looking for the NEXT BIG THING -- where will you focus your time, money, and energy? Consider following the lead of Chinese business, which is going green in a very big way. You see, regardless of whether or not you believe in global warming -- much less the reasons that it may or may not actually exist -- Chinese entrepreneurs have seen the future of business, and it's a very green future indeed.

DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- is well known for its technology innovations. Founded in 1958 as America’s response to the Soviet Union’s launching of the Sputnik satellite, DARPA invented the Internet (no, it wasn't Al Gore), the stealth technology used in fighter aircraft, high-energy laser technology for space-based missile defense, and much, much more. DARPA’s mission is to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use.

Tiger Woods' recent personal difficulties point out the problem when companies tie themselves closely to a celebrity endorser. What happens when that person -- who is, after all, just a person and not perfect -- does wrong, and tarnishes your brand in the process? In the case of Tiger Woods, Accenture has quickly dropped him (he's "no longer the right representative" after the "circumstances of the last two weeks."), Gatorade has dropped its Tiger Focus brand beverage, and Gillette is phasing him out. You've got to imagine that most of his other sponsors are giving the idea of dropping him serious consideration.

The past three days have been very interesting ones for yours truly. My latest book -- Writing Fiction For Dummies -- was just released, and my coauthor Randy Ingermanson and I are wrapping up a three-day book rush, hoping to drive initial sales of the book. While we're still tabulating the results, early indications are that our efforts paid off in a very big way. As I write this, our book is ranked #368 on Amazon.com -- that is, Writing Fiction For Dummies is the 368th best-selling book on Amazon.com. Not bad out of millions of books available on the Amazon website.

Last month Kathy posted on the topic of where to start your business, citing a recent Fortune Small Business and Kauffman Foundation report titled "Best Places to Launch." While Kathy (and Fortune and Kauffman) certainly have a point -- that some areas of the country may be better than others to start and grow a business -- I think there's more to it than that.

Way back in April 2009, I wrote a glowing post about my love affair with Kiva.org, the online microlending website. The idea is a great one: connect everyday people with entrepreneurs around the world who need small loans to start or grow their businesses. Go to the website, find an entrepreneur you want to loan $25 to, click and pay, and your money is winging its way into the pocket of your "adopted" small businessperson.

The golden Cinderella carriage that is the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program -- TARP, for short -- will in just a month-and-a-half's time become a pumpkin when legislation that authorized the Department of Treasury to buy or insure up to $700 of "troubled assets" expires on December 31, 2009. The funny thing is that, as of October 1, 2009, more than $317 billion of the $700 billion remained unspent. Why? The exact reasons are fuzzy, but maybe there just aren't that many more troubled assets for Treasury to buy up or insure.

A couple days ago, the coauthor of my upcoming book Writing Fiction For Dummies -- Randy Ingermanson -- and I had a conference call with the marketing folks at our publisher, John Wiley & Sons. It was clear to all of us that the old ways of marketing books are mostly broken -- it no longer makes sense to send out 1,000 copies of a press release or 100 review copies of your new book and hope that the media picks up on your message. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they won't. What does make sense today is connecting one-on-one with people using Facebook and other social networking websites.

Contrary to the popular idea of entrepreneurs as lone wolves, following their own unique vision of what a business can be, many entrepreneurs actually work with a variety of partners or a management team to start up and grow their businesses. In many cases, the entrepreneur takes the time to carefully spell out the relationships between partners -- who does what, who owns what, and what happens if the partnership breaks up. In some cases, however, these relationships are never formally spelled out. This is a recipe for entrepreneurial disaster, not entrepreneurial bliss.

The basics of customer service are actually not all that difficult. So, why then is it that so many companies are lacking in good customer service?

It's no secret that social networking websites and media -- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. -- are all the rage today. People are making connections with one another in ways that were unimaginable just a few short years ago. However, some people are going beyond updating their friends on what they had for dinner or their big plans for the weekend. They are using social networks to start new businesses. Rodney Rumford and his business partner Sean Callahan -- cofounders of TweetPhoto -- are two such people.

If you've got a small-ish business and you're looking for financing, you know that there are plenty of challenges. One of these challenges is the fact that many banks are still holding back on making loans at all. Another challenge is that companies are bumping up against the SBA (Small Business Administration) loan limits. Fortunately, progress is being made in Congress to help in both these areas.

A few years back, I helped write a book by the name of Lessons from the Edge: Survival Skills for Starting and Growing a Company, by Jana Matthews and Jeff Dennis. In this book, more than 50 entrepreneurs and business owners offered some very candid stories and insights into how they got their businesses off the ground, survived some calamitous business event, and then picked themselves up and rebuilt their lives -- and often their businesses. As it turned out, partnerships with other people -- good and bad -- had a very high impact on the success (or ultimate failure) of many of these businesses.

Online social networks are all the rage today. From Facebook to LinkedIn to MySpace to Twitter -- and countless other sites with a social networking hook -- more and more people are meeting their friends and family at these websites. And, not surprisingly, so too are the many businesses who hope to reach these people through targeted advertising. Perhaps YOUR business.

When a business is really starting to take off, there are any number of potential obstacles blocking the way to success. As employees are hired, the money begins to come in, and things really start humming, it's easy to think that everything you touch will turn to gold. This is, of course, rarely the case. In reality, it's at just this critical point in the growth of your company that you've got to remain disciplined in your goals, and not overreach. This a lesson that Ken Wolf learned the hard way.

The INC. magazine website recently ran a feature by the title Start-up Secrets: Tips from America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs. Tips include such things as Stick with It ("Start-ups don't die, they commit suicide. In other words, 90 percent of start-ups fail because the founders get bored, discouraged, or something else, and they move on to other things, not because of some catastrophe. No matter how dark it is today, things will always better tomorrow." -- Justin Kan, Justin.TV), Exceed Expectations ("We knew we only had one shot at this, so there was nothing throughout our start-up that we didn't purposely over-deliver on -- from the way we pitched our distributors and investors to the way we rolled out in the market. If you always over-deliver, it is going to draw attention and you will likely be successful." -- Jeff Avallon, IdeaPaint), and Do Your Homework ("Be really clear about the assumptions you're making about the business you're going into, and check those assumptions as quickly as you can -- whether it's building a prototype and testing it with people, or just talking to other people in the industry." -- Can Sar, Apture). Check out the feature to view all the tips.

Given the choice, most entrepreneurs would prefer their businesses to grow -- not get stuck on a plateau or, heaven forbid, shrink. But there are times when growth isn't good, and as an entrepreneur, you need to know when to grow -- and when to lay low.

My friend Kevin Daum is the archetypical entrepreneur -- he's always on the lookout for opportunities, he loves starting new businesses, and he is eternally optimistic. A few weeks he sold a business book to publisher John Wiley & Sons: Roar! Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle. Kevin doesn't want to sell just a few hundred or even a few thousand copies of Roar!, he is 110% committed to turning it into a New York Times best seller.

Although I'm not yet sure how deep and strong its roots are, there is a move afoot in this country to transition to a new, more-sustainable model of business. Business experts Paul and Sarah Edwards have encapsulated this movement in something they call the Elm Street Economy. According to Paul and Sarah, the Elm Street Economy provides jobs that last, services one can depend on, and a secure future in a strong community and a healthy environment ... where people come first. I personally believe that this trend towards a local focus on doing business (and away from national chains, franchises, and big-box stores) is gaining in momentum. It is therefore something every entrepreneur needs to consider when making plans for the future.

As a business writer AND an entrepreneur, I love to read the latest statistics on business and economic trends. As such, one of my favorite online hangouts is Discover Small Business Watch. Each month the Discover number crunchers do a survey of small business owners, and the results are often quite illuminating.

I was browsing the business news earlier today and noticed an ominous headline: Walmart's Project Impact: A Move to Crush Competition. With my curiosity piqued, I decided I needed to learn more about Project Impact.

Few of us give much thought to exactly how we go about making decisions. While we know that some decisions are more important than others -- and we therefore put more time into gathering and considering as much information as possible before making the decision -- it's the rare businessperson who actually routinely applies any sort of formalized decision-making process. This is a mistake. Why? Because there's a right way and a wrong way to make decisions.

Kathy's recent post on Connection Fatigue reminded me that I'M getting tired of Twitter, and weary of Facebook. Apparently I'm not alone. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the number of people leaving one or both sites behind is gradually increasing.

As often happens when the economy goes sour and unemployment is on the rise, many people get serious about putting their back-burner dreams of starting a business into motion. It's no surprise, therefore, that the number of articles in the press about this latest wave of "accidental" entrepreneurs is on the rise.

Some years ago, I cowrote (with venture capital expert Joe Bartlett) the book Raising Capital For Dummies. Although entrepreneurs often raise money to start up their new ventures -- or grow their current ventures -- from a variety of outside sources (angel investors, friends and family, private equity offerings, commercial banks, venture capital firms, and more), about 20 percent turn to a readily available source of cash: themselves.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, a survey by the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University shows that venture capital firms are alive and well -- and investing in all sorts of enterprises. Last spring, researchers at the Graziado School surveyed 185 venture firms. Of these 185 firms, 46 percent said they planned to make at least two investments over the next 12 months within their current fund, and 54 percent said they planned to make three or more investments. As the pictured graph shows, the majority of VC investments are made in technology firms, with software, medical devices, and biotech leading the way. Financial services and consumer products companies are also-rans when it comes to attracting VC investments.

Unfortunately, I believe Kathy was correct in her assessment a few days ago that innovation is moving out of the United States,. The first I recall hearing warnings about the coming Great American Brain Drain was in an article by David Gergen, published two years ago in U.S. News and World Report. In this article -- entitled Great to Good? -- Gergen reports that "In 1970, U.S. students represented 30 percent of all university enrollments worldwide; by 2000, that had dropped to just 14 percent. The U.S. share of Ph.D.'s around the world is also plummeting, from about 50 percent in the early 1970s to a projected level of 15 percent in 2010. By a separate estimate, within just five years, Asia will have produced 90 percent of the world's scientists. Never before has there been such an explosion in the world's knowledge workers." The bad news is that the vast majority of this explosion in the world's knowledge workers is occurring outside of our borders.

I've been wondering for a while if jumping onto the latest and greatest social networking phenomenon -- Twitter -- makes sense for someone who runs a business. I've been on Twitter for the last six months or so, and havemanaged to accumulate 172 followers. This is just a small splash considering it's not uncommon for celebrities to rack up thousands of followers -- each one presumably hanging on their hero's every tweet. If you listen to Internet pundits such as Guy Kawasaki, Twitter is a key marketing tool for any businessperson. However, just because you have followers doesn't mean that everyone (or even anyone) is listening.

I was recently discussing with a friend the difference between creativity and innovation, and how people tend to confuse and conflate the two. In business, while creativity -- coming up with new ideas and new ways of looking at the world -- is a nice thing to have in any organization, unless you are creating ideas that can be put to use (innovations), then it is of little real use. Innovations flow directly to the bottom line, while creativity tends to float somewhere high above.

Despite my concern that I might end up feeling like a big sardine jammed into a little can, I decided to brave the Sunday crowds at Comic-Con. Arriving with my kids in tow at 9:30am -- right as the doors opened to the public -- I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Sunday crowds were much less intense than what I have experienced onother days during previous shows. I suspect the reason was some combination of typical last-day trade show blues, and burnout on the part of the 4-day passholders who decided to sleep in on Sunday and arrive fashionably late.

One of the fringe benefits of being assistant editor of Leader to Leader magazine is that I am usually able to wrangle press passes for some very interesting events. For the past several years, I have used the power of the pen to get a pass into what is possibly the world's largest convention for lovers of pop culture: Comic-Con. Born 40 years ago in San Diego, Comic-Con has steadily grown over the years into a four-day extravaganza that draws lovers of comics (and science fiction, fantasy, superhero, supernatural, and horror films, television shows, blogs, websites, and most any other form of media you could ever imagine) from across the country, and around the world. And while only 300 people attended the very first Comic-Con, last year 126,000 showed up.

The publishing industry is increasingly becoming a tough place to do business. It's no secret that fewer people are willing to shell out the $20 or $25 it costs to buy a new book (much less the $1.50 it costs to buy a newspaper). And why should they? All they have to do is turn on their computer and fire up their Web browser and they can get the latest news and all the savvy analysis and in-depth articles they want -- for free. While this is a great thing for consumers of information, it's a not-so-great thing for those traditional publishers that are selling fewer books today than they were a few years ago. Many of these smaller publishers are simply closing their doors and going out of business, while the larger ones are feeling the heat -- and responding by drastically cutting costs, laying off staff, and reducing the number of books they publish.

In any business, there are times when you'll hit a ceiling -- when growth slows and sales flatten. How do you get jumpstart your engine of growth and get your business moving again?

Paul Edwards -- my friend and coauthor of Home-Based Business For Dummies with his wife Sarah -- sent me an interesting study published this month by the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri. The study -- titled The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation -- surveyed 549 company founders in a variety of industries, including services, health care, aerospace and defense, and computer and electronics. And while the results of the study are skewed towards successful entrepreneurs (those entrepreneurs who were at the helm of failed businesses were not a part of this study), they are illuminating nonetheless.

It seems like every day there is some new bit of news about the economy and its chances for recovery. One day the news is good -- consumer confidence is up, for example -- and the next day the news is bad. However, some economists feel that we are just about to turn a corner and that, although the recovery will take some time, the trend is definitely about to head in the right direction.

A client of mine in Texas recently asked me if I had ever read the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, mentioning that it was one of his favorites. I admitted that although an early-'60s, 1,000-page+ paperback edition of the book has graced my bookshelf for as long as I can remember, I had never gotten around to reading it. Then, when a colleague of mine -- Traci Fenton, founder and CEO of WorldBlu -- mentioned to me that she was about to read the book, I knew that my time had finally come. I dusted off that old, yellowed copy of the book and dug in -- reading it in 5 and 10 minute bursts while waiting to pick up my daughter at school each day.

A little over a month ago I posted about the importance of knowing who your customer is. I mentioned that it's not enough, however, to know who your customer is, you must provide products and services that your customer values. This is by far the more difficult task -- it's not always clear what exactly your customer will value. While you might believe that what you are providing has hit the mark, your customer might believe otherwise. And if this is the case, then you've got a problem.

My wife and I have been having an ongong discussion about the current national debate on some sort of government-provided universal health care. She comes down firmly on the side of "The current system works so there's no need to fix it." Lately, however, I haven't been so sure that it really works.

While many in our nation bemoan the loss of manufacturing plants and capacity to lower-cost countries -- the losses of jobs and tax base are understandably traumatic to the affected communities and the people who live within them -- the United States is increasingly depending on innovation to lead the way. We are becoming a nation of knowledge workers -- farming out or outsourcing or licensing cutting-edge technologies to manufacturers overseas. It is important that instead of throwing government money after the rapidly disappearing manufacturing base, and instead to invest it wisely in innovation -- the seeds of our future.

The last thing any businessperson wants to do is tell a customer that there's a problem with their order or project. We all want happy customers, and problems often lead to customers who are something less than happy. I have personally found that there are a few things you can do when there's a problem, and that these things will help keep your customers happy.

Yesterday my wife and I threw a party for my son's "graduation" from fifth grade. Next year he and the rest of his class -- most of whom showed up, with parents and siblings in tow -- will fragment as their paths take them to a variety of different middle schools in the area.After completing my duties on the grill, it was time for me to socialize with the guests. I was talking with one of the moms of one of my son's classmates about just how tough it is getting new business in a crowded field. I told her that I am absolutely convinced (and I am), that if you're really good at what you do -- and if you do what you promise, on time and on budget -- then you'll have more business than you'll know what to do with. And much of this business will come from referrals from happy customers and clients.

Okay. I know I was on a major rant a couple of months ago about all the magazines and newspapers I subscribed to, and how I was going to cut back. I did indeed cut back, but there's one magazine I decided to hang on to: The New Yorker. I love how you'll be reading a story about some topic -- say, Edgar Allan Poe, or the Parrot Panic of 1930 -- and just when you think the article is going to end, it goes on for another page, and then another, and another, and another. I find myself learning a LOT about some very interesting topics. Anyway, that was a long way of saying that one article in last week's issue caught my eye -- Board Stiff -- which explores how the nature of corporateboards has changed as people have tried to improve them over the past couple of decades.

I can't let the bankruptcy of General Motors go by without comment. Yesterday was truly a sad day for what was once the largest and most powerful U.S. corporation. According to its bankruptcy filing, the company has assets of $82.3 billion and debts of $172.8 billion. That is a going-out-of-business plan if I've ever seen one. While the company is not going out of business -- yet -- it is embarking on a major cost-cutting campaign. This campaign includes letting go of 25,000 employees, closing 17 factories and parts centers, and getting rid of 2,400 of its 6,000 dealers across the country. GM has been a part of the Dow Jones industrial average since 1925. No longer.

My friend Bob Nelson -- author of 1001 Ways to Reward Employees -- talks a lot about all the different ways to (no big surprise) reward your employees. While rewarding employees is important, there are other people in your life who you should consider rewarding too. At the top of my personal top-10 list would be someone near and dear to my own heart: my clients and customers. And one of the best ways to do that is to turn them into heroes -- in your industry and your community.

I have been an observer of leadership for many years. During this time, I have seen leaders come and I have seen leaders go. Throughout it all, it became clear to me that, given the right environment and attitude, anyone can become a leader. Leadership is not something that only a select few have the smarts, the fortitude, or the genetic code to possess. I have seen—time and time again—examples of regular people who, when confronted with a challenge, took charge of the situation and became extraordinary leaders. Leadership is within each one of us, we just have to find it.

Last week I was reminded about the importance of remembering exactly who your customer is. I've had a long-term job where I provide support to a key employee who works for a client of mine. I meet with the key employee for a couple of hours every week, and we work closely together on a variety of projects. While I spend a lot of time with this employee, I only meet with my actual client once every couple of months. The problem was that because I was spending far more time with the key employee, I had forgotten exactly who I was working for. I was serving the employee instead of the client. The result? My client reminded me -- not too subtly -- who was approving my invoices, and who I needed to please.

This past weekend I was chatting with Kathy about this blog, and I was reminded of something that happened a few years ago to an article I was working on for Leader to Leader magazine. One of the things I love about working with the magazine is that I get to meet some very interesting and influential top executives. When it comes to cold-calling a CxO, I'm fearless -- no matter how big the company or how big the name. So I was particularly proud when I cold-called FedEx Express and got president and CEO David Bronczek to agree to do an article with me. For the associate editor of a business magazine, it just doesn't get much better than that. But as I soon was to learn, sometimes it's the small stuff that counts.

Today Stonyfield Farm -- a subsidiary of Groupe Danone -- is the leading producer of organic yogurt in the world, with more than $300 million in annual sales.However, the path the company traveled to get to this place was frought with uncertainty and near-disaster. Stonyfield Farm -- which originated with an organic farming school in New Hampshire -- opened for business in 1983 with CEO Gary Hirshberg's vision for the future and a $35,000 loan from the Institute for Community Economics. The business started with seven Jersey cows and by the end of the year was steadily producing 150 cases of yogurt a week.

A while back I posted about the fact that many of today's top companies were started -- or significantly grown -- during some very difficult economic times.For example, Disney started during the post-war recession of 1923-24, Hewlett-Packard began during the Great Depression, and Microsoft was founded during the oil crisis in the mid-1970s. The point? That just because times are tough doesn't mean that you as a businessperson should run and hide from the multitude of opportunities that await you. A recent article in the New Yorker provides further support to this point of view.

I just read an article in the New York Times reporting that the popular Yelp.com website has made a major change to its policies. In case you're not familiar with Yelp, it's a website where anyone can write reviews of restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, dry cleaners, CPAs, fish markets, and most any other kind of business you can imagine. You can even write reviews of local places of interest, such as museums, parks, and beaches. I've been a BIG fan of Yelp for a couple of years now, and I rely heavily on the Yelp app on my iPhone when I'm looking for a great place to eat in an unfamiliar town. What's changing with Yelp's policies is that starting last week, the company now allows businesses to respond to negative comments left about them by reviewers. And believe me, reviewers can sometimes leave comments that are both brutal -- and untrue.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.

Teach him how to fish and he will feed every day.

Loan him money for a boat and he will have a fishing business.

                                  -- Olivier Ozoux

Like my blog co-conspirator Kathy Allen, I too am a BIG fan of person-to-person microlending site Kiva.org. Over the past couple of years that I have been a member, I have made nine different loans to entrepreneurs around the world, including men and women in Senegal, Peru, Cambodia, Mexico, Tajikistan, Samoa, and Azerbaijan.I have been paid back in full on five of my loans, and the others are on their way. To date, Kiva has loaned more than $67 million by way of almost 100,000 individual loans. I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kiva.org cofounder Matt Flannery (he and his wife Jessica came up with the idea for Kiva.org while they were working in Uganda for the Village Enterprise Fund) for my book Giving Back: Connecting You, Business, and Community. I thought it might be interesting to include here some excerpts from the interview pertaining to Matt's own entrepreneurial journey...

I was chatting with a friend last week about a new website she was about to get off the ground. She was particularly excited about the name of the website -- a name that I noticed was VERY close to a concept made popular several years ago in a book by business author Jim Collins. Now, my friend was not familiar with Jim Collins' work, so she had no idea that the name of her website was dangerously close to his concept. And even if she had known, that might not have made a difference anyway, since she was so excited about it. But, as I pointed out to her, if Collins had trademarked the term, then she might not be able to use it.

While few forsaw the depths of the economic crisis that we now face, a few noted authors released books in 2008 that can help provide some much-needed perspective tobusinesspeople looking for solutions today. Here's a list of my current favorites:

Although it seems like I spend 99.9 percent of my waking hours in my home office, every once in a while the opportunity presents itself to get out and run some errands. The first thing I do after starting my car is to change the radio station from whatever noise my kids were listening to the last time they were in the car to something that I like.Today I was driving around and I  heard an interesting advertisement. While I don't remember all the details, the main theme was this: The President and Congress have just agreed to the biggest stimulus of the American economy ever, and there are billions and billions of dollars just waiting forsmart businesspeople like you and me to claim. Of course, the ad implies that if you're REALLY  a smart businessperson, you'll waste no time picking up the phone, calling the company, and getting your piece of the stimulus pie.

Make no mistake about it -- the current economic downdraft is having serious consequences across our nation -- and around the globe -- and there is no end yet in sight. However, it's at times like these -- when everyone seems to be placing their bets on a continued downward slide -- that great companies are built, and that sigificance is found. This fact has been borne out time and time again by many of today’s greatest companies, which either began or grew substantially during recessions and/or depressions.

There has been much debate over the years as to whether entrepreneurs are born or made. My own personal opinion is that it is a little of both. Some people just naturally take to entrepreneurship -- they see themselves as entrepreneurs, and cannot imagine any other kind of life. Although my business only has two employees, I am an entrepreneur of sorts (perhaps a low-level one) and I will do everything in my power to ensure that I never have to work for someone else ever again. I like being my own boss. To be honest, I work far harder for myself than I ever did for anyone else when I worked a regular job, but I don't mind it a bit.

Yesterday my blog-mate Kathy Allen and I were chatting about the current state of the economy, and what we would do about it if we were in charge. While being in charge of cleaning up this economic mess is about the last job I would personally aspire to at the moment, that didn't stop us from coming up with some interesting ideas. This then is the first plank in the Allen-Economy Economic Stimulus Plan of 2009.

If you haven't yet seen a copy of the $787 billion economic stimulus package signed recently by President Obama, then you're in for a treat. At more than 1,000 pages, it's not exactly light reading. For busy small business owners, ferreting out programs of particular benefit to them has not been an easy process. But, according to a recent New York Times article, the benefits are definitely there. Here's some of the good news for small businesses:

Last week Mark Cuban -- the billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team -- announced an interesting new approach to stimulating the U.S. economy: an open source funding environment that he would fund with his own money. Says Cuban, "Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I  was looking for an idea that hopefully could inspire people to create businesses that could quickly become self funding. Businesses that just needed a jump start to get the ball rolling and create jobs. I'm a big believer that entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. I just needed a way to help." Here's how it works: Simply post your business plan on Cuban's blog, and he will personally consider it for funding. There is no minimum and no maximum funding limit, and with a couple billion dollars in the bank, Mark can clearly afford some serious funding.

You might think with the economy on the skids, that consumers could care less about buying green products -- regressing to old habits of purchasing those less ecologically fit items that generally cost less (often significantly less) than their green counterparts. If that's what you thought, then you thought wrong.

I recently met with a very smart former C-level executive who worked in some of the country's largest companies. During the course of our meetings, he gave me a copy of a book that he used to give to all of his managers: Zoom, by Istvan Banyai. The book has been around for a while -- it was originally published in 1998 -- but its message about the power of perspective is timeless. There are no words in the book, just a series of pictures with constantly receding frames of reference.

We all know the news in the United States is nonstop doom and gloom, 24-7. But, despite rumors to the contrary, a significant portion of the rest of the world is not suffering from the same severe economic downdraft as we are. In fact, some parts of the world are prospering.

Is it possible to have too much information? This is a question I've personally been struggling with lately. As a full-time business writer and small business owner, it's my job to be up to date with the goings on in the business marketplace. To do this, I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, made the New York Times my homepage on my web browser (and also read through the online versions of the Washington Post and San Diego Union-Tribune each day), and closely monitored the Business Week, Inc. magazine, and Fast Company websites. The result? I spent far more time reading about what was going on out there in the world than writing about it. I was suffering a chronic case of information overload.

With the business environment as unsettled as it has been lately, you might think that taking time to undertake a planning process might not be the best use of your time right now. I would actually venture that you need to plan now more than ever. One good thing about planning is that it makes you sit down with your team and take some time to think about the priorities and direction of your business. While I agree that the end result should not be a 300-page five-year strategic plan (that might indeed be overkill at this point), a short bullet list of key priorities might just do the trick.

The U.S. economic stimulus program promises to inject up to $2 trillion of new government spending into the economy during the period 2008-2010. While a portion of this cash has already been spent or earmarked for specific purposes -- such as propping up woozy banks and buying bad mortgages -- the majority is yet to be committed. With the new presidential administration's desire to make major investments in rebuilding the nation's infrastructure, there are numerous potential opportunities for American businesses -- your business -- to profit.

In case you haven't noticed, over the past month Kathleen and I (and some of our readers) have been engaging in a mini-debate of sorts over whether or not to set goals, and if so, how large they should be. A friend and colleague of mine -- Traci Fenton, founder and CEO of WorldBlu, Inc. -- is a big believer in the power of setting BIG goals. However, rather than just creating a list of goals and tacking it to her office wall or implanting it into her Blackberry, she decided that sharing them with other important people in her life might apply the additional leverage she needed to achieve them.

While I generally don't post information that will be stale in a few months -- much preferring timeless pearls of wisdom that will stand the test of time (*cough*) -- in this case I'm going to make an exception. I just found out about a competition that -- if you qualify -- you're going to be very interested in. It's called Pitch 2009: Women 2.0 Startup Competition, andthe prizes are nothing short of awesome.

Today one of my clients and I drove up to Riverside, California so I could do some research for a project we're working on. On the way through town, we passed numerous empty houses with uncut grass and empty rooms -- and For Sale signs posted out front. Some of the signs had an added note: Bank Owned. California's Inland Empire -- the inland area of Southern California surrounding the cities of Riverside and San Bernardino -- was booming just a few years ago. Today it's a bust. According to an article in today's New York Times, the area's unemployment rate is hovering at 9.5 percent and 350,000 homes have gone into foreclosure -- with a local population of about 4.3 million people, that translates into one out of every three homes.

However, among all these dark clouds silver linings are starting to appear.

Over the past few days I've had a couple of conversations with colleagues that have crystallized a recent change in my personal business philosophy. My own business of writing books and consulting for aspiring authors is very cyclical -- most of my business comes from referrals from happy clients, and I never know when a new customer is going to walk through the door. When business is tight, I automatically go into austerity mode -- I don't spend a dime on my business unless I absolutely have to. But when I've got LOTS of business, that's when I typically go into spending mode -- buying new computers, monitors, software, printers, and the other things I need to upgrade my office.

However, that's all changed.

Now is not the time to be frittering away your marketing time and money on prospects who offer you the least possible chance of paying off in the near term. Now is the time to focus your marketing efforts on the potential customers and clients who offer you the best chance of a return sooner rather than later. And who exactly might these best marketing prospects be? Well, your current customers and clients of course!

Many company owners and execs no doubt believe that demonstrating to clients and customers that they have a social conscience is a good thing for their companies, particularly if doing so won't have a negative impact on the bottom line. Corporate social responsibilty --aligning a company's activities with the social, economic and environmental expectations of its "stakeholders" -- is the motherhood and apple pie of 21st century business. It's the kind of thing that most every company feels it's got to do -- or at least to give the appearance of doing -- in today's increasingly competitive business environment. Even Wal-Mart -- the 1,000-pound gorilla of the retailing marketplace -- has gotten into the act, declaring on its website that the company's "environmental goals are simple and straightforward: to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy; to create zero waste; and to sell products that sustain our natural resources and the environment."

Do you know anyone who doesn't make at least one or two resolutions for the New Year? I don't. Whether it's exercising more, spending less, or resolving to take a business to the next level, there are all kinds of things we can do better -- starting January 1st. In his book My Start Up Life, my friend Ben Casnocha included a One-a-Day, One-Month Plan to Becoming a Better Entrepreneur. Following Ben's plan -- starting January 1, 2009 -- would be the perfect resolution for any businessperson who wants to shake things up in their business and life. Here are Days 1 through 5 of Ben's Plan (you'll have to buy the book to get Days 6 through 30!):

I was just reading about the guy who was accused a few days ago of embezzling a ton of money ($65 million, to be exact) from his employer Fry's Electronics. According to the complaint filed Dec. 18 by the Internal Revenue Service with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Ausaf Umar Siddiqui -- the company's VP of merchandising and operations -- allegedly devised secret deals with five vendors that involved purchasing excessive amounts of merchandise above market rates in return for kickbacks ranging from 15% to 31% of the total order. That's some serious cabbage!

Many prospective business owners today have tested the economic winds of change to decide whether or not to start their enterprises, felt a chilly downdraft, and retreated to the warm comfort of their existing jobs. This is unfortunate, because even in the most turbulent economic times, there are plenty of opportunities to be had -- you just have to take the time necessary to find these opportunities and work up the courage to pursue them. Imagine, however, that on top of a severe economic downturn, that your country had just emerged from a brutal, years-long civil war -- one that had literally torn your nation apart. This was the case when Hanan Saab decided to start her Beirut, Lebanon-based business, Pharmamed.

A recent Business Week magazine article described an approach to business lending that is gaining in popularity. The article discusses the case of Michael Amstein, a Denver ambulance company executive who decided to quit his corporate job to open a Nestle Toll House Cafe in a local mall. Amstein's loan requests were rejected by local banks because he didn't have sufficient collateral, but he was able to pull $100,000 out of his401k without the standard 10 percent tax penalty.

Okay, so times are tough -- we all know that. You may not be bringing as many new customers in the door as you did a year ago, and some of your most reliable customers from past years may not be quite so reliable. In fact, some may have stopped calling altogether.

The recent financial meltdown has really put the hurt on a lot of businesses. And it’s not just the Wall Street brokerages, the huge multinational insurers, and Big Three automakers that are suffering. In my hometown, restaurants that were vibrant a few months ago are now dark—their windows shuttered and doors locked—and stores and other businesses suddenly have “For Lease” signs posted out front. Credit is tight, banks are holding onto their money, and business loans are harder to get. 

Okay. Let me make something perfectly clear from the very beginning of this post. I have never bought “shapewear,”—undergarments that are specifically designed to reshape (mostly) female body parts and regions—and I don’t expect I ever will. Apparently I’m not alone: the market for pantyhose (much less for girdles, corsets, and other, old-fashioned shapewear) has been sagging for years as large numbers of women have abandoned the product, moving to a more natural look.

A couple of years ago, Frances Hesselbein at the Leader to Leader Institute asked me to take on a new project—an update of a book that Peter Drucker wrote for the Institute (then known as the Drucker Foundation) way back in 1993. Of course, it’s not every day that I get asked to create an updated version of a book by Peter Drucker, so I of course jumped at the chance. Long story short, the new book—The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization—was published by Jossey-Bass earlier this year. As it turns out, Drucker’s five questions are just as relevant for companies today as they were when he wrote about them more than a decade ago.