My twin two-year old daughters reminded me, without words, about business and success. When you are starting a business, you need to think of it as raising a child. You start by crawling, then walking, then running.

So take heart in the following tips – they may come from very cute, very small people but they have the power to help you achieve success.

1. Mirror and Mimic – We forget this, but little ones learn by following what we do. We should be doing this in our businesses too. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Someone has already spent the time, effort and money doing it. Copy them, but use your own personality in everything you do.
2. If it’s working, keep doing it… until it doesn’t work anymore! PB&J sandwiches go down easily but chicken cordon bleu ends up on the floor. (I even told them it was a big chicken nugget… no dice!) So, why force the chicken? Granted, it’s easier to tell what food works with kids more than your business (especially if you are not tracking your marketing efforts). Business owners tend to get bored with their marketing efforts more quickly than customers do.
3. When starting something new – where is your “luvy”? My girls both cling on to a special stuffed animal when they need a little extra comfort. All business owners need support to get through the tough times – because it WILL happen. Find your luvy and always know where it is.
4. Keep practicing new skills. The only way my girls learned to talk – or do anything for that matter – was practice, practice, practice. You need to do the same with skills you are learning.
5. Busy for busy sake isn’t fun… and you can’t learn anything from it. At those busiest of times, the best thing you can do is “stop, drop and watch the bugs go by”. By taking a break – and watching the world for a few minutes, you’ll clear your mind and learn new things.

Post from: EveryJoe

Lessons for small business success, from my twin toddler daughters: Part 2

It’s not good enough to want to survive, your goal should be to excel. This is something I’ve dealt with personally – a company that survived but could never get beyond that.

Most of the time, surviving is better than dying, and if your business survived through the dot com crash or a recession or some similarly difficult time that’s something to be proud of – many, many companies didn’t make it. But the problem comes when you remain in survival mode even when the danger of dying is behind you.

Staying in survival mode – focusing on surviving rather than truly succeeding – creates a company that might last forever but really doesn’t go anywhere. Here’s where survival mode fails companies:

• It creates a culture of apprehension and fear.
• It limits creativity, enthusiasm and passion.
• It draws you towards mediocrity instead of superiority.
• It leads to incremental improvements versus radical innovations.

If survival is the best you can do with a company, it’s time to let it go. Or force radical change.

When starting a new business very few entrepreneurs dream of surviving, but many end up there. It’s hard to succeed, no question about it, but as soon as that’s an excuse for driving in first gear instead of fifth, you should get back to the drawing board.

Don’t get stuck in survival mode.

(Thank you to Charles Green for inspiring this post with his own Built To Last–Not.)

Post from: EveryJoe

Survival Isn’t Good Enough For Entrepreneurs

“The mobile industry will be worth $50 billion in 5 years!”

“Advertising online is going to be worth $100 trillion by 2010!”

You can get this sort of data all over the place. Analysts put out reports all the time expounding the growing size of various markets.

The result is that many startups take this approach:

“If we only get 1% of that market, our company will be doing $5 million in sales, easily. And we’re being conservative. Just 1%.

I used to think that way. Part of me still does because it sounds so damn tempting and easy. But it’s the wrong way to think, and it’s the wrong approach for your business plan and pitch.

Let’s debunk the 1% Market Share Myth:

1. Market numbers are nonsense. At the rate things change in so many industries (and particularly technology) it’s almost impossible to really get a handle on the size and growth possibilities of various markets. Plus, when analysts talk about markets it’s often in vague terms, bunching things together that don’t necessarily belong, or certainly including companies and product offerings that wouldn’t compete against what you’re doing. “The online collaboration market is growing at 1000% per year!” Um…what the heck is the “online collaboration market” and what does it include?
2. You’re selling yourself short. Sure, 1% of a huge market could be a lot, but 1% is a piddly number. There’s a difference between being conservative (which is smart) and lowering expectations. Promoting the concept of 1% is lowering expectations and setting the bar way, way down.
3. VCs hate hearing this. If you’re going after funding, you’ll need a business plan. At minimum you’ll need a pitch. And that pitch is going to include sales estimates, market sizes, etc. Basically, you’ll throw a bunch of numbers into your pitch that will show VCs how much money you’re going to make for them. Truth is, they know the numbers are BS, but they have to be there anyway. What VCs hate is the “1% of market” argument. So if you’re looking for funding, don’t pitch it that way.
4. Getting 1% of any market is damn hard. The big fallacy about nabbing 1% of a market is that startup companies think it’s easy. “How hard can it be to grab 1% of a market? Plus, when we show that 1% of a market is worth so much money, it’s a no-brainer!” Grabbing any amount of a market is hard. Closing a single deal is hard. If it was really easy everyone would be doing it, and there goes your competitive advantage!

If you’re starting a new business don’t think about 1% of the market. It’s bad business in so many ways.

Post from: EveryJoe

The 1% Market Share Myth Debunked

1. How you market is important. Are you being authentic? Are you targeting the right prospects? Are you following up?
2. How you treat customers is important. Are you providing the best level of service possible? Do you genuinely care about them?
3. How you manage your money is important. Are you watching every penny? Are you questioning every purchase? Are you making sure your accounting and bookkeeping are up-to-date?
4. How you treat employees is important. Are you treating them with respect? Are you encouraging them to buzz market?

The best businesses aren’t necessarily those selling the best stuff. The best businesses are those that run great businesses. A wonderful product or service certainly helps, but they’re not necessarily at the core of a great business. Everything else on the other hand…

Post from: EveryJoe

What You Sell Isn’t Important

For the past few weeks I’ve been running the Carnival here. Starting in February we’ll send it out into the wild entrepreneurial blogosphere and let others have fun with the hosting duties!

You can check out past Carnivals with the links provided in the sidebar to the far right.

Enjoy!

My Personal Highlights

• GP, a new innkeeper in Montana, gives us his thoughts on entrepreneurship. What’s so wonderful about this post is the mixture of advice, thought and story. Plus, he’s provided a recipe! How can you go wrong with that?
• Thom Singer presents 2007 Networking Tip. Read this post. Thom knows what he’s talking about. Many of you will nod in agreement, but the key is to take action from his words. Thom lays it all out for you right at the end of the post, giving us all the true meaning of networking.
• Andrew MacGill says tell me something I don’t know. Andrew questions the advice people give when they say, “Find out what your customers want.” What if they don’t know? Good question. Andrew has some answers for you.
• David Maister has excellent advice on what to do when you pass your company on to others. I recently talked about exit strategies and succession planning, so David’s post fits in beautifully.
• Bonny Albo has ten top New Year’s resolutions for entrepreneurs. It’s a great list, not overly long with lots of worthwhile resolutions for you to go after. The 6th resolution is “Take a small business or entrepreneurship course.” That’s an interesting one, not something you would typically find on such a list — how many of you do this?

Better Business Advice

• Juuso Hietalahti reminds us that just because you like coffee, doesn’t mean everyone does. The analogy holds true in many cases, including blog posts (I know exactly how Juuso feels judging his own posts vs. what people respond to), business and entrepreneurship.
• Adnan offers Seven Surefire Steps to a Scorching Sales Pitch. Aside from the wonderful alliteration, the post has some good advice for the non-salesperson. I’m far from an expert in sales, but I’d love to hear what others think!
• Kim Bayne has Five Top Tips For Starting Your Business. What an awesome blog post title! I find it very interesting that her first point is to “write a detailed business plan” because I know many people will disagree and I’m going to be tackling this subject in-depth very soon. Point #5 is critical in my mind, and the most often overlooked.
• David Lorenzo reminds us that you can’t manage time. David provides three areas of our daily lives that we need to examine, each of which we may ignore but definitely shouldn’t. And there’s a great connection with David’s item #3 and Emmanuel Olawutosin’s reason #9.
• Jack Yoest goes under the studio lights for some sales and presentation training. Jack’s got an interesting writing style. Sometimes it means you have to read something a couple times to get the flow, but there’s a lot of valuable advice in this post about sales and presentations worth checking out.
• Wayne Hulbert reminds us that every business is different and they can’t all be managed the same way.

Entrepreneurial Inspiration

• Emmanuel Olawutosin offers 10 Reasons to Start a Business in 2007. They’re all great reasons, but I particularly like #9. It made me chuckle. Go check it out.
• Brian Kim shows us how to believe we can do anything. Brian doesn’t just stick with quick quotes of inspiration, he breaks things down, forces us to think and reconstructs everything by the end. Brian wants you to take control of your beliefs. Go give it a try.
• Patricia gives us 10 Reasons NOT To Give Up on TV. Interesting. When most people find there’s nothing of value on TV, Patricia disagrees, tells us why and ties it into the entrepreneur in you.

Online Entrepreneurship and Resources

• Ryan Mapes, co-founder of Go Big Network, a network for startups and entrepreneurs, asks a question many of us are thinking about, is being paid to write a blog post ethical? Check out Ryan’s thoughts and continue the discussion, which is a worthwhile one (regardless of your opinion.)
• The Digerati Life questions where we’re going with Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Methinks she may have coined a new term: Web 2.5. Anyone?
• Jimmy Reimer has an interview with Lucas Arnold of CommerceCubes where they talk about getting started in the Internet business of building and monetizing websites. It’s a great intro, and I always enjoy the interview format.
• Laura Young presents The Golden Retriever’s Favorite Small Business and Home Office Resources which is a great, and extensive list of resources related to entrepreneurship and business. She has an entire section for resources especially for women, which I think is important.
• Ruben offers a 3-prong triage technique based off of Steve Pavlina’s ideas in order to make money blogging. Ruben doesn’t go into a lot of detail on how he’s going to accomplish the tasks to make money from blogging, but the technique itself is worth investigating and experimenting with.
• Barbra Sundquist provides instructions on how to setup an autoresponder. Many people will tell you that an autoresponder can be very valuable off your website, landing pages, etc. to generate interest in your products and services.

More Great Posts to Help Entrepreneurs

• Erich has a fascinating article entitled What’s Your Money Type? Apparently we all have a money type which tells us a lot about ourselves. I’m not sure we all fit into such neat categories, but it’s still interesting. I’d say I’m a Striver-Coaster. I don’t live above my means and I don’t tend to show off (there’s not much to show off) but I like the “strength of will” referenced with the Strivers.
• Nate Ritter looks at The VC Money Connection, talking about two specific issues: geographic proximity between VCs and startups, and trust.
• Murad explains solution selling and how it works.
• Sagar Satapathy presents The 10 Best (and 10 Worst) Companies for Call Center Service. It’s an interesting list, and everyone – from the solopreneur to small business owner to CEO of a multinational can learn something from the companies doing it right and wrong.
• Joshua Dorkin has some advice for real estate investors and entrepreneurs – buy real estate owned properties. These are properties owned by the bank that have gone through the foreclosure process.
• Jakob Dupont Knudsen has a business idea – commercialized phone calls. The idea would be to listen to commercials while waiting for the person you’re calling to pick up the phone, and the listener (or caller) would be paid (or their phone bill paid) to compensate for the effort. Crazy idea? Maybe. I know I don’t want to listen to ads while waiting for anything, and I’m not sure there’s enough time while the phone is ringing to listen to anything substantial. But who knows…

Another week, another Carnival! It’s a great, enormous list of entrepreneurial-related posts. Check ‘em out, enjoy, comment here and leave comments on the other blogs as well.

Please help promote the Carnival of Entrepreneurs by linking to this post. It’s appreciated!

The next Carnival goes live on January 16th — so get your submissions in.

That’s it for this week! Next week’s Carnival will be hosted here on January 10th, 2006. You can submit your entrepreneurial gems for next week.

I hope everyone finds something worthwhile, spreads the link love, comments on these blog posts and promotes the Carnival.

Post from: EveryJoe

Carnival of Entrepreneurs #5 – An Uber-Load of Entrepreneurial Fun

Please check the links on the sidebar to read the past Carnivals. There’s a lot of content, but hopefully my summaries help you pinpoint what’s of particular interest to you; and then you can go beyond that, broaden your horizons and check out some other posts too.

Every post submitted (barring those that were really not a fit) is included, but I have highlighted some of my favorites. Also, I only accept 1 post per submitter, so if you submitted more than one I took the first one that made sense. Finally, if possible, I’d prefer more recent content be submitted, from the last couple of weeks or so; it keeps things fresher!

Don’t forget to help me promote the Carnival! Whether you’ve submitted posts or you’re just checking it out, blog about the Carnival and help these great bloggers get more recognition and traffic.

My Carnival Highlights

• Emmanuel Olawutosin takes aim at people interested in starting a business with his post How To Start Your Business in 2007. Emmanuel’s post is highlighted today for its sheer enthusiasm and “in your face” approach. You can’t help but get a bit inspired by this fellow.
• Vihar Sheth provides an inspirational story at Turn On Your Love Light. It’s about an Indian company that sells solar-powered headlamps, many of which go to rose pickers (who don’t make a lot of money.) The result has been more productivity and success for everyone. With my bent towards social entrepreneurship I’m glad this post was submitted.
• Charles H. Green recommends that you always stay curious and have a list of 20 questions ready to ask prospects or customers. Really it’s about lowering self-orientation; which is your own focus on you.
• Jon presents Pipeline-Profits: Tempted? If so You Aren’t Ready to Be Rich! Jon takes aim at Internet marketing scams and get-rich quick schemes. Plus he says, “The big fat problem with get money quick for little or no effort is that you don’t really want money. No-one does.” Say what now? We don’t want money. Better read on…

Entrepreneurial Inspiration

• David Maister entertains us with his friend’s thoughts on James Brown. It’s always amusing to see what parallels people can draw to entrepreneurship and work. I do it all the time in my own thinking about what to write; drawing those connections is a great way to tell a story, and David’s friend does an excellent job.
• Tim King wins the award for finding parallels in his analysis of the movie Chocolat. The title of his post is awesome: What Chocolate Says About Entrepreneurship. If that doesn’t make you want to read it, nothing will. The post is long and extremely detailed, but go have some fun with Tim and his analysis.
• Adeolu Akinyemi has some good advice on making transitions in your life. If there’s a common theme amongst entrepreneurs it’s change and transition.
• Patricia has 10 steps for breaking bad habits or starting new ones. We’ve all got bad habits. We all want to create new, positive habits. Patricia just provided us with the roadmap.
• Jack Yoest asks What’s the Best Predictor of Successful Leadership? I won’t give away the answer, go check out Jack’s post.

Business Advice Galore

• Wayne Hulbert has some straightforward advice on how to get more customer referrals. The crux of Wayne’s suggestion is that you put a customer and staff referral system in place.
• Matthew Paulson presents a rather scathing review of the book Why We Want You To Be Rich by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki. Matthew isn’t impressed with much, saying the book is a rehash of old messages and in some cases flat out wrong.
• Jeff Burkey presents Against All Odds, which is his quick summary of John Edwards’ entry as a presidential candidate for 2008. The most important point for entrepreneurs in this post is Jeff’s quote, “Desire for success is a prerequisite for any goal, but the difference between the winners and losers is careful, methodical preparation.”
• Jim Logan asks What’s the difference between a suspect and a prospect? Short and to the point, Jim offers two quick definitions and lays it out clearly. We want more prospects not suspects.
• Murad helps explain the concept of a product life cycle. It is important to understand how long your product will have value so you can continue to extend it, innovate on it or build new products.
• Mary Emma Allen presents Home Business Strategies For The New Year. Mary’s got a list of important questions to ask yourself, evaluating the past and future, so that 2007 will be a banner year!
• Anne-Marie Nichols reminds us to be nice, even to your problem clients. The kicker to Anne-Marie’s post is right at the end. It’s a smart way of turning things around and saying, “be nice, but…”

Web 2.0, Blogging and Internet Entrepreneurs

• Rohail Rizvi things now is a good time for young entrepreneurs. Big-time Web 2.0 companies looking for suitors are asking for too much money, and companies like Viacom are eager to make acquisitions, but with reasonable price tags. Times are interesting, indeed.
• Vahid Chaychi presents Be Aware of Scams and Rip Off Artists – Part Four (MLM schemes) which is a good lesson in how MLM schemes make money. For home-based entrepreneurs these schemes might be attractive, but there’s plenty of risk involved.
• Joshua Dorkin borrowed a page from my group writing project experience and launched his own writing project: What Are Your Real Estate Goals For 2007?.

That’s it for this week! Next week’s Carnival will be hosted here on January 10th, 2006. You can submit your entrepreneurial gems for next week.

I hope everyone finds something worthwhile, spreads the link love, comments on these blog posts and promotes the Carnival.

Happy New Year!

Post from: EveryJoe

More Great Entrepreneurial Insight in the Carnival of Entrepreneurs #4

Truth is, failure is part of being an entrepreneur. Trial by fire and all that nasty stuff. Although it’s not necessarily that entrepreneurs are huge risk takers, we are doers. And doers make mistakes.

When you do fail, it’s important to learn from your mistakes. It’s the best way to avoid them and improve things in the future.

Chris Pearson has made some mistakes and openly discusses them in his blog post. Dumb Move #3 for Chris is a tough lesson and one that requires a fair bit of skill in balancing a business. The crux of his point is:

If you’re going to traverse the road of an entrepreneur, you need to play it smart by avoiding distractions and obstacles.

What he’s talking about specifically is how he worried too much about money. It distracted him from doing the things he needed to do in order to make money. Worrying about money is easy. We need money to pay bills, and if we don’t pay bills we get in trouble.

Here’s the balancing act:

Worrying about money. Making money in any way possible. Doing what’s right for your business.

How do you balance those three things for the most success possible?

In order of importance, focus on:

1. Doing what’s right for your business.
2. Making money in any way possible.
3. Worrying about money.

A little worry never killed anyone, but let it consume you and you’re screwed. Either you’ll be paralyzed or you’ll go towards doing whatever it takes to make a buck, and there’s no vision or success in there.

Ultimately, bills have to be paid, so if opportunities arise to make money, go for it, but do what you can to align those opportunities with your overall strategy and goals. And again, focus too much on this and you don’t really have a business anymore, you’re just working for hire.

At the end of the day, with a vision and plan in-hand, you need to do what’s right for your business. Short of that and you’re hampering your own success.

Photo courtesy of Havana2006.

Post from: EveryJoe

How To Balance What’s Right, Making Money, And Worrying

I’ve highlighted some of my favorites, but I encourage you to check out everything and anything that interests you.

As well, please help promote the Carnival by linking to it! It’s easy to do and your readers will appreciate it. In the New Year I’ll be asking others to host it for me, perhaps in a few weeks once we have a couple more under our belts. If you’re interested, please get in touch.

My Carnival Highlights

• Charles H. Green suggests that you write your next proposal with the client. Charles recommends that you ask the client (well technically they’re a prospect) to write the proposal with you, instead of having you do it on your own and submitting it. It’s a crazy idea…so crazy it might work … has anyone ever triedit?
• Barbra Sundquist presents Top 5 Food Business Trends for 2007. Maybe it’s the season, but I can’t help but be interested in a food-related post. Plus the trends are ironic in a way; from ultra-healthy to ultra-fatty (and yummy.)
• Josh Bickford asks, Is your goal worth of you? Josh wants us to strive for bigger goals, and stop selling ourselves short. I’m all for that. His post merits more discussion, hopefully this sends some his way. Check out the question he asks at the end…it’s a doozy.
• Jack Yoest got to meet Sylvester Stallone. Pretty cool. Plus he does something along the lines of a review of Sly’s latest movie and connects the dots between Rocky Balboa and entrepreneurial success.
• SVB tells it like it is with her lessons learned about entrepreneurship. We all face hardship in our lives, including our entrepreneurial ventures, and SVB is learning the ropes and figuring it all out.

Can I Get Some Motivation With That Holiday Feast Please?

• Steve Faber says success is at your doorstep. He’s not pulling any punches here. You’ll either say “damn straight” or “ouch” when you read his thoughts. So read ‘em and tell him what you think.
• David Maister has a new podcast episode on investing in your career where he focuses on your non-billable time and what you’re doing with it to improve yourself and your career.
• Craig Harper has a list of 35 tips to create and grow your business. The link goes to part one of the series. I really like tip #9.

Money, Money, Money!

• Juuso Hietalahti has a rule you should use when deciding whether to lower your product price. It’s got something to do with beer, so it can’t be too bad, right? Reducing your product price is easy and the common feeling is that it will increase sales, but is it worth it and does it really work?
• Murad Ali introduces us to the Pecking Order Theory of Finance, a straightforward article on deciding how to finance your business.
• Wilson Ng reminds us that passive income is a great way to build wealth. He discusses the Rule of 72 and compound interest. Passive income is an extremely popular subject these days, particularly for bloggers.

Best Business Practices

• Benecia Beyer asks, Are you an organized manager? Good question. The article asks a few pointed questions about your work habits and tries to focus your energies on getting things done.
• Travis Wright introduces us to the book The Next Millionaires by Paul Zane Pilzer. Apparently 10,000,000 new millionaires will be created between 2006 and 2016. A boy can dream right?

The World of Online Entrepreneurship

• Julia Dorofeeva has some suggestions for your website’s logo. Julia’s focus is the dating business, which is huge online, but her ideas and suggestions could apply to any company with a strong online presence.
• John Wesley presents The Next Big Thing: Will It Be You? John’s got some opinions about what makes bloggers successful and a couple of blogging pet peeves as well. He doesn’t like list posts (hope this doesn’t count!) and points a finger directly at Ririan Project for posting unoriginal list posts because of their popularity. A little controversy never hurt anyone, right?
• Lynn Cognito offers up her thoughts on PayPal and their frustrating handling of fraudulent charges. For anyone in the eBay business (or thinking about it) getting some good lessons on PayPal is a smart move.
• Sagar Satapathy presents a list of free CRM tools for home-based or small businesses. I’m not familiar with any of them, but CRM in general is worth checking out and can help a business stay organized.
• Yan presents his Social Bargain Hunting Roundup. He’s looked at a number of bargain-related sites that include social features and presented his review of them.
• Mary Emma Allen reminds home-based business owners that blogging can work for them too. I laughed outloud when I read the question someone asked her about blogs. Great stuff!

I hope you find something here that interests you, and spread the word! Tell your friends, link up to the post, etc.

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted on January 3, 2007 – so get your submissions in!

Post from: EveryJoe

The Carnival of Entrepreneurs – Round 3

Round 2 of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs is no different. Lots of great submissions. Lots of inspiration. Lots of practical guidance.

I encourage you to check out these posts, dig through these people’s blogs and expand your horizons.

And I’d also ask that you do what you can to support the Carnival. Link to this post. Tell your friends. Helping is easy, and I hope you’ll see the value in doing so.

Alright! Here we go…

My Picks

• Tim King reflects on 10 things that are different now that he’s self-employed. First off, you’ll laugh (not at him, but with him) at the intro to his post. Just go read it and see. After that Tim’s got some great insights into someone that’s just switched from employee to entrepreneur. His insights are great – raw, humorous and important.
• Brian Kim helps us find what we love to do. Brian will tell you that it’s not hard to find what you love to do, but you’ve got to ask the question. Once you understand why people don’t ask the question and you look at Brian’s steps for finding what you love to do, you’ll be a heck of a lot closer.
• Stephanie West Allen is puzzled by all the nonsense around designating people as workaholics. She cites two online surveys that have some fairly funny questions in them. From my point of view those questions don’t determine whether you’re a workaholic or not, they determine whether you love what you do (at least partially) and whether you care about the quality of your work. Um…those aren’t bad things. Stephanie’s not overly impressed with the labels people are throwing around, nor should you be.
• David E. brings us an example of incredible entrepreneurial spirit used to help cure a disease. You won’t find much more inspiration out there than this post. David’s talking about Augie Nieto, founder of a huge fitness business, recently diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Augie’s throwing his entrepreneurial spirit and guts into curing this disease. I wish him nothing but the best.
• Brandon Peele presents The Economics of Self-Awareness. Brandon tackles 4 concepts: sustainability, leadership, authentic marketing and innovation and how they can be the birthplace for self-awareness. It’s a long post but well worth reading. Brandon touches on many important points for any growing business. Makes me feel like someone that “gets it” will easily stand out from the crowd.

Smart Business Advice

• David Maister recognizes the pitfalls with constantly changing your mind and provides some great advice and experience on how to stay focused, make better decisions and be more successful. David hits on a theme near and dear to my heart which I talked about in Why Ideas Suck.
• Paul has some advice on how to get rich — you have to increase your hourly rate. He provides some very clear ways that you can increase your hourly rate, and why thinking that way when it comes to making money is important.
• Laura Young says that you have no competition. What’s that? No competition? Come on! Laura’s not really saying there’s no one else in your industry, but she’s saying that focusing too much on the competition is not the way to go. Having your own focus, knowing yourself and your business is the most important thing.
• Charles Green tells us we need to check our egos at the door. Solid advice about going in for the big close, pitch or meeting. Toss out the ego, don’t try and control everything. It won’t work anyway…
• Wayne Hulbert recommends getting feedback on your business ideas. I couldn’t agree more. This is something I’ve always pushed – if you have an idea tell people. He’s got some recommendations on who you should speak to as well.
• Jake Danger describes 3 kinds of self discipline. Most people will probably be nodding their heads in agreement with Jake’s final thoughts about doing what you love. My favorite part of Jake’s blog: the title — “Lunatic Wisdom: Life Beyond the Matrix”.
• Patrick Chan presents Know The Fundamental Skills Of Creative Thinking. In particular, I like Patrick’s thoughts on thinking ambiguously. What’s that now? Well, check it out yourself…
• Barbra Sundquist offers up a self assessment quiz for people interested in starting home-based businesses. A few questions that stand out for me — Do you know your weak areas? Do you have family support? Do you have enough to money to do it?
• Juuso Hietalahti provides some straightforward information on how to perform marketing research. It’s bigger than market research and aims to form a communication link between a company and its customers.
• Murad Ali recommends having a diverse workplace of different cultures and people of different backgrounds. He does a good job of explaining the benefits and values of doing so.
• Alexandra Levit says that working from home isn’t necessarily perfect. She work from home part of the week, goes to the office for the rest, and lists three qualifications you’ll need to succeed as an at-home worker.
• Mary Emma Allen suggests a smart spin-off idea for stay-at-home entrepreneurs. Mary definitely takes a more creative, “outside the box” approach to working-at-home. She’s pushing the envelope a bit in terms of getting people to think of what they can do from their homes.
• Emmanuel Oluwatosin recommends that you focus on solutions, not problems. He’s right. The most successful people are able to achieve their goals through visualization, and Emmanuel’s got a healthy reminder of that.

Online Business, Software and Entrepreneurship

• Cody McKibben has an interview with Rajesh Setty. Rajesh Setty wears lots of hats – blogging at Life Beyond Code, writing books and working on a few startup companies such as Suggestica and iPolipo. Two points stuck out – “a life of leadership” and “ROII”. Read the interview to find out what I’m talking about.
• Lynn Cognito provides answers on creating effective eBay listings. A picture speaks a thousand words, and Lynn’s right on the money when she says the picture closes the deal.
• Phil tackles issues of email etiquette expressing his frustration with people who don’t respond to emails. The reasoning they give him is funny (and sad at the same time.) His tips for how to respond to email should generate some controversy; since so many of us are overloaded by email and we all try to handle it in different ways. For example, Greg at LifeDev has a different opinion on when you should read your email.
• Sagar Satapathy offers up 5 software programs to help your small business. I haven’t used any of these so I can’t speak to Sagar’s choices, but I can tell you that getting better organized through the use of software (particularly to automate boring / time consuming / non-core tasks) can really help a small business / entrepreneur succeed.

And that’s the end of the Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 2.

Please check out Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 1.

And please spread the word!

Next week’s Carnival goes live December 27th.

Post from: EveryJoe

Carnival of Entrepreneurs Round 2

Ideas are worthless.

But, they actually miss the entire reason why that’s the case.

Mark Cuban on the other hand, gets it. He recently wrote a blog post titled Success and Motivation: Drowning in Opportunity / Winning the Battles You Are In.

He’s listed 3 rules he uses when starting a new business or looking to expand an existing one. Rule #3 is the critical discussion point: You Can Drown in Opportunity.

Every entrepreneur’s mind goes crazy with the new and exciting things they can do beyond the new and exciting things they are already doing. The risk is that you can drown in all these opportunities. Far too often when an entreprenuer hits a rough patch or competitive challenge, the temptation is too “turn on the thinking cap” and find something new for the company to do.

He’s 100% right. And that’s why ideas suck. There are simply too many of them.

Of course recently I praised the long tail of ideas, where I argued that an idea’s value wasn’t just its own results but in the million other ideas spawned from it, which could be bigger in return than the original idea.

So which is it? Do ideas suck or are they the key to business success?

Both.

Let’s go back to what Mark Cuban says:

As an entreprenuer you have to know what the core competencies of your business are and make sure that your company focuses on being the absolutely best it can be at executing them. Bottom line is this. If you are adding new things when your core businesses are struggling rather than facing the challenge, you are either running away or giving up.

Under these circumstances generating infinite ideas and chasing them like a rabid dog in a room full of chew toys will lead to failure. It’ll be impossible to focus on what you should be doing best, and you’ll spread yourself too thin.

Of course, if what you do best changes as a result of generating an idea, or your core competencies are being managed well and you’re looking to expand…well…ideas are the goldmine of success. Without new ideas (spawned from existing ones or not) you’ll never grow. A business can’t grow without new ideas.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why Ideas Suck