The Venture Edge

Last week I saw one of the best pitches for funding I’ve ever seen.  Irene Rhodes is the founder/CEO of Consumer Fire Products, which provides proprietary wildfire protection systems that are, quite simply, amazing.  I’ve known her for some time.  She’s a USC alum, and I’ve had the pleasure of giving her advice along the way as she developed the business.  So what did she do last week to hit it out of the park?  

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.

Lately, private equity has gotten a lot more attention than it probably wants.  That’s because most of the attention has been negative as reporters and political pundits have gone all out to expose their lack of knowledge on the subject including confusing venture capital with private equity and making wildly unsubstantiated claims about the “vulture” nature of private equity.

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. 

Start your engines all those of you who have hopes of becoming top-level domain name registrars, which seems to be the opportunity du jour. On Thursday this week ICANN, the non-profit organization that oversees the Internet domain name world so that it’s not completely chaotic, will begin accepting applications to manage a whole new set of top-level domains that could include just about any word.  Think dot-electronics or dot-snowboardingsafaris.   Opening up a vast array of potential top-level domains will no doubt have the domain-name speculators out in force.

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. 

I keep looking for the pundits to come out in force to predict what 2012 is going to look like for business owners. Most seem to be hiding because I’m not seeing a lot of insightful predictions. Maybe they just don't have any idea.   Now, I do not put myself in the “pundit” class by any stretch and I don’t have any special insights into what might happen this year, but as a business owner I sure have been thinking about what to expect in the next 12 months.   

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.

 Imagine spending a ton of time and resources coming up with the name for your company or your product only to discover that someone else owns it.  Or they own the trademark while you own the domain name.  Or what about this?  You’re a famous entrepreneur and someone in another country legally changes their name to yours.

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. 

Many entrepreneurs launch their businesses with a board of directors that consists of the founding team and perhaps the first investor while they rely heavily on board of advisors for everyday guidance and to open doors. There's a good reason for this approach: it's easier and less costly to find people willing to be on an advisory board because advisors don't have the legal liability associated with being on a board of directors. Most potential directors will not serve unless you carry directors' and officers' (D&O) liability insurance to indemnify them, and the expense of this insurance is often prohibitive for a startup. However, I would argue that establishing corporate governance early in the life of a startup will often enhance the quality of the company as it grows.   

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. 

I want to follow up on Peter’s great post about Google and its march toward brand dilution with its latest venture, a local/online delivery service.  You might scratch your head and ask why are they doing this, but remember this is the same company that is also developing autonomous, self-driving cars so that we can devote our full attention to its search engine while we’re on the road. 

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? 

I have been missing in action for the past week and a half and Peter stepped in to fill the void.  My father passed away last week after a long life of 93 years (WWII vet at Guadalcanal) and a valiant battle for the past two years to overcome a disease that cut short his wish to live to 100.  I hope you’ll permit me a bit of a deviation from my normal posts because going through this transition with my father was a life-changing experience that taught me some key lessons that anyone can and should apply in their lives, especially in these times. 

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? 

Well, that title is going to irk some people.  Actually, I can’t claim to have thought it up. No, a friend in Madrid sent a link to this post on a Chilean site called PilarSordo, written by Armando Fuentes Aguirre.  The title is “Hay Gente Pobre, Pero Tan Pobre, que lo Único Que Tiene es…Dinero,” which translates to there are poor people, but so poor, that the only thing they have is money. Given that in 2006 Chile had the highest GDP per capital in Latin America and the Global Competitiveness Report for 2009-2010 ranked the country at 30^th most competitive in the world, I thought Aguirre might have something interesting to say.

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.

It’s not often I get to write about proposed legislation that will actually make something less regulated, particularly when it comes to the SEC.  But, it’s true.  Read on. 

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. 

Only two days left until Groupon begins trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol GRPN. Their highly anticipated (and often panned) IPO, scheduled for November 4, is important to investment banks that have another 14 ventures in the wings waiting to launch their IPOs.  If Groupon fares well, companies like Zynga and Angie’s List will head out with some confidence.  On the other hand, given all the negatives around Groupon in the past few months, there are no guarantees that this party will last beyond the initial bump.

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%).  

Peter hit the nail on the head when he said in his recent post that saying you’re sorry just doesn’t cut it. With third quarter results just out, Netflix lost 810,000 customers  between Q2 and Q3. That’s a lot of customers. Although the company increased its revenues this quarter, the full effects of customer loss won’t be seen until the 4^th quarter.   If that weren’t bad enough, the company has also lost billions in shareholder wealth with the stock down to about $93/share. So what is the real reason CEO Reid Hasting’s plan to split the company failed so miserably? It may be because either he never really understood his customers or he was simply arrogant enough to think that he knew best what they wanted. Either way he sacrificed the long-term value of loyal customers for for bad execution of a questionable plan.

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. 

Ok, the title of this blog is a bit cheesy given that this year’s Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Awards gave the gold medal to a company that produces heart cells by the billions. I couldn’t resist. The annualawards seek out “breakthrough” technological achievements in everything from medicine to consumer electronics.

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.

Today I received VC Steve Blank’s blog post, Nokia as “He Who Must Not Be Named” and the Helsinki Spring, and I encourage you to read it. I usually avoid writing about political issues as much as possible because that’s not the purpose of our site; but sometimes it’s unavoidable, especially when it affects the future of entrepreneurship in the U.S.

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. 

I never switched my allegiance to Apple, although I wouldn’t part with my iPad2 for anything. No, I’m one of those business people still rooted in PCs and Windows. But I have to say…the death of Steve Jobs yesterday was a huge loss to innovation. He was the first of the technology icons that I’ve admired to leave this world, so it felt a bit like a personal loss as well. I’m sure Apple will feel his absence for a long time to come. As difficult as it was for Tim Cook to replace Steve Jobs in the hearts and minds of Apple fans while he was alive, it has to be even more difficult trying to step into the shoes of a legend.

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. 

I’m working with a fresh crop of aspiring entrepreneurs who are pie-in-the-sky optimistic about their ventures becoming the “next big thing.” I love their optimism because today it seems thatoptimism is in short supply in the general public, but not among these can-do entrepreneurs. They’re absolutely certain that they can compete successfully in a very crowded marketplace. And they absolutely can, but only if they adopt a contrarian point of view.

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.

Peter and I are big on entrepreneurs designing businesses that can withstand unpredictable events—those events that mathematician and philosopher Nassim Taleb dubbed Black Swans. This week the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, reported on an experiment that "...could have a potentially great impact” on science—what an understatement!

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. 

From time to time I’ve been talking about some of the critical skills that entrepreneurs must have to be successful no matter what industry you’re in or what the state of the economy is. Last week I talked about decision making and your emotional intelligence. Today I want to talk about storytelling. First off, let me assure you that I’m not referring to tall tales or big fish stories when I say storytelling.No, absolutely not! In this case, storytelling is your ability to convey a compelling narrative about yourself, your business, your product, and your customer.

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? 

One of the important skills that entrepreneurs must develop is effective decision making. This is true not only because some of the decisions they are called upon to make could affect their business insignificant ways, but also because entrepreneurs make hundreds of decisions throughout any given day and usually those decisions are made quickly, almost instinctively. Any one of those decisions could negatively affect the business.

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. 

Although entrepreneurship in its essence is about startup—creating an opportunity and gathering the resources to make that opportunity a successful enterprise—it really is also a way of life. Once you’ve been bitten by the excitement of discovering an opportunity and creating and designing a new business, it’s hard not to see opportunity everywhere you look. But despite the fact that I’ve clearly drunk the entrepreneurial Kool-aid, I do recognize that this lifestyle is not for everyone. 

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’s very hard to get the business model right at startup. Even if you’ve done all the things we’ve talked about in previous posts, there are no guarantees that things won’t change once you have an operating business. The business environment is fluid (and that’s being kind) so chances are you’ll be operating a few months and something will shift

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.

Now there’s a negative way to start a post! But I believe in facing the facts; let me explain. Today on the news shows, people were talking about how the government has to incentivize entrepreneurs tostart businesses and businesses in general to hire more people. Some talking head on CNN actually proposed that if the government would simply subsidize one new job for every small business and that business had to keep the person for 5 years, we could get rid of unemployment. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

 Imagine you’re a VC who is finally seeing the light at the end of a long tunnel. The company you have put your heart and soul into, not to mention millions of investment dollars, is about to go public.Can you picture the excitement—after all, the press has called your company a long-awaited IPO—it’s going to be big!  Really big. But wait...the market doesn’t seem to be cooperating—betting on a great opening day is looking like trying to shoot a pheasant in the dark (without night vision goggles - I know I'm going to hear from one of my South Dakota friends that this is totally possible). You see your fellow IPOers Pandora Inc. and Linkedin being pummeled by stock sell-offs. And it’s not just Internet companies getting slammed. InvenSense, which makes motion sensors for consumer electronics, hit the pause button on its IPO, according to a Wall Street Journal article.

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 can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this happen—you identify a customer need and come up with a fantastic solution only to discover that the customer is not doing their part by buying it. And our saga of the TaTa Nano is an example of that, but here’s another.

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.

The biggest  markets for new products and services today lie in developing countries, and these countries represent more than 80 percent of the world's population.  Asia, Africa, and Latin Americaoffer a wealth of new opportunity to entrepreneurs who can help customers become more productive and create wealth.  But to take advantage of these opportunities entrepreneurs need to leave their developed world perspective behind and look at these markets from a local perspective. 

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.” 

 I don't often write about books I'm reading, which is surprising since I'm an avid reader and a lifelong learner.  Actually, I'm finding that my love of books (the real physical kind as well as the Kindle/iPad kind) is not shared by a lot of people any more.  Each semester I post my favorite business books for students, and when I ask if they have read any of the books, only a couple hands go up. A sign of the times, I suppose, and a reflection of the reality that today people want information in sound bytes.   Their loss... 

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." 

It looks like the most sweeping reform of our patent system since 1952 is going to happen. The House and Senate have both passed similar versions of the bill and it now goes to reconciliation. If you’re an inventor or your small business files for patents, you should have been paying attention because not everyone is happy about the changes being made. 

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: 

Although it appears that I did two posts in the last two weeks (less than I normally do), I will admit now that I set those up in advance to post while I have been off the grid in French Polynesia.  This was a well-earned vacation (and much needed), but if you're like me 

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

 I just finished making a Kiva loan to a woman entrepreneur in Peru. If you’re not familiar with Kiva, it’s a micro lending program founded in 2005 to “connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.”  You can go on Kiva’s site and search for an entrepreneur anywhere in the world who needs a loan, and you can be the lender for as little as $25. When the entrepreneur pays back the loan (and all of my entrepreneurs have paid theirs back), you can relend it. And that’s the essence of micro lending. I’ve been doing Kiva loans for the past 4 years, but it was after the debt crisis here in the U.S. that I wondered if it might be a model that would work here. Clearly others were thinking the same thing because today there are several sites offering “peer-to-peer” lending. 

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.

One of the great moments in education for those of us who teach comes long after the student leaves the classroom, sometimes years later when out of the blue the student contacts you to thank you for what he learned in your class and how he used it to further his career.

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. 

 I’m beginning to think that everyone believes that incubators hold the secret to entrepreneurial success. When you look at all the incubators that have launched in the past few years, you wouldcertainly get that impression. Some highly respected people have launched such programs as yCombinator, TechStars, Plug and Play, and IdeaLab, to name just a few. Their goal? To claim the next great startup, whether it be an Internet company, an energy company, or a retail play.

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 May 18, I posted a blog about the Mobile News Incubator program at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. In short, 17 students in teams were dropped into four news organizations—The Associated Press, Variety, KCRW-FM, and La Opinión, the largest Spanish newspaper in the U.S. Their mission? To develop new mobile app products that would revolutionize journalism. I’m happy to say that every team succeeded beyond all expectations.

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. 

I recently received an email from a high school student with strong entrepreneurial interests who asked me whether I thought it was worthwhile to go to college to study entrepreneurship. Sam even sent me a list of about three dozen books he had read related to entrepreneurship (several of them were mine, so he already knows how to get someone’s attentionJ) As a professor at a university known for entrepreneurship, you would think this would be an easy question for me to answer. Well, it’s not, because in a world where pretty much all the information you might need is readily available online, and since many universities have been successful with online courses, students are questioning how they should spend their time, not to mention their money.

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.  

Today I’ll meet 17 students who hope to invent the future of news in just 9 days. Sound impossible? Maybe, but then considering how fast we've seen change come to the global journalismbusiness--it's now powered by millions of citizen journalists through blogs, Facebook, and YouTube-- 9 days is almost an eternity! 

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.  

 I just finished the semester at USC and for one of my graduate courses, Technology Commercialization, the students, who come from science, engineering, fine arts, psychology, and business have to write a reflection paper of about 4,500 words on the insights they gained and novel connections they made across all the various activities and requirements of the course. This is always an eye-opening experience for me because I learned long ago that students are frequently learning things you never thought you were teaching!

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. 

Ever since the cartoon series “The Jetsons” became a household world in the 1980s, we’ve fantasized about owning a car that could fly. And, if you live in a megalopolis like Southern California, you dream about rising above it all. Former UC Davis professor Paul Moller, who designed his first helicopter at the age of 15, went beyond the dream stage and has spent his life developing a flying car. After more than 20 years of development, his company, Moller International, has produced “the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.” On his website, Moller has the following anonymous quote about new technology:

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. 

 Part III of the Facebook Trilogy.  Now that yet another Facebook “founder” wannabe has come out of the woodwork to claim his riches, it’s time to take stock of the lessons that entrepreneurs should learn from the evolving story of the founding of Facebook. First-time entrepreneurs make a lot of mistakes, and Mark Zuckerberg is no exception, so let’s see what we can take away from the ongoing claims against Facebook.

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.

Are you feeling the pressure to put your business on Facebook? It’s not surprising because lots of small businesses (and large) are rushing to plant a stake in Facebook territory, hoping to take advantage of referrals by people who “friend" their company. It makes sense, because we all know that referrals bring us the best and most loyal customers, those lifelong relationships. Some marketers are claiming that Facebook will become the next great e-commerce platform.   But before you set up your retail business on Facebook and expect an onslaught of sales, you need to consider whether it will really help you or not.

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.

 Back in February Peter wrote about the new program, Startup America [“Ready. Set. Startup America!], that promises to support a variety of entrepreneurship programs and kick start more new businesses. Looks likethe UK is getting on board with their own version—Startup Britain. 

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.

Coming to you from Washington DC where I was speaking at the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) annual conference.  Tonight was the highlightofthe conference, March Madness for the Mind.  Oops, can't call it that any more because the NCAA decided they didn't like the juxtaposition with their annual collegiate basketball tournament.  So this year, it's actually called Open Minds, a characteristic the NCAA can't claim.

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. 

I often get asked about how to quickly assess a new venture idea so you don't waste time and money on something that has little or no chance of succeeding.  To be sure, some ideas don't immediately suggest a problem; in fact, they may look like real winners until you dig a bit deeper and uncover the fatal flaw.   

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.

Recently I’ve been talking with my students about patents and the issue of prior art. For those unfamiliar with patent law, prior art refers to the body of knowledge that precedes the invention thatyou’re seeking to patent. The key point here is that you can be prevented from obtaining a patent if your invention is based on something already in existence—“known or used by others..or patented or described in a printed publication.” [Title 35, USC, Section 102] But enough of the legal stuff. What’s interesting about prior art is that sometimes a work of fiction can prevent you from getting a patent if it reveals the secret sauce behind the invention.

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.

If you attend or speak at a lot of conferences in your industry like I do, after a while they all start to look the same—a bunch of people giving speeches, attendees skipping out on sessions tocatch up on work, and everyone eating like they've never seen food before. If you're looking for something different and you want to hang out with the movers and shakers of the world, the most exciting conference of all is TED, the brainchild of Chris Anderson.  It's the place to be every spring in Long Beach, CA, but you’d be hard pressed to get an invitation because it sells out a year in advance at $6,000 a ticket. For that you get to schmooze with the likes of Bill Gates and Gen. Stanley McChrystal and become part of an exclusive network of TEDsters.

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.

We sometimes have this impression that anything worth paying attention to when it comes to technology is taking place in the U.S. and maybe the Pacific Rim.  But this past week a huge event took place in Barcelona—Mobile World Live, and it featured a stellar list of keynotes including Google’s Chairman/CEO Eric Schmidt, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, and Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, to name just a few. 

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."

As someone who spends her life around entrepreneurs, I've seen every type imaginable.  But sometimes you have the pleasure of getting to know an entrepreneur whotakes creative thinking to the max and does more than simply start a business--he changes an industry. Such a person is Tom Grasty, who is probably one of the finest graduate students I've ever had the pleasure of working with. Tom comes out of the field of journalism, an industry that is struggling to adapt to the onslaught of citizen journalists who tweet, blog, and YouTube their way alongside (and often in front of) the mainstream press.  But even Tom and his partner Nonny de la Pena couldn't have predicted that their collaborative video editing platform, Stroome, would play a role in the revolution taking place in Egypt.

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."

it's amazing to me how often our government takes a perfectly good idea--for example, Startup America, designed  to encourage innovation--and then screws it up big time.  At the same time the White House was announcing all the programs that Peter talked about in his recent post (Ready. Set. Startup America), it also announced a new way for business to fast-track the paten tprocess. On the surface, this seems like a good thing, but look a little closer. 

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 first met Richard Rosenblatt, the co-founder and CEO of a now very public new media company, back in 2006, after he had successfully sold MySpace to News Corp’s Rupert Murdochand had just started a long-tail phenomenon called Demand Media.  I had asked him to participate in an Internet forum I was hosting at USC.  People at that event were clearly watching and listening carefully to this serial entrepreneur because he is that rare person who not only envisions a business, but an entire industry, and then makes it happen. If you're familiar with his history, he has done it multiple times, but that’s another story. He became a friend (and, of course, he's a fellow Trojan), and last week I had the good fortune and excitement of being an investor in the company’s highly successful IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.  In the short space of about 4.5 years, Demand Media (DMD) has grown to more than 600 employees with locations in North America and Europe and is now worth as much or more than the New York Times on the public market.

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.  

This morning I once again had the pleasure of hosting the Tech Coast Angels at the university. They are the largest angel investor organization in the U.S. (see an earlier blog post “Finding investors is art, not science.” ). At their screenings, they typically have 2-3 entrepreneurs pitch their ventures. Today’s pitches were some of the best I’ve seen in a while in terms of the actual businesses they were pitching; but, I have to say that “death by PowerPoint” is alive and well with entrepreneurs. I certainly have been doing my best to get my students to shed the text-laden slides that force you to choose between what the presenter is saying and trying to read the rendition of War and Peace that is on the slide.Unfortunately, not enough of you have been listening. 

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 am sitting here in sunny, but very cold, Hilton Head, SC and thinking about small businesses.  Not just because I'm here to speak at a the USASBE conference on small business and entrepreneurship, but also because I just finished driving around the island with a colleague and had the opportunity to talk to some small business owners.  The primary economic driver in Hilton Head is tourism, so lots of retail and food services. Like many other small business people, these entrepreneurs have really taken advantage of the Internet to promote what they have to offer because it's where we all look for information and because relative to other forms of promotion, it's inexpensive.  Makes sense because with just an iPhone and a car, we were able to find the best that Hilton Head has to offer.  However, some people still believe that direct mail (what we all refer to affectionately as junk mail) is the most effective marketing channel--and Paul Vogel, the U.S. Postal Service's chief marketing person, is one of those people.

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.  

I have to admit that when I saw the promotional material for How They Did It: Billion Dollar Insights from the Heart of America, I thought, “OK, another book about entrepreneurs and lessons learned. Fortunately, I didn’t simply dismiss this book with all the other promotions that hit my inbox and instead decided to call the author. 

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.

 I’m not a big believer in New Year’s Resolutions—probably because they tend to survive about two weeks after they’re made, if that. That’s not to say that the fundamental idea of promising yourself to do better in some aspect of your life is not a good thing—it is—but rather than set yourself up for failure, maybe New Year’s Eve is a good time to reflect on 2010, but, more importantly, to visualize 2011. Let me explain.

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.  

Maybe you've always wanted to invest in a startup (what could be more exciting!) but never had the ability to risk a large chunk of cash.  Well, Santa Claus has just found an opportunity for you.  Joel Shulman, (aka Santa) an entrepreneurship professor at Babson College in Massachusetts (a great school, by the way), is about to officially launch a mutual fund of publicly traded companies that have entrepreneurial characteristics. It's called the EntrepreneurShares Global Fund and it's comprised of more than 200 companies, 60% of which are U.S. companies and the remaining are from China, Canada, the U.K. and Hong Kong. Shulman soft launched the fund November 11, attracting about $10 million in institutional investors as well as a number of his most loyal students. 

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.  

You may have noticed that in a lot of companies today, dressing for success is not something you’re seeing quite as often as you used to. Maybe it’s a sign of the times—more and more companies run by wunderkinds in jeans and t-shirts like Mark Zuckerberg, Time Person of the Year.  Looking like you’re too busy to think about showering or shaving seems to be in fashion. Or maybe it’s just laziness. After all, it takes a lot more effort to dress up for work and look your best, and besides, that might signal that you’re trying too hard and haven’t really made it.

 As I'm in the midst of doing grades to end the semester, I have to laugh at all the people who think it's a walk in the park to teach at a university.  Tonight when I should be putting up my Christmas tree, I'm trying to calculate the grades for my two classes this semester.  Normally I wouldn't complain about something that's simply part of the job, but, sorry, grading is something I really dislike.

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.

It’s always amazing to me that no matter how many times I advise entrepreneurs about their pitches to VCs and angels, they still think they have a better approach and that approach invariably includes spending far too much time on the problem and solution and practically no time on market validation and business model. It doesn’t matter whether the entrepreneur is given 5 minutes or 15 minutes, it happens time and time again, so much so, that by the second slide I can usually predict where things are going, and it’s not pretty.  

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.

Those of us who blog have our favorites that we follow, but that doesn't mean that we always agree with what they have to say.  Such is the case with one of my favorite blogs, Steve Blank, who is a VC, author, and adjunct professor at Stanford.  The day before Thanksgiving he posted "When It's Darkest Men See the Stars."  This was meant as a there-is-still-a-lot-to-be-grateful-for-despite-everything-that's-wrong-in-the-world type of post appropriate for Thanksgiving when we're supposed to give thanks for everything we have.  And it was actually a very positive post, claiming that "we're standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution." I'm sorry, Steve, but the entrepreneurial revolution has been going on since the 1980s when it became the word du jour in the U.S.

In just two days it will be Black Friday. In the retail biz the day after Thanksgiving has traditionally been the biggest shopping day of the year, the point at which retailers make up for any sluggish sales they’ve experienced over the year. Unfortunately, with the economy still in the doldrums, retailers of all sizes are having to discount heavily to drive store traffic. After all, it’s much easier to cuddle up with your laptop in front of a cozy fire and buy all your holiday gifts with a few clicks on Cyber Monday. That’s a pretty tough barrier for small businesses to overcome.

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.

Every entrepreneur dreams about reaching the promised land, as they say, making it big by being acquired or successfully executing an IPO. But, not so fast--I can list on more than two hands the number of entrepreneurs who were dissatisfied with the result. If they weren’t singing “ Is That All There Is,” (an old Peggy Lee song from 1969, recently revived by Christina Aguilera) they were wondering when the precise moment was that they realized, “Hey, I don’t own this company anymore.”

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.  

Listening to the political pundits, you might think that big business is the instrument of evil, responsible for all society’s ills. If we could only regulate, tax, and generally punish big business for the harm it has inflicted on everyone, all would be well. Those same feelings aren’t transferred to small businesses. No, small businesses, bless their little hearts, are virtuous, positive reflections of American ingenuity and hard work, and they create all the jobs worth counting. If only it were that simple. 

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.

If you're like most people, you're probably  tired of the negative campaign ads and slogans, the partisan sniping, and debates that don't answer the question, how are we going to fix this mess?  I know I am.  If you only depended on ads and the sound bytes you get in the news, you'd have a hard time trying to decide whom to trust.  I'm not going to presume to tell you how to vote in this election.  What I am going to say is that it's very important that you study the issues and vote as an informed voter. If you don't vote, you really have given up your right to complain about what you get after the election.

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.

Inventors are interesting people. I know a few and what I can say for sure is they’re definitely not normal. I don’t mean that in a bad way—if they were normal, they wouldn’t have the vision to connect things that don’t generally go together to come up with something new. Let’s face it, they see the world very differently from most of us, and it’s for that reason that not all the inventions they come up with are practical. In fact, the vast majority of inventions that receive patents never make it to the market at all.  

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.

It’s a common phenomenon that even the savviest entrepreneurs can stumble trying to take their businesses to the next level. Marco Giannini wasn’t new to entrepreneurship and he wasn’t new to failure. While an MBA student at the University of Southern California (and one of my students I'm proud to say), he launched Clear Day, a natural beverage company designed to take advantage of consumers’ desire for functional beverages. That business failed in 2003 from a lack of customer validation and too much money spent on product development. Not one to dwell on failure, Giannini decided to take his experience in functional beverages into a new area. His childhood dog had suffered from arthritis and hip dysplasia, so he began to study how supplements in dog treats might help dogs live happier lives. After finding a manufacturer to produce his first product—Happy Hips—Giannini began driving all around California visiting pet store owners to get them to try his product. He also handed out samples at sporting events. When a customer wrote to him to tell him that her aging dog was now able to walk normally after two years of Dogswell treats, he knew he had a hit.

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.

Sometimes what appears to be good news isn't.  And we've been seeing a lot of that lately. The Small Business Administration (SBA) recently reported on its fiscal year 2010, which ended September 30.  Despite much press about how small business is unable to get credit, the SBA loan approvals rose by 30% over those in 2009.  The agency approved about 54,826 small business loans to the tune of $16.84 billion.  Of course, that's still below the pre-recessionary levels of about $20 billion; still, it's not chump change.  

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.  

 On Monday, President Obama signed into law the Small Business Jobs Act, hailed by the administration as “a great victory for America’s entrepreneurs,” and promising to provide loans that small businesses have been waiting for. The administration is hoping that doling out taxpayer money to the tune of $30 billion to community banks will ensure that small businesses will rush to increase their debt and grow their businesses, adding new jobs that are desperately needed. But not so fast...unfortunately, this tactic appears to be a solution in search of problem.

 I'm going to deviate from our small business economy posts for one post because I think it will help many of you focus your pitch about your business, whether that's a new business you're designing or one you have up and running.  Last night in my graduate tech feasibility course at USC, my VC in residence, Scott Lenet (DFJ Frontier Fund), brought his partner David Cremin to give the students a lesson in pitching to the needs of the investor.  Needless to say, it was eye-opening for many.

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.  

With only a few weeks until a very important mid-term election, Peter and I decided to focus our next several posts on critical political and regulatory issues impacting entrepreneurs and small businesses for the foreseeable future. We’re not going to take political sides but rather deal with the truth—just the facts, folks. Let me start by saying that uncertainty is clearly the word of the day and the entrepreneurs and business owners I talk to around the country are all singing the same tune—no major commitments until we know where things are going. 

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.

There are plenty of articles out there on the biggest mistakes you don't want to make when you start a business.  In fact, I've probably written one or two of them, but at least I can proudly say I actually committed a few of those mistakes so I know for a fact they're mistakes you shouldn't make.  What disappoints me is when a consultant ( an entrepreneur wannabe and professional service provider) who does business plans and financial projections for startups claims to be an expert on the subject and completely misses perhaps two of the biggest reasons new businesses fail.

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.  

I just had the opportunity to write for Forbes about what you need to think about if you believe it's time to leave your job in Corporate America.  This is an issue many women have faced as they begin to hit the glass ceiling and are frustrated that their job is not giving them everything it should.   In fact, that's why many women leave the corporate world to start their own businesses.  But surprisingly enough, I heard today from an engineer who said he had learned something from the article as well, claiming " Excellent advice, even for those of us among the weaker sex." 

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.

We live in a dynamic, global marketplace that places a premium on speed and quick returns. Shareholder value is often considered more important than basic human values. Entrepreneurs are under so much pressure to achieve the unachievable and just survive in this environment that it causes stress; and when people suffer stress, they don’t always make wise decisions. That’s when your ethics come into play.

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."

Now before you dismiss the title of this blog as a joke, or worse, the ravings of an idiot, hear me out. It’s an unfortunate fact that many universities and for-profit businesses are perpetuating the myth that entrepreneurs have to create business plans before they start businesses. Potential entrepreneurs are spending up to 200 hours of their valuable time in pursuit of the perfect plan to present at a competition (don’t get me started on business plan competitions – I’ll save that for another post) or pitch to an investor, only to discover that investors are more impressed by a founding team that has gotten the business up and running, even in a minimal way, to prove the concept than they are by a nicely bound document.

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.  

Several years ago I wrote about a trend for retail businesses--the kiosk approach to testing a business concept or product. What this entailed was setting up a small shop in the form of a kiosk, generally in mall space, with relatively low overhead, but the ability to directly reach consumers. I also wrote that some landlords found that, rather than sitting on an empty space until a new tenant is found, they could rent the space on a temporary basis so that their cash flow is not interrupted. Well, guess what? In these uncertain and depressed economic times, we’ve seen a real resurgence in these “pop-up” businesses.

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.

Are you one of those people who claims they have no time?  Today most of us are carrying mobile devices that deliver a constant stream of information 24/7, whether we want it or not. Look around you—chances are you’ll see more than one person with a cell phone to their ear or worse yet looking like an escapee from a psychiatric institute talking to themselves through Bluetooth.  Problem is, entrepreneurs of the world, if you don’t shut off the noise once in a while, you’re going to miss a great opportunity. Don’t suffer from information overload. 

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. 

 Don't ask for investor money unless you're in business in a serious way. If you're going to ask investors  to risk their hard-earned money, you'd better be worth the risk. 

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.  

Kim and David Chauvin are no strangers to tough times.  Their shrimp-trawling business in Louisiana has survived four major hurricanes in five years, but the two had amassed enough savings to carry them through the floods that Katrina and Rita brought in 2005.  But 2008 brought Gustav and Ike (not to mention the financial crash)  and that meant that this family business had to apply for a disaster loan from the SBA. just to survive.  Now they're struggling with the losses brought on by the gulf oil spill, and the problem is, they already have a $170,000 loan from the SBA  they're paying back so they can't go after another emergency loan.  Instead, they've signed a contract with BP to work on the cleanup. 

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 

Given the frequency with which entrepreneurs are discussed in the media,, it's not surprising that stereotypes have developed around them. Not all of these stereotypes are flattering, however,  and mostare simply false. I want to dispel three myths surrounding entrepreneurs so that you can begin your entrepreneurial journey based on facts.

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 just finished reading a recent edition of Leader to Leader put out by the Leader to Leader Institute and publisher Jossey-Bass (my blog-mate Peter is an Associate Editor for the journal). This time they included a special edition celebrating the life of management sage Peter Drucker on what would have been his 100th birthday (he passed away in 2005).  Often referred to as the greatest management thinker of the last century, he understood as far back as the 1950s that there is no business without a customer. 

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. 

This morning's LA Times (paper edition)  led with an article, "Economic Fears Rise as Stimulus Ebbs."  Here we go again.  Articles like these underscore the fact that no one seems to understand the economics of growth and job creation. One business owner is quoted in the article as saying that his biggest job this year was a stimulus project repairing a pipe at the Veterans Administration building.  "My company's on the verge of closing," he said. About $18 billion of California's stimulus funds has been spent on Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, schools, and job centers.  I'm sorry, where is the job creation?  Can you imagine what a bunch of entrepreneurs could have done with that $18 billion?

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. 

 How do you succeed in a tumultuous industry that can't seem to do anything right and that regularly sues its customers?  Meet the heroes of the retail music industry, Mike Boyder and Marc Weinstein, co-founders of Amoeba Music, a three-store California retailer that is the self-proclaimed "largest independent record store on the planet."

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. 

I'm posting this blog from beautiful Sioux Falls, South Dakota where, with my N2TEC Institute co-founder Tim Stearns,  I'm helping 9 entrepreneurial teams launch their new technology businesses. I can hear the response from all of you--South Dakota, do people actually live there?  Well, yes they do and unlike most of the rest of you, they have stubbornly refused to participate in the recession.  In fact, South Dakota was recently named in "the most entrepreneur friendly state in the Small Business Survival Index put out by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (California ranked 49 and New York 48 - so much for the notion that nothing happens in flyover country).  This organization ranks the policy environment of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

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. 

 I've been told I'm pretty passionate about the things I do and I jump into life with both feet (they don't always land together), but I can't come close to Tony Magee, author of an inspiring paperbackaptly named, Can't Shove a Great life into a Small Dream!  The man literally defies gravity with his enthusiasm for life and the people he is helping.  And with bestselling authors like Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup for the Soul®, and Zig Ziglar, of See You at the Top, singing his praises, Tony is definitely on his way to helping a lot of people achieve the life they've always wanted.

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. 

Emerging industries are the Wild West of the 21st Century, and nowhere are things wilder than in the emerging private space enterprise industry. Driven by entrepreneurs, many of whom put their own wealth from successful Internet ventures into their new space companies, it's the natural venue for the search for opportunity where no one has gone before.  In this case, the opportunity is to make space transportation better, faster, and cheaper; and at least one famous entrepreneur, Elon Musk, secured a big win with the successful launch of Falcon 9 last Friday.  

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.

 Peter and I have written numerous posts about the benefits of social media to entrepreneurs who want to promote their businesses and get customer feedback and to individuals like consultants and service providers who want to promote their personal brand. But there is a dark side to the social media groundswell and it's found in the increasing rate with which we appear to be losing our privacy.

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.

My good friend Peter asserts that it's time to get NASA out of the way and hand over the reins of space exploration to private companies like Space X and Virgin Galactic. (See Privatize space now). Speaking as someone who has been involved with the private space or New Space industry for several years and knows a lot of the major players, including those that Peter mentioned, I need to set the record straight. For one thing, private companies like Space X get significant government funding and contracts (the most recent was $1.6 billion from NASA to launch 12 cargo missions) and Virgin Galactic will launch from a taxpayer-funded spaceport in New Mexico. This is hardly getting the government out of the picture.   

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.

I have just returned from witnessing up close and personal the launch of the final mission of the Shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Needless to say, the launch was one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen. The tension leading up to the final ten seconds before launch was palpable as my engineer colleagues from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, which developed and produces the shuttle's main engines, worked through the launch sequence of activities in their minds in solemn tribute to their colleagues in the launch center who were making the vital countdown decisions. When you consider everything that must go right in just the right sequence, it truly is a marvel of engineering and foresight. Those of you who have come to view these shuttle launches as “business as usual” (and that’s most everyone), you might be interested to know that there was a time when no one was convinced the shuttle could ever be developed.  

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.

 If there is one common theme among all the stories I've heard entrepreneurs tell about their ventures (and my own experiences as well), it's that you have to get the team right or you'll struggle--or worse--fail. I could talk all day about teams but I want to focus on a major issue that leads to big problems: an incomplete or mismatched team DNA.

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.

 I'm as bummed as the next business person about the government over regulating the marketplace, mostly because it means higher costs for businesses, which translates to higherprices for customers.  Businesses generally can't survive unless they pass on those higher costs to their customers whether they want to or not.  But, being the glass-half-full kind of person that I am, I believe that every negative situation usually contains the potential for an opportunity that someone will take advantage of, and regulation is no different in that regard. 

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.

 You've just been hired as a project manager at ABC Start-up, a new media company. Because it's a start-up, you're given a relatively low salary in addition to stock options (the right to purchase stock at an agreed-upon price at some future date) that look promising because the founder says she's expecting to complete an IPO in the next 3 years on a valuation of at least $500 million. That's exciting!   Before you get too excited, however, (Wow, that means my 1% of the company will be worth $5 million in three years and I can retire at the ripe old age of 26), you might want to consider some red flags and a little item called "dilution."

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.

This week I had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Scott Lenet, co-founder and managing partner of DFJFrontier, an early-stage venture capital fund with offices in Los Angeles, Portland OR, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara.  To be quite honest, until now I did not have a very favorable impression of venture capitalists--hence the term vulture capitalist, which is often applied to disparage them.  Venture capital funds are professionally managed investment funds that typically invest in companies at the rapid growth stage or just prior to an IPO (initial public offering) or M&A (merger or acquisition).  If you've ever been in a room with a bunch of venture capitalists, you know that the arrogance is palpable.  And you've no doubt heard the horror stories of the nasty VCs who wanted to steal a company from its hard-working entrepreneur.  In some cases, the stories are true...but not always.

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.

After several posts on this issue of employee ownership, I have come to the conclusion that Peter and I don't really disagree on the importance of employees having a vested interest in the companies for which they work - we're just coming at this from two different perspectives. 

We're comparing apples and oranges.

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.

In his recent post Peter wrote about the benefits of making employees feel like owners by giving them stock so they'll act like owners.  On the surface that seems like a logical way to go but if not considered carefully, your good intentions could become a train wreck of problems.  What do we mean when we say that we want our employees to "think like owners?"  If employees wanted to think like owners, it would seem that they wouldn't have chosen to be employees in the first place but would be out there starting businesses. 

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.

In a post last week about the potential effect of the new Healthcare bill on small business, I talked about the importance of assessing your business's cash flow position so you can weather the changes that will be coming. Insuring that your business is sufficiently cash flow positive is the first step.  The second step is to make sure that your business remains flexible and ready to change quickly.  That means not taking on non-essential capital expenditures such as a new building,  new equipment, or even extra people for that matter.

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.

For most people, March Madness is about basketball, but for entrepreneurs who create inventions that have social impact, March brings "March Madness for the Mind," an inspirational event sponsored by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).  NCIIA is a non-profit organization that supports technology innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education with the goal of creating experiential learning opportunities for students and ultimately socially beneficial businesses. I just returned from speaking at the 14th Annual Conference, which took place in San Francisco and I was impressed and inspired by the inventions I saw.. 

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).

On Tuesday, Nation's Restaurant News asked its readers to let them know how their restaurants would fare under the new health care reform bill (which is still under revision). It appears that restaurant owners, among other types of small businesses, are feeling a great deal of concern.  "This will close our business.  The downturn in the economy and the escalating cost of labor, food, and fuel has us using our own savings to meet restaurant expenses," claimed one Savannah, GA business owner. 

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.

Peter and I seem to be on a funding streak lately with our recent posts, probably because so many people are asking for advice on how to fund their businesses in these difficult times. In the past week alone, I've been contacted by four entrepreneurs looking for money from me or my network.  To a person, they all approached the issue in the wrong way.

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).

 I want to follow up Peter's great post about angel investors with my two cents from the perspective of an angel investor.  In addition to all the great advice in that post, it's important to note that angels are generally bypassing companies that don't have customers yet.  They might get involved to mentor the team to prepare them for money, but they won't risk their money in this economy until the business is revenue generating.  

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.

Tuesday I had the pleasure of meeting the producer of the documentary film The Triumph of the Dream, Norman Seeff, a medical doctor turned photographer.  In a a visually intimate and compelling style, Seeff explores the human and emotional side of the Mars Exploration mission during which engineers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully landed two Mars Rovers on the surface of the planet. It turns out that the technical achievements of the mission served merely as the context or backdrop for the very real inner journey experienced by the team members as they struggled to overcome the inertia of previous failures with the Mars Polar Lander mission in 2000.

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.

More than one entrepreneur has looked forward to the day when his or her company might become the dominant player in the industry, the company that everyone wants to emulate.  In the search business that company is clearly Google.  But this week's headlines give you a different picture of what it's like to be number one--as number one you're also the biggest target of expensive, lengthy, and often damaging lawsuits. 

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.

Lights! Camera! Action!  "Oops, I didn't know you were actually going to film EVERYTHING."  That's what small business owners are learning as they let TV cameras into their businesses and their lives 24/7.  Most like Duff Goldman who owns Charm City Cakes LLC in Baltimore, which is now featured on the Food Network's "Ace of Cakes, would say that if they had read the fine print in their contracts, they would have probably said no.  "But we learned to deal with it all," claims Goldman in an interview with WSJ journalist Emily Maltby.  His business found that because of the intrusion of the film crew, they were making fewer of the unique cakes for which they're known, which meant less revenue. To make up the loss, Goldman had to develop licensing deals, write books, and do speaking gigs.  He did receive money for doing the show, but it wasn't enough to make you do the show for the money.

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.

Just three years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting one of the smartest and most interesting people on the planet--Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former chief technology officer and director of research.He's unassuming and approachable with a quiet confidence that hides the fact that he is a very wealthy man.  In 1999 when he left Microsoft, he was on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.  He could have simply retired, enjoying his wealth; but having money is not that important to Nathan--in fact, he's notoriously frugal.  Money's only value lies in what he can do with it to solve some of the world's biggest problems.

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.

 Unless you've been hibernating in a cave in Alaska, you've heard a number of people talking about tort reform when it comes to reducing the costs of health care.  But I wonder if you are aware that as an entrepreneur you can be held liable for the tort of negligent hiring, which essentially means that you hired the wrong person for the job or didn't use a duty of care in selecting that person.  Well, guess what--you and lots of other entrepreneurs are at risk.

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.

Small business owners are some of the brightest and hardest working people on the planet.  They have to be because they now find themselves competing in a global environment for customers, employees, suppliers, and distributors.  And their competitors are coming from places they had never even heard of.  It's not your grandma's small business anymore.  So are SB owners going to rush out to grab up the announced government subsized loans through the SBA?  I'm not so sure

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.

Apple just announced its long-awaited tablet device and they've dubbed it the iPad. Upon hearing this,  I immediately tweaked a number of my female friends to see if they were laughing as hard as I was.  They were.  I guess Jobs thought it was time to bring feminine products into the digital age. 

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.

When you work with someone for a long time, you begin to get in synch on things you're thinking about.  Don't know how that happens, but once again Peter has posted a topic that I've been thinking about recently.  In his recent post A great big leap of fath, he talks about the importance of not losing your belief in what you're doing when you start to hit the obstacles that are sure to block your path.  One of the biggest obstacles I see in people who have decided on a quest to achieve something big like The New York Times bestseller list is the problem of getting traction.

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.

I had to laugh when I read Peter's post Free is the New Black because I had just decided to cancel my online subscription to The Wall Street Journal (for which I was paying $155 dollars a year - up from $99 in the past two years alone).  It seems that everything I wanted to read in the WSJ was already available to me for free on the site.  Sure, WSJ probably won't let me search its archives once I'm not a member but there are other ways to find that information if I really need it. 

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.

Wow!  This time I really have to disagree with Peter in hisrecent post where he asserted that if Google leaves China it will be to protect its shareholders and the integrity of its data, not because of principles and business ethics.  Protecting your online business from hackers is something that every business must do no matter where in the world they operate.  China does not have a monopoly on hackers.  But, Google's mission is to make the world's information "universally accessible and useful," and its corporate motto is "Don't be evil."  That goes to the heart of the problem in China.

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.

I don't know about you, but I am watching closely to see how Google ultimately deals with the recent problem it's had in China.  You would have to be in a coma not to have seen the news about what Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have called a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property."  They are now looking at potentially leaving China because they no longer want to remain silent about these attacks and they no longer want to censor their search engine in China, something that has been required of them since 2006

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.

Have you been noticing that your customers have been delaying their payments to you?  Not surprising in these times that customers want to preserve their free cash--the cash that is available to operate and grow the business.  This practice may be great for your customers (you may be doing this yourself to your customers), but it can wreak havoc with your company if you're not careful. If you have a business that depends on active cash management (and what business doesn't), you need to monitor your daily cash flow

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?

In my previous post just before the New Year, I talked about the fact that we should strap ourselves in for some interesting times and that it's better to be proactive about change rather than reactive.  In the 2008 election, about 52% of the country voted for change.  They were expecting change, and change is what they got (one could argue whether it was the change they wanted, but I digress).  The point is that it's an established fact that our minds tend to give us what we expect. if not always in the exact form we want.

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.

Those of us involved in starting and running businesses (and that's millions of us) could describe the first decade of the New Millennium as a wild ride to say the least.  I won't reiterate here all the events we know so well that affected businesses large and small (every journalist and blogger will be doing that over the next couple days).  What I will say is that if the first decade is any indicator of what life will be like going forward, everyone should consider putting on their entrepreneur hats and tying them tight because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

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.

Even though the U.S. Senate is determined to give us all a present on Chirstmas Eve that we'll definitely want to exchange or regift to someone we don't like, I have to say that this is one of the best times of the year. People are out and about--they may not be buying as much this year, but they look happy and less frightened abut the future than they did last Christmas season.  Optimism is a good thing.  Entrepreneurs tend to be optimists who look for opportunities in situations that other less creative types might find daunting.  The cup is always half full, I say..

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.

Small businesses need to manage their cash flow, and in times likes these, that's not so easy.  If their customers fail to pay on time (or at all), they're left having to find a way to pay their employees and purchase their inventory until the cash comes in.  Since for now banks are not cooperating with small business loans, many owners have resorted to business credit cards to carry them over the rough times.  That's fine if things go smoothly, but beware--business credit cards are not as friendly as they used to be. 

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 big buzz in the start-up world is mobile communication, whether it's to find things, opt in to special deals from marketers, or conduct your buy/sell transactions from your iPhone.  In the last few months alone I have seen a number of these businesses--it's the wild West out there--but the jury is still out on which ones will stick and which will simply disappear. With a global mobile payments market expected to reach nearly 2 Trillion in the next decade, it's no wonder that entrepreneurs and investors are scrambling to find the platform that will become the standard.

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.

Friday night I was having dinner at a wonderful restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.  It's called Provecho , a modern, upscale Mexican experience, and it was started by a former graduate student of mine and her chef husband.  Now you would think that downtown Los Angeles would be hopping on a Friday night, but no.  You could find more people at upscale restaurants in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on any night of the week than you'll find at the terrific restaurants in downtown Los Angeles. 

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.

I was so distressed when I read Peter's recent post about Kiva.org (A little less love for Kiva.org) because I am a lender and I've given Kiva gift certificates to people to get them involved in helping others start or run their small businesses.  Peter wrote about how big business Kiva has become and how the very thing that drew most people to them (one-to-one lending) is the very thing they tinkered with to the dismay of many of their most loyal customers. The precarious position that Kiva has put itself in reminds me of how often some entrepreneurs foresake the core values that were the very reason for starting the business in order to grow and make more money.

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.

In my last post I asked if you were ready for investor money.  I'm sure some of you said, "Absolutely! Bring it on!"  However, if you honestly answered the questions in that post, you know that taking other people's money is serious business.  And it also doesn't happen overnight.  So how do you find investors who might want to help you out?  It starts with some detective work on your part to learn where investors congregate.  This is important because investors aren't always easy to spot--they don't exactly put a sign on themselves so entrepreneurs can find them.  In fact, it's quite the opposite; they usually rely on their own network to supply them with leads on potential new business investments. 

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.

At least two to three times a week I hear from an entrepreneur seeking money to start or grow their business. Usually they need the money yesterday.  Sometimes the request comes from people I know, but, more often than not, I've never heard of the person or they've found me through six degrees of separation on Linked In.  Believe me, cold calling people who know nothing about you or your business is not an effective strategy for raising money.  How to search for money will be the subject of my next post, but today I want to focus on whether you're even ready for investor money.

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.

You know the old saying about the three most important factors in real estate--"location, location, location."   Could the same be said for where you start your business?  Fortune Small Business and the Kauffman Foundation certainly think so.  This month they once again brought out their "Best Places to Launch" report and the findings just might surprise you.  It did me because California, where Peter and I are, is nowhere to be found on any of the lists that include the top 50 cities in small, medium, and large categores. 

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.

If you're one of the thousands of potential entrepreneurs who want to make their mark on the Internet, you need to understand where things are going and there's no place better to do that than at the annual Web 2.0 Summit, which took place last week in San Francisco.  Unless, like my grad students last night, you get the chance to have a conversation with CEO/founder Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media, arguably the person who knows more about how to deliver unique content to users in a way that is meaningful to them than almost anyone today.  That's because his company in just 3 short years has not only become the leading producer of unique content on the Web through its network of freelance creators, it is also the undisputed leader in distributed social media, powering the conversations of 3 billion users on sites such as USA Today, Fox News, and CNN.

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?

Who would have ever thought that you could base an entire business on Twitter, but as Peter's prodigious post  pointed out (don't you just love alliteration), anything is possible in the world of social media.  I don't want to throw water on that notion, but I do want to caution that there is a dark side to Twitter that you should be aware of if you're going to do business on it.  For one thing, it can quickly become a viral nightmare of negative press if you don't nip it in the bud. 

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.

In the category of "you can't make this stuff up," Peter and I are collaborating on this post to tell you about a proposed mandate by your friends at the California Air Resources Board (also appropriately known as CARB), California's equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency.  The new mandate will have enormous unintended consequences for businesses large and small.  On the heels of their recent losing effort to ban black cars because they absorb more heat causing their owners to use more air conditioning, CARB has come up with yet another ridiculous regulation to supposedly save energy.  This time they're proposing mandating that automakers install metallic reflective glazing on all new vehicles weighting under 10,000 pounds and sold in California beginning in 2012. . 

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.

This post is coming to you from midtown Manhattan--the Waldorf Astoria to be exact.  As I'm sitting in the lobby taking advantage of the free Internet and doing some people watching, you would never believe we are in a down economy.  The place is hopping with business people, all on what seem to be important missions--at least they act like they're important.  Of course, part of the explanation for the activity is that many of the investment banking firms moved to midtown from the financial district after September 11 and the Waldorf seems to be at the center of things.  Even our President thinks there is money here because he came to Manhattan for two Democrate Party fundraisers last night.   

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.

A recent Wall Street Journal headline asserted, "Videogame firms make a play for women."  It seems that videogame publishers are racing to launch games geared to both young and older women by the holiday shopping season.  Well, what took them so long?  Women aren't exactly a niche market; in fact, they now constitute more than 51 percent of the population--they ARE the mass market.

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.

It's not often that I disagree with Peter, and actually I'm not really disagreeing with Peter.  I'm disagreeing with one of the entrepreneurs he cited in his most recent post.  The entrepreneur, Justin Kan of Justin TV, claimed that "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."  Well, I don't know where he got his statistics but let me give you the top five reasons new businesses fail.

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.

In the past week I have been frustrated by entrepreneur wannabes who are enjoying the planning phase just a little bit too much.  They figure that they can feel like they're real entrepreneurs by simply talking about their yet-to-be business without ever actually getting down to starting the business and making it real.  In fact, I know at least several of these wannabes who have been talking about their business for at least two years with nothing to show for it except a business plan.   Some of them have entered (and in some cases won) one or more of the ubiquitous business plan competitions that seem to be a mainstay of every university or college on the planet.  Still, they don't have a business.

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.

I wonder how many entrepreneurs really think about all the possible markets for their products and services and devise a roadmap for rolling them out over a period of years.  I suspect very few.  Why? because,  to use a quaint phrase, too many entrepreneurs start businesses that are one-trick ponies.  They have nowhere to go from where they started. 

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.

I hate to say this, but Google has made us all a bit lazy--not to mention fatter from sitting for hours in front of our computer screens.  It's just too easy to search for what we want without moving more than our fingertips, but that deeply ingrained habit has negative ramifications for what we do as entrepreneurs.  There is no substitute for getting out of the office and talking face to face with customers, suppliers, distributors, and anyone else who affects the success of your business. 

I teach a course in entrepreneurship for engineers at the University of Southern California, so I'm used to having to persuade budding entrepreneurs whose lives have focused on technology  that it's not about the technology when you're designing a new business venture.  It's always about people, their needs and how you deal with them.  It wasn't surprising then when USC alum and successful entrepreneur Shannon Blake Gans came to class this week to talk about her company and the lessons she's learned that students figured she would focus on what her company does.  After all, it is a pretty sexy company in the film industry, but they quickly found out that although the technology is important, it's probably not the critical success factor for the business. 

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.

Remember Famous Amos the cookie guy?  He's known for the now way-overused phrase "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade."  It's his mantra for entrepreneurs to take charge of their lives when things get tough.  Well, if you plan to cater to the luxury market with your new business, you may have bought a lemon and will have to figure out how to make lemonade in this weak economy.

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.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  The surest path to a healthy economy is through innovation and entrepreneurship.  Apparently Sramana Mitra, technology entrepreneur and columnist for Forbes, agrees with me.  In her latest book, Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction, which, by the way, is self-published, she showcases 12 successful entrepreneurs who made it to the top by bootstrapping at the start.

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.

We all love a good story--a great plot, compelling characters, a challenge that the protagonist has to overcome, and an ending that makes us feel satisfied.  Stories serve many purposes--to explain, to entertain, to inspire--but for entrepreneurs stories help to craft an identity that gives the new venture legitimacy in the eyes of investors, competitors, partners, and customers.  What I mean by this is that for entrepreneurs to secure the resources they need to launch and successfully operate their businesses, they have to be viewed as legitimate members of the business community and that doesn't happen easily.