The Venture Edge

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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

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

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

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. 

 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... 

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: 

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.

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 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!

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.  

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." 

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."

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. 

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

As 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. 

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.  

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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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..

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 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. 

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.

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

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

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. 

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. . 

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.

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. 

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.

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

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

Are you suffering from Facebook Fatigue?  Are your friends annoying you with trivial tweets about what they're eating? Do you really want to join and socialize on Wal-Mart's facebook page or learn what your Congressperson is doing at any point of the day or night through his or her attempts to act like the average joe? Who has the time for all this connecting in cyberspace

One of the hot topics in business today is executive or management compensation.  With Congress firmly convinced that businesses and their shareholders can't make wise decisions about how to compensate their people, a number of compensation reforms are being floated that have a common theme--government telling businesses how and when to compensate their employees. 

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

I don't know about you but I am scrambling to understand all the acronyms that have been popping up in text messages lately.  Apparently I'm not the only one who can't tell whether I should be concerned about whether NSFW is a good thing or a bad thing. 

For years people have moaned and groaned about the outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing capability to other countries, namely countries where the cost of labor is substantially cheaper.  Whether or not outsourcing is a good thing is really a moot point because it's now a fact of life.  I'm afraid that it won't be too long before we say the same thing about innovation.  The fact is that an amazing number of corporate research laboratories are being opened in China.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One thing we writers are good at is taking others' concepts, repackaging them, giving them a new name, and then proclaiming a new discovery.  Geoffrey Moore essentially did that when he popularized the work of the Department of Agriculture in Iowa in the 1930s on the technology adoption-diffusion cycle in his very successful book called Crossing the Chasm.  Blue Ocean Strategy, another best-selling business book, gave a new name to an old entrepreneurial strategy--looking for unserved needs in the market.  So, not to be left out of this game, I developed what I call the Allen Technology Richter Scale, with all due apologies to Mr. Richter who helped us measure the intensity of earthquakes.

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

I have to admit that I took three days off and did absolutely no work.  I didn't even have access to the Internet or email.  It was fantastic!  I highly recommend it to all you Type A, multi-tasking, think-you're-so-productive type business people who can't be away from your networks.  Trust me, your network will survive.  Yes, you'll return to a full inbox or Tweetdeck, but, frankly, most of it you'll be able to delete without reading (saves lots of time). 

If your sales are declining, it may just be time to give your customers a break.  At least that's what Dana Mattioli contends in her Wall Street Journal artice today. More and more small businesses are figuring out ways to entice customers to buy even in a down economy.

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

I couldn’t let Peter’s post pass (notice the alliteration) without commenting because I’m not sure I agree totally with the premise of the New Yorker article he referred to. I have served as a director of a NYSE company for 9 years and on several private company boards and have talked to many public company directors across the country. We need to be very careful about painting a broad brush when we talk about some of the things the public is unhappy about because of the subprime debacle and the auto industry implosion.   

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m in the middle of preparing some materials for a three-day corporate seminar I’m giving in June on innovation and technology commercialization and I’m trying to decide on the key concepts I want to focus on. One of those concepts is definitely the idea that we should worry less about the competition and focus more on how we position ourselves uniquely, so that in the customer’s mind we stand out from the crowd. 

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

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

The popular reality show Survivor got people talking about tribes and voting people off the island (much like Jim Collin's Good to Great mantra of getting the wrong people off the bus).  But the idea of modern-day people organizing themselves into tribes actually stemmed from the work of British anthropologist Robin Dunbar and was popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. 

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

If you've been hungering for a community of thinkers and doers who can inspire you to be the best you can be, look no further than TED.  TED is not a person; actually, it's an acronym for technology, entertainment, design.   In 1996, Chris Anderson, a magazine publishing entrepreneur,  set up a nonprofit foundation, the Sapling Foundation, to support the mission of TED, which is to give "millions of knowledge seekers around the globe access to the greatest thinkers and teachers." 

There's hardly a more interesting time to be in Washington DC than now (apparently the President didn't agree with me because he was in Burbank yesterday).  No, I did not come to Capitol Hill to beg for a piece of the stimulus pie, although it seems that everyone else has and no one seems to know how we'll pay for the pie.  The cafeteria of the Rayburn Congressional Office Building was jammed with lobbiests plotting and planning how to snag some bucks from the government (that's us). 

I would like to claim ownership of the title of this blog, but if I did that I would be plagiarizing the very person who is known for the Character Counts program that educates more than six million kids about the importance of character and integrity, trustworthiness and good citizenship.  That person is Michael Josephson, the entertaining ethicist who is founder of the Michael Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles where he also hosts a national radio show focused on--what else?--ethics and character. 

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

Well, the Allen-Economy Stimulus Package for entrepreneurs started off with a bang, with Peter giving every individual a million bucks from the government.  Makes sense when you consider that it probably amounts to less than the proposed budget. by a whole lot!  I have no problem with wealth - I just don't think it's the government's job to make us wealthy.  Entrepreneurs are pretty good at doing that themselves, thank you. 

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

I am a huge fan of Warren Buffett's investment philosophy because I think it applies not only to investments in stocks, bonds, and other cash equivalents but to entrepreneurs as well.  Today I was reading Buffett's letter to the shareholders of his enormously successful company Berkshire Hathaway Inc.  Now, believe me, with the exception of a notable few, I don't spend my time reading annual reports because most are pretty boring.  But I always find that I learn something new when I read Buffett's annual letters to the shareholders, and they can be quite entertaining as well. 

Recently Peter posted an interesting piece on Mark Cuban's solution to stimulating the economy.  While I agree in principle that entrepreneurship is the way to make things happen, one could question Cuban's motives in his approach.  Actually last night one of USC's great grad students did question those motives, so I'm sharing his thoughts in my post. 

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

The more information you have, the easier it is to solve a problem.  Unfortunately, entrepreneurs typically don't have all the information they need to define the problem they're actually trying to solve.  Defining the problem correctly is absolutely essential to coming up with a business opportunity that can succeed in the market. 

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

I have to say that Peter hit the nail on the head when he decided to take a vacation from the news and everything else that was being pushed at him. One of my dearest friends is a very prolific inventor.  He is Dr. Berok Khoshnevis at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC.  He has come up with more solutions to more problems than you can imagine and he's done it by spending time alone with his thoughts. 

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

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

One of the most important lessons I've learned in my years as an entrepreneur and investor is not to get greedy, not to hold out for the bigger deal, and not to negotiate a win-lose situation.  I have seen entrepreneurs turn down great offers because their egos told them that their companies could command a bigger number.  Trouble is, these days offers don't come often, so the risk of turning down a good offer in hopes of getting a great offer is huge. .

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

However, that's all changed.

I agree with Peter that everyone seems to be making New Year's resolutions--all with great intentions that they will be accomplished.  But, really, how many of you have actually achieved those goals?  I want to suggest a contrarian point of view, which will be strange coming from me, since I have spent my life setting goals and achieving them.  But give me a chance to explain. 

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

I have to admit that like most entrepreneurs I'm an optimist.  As an optimist, I have two choices: 1) I can watch the news everyday and get depressed because everything sounds so negative, or 2)I can create my own reality, which is based on my inherent optimism.

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

If you had to pick a time to look for a job, you wouldn't pick the holiday season in a down economy when the press tells us that one--not even Starbucks--is hiring.  But it's an unfortunate fact that man of you out there--my daughter for one--are feeling the effects of the economic situation...

Tis the season to be jolly. In fact, if you think about it, there is a lot to laugh about. Just when you thought you had seen it all, that things couldn’t sink any lower, along comes Illinois Governor Blogojevich and his senate seat folly – ya gotta love it. This is stuff you can’t make up. Seriously though, this depressing example of public service does serve to remind us why integrity and ethics in our business dealings matter.

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

In an earlier post (The plumber’s sink is always plugged), I talked about an experienced angel investor who totally blew his pitch for his business by making some very fundamental mistakes. I ended the post by saying “what you know can hurt you,” and it’s so true. The more you know about what you should do, the greater the chance you will mess up—

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