I read a post today on how a corner gas station owner could benefit from having a blog.

Challenge: Can You Stump Business and Blogging?

I know you’re going to read it and then tell me it was not about gas stations needing blogs, but about the benefits of blogging for any and every business. My argument is that this post is absurd and misleading in its self-serving logic. (Of course a site that generates ad revenue based on content for business blogging would say every business needs a blog!) I know the piece was meant to be fun and attract traffic, but this was just over the top. I would also not take such offense if I didn’t see this same sentiment echoed by 95% of the web developers and marketing professionals out there. To combat this problem, and to help the non-tech people just looking for advice on marketing their business and their website, I offer this:

Every business does not need a blog!

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The January edition of the Carnival of Trust is up now. I’d highly recommend it for some thought-provoking reads. The Carnival is spearheaded by Charles H Green of Trusted Advisor; you can see other editions of the Carnival of Trust here. I know that not all of the entries in this particular carnival are completely business-related, but I feel that the discussion of trust and relationships is missing in business to the point where we really need to talk about it. You can’t build relationships in business without trust—and without relationships, you can’t build a business.

I like Skellie better than Darren Rowse. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Darren Rowse is the owner of the very popular site Problogger, which gives tips to people who are looking to learn about blogging. Skellie is a young writer who he hired in late 2007 to be Problogger’s first staff writer. I don’t know what it is about her that makes the writing better than his; it just is to me.

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We are now into the third January of my business, which will mark the third year in a row that I did not sit down to establish business goals. I will tell you exactly why: I am a big giant chicken. (Cluck! Cluck!) In my perfectionist brain, I just tell myself that if I don’t write down any goals, I won’t have to deal with disappointment and failure for the next 12 months. I then round out my justification by telling myself that I run a lifestyle business anyway, and it would be impossible to meet projected goals when I feel free to take off work any time my child needs me or the holidays get me too busy.

What I am doing, in reality, is hurting my business.

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There’s a really great article on the empire of LeBron James, the NBA star, at Fortune / CNN Money: LeBron Inc. The building of a billion-dollar athlete. (Thanks to BusinessPundit for the tip-off.) What interested me the most was the "summit" that LeBron and his marketing team held at the end of the NBA season, and how LeBron’s team aligned themselves with the top consultants. Even though LeBron is just a baby in the business world, as he’ll be turning 23 this month, he is already demonstrating many fine examples of good business strategy and execution. These include:

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As we near the end of 2007, it’s time to start making those goals for yourself and your business for 2008. After studying all the entrepreneurs I have come into contact with over the past year, both at StartupNation and in my marketing/webdev business, I have come to realize that success as a solopreneur is not just a matter of a good idea; it has a lot to do with how much self-discipline an entrepreneur has, and what kind of time management processes they have in place. I know everyone wants to think they will be a success because of their offerings or their superior inventions, but how efficient an entrepreneur can be juggling so many hats in the limited number of hours in every day will determine their fate the most. If you need some help tipping the scales in your favor in 2008, try some of these ideas I’m compiled for time management and efficiency.

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I have a chronic illness, but the specifics of what it is are not important at this point. What is important is the choice I have to make every morning: I can get up and think "woe is me", let the pain prevent me from doing anything, and crawl back into bed for the rest of the day; or I can get up and think "it is what it is, and it’s time to move on" and go about a productive day.

The reason I bring this up is not to discuss my illness, but to make the comparison of having a chronic illness to being a solopreneur or the owner of a microbusiness. When you work for yourself, you have to be your own CEO. When you are your own CEO, you can’t let discouragement get into your way; you need to choose each and every day to only engage in those activities which bring you forward in your life and your business.

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If blogging is a business itself, much like publishing or content production, then it only makes sense that the rules of good blogging would be the a variation on the foundations of running a business. As I was reading a guest post by Skellie on Problogger entitled "5 Powerful Techniques to Help Your Posts Stand Out", I was thinking about how her points could be applied to the small business owner. I thought I would reframe her examples to look at the larger view of the entrepreneur, bloggers included.

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I’m an only child, which makes me a natural candidate for the sort of perfectionism that legend is made from. Most people who have met me would laugh when I say that I am an insane perfectionist because my psychosis is so complete that I have learned to hide it extremely well. I don’t know if that is my natural tendency from birth (the nature argument), or if it is born from the idea drilled into me throughout my life that quitting is for losers (the nurture argument). And therein lies the problem: Most entrepreneurs have to be driven like perfectionists to reach high levels in their field, and yet failure is the natural learning process by which entrepreneurs hone their skills and learn from their mistakes in order to go on to something better. What is missing from my equation is the "art of quitting"—the calculation of the exact right time in which quitting will advance you in business, not hurt you.

Is there a right way of quitting something, whether its personal or professional? According to the Psychology Today article, Adieu to All That, there is an entire psychology built up around quitting. While the psychology of quitting is important in every aspect of your life, I’d like to look at three of their concepts—open/closed memories, lingering, and accepting—from the perspective of the entrepreneur.

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As I was reading the post Ten Questions with Compete on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, I was reminded of a recent conversation I had on StartupNation with a designer named Paula about what kind of site information is proprietary, and if website traffic data should be considered proprietary information.

To get to the point, Compete collects information from web users and gives it away for free. It basically estimates the traffic information for comparative purposes in a more detailed fashion than Alexa, and displays this information for free on its website. But why should we go through the trouble? Why not give away the actual data as well?

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