Now, you may think this is a dig against Darren Rowse, but is it not—in fact, this is praise. The reason why I give kudos to Darren Rowse is because he is a very talented writer and yet he managed to find someone who is more talented than he is. I think that hiring people who have a high level of talent is the mark of strong leadership, forward thinking, and a commitment to quality. In my webdev/marketing company, I employ an artist for our web and print work. He does things with colors and imagery that I can’t even think up in my head. His talent exceeds my own in this particular area, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So why should you hire people that are better than you? The reasons include:

• Trust
  If you know your employees can do something better than you can, you are more likely to trust them to do this independently. By allowing your employees the freedom to do what they do best, you create a better product overall.
• Quality
  When a business changes hands, the difference in quality is sometimes extreme. The same could happen if Darren handed over some of the writing duties to a lesser writer—the posts on his days off would be obvious. This quality drop leads to a drop in your customers’ opinions over time. Top-notch employees mean that the quality is kept high whether or not you are there.
• Fresh Perspectives
  When new talent comes in to your company, they bring in experiences, skills and ideas that are different than your own. If you have hired good people, this new wave of ideas can increase the value of your product.
• Greater Options
  Perhaps your company has only been doing B2B marketing with a target of small businesses, and then you hire an employee who has more experience with marketing to medium businesses. (This scenario has a high probability, according to SCORE: "Talented people don’t move into identical jobs if they can avoid it," which means that your new employees might have the skillset to work for you but not the exact experience.) You now have 2 choices: let that employee expand into small businesses, or let your company expand into medium businesses.
• Efficiency
  Hiring people better than you means that you spend more time working and less time explaining anything to your employees.
• Cost Savings
  Having employees that do quality work means that you spend less money on redesigns or re-dos—and that money goes to your profits instead.

To keep your top talent, think of creative ways for them to learn and grow with your company, or incentives that make you an attractive employer, as they will not be learning their craft from you.

Just Remember: When hiring employees in a microbusiness, look for someone who does the task better than you can.

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

Why Goals are Important

Business goals are important for many reasons, including:

• Focus.
  Without an end goal in mind, how do you know where to focus your efforts and actions? (On the flip side, having too many goals can spread you too thin this year, so focus on one at a time.)

• Productivity.
  Having goals in mind helps keep you on task by allowing you to operate at a great efficiency. It also helps you to break down your goals into action tasks for your to-do list.
• Accountability.
  With no goals for your business, you can feel free to slack off, work part time, not look for new clients, etc. If that’s what you want, that’s fine—but if your life plan includes running a successful business, then you should be accountable to that business.
• Progress.
  Setting milestones for your business helps you to see your progress and gives you the encouragement to keep going, much like the weekly weigh-ins at Weight Watchers.
• Success.
  How will you ever know you were a success if you don’t know what the end goal was? Think of it as running a race with no finish line—would you be able to keep running forever if you never knew you could win?

Why Goals Should be Flexible

I work in a business that involves the use of a lot of technology. From my point of view, if I don’t remain flexible and able to adapt to trends quickly, I can get passed by really fast. For this reason, your goals should not be set in stone, and you should be able to revisit your short-term goals frequently to see if they still make sense for you. I feel like this concept is true for any profession or industry, as we are all susceptible to changes in the economy, technology, or consumer behavior.

How to Set Goals

If you haven’t made a life plan (or at least have one in mind), I would start out with that.

If you haven’t reviewed your business plan lately, I’d revisit that as well.

Goals should be more about the process, not the end result, and for that reason I start out by making a master list of dreams. Once I have a list of everything down on paper, no matter how crazy it is, I can go back and prioritize and quantify everything. For example, you might mark up your list in the following way:

Assign years.
For each of your goals, decide how many years you will give yourself to attain that goal. For example, is it a goal for this year, the next 3 years, the next 5 years, or just sometime in your life?
• Give priority.
  Can you assign each of your goals some kind of priority level or number? For example, you might decide that creating a new product is more important than increasing sales on an existing one, so prioritize each of these items accordingly. This will help you when it comes time to set your tasks lists or decide which goals to table for another time.
• Break down goals into milestones.
  If your goal is to create a new product, how can you set mini goals for yourself to accomplish the larger goal? The mini goals might include researching the subject, taking some continuing education classes for yourself, or hiring a new employee to assist you in this aspect of your business.
• Create measurement units.
  How will you decide if your goal of “start podcasting” is a success? You should consider adding some form of measurement to each goal, such as "creating a new podcast every month for 12 months" or "writing an e-book and selling 1,000 copies of it". Having a way to quantify your objectives makes it easier to determine if the criteria for success has been met. Some goals aren’t easily measured, however, and for those you will have to get creative.

What areas should you cover when setting your business goals? Really that is up to you, because I can’t tell you what areas you need to make improvements in or what product lines are most important to you based on current consumer trends. The idea, however, is that the more areas you cover, the more well-rounded your goals (and your business) will be.)

My Goals for 2008

It’s only the first week in January, so I haven’t come up with much yet. Here’s the partial list I am working on:

• Move our of state in the summer.
• Launch one content-based site that is separate from the services my company provides.
• Make a regular habit of writing, even on "off days" when I don’t have any blog posts going live.
• Read more and use my Google Reader share feature regularly.

What goals have you made for yourself in 2008?

Additional Resources

• Goal Setting That Works I like this one for the way in which it internalizes goal setting and encourages you to listen to your inner voice.
• 101 Goal Setting Breakthroughs: A 31 Day Blog Series That Will Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever!
• The Ten Commandments of Goal Setting
• SMART Goal Setting

• Find the courage to ask.
  LeBron wasn’t afraid of asking how to get into the meetings of a top investment firm, leading him to contacts he would have not found by other means. I have started several business relationships by having the courage to step up and ask when others sat on the sidelines. If you never get out on that limb, you’ll never know if you can fly!
• Unity is better than focusing on the individuals.
  At LeBron’s summit, his team told the participants that they were there to see how King James Inc. and the invited endorsers can work together to promote the LeBron James brand for mutual benefit. The goal should not be to see what each could get out of the party, but to see how everyone can increase revenues by working as a team. This is an important concept to remember when you are forming B2B partnerships or networking.
• Surround yourself with the best people.
  Sure, LeBron’s team consists of his three buddies that didn’t know anything about building an empire before they came on board with LeBron. But what they did was learn from the best—they had advisors from top firms, first-rate accountants, and "financial world superstars" on their Rolodex. While your start-up may not be able to afford the kind of counsel that LeBron gets, you can still hire the best people and surround yourself with quality.
• The brand is bigger than the man.
  LeBron realizes that he is only one person, and his career will only be so long. By building an entire brand around himself and using solid financial strategy, LeBron is setting himself up for a career that extends beyond the NBA. His team’s concern with market polling and international image allows LeBron to create a version of himself that stands out from his peers and the problems they have had. This principle is true whether you’re an international superstar or the hero at your local mall: When you run a company with your name on it, the brand is some version of yourself that is highly edited and not quite complete but works from a marketing standpoint.
• Diversify your income streams.
  LeBron isn’t just relying on one stream of income through basketball. He has created equity partnerships in a wide variety of companies including MSN, Nike, Coke, Cannondale, and even a new internet venture. By spreading the interests of King James Inc. across various markets and keeping up with changing consumer trends, LeBron is insuring himself against market and income fluctuations. While specialization is great to help your company excel at one thing (such as LeBron does with basketball), it is not enough to give you a cushion against changes in market interest and consumer behavior (such as a drop in the popularity of a sports star or declining viewship in the sport). Diversifying your income streams and anticipating future consumer trends will ensure your business has longevity.

I’m not the biggest basketball fan—give me football any day!—but I have to agree with Warren Buffett that "King James" is the one to watch in the future, and I’ll be keeping track of his business dealings closely.

Make your own Lent

I’m not about to make you give up chocolate for forty days, but I will have you consider what else you can give up. Are there certain activities, both personal and professional, that are sucking up your free time? Are there certain clients or projects that have not been as profitable as you hope, and yet they are still monopolizing your time? Now is the time to make a list of these things and figure out how you can either eliminate or modify them so that you can be more efficient. To demonstrate, here are some of the things I have done:

• I stopped driving to the gym.
  Time saved: 45-90 minutes
  Years ago, I used to drive to a gym to work out. Now, I just run from my house and do strengthening exercises at home. This saves me about 45-90 minutes every time I work out if you consider how long it takes someone in California to drive to the gym, park, walk from the car to the gym, get inside the gym, wait for certain machines to become available, leave them gym after working out, and drive home again. That 45-90 minutes is definitely better spent elsewhere. Better yet, I now jog with an empty stroller to pick up my daughter and walk her home, so I get to exercise, run an errand, and save fuel costs all in one shot.
• I stopped watching TV.
  Time saved: 15 minutes per show for DVD,
  15 hours for cutting back
  I was actually down to one show a week from the 5-6 nights per week of TV I used to watch two years ago, but with the writer’s strike that has ended as well. If I still want to watch something with my husband, we pick up a TV series on DVD from Netflix. Watching TV on DVD, whether old shows that are on commercial DVDs or new shows that you record, allows you to save roughly 15-20 minutes per hour by eliminating the commercials. Watching your TV shows at a different time than they are aired also allows you greater flexibility in your weekly schedule.
• I gave up refined sugars.
  Time saved: 1-2 hours of productivity
  Not only do I feel better after eliminating refined sugars and reducing all other sugars, but my energy is greater with my steady blood sugar levels so I don’t feel like I need an afternoon nap every day. This makes my mid-morning and after-lunch periods a lot more productive. This same technique worked for Rob May over at Business Pundit and Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur’s Journey as well.
• I dropped a bunch of feeds.
  Time saved: 2 hours per week
  I used to have about 40% more feeds in my reader, but a bunch of them were really just dead weight—they had slipped in quality and were really not a good value of my time. Dropping them means that I can focus on reading only the feeds that will help me and not the ones that are a waste of time.
• I cut out some web sites.
  Time saved: 5 hours per week
  Are you the kind of person who spends a few hours a week checking news- and hobby-related web sites? I found that these activities really did nothing for me, and if I could control the urge for about five minutes, it went away. This act of impulse control now gives me an extra five hours every week, at least. The added benefit is that not reading the kinds of things that make headlines on CNN has improved my mood, which also increases productivity. The exception to this rule is any industry-related news such as business or technology trends, which you should keep up on in order to remain competitive in your business.

Eliminate Inefficient Uses of your Time

To really overhaul how you use your time, you have to look at what you are doing now that is inefficient or leaves room for improvement. I would begin by recording everything that you do for the next week or two, including how much time each activity took you and what the results of that activity were. Once you have the data, look at your schedule to see which activities consume too much time or don’t bring in any returns for you. If problems in your schedule emerge from your data, try some of these solutions:

• Outsource.
  Outsourcing might be as complicated as hiring a bookkeeper if you are spending too much non-billable time on your books, or as easy as hiring a housekeeper to free you up for additional work time. My simple version of outsourcing is that I have been sending my daughter to play at a friend’s house during the day and letting her daddy put her to bed at night.
• Reduce distractions.
  Tim Ferriss, author of the The 4-Hour Workweek, strongly advocates checking your e-mail only twice a day. I haven’t quite made it there, but I am trying to turn off my e-mail and IM more often. I also stopped answering my phone when I’m focused on writing.
• Stay focused.
  The nice thing about working from home is working from home, but it’s also the bad thing. Besides e-mail, I can get distracted doing housework, playing with my dogs, or making overly involved breakfasts for myself. The trick is to stay focused on your task and "go to work" in the morning as if you have a job outside the home. According to Cameron Martel at Career Ramblings, staying on track when working from home includes dressing for work, setting regular work hours for yourself, making yourself a work space, and not finding other things to do around the house.

Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is the fastest way to derail a project and get yourself into some bad habits. If procrastination becomes regular, across all projects, you will start missing all your deadlines and your customer satisfaction (and client referrals) will suffer. This is why it is important to stop procrastination in it’s tracks! Julie Morgensteign, author of Time Management from the Inside Out, explains that procrastination often happens for two reasons:

1. The task is too complex and overwhelming.
2. The person procrastinating hates what they are doing.

If complexity is your problem, try breaking up the task into component parts and tackling each of them one by one. (I find that making a detailed to-do list and talking to yourself, as outlined in Be Your Own CEO, also help with that kind of procrastination.) If you hate your current task and are trying to avoid it, see the section on outsourcing above.

The Bottom Line

Overall, I’m looking forward to my increased productivity in 2008. Don’t wait until January to start these changes though—many of them can be made starting today. Just ask yourself this question: Is there anything that I am doing today that is not helping me move forward in my business? If the answer is yes, do something about it!

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/12/05/entrepreneurial-time-management-and-discipline/feed/ 1 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/12/04/be-your-own-ceo/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/12/04/be-your-own-ceo/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:24:19 +0000 nhgnikole http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/12/04/be-your-own-ceo/ 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.

As an entrepreneur, I have faced many professional hardships. The only thing that keeps me going at times is this drive to move myself forward. How do I do it? Well, like anyone, I try to do my best and hope the rest follows. If you need some help in this department, try these tips out:

Tell Yourself to "STOP!"

When my mind starts to wander into bad places like dwelling on mishaps or focusing on bills that are unpaid, I actually tell myself "STOP!" I quickly clear my mind and then refocus on any task that is beneficial to my business. Dwelling on things which you are unable to change at this moment helps no one.

Make a To-do List

I have a running to-do list on my whiteboard called "What can I do today to move this business forward?" Whenever I am feeling down, I refer to the list, complete items, and then check them off to feel a sense of accomplishment. I always have this list full, but if I ever find myself in a down time without anything on the list, I spend 5 minutes adding things to the list as my way to move myself forward.

Contact a Friend

If I start talking down to myself and can’t summon the courage to stop, I e-mail or IM one of my friends and say "please kick me in the pants. Thanks." The prompt response usually gets me moving again!

Eliminate Negativity

The world is full of naysayers, and unfortunately many of them are the people closest to you. It is important to block out those who want to save you from failure by giving you the out on your business or those who always see the downside of every situation. A naysayer is only going to bring you down overall—avoid them or at least don’t talk about your business with one.

Create a Quiet Moment

I was never one for meditation, but some people swear by it. As for me, I’m a runner, and there’s nothing a run won’t fix in my mind. So whether you’re putting on your running shoes or getting into your favorite pose on the floor, spend a half hour or less clearing your mind of the clutter and refocusing yourself with new energy into the business at hand.

Admit Defeat

When a particular project or client gets you down, sometimes the healthiest thing to do is quit that project and refocus your energy on your other clients/projects. Sometimes quitting sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s the best thing you can do when you are wasting too much time or resources on a single project.

Live in Day-tight Compartments

I read a book a while back called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, which is originally from the 1940s. The book is meant to be on a more personal level, but the techniques it discusses are perfect for the entrepreneur as well. Essentially, you can’t change what you did yesterday, so just section off that part in your brain and focus on what you can do today to be your best.

End your Negative Thoughts

Whether it’s a setback in your business or your own poor health, the goal in all of this is to stop your negative thinking and refocus yourself on moving the company forward. Negative thoughts are bad for morale and can kill your productivity.

Additional Reources

• Importance of Eliminating Negative Thinking
]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/12/04/be-your-own-ceo/feed/ 4 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/20/5-powerful-techniques-to-help-your-business-stand-out/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/20/5-powerful-techniques-to-help-your-business-stand-out/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2007 10:47:14 +0000 nhgnikole http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/20/5-powerful-techniques-to-help-your-business-stand-out/ 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.

Being Different

Celebrating your differences in your market is the basis for the creation of a unique selling proposition (or unique selling point) and the formation of a point of difference for your product. It is impossible to know how to brand your company if you don’t have a clear vision of what you offer, why it is different from others who may offer similar concepts or products, and how to convey all of this to your customer.

Why is being different important? Being different is important because not everyone does it—not everyone puts "be remarkable" into their business plan. Many people can open a chain store, a coffee shop, or provide web design services that are just the same as hundreds of others out there. What makes you unique is putting in the extra effort and showing the initiative to make yourself different. It is about finding your niche and being best in the world at something, whatever your version of the world may be. You can use branding to make yourself stand out even when you are selling the same home care products as 100 other women in your city, cater to a specific audience when creating your content online, or provide the greenest dry cleaning service with the best customer service in all of Cleveland. The point is that you have to be different to stand out in a crowd, because doing the same thing as everyone else will never bring you the success you want.

How should you go about being different? Try some of the examples I have outlined below:

#1 Develop a recognizable and consistent voice

Being different doesn’t mean you have to constantly change. For example, my husband used to frequent a pizza shop regularly before we were married. The owner knew all the regulars and often served them himself. He also sponsored local youth sports which then brought in business from their aftergame parties at the pizza place. This kind of predictability and personal service brought customers back time and time again to watch sports, consume food, and play video games. The food there was OK, the beer selection was minimal, and the TVs weren’t huge, but that pizza shop offered a very unique selling point that created regulars that brought a consistent cash flow to the business. When that owner left, a new one came in who didn’t have that personal connection or that feeling of comfortable predictability—and all of the regulars soon left to another establishment that did. Without the personal touch and reliability of the original owner, the business itself faded. What the new owner lacked was a "recognizable and consistent voice" to keep the business going after the handoff, and what the pizza place lost was essentially the heart of the business.

How can you keep and maintain a consistent voice while your business grows? The key is to put yourself into the business, as it is easiest to maintain when it is natural. Which gets me to point number two:

#2 Put yourself into your business

When you are an entrepreneur, what usually makes your business different is you. You bring everything you do into the company to make it what it is—your passion, your skills, your talent, your ideas, and your unique spin to a solution for a current problem in the world. I am my company. I even gave the company my initials! I know there is a frequent debate among small business owners working "on their company" vs "in their company", but I will always be the kind of person who works in my company. My personal handling of every customer is not unlike the pizza story above, but it does limit me in terms of the number of clients I can take on. If personality is important to your service business, then quantity over quality might be important as well. Consider how many clients you can logically handle, and then consider the pros of taking more (potential income) vs the cons of losing that personal touch (losing income).

#3 Develop your own style

I have always stressed the importance of personal branding, both with my clients and on this blog. Your personal style as the business owner shines through in everything you do, from your business card, to how you conduct yourself while spreading the word about your company, and how your business operates on a daily basis. Your own style is what makes your business different, because no one in the world is like you. I see a lot of small businesses trying to hide their uniqueness by setting up a false "big company look" complete with auto-attendents and phone services that will chase you around. Except in a few rare cases, you shouldn’t try to be something you’re not—be yourself and let your small business pride shine through. If your potential customer wants a big business, that is where they will go, so it is important to be honest and let your visitor decide that right from the start.

#4 Use imagery in a unique way

In my special for StartupNation, "5 Steps to Marketing Your Website", I discussed the use of imagery in marketing your site. This imagery doesn’t have to stop with your website—bring it to your store, your uniforms, or your marketing materials. You could try:

• Hiring a local painter to create permanent or seasonal murals on your walls or windows.
• Provide creative or fun uniforms for your staff, or let them express their own styles.
• Creating catchy fliers, business cards, and advertising pieces.

Why stop with the graphic arts? You could use the power of mental imagery in your business as well. Who would forget singing waiters or cashiers that always remembered to give balloons out to customers with kids?

#5 Break with tradition

Let’s revisit that pizza parlor. You may be thinking, "How can she use a pizza story to tell us to stay the same, and yet use the same example as a reason to ‘break with tradition’?" The answer is simple: Personal service is breaking with tradition in the San Francisco Bay Area (where I live). In every city, you can find plenty of pizza chains, fast food joints, and other institutionalized eating establishments—but finding a single owner with a single store who knows his customers is a rare treat that you can’t find at Little Caesar’s or Papa Murphy’s. For most of the establishments in this area, "tradition" is chasing trends, so doing things "the old-fashioned way" is actually breaking with tradition. If you’re not a pizza joint, you can be the only cafe that offers old-fashioned Italian sodas instead of just offering staples like Coke and Pepsi, the only drug store that also carries a selection of locally-made seasonal items for the family, or the only hardware store that sells goods and services by employing retired professionals to teach how-to classes.

Good customer service, a quality product, and value for your customers never goes out of style. Let others chase fads—you can often differentiate with yourself by keeping some traditions alive.

Additional Resources

• How to Create Your "Unique Selling Proposition" (USP) from Interactive Marketing in Bend, OR
• Your Unique Selling Proposition from Business Owner’s Toolkit
• Your Unique Story Proposition from CopyBlogger
• Term definition: Unique Selling Proposition (USP) from Entrepreneur.com

Reader Question

What makes you different? How have you capitalized on that?

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/20/5-powerful-techniques-to-help-your-business-stand-out/feed/ 6 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/13/the-art-of-quitting/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/13/the-art-of-quitting/#comments Tue, 13 Nov 2007 17:34:50 +0000 nhgnikole http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/13/the-art-of-quitting/ 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.

Open vs. Closed Memories

Open memories have an emotional attachment to them while closed ones do not. While emotion can play an important part in the learning process, hanging on to that emotion prevents an entrepreneur from growing and moving on to something better. What if someone like Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and Chairman of HDNet, had become consumed with the memories of his past failures? He might have not gone on to strike that one great thing he was looking for. Letting go is the process of sorting your memories from open to closed ones, and it’s an important part of the learning process for an entrepreneur.


Lingering and Avoiding

Both of these actions take the power of decision-making out of the entrepreneur’s hands. By lingering, the entrepreneur can let events or others make the decision—for example, by letting the business run until the cash flow is gone, or by letting the client finally decide to drop the contract. By avoiding, you ignore the problem until it is too late to change the fate of your lack of decision, and ultimately the fate of your business. True power as an entrepreneur comes from pushing aside your fear of the decision and making it—win or lose, at least the decision is made and the business can move forward.

Accepting the End

What happens when you actually have made the decision? This is where you, the entrepreneur, has to go from logic to faith. Your faith in your decision as the right choice has to be solid to see you through the fallout that might occur. (Pamela Slim refers to it as emotional fortitude, and it applies to any major decision in your business or life.) For example, you may have to close down a product line and lay off some employees, or end your relationship with a client if that is not working for you. These things are unpleasant, unavoidable, and absolutely crucial to the survival of your business—there is no room for second-guessing because of feelings of sadness or discomfort. Rob May is leaving Business Pundit to pursue other business ventures that are better for him, and although this creates some sadness during the transition, I think he’s demonstrating that his faith in the right decision will see him through.

Having determination doesn’t mean that you have to be ruthless, however: In business, not everyone will like you, but you can still end things on a high note, with civility and respect. A calm, closed ending is always better than burning your bridges and storming out!

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/11/13/the-art-of-quitting/feed/ 2 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/10/31/transparency-and-analytics/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/10/31/transparency-and-analytics/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:17:03 +0000 nhgnikole http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/10/31/transparency-and-analytics/ 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?

For example, a lot of people use Google’s free analytics service. What if Google started compiling all that data and offering it up Alexa/Compete-style? Then these types of comparisons could be made with real-world data, not just data created using statistics and samples. Personally, I wouldn’t mind if my real Google data was used in this way. The benefits of such a system could include:

• Making the data available to other sites and startups for real-world traffic estimation.
• Letting advertisers research your traffic and visitor profiles to decide if they want to purchase advertising space.
• Giving advertisers accurate comparisons to assess fair CPM rates.
• Insuring investors as to the health of the company.
• Creating an open dialogue and truthful communication in the internet community—how refreshing!

What do I have to hide? But maybe I am missing something here and there is some benefit to protecting that kind of data—something other than covering up your failures from your investors and your advertisers, of course. So what do my readers say on this? Would you mind if your real data was being served up Alexa style? Or do you consider that information to be proprietary, so it should be kept protected? What are the pros and cons of making such information available to all?

For anyone interested in the Compete service, I found it very cool—but you can try their free Site Analytics for yourself.

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/10/31/transparency-and-analytics/feed/ 1 http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/08/01/starting-a-business-out-of-college/ http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/08/01/starting-a-business-out-of-college/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:47:46 +0000 nhgnikole http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/08/01/starting-a-business-out-of-college/ When I came out of college, I went to work for a variety of places for very short periods of time (thanks to the dot-com bust). Looking back, I wonder if I would have just been better off skipping half of college and most of my early jobs—and going straight to entrepreneurship. What stopped me? Money.

Money is what drives businesses. While there are a lot of factors going into entrepreneurship, money has to be the #1 reason why a new business succeeds or fails. Start-ups run out of capital, entrepreneurs go back to their day jobs because of financial constraints, and most college students take their innovation straight to a large company where it gets squashed just to pay off their student loan debt.

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about my student loans (thanks to auto-pay), but I was reminded of them after reading all 141 comments left when Ramit Sethi asked his readers to tell him about their debt. The stories were just incredible—I thought my (currently, after 7 years of payment) $28K in loans was bad until I read stories of recent grads being in debt for several times that amount. The overall implications and financial burdens on the lives of the commenters is just astounding.

Considering this amount of debt, it is pretty obvious why most post-grads would want a stable job vs pursuing entrepreneurship. Their loans payments start just a few months after graduation, and who would want to add to their existing debt by taking out a business loan? This is why we are losing a lot of potential innovation in this country, because those new grads are wasting away in corportate America instead of using the cutting-edge technology they just experimented with while in college.

I don’t have the answers, only more questions. How can we encourage innovation by changing the structure of post-college debt in this country? Is there any end to this trend with college costs rising every year? Who will pass us up when our innovators (at any level) can’t afford to innovate?

]]> http://www.smallbusinessessentials.info/2007/08/01/starting-a-business-out-of-college/feed/ 5