If you are running a small business, you know that to be successful you need to be a jack-of-all-trades. The smart way to manage everything from company finances, to client relations, to marketing, is to use the right tools – tools that are simple enough that they won’t require you to spend a lot of time and money you don’t have setting them up.

In this guide we cover the 25 best web2.0 applications for entrepreneurs who are looking for simple, cheap, and effective solutions to solving some of the tasks facing their small business or startup. The 25 applications selected were chosen both on the basis of their usefulness for the individual small business manager as well as their effectiveness in providing community support and networking opportunities for users.

Finances, Money Management, Payments

You’re in business to make money. However, if you can’t manage your finances, payments, and assets, you’re going to find that expenses start to creep up, financing runs short, and your ability to plan for the future is nil. Thankfully, the following five apps are designed specifically to help you manage your finances. With these apps, you’ll know where every dime is spent and what you owe at all times, allowing you to start planning your company’s future rather than always trying to play catch up.

1. Prosper.
   
   Got a business idea but little or no capital? Prosper is a new type of peer lending service which brings individual lenders and small business borrowers together. Each loanee creates a profile, describes what the loan will be used for, and what interest rate they are able to pay. Lenders indicate how much they are offering, at what rates, and who they want to offer sums to. So your loan may come from multiple sources, or a single person. Alternatively, if you already have a group of investors you already know, such as friends and family, Prosper manages the transaction’s lifecycle for you. Regardless of whom you borrow from, Prosper takes a small percentage for managing each loan. For the entrepreneur looking for alternative financing, peer lending can be a great solution. The only downside, however, is that everyone knows your business, literally and figuratively.

2. Dimewise.
   
   Dimewise lets you record your purchases/expenses and categorizes them. Then, when you’re wondering where the heck last month’s budget went to, you can produce a pretty pie chart showing you exactly what you’re spending your money on. You can also set recurring expenses as well as track balances in one or more accounts, which will make it easier to predict what your future months’ total expenses will be. Of course, you could do much of this with a spreadsheet, but Dimewise lets you do it from anywhere with a web browser, and saves you the time of setting up macros.

3. NetworthIQ.
   
   NetworthIQ, winner of an SEOmoz web2.0 award, will help you keep track of your company’s finances as well as your personal net worth. It also includes a fun tool that lets you compare your income to other entrepreneurs of the same age or industry, so you can keep track of your company’s success relative to your peers.

4. Wesabe.
   
   Wesabe goes a step further than both Dimewise and NetworthIQ by integrating its financial organization and planning tools with your bank account. This allows you to complete a monthly accounting report and simultaneously use that report to manage and pay your bills. In addition to this added function, Wesabe also serves as a meeting point for other entrepreneurs to discuss financial advice. While this application won’t be robust enough to meet the needs of larger companies, for small startups Wesabe can serve as a one-stop finance resource.

5. Instacalc.
   
   Whether you’re rolling in the dough or just squeaking by, every entrepreneur has to crunch the numbers. There’s no easier tool to do long financial equations than instacalc, which will also give you a variety of charting options to display your figures. And if you need to go beyond basic algebra, calcoolate will help you add up all your moola in ways that would make your calculus teacher proud.

Timesheets, Invoicing, Billing

For a small business to succeed, managers need to maximize the amount of time they spend on developing the business, and try to minimize the time they spend on mundane tasks like creating timesheets and invoices. The following three web2.0 apps are all designed to help you cut the time you have to spend on these mundane tasks while simultaneously increasing your company’s accuracy and effectiveness in doing them.

6. FreshBooks.
   
   FreshBooks is an app designed with the web-based entrepreneur in mind. Not only does the program let you bill clients via email with professional-looking invoices, but clients can also pay you online via PayPal, Authorize.net, and other options through FreshBooks. The wide range of invoicing options is certainly enough for most small business owners, and because the generated billing reports the application generates can handle imported data, FreshBooks will work well with your current billing system.

7. Harvest.
   
   If after a long work day you often find yourself trying to wonder what exactly you did with all your time, both you and your small business would probably benefit from some time tracking. GetHarvest offers ten reasons why you should use their time tracking solution, including professional quality reports, Internet-based access, daily data backups, and privacy. Perhaps the most important feature is the application’s ability to analyze the hours worked by your entire staff, thus enabling you to identify company-wide inefficiencies.

8. SidejobTrack.
   
   SidejobTrack is billed as a software tool for the part-time independent contractor. If your startup involves providing services for a number of different clients, this all-in-one finance app is ideal for you. With SidejobTrack you can organize all the various jobs and services you’re performing, send estimates, do invoicing, tax reporting and even manage projects.

Communication and Collaboration

A common ingredient in every small company’s success is teamwork and communication. We’ve got both covered here with five web applications designed for conferencing, voice communication, text chat, team/project management, live customer support, and workspace sharing.

9. Campfire.
   
   The much celebrated product company 37 Signals has a suite of award-winning tools for collaboration and productivity: Campfire for group chat, Basecamp
   for collaboration and project management, and Backpack for organization (calendaring).Among these, the most useful tool for small business owners is Campfire. The application offers password-protected chat rooms to which you can invite clients, vendors, colleagues, and employees. These secured rooms are an excellent place to conduct negotiations that may involve sensitive company data without fear of having that information compromised.

10. Meebo.
    
    If you’ve used any of the text chat IM clients such as AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, or MSN Messenger (aka Windows Live Messenger), you’re aware of one fundamental problem: they don’t play nice together. If you have one contact on one IM and another contact using another service, how do you stay accessible to both of them? You could open a whole group of IM clients and chew up your free RAM memory, or you could use Meebo as a web-based bridge. For online companies where an increasing amount of business is conducted over IM clients, making yourself accessible to everyone through a bridging app like Meebo can mean the difference between success and failure.

11. Userplane.
    
    Userplane offers a suite of communication and conferencing tools, the most useful of which is called Presence. Presence is the new hot niche tool in telecom, be it over the Internet, cellular networks, or the good old regular telephone system. The technology allows a communication system to “know” where a user is and to reroute calls and messages accordingly to the specific device he is near. For those entrepreneurs who work from home, the office, and the road, this app is really helpful.

12. ConceptShare.
    
    Of all the above conferencing and collaboration solutions, none of them is suited for creative live interaction, such as having multiple people in different locations designing artwork or editing a document. ConceptShare solves the need for having a way to collaborate on a project in real-time by providing a creative workspace where employees can add to and modify graphic presentations. Changes made on the artwork or web design are even tagged by contributor, so different filtering combinations will allow your team to look at a variety of different filtering options.

13. Near-time.
    
    Near-time offers collaboration tools including group calendars with event and activity tracking, private shared weblogs, author pages, categories and tagging, and more. Near-time is designed specifically for small businesses, work groups and professionals, which no doubt includes the collaborative entrepreneur.

Organization

As a small business owner you don’t have the luxury of having a personal assistant to keep you organized. But just because you can’t afford to devote hours or dollars to staying on top of things, doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. The following three apps are designed to help you quickly and easily keep track of deadlines and schedule your work week so you can focus on the most important task, building your business.

14. Google Calendar.
    
    There are numerous web2.0 calendaring applications out there, including CalendarHub, Planzo, and spongecell. But what sets Google Calendar apart from the rest is its ease of setup and use. With Google Calendar you can quickly set up multiple calendars for different projects or clients, as well as link up to public calendars which can help you stay synched with your client’s activities. And for the entrepreneur on the go, Google Calendar even lets you check on your schedule from a mobile phone through SMS messaging.

15. Remember the milk.
    
    Have you ever tied string around your finger to remind yourself of something but then forgot what it was?Remember the milk can help you and your company remember all of the days important details. The app will let you set and receive reminders via email, SMS and IM. And to minimize the total number of apps you’re running independently on a daily basis, Remember the Milk even works as an add-on to Google Calendar.

16. Neptune.
    
    Neptune is the ultimate in practical planning. This web2.0 application won a spot on this list primarily because of its ease of use and simplicity. It’s a GTD (get things done) type of to-do list application with multiple project folders and drag and drop task reordering. Neptune also sends you email each day reminding you what your most urgent task for each defined project is. And for those of you daunted by the idea of having to go in and constantly update your to-do list, Neptune will even allow you to set up events and reminders simply by mailing items to your personal inbox.

Networking, Social Spaces

While big companies can afford just wait until contacts come to them, as a small business owner you have to go out and make your own opportunities. That means being proactive about developing relationships with people in your niche and finding new ways to introduce yourself and your company to prospective clients. The two apps in this section are designed to help you to be more effective at professional networking.

17. LinkedIn.
    
    LinkedIn is the new, hot, de rigueur networking tool for professionals and entrepreneurs. It builds on the concept of six degrees of separation, which says that every human being is connected to every other human being through at most 6 people. Entering into a network means being able to take advantage of business opportunities, asking for, or offering advice, and letting people in your network know about your projects. The best part? You’re connected to everyone that your direct connections are networked with. That means that you can quickly expand your contacts and develop your professional reputation with minimal effort, since you already have something in common with the other person (a common contact).

18. Ning.
    
    Ning is easily one of the most unique web2.0 application sites out there. Ning takes web2.0 to a whole new level by letting you build your own networking and social space. The plug-n-play social space creator will allow you to create your own community space for other entrepreneurs and potential clients in your niche to communicate and share ideas. With hundreds of pre-fabricated modules no programming is needed to get the space up and running making it just the sort of marketing boost your company needs.

Content Creation, Office and Productivity Tools

No matter the service or product that your startup company sells, you are going to need to maintain accurate records if you want to stay productive and steer clear of legal issues. But since you’re already strapped for time, recordkeeping is often one of the first dropped tasks if a small business doesn’t have a good plan in place to make sure that it gets done. In this section we cover four of the best web-based apps to help you take notes, write documents, preserve records, and create spreadsheets. When used correctly, these tools will minimize the time it takes you to make and keep hard copies, records, and backups so that you will actually follow through and get them done.

19. Zoho.
    
    Zoho has one of the most well-rounded offerings of web-based tools for the entrepreneur/ business person, including an Office Suite (Writer, Sheet, Show, Wiki, Virtual Office), Productivity Tools (Projects, CRM, Creator, Planner, Chat), Polls, and website monitoring. One of the most useful applications, however, is Zoho Challenge, which lets you test and evaluate job candidates using a combination of multiple choice and descriptive questions. Candidates can then be emailed results for one or more tests. Perhaps the best feature is Zoho Writer, a superb web-based replacement for Microsoft Word. Zoho Writer’s only limitation is its own popularity, which has been known to cause slow server response times. By using a web-based writing program, your employees and clients will be able to access their work at any time without the need for email attachments.

20. ThinkFree.
    
    ThinkFree calls itself “the best Online Office on earth.” Their suite of apps includes ThinkFree Online, Server, Desktop, and Portable. Of these numerous tools, the two most useful for entrepreneurs are ThinkFree Online, a document management and sharing application, and Desktop, a Microsoft Office compatible word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tool. Together, these two tools will allow small business owners and their employees to access a project no matter their location.

21. MyStickies.
    
    Does your business involve online research, but keeping a pad of paper and a pen handy for notes seems arcane to you? Or maybe you’ve made the cost-effective choice to try to make your company paper free. Whatever your reason, MyStickies is one of a number of digital sticky note apps (among others are stikkit, jotcloud, sticky tag, and webnote) available to you to quickly record short notes. In addition to putting post-its on your desktop, MyStickies will also let you put digital stickies on a particular web page so that when you return to the page later on, you won’t need to spend time trying to remember where you were in your research.

22. EyeOS.
    
    If your company would benefit from having multiple employees having access to the same documents, images, and programs, but they’re spread around the world, a shared online operating system might be the answer. EyeOS, one of the new breed of web-based “operating systems” is one of the best options available. EyeOS is Open Source and can either be downloaded and installed to your own server, or run off their public server. Once EyeOS is setup, anyone with the correct username and password can access the “desktop”, no matter where they are located. That means that if you and your employees are frequently working off the same data or tools, EyeOS may be the ideal application for your company.

Promotion, Marketing, Sales and Support

Fortune 500 companies have entire departments devoted to branding, marketing and supporting their products. For the small business owner, however, you need to replace all those departments and still have time left over to meet the other needs of your company. As the face and driving force behind your startup, it will be largely up to you to get your product in front of new customers, control the way it is perceived in the market, and answer questions from potential clients. The following four Web2.0 apps are all designed to maximize the effectiveness of your time by helping you promote your product and provide customer support.

23. Veetro.
    
    Veetro is designed to be a one-stop organizational and promotional application for small businesses. It offers a wide range of tools from invoicing and project management to customer support.The most useful aspect of Veetro, however, is its emphasis on client development and sales. With built-in lead tracking, email marketing, customer support and direct advertising functions, Veetro is an excellent tool for small businesses that are making a push to expand their client base or break into a new niche.

24. eBay.
    
    eBay is the classic early web2.0 application because of it’s pseudo-social network reviewing system. For small businesses trying to generate buzz, selling a few early product examples on eBay is a good way to get your product out early without a lot of overhead cost. In fact, some people legitimately make their living selling products full-time on eBay, though it’s not necessarily as easy as all those $97 e-books would have you believe. But if you’re an entrepreneur with volume purchasing and drop-shipping experience or just looking for some pre-launch exposure, eBay might be perfect for you.

25. Qoop.
    
    Qoop, there it is. When it comes to promotional/ advertising efforts for your small business, Qoop is an excellent resource as it allows you to create calendars, posters and other “memorabilia” with your company’s logo added. Qoop goes beyond sites like cafepress by taking numerous web2.0 photo sharing sites and networks including photobucket, webshots, and flickr and mashing them up. So if you have, say, a flickr photostream, you can create custom calendars using your images. Qoop has also partnered up with sites like blogprinting and fundprinting to outsource volume printing.

26. Bonus App: YouTube.
    
    Don’t underestimate the value of YouTube to a business, especially because of its pseudo-social network and category tagging. Real estate agents use YouTube to post video walkthroughs of properties they’ve listed on their website. Other web2.0 applications in alpha and beta stage post screencasts of their “secret” software to create some buzz. The innovative entrepreneur will come up with some way to utilize YouTube or similar sites such as revver to promote their business. If new media advertising doesn’t work for your company, you might want to promote via traditional TV through spotrunner. Spotrunner lets you pick pre-shot footage snippets to mashup, and then finds you budget ad spots with TV stations across the USA.

Being an entrepreneur has always been a high risk/ high reward venture. This year, more than 50% of new startups will close up shop before they reach their first anniversary. And while you cannot control things like market fluctuations, being smart about how you spend your time and energy can dramatically improve your company’s chances of success. This article has introduced you to 25 of the best Web 2.0 applications, all of which are designed to help you organize, control and promote your company, so that by working smarter you can maximize the chances of your startup’s success.

Source: http://www.avivadirectory.com/

This article proves 10 time-tested methods to get more work done than before AND free up the time we tend to ‘borrow’ from outside our work schedule.

These suggestions are work well for bloggers, entrepreneurs and especially anyone whose work routine needs to be flexible because of their family / social circumstances. The key is to integrate these habits into your daily routine, otherwise it’s not going to bring you any results.

General Tips

These are general habits that set the foundation for increasing productivity and using your time effectively.

1. Time & Task Chunking

There are two things you must start doing right now:

• Think of the time available to you in ‘chunks’ or ‘blocks’.
• Group related tasks together, and assign them time chunks.

Working on related tasks in the same time chunk makes it possible for you to get through those tasks faster than you would otherwise as your mind becomes attuned to doing a specific type of task. You might have heard the tip on writing your blog posts for the week / day in one go – this works because once your writing juices get flowing, it’s easier for you to write that second and third article for the day / week,

Why time chunks? I’ve discussed in detail later, but in essence the idea is to a) break down your work day into manageable time periods (input, output or just processing) and b) help you concentrate better on your work.

2. Smarter Email Management

Ideally you should be checking email just once a day – however in practice this is a difficult habit to adopt from the start, so I recommend restricting yourself to 2 checks – once in the morning to deal with the urgent stuff and once in the evening to answer emails, etc.

Daniel has more on effective email management. A great tip from the article is to NOT read your emails unless you’re ready to deal with them (reply, take an action based on it, etc). Usually what happens is that we tend to read an email once and then don’t take action on it for a few hours (or days). That leaves an open loop in our work cycle – either you’ll keep being reminded of unfinished business by looking at that unattended email or you’ll have it floating around in your head.

Only read an email if you’re ready to take immediate action on it. This is why I suggest splitting your email checking time into two steps – urgent and regular processing. Scan email headlines to pick out urgent matters and discipline yourself to leave the rest for later, when you can go through each email and deal with it there and then.

A last word on email – learn to write emails that deal with such simple follow-up questions as ‘what if this happens?’ or ‘how do I do that?’. Close possible loops by discussing alternative scenarios and solutions, as well as providing references in advance in case someone needs to know how to do a particular task.

3. Say No To Feed Abuse

Earlier this year I wrote an article on Search Engine Journal on why you should dump 90% of the feeds you read. At that time, I was spending 2-4 hours every day just browsing through feeds, and at the end of it I’d have so much in my head that I would find it difficult to sift through the unimportant stuff and focus my thoughts on the important, bloggable material.

Since then, I’ve dumped my feed reader altogether. I now rely on 2 types of news sources – editorially-aggregated news (a good example of this is the Search Engine Land’s SearchCap) and my network of contacts who end up emailing / IMing me the the hottest news. I wouldn’t make a living as a news blogger this way but in terms of ‘winning back’ time that can be invested elsewhere, this approach is an absolute must.

You don’t have to dump your feed reader, but cut down to reading aggregated roundups of your niche (and if there isn’t anyone doing that currently, that’s a perfect opening for you in that niche).

4. Downtime = Networking

Schedule some downtime for your self during the day – afternoon is a good slot, so is late night after you’re done with everything else (including planning for the next day). By downtime I’m not talking about taking a break, I’m talking about indulging yourself in IMing and random web browsing – putting aside time for IMing is one way to get the most out of the exercise, especially because the short time forces you to do the important things first (including networking, of course).

Some people will disagree with this approach, and I admit that I’m quite often online all day, if only because these days me and Ryan are coordinating a few Perf projects. In such cases I’m only available to chat for one or two people and with everyone else, I’ll have to wait till the important stuff gets done first. It’s hard but it’s the only way to eliminate the distractions that get in our way and stop us from getting work done.

5. ‘Heavy Lifting’

Set aside time daily for some heavy lifting – i.e. intensive work. You don’t have to do this at the same time every day (although in terms of building your rhythm and improving productivity that surely helps) but you should allocate the same amount of hours to it every day.

The ideal solution for me is to have two ‘heavy lifting’ chunks – one in early / late morning and the other either late afternoon or early evening (never at night). This allows me to start the day off by getting a good chunk of my work complete, and before the day is over I’ve done everything for that day, giving me time to enjoy the rest of the day and obviously plan for the next day ahead of time as well.

6. Input / Output / Processing

I’ve started thinking of a typical work cycle as 3 distinct phases.

1. Input: Any task that involves the intake of information. Browsing, feed-reading, etc are input-oriented activities.

2. Output: Any task that involves you producing something – blogging, programming, designing, etc.

3. Processing: When you’re dealing with ideas, knocking off action items, planning for the next day or evaluating progress.

In practice, you want to limit your inputs to the ‘absolutely necessary’ and maximise your output. Most of the time we spend our day the other way around – reading a lot and doing / writing very little. In terms of achieving your goals, that’s a brain-dead approach – why would take up any habit where you’re deliberately limiting the amount of work you can get done?

Sometimes people don’t segregate processing from their input / output states. I disagree – it’s vital that you set aside time for processing your inputs as well as for planning what needs to be done in the future. The processing phase is key to giving your perspective on what you’ve done, what you want to do next and how to get that done.

Like the concepts earlier, thinking of your work cycle in terms of these 3 phases will help you focus on why you’re doing certain tasks and therefore help you get the most out of your time.

When Working / Heavy Lifting

The 6 tips mentioned above concern basic habits. From #1 and #5, you’ll remember the concepts of time chunking and heavy lifting. The rest of this article concerns tips on how to make the most out of your working time, especially the time when you need to be 110% productive.

7. Stay Offline

Turn off your browser, your IMs, etc. If you’re blogging and need access to feeds, open all the required web pages in your browser and then disconnect.

There are two major problems when you’re online and blogging / writing / programming / strategising at the same time: one, you have the option of distracting yourself, and two, you’re leaving yourself open to the possibility of being distracted by someone / something else (a news item popping up in your feed reader, an email).

I can hear you saying – ‘what if its important?’ Sure, it probably is, but you’re smart enough to know that the work you’re supposed to be doing is certainly important, while something that you might miss in those 3-4 hours is most likely not important. You’re most likely not missing much by going offline, but you’re definitely losing a lot by dividing your attention.

Of course, there are obvious exceptions. However for 95% of us, those exceptions are just theoretical (we’re not as special, essential or important as we like to think).

8. Turn Off Your Phone

I don’t know about you, but phone interruptions are the worst when I’m blogging. Whether it’s a message or a call, even the one minute it takes to shift focus from one thing to the other and then bringing it back can have you lose your momentum, pushing you back by 5-10 minutes or more.

Turn your phone off, or at least on silent and train yourself to ignore the phone. When blogging, check your phone between blog posts if you absolutely must, not during.

What if it’s an emergency? Like I said earlier, our imagination paints the world far worse than it really is. In case of an emergency and especially if there is a real need for you, the person looking for you will find a way to contact you. In any case, keeping two numbers (one for social and professional contacts, one for close friends and family) allows you to turn one off and then you can decide to ignore the second one. This only works if implement it properly and make it clear that the second number is only for emergency use. Drastic, yes, but since you’re only going to be doing this for a few hours each day, it’s worth it.

At the end of the day, us ADD-affected entrepreneurs need every little bit of help they can get.

9. Be Alone While Working

Admittedly this is more of a personal issue – I feel that I cannot work at my best, with full concentration, if someone else is around in the room. From getting distracted by what they’re doing to feeling the urge to strike up pointless conversation, I tend to get very little done when there are people around.

To get the most work done, find a quite spot where you can be alone. If that’s not possible, try ensuring that your immediate physical area is clear and free of distractions.

If all else fails, chain yourself to the desk and lock yourself in the room until you get work done.

10. Deadlines

When faced with a project, nothing ruins it more than having a deadline far into the future. Break your projects down into smaller, bite-sized tasks and set impossibly short deadlines for getting them done. You’ll find that not only do you psychologically motivate yourself into getting things done quicker, you’re probably doing less work than you would if you approached it as a large chunk and set aside weeks or months to get it done.

Process each project, break it down, and get it done as quickly as possible.

(Bonus) 11. One Thing At A Time

This part is especially for those people who claim to be multi-taskers. I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.

• If you plan your work in advance, you’ll never be rushed enough that you need to do 2 things at the same time.

• And if you concentrate on one thing and get it done before moving to the second, you’ll get both of them done faster than if you tried to ‘multi-task’.

If you’ve lived all your life multi-tasking, it’s possible that you’ve achieved some success because of that approach. Unfortunately, multi-tasking is an emergency, short-term response to a failure of planning and a product of panic. It slows you down, and as a long-term strategy it’s just stopping you from planning your tasks properly.

Multi-tasking forces you to be inefficient and unproductive. Don’t fall into / stay in this trap.

Summing It Up

I hope you found the above tips useful. Following any one of these tips will immediately boost your productivity, but when you start applying several of them together is when you will see the real benefits – these tips were far better in tandem than they do on their own.

Source: http://performancing.com/

1. Question: Who even reads business plans anymore?

   Answer: How about “Who should read a business plan”? It’s not about whether venture capitalists read plans, it’s about planning to make your business better. So here’s who should read a plan:

   First, you the owner, manager, author of the plan–and you’d better be the owner of the plan too—not some consultant. The plan is by you and for you and if tracking it, reviewing it, managing and executing it aren’t important to you, then you don’t understood planning. Planning isn’t about the document; it’s about controlling your destiny, running your business better, setting goals and tracking progress, and keeping your eyes on the horizon while not tripping over potholes in front of you. If you’re not going to read it regularly, then don’t ask anybody else to.

   Second, team members, boards of directors, and collaborators. A business plan is a way to coordinate, communicate, and collaborate with accountability and tracking. It should get all the key people on the same page. Nobody can execute a plan they don’t know about.

   Third, relevant outsiders. Banks, investors, boards of advisors, key consultants, and even occasionally—but only with caution—vendors or prospective new high-level employees.

2. Question: What’s the most important qualities of a plan?

   Answer: First, a plan should set priorities with the understanding that you can’t do everything. After all the buzzwords and analysis, strategy is focus. What can you do better than anyone else? What’s your core competence?

   Second, specifics. What’s going to happen, when, how much it’s going to cost, and who’s responsible for it.

   Third, cash flow. Growth spurts in a company are good things, meaning more sales, and presumably more profits, but unplanned growth can suddenly sucks up liquidity and in the worst cases kill the company. Growth without prior planning can be as fun a hard kick in the stomach.

   Here’s a story to illustrate the concept growth versus cash flow: Willamette River runs through Eugene where I live. More people drown in the slow deep portions of the river than in the rapids because people think they’re okay when it’s slow. Cash flow is like that, you think it’s okay when you’re growing and profitable. Profits are good, but cash and profits aren’t always timed together.

3. Question: In what order should you do the summary, pitch, and projections?

   Answer: That’s another chicken and egg question, and the answer depends on who you are, how you think, and how you work. I go through periods of months and in at least one episode years in which I think in broad bullet point terms first, then fill in details, and then I’ll swing over and start thinking in numbers and projections first, then filling in the concepts. I’ve watched people with planning for a lot of years, and it’s a style question.

   What’s most important with this order of execution is to understand that it will never be sequential. In whichever order you do it, you will always be doubling back. I’ve done it in every conceivable order, but I’ve never done a plan from step one to step N. Fleshing out the second step will almost always bring up reasons to revise what you did in the first step, and the third step will make you rethink the first two.

   At every point that you stop and work with plan, share it, talk about it, or manage it, then you’ll need to review the parts for alignment. I’m not talking about the big fat “Business Plan” as opposed to the larger and more useful real plan, the live plan. You need to keep alignment between the concepts and the numbers, and between the summary, the pitch, and the plan. In the real world it’s hard because a good plan is so alive that whichever part you touch changes.

4. Question: What about the theory that you should develop a pitch instead of a plan?

   Answer: A good presentation is a great way to communicate the core of a plan, but it doesn’t substitute for a plan. A pitch without a plan is like a movie trailer without a movie. The plan and the pitch should work together. Which comes first is chicken and egg, a matter of personal style, but it’s crazy to have a pitch without a plan, or, if you’re aiming high in the investment world, a plan without a pitch.

   VCs like the contrarian buzz they get when they say they want the pitch instead of the plan, but they’re really always assuming there’s a plan in the background, aren’t they? They’ll probably have some analyst read it. We hear about some rare exceptions, but they are interesting for just that, they are so rare.

   Furthermore, the whole pitch versus plan discussion is limited to the exclusive top of the pyramid: the 5,000 or so deals that get VC funding in an average year plus another 25,000 or so that get angel funding. For the other twenty-six million or so businesses in this country, planning is vital and a pitch is an excellent part of the planning process, not a replacement for it.

5. Question: What’s the optimal process for writing a business plan?

   Answer: Grab whatever part gets your attention first and get going. Understand that it’s not sequential it’s iterative, and a good plan is never done. Some people do the numbers, then the concepts, most people do concepts first, but it doesn’t matter. Planning isn’t a waiting room where you sit until you’re done. Build it in parts, mix and match, choose items from a menu. If you like, do a sales forecast and see where that leads you.

   My favorite process starts with what you want for the business on the long term, moves to establishing a conceptual identify: what are you best at, how do you want the world to distinguish your business from all others. Then it goes to the marketing: what message, to whom, through what media. Then it goes to sales forecast, costs, expenses, and last but frequently most important, cash flow. Key concept: a good business plan is never done.

6. Question: What are some of the common mistakes?

   Answer: The worst by far is focusing on the plan instead of planning. This generates the idea that you create a plan as a document, and the related misunderstanding that the plan is for somebody else. You don’t postpone life while you’re developing a plan; you’re always developing the plan. In the meantime, “Get going.” Here are some other common mistakes:

   • Blue-sky blurry: lots of strategic thinking without any hard facts. Planning requires specifics: dates, deadlines, responsibility assignments.

   • Trying to do everything. I use the rule of displacement: everything you do rules out something else.

   • Thinking that being the lowest price option is important. It isn’t. The price and volume thing they talk about in economics classes is for 200-year-old lumps of coal, not your business. Use price as a statement of quality. Leave the low-price strategies for Walmart and Costco.

   • Mistaking profits for cash. Profitable companies go broke all the time. You don’t spend profits. Plan your working capital well.

7. Question: When do you revise a plan?

   Answer: You need to revise a plan regularly, like steering a car or walking, both of which are constant small course corrections; but you also need to stick to a strategy consistently for two to three years at least to see it working.

   It’s better to have a mediocre strategy consistently applied over a long term than a series of brilliant strategies contradicting each other every six months. The hard part is knowing which is which. Don’t ever stick to the plan like running into a brick wall just because some cliche says you’re supposed to; that’s just dumb. But you also need the patience to let things work. Sometimes we keep solving the same problem repeatedly because we don’t have the patience to let the first solution work before we change to the next solution. It’s paradoxical.

8. Question: What’s the best format?

   Answer: Form follows function. Planning isn’t about the “Business Plan” document, it’s about the planning process that creates management. The vast majority of business plans are for the business themselves—not to be read by outsiders, and they should stay on a computer and in bullet points and financial projections because that’s how they can be used.

   Until your plan needs to go to outsiders you keep it simple and practical. I’ve been running my company with a business plan for twenty some years now, it gets revised often, discussed and managed often. But we print it when our bank asks for it—maybe every five yeras or so.

   However, when you do have a “business plan event,” as we call it—meaning loan application, investment, or review for board of directors or advisors—then give your readers a break. Include charts to illustrate numbers. Use easy to read bullets. Use 12-point fonts for people over 50. Make an easy outline to follow. Include an executive summary that could stand alone if it has to because it will. Have chapters describing the company, what it sells, the market, the plan specifics —strategy, tactics, and programs, the management team, and the financial projections. Don’t be afraid to use PDF documents, they travel well and are convenient for all concerned. And let your readers decide whether they want hard copy.

9. Question: How can you project numbers for a new business with no history?

   Answer: Aim for the educated guess. Educate the guess with back-up information laying out assumptions for how many potential buyers, what sort of penetration process through the market you’re projecting, and what experience shows in other industries. Look for indicator factors you can tie your numbers to, like web traffic and click-through and conversion rates for one kind of web business, or page views and ad views and ad revenues, on another.

   Don’t sit around debating projections—start selling. Prove your sales projections with sales. One of the best things about working with Philippe Kahn during the early days of Borland International was how he jumped out of the planning and into the sales at a moment’s notice. Nothing made the projections more credible than the $90K bundling deal from a computer manufacturer that also put dollars in the bank account (and $90K bought more in 1983 than it does now). There’s no data substantiation better than actual sales.

   Always try to get data you can pull apart into assumptions. I just used a web example, but even in the less data-rich world, you can project a restaurant sales by breaking it into meals per sitting and sittings per table and people per sitting and tables available and sittings per hour and peak hours and other hours, all of which helps to educate a guess.

   Always try to add experience. People who know a business understand general scale in a way that’s extremely hard to duplicate from scratch. I understand that we’re talking about a new business here specifically, but new businesses are usually derivative. If you don’t have the experience yourself, find somebody who does, and entice them into sharing and listening a bit. Buy lunch. Use flattery. That’s why boards of advisors were invented, as a forum for lunch and flattery.

   And remember: Start the planning process immediately. You’re projecting a new business only until you’ve finished the first month, and then you have plan versus actual to deal with. You’re laying down a plan so you can track the difference between plan and actual results. Your plan will always be wrong, but you’ll be tracking where, why, and in what direction.

10. Question: How do you know when you’re done?

    Answer: A good business plan is never done. You’re going to be circling back around it for as long as you care about your business and want to manage it better. If your business plan is done then get out of that business, it’s dead. You’re always moving towards the horizon, and you’re business plan is always there to track where you’re going, mark the steps, and help you steer.

    The absolute worst business plans ever, anywhere, are those plans in a drawer somewhere. If you’re not keeping it alive, it’s not planning; it’s just a plan. It’s history. It’s of no business value.

11. Question: What do you make of these “Web 2.0” entrepreneurs who say that the world is moving too fast for anything as “1.0” as a plan?

    Answer: They’re referring to the the big fat “Business Plan” when what they need is planning. Planning is vital because it keeps you on track and mindful of important long-term strategy and objectives. A plan, on the other hand, a plan taken by itself, is only as good as the implementation it causes.

    Planning is exactly what you need to deal with the speed of change. You have to remember that your business plan is always wrong—it has to be because it’s predicting the future and we’re human, we don’t do that very well. But it’s still vital because it’s the way you lay down tracks so you can follow up on the constant difference between plan and assumptions.

    Without a plan, when assumptions are wrong you don’t even know what they were, how were they wrong, in what direction, and what can you do about it. With a plan, you use plan versus actual all the time to manage the difference between what you thought and what actually happened.

    That’s what I love most about having a GPS unit in a car. When I screw up and take the wrong turn, the GPS still remembers where I wanted to go and tells me how to change my course. That’s what good managers do with a sound planning process.

Source: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

Are you a desk-bound entrepreneur? If so, then you have to get a little extra exercise to make up for the fact that you’re sitting all day. Exercise will also reduce stress, increase your energy and clear your mind. But the gym can seem like a waste of time. It’s not the 45 minutes working out that’s a problem — it’s the additional 45 minutes of prep, travel and cleanup.

In his new book, The Entrepreneur Diet: The On-the-Go Plan for Fitness, Weight Loss, and Healthy Living , author Tom Weede offers eight simple exercises you can do to build strength, tone and flexibility without leaving your office, and no matter what condition you’re in already.

Quick-Start Exercise

At its most basic level, exercise is nothing more than your muscles, bones, and heart working as they were designed so well to do — to move.

And even with a crowded schedule, you can work physical activity into your life just about anywhere and with minimal equipment.

If you’re at the office, take a 15-minute break in the morning or afternoon to complete this session — and you’ll have your first workout under your belt before you go home. If you’re at home, take 15 minutes before lunch or dinner to knock out the routine. The movements are unobtrusive — you can think of them as “stealth” exercises.

This first step will serve as a springboard to more fitness and dietary changes in your life. And once you learn these movements, the more challenging habit changes will be easier. But even when you become more advanced, or if you are right now, these simple exercises provide a refreshing break during the day. They can also serve as a fast workout for those inevitable times when your schedule is too hectic for longer workouts.

Still, if you do nothing with this book other than take away these exercises and this chapter’s action plan, you’ll be doing something powerful for your body and mind.

A note on terminology: A “repetition” or “rep” is one complete movement of a given exercise. A “set” is a given number repetitions done in sequence. Start by doing one set for each exercise — if you feel good, you can add a second set. Do two sessions this week.

Strength Exercises

Chair Leg Extension
Muscles strengthened: Quadriceps (thighs)
Press your tailbone firmly against the back of the chair. If the chair is adjustable, move the height so your thighs are parallel to the ground. Lightly grasp the armrests or the edges of the seat pad. Keeping your back straight and looking straight ahead, slowly extend your right leg with your foot flexed toward your shin. At the top of the movement, your leg should be fully extended, but don’t forcefully lock out your knee. Slowly return to the starting position. Do 10 repetitions, then repeat with your left leg (this is one set).

Isometric Hand Press
Muscles strengthened: Biceps, triceps, chest
Sitting upright in your chair, grasp your hands together in front of your chest, and firmly press them together. Make sure you continue to breathe throughout the exercise. Hold for 10 seconds and then relax for 10 seconds, then repeat four more times.

Wall Push-Off
Muscles strengthened: Chest, triceps, shoulders
Stand about three feet from a wall, and place your hands flush against the wall, about shoulder-width apart. Slowly lower your body toward the wall by flexing your elbows. When your elbows are aligned with your torso, push back up. Do 10 repetitions. Make this exercise more challenging by using your desk: Stand several feet away and position your hands on the edge of the desk, shoulder-width apart. Then repeat the raising and lowering of your body by flexing your elbows.

Overhead Press
Muscles strengthened: Shoulders
Sitting upright in your chair, flex your elbows so that your left hand is in front of your left shoulder, and your right hand is in front of your right shoulder. Your elbows should be slightly flared out to the sides, just below shoulder-level. Lightly clench your fists with palms facing forward. Next, fully extend your elbows without locking them out, with your hands moving toward the center over your head. Slowly return to the starting position. Complete 10 reps. To make the exercise more difficult, use a book to press overhead.

Drawing-In Maneuver
Muscles strengthened: Mid-section
Sit upright on the edge of your chair, grasping the arm rests or the edges of the seat pad. You can also stand with your hands on your hips, feet shoulder-width apart. Next, pull your stomach up and in as far as possible — think of pulling your belly button toward your spine. Hold that position for the count of five to ten, then release. Do 5 to 8 repetitions.

Flexibility Exercises

Side Bend
Muscles stretched: Back and sides
Sit at the edge of your chair with your back straight, and interlace your fingers with your palms facing away from you. Reach your arms straight above your head, then lean to the left from the waist and hold. Next lean to the right and hold.

Cross Arm
Muscles stretched: Upper back
Sit upright and bring your right arm across your upper body at about shoulder level. Your elbow should be slightly flexed. With your left hand, grasp under your right arm just above the elbow. Gently pull your right arm across your chest, toward the left, and hold. Don’t shrug your shoulders — keep them relaxed. Repeat with your left arm across your upper body.

Neck Stretch
Muscles stretched: Neck
Sit or stand with your head upright. Slowly turn your head to the right as far as comfortably possible and hold, then turn slowly to the left and hold. Next, let your head fall gently toward your chest and hold. Avoid tilting your head backward — it weighs about 10 pounds, so this can put too much stress on your upper spine.

Scott Allen
http://www.about.com/

The following is an exclusive excerpt from Barry Moltz’s Bounce! The book takes a hard, honest and often humorous look at failure as a natural part of business, but without the “you can turn it around” cheerleading and the “failure is your teacher” balms that are supposed to somehow ease our pain when we hit bottom in spite of our best efforts.

At my wedding, my best man, Zane stood up to give the toast and recounted the story of our bachelor party in Las Vegas a few weeks earlier. He told of my frustration at the blackjack table where I was really upset that I was losing my money. He reminded me that my luck would change soon. “Lady Luck will soon shine on you again,” he encouraged me at the casino.

I retorted that what bothered me wasn’t watching my chips getting whittled down; it was that in not winning, I was a loser. At that point in my life, I hated to lose. I had read so many motivational books that I desperately wanted to remain a winner and be honored as such, the way I had been at IBM, so I went to great lengths to avoid losing. This pattern kept me working at IBM far past the time that I was satisfied with what I was doing there. Other people were called losers, but not I. I was one of the winners, and I was going to stay one of the winners . . . until I failed miserably. Why play unless we think we can win? My father – in – law always played the state lottery because, as he so often said, “Someone has to win; it might as well be me,” and he did win small stakes on occasion.

Now I’m not suggesting that you head to the nearest casino boat and buy some chips, but we can learn a lot from Las Vegas and lottery analogies. Whether you play the lottery or not, you don’t have to be a gambler to fail. No matter what you do (and don ’ t do) in business, eventually failure will show up. It might be big, it might be small, but failure will arrive. Over the years, I‘ve learned to regard it as no big deal. (All right, maybe not exactly no big deal, but certainly much less of a big deal.)

You and I are not the first people in business to fail. We have lots of company — and we’re likely to have more. If this book teaches only one thing, it is how to learn to recognize, accept, and embrace failure as part of the natural sequence of events. This is how we already think of success; can we think of failure this way, too, as simply a natural outcome? In business, certain odds are against us from the start. Since 80 percent of all new businesses fail within five years, you might as well learn to handle it. In fact, if you can start building this mind – set before you fail the first time, you’ll be ahead of the game. After I had gone out of business twice, the possibility of that happening a third time seemed easy to handle. If that doesn’t sound quite so crazy as it might have when you picked up this book, that’s a sign that you are making progress toward developing your own brand of resiliency and true business confidence before you have multiple failure notches on your belt.

It is good to be a competitor and not want to lose. An honest competitor gives every deal his all, is rigorous about preparation and training, and approaches each event with humility and without the fear of losing. I want to win. I expect to win. I celebrate when I win. But I can also accept when I lose. I learn what I can. I may wallow in it for a while, but then I move on. I escape to a new path. I try again. I view the outcome as an escape so I can now make a new choice. This is how my bounce acts.

Lost? Try the Escape Hatch

Anna Belyaev of Type A, a training firm in Chicago, knows that she will fail at parts of her business, but her resiliency makes it into a game where she really can’t lose. “The game I play around failure is that I try to make sure that when I leap or take a risk, it’s a big enough one that if I fall, I am just going to be so far ahead from where I started that it s not failure.”

Belyaev works at her life so that any potential failures are ones that she knows can move her forward. In this way, with very long leaps, she can see any failure as progress on the path toward her goal, and even if she doesn’t achieve what she wanted to achieve at a particular step, at the very least she lands a long way from where she started. From this new place, she then has a different view to make a decision that will yield the best possible outcome.

Deborah House knows that people are sad and disappointed when they fail, but she retorts that we need to “see how quickly you can come out of it. I view it as a process of elimination because even the best of plans have the option for failure, so by failing you ’ ve eliminated one of your options and you have a smaller pool to choose from.”

Failure thus can be viewed as an escape hatch for each step. Finding out what doesn’t work is as important as finding out what does — and there is no doubt that failure teaches us what doesn’t work. When we fail, we have eliminated at least one of the possibilities. Failure actually can be very cleansing. It gives us the ability to start anew with a modified or entirely new direction or outlook that has a new opportunity (and probability) for success. The moment we jettison what happened, we have a fresh chance to succeed (or to fail). We can get moving once again and begin a new streak.

By Scott Allen
http://www.about.com/

Individuals who are considered successful are able to take in a lot of information, and tend to do a lot of reading. Indeed, those who are most adept tend to do a fair chunk of their reading on topics outside of their primary area of expertise. That means that if they’re a business leader, they may read quite a bit on business and leadership, but they also read books and articles on history, science, archaeology, psychology, theology, or other non-business topics.

At the same time, most of us are awash in information – avalanches of email, letters, journals, books, articles, reports, web sites, paperwork that come our way each week. Knowing that, in order to be effective, we need to sort through the mountain of information and extract the most important nuggets, how do we approach the climb?

Some information-overload strategies tout speed-reading as one be-all and end-all.

We hear of executives who, ever quantitative in their focus, boast about reading more than 30 journals and a number of books each month. And speed-reading advocates, selling their “how-to” workshops (or justifying their participation in the same), insist that you can zip through and actually retain all of the information.

…but why would you want to do that?
Exactly. Why would you want to speed read? Like eating too fast just so you can sample all of the foods on the buffet table, all it will likely give you is info-indigestion. The better bet is to survey the buffet, know what food you like and feel like eating, and then focus on a few offerings so you can fully enjoy each morsel and benefit from the nutrition and energy it provides.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for efficiency, and think information-scanning has its time and place. However, being able to scream through a vast quantity of information isn’t always necessary, and neither is it wise or efficient. It’s like someone boasting that they work 70 hours per week because they think it sounds impressive, yet a mindful, organized person would be able to actually produce more in half the time. Like the saying goes, just because you can do more, and do it fast, doesn’t mean you should, or need to.

A better approach?
A more mindful and effective approach is to be clear about your key priorities and primary interests, use scanning to get through the piles and determine what of the information is actually relevant to you, read and mindfully digest the most important material, and toss or pass along the rest. Yet again, we make the distinction between a focused, qualitative approach versus a broad, quantitative approach.

For example, if your weekly or monthly priorities are researching and giving an important presentation, discussing performance issues with a problem employee, reviewing and approving a project report, and wanting to find tips for dealing more effectively with information overload, you would:

• identify your priorities for that day, week and month,

• chunk it down into daily and weekly activities,

• assign time slots for reviewing information on various priority topics,

• sort through your journals and other information,

• respond to those inquiries that require an immediate response,

• read through articles (online, print or otherwise) that are about the issues of greatest interest to you first,

• make notes that will help you deal with your priority issues, and,

• either toss or pass along the rest of the information to others who can benefit from it, or save it for your “if I have an extra 30 minutes this week, I’ll read it” file (which you’ll toss or pass along if you’ve not read it by the end of the week).

Most people who focus on quantity are often unfocused and unclear about their vision and priorities; disorganized; or have convinced themselves that they have to read everything or they’ll miss something crucial (a tendency that most likely stems from one of the first two things mentioned).

The main gist? Get clear about your true priorities, and let that guide your actions throughout any given day, week or month. And remember: If you really have a need for information on another topic that crops up, you’ll no doubt be able to track down what you need at the time. Being clear and mindful saves you time and energy, and allows you to be more effective than a scattered, quantitative focus ever could.

By Jamie Walters
http://www.about.com/

I once heard John Kremer, one of the leading experts on book marketing, give a presentation on book marketing in which he said, “Book marketing is all about relationships. And you’d better get good at doing them long-distance, because you’re never going to meet most of the people face-to-face.”

While the telephone and e-mail may be sufficient for basic communications with these people once you’ve identified them, the Internet provides a wealth of other opportunities to meet and connect with other authors, agents, publishers, retailers, readers, and others who can help you throughout the lifecycle of your book. Here are some ideas and resources for all you authorpreneurs to help you find and maintain those long-distance relationships.

Before you even type the first keystroke of your book

The process of marketing your book starts before you even start writing it.

You will also find that you will be wanting help and input regarding various aspects of the book-writing process. Some things you can use the Internet for before you start are:

• Market research—Who will be interested in this book, where can I find them, and how can I reach them?

• Competitive analysis—What other books exist on my topic, how are they marketing, and how are they doing?

• Education about the industry—Take teleclasses, meet other authors and publishers, and learn about the various choices and challenges involved in writing a book and getting it to market.

• Start building a network—Above all, start making those connections sooner, rather than later. If you just suddenly blast onto the scene when your book comes out, expecting everyone to greet you with open arms (and open little black books), forget it. Start building trusted relationships now, so that you will have the credibility and the support you need in 6-12-18-24 months when your book is done and when it gets published.

While you’re writing your book
Very few books are truly written by one person with no other input. Non-fiction books need research for credibility and real-world stories for depth. Even fiction writers need brainstorming ideas, and just the general stimulation that comes from interacting with people. Some places you might want to spend time online during the writing process include:

• Writer’s forums—Most cities have some sort of group for authors, and there are hundreds more online. Online, you’ll be able to select the group by genre, rather than by geography.

• Topical online communities—You’ve done your market research and you know where your target audience hangs out… better start hanging out there yourself. Get to know the people—what motivates them? What are the hot, timely topics right now? Bounce ideas off of people you get to know and trust. Solicit stories and anecdotes for your book. That input will help you write a much better book.

Part 2: Leveraging Your Network to Market Your Book

Preparing to publish Some people get an agent and a publisher before they ever even start. Some write the book first and then take months or even years to get a publishing contract. The vast majority lie somewhere in between. You can turn to your online network for a variety of help with the process:

• Deciding on a publishing route—Talk to authors who have done similar projects to yours to help you get a better idea which publishing route (self-publishing, print-on-demand, small press, major publishing house) may be best for your situation. Get input from multiple people.

• Get referrals to agents and publishers—There are so many people trying to write books these days, and the market is so deflated, that it now can be as difficult to find an agent as it once was to find a publisher.

• A personal referral won’t get you the contract, but it will get your proposal looked at in front of the hundreds of other unsolicited proposals they receive.

• Get feedback on your proposal—If you have built strong enough relationships, people will want to help. My co-authors and I had over a dozen people, mostly published authors, editors, and publishers, review our proposal for free. Their input certainly made it a much stronger proposal.

• Get endorsements—Yes, you can get endorsements even on a proposal. Remember, the agent or publisher probably doesn’t know your industry intimately, so look for household names, or at least people whose organization and position makes them sound important.

Marketing your book The day has finally arrived—your book is hot off the press! Now, how are you going to make it a best-seller? Assuming you have a very limited travel and advertising budget, the only other way to reach large numbers of people is to turn again to your growing network to help you get the word out. But it’s not going to be just to them and their immediate contacts—the idea is to now leverage those connections to help you reach a much larger audience. Here are just a few of the ways you can do this:

• Mailing list / forum announcements—Assuming you’re an active member of that community.[, a book release is considered a major enough event that most mailing lists and discussion forums won’t object to you announcing it one time, so long as you haven’t been overly self-promotional all along.

• Media referrals-Remember the “R” in “PR”. Develop relationships with media throughout the writing of your book. Once your book’s done, now is the time to press them to be a guest on their show, to publish an article or book excerpt on their Web site or in their magazine, or to do a review of your book.

• Referrals to bulk buyers—Turn to your network for referrals to possible bulk purchasers of your book: corporations in your industry, professional associations, clubs, service organizations, etc.

From cradle to grave (or at least to the used book store shelves), a strong online network can help you write the right book, find the right agent and publisher, and market it to the right people.Let’s take a look now at some of the specific web sites and communities where you can start building such a network to support your book project.

Part 3: Online Communities for Authors

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of online resources for authors—you can find that at some of the sites below. The focus here is on online communities where you can network and meet people—real people, and lots of them—who can help with your book project. Remember, though, that while you will undoubtedly receive even more than you give, you must give first. Contribute to these communities and add value yourself before you start asking for it in return.About Freelance Writers offers a wealth of information about the writing business, including sample book proposals, query letters, and more. The discussion forums focus mostly on smaller projects—articles, screenplays, etc.—but also have some discussion relevant to book authors.

Author Zone is a very robust online community for authors, offering personal profiles, discussion forums, private messages, news, reviews, events calendar, and an e-mail newsletter—pretty much everything you could want, all in one place.

WritersNet is by far the most active online community for writers, agents, editors, and publishers.

This is the place where professional writers come and discuss the business of writing and publishing books—editors, agents, printing/publishing options, and even wordcrafting.

Ecademy Authors offers conversation of consistently excellent quality, and the networking opportunities benefit greatly from the surrounding context of Ecademy, another one of the largest business networking sites. Ecademy also offers free blogging and article posting, so it’s an excellent place to demonstrate your writing skills and create some visibility for what you’re doing.

Lit.org is a stylish, well-maintained hub site for authors, offering over 40 different forums, publishing news, reviews, and interviews with writers. The focus here is on stories, essays, poetry, and other short fiction.

WritingForums.com, a sister site of Lit.org, offers 20 or so very active forums on topics including various genres, critique forums, resources for writers, markets and contests, and writing challenges.

The Writer’s BBS is one of the longest-running online communities for authors, with over 50 writers’ discussion and critique forums, “covering both fiction and non-fiction with topics ranging from poetry to politics, and almost everything in between.” The articles and reviews appear not to have been updated in a while, but the forums themselves are extremely active. They also offer a free small web site for members.

Self-Publishing Yahoo Group is co-sponsored by Small Publishers Association of America (SPAN), and is one of the most active communities for authors. Currently monthly volume is over 30 messages a day. Even if you’re not self-publishing, the discussion here about the book business and general, and more specifically about book marketing, is invaluable.

Internet-Authors Yahoo Group is a discussion group for authors, both self-published or traditionally published, to share ideas about marketing their books (print or e-books) on the Internet.

Booksigners Yahoo Group offers information and discussion about book signings for authors. This is the place to learn how to maximize the effectiveness of your in-person marketing efforts.

Conclusion
The Internet offers a wealth of resources for authors. Don’t forget, though, that it’s still about people. Make the right connections, nurture those relationships, and you’ll have all the support you need for your book project.

By Scott Allen
http://www.about.com/

With the ready availability of mass communications, it has become very easy to reach the media on a large scale through email blasts, media alerts, and wire services. But just reaching them isn’t enough – you also have to reach them effectively and catch their attention in order to get coverage. We sometimes focus so much on the “P” – Public(ity) – that we forget that the “R” in PR stands for Relations(hips).

Rather than writing press releases, it is far more powerful to build a relationship with a journalist before you want the coverage. Your goal should be to end up in their contact book as a source: someone they can rely on for responses, facts, contacts and ideas.

When a journalist writes a story in your area of interest, send him or her an email of congratulations and perhaps offer additional story ideas, leads, or resources.

Journalists are almost always interested in story ideas relevant to their coverage area.

Remember to focus on the journalist’s needs, not yours. Not to paint them as insensitive, because they’re not, but they really don’t care that you have a book, or a website, or whatever your business is — their primary interest is creating an interesting, helpful and credible story for their audience. When a reporter calls you, of course you should be courteous and helpful. If you don’t know the answer to a question, just say you don’t know, but will get back to them with an answer or the name of someone else who can assist. They very much value fast response to their requests. Even more so than most other people, a quick response to their emails carries a lot of weight, because they are always under deadline. The very best way to build a relationship with a journalist is to provide a lead for a hot story, particularly an exposé. These appeal to the crusading spirit of many journalists.

Writing a regular column for your trade publication has tremendous exposure benefits, and will build your relationships with the media community. The media also appreciates invitations to events; they like networking with your friends also! Invite journalists to join a board or committee, ask for advice, ask them to present awards, or to sponsor an event.

The media really appreciate knowing that they have changed your life. If their coverage helped you, let them know. Perhaps you got some new sales leads, or perhaps your mom was simply very proud of you. Either way, you’re building a relationship at a personal level, even if you never meet them face-to-face.

By David Teten and Scott Allen
http://www.about.com/

The final portion of your business plan outlines your exit strategy. It may seem odd to develop a strategy this soon to leave your business, but potential investors will want to know your long-term plans. Your exit plans need to be clear in your own mind because they will dictate how you operate the company. For example, if you plan to get listed on the stock market, you’ll want to follow certain accounting regulations from day one. If you plan to pass the business to your children, you’ll need to start training them at a certain point.Here’s a look at some of the available strategies for entrepreneurs:

Exit Strategies for Long-Term Involvement

Let it run dry: This can work especially well in small businesses like sole proprietorships. In the years before you plan to exit, increase your personal salary and pay yourself bonuses.

• Make sure you are on track to settle any remaining debt, and then you can simply close the doors and liquidate any remaining assets. With the larger income, naturally, comes a larger tax liability.

• Sell your shares: This works particularly well in partnerships such as law and medical practices. When you are ready to retire, you can sell your equity to the existing partners, or to a new employee who is eligible for partnership. You leave the firm cleanly, plus you gain the earnings from the sale.

• Liquidate: Sell everything at market value and use the revenue to pay off any remaining debt. This is a simple approach, but also likely to reap the least revenue. Since you are simply matching your assets with buyers, you probably will be eager to sell and therefore at a disadvantage when negotiating.

Exit Strategies for Short-Term Involvement

• Go public: The dot-com boom and bust reminded everyone of the potential hazards of the stock market. While you may be sitting on the next Google, IPOs take much time to prepare and can cost anywhere from several hundred thousand to several million dollars, depending on the exchange and the size of the offering. However, the costs can often be covered by intermediate funding rounds.

• Merge: Sometimes, two businesses can create more value as one company. If you believe such an opportunity exists for your firm, then a merger may be your ticket to exit. If you’re looking to leave entirely, then the merger would likely call for the head of the other involved company to stay on. If you don’t want to relinquish all involvement, consider staying on in an advisory role.

• Be acquired: Other companies might want to acquire your business and keep its value for themselves. Make sure the offered sale price meshes with your business valuation. You may even seek to cultivate potential acquirers by courting companies you think would benefit from such a deal. If you choose your acquirer wisely, the value of your business can far exceed what you might otherwise earn in a sale.

• Sell: Selling outright can also allow for an easy exit. If you wish, you can take the money from the sale and sever yourself from the company. You may also negotiate for equity in the buying company, allowing you to earn dividends afterwards — it clearly is in your interest to ensure your firm is a good fit for the buyer and therefore more likely to prosper.

By Daniel Richards
http://www.about.com/

Secretary of State offices register corporations, limited liability companies (LLC’s), partnerships, business mergers and acquisitions, and articles of dissolution. For your convenience, here are quick links and phone numbers for the Secretary of State offices for all U.S. states plus and territories:

Alabama Secretary of State, 334-242-7200
Alaska Secretary of State, 907-465-2530
Arizona Secretary of State, 602-542-3230
Arkansas Secretary of State, 501-682-1010
California Secretary of State, 916-653-3795

Colorado Secretary of State, 303-894-2251
Connecticut Secretary of State, 203-566-3216
Delaware Secretary of State302-739-4111
District of Columbia Secretary of State, 202-727-7278
Florida Secretary of State, 904-488-9000
Georgia Secretary of State, 404-656-2817
Guam Government Site
Hawaii Secretary of State, 808-586-2727
Idaho Secretary of State, 208-334-2300
Illinois Secretary of State, 217-782-7880
Indiana Secretary of State, 317-232-6576
Iowa Secretary of State, 515-281-5204
Kansas Secretary of State, 913-296-2236
Kentucky Secretary of State, 502-564-2848
Louisiana Secretary of State, 504-925-4704
Maine Secretary of State, 207-287-3676
Maryland Secretary of State, 410-225-1330
Massachusetts Secretary of State, 617-727-9640
Michigan Secretary of State, 517-334-6206
Minnesota Secretary of State, 612-296-2803
Mississippi Secretary of State, 601-359-1333
Missouri Secretary of State, 314-751-1310
Montana Secretary of State, 406-444-3665
Nebraska Secretary of State, 402-471-4079
Nevada Secretary of State, 702-687-5203
New Hampshire Secretary of State, 603-271-3242
New Jersey Secretary of State, 609-530-6400
New Mexico Secretary of State, 505-827-4508
New York Secretary of State, 518-474-4752
North Carolina Secretary of State, 919-733-4201
North Dakota Secretary of State, 701-328-4284
Ohio Secretary of State, 614-466-3910
Oklahoma Secretary of State, 405-521-3911
Oregon Secretary of State, 503-986-2200
Pennsylvania Secretary of State, 717-787-1057
Puerto Rico Secretary of State, 787-722-2121
Rhode Island Secretary of State, 401-277-2357
South Carolina Secretary of State, 803-734-2158
South Dakota Secretary of State, 605-773-4845
Tennessee Secretary of State615-741-2286
Texas Secretary of State, 512-463-5555
Utah Secretary of State, 801-530-4849
Vermont Secretary of State, 802-828-2386
Virgin Islands Secretary of State, 340-776-8515
Virginia Secretary of State, 804-371-9141
Washington Secretary of State, 360-725-0377
West Virginia Secretary of State, 304-558-8000
Wisconsin Secretary of State, 608-266-3590
Wyoming Secretary of State, 307-777-7311

By Scott Allen
http://www.about.com/