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Are you doing a good job meeting the needs of your small business? Keeping a good handle on finances? Networking? Do you have a system for organizing your marketing strategy? Do you even have a marketing strategy?

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.

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I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in “the rest of the world.” He’s right, and he should know because he’s the president of Palo Alto Software, the principal creator of Business Plan Pro, and the author of a blog called Planning, Startups, Stories. He was recently named the US Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE) Corporate Entrepreneur of the Year for 2007.

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.

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An excerpt from “The Entrepreneur Diet”

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.

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An excerpt from Barry Moltz’s “Bounce!”

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.

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The author of “Bounce!” shares his unconventional wisdom on success and failure

Barry Moltz has founded and run small businesses with a great deal of success and failure for more than 15 years. After successfully selling his last operating business, Barry has branched out into a number of entrepreneurship-related activities. He founded an angel investor group, an angel fund, and is a former advisory member of the board of the Angel Capital Education Foundation.

His second book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success, was published in January 2008. I caught up with him to discuss some of the unconventional wisdom he shares in it about defining success and dealing with failure.

Scott Allen: There have been dozens of books written about comebacks and turnarounds. What makes Bounce! different?

Barry Moltz: This is not a book about coming back from failure.

In fact, I say this in bold on the jacket cover. You need to Bounce not Bounce Back! This is about letting go so you can see failure and success as just part of a business cycle I don’t believe that we bounce back. That is too simple. The business world is not structured in a linear way. Bounce! is about letting go of what you were taught was the secret path to succeed in business. Letting go of the idea that something to learn comes from failure or that you can always duplicate your success. Let go of the shame of losing and the enlarged ego that comes with a big win. If we let go of whatever the last result was, we can actually Bounce! We can learn what — if anything — from the last success or failure and get ready by bouncing to the next decision that we have to make. Any success or failure is just a part of the entire business lifecycle. Individually, a particular result or outcome actually means nothing. No event will guarantee the same result in the future.

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How Do You Keep Up With All That Reading?

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.

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Part 1: Long-Distance Relationships for the Lifecycle of Your Book

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?

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Get More Publicity Through Better Relationships

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.

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Plan a graceful (and profitable) exit from the start

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.

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Convenient web links for U.S. corporate filings

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

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