4 Tests to Fail-Proof Your Business Idea

By Stephen Key

You've put in the time, and you're ready to launch your new business idea. It's an exciting time. But how ready are you?

I don't need to tell you how much risk is involved in venturing. Financially, it is very important that you test your idea before you commit to a big launch.

The knowledge you gain from testing your idea will help determine if it is ready for the market and improve your business plan. You'll set yourself up for success by preemptively identifying problems and minimizing risk. And hopefully, your nerves will be eased.

Use one or more of the following strategies to test your idea before it launches.

1. Test your idea with a venture capitalist.
Venture capitalists are brutally honest. That's why it's a great idea to pitch your business idea to them. They're not going to lie or sugarcoat their feelings. Show them your business plan or product. What do they think of your plan? 

In my experience, venture capitalists are very talented at quickly identifying holes and problems. If you've forgotten to address something important, they'll tell you. If they're interested, that's a great sign. What you learn will help you be a better entrepreneur. 

2. Show your prototype to product retailers.
Product retailers are at the front line of retail: they have a unique understanding of what consumers like and dislike because they literally watch what sells and what doesn't. They know what consumers want. They know what consumers are asking about. 

Your idea needs to be easily understood when you show it to retailers. If you have a prototype made, it doesn't need to be polished. Rough drawings might even work. On a slow shopping day, visit a local retailer where you think your product might be sold. What do they think? Is it a good idea? Is it a bad idea? These people are in the trenches every day. They'll tell you if your product stinks. You can go one step further and try to get a retailer to place an order. Would they be willing to actually carry your product?

3. Try to license your idea.
Even if you've decided you want to venture your idea, not license it, you can gain valuable information from pitching potential licensees. If they're intrigued, that's a great sign you have a solid idea. Licensees know a good idea when they see one. You might find a partner who can help with sales, distribution, or manufacturing.

4. Get consumer feedback. 
Reach out to your target demographic. Not just your friends and family, but people who would actually want to buy or use your product or service. They're much less likely to be biased.

When I had the idea to change the shape of the guitar pick, I asked the staff at a few local music stores to distribute a survey asking customers which designs they liked best. What I learned surprised me. More often than not, Moms were buying guitar picks for their kids, and they didn't like images of women in bikinis on them. We quickly started designing more kid-friendly images. You don't necessarily need to follow the feedback you get, but you should definitely get some. It's impossible not to learn something productive.

Remember: no one opinion matters more than another. Products that companies weren't interested in licensing have gone on to be very successful. Sometimes product retailers are wrong. Doing these tests will give you insight, rather than a concrete answer as to whether you should move ahead.

The more tests you put your idea through, the more confident you can feel about its chances of success.

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Don't Let a Great Idea Waste Your Time & Money

By Bruce Kasanoff

When you discover a "great idea," it is utterly dependent on you for survival. You must be able to nurture and support your idea until it has enough momentum to thrive without you. This means that you must be perfectly qualified to develop your idea, or else it will die.

Long ago, I used to raise funds for WGBH/Boston, one of the most prolific producers of television programs for public broadcasting. Countless professionals came to the station with ideas for new shows. I learned that success wasn't just about the idea; the right idea, talent, director, producer and funder all had to come together at exactly the right moment.

Get any one of these wrong, and you have a flop instead of a hit.

If you are an entrepreneur - or intrapreneur - your first question needs to be: am I the right person to bring this idea to life?

• If you are a marketing professional who doesn't understand code, you are not the one to "leapfrog Google" and launch the next generation search engine.
• If you always take a three-week vacation in August, and two weeks at Christmas, you are not the one to "take down Oracle." (They are fierce warriors compared to you.)
• If you are a genius at coding, but you can't work with an interface designer or pick a font to save your life, you are unlikely to create a top ten consumer app.

Many entrepreneurs test their idea, but they skip the step of testing whether they personally have the right skills and demeanor to build upon the idea.

I say this from experience...

At one point in my career, I started a new product line for a private company. In three years, I generated $20 million in sales, at which point I quit my job to start my own company. Four years elapsed, during which I lost and earned back my original $80,000 stake several times. In retrospect, the outcome was predictable. I'll spare you my logic in starting the company, but the cold hard facts are that I spotted a true opportunity; unfortunately, I was not the guy to capture the opportunity.

It is hard for you to test your ability to execute a great idea. Most people aren't that good at self-insight. You might believe you are relentless, but others may think that you only work hard for short periods of time. You might believe you are highly perceptive, but others may think you barely even listen to them.

To avoid such blind spots, involve others. Don't just ask them what they think of your idea. Ask whether they would hire you to manage a business that was seeking to capitalize on this idea. Ask who else they might hire, and why other people might be better suited than you to succeed in this situation. Ask the most perceptive and honest professionals you can find.

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4 Sales Lessons Every Business Owner Should Learn

By Michael Alter

Being able to sell is one of the most important skills you can have. It’s amazing how many business owners don’t realize how crucial this is, because they don’t see themselves as being in sales. But if you’re going to be the leader of a business, the skill is essential.

When you think about it, everything you do in business involves sales. Either you’re selling directly to a customer, or you’re selling people on coming to work for you, or you’re convincing a supplier to carry your product. The sales skill is absolutely critical and you ought to have a clear understanding of the process. 

The good news is you can learn to sell. You’re not going to get everything you need to know about sales from reading this column, but there are four things you should investigate and understand:

Stay out of "MaybeLand"

A mentor once taught me that MaybeLand is the worst place to be in the sales process. "Yes" is the best answer and "No" is the second-best answer. You need to know you’re spending your time the right way, so you want to qualify customers and know when a prospect is real. You want to see buying signs that show they’re interested. Are they calling you back? Asking lots of questions? If they’re just asking you to send a brochure and saying they'll call you back, it might be time to move on.

Ask for the Sale

Just like my kids won’t make the play or the baseball team if they don’t try out, you very rarely will make a sale if you don’t ask for it. The more you do it, the more comfortable you will become and the more you will develop your own style and approach that works for you.

Understand the Timeline

If you’re selling basic office supplies, you may be able to walk in, give a short presentation and ask for the sale. But if it’s something requires more commitment, like accounting or consulting services, the client might want to get to know you better. That means your goal in the first meeting may be to get to the next meeting, not necessarily make the sale. You have to learn not to jump the gun. Instead, always end the conversation with an ask to go to the next step.

Listen to the Customer

The best sales reps have big ears and a little mouth. The more you’re able to listen and ask questions, the better you’re going to be at meeting the needs of the client or customer.

These lessons are true regardless of the organization. Whether you’re directly selling a commodity or doing fundraising for a nonprofit, the same principles apply. No matter what your business is, you need to know how to sell.

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Want to Grow Your Business? Get Out of the Way

By Ross Kimbarovsky

Some entrepreneurs see 20-hour days as the entry-fee to success. Others believe they will succeed by working smart, not hard. In either case, as a business grows, the founder's job becomes too large for one person. You quickly find yourself working in the business, and not on the business.

Successful entrepreneurs know how to let go by handing over authority and responsibility to someone else.

At the start of this year, I handed over leadership of crowdSPRING's engineering team to one of our senior engineers, Adriano Marques. I led the engineering team since founding the company in 2007. I enjoyed working with the engineers -- they've been incredible teachers and teammates. But as I reflected last fall on my responsibilities, I realized I was too deeply involved in day-to-day technical issues. As a result, I could not devote enough attention to other important areas and that became a problem. To help my company grow, I had to let go.

Letting go is one of the most difficult challenges for an entrepreneur. Some fear losing control. Others believe they are the only ones who can do the job right. Many think there's not enough time to properly train another person.

Those are legitimate and normal fears. But they are unfounded if you properly prepare and delegate wisely.

Some entrepreneurs try to compensate for their fear of letting go by retaining authority, but giving up responsibility. That rarely works. I knew that to succeed, I would need to turn over both the authority and responsibility for the engineering team.

Almost a year earlier, I started giving Adriano incremental responsibility and authority over discrete areas involved in managing the team. For example, last year, he took over the analysis of our weekly engineering sprints and communicated with the team about their individual and collective performance in those sprints.

By the time I decided to turn over full leadership of our engineering team, I was confident he was ready, knew what needed to be done, when and to what standard. We worked closely for several years, but more importantly, spent many months before he took over the team, discussing our combined vision, assessing problem areas and debating the technical direction for our infrastructure and product.

One of the most important things to discuss with someone taking over a managerial responsibility is whether they have the time, resources and support needed to get the job done right.
Be sure to discuss your expectations and goals and to instill a sense of pride and ownership over the responsibilities being passed on.

Discuss ways to collaboratively measure and reward success, both on the individual and team levels.

In crowdSPRING's case, Adriano knew I would not just abandon him once I turned over control of the engineering team. As with everyone in the company, I provide regular feedback that’s positive when they do something well and constructive when they don't.

Allow for room for mistakes. I made many mistakes while learning to manage the engineering team and I made it clear that while I expected my successor to always do his best, I did not expect him to be perfect. I also made it clear that I would not jump in and assume control if he made a mistake. It was his team – he had full authority and responsibility over the team.

Once Adriano was comfortable, my only job was to get out of his way.

If you want to grow your business, you must learn how to let go.

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The Business Plan that Always Works

By Michael E. Gerber

Why is it that business plans never come to life? Why do almost all of them, once written, sit on a shelf and gather dust, while the futures they describe never see the light of day, and the businesses they lay out wobble their way into uncertain futures?

A traditional business plan is head-centered; it's an exercise in what business owners think they should do. Writing a traditional business plan is usually precipitated by one of two thoughts:

1. We'd better write a business plan because "that's what most successful businesses do"

2. We need to write a business plan if we want to go out and borrow money.

Traditional business plans are quite intentional. They are thoughtful, analytical, complete, decisive--all of the hallmarks of a supposedly "smart" business.

Traditional, head-centered, static business plans don't work. A plan that starts in the head, with logic and reason and thoughts, lacks passion and excitement and purpose. And a plan that starts with the assumption that it's been able to capture and account for all the relevant changes that will happen in the future is obsolete before the ink is dry on the page.

The business plan that will always work starts from a different place with a different set of operating assumptions. It starts from a heart-centered approach, which means it starts with experiencing the feelings you have. Not only does this plan tolerate change, but it relies on your building in change as a key factor that will keep you on the best course.

When I work with Entrepreneurs, I lead them through something I call 'The Dreaming Room.' This is the step before the business plan. In the Dreaming Room, we set out to imagine our businesses-but not from a logistics standpoint. Rather, we dream about the vision for the business. Why do you want to build it? Who will benefit? What will it mean to the world? Only after you understand those things, can you write any kind of tactical plan that will truly get you there.

The real difference between the business plan that always works and the traditional business plan is in how you think and feel about the plan--it's your attitude and your relationship to the plan that will make all the difference.

Read more HERE

4 Ways Not to Sink Your Start-up With a Bad Hire

By Peter Cohan

If you have a great idea for a start-up, odds are good you can’t do all the work yourself. And that means that you’ll have to hire people to help you. Make the right decisions about whom to hire, and you boost your odds of success. But just one bad hire could bring your start-up to the brink of failure.

That’s what was on the mind of Christine Marcus, a 2012 graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, who co-founded Phoodeez, a Cambridge-based start-up that she claimed in a recent interview is "reinventing catering to make event eating easy on diners and the environment.

When an event planner places an order, Phoodeez contacts a local restaurant to make sure it can fill the order and deliver it at the requested time. Neither the event planner nor the restaurant uses a phone during the entire transaction.

Marcus' co-founder, Sal Lupoli, is an MIT classmate from a Boston restaurant family -- it operates Salvatore's Italian restaurants that cater MIT events -- serving "awesome pizzas." In 2011, Marcus and Lupoli developed Phoodeez working with MIT event planners and Salvatore's to assemble "a basic web site that offered simple packages and the right amounts. It worked and took on a life of its own -- word spread across MIT," said Marcus.

Based on her experience, Marcus is building her start-up’s team based on “culture, values, and the kind of company we are building. And we look for team members who fit those elements in addition to the technical skills.”

Here are Marcus’s four principles for building a winning start-up team:

1.  Identify your start-up’s mission and core values.  

The first step to building a team is to know why your start-up exists and what it stands for.

Marcus wants Phoodeez to make a difference for employees and local businesses. Here’s what she means by that: “Our Company is about building a successful venture that disrupts a very lucrative industry to level the playing field and give the best local businesses a larger piece of that pie. For us it is about essentially changing people's lives by driving more business to local restaurants than they ever thought possible. This creates jobs that support families, and the local communities in a way that improves numerous lives.”

To build your start-up’s team, you have to start with a statement with that kind of clarity so you can make sure the people you hire will fit with its mission and core values.

2.  Know how your start-up outpaces the herd.  

Start-ups have a nasty habit of failing most of the time. If you want yours to have a chance of beating the odds, you have to know what will make it better than everyone else in your market.

Marcus decided that Phoodeez would compete by delivering better customer service. Even though the start-up is in e-commerce, she hopes “customers come to us is because of our customer service that takes the stress of event planning and catering off their plate. Many people start such a company with the first hire being a technical cofounder/web developer. Our first hire was a customer service concierge.”

Before you decide whom to hire, make sure you know what skills your start-up needs to win and how well the people you hire can perform those critical activities.

3.  Only hire people who are willing to work long hours.  

One of the most remarkable skills of a successful entrepreneur is the ability to attract and motivate people who will work killer hours and do lots of different jobs for very little pay. And since start-ups don’t have the cash flow to pay loafers, one bad hire can sink the entire team.

Marcus is very careful to make sure everyone she hires has the right work ethic. To do that, says Marcus, “We look for team members who are willing and have demonstrated a track record that they are willing to do what it takes in terms of supporting the rest of the team.”

Given the cost of a bad start-up hire, I urge you to follow her example on this.

4.  Fill your team with people who believe in your start-up’s mission.  

The reason it’s possible for winning start-up CEOs to hire people willing to work so hard is that its mission and values are a form of valuable emotional currency. They’re also a great way to screen people who will fit well with the rest of your team.

As Marcus noted, “We look for team members that understand at our core what we are trying to accomplish, and that are not merely looking for a quick return from a future exit or IPO.  While of course those monetary returns are desirable, team members must be able to see beyond that and must be motivated by the more fundamental values of making a difference first.”

This is a key principle of Hungry Start-up Strategy, and I urge you to apply it. 

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4 Small-Business Lessons Learned in Reality TV Limelight

By Caroline McMillan

The rise of reality TV has created a new breed of celebrities known for their inane routines (think "Jersey Shore's" gym-tan-laundry combo) and absurd predicaments ("Big Brother," anyone?).

But some shows also have affected hundreds of small businesses. And as their success stories demonstrate, even the briefest of stints on the national stage can have considerable impact and teach lessons to seasoned and newbie entrepreneurs alike.

The Charlotte Observer spoke with small-business owners who have been featured on reality TV shows in the past couple of years to hear what they've learned from their Hollywood experiences.

Here are their insights, each valuable whether you have a national bandwagon or an intimate, loyal following:

1. Every business needs a cohesive vision. 

Before appearing on the Food Network's "Restaurant Impossible," Dana and David Cohen's Sweet Tea's Restaurant in Pineville was months from closing its doors for good.

The restaurant, once a catering service only, had moved to a shopping center. But no matter how much advertising the owners did, they struggled with foot traffic. Applying for the show "was kind of a last-ditch effort to get some big advertising," Dana Cohen said.

After an in-person interview, they were picked from the hundreds of applicants. Filming started in early December 2012, and their episode aired in March 2013.

Here's how the show works: Celebrity chef Robert Irvine spends two weeks revamping a struggling restaurant by changing the menu, retraining the staff and using $10,000 to renovate the interior.

Sweet Tea's, Irvine said, didn't have a cohesive vision for the restaurant. The decor was more eclectic than cozy. And the self-proclaimed "Southern comfort food" spot had incongruent entrees such as chicken marsala and subs.

Irvine and his team retrained the staff and taught the chefs to cook everything with a Southern flair, adding menu items such as fried green tomatoes, black-eyed peas and hushpuppies.

Sales are up 300 percent, and there regularly is a waiting list for tables. Plus, they're doing catering for Hollywood film crews in the area, Cohen said.

Before "Restaurant Impossible," Sweet Tea's struggled with identity, Cohen said. Now, she said, "consistency is so important to us."

2. Creativity begets value - and validation. 

As Google and Facebook have demonstrated by spending millions on perks to generate spontaneous inspiration among employees, creativity is critical to success in the increasingly crowded 21st-century global economy. But that's important whether your business is a Silicon Valley tech giant or a family-run business in small-town USA.

Sisters-in-law Madeline Baucom and Enza Friedman, who opened Maddy's Fatty's Bakery in Cornelius, will attest to that.

The duo, who started their business out of Baucom's kitchen with no formal culinary training three years ago, applied to be on "Cupcake Wars" before they'd even opened their brick-and-mortar spot on U.S. 21.

Their "Mission: Impossible"-themed video, complete with one-piece leather cat suits and Tom Cruise-esque moves, caught the attention of the producers. And just five weeks after they opened their new facility (a tough one to explain to new customers, thanks to the confidentiality agreement) they were flown to Los Angeles for filming.

Unbeknownst to the contestants, their episode had a soap-opera theme. That posed a problem for Baucom and Friedman: Neither had ever seen a show.

The pair lost in the finals, but not before getting rave reviews from the judges for their creative confections, including "Cheddar Habanero Crisp" (the habanero pepper was an ingredient with a "twist," just like every soap opera has).

The judges "raved," Baucom said. "We thought we were good, but when we saw they thought we were good, it showed we're doing it right. We should trust our instincts."

3. A strong social media presence pays off. 

Social media helped Heather McDonnell get her Fort Mill, S.C., bakery, Cupcrazed, on "Cupcake Wars" just three months after it opened, and it's been key to her strategy since.

A former school teacher-turned stay-at-home mom, she'd already built a Twitter following based on her blog, Stepford Life, a satirical take on her neighborhood, and had plans to open a bakery.

So when McDonnell was at home, watching the first season of the show - a competition that starts with four contestants who are eliminated, one by one, in three rounds, all competing for a $10,000 prize - she tweeted at @FNCupCakeWars to ask about casting. They told her to email them.

Within 10 minutes, a producer called to say they wanted to wait until her store was open but that she'd made "the short list," McDonnell said. And three seasons later, just months after McDonnell opened her shop and submitted a formal audition video, she made the cut.

After causing an on-air fire - customers still bring her fire extinguishers - and baking much-lauded sweet tea cupcakes with lemon sweet tea frosting, McDonnell and Cupcrazed won. She recently was recognized as Martha Stewart's "Entrepreneur of the Week."

Now, the bakery has more than 13,000 followers on Facebook - 9,000 more than before the show - and every day McDonnell uploads photos of their coolest offerings, including the occasional TV-show-themed one.

And if foot traffic is slow one day, a few new pictures posted to Facebook and Instagram can spike sales, she said - sometimes within the hour.

"You better be good at social media if you're going to do something in retail," McDonnell said.

Read more HERE

7 Steps to Becoming an Idea Entrepreneur

By Jana Kasperkevic

Every so often a disruptive idea will come along that shifts the mindset of thousands of people. Where do these ideas come from? How do their creators breathe life into them, gaining followings that lead to culture-wide behavior change? 

John Butman, author of Breaking Out: How to Build Influence in a World of Competing Ideas and founder of the content development firm Idea Platforms, Inc., explores these question in a recent post for Harvard Business Review. 

Here are seven steps he says leaders should take in order to become "idea entrepreneurs."

Accumulate evidence. For an idea to gain influence, leaders need to become "resident experts," says Butman. That can be done by collecting supporting materials such as data, stories, and analysis, as well as by talking with others, "gathering opinions, refining the ideas and practices, making connections and gaining supporters." 

Develop practices. In order for your idea to take root, followers need to be provided with "specific, practical ways to put it into everyday use." 

Create a sacred expression. Whether it's a video, a different kind of a visual, or a written memo, every idea needs a compelling articulation, says Butman. 

Encourage "respiration" around your idea. "The only way to get an idea breathing on its own is to show up, in person," says Butman. Leaders should put themselves out there and engage others in order to bring their idea to life. 

Include your personal narrative. "Idea entrepreneurs always present their idea in context of their own life story," says Butman, adding that personal story is what gives the idea a personality. 

Align with a metric. "Influence cannot be definitely measured in financial terms, but people need some way to calculate its value," says Butman. For example, "people associate Malcolm Gladwell's idea of mastery through the '10,000 hours of practice' metric."

Expect backlash. Disruptive new ideas should elicit an intense response. "Intense response--positive and negative--is a sign that people are taking the idea seriously. No challenges, no point," says Butman.

Read more HERE

The Entrepreneur, the CEO, and the Key to Growth

BY KARL STARK AND BILL STEWART

Conventional wisdom says the best way to build a successful company is to find an entrepreneurial CEO and management team to launch, build, and grow a business.  But the skills required for those three phases often don't lie within the same person. The entrepreneur who likes to build is not necessarily the CEO who has the capability to grow.

We recently spoke with a serial entrepreneur within a billion-dollar company.  Every year or two, this corporate business builder incubates a business, starting with a strategic partnership.  Once the business is off the ground, he hires his own boss to grow the business.  Then, as the he transitions the business to the CEO, he steps away and focuses on the next business opportunity. To us, that's a great model.

One of our partners at Avondale, Dione Spiteri, has built a number of companies over the past 20 years, including a three-time Inc. 500/5000 recipient, US Appraisal Group.  As Dione took the business from concept to funding to growth, she always strived to create a replicable growing machine that she could pass onto someone else.  Once this foundation was in place, she would search for the perfect CEO to step into her role and grow the business.  Now Dione helps our clients build and transition their businesses to growth oriented leadership.

We once met a CEO of a meat processing company who referred to himself as a "Meat Scientist."  We met a CEO of a manufacturing company who was an engineer at heart.  We met a CEO of a financial services start-up who longed to be a "sales guy," and became just that after selling his company to a larger entity.   In each of these cases, the person who built the company was a subject expert rather than a growth-company CEO.  Their core strength was developing a concept that worked for a specific customer.  Once they achieved that goal, they longed to go back to the concept phase and found someone else to grow the company.

Many large, established companies are poor at entrepreneurship.  They are filled with talented people who can manage and grow, but they typically lack the talent for creation and building. Should they bring in more creative incubators to build businesses?

Companies that grow by leveraging the collective strengths of a business builder (entrepreneur) and the business grower (CEO) are often better built to survive through multiple stages of growth.  Is that the best route for your company?

Read more HERE

Five apps every small business owner needs to know about

BY PHYLLIS FURMAN

Owning a small business has never been easy and a sluggish economy has made the road especially tough.

But in some ways, these are the best of times for entrepreneurs thanks to a host of apps and tools that help you do everything from improve productivity to amp up your social media marketing, for a nominal cost, if at all.

Figuring out which are the best isn't easy. There are tons of apps out there vying for the attention of small business owners and many aren't worth your time.

Here are five cool ones you should know about:

HootSuite

Small business owners have too much to do to manage their daily social media interactions.Enter HootSuite, a one-stop tool that does it all.

"This social media management system allows small business owners to centralize all of their social media networks in an easy-to-use web-based dashboard," said Scott Gerber, the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council and author of "Never Get a 'Real' Job."

Use HootSuite to schedule your messages and tweets, track brand mentions and analyze social media traffic.

The social media manager already has 7 million users in over 175 countries. Last week it raised a whopping $165 million to further expand its business.

"It's the easy way to keep in touch with all of your social media followers," Gerber said.

Speek

Sick of the old school method of doing conference calls? Speek does away with those annoying dial-in and PIN numbers.

Instead, you get a simple personal link, i.e. speek.com/phyllis. Share that link with others via email or any calender tool you like.

Everyone clicks the link with the device of their choice and, voila, they're on the call.The service is free for small groups. Or you can opt for a $10 a month package that provides more bells and whistles.

"It will make conference calls less of a pain, in the click of a button," Gerber said.

TripIt

This trip management tool helps business owners turn travel booking chaos into order.

"TripIt organizes all of your travel plans in one place," said company spokeswoman Amy Jackson. "You forward your confirmation emails from any airline hotel, car rental etc. to plans@tripit.com and you will get an instant mobile itinerary."

A version for businesses called TripIt for Teams, lets one person organize trips for an entire group of employees and keep everyone informed.

Use it to keep track of who in your company is traveling, where they're staying, whether reservations are complete, and how much the trip will cost.

"I travel quite a bit," said Ramon Ray, the editor of SmallBusinessTechnology.com. "It's an awesome tool."

Asana

The days of endless email threads and multiple meetings are history thanks to shared task management tool Asana.

Started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his business partner, Justin Rosenstein, Asana lets users set a goal and then seamlessly track the progress of their project.

"It's a single destination for all the work that matters to you and to your colleagues," said Asana spokeswoman Emilie Cole. "It's where you go every day to see what you should be working on."

This digital office organizer is free for up to 15 team members. "My business runs on it," Ray said.

Square

No cash register, no problem.

Square turns you into an instant shopkeeper with a system that gives even a tiny business a way to accept payments using a smartphone or tablet.

"It's disrupting the credit card processing space," Gerber said.

Sign up and Square will mail you a free, one inch-tall, card reader that you'll use for card swipes. Download the free Square Register app and link your bank accounts.Get going and you'll be accepting payments on your smartphone or iPad in minutes. The cost is a minimal 2.75% per swipe or a flat monthly fee of $275.

Read more HERE

5 Tips for Accelerating Growth the Smart Way

By Em Meir

Ideas are fast to generate ... and slow to turn into reality. That's why CEOs worry about competitors beating them to market. But it's essential not to let this concern affect the final product, or the resulting stress can lead to added deadlines, micromanaging supervisors, and an authoritarian environment.

As a leader, how can you handle the desire to get to the end product quickly without overloading your team? HBR's Scott Anthony suggested five ways that will help small businesses accelerate the process of scaling up.

1. Stay Small and Focused

A smaller team leads to flexibility and agility; a large team can amble through discussions or take hours just to find a time to meet. Amazon's Jeff Bezos uses the "two pizza rule." If a team can't be fed with two pizzas, it's too large. And as Jason Fried from 37Signals says, "There's nothing wrong with staying small. You can do big things with a small team."

2. Boots on the Ground

Rather than hiring a consultant or marketer, Steve Blank's The Startup Owner's Manualadvises, "Get out of the building" and explore the neighborhood. Act like a cub reporter, walking out to interview and meet with individuals the company will soon work with: customers, suppliers, shopkeepers. Doing a soft opening or test run can help iron out kinks as well.

3. Use the Right Data

For a company that's still in the process of learning about itself, it's not always the best idea to use definitive, quantitative checkpoints at the outset. Instead, managers should focus on employees' learning and comprehension of the company concept. Think of alternative metrics that will be more useful at your current stage: IBM measures the number of customer interactions or speed of prototype creation, rather than sales spreadsheets.

4. Keep Funding Flowing

Investors don't hand out money like parental allowances: it's not a scheduled reward that comes every three months. Businesses have to prove they can handle the finances appropriately and responsibly. Once a problem or step is completed, investors will provide money for the next step. So be methodical; if a CEO is careless, the investors will pack up and move on.

5. Consult With Experience

While management may plan out growth initiatives, they can be too far from the ground level to understand the logistics and details. As a solution, it's key to consult with people who have already begun start-ups, either from within the company or as outside consultants. Without experience to draw on, your company might start out sluggishly. Mark Pincus has said, "Get five or six of your smartest friends in a room and ask them to rate your idea." They may be able to find solutions with fresh eyes.

Anthony concludes with a single ratio question: how much time is spent preparing for organizational meetings versus meeting with customers or develop products or connections? If it's higher than 1:3, you're slowing yourself down and things need to change.

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Barbara Corcoran's Top 12 Tips For Small-Business Owners

Barbara Corcoran’s credentials include straight D’s in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country when she took a $1,000 loan to start The Corcoran Group. She parlayed the loan into a $5 billion real estate business and sold it in 2001 for $66 million.

Here she shares 12 of  her best tips for small-business owners:Barbara is the real estate contributor for NBC’s TODAY Show where she comments weekly on trends in the real estate market. She’s also a Star on ABC’s reality hit Shark Tank. In the first and second season, Barbara bought 13 young businesses that she’s shepherding to success. Barbara is the author of If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails, an entertaining business book that has become a national best-seller, as well as Nextville, Amazing Places to Live Your Life. Her latest book, Shark Taleshit the No. 1 business book on Amazon.

1. Don’t Be Afraid to Make Big Mistakes.  All the best things that happened in my business happened on the heels of failure.  Don’t be afraid to fail; it’s proof that you are meant to be a successful entrepreneur.  The only difference between people who are hugely successful and those who aren’t is the time it takes them to get back up after getting knocked down.

2. Little Companies Always Move Faster.  The big guy may have the corner on money but the little guy usually has the corner on creativity.   Take some time to sit down and figure out how your big rival is promoting their brand and plan something smarter and more creative for yours.

3. Take Full Advantage of all the Free Social Media Out There.  Before you go out and blow money on advertising, capitalize on the free online access that leads you direct to your customers.   Blog, Tweet with humor, and make as many friends as you can on Facebook.  You can quickly build a huge following of customers willing to try your new product without spending a dollar on advertising.

4. Don’t Rush Out to Get a Patent.  Most entrepreneurs get a patent on their new product as soon as they open their business.  All that does is help build your patent attorney’s business rather than yours.  It’s a much better bet to put all your energy into getting your product to market before the next guy does.  Patents only protect you IF you have the money to defend them, and most young businesses don’t.

5. Make a Marketplace Report.  The best way to get some attention for your brand is to publish an industry report chock full of statistics.  You’ll be surprised how much you know about your industry once you start putting some numbers down on paper.  Reporters need stories, and if you put your report in a short, easy-to-read format and name it after your company, you’ll soon become the expert reporters call when they need a quote.  The easiest way to steal market share from your competitors is to steal the limelight, and nothing does that faster than being quoted in the press.

6. Choose Only Really Good People.  Make sure you pick good people to build your business with, as they’ll determine 80% of your success.  The best people are honest and have lots of enthusiasm.  Don’t worry too much about their level of experience when you’re interviewing, as the right attitude always delivers much more than just experience.

7. There Are Only Two Kinds Of People In Business — Know the Difference.  There are really only two kinds of people: expanders and containers.  Learning to separate them quickly into the right category will save you a lot of time.  ‘Expanders’ like to push the envelope, take risks, make new friends, and test how far they can go!  They also like to spend your money.  ‘Containers’ like to keep things in order and stay on top of the details.  They keep you from losing your money.  If you match the right person to the right position that takes advantage of their natural talents you’ll build a powerful team of workers with all the strength needed to build a huge business.

8. Focus On What’s Already Working For You and Do More Of It. When you look for ways to expand your business, the real pot of gold is usually the same stuff that’s already proven successful.  So before you move on to the next exciting project or a new strategy, s-l-o-w down.  Do a lot more of what’s already working and then do the new stuff.

9. Stop Putting It Off!  Procrastination is the enemy of success.  The time you waste on stalling breeds guilt, and guilt deflates energy and sometimes even leads to depression.  When you feel stuck and can’t seem to move ahead, always remember that you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going!

10. Make a System for Everything You Need To Do More Than Once.  My mother ran her house like a boot camp.  She had to – she had 10 children!  She set up two sock drawers in the kitchen – the boy’s drawer with all blue socks all in one size and the girl’s drawer with all white socks, all the same size.  I learned from my mom that to run a growing business you need to set up a system for everything.  If you take the time to set it up once, you’ll build your business faster and avoid wasting time and handling customer complaints.

11. Make Sure You Know What Not To Do.  Everyone should have their own ‘Not To Do’ list.  I sit down regularly and make a list of all the things I have spent time on that have amounted to nothing.  It’s smart to post your ‘Not To Do’ list where you’re bound see it so you’re reminded to do more productive things that give a better return on the time you spend at work.

12. Shoot the Dogs Early!  If you spot a complainer and if you have the authority to do it, fire them right away.  Complainers are like thieves, robbing you and your company of its good energy.  Your whole team’s outlook will shine brighter once you’re rid of them.

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Prune Your Business Before It's Too Late

By Cree Price

There is a common misconception in business (and life) that more is better, when in fact the inverse is usually true. As an avid gardener I’ve learnt that the secret to encouraging plant growth is to prune rigorously. As a result, valuable resources are naturally reallocated to the areas of the plant you want to develop and thrive.

In business it is exactly the same - the more you can ruthlessly cut the clutter from your business, the faster your business will grow. Yet it is a lesson that both first time entrepreneurs and seasoned executives often fail to heed. Early on in our company’s journey we wanted to appear bigger than we were to compete with our multi-national competitors. So off we set and expanded to another two city locations in quick succession. Whilst it looked great on our business cards and letterhead, there was no sound business logic for making this naïve choice. We kept making these types of mistakes until we realized that in business less is often more.

Here are seven areas in your business or organisation where you should consider some ruthless pruning, allowing you to thrive and flourish where it really counts:

1. Information: In this digital age we are bombarded with information overload or what I’ve heard called ‘infobesity’. This white noise of information comes via media, mail, email, social media and every conversation you have. Like termites it can white ant your brain – until you become stark raving mad. The solution is to stay in control and discard as you go only allowing in what is truly useful. Don’t attend that next incredibly informative conference until you have implemented the ideas from the last one.

2. Meetings: As John Lennon (nearly) said ‘Meetings are what happens to you when you should be busy making other plans’. Meetings’ are an easy target for trimming, though it’s amazing how like some invasive vine they fill our diaries as soon as we turn our backs. My advice is: don’t agree to coffee meetings without a purpose. Don’t invite a cast of thousands to a meeting, rather go for lean and mean. And opt for an aggressive 15 or 30-minute time slot with a clear agenda - preferably phrased as a simple, affirmative question. For instance, “In this meeting we need to decide, should we . . . ?“ My pet habit has been to hold walking meetings to ensure I not only use both sides of my brain, but if the meeting turns out to be a waste of time, at least I got some exercise.

3. Marketing Material: In our eagerness to promote our products and services we tend to overwhelm customers with too much about us. We bombard them with thirty-slide presentations with detailed graphs and statistics; we send them fifteen-page proposals or we cram our advertising with small text and images to fit everything in. Yet like us, our customers are busy. Use just a few slides in your presentations, go for more white space in your advertising and remember that a one page proposal is more likely to be read that a fifteen page dissertation.

4. Products: To win at the game of business the idea is not to have the widest range of products or services. Compare the exclusive menu of a five-star restaurant with the fifty-meal option local diner. They often have just four choices each for entrée, main and desert. Your business is the same. Focus on just a few awesome products or services that can be clearly articulated to a niche target market - don't be afraid to alienate a customer segment.

5. Relationships: In this age of social media where at the click of a button we seem to accumulate friends and connections at an alarming rate, it’s time to downsize. To be successful at business you need to develop deep relationships with the clients, suppliers and partners who will help your business grow. Start getting real with your prospect and client databases. ‘Likes’ aren’t clients. And be brave by removing excess suppliers and clients who are weighing you down. One of my proudest moments in business was having the courage to sack our second biggest client, an international credit card company, because they weren’t aligned with our values and took up too much of our time and attention. The company-wide sigh of relief enabled us replace the business within a matter of months.

6. Processes: In the name of efficiency, quality control and systemization it is all too easy to introduce unwieldy red tape into our processes. Yet it is these laborious hoops we insist our staff, clients and suppliers jump through which make them want to run for the hills. Look for areas in your business where you can trim back unnecessary processes.

7. Choices: Decision-making often consumes a large percentage of our waking hours. If you are prone to make decisions as a ‘Maximiser’ (someone who searches for every possible option) then not only does it take up more of your time than it needs to, but Herbert Simon in the 1950’s proved that it leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Instead be a ‘Sacrificer’, someone who sets clear criteria for what constitutes a good option and as soon as they find an alternative satisfying this, they decide.

If you become ruthless at pruning back your business in these seven areas you will quickly accelerate its growth until you stand head and shoulders above your competitors.

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