Adaptable, Connectable, and Sociable Brands
Published December 19, 2011 | 
There are some important questions every entrepreneur and small business owner should always keep in mind. Is your brand adaptable, connectable, and sociable? Can it be easily upgraded? Does it act like a smart system designed for integration and bring together over-lapping disciplinary approaches and solutions? And does it keep from getting bogged down in the formulaic world of endless analytics.
It seems counter-intuitive but the Connected Age is not the Age of Data. Smart brands remain ephemeral and short-lived for they recognize that brands, despite the inundation of data at their disposal, are more essence than form, more confusion than structure, and more instinctive perception than knowledge. Smart brands are viral because they are driven by passionate people, and their passion proliferates through the connections they are able to activate.
They make lasting impressions with the ability to connect people with people, brands with people, brands with brands, people with stories, stories with brands, stories with stories, and all the while frequently developing and evolving their repertoire of interactions based on innate intuition and the faster-than-real-time responses they receive from the members of networks they join, activate, or own.
Hyper-connected, hyper-social, and universal, they can foresee and predict desires, sense the slightest mood shifts, anticipate and forestall knowledge, and rapidly direct attention to highly-significant events and important conversations, since at any time something happens or is even being talked about and discussed, they are already there.
Smart brands have developed to the point they are good at dealing with the unpredictability. Businesses constantly wrestle with a certain level of chaos and disarray that is fundamentally intrinsic to humankind, since when people have more freedom and greater interaction, unpredictability naturally occurs. 
And the decentralized spider-like networks that shape the substructure of the Connection Age leads to evolving properties that are naturally unpredictable. Randomness and unpredictability is the new brand consistency or “consistently inconsistent.” This isn’t necessarily viewed as a bad thing since good brands tend to remain unpredictable, and thereby help their organizations welcome the unknown.
Management performance isn’t measured by how much uncertainty it can eliminate, but how much uncertainty it can tolerate and how quick it can easily change and adapt.
Successful Business Partnerships
Published November 29, 2011 | Common Business Mistakes You Want to Avoid
Create a Winning Business Partnership
I think it’s safe to say the majority of entrepreneurs and small business owners choose a sole proprietor business structure most often when starting up. But since the road to entrepreneurship can prove quite lonely and even limiting to some, the promise of bigger and better rewards may directly result from forming a business partnership.
That’s a sentiment that’s easily understood, since partnerships immediately offer more freedom for business owners by way of shared business tasks and the significant potential to earn greater profits. Yet, only 6% of all businesses start in the form of partnerships, with the overwhelming majority forming sole proprietorships.
It can’t be stressed enough that a business partnership can either be a horrific relationship disaster or a wonderfully positive experience. So before you decide to form a business partnership, carefully consider and understand the following critically important points.
Have the same shared vision between partners to be successful, with strong agreement on the same strategic direction of the company by everyone involved. If not, and one partner wants to build a national chain of retail outlets located in small shopping plazas, while the other would just like to earn a decent living, the business will of course fail in no time. 
The needs and desires of all partners should be addressed and an agreement reached, in order to set a clearly agreed upon course for the business.
Define business roles and responsibilities for a winning business partnership that capitalizes on the identified strengths and skills of each partner. Business roles should be clearly defined and assigned according to the strengths of each individual partner.
The 50-50 split should be avoided at all costs, although it may seem completely logical and fair to split the share of business ownership into an equal 50%. However, this ownership structure can impair decision making in the future. Instead of having decisions deadlocked in a standoff, you should strongly consider a 49% to 51% split. If this is not possible, an agreed upon method for breaking a tie should be adopted as part of the agreement to keep your business from being deadlocked on decisions.
Hold a regular meeting for partners to maintain a crucial open communication relationship. Partners should meet on a regular weekly, semi-weekly or monthly basis to share and discuss issues and grievances, review roles and responsibilities, and offer productive criticism.
Create a partnership agreement that is simple to set up because no legal documents are needed. Now, because partnerships are more often than not, an oral agreement between two or more parties, potential issues and problems can be prevented down the road by simply drawing up a legal partnership agreement.
Contents of a Business Partnership Agreement
I am often asked, “What should be addressed in a good business partnership agreement?” According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the agreement should always include…
(1) The amount of equity invested by each partner.
(2) Type of business.
(3) How profits and losses will be shared.
(4) Partner pay and compensation.
(5) Distribution of assets on dissolution.
(6) Provisions for any changes to or dissolving the partnership.
(7) Disputes settlement clause.
(8) Settlement in case of death or incapacitation.
(9) Restrictions of authority and expenditures.
(10) Duration of the partnership.
When comparing the sole proprietorship and partnership business structures, building a small business can be more rewarding and profitable in a partnership environment. You should give strong consideration to a business partnership structure, especially when you have someone to not only compliment your own skill set, but add significant value to your company.
Finally, understand that partnerships can work and meet expectations, especially when built upon the right structural foundation from the very beginning.
Start Your Business for the Right Reasons
Published November 25, 2011 | Common Business Mistakes You Want to Avoid
Don’t Start Your Business for the Wrong Reasons
There are way too many would-be entrepreneurs that share similar, but wrong reasoning for starting their respective businesses. Answers to some common questions expose this failed thinking. Questions like, “Would the one and only reason you would be starting your own business be that you desire to make a lot of money? Do you think that by having your own business, you’d have more time to spend with your family, or possibly that by being your own boss, you wouldn’t have to answer to anyone else?” If so, you’d better start thinking again.
Now on the other hand, if your reasoning for wanting to start your own business includes the following reasons, you’ll most certainly have a much better chance at experiencing the entrepreneurial success you decide to pursue.
The Right Reasons
You have a true passion and love for what it is you’ll be doing. And fervently trust and believe after thoroughly comprehensive research and investigation, that your product or service would answer a real problem and need in the market.
Not only are you physically fit, but you have the often-ignored required mental stamina to withstand potentially great physical and mental challenges. Often overlooked with little emphasis, inadequately poor health has been largely responsible for a significant number of bankruptcies.
You have a real inner-drive, strong determination, the gift of patience in the face of adversely-stressful pressure situations, and a genuinely positive attitude. And when most others decide to throw in the towel, you reach a higher-level of determination.
You are never defeated by failure. You have the ability to quickly learn from your mistakes, and use these lessons to achieve eventual success. 
There have been many examinations and studies of successful business owners that illustrate how they share attribution of much of their success to building successful processes from earlier failures, and using each failure as a “learning process.”
You are one that thrives on independence, and possess leadership skills for taking charge when the situation calls for creativity and intelligent solutions. This is never more important then when strict time constraints are in play.
You “like” or even “love” your fellow man with a show of great respect, which is displayed in your honesty, integrity, and interactions you have with others. As a result, not only do you get along with, but you are able deal with all different types of individuals, in all types of strategic situations.
Your Job is a Great Asset before You Start the Business
Published November 18, 2011 | Common Business Mistakes You Want to Avoid
You Need the Freedom to Create a Business with the Best Chance for Survival
The very moment you become dependent on the income from your business to pay your personal expenses, you will immediately have more financial demands than you can imagine or your new business has the capacity to take care of without some degree of negative impact. Use the time you have at your day job to create a solid financial foundation you can build your business on, so that the business you create is the perfect one for you.
Maintain Your Ability to Take Risks
You remain in a position where you can take bigger risks when you maintain your new business as a side business at the beginning. You should plan to use this valuable time to push yourself. The reality is that wonderful things can happen when you can take the right risks.
Stay Precise, Disciplined and Focused
Understand that people who are busy are much more disciplined and focused, and work with greater precision, so building a business while working another job will most certainly keep you busy.
Practice Does Make Perfect
Let’s face it. Most entrepreneurs who are just starting their business aren’t at their best right from the beginning, and need time to go through the learning curve of operating the business with the highest-level of efficiency with the best results. So while you maintain the job, use this time to gain valuable preparation and training operating your business.
Pay Off Debt
It’s a simple fact that debt is the very worst enemy of entrepreneurs and new business owners. Writing loan payment checks to your bank while you are in the critical process of growing your business while preserving positive cash flow. So pay off your debt while you still have a job, and have a plan in place to pay off any debts.
An Emergency Fund is a Great Asset
No one can imagine the enormous financial stresses new businesses puts on their owners. Most business owners experience slow times where critical cash flow is tight, and a job will give you a regular pay check, so while you still maintain your day job, make it an important point to build an amount equal to 6 to 12 months of operating expenses in your emergency fund.
Your Education Never Stops
There are obviously a lot of things you need to learn before starting a business. So learn as much as you can about business while you still have your job.
People Skills Can Always be Improved
It’s a great understatement that business is all about people skills. Be sure and use this valuable time to improve your own people skills including how to treat your customers, how to treat your employees, and how to effectively network.
Get to Know Yourself
The more you know you can make you successful as business owner or doom you to failure if you don’t know yourself. So what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What type of work do you really love?
Growing Your Business
The stability of your job can be invaluable to growing your business. You will be busy and you can continue to build your business in your off hours without enormous stress.
Brilliant Business Ideas – Avoid Opportunity Greed
Published June 20, 2011 | How to Avoid Opportunity Greed
The “great battle” that faces entrepreneurs each day is to filter through many potentially great ideas and then to decide 
which ones are worthy of pursuit.
I have seen businesses fail regularly from ‘opportunity greediness.’ Understand that when you as an entrepreneur decide to do even one too many ideas you overextend yourself and the whole thing collapses, sometimes slowly… sometimes quickly, but the whole thing collapses.
If you haven’t experienced this as an entrepreneur yet, what happens as an entrepreneur is that you gain a group of friends who are always quick to toss around their ideas and without fail strongly suggest that you get involved with them, but your best answer should more often than not be no. Never forget that you have to remain clearly focused with your own idea.
Whenever you are presented with additional opportunities or challenged with a decision that could have an enormous game-changing impact. You should always ask yourself if the projected results and conclusions are aligned with your core values, beliefs and way of thinking. If the answer is “yes they are,” then you will have made certain that you are not straying from your true course, remaining clear and focused on the achievement of your established objectives and goals. 
If they aren’t, you may most certainly be setting up conditions for conflict and ultimate failure.
I have found it can also help create greater understanding within yourself to honestly evaluate why you tend to react certain ways whenever an opportunity presents itself to you. If you take the time to investigate and reach a clear understanding of your initial reaction, which is usually an emotionally-driven knee-jerk response, you then are completely able to allow yourself to pause, take a step back, and honestly evaluate the situation in an objective manner.
Finally, by doing these things, you will gain more clarity, and make more enlightened choices that will be in keeping with you intention of being the most successful entrepreneur at whatever you choose to do.