Everybody’s got a job to do.

And no matter what you’re selling, if you’re running a small business, it adds up to a lot of early mornings and a lot of late nights.

In fact, sometimes those late nights become so late they end up being early mornings. We’ve all been there, and you and I both know we’re all going back there sooner or later.

It’s just business as usual.

And for the fortunate among us - who are really any who choose to pursue their small business dream-come-true - we wouldn’t have it any other way.

For the really fortunate, sales are solid, profits are reliable and we’ve got our niche carved out with no competition in site.

But even if you’re still struggling to get there, still trying to figure out which end of the spreadsheet is up, still trying to figure out the difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable (please let this not be you), there’s something you’ve got in common with the most successful small - and large - businesspeople in the world.

We’re all in this together.

Yes, you’ve gotta work to survive. But you’re surviving, right? You’ve got time to check out small business blogs, so that’s a good sign.

But with survival figured out, what’s the point beyond that? A new business? A bigger house? What’s your legacy going to be?

How about helping out? The most successful companies in the world do it, and rumor has it they know a thing or two about closing a deal. Who knows: maybe they’re onto something when it comes to giving back, too.

So the market’s up, the market’s down. The news of the world is good, the news of the world is bad.

The common denominator is thusly: we all owe it to each other to take a minute to think about what we’re doing to help each other, not just ourselves.

And for you Milt Friedman’s of the world, giving back is no longer a recipe for business disaster. Au contraire!

Thankfully, times have changed. These days, volunteering is simply smart business.

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Grow My Business can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

Let’s assume you’ve finalized your business plan, finished your product and honed in on your market. Now comes the hard part: figuring out your customer.

Where are they? What do they want? When do they want it? Do they like Clay Aiken? All excellent questions.

Perhaps most important, however is: “How are you going to reach them?”

If you aren’t already asking yourself this question daily, start now. And don’t ever stop.

On the mainstream front, sure you’ve got your business cards, you’ve got the web site…but do you have the email newsletter, too? Get it.

Why? No other reason except it’s truly the easiest way to communicate with your customers, current and prospective.

Of course, you can always shoot for the moon, too. Prize reimbursement insurance, anyone? If you’re looking for an immediate impact - and some local TV news coverage, pretty much guaranteed - promising free product to the first 5,000 customers if Paris gets off may be worth a shot.

(And, uh, maybe check with a legal pro before calling the TV station.)

The point is, if you expect your customers to believe in your small business as much as you do, why wouldn’t you want to do whatever it takes to get them in the door? You already know how important it is to keep your business connected. But if you’re not connecting with your customers, what’s the point?

So ban all trans fats from your business, keep the Big Picture in mind, fire up the computer right now, and make it happen.

Need another good idea? How about pod casting? Hey, it’s so easy your cell phone can do it.

And, hey, if nothing else works, you can always get your product turned into a video game, too: Halo fans, unite!

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Grow My Business can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

So, it seems that one of the cardinal sins of effective blogging is getting long-winded.

But it’s like paying bills and writing checks at the end of the month: once you get going it can be tough to slow down. (At least for some of us.)

So, this blog is going to get tighter and punchier and maybe even a little more frequent.

And this really lends itself to today’s post, which is all about the importance of self-reflection as it pertains to your small business.

Let’s say you know what you’re doing, and you like what you’re doing, and you’re doing OK.

Great, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement.

Now, I’m not saying that you fix something that isn’t broken. No, no, no.

What I am saying is that sometimes the best time to think about doing things maybe a little bit better is before you are in dire need of an emergency change in course.

So don’t get extreme. Try baby steps. Think about simple ways that you can lighten your workload.

Consider how to:

Trim your accounting paperwork.

Limit web site downtime.

Clean up your office computers.

Freshen your company logo.

Hey, it could be something as simple as choosing to talk less, and listen more to your customers.

What you really don’t to do is pull a spinach farmer and get complacent. Otherwise, it’s game over before you know it. It happens to the best: even mighty Yahoo! makes missteps.

But then you have Kate Moss, prime example of someone who reevaluated her floundering brand, which is her business, and made it much, much stronger.

There’s really no time to be complacent in a small business. Keep yourself sharp, and constantly focused on streamlining your efforts.

Why? The less you have to carry everyday, the more room you’ll have to pick up the things you not only need, but are working so hard for in the first place.

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Grow My Business can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

Ever wonder why it takes so long to get things done?

Like, in some cases of small business success, oh, about 70 years or so?

You have if you’re doing things the right way, because doing things the right way means a couple of things, none of which have anything to do with skipping steps or taking shortcuts.

Doing things the right way does require some important actions on the part of the aspiring entrepreneur, however. Let’s call it our 7-Step Program to Business Success:

1. Be thoughtful

2. Do the homework

3. Do the legwork

4. Tool up

5. Train the talent

6. Dig in

7. Go for it

8. Have faith

Some will point to Apple and Yahoo! and Amazon and eBay and Google and many of the even more recent tech successes like MySpace, Skype and Flickr and say, “Wait a sec.”

But closer examination reveals that neither of the first generation success stories were exactly overnight successes.

(BTW, speaking of overnight, it’s not too late to squeeze in a last minute summer vacay on the cheap!)

Of course, many now know Apple more for their MP3 player hits - and they keep comin’, as the new iPods indicate - but success easily overshadows very serious missteps, the Newton being a very public one that nearly buried Apple.

In fact, if not for the original iMac, Apple as we know it might not exist. Imagine, a world with no iPods!

It took years for Yahoo! to establish its presence against competing rivals like AltaVista, Looksmart and Lycos (remember them?). It wasn’t exactly like Caesar’s unopposed march into Rome.

I recall specifically the story that showed pictures of Jerry Yang and David Filo, co-founders of Yahoo!, in their sleeping bags under their cubicles at the then fledgling startup. This was long before success was a sure thing.

But then let’s take the examples of those second generation Web 1.0 ventures. Kozmo? Webvan? Gesundheit.com? All the pet food startups??

Right. How about lots of confidence, lots of VC cash, and lots of hype.

And lots of failure.

These companies saw the momentum being generated online by the early players, and in true entrepreneurial spirit, saw some opportunities.

But impatience led to disaster. Turns out you can’t deliver groceries for free. You can’t deliver movies for free. You can’t deliver dog food for free.

Who knew? Why, who else? The woman who ran my pet store, which was very un-tech, very under the radar, very not cutting edge.

But very essential to those of us who depended upon her business for our much-needed pet supplies.

I asked her if she was fearful of the new online petstores, and what it meant for her business.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she said calmly. “Because they’re all going to fail.”

I guffawed, and asked her why she thought that. After all, what could she know that all these $25 million VC-funded hip, cutting edge, pushing the envelope new companies didn’t know?

“They won’t make it because no one has 1-2 days to wait for their pet food,” she replied. “When people need pet food, they need it yesterday. They come in here frantic. No one plans ahead for their pet food purchases.”

And she was right. The online petstores thought that the volume of their sales would allow them to absorb the substantial shipping costs of a 50 lb bag of kibble.

Nope. The sales simply weren’t there. Even with all the amazing capabilities of the internet, it’s still not instant in every capacity. Sure you can make a purchase today. But with the exception of downloads, you can’t get your purchase today.

Someone please run with this new business idea: downloadable pet food.

So the online ventures became the poster children of overoptimism, dot-com bust and business failure.

All because they violated rule #1: they didn’t do the homework. So they didn’t understand the customer they were chasing.

Then again, hold everything.

The more recent Web 2.0 ventures have gone from nowhere to everywhere in the span of a few months. That certainly qualifies as overnight. But success? We’ll see. The hype is there, but proven business models have yet gain a solid foothold.

So if you’re planning on launching a new biz, take those Seven Steps to heart. And even if you already are getting things done, it can be good to revisit the steps from time-to-time.

Because if there is one certainty in business, and especially small business, it’s that it’s never too late to give what you’re doing more thought, more research and more dedication.

Exhibit A: the bionic arm.

Work hard enough at it for long enough, and next thing you know, you, too, will wake up to find yourself an “overnight success.”

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Grow My Business can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

Bills, bills, bills. Supplies, lights, heat, janitors, computers, phone…

Like junk faxes, they never stop coming. (By the way, if the faxes come from you, they aren’t junk.)

But let’s drill down on a bill - the beloved phone bill - hey, now! That’s one we could all use a little help with, right?

I’m sure everybody’s heard of the most publicized new solution to preserving cash. It might even qualify for “Extreme Saving.”

Naturally, I’m talking ’bout Internet calling.

Vonage and SunRocket are two of the web-based phone companies you may have seen advertised a bit. They’re cheap. You get unlimited calls.

Kind of a attractive for the average small business, especially one like yours that may need to spend more than a little bit of time on the phone.

But there are issues, notably the challenge that comes with keeping your landline-based broadband connection which maintains that steady flow of all-important emails, and a lack of dedicated, reliable 9/11 service.

Maybe you don’t want Facebook or HP knowing where you live, but the life-saving 9/11 types you definitely do.

That is a biggie, obviously. It is being addressed, but don’t abandon the landline just yet.

So, cool, right? Lower cost, mostly the same phone service.

But what if we can get it down to right around nada? Now we’re getting closer to a perfect solution, eh?!?

Ladies and gentleman, I give you Skype.

(Actually eBay does, but thanks for allowing the dramatic intro.)

Ironically enough, it was a business colleague who first turned me on to Skype. It only took a brief, testimonial-laden conversation to get my interest. But what won me over was the actual practice.

To record a podcast (future blog alert!), the colleague, who had lots of previous experience using Skype, suggested that we use it as a way to save money (the recording was East Coast to West Coast).

I downloaded the software, ran the quick self-tests and voila! It was done. Ten minutes later we were on the call together, it sounded exactly like any other phone call I’ve ever been on, and we ended up taking about 90 minutes to record the conversation to his iPod.

Cost? Zero dollars.

Check out this post from the Skype blog

We did some user research and we found that about 30% of our user base uses Skype for work purpose, pretty interesting because we have a consumer focused product. From the research we also found that it was mostly small companies using Skype and the reason that they use Skype is because it saves their company money but also because it increases their productivity and saves them time. There are some features that helps conf calling, group chats, presence, SkypeIn, Call forwarding etc.

Turns out it works just great if you don’t mind calling PC-to-PC, and it’s simple to use. I love the interface, too. Check it out. Unless you prefer to pay boatloads of cash for conference calls, in which case avoid it at all costs. Literally.

So how about that? Yet another great, money-saving small business resource. Hey, thanks technology!

In sum, bills are indeed such a drag. Hopefully today’s post helps reduce your list by at least one.

Still, bills are a part of doing business. And at the 5-year anniversary of 9/11, it feels necessary to offer ourselves a perspective-bearing reminder: it is indeed a privilege to pursue the American Dream.

Need a poignant yet appropriate way to commemorate 9/11? Stay dedicated to your dream of business success. Good business is what this country was founded on, and something we are all committed to.

Keep up the good work, and the legacy of 9/11 will never be forgotten.

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Grow My Business can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

Weren’t we just talking about friends and family, and how lucky we are to spend time with them?

We were, and we are again!

But what if - now, just bear with me, here - but what if you were able to spend lots more time with friends and family, AND get lots more work done at the same time?

How??

Why, it all comes down to a single, simple concept: solicit your friends and family to help grow your business!

Wait, wait, wait - please don’t go!

I know it may seem hard to believe, but for the average entrepreneur a personal network offers an outstanding business resource unavailable to anyone else.

Ever watch “Flip That House” on Discovery? It’s a reality show about small business folks that buy up attention-deprived houses, and then, after making needed repairs, sell them off for a profit (typcially hefty).

It’s entertaining. Not as entertaining as Paris Hilton’s latest escapade, but still.

And for someone like me with zero handyman skills, it’s also a bit mysterious. The one thing I do understand comes at the end of each episode. That’s when they tally up how much the house cost, how much renovations cost, and earnings (pre-tax, of course).

A recent episode was about a house flipper in Vegas who took on a big project, and set an agressive deadline for himself. Sounds like the average small businessperson to me.

But the smartest thing he did on the project wasn’t the house that he bought, the ideas that he had, or the revenue that he projected. It was the team that he brought onboard to help him out: his family.

Turns out his father and two brothers all had knowledge and exeperience in construction, so instead of trying to do everything himself, he smartly tapped that labor pool.

And good thing, as they noticed many mistakes and oversights that he didn’t notice or forgot about. Essentially, they saved him many, many thousands of dollars in mistakes. All cash that would have flown right out his pocket.

If you want to do the same, you better act quick. There’s plenty of attention competition out there, with kids spending too much time on Xanga and the Army increasing the age ceiling for recruitment.

So how, again, are Friends & Family going to help your small business succeed?

1. Opinions. Those who know us best can often see things we can’t or don’t want to. Including them in business decisions and planning is the best possible way to strip away blinders that you may not even be aware you have, and that could be setting you up for failure.

2. Projects. Deliveries to make? Invoices to file? Copies to run? Look at those family members just sitting around enjoying their evening/weekend! Hey, all you’re asking is 20 minutes a few days a week for a little help. I bet you can even figure out some creative incentives. (Hint: try money or MP3 goodies).

3. Talent. Your husband the packaging expert can help get everything off to UPS. Your daughter the financial wiz can double-check the numbers. Your son the tech expert can keep your website firing on all 8 cylinders (or all 4 + keep the battery charged for you hybrid fans out there. I’m looking at you, Mr. Clinton).

You want the #1 reason to involve friends and family in your small business? Honest feedback.

You can pay for all the customer service feedback in the world, and it’s oftentimes helpful when charting a business direction or changing course.

Like, I’ll bet the execs at Dunkin’ Donuts asked around before going after Starbucks.

You think?

No one knows you better than the people you are close to, and if you ask for it, you will most definitely get honest, unfiltered opinions about what you’re doing and how they think it can be improved.

And I bet it will be waaaay easier than giving away free veggies at the local school.

Of course, it’s important to be able to accept and incorporate this feedback without taking it personally. And that can be hard to do when Uncle Charlie drives you completely up the wall all the time.

So don’t ask Uncle Charlie, and no matter what you do DO NOT SPY ON ANYONE’S PHONE RECORDS!

But ask everyone else for help. Your family and friends are smart, talented and capable, right? Of course they are, they’re yours!

Help them help you. Your business succeeds. Soon you can afford an extra lawn mower to loan to the neighbors. Everybody wins.

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Want to grow your business? Then visit Grow My Business! This online resource can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck. 

Workers of the world…relax!

A nice sentiment, truly, and hopefully many of you were able to enjoy a Labor Day in the cherished company of family and friends, far from the toils of work.

Aside from another reccord-setting version of Jerry’s MD telethon, there were BBQs, the US Open, Andre Agassi’s retirement, the PGA Tour.

Of course, baseball, too, with it’s own labor-related business issues to attend to.

Reality check: even if you did have a day “off,” as it were, you and I both know that if you are running a small business (or hoping to run one), it is the rare moment, indeed, that allows the luxury of thoughts away from your bread, your butter, your passion.

On that note, let us mark the passing of a truly passionate business owner, who went from small to quite big, and spent his last Labor Day devoted to the very job that he cherished. Thanks for the fun and the education, Croc Hunter Steve Irwin.

But honestly, does ever a day go by that work can be entirely forgotten?

Good one. Alas, as you well know, it does not.

And how can it? Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall, failing to check in on your business affairs each day makes nearly as much sense as holding your breath for the length of any given holiday.

Take the inventors of the Wine Robot, for instance. You think they had time to relax before getting this revolutionary product to market?? Nope.

Now, now. I’m not suggesting that one venture into the office at 4:45 AM on a holiday or face dire business consequences. It’s not quite all that bad, but things aren’t exactly perfect, either.

But with on-call internet and instantaneous email, “working” on the weekend often means little more devoting a few keystrokes.

And with no apparent shortage of customers of late, there’s reason enough to run those numbers again, verify those orders are, well, in order, and make sure those invoices go out first thing tomorrow.

Not feeling up to it? Talk to Fed Ex about putting in the overtime.

For the average small businessperson, every day is a celebration of human accomplishment and ingenuity and a new chance to appreciate the opportunity we all have to pursue our hopes and dreams.

Pay homage to our collective efforts but once? I don’t think so. For true entrepreneurs, the celebration of Labor Day takes place 365 times a year.

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Want to grow your business? Then visit Grow My Business! This online resource can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.

With so many things going on in the world every day, who can keep up?

New products launch to market, old products are pulled from market. Businesses succeed, businesses fail. 

And it’s hard enough to keep your mind on just the world of business, but the news of the globe gets slightly overwhelming and dangerously distracting.

But with all the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the comings and goings, there’s one reliable constant: your workload!

Which is exactly why it’s so important that a small business owner doesn’t take an eye off the prize for a single second. So let’s practice a little on minding your own business:

1. Global warming is upon us, and California has the answer!

• That’s nice, but…you’ve still got inventory to finish.

2. The Valerie Plame leak…it’s not who you think it is!

• Fascinating, but…you’ve still got checks to write.

3. We’re headed back to the moon thanks to Lockheed Martin!

• Exciting, but…you’ve still got a mailing list to communicate with.

4. We’re down to eight planets!

• Zany, but…you’ve still got computers to maintain. 

5. It’s MTV music awards time!

• Entertaining, but…you’ve still got a website to manage.  

6. The Scream is back!

• Hurrah, but…you’ve still got a business to run!!!

So why stress the little stuff, even if it’s not so little? And why worry about anything that doesn’t directly affect your business?

Last you checked, you already have your work cut out for you. Don’t let everyone else’s problems keep you from dealing with yours.

It may be a small business, but it’s your small business. And that’s exactly what makes it the only one worth worrying about.

Still, watch where that smartphone ends up…

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Want to grow your business? Then visit Grow My Business! This online resource can help lighten the load on understanding how to get started, gain momentum, and manage growth for the long run. And for small and home business software needs, check out Avanquest, the company that brings you the biggest bang for your hard-earned entrepreneurial buck.