© WordRidden

I've been contributing over the last few months to the content of a vibrant and growing site that points toward the future of the Internet and has profound potential for users interested in creating business relationships over the web. The site is NetworkingForPros.com.

When I look across the web at the moment, it's clear that the Internet of yesterday (static pages where you could find information and news) has been replaced by an interactive, social Internet that is about people instead of facts and figures.

One of those people is you. Today the Internet is about you, and about me.

Who are you? The old model of the early Internet allowed a handful of writers and bloggers to publish information about people. Most of those people that info got published on were the stars - the Madonna, Mel Gibson, Mylie Cyrus, and the like. Who where you in that mix? Probably nobody, because they didn't write about you at all.

NetworkingForPros.com is part of a trend that is changing what the Internet is about. It's helping to make the Internet more about you and less about Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey. And the best part is that you can even help control what gets said about you. Using a wiki format, NetworkingForPros.com lets you enter your own information. You can write about yourself and about your friends or colleagues. Like with any wiki, you can comment on and contribute to the pages that other people have started. It's an interactive space focused on providing information about real people. People like you. After all, just because you're not Madonna or A-Rod, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be on the Web.

NetworkingForPros.com is where the professional relationships of tomorrow start: a place where you can find out about real people, a place where you can contribute to what knowledge is available on the web, a place where you can find and connect to people who share your interests.

Find yourself and find your friends at NetworkingForPros.com. And if they're not there already, put them there…

In this economy you have to expect setbacks. And you have to be prepared to deal with them. Whatever you do to create that mental framework is up to you. I know of people who keep a litttle laminated card in their wallet that gives them a list of steps to remember when bad things happen. I don't know that you have to go that far, but you do have to be mentally prepared.

Adam at Blogtrepreneur had a piece recently on overcoming setbacks.

Overcoming setbacks in business takes tenacity and perseverance. It means doing what it takes to save your life's ambition and to come out of it with you and your business as stronger than ever.

According to Adam, it also means following five essential steps, and he gives them to you.


© Gary Denness

Seth Godin asked that question recently, as a metaphor.

If you own a lot of acres but just have a few bags of seed, you might be tempted to spread out what you've got and cover as much territory as you can. Farmers tell me that this is wasteful and time consuming. You end up with less yield and more work.

Marketers face the same dilemma.

The metaphor gives you a way to visualize a basic truth about business: the more you spread out your resources, the less you make from them. Why would you set up business in the next county when you have more than you can handle in your own county. The temptation is to say, "Because no one there is doing what I do." It's good to recognize that as an opportunity. The problem is, you have to be prepared to take advantage of an opportunity. You have to have the resources to meet demand in the new market, or customer service declines and your business declines with it.


© Jams_123

With any new business, one of the most difficult tasks is finding affordable ways to publicize products and services. Yescalate gives you and your customers a chance to tell your local community about what you do. And it's more than affordable; it's free.

If you're looking for a convenient way to get your business noticed on the Web (or to publicize your experience with a local business), you're probably looking for Yescalate, a site were local business information is built by users.

Yescalate is a wiki, a site where users collaborate to create content and built knowledge for the Internet. On the one hand, Yescalate works like the business pages of an online phone book. You can put basic information (street address, products and services, phone numbers, prices, website, even pictures) on a Yescalate entry about your business. On the other hand, your customers can add to the site, creating comments or adding to the content about your business.

Best of all, you don't have to deal with sales people or pay some fee the way you world with a newspaper or phonebook ad. The site is free to use, and free to build.

Success in starting a business is mostly about figuring out what to do when challenges arise. So I couldn't help but get a little excited when I say this point on problem solving.

In the piece Sid Kemp looks a six basic steps to assessing and solving problems. And in his view, most of it is common sense...

There's an old joke that a consultant is someone who listens to the employees, tells management what they are saying and takes a fee for it. This is truer than most consultants would like to admit.

The bottom line, like Sid says, is that when you fix all the small problems in your business, profits shoot through the roof.


© Steve Rhodes

Entrepreneur.Com had a piece recently that made a simple point: You should be selective with your social networks.

The simple truth is that social networking can be a time consuming endeavor. It's easy to get bogged down trying to read all your Twitter posts. Social networks can become redundant. If you're not careful you end up friending the same people on Facebook that you're following on Twitter and you've already friended on MySpace.

Jennifer Shaheen's piece gives you some guidelines to think about when you participate in social networks for professional purposes. Her piece is worth reading.


© luc legay

© worak

Small Business Trends had a cute piece recently on a viral marketing campaign that included mailing chocolate covered grasshoppers to some 5,000 marketing gurus with a simple message: if you can eat one of these, you probably have the guts to be an entrepreneur, too.

From Rob May, founder of Lifestream Backup articulated the idea: “My theory is that anyone tough enough to eat a grasshopper is tough enough to start their own business.”

Watch the video...

Entrepreneur.com pointed out recently how easy it is to create and host online a video about your business. It's a powerful marketing tool that can give your business' image a big boost.

It's not hard to make a video look pretty professional with an inexpensive camera and some simple, free tools:

To do this, you could use the free video editing programs that are built into most operating systems. But if you want to take video editing to an entirely different level, you might want to consider a video editing tool that lets you select a background, making your video look much better.

And free tools are good for bootstrappers, right?

BusinessWeek recently published an article that looked at our infatuation as a nation with the MBA and suggested that perhaps we should be more concerned with the talent of entrepreneurship than with training. Rarely have I seen the contrast spelled out so clearly...

Now, I understand the use of students from elite business schools as a proxy for "talent" in the business world. But as the economy experiences the most deep-seated changes in decades, maybe it's time to change our minds about what kinds of people are best-equipped to become business leaders. Is our fascination with the comings and goings of MBAs as obsolete as our lionization of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers? Is it time to look elsewhere for the "best and the brightest" of what business has to offer?

One place to look for answers is the fascinating research of Professor Saras Sarasvathy, who teaches entrepreneurship at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.

While I personally value education a great deal, it's hard to deny that talent and training are different things. Maybe we're coming back to a sane approach to business.

Like many high pressure careers, bootstrappers face a problem that can sometimes be difficult. It is a problem for which no pat answers or prefabricated solutions are available. The problem: maintaining a balance between your entrepreneurial endevears and the rest of life.

You do have a life, don't you? You should.

Inc. had a piece recently that looked at the balance between work and marriage. The story, by Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, is written from the prospective of an entrepreneur's wife. She starts with this:

Slide into bed with an entrepreneur, and you wind up cuddling with his business. At a certain point, the entrepreneur's spouse has to answer the question: Are you in or are you out? It is a question that surfaces in many forms over time. Are you in? In for as long as it takes this business to succeed? In for what is potentially a lifetime of financial risk? Or are you out? Out of patience, out of tolerance, out of your mind with stress and the bitterness of dreams deferred?

While many careers pose unique problems for married couples, the life of an entreprenuer can be hard on a marriage. Hirshberg's article is worth reading.


© samantha celera