When To Grow And When To Cut

By HERDING GAZELLES | Karl Stark and Bill Stewart | Inc.com

Economic conditions often drive growing companies to invest on the upswing and cut on the downturn. But for the best-run companies, deciding to turn on and off growth investment is much more of a pinpoint approach than a blunt tool. In some cases, it makes more sense to cut investment in relatively good times and or sustain investment in bad times.


Photo: Shutterstock

One of our clients, a large enterprise technology provider, decided it needed to continue growth investment through the Great Recession of 2008-2010. They were fortunate enough to build up a significant cash position prior to the downturn, which gave them more options than most companies. Their market was negatively affected by the downturn in corporate technology spend during the recession, but they saw the opportunity to invest into the economic headwinds because their offering gave customers significant cost savings relative to competitive products. They had a chance to gain share while their competitors were struggling.

Another company we work with is going through some strategic cuts despite participating in a growing market. They've realized that their market has become more competitive and less profitable as it has matured. Most of their mainstream business is commoditized and the client has realized that they don't offer much of an advantage relative to their competitors.

However, in a smaller, more specialized segment of their business, they have an opportunity to make significant profits because they can offer something much more attractive than competitors. So they are cutting investment in their mainstream business while investing to significantly grow their specialized business. This will result in overall profitability growth, despite lower revenue.

Even though most businesses follow the simple rule of grow in good economies and cut in bad economies, we prefer the following approach:

Invest for growth when:

* You have access to growth capital
* You know you can create significant return on investment from investing that capital in the business--i.e., the investment will more than pay for itself in the future
* You have the opportunity to improve your competitive position in a specific market--either by enhancing your customer offer or improving your cost position -to create higher share or profitability in the future

Cut investment when:

* You don't see a clear return- i.e., you'd make just as much money or more on less revenue or there's no clear future benefit from the investment
* You see an opportunity from focusing on a limited segment of your market
* You believe that improving your profitability in the short term will better position you to invest for growth in the longer term

The mistake many growth businesses make is to believe that gaining market share is always good. Every business has profitable segments and unprofitable segments. Almost always, the most profitable segments are ones where the company is offering its customers a distinctive, advantaged offering. These are the areas that businesses can invest to fuel growth over the long term.


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Create A Scalable Brand

By HERDING GAZELLES | Karl Stark and Bill Stewart | Inc.com

When a company is in growth mode, it's natural to focus on operations--getting the product to the right customers and keeping those customers happy. Although operations are critical, they will only take a growing company so far. To create a truly scalable growth engine, a company needs a strong marketing strategy, with a solid brand at its core, and a supporting structure for delivering the company's core message to customers.



Jackie Yeaney is the EVP of Strategy and Global Marketing at Red Hat, a software company that has grown from a start-up in the mid-1990s to a billion-dollar open-source developer. Yeaney has led marketing strategy at a number of growing businesses including Earthlink, PGi, HomeBanc, and Delta Air Lines. Asked about how to build a thriving marketing strategy, Yeaney uses an example from nature: a growing tree.

"You need to start with the roots, which is a clear corporate strategy," she says. "This feeds the brand, which is the 'trunk' or core of your marketing strategy. The brand has to be the foundation of your growth. Then, all your investments become the 'branches' that grow from your brand."

At Red Hat, the brand is at the core of all marketing investments. This includes global marketing programs, marketing operations, marketing services, and field marketing in each of the regions. Each of these teams has become more focused, streamlined, and effective by centering their activities and investments on driving the brand message to customers. In fact, each of the field teams behave like a larger organization because of the support behind them. Much like tree branches provide nourishment from the trunk out to the growing leaves, the branches of the marketing organization reinforce the brand to customers through Red Hat's various investments.

As a company grows from a small start-up to a more complex organization, its marketing investments often grow in proportion to revenue. This approach can lead to complex and often disjointed marketing structures. At Red Hat, Yeaney found that as the company grew, new customer acquisition became paramount. This led to a larger marketing organization that quickly lost sight of the core customer value proposition. Each of the branches of the marketing organization were telling the Red Hat story in their own words and their own way. Focusing the organization on a clear and simple brand strategy created more effective results in the field with individual customers.

All growing companies want to invest more as they grow and continue their growth trajectory. Building a solid brand strategy is essential to providing a foundation for future marketing initiatives. After all, branches can't be healthy on their own--they need a strong trunk to fuel their growth.


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What's Your Powerful Brand Message? Think Local

By SERIAL CEO | Margaret Heffernan | Inc.com

It's become fashionable to think that the world is flat and small. Every business can serve the world, Tom Friedman famously argued, and therefore place really doesn't matter any more. But is it true?



Consider these facts:

2% of voice phone calls last year crossed borders; if you include Internet telephony, the biggest number you get is 7%

3% of the world's population is first-generation immigrants

10% of global investment was foreign direct investment

20% of global GDP derives from exports

10% to 15% of Facebook friends do not reside in the same country

These data, from Pankaj Ghemawat, a strategy professor at IESE Business School, don't describe a flat, universalized world but a highly localized one. Place now doesn't matter less--it matters more than ever. His data also suggest that, as far as worldwide markets are concerned, there's still a vast area of untapped opportunity. But the strength of business starts locally.

Real Madrid and Manchester United have become phenomenally successful and wealthy football teams not by eschewing their locale but by emphasizing it.

Italian fashion maintains its luster and its margins not by outsourcing manufacturing to China but by using and showcasing local textiles and intricate handiwork.

Emma Bridgewater ceramics has become fashionable and remained pricey because it is still made by hand in the historic home of British pottery, Stoke-on-Trent.

Or, as The Economist pointed out recently, the unique strength of Scandinavian crime fiction is its setting.

What all of this suggests is that successful brand building has a lot to gain by nurturing and articulating local roots. If you want to become a global business one day, the most important place to start is at home.


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Why You Don't Need Salespeople

By Karl Stark and Bill Stewart | Inc.com

For most growing businesses, quality salespeople are a must. But most business models won't achieve exponential growth riding on the backs of the sales team. Even the best salesperson can't sell something that customers don't value. Furthermore, most high-growth companies don't achieve their successes by hiring the best salespeople. If they did, good salespeople would be too expensive for small companies to afford.


Photo: Shutterstock Images

Real sales growth comes through an advantaged customer offer, which we define as a better product at a fair price (or, alternatively, a standard quality product at a much better price). Creating an offering that customers are willing to buy is the key to growth. A good sales team will get your advantaged offering in front of the right customers at the right time.

We were reminded of this simple concept recently when we read through some of the comments to our recent article "Relationship Building Is Much More Than Selling." The executives who read this article seemed to think that the best customers were never "sold to" but nevertheless became the business's most valuable customers.

I've always believed that the best way to market is not to "sell" your company but rather to make it known and to establish meaningful relationships with your clients and B2B leads. This post just makes me believe that even more. Rather than selling to people you don't know, and who have probably heard the same opening lines you gave them upon your first meeting from a dozen others, you should be trying your best to invest time and effort into building up a very good relationship with one of your clients and prospects.

--Maxwell Stinson

The best business relationships are not those who are "sold" to, but those who act as referral points or credibility references that result in sales, far beyond what these individuals could have "bought" on their own." This is one way of building your network, through referral...I believe this is one of the best business relationships...they trust you to refer you to others.

--Amber King

Given this insight, we try to coach companies to imagine how they would build their business without salespeople. How would they create an offer that caused customers to come over the transom without much sales and marketing investment? What could they do to improve their offer to make it more attractive to customers? This disciplined thinking causes management teams to ensure that their business model will stand on its own, without relying on advantaged selling. If that occurs, the business's sales investment can be a catalyst for growth rather than the single enabler of growth.

What would you do differently if you weren't able to rely on salespeople to fuel your growth?


Follow Karl on Twitter @karlstark

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Traits Of A Truly Entrepreneurial Mindset

By Michael E. Gerber | Inc.com

I've spent most of my life working with small-business owners. And what I've learned is that most small-business owners don't truly understand how to think like an entrepreneur. And, because of that, the vast majority of small businesses--and the people who create them--remain today what they were when they were started: jobs for the people who created them. They aren't entrepreneurs at all, but are instead what I call "technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure."


Photo: Getty Images

Seventy percent of all small businesses are sole proprietorships, meaning that their owners are self-employed. They have created a job for themselves, but have not learned how to create a business, meaning they could step away and still have the thing run.

Please don't misunderstand me; I am not negative about small business. To the contrary, I have worked with more small businesses over the past 50 years of my life than anyone I know. Tens of thousands of them. My problem is that I am simply shocked again and again at how little most small-business owners seem to understand about what it truly takes to invent, design, build, grow, and maintain a thriving company. Even those who consider themselves to be information junkies seem to miss the point by a wide margin.

In short, entrepreneurship is not about information; it's about perspective.

Some call it "mindset."

What is a truly entrepreneurial mindset?

In order to develop a truly entrepreneurial perspective, you must begin again. No matter how long you've been in business, it's important that you take on the perspective that you're starting it anew today.

So, when you start your company, you must think of it as though you were about to write a book. What would that book of yours say? What would you, as the author of your book, wish to impart to your reader that would hopefully transform the way they think about their life, about their success, about their future?

That's the point of your business, isn't it?

Your business is a product of how you, its creator, think about it: what it sells, what it does, how it does it, who your people are, and how you help them grow.

It's why Starbucks is such a wonderful example of an entrepreneurially designed company. Look at how the founder of Starbucks has made its mission, to expand the economic viability of small family growers throughout the world, a part of everything Starbucks does.

It's why causes are important to entrepreneurs in this Age of the New Entrepreneur. Causes add dimensionality to your business. Causes add meaning to your business, beyond simply making money. Which is not a cause in itself but a necessity. A necessity doesn't need to be stressed every day. But a cause must be.

As you go to work on your business, you must think beyond what the day-to-day reality of your business calls you to do. As an entrepreneur, you must rise above the stuff of doing it, doing it, doing it. It means you must ask meaningful questions about your role in the world, your community, and how you can institutionalize your new-found perspective into the genes of your company, so that it lives, speaks, and demonstrates it in every action your company takes.

Which means that every single entrepreneur on the face of this earth, in this Age of the New Entrepreneur, is actually writing a book. If he or she is truly determined to create a great company, that is.

And the nature of that book must begin right now. Where you are. With the question: What do I wish to say?


Follow Michael on Twitter @MichaelEGerber

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Win Customers: 7 Small Gestures That Go Far

By Paul Spiegelman | Inc.com

I had the opportunity to spend two nights at the Montage Resort in Laguna Beach, California, a couple of weeks ago for my parents' 60th wedding-anniversary celebration. I could talk forever about the brioche French toast, fantastic ocean views, and the luxurious pillow-top beds.


Photo: Shutterstock Images

Honestly, though, I'd expect those things, given the price I was paying. What will bring me back to the resort was the impression the unexpected small touches left on me. You don't have to be in the hospitality business to realize that excelling at small things is a recipe for customer loyalty.

Here are seven "small things" that stood out during our stay and apply to most businesses:

1. Notice What's Important
When my wife and I got to the check-in counter, we were assigned to our hotel room. The staffer noticed we had small children and immediately brought out a wagon full of stuffed animals and encouraged our kids to pick one. This seemingly small gesture showed the resort was paying attention to what is most important to us.

2. Be a Guide
Rather than just hand me the room key, the clerk stepped around the front desk, told me he was going to tour my family and me around the property and then escort us to our room. And that's just what he did. Not sure how the hotel managed that with multiple people checking in at the same time, but it was impressive. Do you do this when you give clients direction?

3. Start the Morning Right
I love it when hotels offer morning coffee. But it is usually in very small cups, and you inevitably wind up going back repeatedly for more. At the Montage, the coffee cups looked about the same size as a Starbucks Venti. And the coffee was free until 11 a.m. What a great way to start the day.

4. Empower the Unexpected
At breakfast one morning, we celebrated my 12-year-old nephew's birthday. During the meal, unbeknownst to me or my family, our Montage waiter slipped out of the hotel, went to his car, and brought back a book that he gave to my nephew as a gift. Can you imagine? What small, unexpected touches do you enable your employees to offer without having to ask permission?

5. Don't Just Pass By
As usual, at the Montage I often saw hotel employees in the hallways or outside walkways. But in addition to the standard "good morning" and pleasant smile, the Montage workers went out of their way to purposely step aside and create a path for me, whether I was with a group or walking alone. Instead of two people mindlessly passing each other, we had a moment to interact.

6. Communicate Price Clearly
When I checked out of the hotel and asked for a bellman to help my family and me with our bags, he also brought our bill to the room so we could check it then and raise any issues or questions. I have never experienced that kind of active transparency; it was great to have someone make sure the details of the bill fit the service we paid for.

7. Leave Them With a Lasting Memory
When our car was loaded up and my family and I were ready to go, not only did we find the Montage staffers had left two bottles of water in the car cup holders but also two logo baseball caps on the dashboard for my wife and me. We drove away with smiles on our faces.

What did these "extras" cost the hotel? Not much more than the commitment to excellence and the clearly thorough internal training program.

I've already made my hotel reservations at the Montage for next year. Next time, I'll stay for two weeks.

Follow Paul on Twitter @paulspiegelman

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7 Simple Tools To Keep Your Start-Up Organized

By John Brandon | Inc.com

In the last couple of weeks, I've been testing and highlighting some of the best online business tools out there. First, I looked at the kinds of tools you need to form a new venture. Then I wrote about brilliant people-management tools. Up this week: simple apps for keeping your operations under control.


Photo: Shutterstock Images

1. Expensify
The ability to expense business purchases can be a lifesaver for any fledgling entrepreneur--as long as you have a system to track them carefully. Expensify lets you import a credit card statement and track expenses, create reports for expenses by category, and upload business receipts. You can link a business lunch to specific people for accounting purposes. A mobile app for every major platform lets you scan receipts and add the data (vendor, amount, etc.) automatically. The service is free for 10 receipts per month or about 20 cents for each additional scan.

2. SohoOS
Business-management software like SAP and Oracle can zap your profits quickly. SohoOS offers similar tools for managing inventory, creating invoices, and customer-relationship management for a much more affordable price. The site is geared for keeping a start-up organized: You can create a marketing plan, store documents online, and track your sales leads. The free version includes many of the business-management features, but a paid version for about $10 per month adds more templates and storage.

3. Outright.com
I'm a big fan of Mint.com, because it forces me to get organized with my personal finances. Outright.com is a similar service but is more business-focused. You can import bank records and credit card transactions, then generate reports that show profit and loss. The key benefit is an ongoing estimate of how much tax you might owe at the end of your fiscal year.

4. Zoho Site24x7
Making sure your website is up and running is critical. I like this simple service from Zoho that tracks not just whether the site is up or down but also how it is performing when a boatload of customers suddenly stop for a visit. Site24x7 can also monitor security and even your email server, and the reports are designed so that you can scan them visually in a few seconds.

5. Zoho Bug Tracker
Another tool from Zoho, Bug Tracker lets your developers track website bugs, share files with one another, and link to version control systems to make sure you've identified problems and prioritized them accordingly. The service costs about $40 per month to manage 20 projects, but only the $60 and $80 plans include version control.

6. GroSocial
GroSocial is designed to help you grow your followers on Twitter. The basic idea is that you select your primary audience (say, those in real estate), and the service looks for like-minded contacts and follows them. This process takes time, but when I tested GroSocial, I noticed a jump of several hundred followers over a month period. You can also use the service, which costs about $20 per month, to grow your Facebook legions, create custom pages, and see reports.

7. PressKing
PressKing is a unique service in that it lets you distribute a press release to a network of about 200,000 contacts. The service also distributes press releases to social network contacts and via email. Prices start at about $50 for distributing a press release to about 500 journalists and bloggers.


Follow John on Twitter @jmbrandonbb

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Defuse An Angry Customer

By Geoffrey James | Inc.com

If you work with customers long enough, you'll eventually encounter one who's furious about something or other and can't resist yelling or otherwise acting abusive.

Your challenge is to address the problem with minimum wear and tear--for you, your staff, and the customer. Here's how.


Photo: Shutterstock Images

1. Don't take it personally.
Regardless of what customers may believe, the real reason they're is yelling at you is always about something else that's going on in their lives. It's just your bad luck that you're in the line of fire when the customer is having a horrible day, week, or year.

2. Do not react to the anger.
When confronted by anger, most people react one of two ways: 1) becoming angry themselves or 2) attempting to placate to make peace. Both approaches are mistakes in this case. If you become angry, it only feeds the customer's anger. And if you placate, you'll simply be training the customer to continue to act like a jackass.

3. Expect and demand civility.
State clearly and firmly that you're willing to help resolve the problem, but you won't be yelled at or treated disrespectfully. Don't mince words. Make it clear that your help is dependent upon the customer's ability to behave in a civilized manner. In most cases, the customer will actually breathe a sigh of relief.

4. If the customer won't comply, end the conversation.
Do this politely but firmly. State that you'll be glad to help once the customer is willing to treat you with the respect that you deserve. Yes, you may lose that customer. However, you've also lost the constant headache that customer will become if you don't set reasonable boundaries.

5. Apologize for the problem.
After you've demanded and received civil behavior--and only then--apologize for the inconvenience that the problem has caused the customer. Then explain that you are just as committed as the customer to resolving the problem fairly and equitably.

6. Work on the problem.
Now that you've established rapport and the fact that you won't be abused, you can go ahead and work on the customer's issue. If the problem can't be resolved immediately, set up a way to report your progress.

You need to follow up religiously, because that will prove you're worthy of keeping the customer's business.

Follow Geoffrey on Twitter @Sales_Source

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7 More Great Entrepreneurship Books That Have Nothing To Do With Business

By Bill Murphy, Jr. | Inc.com

Recently, I wrote a column singling out The Great Escape, which is about a break out from a World War II prison camp, as the greatest book ever written about entrepreneurship. I give it that accolade despite the fact the book (like the more famous 1963 movie) has nothing at all to do with starting or running a business.


Photo: kalebdf via Flickr

My rationale is that at its core, entrepreneurship isn't so much about business as it is about pursuing opportunity. Instead, entrepreneurship is a management style focused on the relentless "pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled."

In other words: Find a problem, formulate a uniquely effective way to solve it, and execute.

I gave a guest lecture in Professor Gary Jonas's MBA class at Johns Hopkins University last week incorporating my Great Escape theory, and it sparked a very interesting discussion. That led me think about how many other great and inspiring books fall into the same category: incredible stories about entrepreneurship that have little or nothing to do with business.

So, in no particular order, here are seven more examples:

1. Between a Rock and a Hard Place (2004)
Aron Ralston's account of how he became trapped under a boulder in a remote canyon while climbing in a remote area of Utah. As he had not told anyone where he was going, Ralston knew nobody would be looking for him.

Problem: Escape from a slow, certain death using only the meager contents of Ralston's rucksack.

Solution: After five days, convinced he had no other options, Ralston broke the bones in his arm and used a dull, two-inch knife to amputate it. His 2004 book was made into a 2010 movie starring James Franco.

2. Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told by One Who Knows the Game (1988)
Somewhat forgotten but for the author's eponymous television show, this 1998 book "is like a modern version of Machiavelli's The Prince, only much more richly illustrated," according to the official Amazon review.

Problem: How do you get things done in Washington?

Solution: It all starts with the very first chapter in the book: "It's Not Who You Know; It's Who You Get to Know." In other words, acquire resources (contacts) without regard to who you're connected to at the start.

3. The Aeneid
Pretty much the granddaddy of Western literature, Virgil's epic poem tells two long stories: The journey of Aeneas from Troy to found Rome, and the war between the Greeks and the Trojans.

Problem: The one we're focusing on here is the most famous: How can the Greeks conquer Troy?

Solution: Sneak a bunch of Greek soldiers into Troy by hiding them in a giant wooden horse, convincing the Trojans to bring the horse into their city, breaking out of the horse, and slaughtering everyone.

4. The Man Who Never Was (1954)
Another wartime one. In 1943, the Germans knew the Allies would invade Europe. They just didn't know where or when. The book was written by Ewen Montagu, a lawyer and wartime naval intelligence officer who came up with a bizarre solution.

Problem: Deceive the Axis powers into thinking Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, would take place elsewhere.

Solution: Obtain a dead body, preferably of a drowning victim, convince his family to release his body without knowing what would become of it, handcuff a briefcase filled with fake war plans to his arm, and launch it from a submarine. The body washed up on the Spanish coast, and the Germans were fooled into believing he was a courier whose plane had crashed.

5. Moneyball (2003)
Michael Lewis wrote this book about the 2002 Oakland Athletics, who put together one of the best teams in professional baseball despite a budget less than one-third of the league-leading New York Yankees.

Problem: With limited financial resources, draft the best players in baseball.

Solution: Employ a different, fact-based way of evaluating and judging players. Revolutionize baseball, win 20 games in a row.

6. All the President's Men (1974)
Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post penned this account of their investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal. (Full disclosure: I worked for Woodward from 2005 to 2007.)

Problem: Despite massive White House pressure, investigate one of the biggest political scandals in American history.

Solution: Assemble the best available version of the truth by following the money and leveraging every possible source--including waiters, security guards, secretaries and, famously, the deputy director of the FBI.

7. One Day, All Children (2003)
Wendy Kopp wrote this first-person account of how she turned her Princeton senior thesis into the nonprofit education giant, Teach for America.

Problem: Provide every child in America with the opportunity to attain an excellent education.

Solution: Beg, borrow, cajole, and do everything but steal to scrounge resources and put together TFA, which now places more than 8,000 young teachers a year in some of the nation's most disadvantaged schools.

Follow Bill on Twitter @BillMurphyJr

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5 Ways To Make Your Own Happiness

By Kevin Daum | Inc.com

Another Independence Day has come and gone. Now the topic of freedom is mostly left to a barrage of political commercials designed to convince you that your freedom is at risk. Truthfully, neither major party is about to wipe out all the freedom this country provides. But real freedom comes only to those willing to break out from conventional thought and propaganda.


Photo: Getty Images

On a personal level, I got married this week, which makes freedom a very relevant topic. Some believe marriage means relinquishing freedom, but my previous marriage experience (mostly positive for 20 years, until it wasn't) taught me that stability and certainty provides greater freedom to grow and learn rather than being mentally oppressed by issues with basic happiness.

In that spirit, I am identifying five freedoms you need to be successful in business and in life, as well as ways to achieve them.

1. Freedom From Negativity
Cynicism and age seem to go together. No wonder since the longer you live, the more you see to make you cynical. But just because naysayers are everywhere doesn't mean you have to buy into their ugly nasty world. No matter how bad things get, I always manage to keep a sense of humor about me. There is plenty of real trauma out there so there is no need to add to the drama of the day.

Path to Freedom: Make humor a priority. Most negative attitudes and actions are excellent fodder for comedy. Running a constant satire in your head will help you turn an angry fit into a roll of the eyes and a smile. My favorite tool for ridicule of a bad situation is creating limericks.

2. Freedom From Materialism
There is nothing wrong with collecting toys: houses, cars, boats, etc., but these things have a way of owning us, particularly when we finance them. I've had my share, and I find that my life is much more free without these possessions. I can still play by renting a convertible or beach house when I want and not feeling guilty for paying for something sitting unused.

Path to Freedom: Make a list of the material needs that truly matter if you were to start over tomorrow. Then sell or give away everything that's not on that list. Having freedom from lots of stuff and monthly overhead allows you the ability to be agile and to capitalize on bigger and better opportunities.

3. Freedom From the Status Quo
Inertia is a powerful oppressor. The bigger my platform gets, the harder it appears to move people to action that is meaningful. Once people get comfortable with a rhythm it's very hard to get them to risk moving out of it. And yet it's only when you try something new or see things in a new way that you are able to cast off the everyday chains that bind you.

Path to Freedom: Challenge your own beliefs and patterns. Identify a longtime habit each week and break it. It might be a different order at Starbucks or a different route for your exercise run. The change of perspective will give you insight and empower you to expand beyond your normalized existence.

4. Freedom From Mediocrity
Many people I know today are overloaded with work. But it's not the workload that is oppressing. It's the frustration at their inability to do all that work in an exemplary way. I don't mind getting my butt kicked if I have amazing product to show for it. But when I slog through mud just to end up with something lackluster, I feel spent and futile.

Path to Freedom: Learn how to say no. If you limit your projects to a few important initiatives, you can focus the time and attention that will allow your best skills and creativity to shine through. Then you will be proud of your accomplishments and make larger gains in life.

5. Freedom From Expectations
Family, employers, colleagues and clients all have expectations for you. Sometimes, they are realistic and warranted, but often, they are unfounded and unreasonable. And yet, you can't help but feel responsible for their dissatisfaction when you fall short. The weight of expectations can crush a person's soul or at least their happiness.

Path to Freedom: First, do your best to manage people's expectations. Tell them what you believe to be realistic and put it in writing. If they don't believe you, then make a conscious decision to not be responsible for their experience. If you told them in writing and they are still disappointed, it's on them not you. That may not make them happy but it allows you to be free of the guilt.

Certainly breaking the bonds of all this oppression requires focus and effort, but as our founding fathers showed, most freedom worth having requires hard work and commitment. I'll be happily making my commitment at the altar this week and beginning my exciting, newly found freedom with the love of my life.

Follow Kevin on Twitter @awesomeroar

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2 Radical Ideas For Start-Up Success

By Khary Cuffe | Inc.com

It's a pretty well-accepted fact that entrepreneurs typically approach business differently than traditional Corporate America workers.

But many successful entrepreneurs take it a step further and completely flip the script in order to subscribe to a new business paradigm. Would your business benefit from a new way of thinking? Chris Guillebeau, an intriguing entrepreneur, traveler, and writer, offers just such a new formula in his new book, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future.


Photo: Getty Images

When he approached us about featuring Heritage Link Brands in his book, we were immediately aligned with its core principles, which involve the critical role of freedom and value within the microbusiness revolution. We also appreciated that he understood that renegade entrepreneurs--those who buck the system and go solo--can now test, launch, and scale their projects extremely quickly and on the cheap. He eschews some of the more traditional paths to starting your own small business and instead focuses the book on folks who start microbusinesses without investment or employees, and often without any expertise in the area they're pursuing.

There were two ideas that particularly resonated with me, because I've personally experienced just how much they have allowed our business to thrive through its ups and downs:

1. The Power of the Almighty "Side Hustle"

The book encourages entrepreneurs to not limit themselves to their primary business idea but instead to also consider offshoots, spinoffs, and side projects. They shouldn't exist because things are going poorly with your main hustle--precisely the opposite. Instead, Guillebeau encourages us to pursue other passions in the midst of success.

When my wife and I set out on the entrepreneurial yellow-brick road, it was tempting to give up our side hustles--mainly rental properties. There were already so many things on our plate: We'd just gotten married, were pregnant with our first child, and now had a fantastic new opportunity that nobody else in the market had yet moved on. No matter the warnings, nothing could truly prepare me for the level of blood, sweat, and tears that went into our first year of business.

Yet, even with that, I am grateful that we held on to our side hustles. Financially and mentally, it was important to have buffers in place to prevent us from getting thrown off by the inevitable challenges of our new wine business. In essence, I went from viewing our side hustles as optional--glorified chump change--to viewing them as keys to the kingdom. They are integral cornerstones of our financial foundation that solidified the path for us to pursue our passions.

2. Give the People What They Want

Out of the gate, our focus was solely on importing black-produced wines from South Africa into the United States. But consumers soon let us know that they were also interested in enjoying wines produced by indigenous producers in other regions as well. Since we were just getting our bearings with South African wines (and importation!), it was enticing to play it safe and stick to our business plan, especially given the superhigh rate of new small businesses that fold in the first three years.

We had done our due diligence, and it felt a bit crazy to turn our focus topsy-turvy--especially so quickly. But, man, am I happy that we decided to give the people what they wanted, because the people indeed knew what they were talking about! Thankfully, their feedback and purchasing habits matched. And it opened us up to a new plane of valuable large customers, such as airlines and restaurants, that were attracted to our more diverse wine portfolios.

Rather than thinking that the most groundbreaking ideas are for "that maverick over there," it's time to consider that you may indeed be that maverick! Whether you adopt a completely new paradigm, or commit to constantly questioning your assumptions and remaining open to startling new ways of thinking, it could just generate your next big business triumph.

Follow Khary on Twitter @KCuffe

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How To Get Your Parents To Support Your Start-Up Dreams

By Jessica Stillman | Inc.com

With many traditional career paths such as law becoming less secure, entrepreneurship might be comparatively less risky these days. Only plenty of parents don't believe that. To many concerned moms and dads, starting your own business is financially risky--and terribly draining. Sure, it can have big rewards when it comes to life satisfaction (or net worth), but the path is steep and difficult. Shouldn't you just get a regular job or stay in school?


Photo: Shutterstock Images

No wonder telling your folks you've decided to quit cube life (or college) and pursue your entrepreneurial ambitions can be daunting. Just ask Justin Beegel, founder of data visualization company InfographicWorld, who told his story on the blog Under30CEO.

I was 23. I was single. I had no family to support. If there was ever a time to do something bold, this was it. Worst-case scenario, my business would fail. So I'd get another job or start something else. I was confident this was the time to make my move, to make my side business my main business, to become an entrepreneur. Convincing my parents of this was another matter, and even though I had the support of my closest friends, the knots in my stomach were severely impeding my appetite--not to mention my verbal communication skills--as I found myself at the weekend breakfast table of my dear parental units, trying to find the best way to broach the subject.

Although there were some bumps in the road and tough parental questions asked, everything worked out all right for Beegel and his parents. What can you do to ensure a similar positive outcome if you're about to walk the same road and broach your start-up dreams with your family for the first time? Beegel has a few suggestions:

Lay it all out--every gory detail. I've learned from my mistakes--and there have been plenty--and every time I've told my father exactly what went wrong with my business, he's helped me tweak things to make sure I don’t make the same mistake again.

Be 100% honest. Parents want nothing but the best for their children, and if you come to them earnestly looking for help, you'll likely find that they'll be more than willing to do so.

But Beegel isn't the only young entrepreneur out there with advice on the subject. A blog, Milk the Pigeon (if you're overcome with curiosity about the name, click here), has simple advice for young people with big, unorthodox dreams: "There is no best time. If you wait, you'll never find a good time go. You'll find a million excuses to stay and keep loathing your daily existence." And ReadWriteWeb recently offered nine helpful tips on how to get your parents to support your start-up. Among them:

Don't get too full of yourself. "Show your parents that you have thought [your idea] through to the long term, not just what you hope happens in six months," says Kelsey Meyer, vice president of Digital Talent Agents. "Also, do not try to compare yourself to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram--those are the exceptions, not the rule, and parents know it."

See their perspective. "Until my third year of being self-employed, my parents--who are baby boomers--thought I was out of my mind," says Faiyaz Farouk, whose company, S2 Leadership Consultants, advises businesses on working with Gen-X and Gen-Y employees. The strategy that won them over? "Understand and respect where they are coming from," advises Farouk. "Use their values, and talk from their perspective, without losing your ground on your decision."

Explain your idea on their terms. "You have to instill confidence in them, not only that your idea is a good one, but also that you are capable of actually creating it, and convincing people to use it," says Tashfeen Ekram, whose start-up, SchedFull.com, helps physicians and other professionals fill canceled appointments. "Selling it to them on their own terms is key. I had to explain the usefulness of the product from my father’s standpoint. We are trying to reduce wait times for doctors, and when he realized it could save him time and allow him to see his doctor sooner, he was sold [on its usefulness]."

Check out the complete post for the rest of the solid advice.

Follow Jessica on Twitter @EntryLevelRebel

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