That speech today? Pretty much as expected.

The proposals included an R&D tax credit, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, and a plan to allow businesses to write off investments through 2011. The Journal has a nice summary.

Perhaps more interesting were Obama's comments on tax policy. The President pledged to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle class families but to allow the tax cuts to expire for the richest Americans, a group that is said to include many small businesses:

To be sure, a compromise on the income tax rates is still possible, but assuming this proposal went through, how would your business be affected?

As we pass Labor Day, it is a good day to look at the changing labor force in the US, and how that affects startups. In April, I wrote about “Virtual Workers as a Start-Up Resource” and the trends we saw then have accelerated. Independent workers make up 30% of the nation’s workforce, according to the Freelancers Union.

I spoke with Gary Swart, CEO of ODesk (#286 on the INC 500), a marketplace for online workers and companies that hire them. With over 715,000 contractors and 215,000 employers, ODesk shows an increase (up until the past quarter) (correction) of Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) utilizing contractors via their online marketplace. They report that contractor earnings were up 82% from this time last year. The average overall rates that ODesk contractors make is pretty low compared to US minimum wage – but that reflects the global nature of their business, said Swart. "Jobs like software development have a much higher average cost-per-hour, and you can see US rates in the stats [above].”

“Demand for tech skills is very active and always has been,” said Swart. “Early adopters are there, and things can be done internationally. New products like mobile development, Photoshop (with special interest around latest release), iPhone, iPad and Android development [are popular]. We’re also seeing a spike for project management – up 70% for this skill set. If I’m hiring a team of remote workers, I’d like to be in control, but have someone to manage the project. Lots of start-ups are hiring teams of developers all managed by a single resource.”

Swart also told me that Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Optimization are all marketing functions that small companies are outsourcing via ODesk. Additionally, many are now trying “home-shoring” instead of off-shoring. They are using talent here in the US to get jobs done. “Our growth in the US has been spectacular. We hit a low for wages in January 2009 but the average has risen about 20% since then.”

As noted in the previous article, trust is often difficult when you’re outsourcing a job, but ODesk provides feedback and reputation scores. It also lets you pay workers as complete contractors using a W9, or as employees with benefits using a W2 system. Your company pays ODesk and they handle the taxes and payments without you having to manage that. ODesk takes a percentage of the paid hourly rate, and to contractor it offers guaranteed payments. Via their team room platform, employers can see what contractors are working on at any time, via screen shots. There is significant growth in this outsourcing market – ODesk reports an increase of 2% per week in hours contractors are billing, and the company’s growth is up 500%.

At press time I received some stats from ODesk competitor ELance that confirm this growth – they note “62% of service providers stated that their income has increased in the past 12 months and 58% feel that they will find more online work in the coming 12 months.”

Has your startup used outsourced labor via ODesk or a similar site to save money or find skills you couldn’t find locally? Let us know how it went in the comments below.

Tomas Barreto said no to Microsoft. After two summers working in the software giant's accounting division, Barreto turned down an offer for full-time work. Instead, he went in search of a start-up where he could play a bigger role, and perhaps get a bit more recognition for his contributions.

The same year, Barreto met Dylan Smith, a classmate who founded Box.net, a cloud-computing software start-up that ranks 152 on the 2010 Inc. 500 list. The two hit it off and soon Smith offered Barreto a job at Box.net, which was based in Palo Alto. Barreto decided to make the move. "One of the biggest selling points for me was having that level of impact and ownership, giving me a lot of the skills I needed to grow," says Barreto who's now 24. "I'd have more of the ability to make decisions from a product and engineering standpoint and have the resources to become a manager, which I am now."

Apart from his speedy promotion, Barreto has also enjoyed the excitement and risk-reward element to his job, which he thinks encourages him to challenge himself more. He's happy, productive, and feels valuable at work. He's not sure he'd feel the same way at a large corporation.

How can you compete with the big dogs when searching for new talent? We've created a list of strategies companies can use to attract, connect with, and hire the country's most talented college graduates.

Recruiting on College Campuses: Focus On Your Strengths and Connect

Companies, especially small and growing companies, should realize they are in a position to offer employees a lot of room to grow. Even if they can't match the starting salary of bigger companies, start-ups can make employees feel a lot more important by fostering open communication and project ownership.

Aaron Levie, a co-founder of Box.net, believes this is one of the biggest draws that brought Barreto and other great young employees to his company. He says candidates are generally good at choosing if they want to take the start-up route or work for a large corporation, but as a founder or representative of a start-up, it is your job to communicate the advantages and disadvantages of each. "When you're working for Microsoft or Google, a specific project will have a longer release cycle and you won't see the benefit for a much longer period of time," he says. As Levie describes, this is the difference "between being in the rain nine months of the year or being in the sun 12 months of year."

Experts agree that start-ups are in a unique position to allow employees to grow and innovate. Beverly Principal, assistant director of employment services at Stanford University's Career Development Center, says the most successful companies are the ones that communicate to students how involved they can be in their new idea. "The No. 1 thing that students are attracted to at startups is the ability to be visible and play a larger role of a really cool product or project," Principal says. "At a larger company, maybe the excitement isn't there, or it's harder to figure out or harder to find," she says.

Beyond recognizing those advantages, students also want to feel as if your company has a genuine interest in pursuing them. Much of this gets back to old-fashioned sales and marketing. Principal says that the most successful companies at career fairs will go out of their way to say hi to students and give feedback on their resumes. They will also be knowledgeable about their organization and what kind of environment students find appealing.

Dig Deeper: 10 Tips For Recruiting at Business Schools

Recruiting on College Campuses: Overcome Name Recognition Shortcomings

Emerging from obscurity is never easy. One of the inherent challenges to recruiting for any small company is getting prospective talent to relate to your brand when they likely have never heard of it. Principal advises smaller companies to first get students to understand what they do and who they are before trying to pursue them. "Is there something that the company does that they can start a conversation with a student about?" she asks. Once again, it's all about communication skills and finding areas that truly interest people.

Mary Scott, founder of the Scott Resource Group, based in West Hartford, Connecticut, has been consulting in the recruiting field for more than 20 years. She agrees that building a warm and welcoming presence on-campus is a great way to reach students. "An awful lot of large employers waste a lot of money and don't invest what truly matters to students, and that's face time," Scott says.

Some of the ways she suggests companies build on-campus rapport is to get involved with student associations and leadership groups that align with your business. Don't bother spreading your resources too thin by sending recruiters just to job fairs all across the country. The most efficient recruitment programs focus their searches on specific schools or even specific programs within those schools.

For instance, Scott cites a consulting firm in Chicago that has established a virtual stranglehold over students in Notre Dame's graduate business program. The firm has zeroed in on the exact type of employee it needs and uses its alumni presence at the school to continue networking with contacts and incoming students. As Scott points out, the firm used its established resources efficiently without having to branch too far out.

Dig Deeper: 2010 Top Small Company Workplaces

Recruiting on College Campuses: Get Creative

If you're struggling to find a personal inroad to your target population, try getting a little creative. Check out an advertisement that Box.net took out in the Stanford Daily last spring before the career fair. It featured a complicated math puzzle to attract students from Stanford's elite engineering program. Those who figured out the puzzle could enter a contest for a chance to win an iPad.

The ad's purpose was to "narrowly address" a desired audience, says Levie. "It was the cheapest thing we spent on the recruiting effort but it had the highest reward," he says.

Any way to create a buzz on campus will go a long way in terms of brand recognition. Sponsoring events, guest speaking at student organizations, or participating in alumni networks are each parts of the labor-intensive method of college recruiting. "You don't need to be a household name by any stretch," Scott says. "You just need to attract students attention and get them to start thinking about what they can do for your firm."

Dig Deeper: How to Manage Your Company's Brand

Recruiting on College Campuses: Make Them Want To Come To You

At this point, almost every CEO wants to make staff happiness a top priority. But how can a scrappy start-up compete with the employee-indulgent Zappos and Googles of the world? Don't think of it as a competition: It turns out that making employees feel at home is always more personal than material.

"Culture is how you treat people, the intangible perks, the office environment, and the overall opportunity for growth," says Seth Besmertnik, CEO and co-founder of Conductor, an SEO measurement-and-technology firm based in New York. "People who are great will always have lots of options, and recognize that you need to sell them as much as they need to sell you," says Besmertnik, whose commitment to quality culture landed Conductor on Crain's New York Business' "Best Places to Work in NYC" list in 2009.

In his effort to "sell" prospective employees, Besmertnik has tried lots of tactics. He's sent surprise packages with company baseball bats; he's waited outside people's apartments. He's even sent pictures of people's seats in the office with personalized nameplates on them. Though the company's success can now speak for itself, Conductor still greets interviewees at the door with a folder containing an itinerary with pictures of whom they will be meeting with that day. "It's such an easy thing to do, but it makes people impressed with us," says Besmertnik.

Another way to expose your company's culture is through internships. Intern programs allow students and employees to sow relationships for the future. Box.net's Levie admits that this is one of the reasons larger companies have been so successful at retaining top talent, as many will hesitate to relinquish personal connections they had within a company. "You really want to attract some of the best talent before they are in a position to make a life commitment," he says. Offering the internship is only half the battle, though, as you must keep in contact with your interns to make sure they enjoyed working at your organization and want to come back.

Dig Deeper: How to Make New Employees Feel at Home

Recruiting on College Campuses: Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Common sense would lead us to believe that social media is the best way to target a student audience. The college generation spends endless amounts of hours online interacting with friends, so why shouldn't we interact with them there as well?

Unfortunately, not all students want employers entering their private space. While finding a job may be a top priority, students still want to separate that time from their social outlets. "What employers and a lot of marketing firms quite frankly don't understand is that students do not want them interacting with them on social sites," says Scott, who has conducted focus groups with students on recruiting. "I've had students tell me that they feel stalked by employers and strangely enough, consider it an unprofessional practice," she says.

In spite of such obstacles, there are appropriate ways of using social media to connect with students. LinkedIn is one of the most effective tools that companies can use to reach out and network with prospective employees. But a site like LinkedIn only works if you can get employees on board. "At Box, we encourage recent grads and more senior employees to join their college alumni groups on LinkedIn and regularly post job openings," says Levie. CEOs like Levie and Besmertnik are apt to point to their roles as the company's No. 1 evangelist, letting the excitement trickle down. "This has to happen organically, with employees getting genuinely excited about the features we're rolling out or a revenue milestone," Levie says.

Or, you can try something a little old school. Besmertnik says he thinks chivalry is back. He encourages employees to reach out to recruits with hand-written notes or e-mails to interact with them personally and make them feel important. If your employees have genuine enthusiasm about your company – enthusiasm that they are willing to share on Facebook and Twitter – it will likely translate to prospective employers as well.

Dig Deeper: How To Use Twitter as a Recruiting Tool

In 2009 alone, 4.5 million trade and convention show delegates traveled to Las Vegas, to attend one of nearly 20,000 meetings and conventions, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Association. That alone generated $4.5 million in non-gaming related revenue for the city (which has hosted the most conferences in North America for 16 straight years), so clearly conferences and trade shows are big business.

For attendees and speakers, trade shows can be an intimidating multi-day forum where you make new business connections, learn what others in your space are succeeding with, and learn what you can do better. Particularly in a time of corporate fiscal responsibility like we are in today, individuals need to prove to their companies perhaps more than ever that trade show/conference attendance is just as important to business success as it always has been, and perhaps even more.

But when you attend a conference, how can you be sure to avoid the overwhelming number of people, events, trade booths and more? "A majority of my work in attending a conference is done before I even leave home," notes conference-goer Dennis Yu, co-founder and CEO of BlitzLocal.com, which provides Facebook advertising for brands and local businesses. "Particularly if I'm speaking, but even if I'm just an attendee, you need to study up on the conference. I mean, why are you going if you haven't properly researched it?"

This guide will explain how important pre-conference preparation is to making your conference attendance a better experience, sharing some tips once you are there as a speaker or attendee, and the best ways to follow up after everyone has gone back to their daily lives.

How to Get the Most Out of a Conference: Pre-Conference Preparation

Luckily for conference-goers in 2010, pre-conference preparation is considerably easier than it's ever been in years past. Doing your homework and preparing before you attend has always been important, but with the advancements in technology (namely social media and web tools), there's no excuse for attending a conference unprepared.

"Most people start their homework with the speakers, researching them, and maybe connecting with them," says Valeria Maltoni, a noted blogger and director of strategy at Powered, Inc., where she advises companies on social strategy. "You have plenty of tools to search on Twitter, Facebook and many other networks for the names of people who will be at the conference and what their backgrounds are. Not to mention, most conferences have their own sites with social media integrated into it, so you can connect with other attendees via those channels."

A good strategy before conferences once you've seen the speaker and attendee list is to select the people you'd like to connect with. Depending on the situation and your past attendance of similar industry-related events, that list could be relatively short or more vast. If you're well established in the topic, perhaps you want to focus on making a few really strong and solid connections. If you're just getting started and want to use the conference to get to know people, aim for a higher number.

"Now that people know who I am, it is considerably easier to meet people at a conference because they come to you, particularly when you're a speaker," says Yu. "But even if nobody knows who you are, making valuable connections is so much more important than just spreading yourself around. Don't ever try to connect with a session speaker after they've just spoken, because you'll be in a group with all the other people from that session. Rather, do your homework ahead of time and figure out who makes the most sense to meet with, and reach out to them."

When you're connecting with people, an important skill to remember is to connect with people who might not be able to only help you, but who may also be able to help other people in your network. If you can connect someone with an existing connection or relationship that might work with him or her quicker than you, you'll be seen as an important contact because of your ability to connect.

"One of my favorite strategies is to determine how many people at the conference I can connect with other people in my network that might be helpful to them or vice versa," Maltoni says. "At the end of the day, it strengthens everybody's network that much more and makes everyone's experience much more useful."

Once you've established whom you want to talk to, you can email them to set up a meeting over breakfast, lunch, or coffee. Start doing this outreach a few weeks before the conference. Another option is to tweet with them or friend request them on Facebook. Beyond the pre-conference networking, you should determine what sessions you'll want to attend before you even leave home. Take a look at the conference website, the different tracks, the speakers and figure out how your time can be spent most effectively. And then schedule the aforementioned meetings around what you can't miss.

The final thing you should think about before you lave home is conference essentials. Bring business cards, notebooks, pens, proper attire, work samples, and anything else you might need when you're meeting new potential business partners. Think about it as if someone were visiting your office, and what barebones materials you would need to properly describe your role in the business to them.

Dig Deeper: How to Survive a Las Vegas Trade Show

How to Get the Most Out of a Conference: Making the Most of Your Time

It's not a good idea to completely book your schedule before you arrive at the conference, deciding upon sessions and scheduling all of your meetings. You want to leave some free time in case things come up unexpectedly. For each session you attend, a good starting point is to aim for three takeaways or points from the presentation. Additionally, you should always aim to connect with the person sitting next to you. You have no idea what kind of knowledge might be there, and you never know how that person could help you or vice versa.

"One of my principles, particularly in conferences today, is that I don't tweet or blog during any sessions," Maltoni says. "I'm not saying that's the best strategy, but I feel like if I'm playing around with these other tools, I'm not taking in all of the information from the presentation. Rather, you're only getting individual tidbits of information rather than the larger picture."

Perhaps one of the more intimidating parts of any conference, navigating the trade booth floor can be either a great waste of time or a great way to make new contacts and learn about the companies who are presenting. It's important to take at least one solid lap around the trade show floor. For some attendees, it's all about what booths catch your eye or are flashy. For others, it's about learning more from a company that you may have heard of or learned about previously in a presentation or session.

"You need to be quick but effective as you scan the trade show floor," Maltoni says. "If you do a little research ahead of time on what companies are going to be there and then you go in with specific questions, it shows them that you're not just the average conference attendee. Those people get so tired of repeating what their company does throughout the conference, so somebody different could make a mark. And you never know who the person at the booth is and how they could help you, or vice versa."

Often, key marketing contacts from companies can be found manning trade show booths, which offers an outstanding opportunity for you as an attendee or speaker to learn more about the company, but also to connect with someone at the company you likely would not otherwise meet.

Dig Deeper: How to Boost Traffic at Your Trade Show Booth


How to Get the Most Out of a Conference: Networking Strategy

When you're killing time between sessions and making connections, don't join another conversation unless you've read the body language of the people already talking. If it is open and inviting, introduce yourself and talk about something relevant to the event (perhaps a topic of one of the recent keynote speeches). Don't use these short meetings to try and pitch yourself, because you'll quickly alienate yourself from the other people and end the relationship before it even gets started.

On the topic of business cards, it's not a good strategy to hand a business card out to everyone you come into contact with during the conference, but rather with those you make a real connections with. It's better to make a few really solid business contacts that could lead to working together than it is to collect 50 business cards from different individuals. And a good trick to keep track of people, regardless of how many contacts you meet, is to take notes about the other person on the back of their business cards. This way, when you get back to your hotel room at the end of the night, you'll remember who each person was and what made them valuable to you. Some people even include photos on their business cards, to make themselves more memorable.

"It doesn't matter if you don't get back to your hotel room until 1am and you're exhausted," says Yu. "You absolutely need to follow up with each person you had a memorable conversation with that day. If you wait, it just won't happen. And you can catch up on sleep when you're back at home. "

Dig Deeper: How to Choose the Best Business Card for Your Company


How to Get the Most Out of a Conference: After Its Over

As previously noted, following up as soon as possible is vital to building and maintaining a relationship. It's always best to follow up with someone when your conversation is fresh in your mind, regardless of whether or not you plan on doing business together immediately. Yu's strategy of following up the same night of the initial contact is a great one, but you also need to make sure that you're in touch again within a few weeks, even if you don't necessarily have work to do together.

If you are at the conference with other people from your company, and even if you're not, you will need to report back to the office with what you learned and whom you met. Laying out a strategy ahead of time on who you want to talk to, what you want to attend and being efficient but memorable during the course of the conference can make that considerably easier. And that in turn makes you look smarter not only to your present employer, but to all of those other people you met, who you may need down the road.

Dig Deeper: How to Network Effectively

Today, Epson unveiled a line of affordable projectors designed for small- and mid-size businesses. The EX-Series features three projectors with 2,600-lumen lamps that can last up to 5,000 hours in economy mode. All three projectors have handy features such as the ability to start up in only five seconds. Each one weighs just 5.1 pounds and comes with a soft carrying case and remote control. Resolution varies by model. The projectors, which start at $549, will be available this month at stores such as Best Buy, Staples, and Amazon.com. Plus, read more about projectors in 4 Great New Projectors.

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today:

Your virtual suggestion box.Companies are spending more money on employee innovation. A lot more money. TodayBusinessWeek reports that companies spend an annual $250 million on software that mines their workforce's "collective intelligence," organizes the resulting suggestions, and predicts which ones are most likely to succeed. Luis Solis, executive vice president of Imaginatik, which creates this kind of software, estimates that the market for these products is growing by as much as 30 percent a year. Primary motivators for the initiative include improving customer service, spurring innovation, and taming research costs. AT&T is spearheading the movement, offering incentives to increase employee participation, like virtual currency that can be used to bet on which ideas are most likely to succeed.

What we can expect from Obama.In Ohio today, President Obama isexpected to push forincentives that would let small businesseswrite off all spendingon new equipment and plants between today and the end of 2011. Officials say it could benefit 1.5 million companies, amounting to the biggest temporary investment incentive in history. Whether we'll actually see businesses making significant investments remains to be seen - especially since existing Section 179 expensing already allows for small businesses to write off $250,000 in certain equipment expenses. Pay attention to what the president says about theresearch and development tax credit: It's been extended more than a dozen times since it was created three decades ago, but it could be expanded and made permanent now.

Shots fired at big VC firms. Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon is both an entrepreneur and early-stage seed investor, so he's experienced both sides of the investment equation. And now, via a blog post titled "Things I'd do if I ran a big VC firm," he'staking large VC firms to taskfor the way they operate. First on the list: "lower management fees so that they cover necessary expenses an[d] reasonable salaries (e.g. 200K, not 3M)," Dixon writes. "[B]asically be like a startup and only make money when your investors make money." And our favorite: "keep a database of every employee of every company I invested in," Dixon says. "[S]o for example when a company goes under, you can help their employees and your investments by finding jobs for the best employees." If that's not already being done, it should be.

When bedbugs attack...the office. Lately, business owners in the Big Apple have been dealing with a big problem -- bedbugs. According to The New York Times, the city's recent infestation should be a wake up call to small business owners around the country who need to be more proactive about keeping bedbugs at bay. The Chancellor Hotel in San Francisco, for example, is a model of bedbug awareness. It has a "bedbug technician" on staff, who's responsible for checking every room for bedbugs, and any employee who spots one gets a $10 reward. Catching the critters early not only prevents the infestation from spreading (and driving up extermination costs), but it keeps customers from finding them first, and, says the hotel manager, "the value of a good reputation is infinite."

Chicago businesses nervous about Mayor's exit. With the recent announcement that after 21 years in office, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley would not seek re-election in 2011, Chicago-area businesses who have had a close working relationship with the Mayor are worried what the future may hold. Known for his pro-business agenda and his ability to lure corporate headquarters such as Boeing and MillerCoors to Chicago, Daley will leave office with the city facing some dire economic challenges. As the Chicago Tribune reports, the city faces a budget shortfall of more than $600 million and large liabilities for underfunded employee pensions. The next mayor will have their work cut out for them. As the president of the local Chamber of Commerce explained, "We need someone who can hit the ground running. The economy is not going to sit back and wait for someone to catch up."

Economy stresses states.An annualstudy by the Associated Pressfound that Nevada has been hit the hardest by the recession, and is particularly feeling the pain from unemployment. The analysis found that two in nine Nevadans were either unemployed, owned a home in foreclosure, or had filed for bankruptcy. Who's doing well? Look north to North Dakota (No. 1 in the ranking), South Dakota, and Nebraska.

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Google is attempting to help small businesses convert shoppers browsing online into in-store buyers with its "Local Shopping" feature.

The feature lets shoppers search for goods online then see who locally has the product in stock. Google started with big retailers such as Sears and Best Buy in March, but this month has opened up to small businesses.

Google isn't the first to highlight local inventory, of course. Two-year-old Milo – whose founder Jack Abraham made this year's Inc.'s 30 Under 30 list – hit its millionth user last December, just as it exited beta. (Among Milo's investors: Mint's Aaron Patzer and ComScore's Magid Abraham, who is Abraham's father.) Milo lists some 50,000 stores and 2.8 million products, and in April began reaching out to small independent firms.

"Everyone seems to think that when Google has something new, it will stomp out competitors," Abraham told VentureBeat last year, when Google first announced its plans. "It just doesn’t end up working that way."

Getting listed on Google's Local Shopping requires a bit of administrative work -- about five steps -- and the company says that not everyone who applies will be accepted. One prerequisite: good product search quality, including unique product identifiers. You'll also need to have your store listed on Google Places, which requires submitting and verifying your listings, if you haven't already. Businesses hoping to make the Local Shopping cut also must be open to the public. "By appointment" businesses don't qualify.

A study earlier this year shows that everyone (well, 97 percent of respondents) uses the Internet to help them shop locally. According to a March report from research firm BIA/Kelsey and its partner ConStat, 90 percent of users use search engines, 48 percent use Internet Yellow Pages, and 42 percent use comparison shopping sites. On average, consumers use 7.9 different media sources when shopping for products or services in their local area, up from 6.5 sources in 2009 and 5.8 in 2008. More than half of those surveyed (58 percent) say they used a coupon they got online when shopping for products or services in their local area.

A separate Forrester study estimated that retail sales valued at $917 billion were "Web-influenced" – and that by 2014, the Web will influence $1.4 trillion in sales, or 53 percent of all sales.

While the economic news these days offers more questions than answers, one thing remains relatively constant: the unemployment rate, which is still stuck at around 9 percent. Seems that all those folks who lost their jobs over the past few years can't seem to find someone willing to hire them. But that begs another question: How come you as a small business owner are having such a hard time filling your own open position?

The truth is, you know the job isn't the most glorious position ever conceived (think data entry, cold calls, or maybe even secretarial duties) but still – it's a job, right? Well maybe, but it might be worth your time to think about how and where you go looking to fill that position rather than just taking a "post it and they will come" mentality. After all, the more effective you are in finding someone who actually wants to do the job you're offering, the more everyone wins.

With that goal in mind, here are some tips about how to go about filling that pesky open position at your company.

1. Be Honest

You want to avoid the mistake of what could be called "putting lipstick on a pig," says Bruce Hurwitz of Hurwitz Strategic Staffing, where you try to build up a job to be something it isn't. "My advice is to paint an accurate picture of all the negatives," he says. "Candidates will respect your honesty, will like being treated with respect and will find the idea of having an honest boss with a sense of humor very appealing."

Joey Price, an HR specialist in Washington, D.C., agrees, saying that you should provide realistic job expectations in the job description and throughout the interview process. "You must be clear with the volume of work, pace of work, and any other details that others find unappealing," Price says. This ensures retention since different personality types view tasks very differently. Perhaps the culture of the workplace is full of just one personality type. Seeking someone who sees the job in a different light helps ensure that the job is done with a smile."

2. Look in Different Places

If you are having trouble filling a position, it might just be a symptom that you're not looking in the right places, says Abby Kohut, a veteran human resources recruiter, manager and consultant. She points to a mortician as an example of a position where 99.5 percent of people would not be interested in filling. Yet, if you know where to look, you might find more than a few people who would love it.

"I believe that even if a job is undesirable to most, there are people that are not only willing and able to do it but who would actually enjoy it," says Kohut. "Trying to pay someone who doesn't want to do the job more money as an incentive to do the job is not the right approach. Continuing to look for the right person is." That means don't just settling on posting an opening on Monster.com, she says, but tapping into social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. She also suggests looking for bloggers who are interested in the subject matter related to the job you're looking to fill. "To find the needle in the haystack, one has to first be looking in the right haystack," Kohut says.

3. Make It Temporary

If the problem with your open position is that you tend to experience high turnover within it – perhaps because its tedious or boring or comes with an unreasonably high workload – then you might want to consider making it a temporary six-month position says Robin Fischman, a health coach and veteran of the staffing industry. Temporary employees can be an excellent way to go when filling a hard to fill job because it becomes a, "try before you buy experience for both employee hopeful and company," says Catherine Pistole, founder of thetempfactor.com.

4. Show the Value

Many times candidates will reject jobs because they don't want to be a mere cog in the machine. Most employees crave recognition and the notion that their work makes a difference. That's why an important part of filling a tough open position is to tell candidates what makes the job there are interviewing for so important, says Fischman. She points to data entry as the type of job that few people actively seek, but that plays a key role in any company. "It may end up being important further down the road but at least you can communicate that this tedious data entry will be used by the directors of the company to assess the productivity of the brands, or that the information that will be used for a company wide initiative," she says. "The goal should be for people to see what value they are adding by doing the job."

5. Tout the Perks

While the candidate might not love the job, they may be willing to trade some of that off for different perks, such as, say, reimbursing approved college or professional classes, says Bettina Seidman, head of Seidbet Associates, a career counseling and performance coaching firm. Seidman also suggests mapping out a specific career path for the candidate that would lead to more compelling positions down the road.

Roberta Chinsky Matuson, president of Human Resource Solutions, which is based in Northampton, Massachusetts, says that you may be able to find interested candidates if you show them how something that could be seen as negative could actually be a perk in disguise. "Like most things in life, it's all about the marketing," says Matuson. "I'm not suggesting you should lie about the position, but certainly there must be some benefits associated with a particular job that would be appealing to job seekers. For example, suppose you have a position that requires coming in at 6:00 AM. You can focus on the fact that you'll avoid rush hour traffic and you'll be home in time to help your kids with their homework."

6. Divide and Conquer

There may be some jobs at your company like doing inventory, cleaning the coffee room or restrooms and answering the phones, that either don't warrant a full-time position even if you could find someone willing to do the job, says Sandra Lamb, a career, lifestyle, and etiquette expert. That's why she suggests dividing the job into parts - either by creating half-day coverage slots, or dividing it into segments that you can assign to your existing employees. "If everyone has to do part of the ‘undesirables,' and only briefly, it becomes palatable," Lamb says. "It can even build camaraderie and a friendly competition."

7. Outsource

If you have tried all the tips above and still can't seem to find someone willing to take the paycheck, maybe it's time to start looking to partner with an outside firm or individual instead. A simple Google search or a conversation with a peer could reveal that there are companies and services available to meet your needs at a price less than you would pay an employee. For example, you could hire a virtual assistant for your business through a business like Rent A Smile, which offers expertise in tasks such as administrative support (email handling, word processing), social media management (blogs, facebook fan pages), and research and marketing support (live chat, order taking), for plans starting at $200 a month, says Nikunj Mittal, Rent A Smile's CEO.

President Obama's big economic policy speech tomorrow should be interesting. The Journal is calling it "one of his most dramatic gestures to business."

Also planned is a $100 billion research and development tax credit. USAToday reports that the credit would rise from 14 percent to 17 percent and would become permanent.

The NFIB, which tends to oppose Democrats on pretty much everything, is already dismissing this as window dressing, but these policy announcements seem significant. Other business groups quoted in the Journal's story are giving the proposals faint praise. We should know more tomorrow.

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today:

What to expect for an entrepreneur who's expecting. Writing in today's New York Times "You're the Boss" blog, CEO and expectant mother Jennifer Walzer discusses some of the challenges she expects to face caring for a newborn while also running her business. As she explains, "When you are a pregnant business owner, people want to know how exactly you're going to handle everything. Truthfully? I have no idea." While video conferencing will help keep her connected while she works from home, Walzer says her biggest fear is that her physical absence will lead to diminished morale amongst her employees. Another challenge she faces is simply letting go of her business concerns and preparing for her September 21 due date. "It seems that the drive that helped me start and build my company just doesn't want to quit."

Four reasons to be hopeful. Today's Fortune lists four good reasons to have faith in the economy--namely, farming, corporate buying, manufacturing and "Detroit. Yes, that Detroit." According to the story, the country's farmers are set to export $107.5 billion in products by the end of this fiscal year. That's the second highest rate of exports ever, and, Fortune reports, "the surge will likely continue to last for a while as foreign markets, especially China, continue to demand products." And it's no secret that mergers and acquisitions have been all the rage lately, as a whopping $286 billion worth of deals went down in August alone. While manufacturing growth may be less obvious, Fortune points out that The Institute for Supply Management's factory index was at a three-month high in August. Then there's Detroit, the city that Fortune contends is experiencing a "re-birth," and is better for it.

Who is Marc Andreessen? The man who developed the browser that launched Netscape and speeded the dot-com gold rush has been dubbed "The King of Silicon Valley." The San Jose Mercury News attempts to dig deeper into Andreessen's wide-ranging career and factors motivating his growing $650 million investment fund, Andreessen Horowitz. But without an interview with Andreessen himself, it is mostly a collection of gushing quotes from Valley figures. "He's phenomenal," said serial entrepreneur Mike McCue. "He's operating at a different level." And Jim Chark, a well known technologist who teamed up with Andreessen on Netscape, said, "I take no credit for where Marc is. He is a natural leader with penetrating insight. My main contribution was to recognize his brilliance and get in front of the parade with him."

Tech sector slowdown. For the past few years, tech start-ups have been hailed as one of the few bright spots in our sluggish economy. Yet this week the New York Times reports that job growth in once-booming fields like computer system design and Internet publishing has slowed in the last year, while it has fallen in areas like data processing and software publishing. Likely a result of widespread joblessness throughout the country, the gloomy numbers have still left hordes of highly skilled engineers and college graduates without work. It also leaves many wondering how our economy will recover when the tech sector, once a vanguard of innovation and job creation, is failing to keep up. One of the biggest reason for the lull includes companies that are able to outsource cutting-edge skills once delegated only to the most skilled on our home turf. Now it seems companies can export those skills abroad or use computers to produce the same result.

iPad to face some fierce competition. Think again if you thought Apple was going to retain its stranglehold on the touchscreen "tablet" market. While Apple's iPad has opened eyes as the forerunner in the industry, CNET reports it will be seeing some formidable competition in the coming months from companies like Microsoft, Samsung, and Toshiba. Rumors are also circulating about a device from Research in Motion (your trusted Blackberry manufacturer) called the "Blackpad." Tech blog Gizmodo has reviewed five of the best tablets that have been revealed so far, ranking Samsung's Galaxy Tab (officially unveiled this week) even higher than the already familiar iPad.

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As a business owner looking for ways to stoke interest in your product or service, you might have overlooked an inexpensive yet effective differentiating tool: a warranty.

Many business owners might consider a warranty or a guarantee, two terms that are used interchangeably, as more of a matter left to their legal team. And to be sure, since a warranty is essentially a contractual agreement that the good or service you are selling will be of a particular quality and without defect, it behooves you to get some legal advice about it, says Enrico Shaefer, the founding attorney of Traverse Legal in Traverse City, Michigan.

The truth is that when you do sell something, you are actually already offering something called an "implied" warranty, which really means that there is some expectation about the quality of the product or service your customer is going to receive, Shaefer says, something that is detailed in Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code, a set of laws enforceable in most states. For instance, when you buy an ink pen, you can expect that it will work when you try to write with it or, with a car, that it will start and drive when you turn the key.

But warranties and guarantees also should be looked at from a different perspective where it can become a competitive advantage. That's where the notion of offering an "express" or "explicit" warranty – where you specify exactly what you are guaranteeing your customer – comes in. An example of this is when an automobile manufacturer offers a 10-year or 100,000 mile guarantee. While there are certain standards for big consumer purchases like cars and appliances, you can sometimes use a variation – like a lifetime guarantee – as a way to set you apart from your competition. "A warranty can be incredibly valuable as a marketing tool," says Shaefer. "What you're really trying to do is lower the perceived risk that your customer feels in buying your product or service."

Sargam Patel, who heads up Los Angeles-based Agent18, which has been manufacturing and selling cases for iPods and iPhones since 2004, says that offering a warranty represents a critical point in a company's relationship with the customer. "It's the time when a person has purchased your product," he says. "That means you can look at it as a way to reinforce their decision to buy from you, or, if done poorly, you can lose a customer. The last thing you ever want to do is get in an argument with a customer."

1. Why offer a warranty?

Dr. James Talaga, a professor of marketing at La Salle University in Philadelphia, says there are several reasons why companies might want to offer such warranties:

1. A company may have a poor reputation and the explicit warranty may be used to give assurances to the customer about product quality (thereby reducing the perceived risk in buying it).

2. Competitors may offer similar explicit warranties and in order to be competitive, you may need to do so too (if all else is the same, and your competitors offer a better warranty, they have a competitive advantage).

3. If it is normal practice in the business to offer such warranties (e.g., the automobile industry), then you too need to offer such a warranty.

4. When offering a new product (particularly innovations) you may want to offer an explicit warranty also to reduce the perceived risk for the customer.

5. You may want to offer an explicit warranty to reduce your own risk exposure. If the product can be misused, requires maintenance and can be under-maintained or has shelf-life considerations, offering an explicit warranty can limit, to some, extent, your liability should the product fail.

6. If the product will be used in varied use conditions (e.g., extremes of climate), you may want to have an explicit warranty to protect yourself.

Dig Deeper: Just What Did You Promise?


2. What should be covered in a warranty?

If you decide that offering a warranty makes sense for you and your company, what should you think about covering? Shafer says that he counsels his clients to, "think like a customer and focus on the essential elements he or she might be looking for when it comes to buying your product or service." Again, the key is to think of ways that make your product or service sound less risky to the potential customer – such as the ability to get their money back, receive free repairs or even the ability to exchange an item for a free replacement.

Patel of Agent18 says that his warranty covers any manufacturer defects for two years. He also has added a half-price replacement program where customers can upgrade to a new case for half the price. "It's like an insurance policy for the customer where if the product does its job, we want you to come back," he says.

Dig Deeper: ...Or Your Money Back


3. What should NOT be covered?

It's just as important to specify what is not covered by your warranty, says Talaga. "If the product has parts that wear out and it is your intent to sell replacements to customers, as in, says, ink for laser printers, then you would limit the warranty," he says. "If you intend to sell the product with minimal markup in order to make money from service, then clearly service would not be covered in warranties."

Patel says that he has to spell out in his warranty that his product is not guaranteed for every problem, such as when someone drops their phone or engages in some form of negligent behavior. While the case is designed to protect the phone, he knows he can't control every situation where someone might drop it. While he is willing to replace the case for half-price, he wants to make it clear to his customers that he cannot guarantee the safety of the device within it. "It would be irresponsible to make a claim that you will protect someone's phone no matter what," he says. "Because you give yourself the liability of replacing not only the phone, but also the data on it. How can you put a price on someone's wedding photos?"

Dig Deeper: Smoking Hazadous to Your Apple Warranty


4. How long should it last?

In determining how long your warranty should last, you should get some sense of the normal operating life of the product as the guide to setting the warranty life, says Talaga. "In some cases, firms offer lifetime warranties such as Land's End lifetime warranty on their clothing," he says. "Such a warranty would of course require that the company have a high level of confidence in their product quality."

Dig Deeper: Warranty Bill of Sale

5. What happens if you sell another company's products: can you offer your own warranty on top of theirs?

Offering extended warranties on top of existing ones issues by a manufacturer can be another great way to differentiate yourself from the competition, especially in a sector like retail, says Talaga.

Mike Faith, the CEO of Headsets.com, says that he offers extended warranties to his customers on the headsets he resells from manufacturers. "Why not?" he asks. "Stand out. Manufacturers aren't marketers, they run scared while marketers set the pace." Faith says that he also will make good on any warranty claim, regardless of the timeline of when it is submitted. "Your warranty is a minimum obligation, not a policy with which to alienate your customers," he says.

Dig Deeper: Beware the Impossible Guarantee


6. Are warranties just for products or can you offer them for services as well?

Don't forget that even if you sell a service, you can still offer a warranty. Consider examples where hotel chains commonly offer satisfaction guaranteed offers; car mechanics may guarantee their work for 90 days or longer; or a company like H&R Block may offer a form of warranty in that they will support you should they make a mistake in your taxes.

The difficulty in offering warranties for services is that by their very nature, services involve a greater or lesser degree of custom production, says Talaga. "This lack of mass production means that there's a large number of variables that can influence a customers use of products and hence their level of satisfaction," he says.

Case in point: Dale Furtwengler, a consultant in High Ridge, Missouri, says that's he's often asked by his clients, "Do you guarantee the results?" "My answer is, 'No,'" he says, "Because I can't guarantee that a client is going to implement the solutions I suggest. I guarantee that I'll do everything I agreed to in the agreement and that it will work if you employ my advice, but I can't guarantee that you're going to take the necessary action to get the result."

Shaefer at Traverse Legal, on the other hand, says that he offers all his clients a money-back guarantee for any work he does as a way to win the confidence of his customers. At the same time, he's not worried about droves of them taking him up on the offer as his goal is to win repeat customers by offering the best possible service. If a client isn't a good fit, he's happy to give them their money back. "The truth is that most customers never take follow up on warranties," he says. "And in our case, we've had one person ask for a refund in six years and we were happy to give it to him. We just didn't have good chemistry."

Dig Deeper: What You Need to Know About Making a Personal Guarantee

Gabor proposes a radical way to keep bookstores in business:

It sounds good, but here's my question: Is he describing a bookstore or a really nice cyber-cafe? The problem that a typical bookstore solvesand that the Internet (or a cyber-cafe) does not solveis discovery. That is, how do you find a book that you don't know you want?

Google is very good for finding things you want, but it's quite bad at finding things you don't know about. Social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have made some headway here by taking the networks that naturally build among friend groups and putting them online. And Apple is trying to do something similar with its new social network, Ping.

But I think there's a lot of opportunity for other start-ups to help with the problem of discovery, and, until they do, there isn't going to be a good way to help consumers discover new books except by putting them in a room full of dead trees. By removing the books from the bookstore, you get rid of the bookstore's core competency. You've got a Starbucks, but with worse coffee.

That's the case today, but it probably won't be true in ten years. So I'd love to hear about some start-upsbesides the big ones mentioned abovethat are attempting to solve the discovery problem. What are some of your favorites?

(N.B. This month's Inc. has a Q&A I did with Twitter's Biz Stone that touches on this issue. And, for another story of Silicon Valley's attempts to save bookstores, check out Bo Burlingham's seriesonKepler's.)

An industrial engineer and former Starbucks executive (as a "director of profit improvement") Mike Caswell has long thought that there were things in the coffee industry that were just never offered to customers, namely freshness and choice. Historically, he says, companies marketed their coffee as fresh off the basis of when their coffee was brewed or how freshly ground it was. However, that's not really what makes the difference.

"For a long time, everybody was ignoring how long ago the beans were actually roasted," Caswell says. "Industry insiders will acknowledge how important that is to quality, much like the freshness of bread. But because there hasn't been an industry-wide adoption of how to best provide fresh coffee, people don't want to talk about it."

That's when Caswell's engineering background came into play. He began tinkering with disassembled vacuum cleaner parts in his basement in 2003, and with a lot of time and some help from some mechanical and electrical engineering friends, he created what has officially been patented worldwide as the Javabot. The Javabot combines every aspect of the coffee roasting experience, transporting beans through Caswell's store via a maze of clear tubes and pressure, sending raw green beans to a roaster, roasted beans to holding chambers, and small amounts of precisely measured roasted beans to Swiss-made brewers for grinding and eventually brewing.

When the Javabot was ready for public consumption in 2007, he opened his first store, aptly named Roasting Plant, in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Many early investors asked Caswell why they should invest in his shop, which is located less than a block away from an existing Starbucks. What would keep customers coming back instead of walking right down the street to the familiar chain?

"My answer then was that you have to offer a differentiated and legitimate experience for the customer," Caswell says. "And I wouldn't answer differently today. I was convinced this business would work in New York because the city just has a really active coffee culture. At the time, Starbucks was just cranking along and opening stores every day. But I saw vulnerability because they weren't focusing on freshness or choice. Additionally, New Yorkers are one of the few populations on the planet that are always looking for something better, newer and more interesting, a higher contribution to a higher quality of life I guess you could say."

The entire experience at Roasting Plant is unique. When you enter, you'll be greeted by friendly baristas (Caswell says a non-intimidating employee defines his "legitimate experience"). Then it's time to make a choice—deciding from 11 different types of beans onsite—before watching your selection fly through the Javabot above your head and into the roaster. Depending on the roast, you'll have your drink within a few minutes. If hungry, you can opt for award-winning pastries from the locally revered Tom Cat Bakery or settle into one of their many modern seating areas, including long couches, high stools and individual tables, with plenty of outlets and free wi-fi for the computer-toting clientele.

Roasting Plant now has two locations in lower Manhattan, and many of the regular customers consider Roasting Plant's coffee the best they've ever had.

According to a recent Yelp review by Jeni Y., "dorky engineering + delicious coffee = love!! I gravitate towards Roasting Plant whenever I'm within a five block radius, pulled in by the wonderful, gadgety, and incredibly genius way that my coffee is prepared. I'm now spoiled rotten and demand that ALL coffee I drink in my future be first flown above my head."

Financially, Caswell is projecting growth of 51 percent, year-over-year, in 2010. From an on-the-ground retail perspective, the businesses are doing great, it's just a matter of growing to more locations.

On the other side of the equation, Starbucks has seen unprecedented competition in the market in recent years, with Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's and other fast-food chains offering a similar grab-and-go product. According to a company spokesperson, Starbucks opened their 182nd franchise on Manhattan's Upper East Side this week, so clearly they are not going to cede their market share. They still drive the industry because of their reach and their take-home and brew business, but independent shops are in a completely different segment of the market.

"In the last few years there's been a leap forward here in America for an understanding of coffee, what makes good coffee and what the proper preparation techniques are," says Andrew Hetzel, an industry expert and founder of Cafemakers, a consulting business for the coffee industry. "As a result of the economic downturn, the overall number of coffee shops has probably declined as has the number of businesses starting. But that's not a bad thing, because the shops who are doing a good job have survived and are prospering."

In the ultra-competitive coffee market, low-cost operations and successful branding are important to maintain profitability, due to the obvious low margins in a single cup of coffee. But as Americans continue to learn more about java, about what they like and don't like, the smaller shops that focus on quality, freshness and customer experience are the ones that are continuing to succeed.

So while Starbucks and independent coffee shops exist in different segments of the market, much of the credit for wetting Americans' palettes (or perhaps it was a re-introduction) to stronger, bolder, European-style coffee goes to the Seattle-based behemoths. Unfortunately because of the limited supply of high-end beans in the market, Starbucks is unable to buy some of those batches. And that's where smaller shops hold the advantage. If you think about it like fine wine, there just are not enough aged bottles to be sold in bulk, which is what drives up the price but also the quality. Coffee is quite similar.

"Many independent coffee shops across America actively seek out those locations where Starbucks operates, as it will have already done the ground work of establishing a coffee shop culture in that area," Billy Hulkower, a spokesman for consumer intelligence insight at Mintel, said in 2005. "Starbucks' rampant expansion has created an ever increasing demand for premium coffee, while opening the market up for competitors as well."

For Caswell, he learned a lot of entrepreneurial lessons along the way that are not specific to the coffee industry, struggling to raise capital with potential investors early on by convincing them his business could succeed.

"As I reflect back now, the critical things I learned were to have passion, persistence and patience," he says. "You have to believe with all of your being that what you're trying to achieve and what you're pitching to people is legitimate and will succeed. That's something you need to do over and over again, and then to learn to deal with the many rejections that will come and not to take them personally. I kept my end goal square in sight and kept going, and I think regardless of the industry you're in, you need to commit yourself with unending effort and passion."

As premium coffee and a passion to attain it grows here in the U.S., independent shops like Caswell's will continue to succeed. And while his immediate goals remain on maintaining a high quality experience for his two stores in New York City, Caswell has fielded calls from every part of the world to both franchise his stores or to license out the Javabot. He admits that the company's next challenge is their growth and how to handle it, but as an entrepreneur, that's not a bad problem to deal with.

And to answer the question of how fresh your coffee should be is a matter of opinion and preference for each individual consumer, says Caswell.

"Somewhere between one day and seven days is optimal. Again, coffee is like a really good wine in that it improves a little bit with age. If we're talking about my personal preference, I lose interest once the coffee has been out of the roaster for seven days. After that, it just doesn't deliver the flavor any longer."

Who says money can't buy happiness?

Certainly not two Princeton University researchers -- including a Nobel laureate -- who suggest it comes with a $75,000 price tag.

Not having enough money causes emotional pain and unhappiness, the researchers found. But the happiness tipping point is about $75,000 – more money than that doesn't make a person cheerier, though it can help people view their lives as successful or better.

The study – published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- analyzed poll data from the Gallup Organization of more than 450,000 U.S. residents in 2008 and 2009.

The two researchers – Daniel Kahneman, the 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, and Angus Deaton, past president of the American Economic Association – broke the question of whether money can buy happiness in two, examining both how people evaluated their day-to-day happiness and their overall satisfaction with life.

With every doubling of income, people tended to say they were more and more satisfied with their lives on a 10-point scale – a pattern that continued for household incomes well above $120,000.

But when asked to assess the happy hours of the previous day – whether people had experienced a lot of enjoyment, laughter, smiling, anger, stress, worry – money mattered only up to about $75,000. After that, money didn't buy more (or less) happiness. (About one-third of U.S. households had incomes above $75,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The average household income was $71,500.)

Among life's misfortunes made worse by lack of money: disease (including ailments such as asthma), divorce and being alone.

"We conclude that lack of money brings both emotional misery and low life evaluation; similar results were found for anger," Kahneman and Deaton, both professors at Princeton University, wrote in the report. "Beyond $75,000 in the contemporary United States, however, higher income is neither the road to experience happiness nor the road to relief of unhappiness or stress, although higher income continues to improve individuals' life evaluations."

Why does money help brighten a person's picture of their life overall, but not the individual days?

"We suspect that this means, in part, that when people have a lot more money, they can buy a lot more pleasures, but there are some indications that when you have a lot of money, you will savor each pleasure less," said Kahneman, who, for the record, makes more than $75,000. "Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure."

What's the take-home message? "If you want to enjoy life, focus on relationships and health once you make more than $70,000 a year," wrote Ed Diener, a University of Illinois psychology professor who studies well-being, in an e-mail to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Diener wasn't part of the study. "If you are poor, it makes a great deal of sense to be concerned about higher income."

And if you're thinking this means you don't need to pay anyone above $75,000, think again.

"Our data speak only to differences," the authors wrote. "They do not imply that people will not be happy with a raise from $100,000 to $150,000, or that they will be indifferent to an equivalent drop in income.... What the data suggest is that above a certain level of stable income, individuals' emotional well-being is constrained by other factors in their temperament and life circumstances."

Do you engage in procrastination or other self sabotaging behavior? I think we all do from time-to-time. What’s interesting is that this limiting behavior can be traced all the way back to the day we were born.

That’s right; did you know that we are born with millions of neurons that don’t know what to do? A neuron is a cell that, in combination with neurotransmitters, processes and transmits information to your body and mind. When we are born we have millions of these little guys just waiting for a job and our environment is responsible for assigning those jobs.

As we learn to respond to pleasant things, like music and touch, these neurons are “programmed”. The downside is that as we are exposed to negativity in our environment, neurons are programmed to send negative messages to the brain and body, and those messages create limiting beliefs that we often carry with us into adulthood.

You don’t have to come from an abusive childhood to experience this programming; innocuous comments from parents, teachers, playmates and others are often translated into negative beliefs and can hinder our ability to achieve (and enjoy) the things that are important to us. We hold tight to this programming and carry it into everything we do – including our business. For example, I hear brilliant business owners make comments like, “I’m not smart enough” or “I would have to work too hard to become successful.” I’ve even heard hard-working, intelligent, ethical individuals say that they don’t deserve success. All of these beliefs come from life experiences upon which we build a pyramid of negative and limiting beliefs.

This is where self-sabotage begins. If we believe at a conscious or subconscious level that we don’t deserve to succeed or we don’t have what it takes, the subconscious mind will do everything within its power to help support that limiting belief. Does that mean that we can’t eradicate this programming? Absolutely not. The first step is to recognize your self-sabotaging behavior; sometimes that’s enough to create change. But oftentimes our beliefs are engrained so deep that we need support in changing to healthy thought-patterns. I subscribe to the energy psychology approach to create significant change and positive thought patterns, specifically the Emotional Freedom Techniques. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis and EMDR are also among the most popular methods. But again, the first step is to explore your mind and discover your limiting belief systems.

Exploring Your Beliefs –Procrastination is a sure sign of self-sabotage brought on by limiting beliefs. Do you find yourself putting off activities that could contribute to the growth of your business? When you ask yourself that question you may immediately come to your own defense by saying something along the lines of, “but I don’t have time to make those sales calls, it’s just me!” I assure you, if you believe in yourself and you desire success at the subconscious level you would put your creative thinking to use and find a way to make the time.

During the exploration process, some other significant questions to ask yourself are:

In a recent article, we discussed the power of mind mapping for your business planning. Try putting the same process to use to explore your limiting beliefs and fears around growing your business. This can be a very powerful experience. And remember, everyone – absolutely everyone - experiences the pull of nagging, limiting thoughts. What sets people apart is the ability to transform those thoughts to beliefs that support them in their growth. We all have that ability, the first step is to recognize that you are holding yourself back and to decide that it’s time to change. You can do it!

How have you overcome your self-proclaimed limitations? What tools, methods and support systems work for you?

NOTE: Please know that I present this information as a life coach who has interest and experience in dealing with this topic, not as a mental health professional.

Entrepreneurs wear many hats, and that of director of sales is very often one of them. In fact, if you're a CEO and your company's sole salesperson, then welcome to the club — many small companies operate this way. But just beacuse a practice is commonplace does not mean it's easy. We put the word out that we were looking for advice on how to manage and balance the dual roles of CEO and salesperson and guess what? It took a whole train ride from New York City to Boston to wade through the responses. Here are the best of them:

1. Manage your time religiously. Jen Sterling, the CEO of the marketing company Red Thinking, has played the CEO/sole salesperson role in three companies and says she is now "much more militant about how I block time in my calendar. If I've scheduled a prospect meeting, I have already scheduled an hour to write their proposal." And she also blocks in fixed period of time to focus on CEO duties such as charting her South Riding, Virginia, firm's long-term strategy and marketing messages.

Dig Deeper: 15 Ways to Be More Productive

2. Sell your product or service, not your company. It's your company and you're proud of it, so of course you're inclined to tell your story to potential clients. But that's not always an efficient use of your time. "I slip into selling our business instead of our product all the time," says Keith Chung, the CEO of Amobius Group, a Toronto company that publishes Veribook, a web application for booking appointments. But the pitch you would make to potential partners or investors should not be the same as the pitch you make to potential customers. "Selling," Chung says he realized, "is about convincing people that they want to use your services, not that your services are cool, innovative, or otherwise interest-worthy. Prove that you provide a solution to a problem, and the users will come."

Dig Deeper: 5 Tips for Selling a Service

3. Don't neglect existing clients. Your current clients are your best source of additional revenue, so don't get so wrapped up in pursuing new leads that you neglect their needs. "I firmly believe that your current clients should come first," says Rebecca Andino, CEO of Highlight Technologies, an IT government contractor in Arlington, Virginia. "If I have a meeting conflict, I would re-schedule a business development meeting to make a client meeting."

Dig Deeper: How to Get More Sales from Existing Customers

4. Leverage a simplified feedback loop. One of the great advantages of CEO selling is consistent, direct contact with your customers, so don't squander the opportunity to get honest feedback on your product or service. "There are no bureaucratic layers in our organization and the customer's voice is never lost," says Marc Zawel, the CEO of EqualApp, a Research Triangle start-up that offers online college admissions resources. Customers can "tell me what they love about EqualApp, and what additional features they would like to see, and I'm in a position to take action." As CEO, you're not just selling a product; you're selling access to yourself.

Dig Deeper: How to Make the Most of Customer Feedback

5. Reduce your travel. Until cloning technology becomes more advanced, you can only be in one place at time, and traveling is a huge time suck. Some potential clients will always demand your presence for an initial pitch, but you'll find that many others will gladly settle for alternatives. "When I conduct an initial presentation with a new client, I set-up WebEx meetings," says Joe Sriver, the CEO of DoAPP, a mobile-technology developer in Minneapolis. "People are becoming accustomed to this type of computer-based, virtual communication. It helps me contact and present to more clients in a day."

Dig Deeper: The Best Low-Cost Videoconferencing Technology

6. Delegate, delegate, and then delegate more. If you're spending the bulk of your time selling, then other day-to-day responsibilities are very likely to fall by the wayside. Don't let that happen. Outsource administrative tasks to a virtual assistant, and take advantage of a huge pool of unemployed professionals for part time or temporarily help with marketing, PR, and bookkeeping. Hire interns for the grunt work and to help you with lead generation. You should also realize that you don't need to handle every aspect of sales on your own. "We spread responsibility for prospecting, scheduling, and demonstrations among the team, says T.A. McCann, the CEO of Gist, on Seattle-based Web start-up that manages e-mail and social networking contacts. "It's okay to let others help you qualify and manage accounts, but view yourself as an essential part of the closing process and hold yourself personally responsible for getting the order," he says.

Dig Deeper: Tips on How to Delegate

7. Find a mentor. Some CEOs are natural salespeople, and some are not. If you're not, then you need help. Judy Davids, the CEO of PostEgram knows that she is the best salesperson for her business because "nobody is more passionate or understands our product better." But she concedes that the pitfall is that "I have no idea what I am doing." Her Detroit company puts Facebook status updates and photos into full-color newsletters for older family members. She has a web design background and is passionate about public relations and marketing, so she relies heavily on a mentor to help coach her on sales. "It's something that I think I have learned to be good at," says Davids. "My mentor has been brutally honest with me."

Dig Deeper: Finding the Right Mentor for You

8. Hold yourself accountable. A salesperson would be accountable to you. So who you are you accountable to? When you're the sole salesperson, says Rebecca Andino of Highlight Technologies (see No. 3), "its easy to slip into an undisciplined, haphazard sales and marketing approach." You'd require a full time salesperson to create a strategic plan and to be diligent about using a CRM system to track leads and results. "As a business owner, I don't always have time to document all leads in our online system, and sometimes I get pulled into operations and human resources issues," says Andino. Nonetheless, you need to work extra-hard to document the sales process so that when and if you a hire a successor, you'll be able to pass that on.

Dig Deeper: How to Set Up a Sales Tracking Process

9. Create an "everyone sells" culture. "Make sure your entire team understands that everyone is really in sales, even if it's not on their business card," suggests Barbara O'Connell, CEO of WhereToFindCare.com, a company in Ypsilanti, Michigan, that helps consumers find health care providers. Your employees should be ambassadors for your company, talking up your product or service and on the look-out for potential leads wherever they go.

Dig Deeper: Turning Workers Into a Secret Sales Weapon

10. Make the tough choice. It's inevitable. You're going to have to hire a salesperson at some point, so sit down and figure out when that will be. Is there a magic revenue target that will, once hit, allow you to hire a top-notch salesperson? Or perhaps the benchmark is your number of customers, or your headcount of billable employees. Whatever it is, commit to it and start meeting in a casual way with qualified candidates.

Of course, there's another alternative. Jared Orkin, the 22-year old founder of CoupMe, a Groupon-like, deal-a-day website, was both CEO and sole salesperson at his Boston-area company, until he raised a round of seed capital and was persuaded by his new investors to replace himself as CEO. Orkin happily stepped down to focus on what he's best at and loves most—and that would be sales. Different strokes.

Dig Deeper: Getting Over Your Fear of Hiring a Salesperson

Just a year ago, BlackBerry smartphones ruled the workplace. With their large QWERTY keypads, fast "push" e-mail, and robust security options, these sleek black handhelds were ubiquitous in business. We've all seen "crackberry" users typing furiously with their thumbs, wearing belt-clip pouches.

But no king can rule forever, as RIM — makers of BlackBerry handheld devices — is now finding out.

According to a recent Gartner report, the company's market share dropped to a 33 percent this year. Last year, they absolutely owned the smartphone market with a 52.5 percent market share in the U.S. That's a free-fall drop of nearly 20 percentage points. So what gives?

For the most part, some heavy competition — especially from Google — is the culprit. The Mountain View, California, search monolith quietly released the Android operating system in 2008. Now, two years later, Android models such as the Sprint Evo and Motorola Droid X command a 34 percent market share. (The iPhone dropped slightly to a 22 percent market share, which is a distant third place.)

Why the BlackBerry implosion?

According to Rob Enderle, a noted consumer analyst who advices tech companies on their products, the economic woes in the U.S. have changed how companies purchase smartphones.

In its heyday, RIM lined up perfectly with corporate buying habits: employees needed phones, so employers bought them a BlackBerry. Now, Enderle says employees are being asked to buy their own smartphones. And guess what? They buy what they want – the latest and greatest.

"RIM hasn't been as successful at attracting individual buyers as Apple and the Android-platform companies have. As a result, they are bleeding customers," says Enderle.

Customer Perception Problems

Recent news reports have not helped RIM. As the San Francisco Chronicle's website and Forbes.com have reported, RIM has struck deals with foreign governments to grant them access to instant messages and e-mail. These revelations hurt the perception that BlackBerry devices are highly secure. In business, that's a death knell because one e-mail slip can bring a legal discovery that closes your doors.

Enderle says BlackBerry's advertising campaign has also been poorly executed. In one ad, he says two gay men are using a BlackBerry to track their interior design business. In another, a Hispanic man tracks Internet RSS feeds for low-rider cars. The ads may have been genuinely intended to reach specific market segments; instead, they come off as trading on stereotypes. (Microsoft made similar mistakes with their infamous Kin ads, which apparently had nothing to do with smartphones and a lot to do with partying.)

Worse, Enderle says RIM has tried to position the new BlackBerry Torch as a competitor to the iPhone, when in reality it is more of a powerful messaging device and not really meant for rich multimedia experiences such as listening to music and watching movies. (See below for my review of this new do-or-die model and whether it can resist the competition.)

Changing Consumer Needs

It used to be enough to deliver messages. But, as BlackBerry's slow downward spiral indicates, consumers have moved on. Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst, says the primary reason BlackBerry market share has fallen is that smartphone users are more excited about apps and touchscreens than messaging. Meanwhile, rivals like the iPhone can now connect easily to corporate e-mail servers.

Financial analysts have a mixed view of the market share decline. Matthew Thornton, a senior research analyst at Avian Securities in Boston, says RIM has healthy cash flows and a strong balance sheet, but its growth has slowed a bit. He says there are obvious technological gaps between RIM's high-end phones and competing handhelds, and that the loss of prestige could eventually lead to management turn-over, restructuring, or a buy-out. But, he cautions, those dire possibilities are at least a year away.

"We expect RIM to continue to show sequential and year on year growth for at least two to three more quarters," writes Thornton. "Their market share in global smartphones has dropped modestly in recent quarters. Their prospects for a sustainable (e.g., multi-quarter) rebound are not good based on their current product cycle relative to emerging competition from Android, iPhone, and even Windows Mobile 7, Symbian, and the MeeGo OS, all of which won't make a push until starting 4Q10."

Travis McCourt, a financial analyst with Morgan Keegan, is more bullish on RIM's outlook. He says he expects a growth rate of between 25 and 30 percent over the next two years. He points out that, while BlackBerry market share declined in the US, their international market share increased. (A New York Times feature on RIM argued that the company's global market share will eventually drop as well, since the U.S. market tends to drive trends and influence the foreign markets.)

Part of the drop, says McCourt, has to do with how major cell carriers, such as Verizon, tend to pick "hero" phones and push them strongly. Android is riding a wave of popularity, so a business owner sitting at home watching NFL pre-season thinks the Droid is the leading smartphone.

McCourt, who says RIM has a $25 billion enterprise value and strong support among shareholders, needs to focus their attention on marketing. Ads should focus on the BlackBerry business advantages. For example, he says, the company might position itself by noting that, on a BlackBerry, e-mail arrives faster, the battery lasts longer, the device can compress data on the fly, the keyboard lets you type faster, and encryption works better.

A Silver Lining?

Of course, even with the drop in market share, RIM is still in a solid second place. One reason has to do with strong customer loyalty. There are legions of BlackBerry diehards, such as Brenda L. Gleason, the president of M2 Health Care Consulting in Washington, D.C. She says her BlackBerry allows her to type faster, shows combined e-mail messages in one inbox, and offers stronger security.

Gleason also prefers "push" e-mail. Messages appear automatically on the phone without having to select a send/receive option, and she can copy and paste text between apps. (In truth, Apple introduced copy and paste in a previous iPhone version, and Android phones also support the feature.)

Similarly, Adam Kruse, a real-estate broker and business owner with Hermann London Group, says he will stick with BlackBerry devices even as they fall in and out of fashion. He sees his BlackBerry is a no-nonsense phone ideal for making basic calls and texting. His co-workers use competing phones, he says, but waste time on weather apps and social networking tools.

Not every BlackBerry user is sticking with the platform, though.

Rebecca Theim, a writer and public relations specialist with Tipitina Communications, switched to Android after seven years of using BlackBerry. She says she likes how Android offers better social networking feeds, the interface is more visually appealing, and it's easier to use.

The Torch Test

If RIM is going to rebound, the company will need to come up with a new smartphone darling. The Torch 9800, released this past week, is RIM's latest attempt to regain the hearts of the business and consumer crowd. On inspection, it suggests the company's engineers have more work to do.

The hefty 5.68-ounce device feels beefy, and not in a good way. The 3.2-inch touchscreen is much thicker than any Android phone, but there's a slide-out QWERTY keyboard so the phone stands almost six inches tall. Fortunately, RIM has solved the irritating problems with the Storm and Storm 2 models where every screen click and swipe became an awkward guessing game. Now, when you want to start your e-mail program or open a browser, the screen clicks register accurately.

On the plus side, the Torch browser — for which the phone actually gets its name — is extremely fast. In my tests, sites like ESPN.com and IGN.com pulled up in just a second or two over either Wi-Fi or 3G. The browser is also easy to use. You can quickly type up a URL, bookmark sites, and flick through open sites.

Unfortunately, while BlackBerry models are known for their spacious keypads, the Torch uses one that is just a hair too small – since the keyboard has to slide under the device.

I couldn't find any really compelling games (like Angry Birds on the iPhone) that would help make a long plane ride more bearable. I encountered some problems with the interface as well. In a few cases, I'd click an icon to move, and the phone would not let me. The touchscreen is much better than the Storm 2, but still lacks the fine sensitivity of the iPhone 4 or the Sprint HTC Evo. And, for music and movies, there is no obvious way to download either, although AT&T does provide a pay-as-you-go music streaming service.

In the end, there is something in the air when it comes to BlackBerry. It's not a black cloud, or even gray—it's a slight mist that tells me the days when the company dominated the world of business users are over. There are plenty of good business phones around, and plenty of options for business messaging. I think RIM will rebound from this latest drop in market share. But I doubt it will ever again dominate.

Thomas Raymond & Co. was launched in 2009 in Tualatin, Ore. to fill a void in the marketplace for men's classic American footwear, which often focuses on athletic styles. Since the company is small and looking to take on larger, established footwear manufacturers and designers, company executives decided to start out with more sophisticated financial software that would manage all their processes in a single application, from purchase order through shipment and collection, CFO Jim Drozdowski tells IncTechnology.com.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What was the goal in starting Thomas Raymond last year?

Jim Drozdowski: Thomas Raymond is a holding company. It was named after the middle names of our two founders, Gregg Thomas Jackson and Chad Raymond Gombes. They are two guys who worked together at L.L. Bean and Phoenix Footwear. All of us at the company -- we now have six employees -- have a lot of experience in footwear. But Gregg and Chad got together and wanted to come up with brands to speak to 35 and older male consumer. This was someone we feel missed in the marketplace for footwear. There are plenty of athetic brands for younger kids. We first wanted to develop a casual brand and wanted to speak to the outdoors. This is for the gentleman who is an outdoor guy who can hunt bison and go fishing and then go boating and yachting in the spring. Gregg came up with the idea that Ernest Hemingway embodied this consumer. So our first collection of shoes is the Hemingway line of footwear. It's a collection of men's casual driving moccasins, loafers made of different leathers, and boat shoes.

Wasserman: What were you looking for in software when started the company?

Drozdowski: What we were looking for was something that would grow with us. We wanted to make sure it wasn't a big dollar outlay, but we were looking for something that could grow with us and was one solution -- meaning it would do purchasing all the way through collections for us. We decided on SAP Business One. We were looking for something very compatible with the big boys in marketplace. Adidas and Nike run on SAP and so do many of the large brands. Our feeling was if we were going to be acquired, let's makes sure our software makes us compatible with other brands so that there is no headache in the transition. I previously took over a company that ran on QuickBooks. A lot of things were not compatible. We feel pretty confident that if another company comes in, it will be an easier transition.

Wasserman: Were you starting an IT infrastructure from scratch?

Drozdowski: Yes, we were not using anything before. When I came in last August, my first call was to open a bank account and my second call was to get software. It was installed in August.

Wasserman: How has it enabled you to compete with bigger companies?

Drozdowski: It's given us a nice view of where we are inventory-wise, cost-wise, how much our products cost, and how we're doing on invoicing and collections. It helped us forecast sales and helped us forecast out to our sales team what is available to sell and what is not available to sell. That way, when they meet with their accounts, you know that we have this available to sell or that. It can be one pair up to a whole line. It helps us with online sales as well because it lets us interface between our Internet store and out band end and SAP system.

Wasserman: Was it difficult to get up and running?

Drozdowski: It was a pretty easy. We got support from a team in town that was wonderful. We were up and running immediately on the bookkeeping side of it, paying payroll and expenses as we went along.

Wasserman: How do you think it will help you grow?

Drozdowski: It's a very dynamic system. We're going to be able to use multiple factories and multiple customer ship-tos and multiple sales reps and multiple lines. As we grow our business it's not going to take a lot of extra work to use the additional dimensions in the system that we're not currently using.

By this point in the financial crisis, you've made countless cutbacks, and wrung as much productivity as you can from your organization. But how can you grow without adding large numbers of people? Scaling your business from here requires a significant change, and for many organizations, that means employing new technologies.

Technology can empower your organization, helping you improve efficiencies and even expand operations. But to use that technology well, you must balance your needs with the realities of how you do business. That means understanding not only which technology to invest in, but also how it will affect your operations and how to maximize your returns on that investment.

Ask the right questions

What does it really mean to scale your business? Today, it means much more than simply throughput. When considering a new technology, many organizations focus on the wrong questions. They want to know, "What can I do with this technology?" rather than "What can this technology really do for me?"

Today, businesses and consumers alike expect everything from new technology, namely speed, collaboration, consolidation, accuracy, and greater connections. But it's risky to think that simply plugging in a new box will do the trick. Using new technology to scale your business involves much more, primarily exploring how well it will integrate with your network, your IT components and your users.

Think automation

Whether the solution you are looking for relates to manufacturing or improving payroll efficiency, a new technology can scale your business through automation.

Consider the example of an auto manufacturing plant utilizing robots. Thanks to that technology, it no longer takes 17 people to build a car -- it may now take three. While people do monitor the technology, there is no one actually driving the screws. In this case, the technology platform improves efficiency and helps the organization meet new "green" business standards. Reducing the number of people makes for a smaller carbon footprint, with fewer resources required.

From a general business perspective, technologies can have a similar impact. Tools like enterprise resource management systems, financial systems, and customer service technologies all have a tendency to improve effectiveness and efficiency without always having to "brute force it" with more people.

Consider scaling your customer interactions, for instance. The Web has made it possible to sell without human interaction. Today, even a multi-million dollar at- home business requires no bricks and mortar. Everything can be automated, from the sales floor and collection of money, even through distribution.

You can even scale your human resource function by converting to a self-service model. Here's an example: A staffing company goes through a large HR payroll implementation, which needed to accommodate the 380 thousand people on payroll. Over a year, they undergo a major conversion that allows them to handle 800 thousand people without adding more than 1-2 percent to headcount.

Clearly, automating functions like employee background searches, enrollment in benefit plans, and payroll can allow you to scale dramatically without adding to your carbon footprint or adding headcount.

Get the most from your investment

A common mistake many organizations make is allowing the technology to choose them, rather than choosing technology to grow their business. Many select technology before they really build out their business case and consider the process re-engineering required to make the company better. Very often they buy software and then convert their processes to support the software, which can actually make things worse.

That is why before you invest in technology, build a thorough business case that looks at the total cost of ownership (including costs of hardware, software, and implementation and maintenance over time). When determining costs, remember that once you invest in a technology, it's fairly well set. Major changes or upgrades are usually not required for some time. But technology does require continual care and feeding.

After implementing the technology, you must then go back and verify that the business case met your company's internal rate of return. For example, if you projected a million dollars in savings, go back and review the business case, compare it to actual performance and show that you did as well as promised or worse. If you did worse, conduct a 360 degree review that explains what lessons were learned, and how you could do better. Such an exercise renders you more thorough, diligent and focused in terms of vetting the business case before proceeding with any kind of project.

When looking to scale your business, remember that scaling through technology means something different to every business and every network. But if you ask the right questions, budget and plan properly, your investment can pay for itself many times over. When you know your business, you'll know how it will respond to change. You'll also be better equipped to meet today's challenges and prepare for growth.

Mike Gorsage is a Partner and Technology Practice Leader for Tatum LLC. Tatum is the nation's largest executive services firm, providing financial and technology leadership nationwide.

Let's say your Google AdWords budget is $50,000 a year. You're competing against much larger companies with budgets several times larger. That means they can bid much more than you on the key words or phrases where you want your ads to appear. You're out of luck, right?

Not necessarily. Bidding for keywords on Google is not a straight auction. Instead, Google multiplies the top bid for each keyword or phrase by the advertiser's Quality Score, a number between 1 and 10 that reflects whether Google thinks its users will like your ad and the web page it links to. A higher Quality Score means you can outrank competitors with higher bids, and get much more for your advertising dollar. "Doubling your Quality Score means you only have to pay half as much per click," explains Frederick Vallaeys, AdWords evangelist at Google.

Oay, you're sold on the idea of raising your Quality Score. How do you do it? Here are tactics that can really help.

1. Don't run ads users won't click on. Let's just try this ad and see if anyone clicks on it. After all, since it's pay-per-click, if they don't click it costs us nothing. That may seem like good logic, but it's a big mistake. Click through rate (CTR) is one of the most important elements of Quality Score, so if an ad for your company runs and users don't click it, it can lower your Quality Score, thus costing you more to run the same ad or even other ads in future. (Google assigns Quality Scores to ad groups as well as advertising accounts, so a bad CTR can hurt you in many ways.) Constantly testing slightly different wording and picking the ads with better CTR will help you not only by bringing you more customers but also by lowering your cost per click.

2. Divide and conquer. "We used to get 2,000 keywords in one group of ads that sent everyone to the same page," says Howie Jacobson, author of Google AdWords for Dummies. "What we've learned is that it's better for both Google and for advertisers if we divide those into groups of a few words each that relate to a common desire and then send users to a dedicated landing page. For example, if I sell camera supplies, instead of grouping 'Nikon,' 'Canon,' 'point and shoot,' and 'SLR' into one ad group, I'd break it down. I'd have an ad group that related only to batteries for Canon PowerShot cameras, and someone who clicked on that ad would go to a landing page with links to those specific batteries."

"A small company can refine its budgeting and bid on very specific key phrases that a larger company might not," adds Peter Levin, manager of paid search at LSF Interactive, an online marketing company. "Small companies can use this to their advantage."

3. Get rid of keywords that aren't helping you. David Sarment, D.D.S. reports that new customers from Google increased dramatically with a few small changes to his AdWords strategy. One of these was changing the keywords his practice bid on. "I treat gum disease and I also do implant, bone grafts, and bone reconstruction surgery," he explains. "So I had two distinct campaigns, one around 'dental implants' and related terms, the other around 'periodontal' or 'gum disease.' Dental implants are a hot topic so the effect of that ad campaign was diluted. At some point, I decided to stop the dental implants campaign and focus on the gum disease side. It worked out well because there were a lot fewer ads popping up for patients interesting learning about gum disease."

For LoopFuse, a marketing automation company, better keyword performance meant avoiding keywords that fit its market, but were too general. "We have a lot of competitors in our space, but we specifically target small and mid-size businesses," says Sean Dwyer, CEO. "Bigger companies might outbid us on 'lead management' so we targeted 'lead management SMB' searches. Homing in on our market has been essential to our AdWord success."

4. Add content to your website and landing page. "Having useful content is one of the big things that will help your Quality Score," Vallaeys says. "We warn people not to repurpose content from other sites. We want unique content, a variety of content, and frequently updated content. We believe this leads to a better user experience."

To Jacobson, all this adds up to one piece of advice. "I tell all my clients to get a blog," he says. "There's no business that can't position itself as a source of credible information. It doesn't matter whether you're selling office supplies or microsurgery equipment. People use Google because they don't know what to get yet and are seeking information. So positioning yourself as expert is great for your Quality Score, and it's great for your customers who are usually looking for someone to trust."

5. Give users choices. You may want your landing page to urge users toward a strong call to action, such as "Click here to learn more about our product" or "Sign up for our free e-newsletter." But Google wants users to have a wide array of choices, and having a menu of navigation options on your landing page will improve your Quality Score.

"If users go to a landing page, they usually want more information," Vallaeys says. "They may want to explore the site, and if they can't they become frustrated. That will be reflected in a poorer landing page Quality Score."

6. Tell about yourself. Does your site have prominent links to an "about us" (or "company") section? And does it offer a privacy policy anyplace users are asked to enter information such as their e-mail addresses? If the answer to either question is no, your Quality Score will suffer. "We want our advertisers to offer transparency," Vallaeys explains. "And if users are going to give you their data, we prefer to see a good privacy policy and no-spam policy in place."

7. Make sure your pages load quickly. "If a page loads too slowly, that's not a great user experience," Vallaeys says. "That's one specific area we tell advertisers to look at, and if your landing page is loading slowly, put up a bigger server, change hosting companies, or change the graphics on the page."

"Site up time is critical," adds Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of online marketing firm WebiMax. "Even small down times that are otherwise unnoticeable are picked up by Google's automatic quality checks. Obviously, if Google checks a landing page and it's down, by definition it's not relevant and there's a high probability of a Quality Score penalty."

To keep this from happening to you, he advises, "Consider using a site monitoring service. And if necessary, changing to a different provider."

Don't blame me this time for blasting Apple. There's a long line of tech writers, bloggers and, most importantly, consumers themselves with nothing but scorched earth comments about Apple's new social networking service called "Ping".

What a long few days it has been since Steve Jobs took the stage in San Francisco showing us Ping for the first time with all of us breathlessly watching it streamed live.

But here we are less than a week later and while Apple puts out happy press releases announcing its first one million Ping users in less than 48 hours (you have to wonder if its the same one million that bought an iPhone 4 and a iPad in those first days after launch); the masses are clearly not happy.

Some of the big complaints:

1. Spam and phishing scams. Apparantly, Apple didn't launch with much in the way of security like, oh say, filtering messages with dubious links and malicious messages promising free iPhones. The result is a hot mess.

2. iTunes 10, itself: home of Ping. In a word: it sucks. By all accounts its just clunky, hard to navigate and boots up about as fast as Windows.

3. Ping is anti-social. It doesn't sync up with anything - Facebook, your contacts, your music library. Some "social" network, eh?

But don't take my word for it.

Here are some choice quotes from other writers, note user comments on the links as well:

As always, you are welcome to follow me on Twitter @oricchio (unless of course you want me to fill out a survey and promise me a free iPhone).

To celebrate Labor Day, we compiled some of entrepreneur Norm Brodsky's advice on managing a harmonious workforce. Tip No. 1: Avoid hiring people who remind you of yourself. Entrepreneurs don't make good employees," he explains. "What's more, they are often crummy managers. Instead, look for steadier hands who have worked in organizations as large or larger than your own.

At a time when many employers are sending subtle (and not so subtle) signals to workers to cut back on customer service, you should rally your employees to go the extra mile. Not only will your customers love it, but you will also instill a sense of confidence and self esteem in your workforce.

Brodsky is a vocal critic of sales commissions because he believes that they create factions, by pitting the financial self interest of salespeople against the needs of operations and accounting. "Because of the role they play and the difficulty of the work they do, salespeople will always earn more than most other people," Brodsky says. "But I want all of my employees to be part of the same compensation system."

Sharing equity is supposed to be a great way to attract talent to your small company, but too often it leads to strife and legal wrangling. Brodsky says you should instead offer workers above-market salaries or generous health benefits. Anyone who hesitates to accept this probably isnt someone you want on your team anyway. Remember, Brodsky says, it's easy to give away part of your company but really hard to get it back.

Though layoffs are sometimes necessary, they should be looked at as a last resort. That's because job cuts can do serious long-term damage to a companys culture and can cause you to miss out on growth opportunities in the future. Think first about freezing salaries, eliminating perks, not replacing old equipment, and so on," Brodsky says. "Your employees will understand and support you if you're trying to save jobs."

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today:

Getting serious about in-bar promotions. Lovely gals selling candy-colored shots to drunk guys – sounds easy as pie, right? Well, it turns out there's a little more to the formula than meets the eye. Today the Wall Street Journal profiles a service that outsources these so-called "shot girls" to trendy Manhattan bars and clubs. Founded by a pair of former J.P. Morgan and Bear Stearns analysts, Auld D'Leo Inc. trains its 25-person staff in the 10 best practices of the trade, which are distributed to each new waitress-slash-promotions specialist on her first day of work. Unsurprisingly, the list includes practices like being as friendly, personable, upbeat as possible, and not spending too much time with a single patron or group of patrons. Following the practices, these mostly college-educated women rake in between $300 and $600 a night. And if all else fails they can get a little, well, creative. One woman uses her large hands as a secret weapon, coaxing guys into wagering a round of drinks over whose hands are bigger. Typically the guys take the bet, and buy the shots.

Private sector jobs up, overall numbers down. In its August report on employment, the government announced that the private sector added 67,000 jobs last month, about 26,000 more than was forecasted, The New York Times reported. At the same time, the overall economy lost another 54,000 jobs, with the unemployment rate rising to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent. The government attributed the job losses to terminated Census-related temporary positions and the paper said the results were still better than expected. But as former Inc. reporter, and current Huffington Post associate business editor Ryan McCarthy tweeted: "What % of Americans actually care whether the jobs numbers are 'better [or worse] than expected'"?

Forget cockroaches. Forget fruit flies. This isn't your typical office infestation, but it might just be the infestation of the future. Yes, Google has bedbugs. Infestation by the nocturnal, blood-sucking insects isn't as of late an uncommon problem for New York retail spaces - like Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, and BuyBaby. That doesn't mean it isn't gross. Meanwhile, the New York Observer is already trying to turn Google's bug problem into a whodunit. Start your bedbug conspiracy theory engines, because this problem for businesses isn't going away anytime soon.

How everyone benefits from more women in technology. Venturebeat has a piece weighing in on the question of why there aren't more women in tech that takes a refreshingly practical approach to the issue, giving advice to members of both genders on how to boost the gender diversity and why they should bother. The author, herself a woman and tech journalist, counsels men that female employees and co-founders are a competitive edge that concretely bups financial performance. For women, she suggests making the most of the fact that they aren't insiders. She cites Anita Roddick of The Body Shop as a favorite female entrepreneur for "pioneer[ing] notions like environmentalism and fair trade in business long before they were fashionable or profitable." Check out the top woman building successful companies in tech and other fields on the Inc. 500.

China gets the Google treatment. The former head of Google's Chinese outpost, Kai-Fu Lee, is investing in 12 growing businesses in China through an incubator he founded called Innovation Works. According to BusinessWeek, Lee's interest in Chinese innovation is part of a larger trend that sees more investors turning their attention East. One University of San Francisco entrepreneurship professor tells BusinessWeek, "While confidence in Silicon Valley has been declining among VCs, there's more money flowing to China venture funds." In Lee's opinion, because China's angel investor community is virtually "nonexistant," it's up to well-funded incubators like Innovation Works to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs to grow. For more information on doing business in China, check out our Beijing city page.

Nine tips to being a better boss. Sometimes the best thing a boss can do is to get out of the way and let their employees do what they do best. With that in mind, the American Express OPEN Forum has a list of nine things a boss can do to remove those stumbling blocks that keep employees from reaching their potential. Excerpted from the book Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best...and Learn from the Worst, the post extolls the virtues of simplification. Among the key suggestions is to, "List all the performance metrics you use. Pick the three most important. Do you really need the rest?" (As long as you are on a self-improvement kick, here's our list of 6 ways to be a better CEO.)

Tips for collecting on late payments. The first rule of making sure late payments don't spoil your cash flow is to act quickly, according to a post on BusinessWeek. The odds that the delinquents will cough up your cash drop drastically over time from an 81 percent payback rate at two months, to 52 percent at six months, and less than 25 percent after a year. So don't be shy about demanding what you're owed and doing it fast. For four more tips on coaxing money from laggard customers see the rest of the article.

Silicon Valley, vacation destination? Well, the New York Times seems to think so. The former agricultural cradle that swaddles Apple, Google, Intel, and countless start-ups is featured in this week's "36 Hours In..." feature. What's hip to do on a vacation to programmer paradise? Rub elbows with venture capitalists at Rosewood Sand Hill hotel in Menlo Park, stake out the Googleplex from Shoreline Boulevard, or take an Airship tour to spy on Larry Ellison's "23-acre Japanese-style compound." The piece also urges visitors to stop by the bar where an Apple software engineer lost an iPhone 4 prototype last April. And don't forget to stay in the Avatar Hotel and visit the Computer History Museum! Oh, man, where are those shot girls when you need them?

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If theres such a thing as a socialite in the start-up community, Chris McCann, the co-founder of Startup Digest, would be it.

A little more than a year ago, he arrived in Silicon Valley, fresh out of college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he graduated with an entrepreneurship degree (a degree, of course, that he helped develop). Knowing few people in the Bay Area, McCann started hitting the start-up event circuit and networking with Silicon Valleys finest. Some events were useful. Some, not so much. To keep track of each one, McCann logged his experiences in a journal of sorts, which he emailed to a group of 22 friends back in November.

Since then, what started as an informal email chain has grown into a weekly newsletter with more than 64,000 subscribers in 51 cities, from Houston to Tokyo. Startup Digest, as its now called, has representatives around the world, who seek out the most important events for entrepreneurs and recommend them to subscribers. Though McCanns a little too busy these days to attend every lecture and meetup in and around Palo Alto, where the companys based, he recently spoke with Inc. reporter Issie Lapowsky about Startup Digests growth and the crucial need it fills for entrepreneurs.

When did you realize you might be able to turn your networking skills into a service for other people?

I got to know my co-founder Brendan McManus about three years ago when he was working on a start-up called UpDown. I was one of the early users of it. We both independently moved up the Bay Area, and he randomly Facebook messaged me and was like, Im in Silicon Valley, do you know any place to stay? Coincidentally, I was being kicked out of the sublet I was in, so we came together to look for a house. What I loved about him was when we moved in together it was like 9 oclock at night and he was like, Well? What are we going to work on? I was like this is awesome. So we just tried a whole bunch of ideas out, and Startup Digest was one of those things.

Howd you get the word out about it?

The thing with the Digest is, I was actually going to the events I was featuring. At the event, Id always ask the organizers if theyd let me talk for a minute afterward to tell people about Startup Digest. So I remember the first time, I gave a little thing about it, and we originally didnt have a website. The only way you could sign up was you had to either email me or Twitter me, and that was the only way I could put you on the list. The first time I said it at an event, I had 20-30 people come up to me asking to be on the list. Silicon Valleys a very small place, so word spread quickly.

Now that you have newsletters going out all over the world, how do you maintain quality control?

We have curators in each city. Most of them are startup entrepreneurs themselves. Some of them are investors in startups, and some of them have cashed out of their startup, but they have to be somewhere along that chain. We pre-screen people, and then theyre the ones who pick the events in their city. And its not like we pick specific cities and try to find someone there. People come to us and say, 'Im a founder in Seattle, and I heard about you guys. I really want to do it here.' We have a little form where they can apply on the website, then we do a quick call with them to make sure theyre doing it for the right reasons and get to know them a little bit, and then we have an internal wiki to set them up.

Were you surprised by anyone who contacted you?

Actually, one of our fastest-growing cities was Capetown, South Africa. This guy has a company called Personera, which is really freaking cool. He heard about us because he had an investor in San Francisco, and he was like, 'Hey we need something like this in Capetown.' He just applied through the online form, just like anybody else, and he went from like 1 to 81 members in a week or two. Now, I think its at almost 1,000 people signed up.

What's the cost of running a newsletter on this scale?

The start-up costs were basically nothing. We started with Gmail to send the emails and Excell to manage the list. All we had was the website cost, which was, all in all, less than $100. Now the costs to operate are less than $1,000 a month. We're spending $500 a month on emails, then the rest on hosting, travel, events, etc. The biggest cost is Brendan and my living cost. We make the majority of our money through advertorial emails and sponsorship.

Which events get the most attention?

The ones that are always the most popular are private events, the ones you have to apply to get into. We usually feature the event and say, 'Heres how you can get in touch with the people.' Those do really well. Also, launch parties do really well. We feature events from huge conferences all the way down to really small meetups, and you find that the smaller meetups that are usually more technical and skill-focused, actually perform surprisingly well.

You guys host your own events, too, right?

We only do one event, and its more fun and silly for our subscribers. It's called Startup Waffles. Its free waffles, and whenever we travel, we do one for our subscribers, and we do it once a month in San Francisco.

Do you have anything new in the works?

At least for now, its all event listings. The Silicon Valley one is still the biggest of all the cities, and were transitioning that one slowly into more of a daily newsletter, sort of like Daily Candy, because people have been demanding more content from us.

Why do you think Startup Digest has become so popular so quickly?

As much as I use Facebook, Twitter and all that stuff thats out there, theres nothing thats going to replace person-to-person interaction. You go and meet an investor or customer face-to-face, and youre excited about it. You make a stronger connection really quickly. Then its a lot easier to follow up on these other channels, but that person-to-person feeling can never be replaced.

How much money are you planning to pull out of your company this year?

If you own your business outright, the decision is yours, but if you have one or more partners, things can get a little dicey, says Jordan Dolgin.

Dolgin is a Toronto-based lawyer who specializes in business law and has seen many business partners fall out. In one example he recounted to me, two partners had vastly different ideas about how much money they wanted to take out of their thriving business. One partner had a healthy appetite for the finer things in life and wanted to claw out most of the cash to fund his ever-growing lifestyle. The other wanted to leave most of the cash in the business to fund new projects and provide a safety net. Their difference of opinion escalated into an all-out war. They stopped talking and eventually couldn’t even be in the same room together.

Finally, the more conservative partner asked their banker to change their account so that both partners had to sign all company checks. This move caused the bank to lose confidence in the business, and their credit line was pulled until the partners could work out their differences.

Like with all marriages, it’s better to size up your partner before you commit. Here are three ways to evaluate your potential business partner:

1. Go to lunch

Watch how your potential partner treats your server, and you will have a good idea of how he or she will treat your employees.

2. Compare your numbers

Ask your potential partner trade-off questions to evaluate their need for financial reward with their lifestyle aspirations. Once the business gets going and the profits start rolling in, how much money do you need to be happy, and at what point is an extra week’s vacation more important than the next $10,000 in personal compensation?

3. Look in the parking lot

Compare your potential partner’s current spending habits to yours. In particular, get a look at the car he or she drives. A car is the ultimate expression of the image we want to display to the world. If your potential partner is driving a Porsche, and you’ve got a sensible sedan, consider this a reliable bellwether of problems to come.

John Warrillow is a writer, speaker and angel investor in a number of start-up companies. He writes a blog about building a sellable company at http://www.BuiltToSell.com/blog. You can also follow him on Twitter at @JohnWarrillow.

Small-business owners have been slapped with credit card interest rate increases of more than 30 percent since January 2010 because their cards aren't getting the same protections as those of consumers, says a new study.

The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, enacted last year, limits rate increases, requires banks to apply payments to higher-rate balances first, and mail bills 21 days before the due date instead of 14 days, among other provisions designed to protect consumers from unfair billing practices and rate hikes.

But cards offered to businesses aren't included in the legislation. According to a study by BillShrink, a search engine that compares product options, before the rules took effect in February a third of issuers raised consumer card rates an average of 16 percent. But rates on small-business cards can rise unchecked – and so far have increased more than 30 percent this year, says the study, which analyzed data from 2,300 small businesses seeking advice from the site.

"We predicted earlier this year that small businesses would be subject to rate increases as the banks try to make up for lost consumer revenue resulting from the CARD Act," said Schwark Satyavolu, CEO of BillShrink, in a statement. "Since small businesses aren’t protected, they appear to be an easier target for card rate hikes."

(How keen are credit card companies to cash in on this loophole? So keen that they are reportedly offering corporate cards to peoople who don't own businesses, prompting Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat, to write to the Fed asking it to curb the pitching of the legislation-exempt cards to consumers.)

Small firms also have a lot more offers to be wary of: Issuers increased mailings of corporate-card offers by 256 percent in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the year before, according to Synovate, a London-based market research firm. And according to the Federal Reserve, 83 percent of small businesses in 2009 used business and personal credit cards, which essentially amount to short-term loans.

Despite the different treatment from credit card companies, small businesses tend to pay off their monthly balances more often than consumers, according to the BillShrink study. Just over a quarter of small firms don't pay off their balance every month compared to 40 percent of individuals. The average debt held by a U.S. small business is $12,100, compared to $7,020 for consumers.

Other survey findings: Perhaps not surprisingly, small firms that pay off their balances tend to have better credit ratings and larger annual revenues than those that don't. A full 60 percentof companies carrying a balance have revenues under $149,000. (For the record, these business owners rated cashback benefits as the most important card reward feature, followed by airfare rewards.)

Switching to a card with better rates and improved rewards could save the average small business owner more than $1,500 a year, the study said.

Effective July 1st of next year, eBay will no longer allow third party checkout transactions for customers. That means you will only be able to make purchases using eBay-owned PayPal.

eBay claims that only about 10% of purchases made are done by third party options. In the same announcement, the online auction giant tried to throw a little oil on what will surely be turbulant waters as reactions ripple through the web. eBay says it will be upgrading its checkout system with better credit card integration, tax reporting and smoother shipping to places like Alaska and Hawaii. Yeah, yeah....

Speaking of turbulant waters, there's already been some brouhaha over eBay using this to throw Google Checkout out of its sandbox. Just a clarification; Google Checkout was never in the eBay sandbox to begin with.

It's long time until next July, we'll see what the FTC has to say about this between now and then.

Take it from those of us who know: An easy way to ruin your relationship with the news media is to send a bad press release.

Newsroom fax machines and reporters' inboxes are flooded on a daily basis with press releases from companies, government agencies, non-profit groups, and even average citizens trying to get their neighborhood plight noticed. If you send in a press release that's riddled with grammatical errors, buried in a convoluted e-mail, or completely irrelevant to the reporter's coverage area, you might as well be tossing your press release down a sewer drain. If you deluge a news organization with unprofessional or uninteresting releases, your chances of ever getting favorable news coverage are zero-to-slim.

But when done correctly, a good press release will grab a reporter's attention and force their curiosity to want to learn more about your announcement.

"I want to be a trusted resource for that media so I'm trying to give the journalist all the information when they need it so they don't have to go anywhere else," says Gillian Pommerehn, director of public relations for Crosby Marketing, which is based in Annapolis, Maryland, and whose clients include the U.S. Department of Agriculture and DuPont.

The trick, professionals say, is knowing how to format a good release, where to send it, and what information to include. The release is the face of your company that you're sending out into the world, so it's not a task to be taken lightly. Don’t forget: With most press releases now available online through wire services or your company's website, customers or clients may also be reading them, not just reporters.

"Really good, clean, crisp, grammatically correct writing is so important in creating a positive impression of your company," says Lauren Selikoff, chief marketing officer for Allison & Partners, which works with Samsung and Michelin and is based in San Francisco. "This is not a task to turn over to the intern."

Here's some tips to help you craft your message.


Writing a Press Release: Mind the Message

One thing comes to the mind of any good journalist when they receive a press release: Why would I care? The "news" in your news release has to be obvious, or else your notice will be on a fast route to the recycle bin. The first step is figuring out exactly what message you are trying to get across, and how it qualifies as news.

"The hardest thing for people who are new to PR to grasp is you really have to take your ego out of it when it comes to finding something the press is going to write about," Selikoff says. "What's newsworthy to a publication's readers is often completely different than what you are trying to get across."

That means your release needs a good headline. That can be something saying how your new product is going to make life easier, or how it relates to a news event. Your headline should be an attention-grabber, so reporters can see right away how the announcement affects their audience.

Dig Deeper: The Art of the Press Release


Writing a Press Release: Seek out Examples

If you've never written a press release before, you're in luck: The Internet is chock-loaded with examples and models you can use. More than likely, someone has already composed a press release on the same topic that you can use for inspiration. Don't copy — but do soak up their style and manner of ordering the content.

PR professionals recommend checking out press release distribution services such as PRWeb and PR Newswire to find a model on which to base your release. Searching Google for announcements related to your business — promotions, new product launches, new branch openings, etc. — is also likely to produce an example you can copy.

Dig Deeper: How to Manage Your Own PR


Writing a Press Release: Mastering the Structure

Experts say press releases should be no longer than one page. Every press release has a basic structure:

Top:
Put the words "For immediate release" at the very top of the page. The headline — the key to grabbing attention — should be centered on the page, and usually written in bold or capital letters. Under that, put a subhead, often in italics, that elaborates on the headline.

The headline and subhead are the prime places to work in keywords that will help search engine optimization and draw traffic to your release once it's online, says Leyl Master Black, managing director at San Francisco's SparkPR, whose clients include Bing and Barclays. For instance, she says, if you're launching an e-commerce platform, you want the words e-commerce, platform, and software to appear in your headline and opening paragraphs several times.

First paragraph:
Black and others say you should assume no one is going to read beyond the first paragraph, which makes it the most important. Many releases also take up a journalistic style, beginning with a dateline, or the city and state the news is coming from.

"You need to have the theme and anything that is newsworthy summarized very concisely and neatly," Selikoff says. "The remainder of the press release is kind of fleshing out the story. But the main story has to get across in the first paragraph."

The old standard is that a release should be similar to a story the journalist would write. Reporters often stick to a structure known as the inverted pyramid, which means the most significant parts or the story should be at the top, with everything getting less important as you go farther down the page. This ensures that even someone who just reads the top of the release will get the most important information, and makes it easier to cut text from the bottom for space.

Quotes:
Experts recommend that your release should also include at least one quote in the body. The quote should come from someone knowledgeable about the announcement being made, such as a product manager if you're announcing a new invention, or a top executive if announcing company wide changes. The quote can also be used to explain how your announcement makes you stand out from other competitors, even if you don't mention them by name.

"The quote is where you can add context to your announcement and offer an opinion about it," Black says. "The quote is where you can talk about why this is important to the industry."

Selikoff also warns against using a canned quote talking about how great your company is. Use a quote that provides some insight instead. It's also helpful to know some publications' standards on using quotes from a release. While blogs and very small publications will often use information directly from a release, and re-use quotes you include in the release in their story, major publications most often will not.

Boilerplate information:
The last paragraph is typically a standard set of information about your company, including your mission, when the company was founded, awards it has received or other achievements. This provides basic background information the journalist or the public can use to put the release in context and understand more about who you are.

Contact information:
You don't want to pique a journalist's interest only to have that person scrounging and searching to find who to call for more information. Contact information can either be at the top or bottom of the page and should include the name, e-mail, and title of whomever the media contact for the story is. Usually, it will be your company spokesperson or a dedicated staff person familiar with the topic who can answer reporters' questions.

"There is a certain format for press releases that media are accustomed to getting, " Pommerehn says. "It's Important to kind of keep that format."

Multi-media:
You'll most likely be sending out releases through e-mail and posting them on your company's website, so experts say you should consider including some digital features, such as video and audio. It's also an opportunity to link back to other company information available online — previous press releases and related matter such as customer testimonials or performance reports — that will give the news media additional context.

Dig Deeper: The Power of Press Releases for Small Businesses
http://www.inc.com/marla-tabaka/2009/01/the_power_of_press_releases_fo.html


Writing a Press Release: Target Your Distribution

The first rule of sending out a press release to know which reporters you're trying to reach.

"Not only is the press release itself important, but who you're communicating with is very important," Pommerehn says. "It’s a major pet peeve for journalists when the PR person or the person doing the press release does not do their homework."

If it's a local news event, find out who in the local media covers your neighborhood or issue. Do some research on bigger news organizations to find out which reporters or producers cover your industry. Some media organizations have designated e-mail addresses or fax numbers to which all releases are directed.

Professionals say to be mindful of what kind of organization you're reaching out to as well: a reporter at an environmental magazine, for instance, might be turned off by a flood of paper-consuming messages coming from the fax machine.

Most journalists expect press releases to arrive by e-mail these days. Put your document in the body of the message because most reporters won't open an attachment from someone they don't know.

If you have a public relations budget, you can also send your release to a wire service for broad geographical distribution. Small companies can distribute through PRWeb.com for as little as $80, Black says. Other services such as Businesswire.com and PRNewswire.com are pricier but will expose your release to a broader audience.

Don’t' forget that media organizations run on tight deadlines. Pommerehn says the morning is typically the best time to send a release for most publications while late morning or early afternoon is better for television and radio outlets.
Advance notice helps too. If you have an event you are trying to get covered, waiting to send notice until editors are rushing out of the door on Friday evening could lead to a missed opportunity for media exposure. Editors will have to scramble to fit it into their story budgets for the weekend, leaving a bad taste in their mouth about your company.

Dig Deeper: How to Talk to the Press About Your Company

Advertising on radio has consistently proven to be an effective and efficient medium to help generate brand awareness and grow business for a variety of companies and in a variety of geographical markets. But for small and mid-sized businesses that are on a tight budget, it pays to know some tricks of the trade to keep radio advertising affordable.

"Negotiation is key. You have to go in and negotiate what you want," says J. T. Hroncich, managing director and principal of Capitol Media Solutions, an agency that helps companies buy advertising. "There's a lot more to it than placing a simple print ad. You have to look at the target audience your looking to reach, size of your budget and the ratings of the stations you are interested in purchasing."

The sections below will detail how to understand your options for radio advertising, tips for negotiating deals for radio ads within your budget, and other promotional opportunities on radio.

Dig Deeper: Making Your First Advertising Buy

Despite the rise of television, cable, and the Internet as advertising platforms, radio advertising "still makes sense," says Hroncich. During the recent economic downturn, some businesses stayed away from radio, fearing that as people lost jobs, there wouldn't be as many commuters during drive-time hours. But that seems to have settled down. "It is still really relevant, but a lot depends on the market. If you're in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles, where a lot of people still drive to work, it's a good platform to get your advertising message out."

Certain types of companies tend to advertise more on radio – auto dealers, banks, jewelers, salons, and so on. They tend to be local and they often provide a phone number, website, or location so that you can reach them. "At the end of the day a lot of them want you to come into the store," Hroncich says.

Often, radio stations will help produce the commercial for you as part of negotiating an advertising deal. "You can give them the copy and they'll create the ad for you, as long as it's a pretty straightforward type ad," says Hroncich. "Most times it is included in the price. Otherwise you can pay $1,500 to $3,000 and up to have an ad created."

Before negotiating, you have to figure out what target market you are trying to reach and then find radio stations and programs that do a good job of reaching those markets. Advertising agencies are often hired to do the research and the bidding for you, and can often negotiate more "value added" features to a contract.

Dig Deeper: On-Air Endorsements

The first rule of thumb to save money on radio advertising is to plan early and negotiate a long-term (13- or 26-week) or yearly contract. "Stations very often provide discounts and/or value added for clients who commit to purchasing a designated amount of advertising in advance," says Wendy A. Schmidt, a 20-year radio sales veteran in the Boston market who is a senior account executive for CBS Radio's premier Boston station, WBZ NewsRadio 1030 AM. "When you lock into a longer term, your rate is guaranteed for that contract period against future rate increases, and you do not pay in advance. Airtime is generally billed weekly or monthly only after the commercials air."
If you don't purchase your radio campaign in advance, you are at the mercy of supply and demand, whereby rates may increase as inventory decreases, Schmidt says. And, you may not be able to run your campaign at all if a station is sold out during busy months.

Here are some other tips for buying radio ads on a budget:

Dig Deeper: Saving Money on Radio Advertising

Outside of on-air radio spots, there are other opportunities you may have on radio to promote your business. Here are a few:

Radio station promotional events. To add value to your radio campaign, you may want to sponsor a radio station event as part of your advertising, Schmidt says. This can be negotiated as part of your advertising package. Make sure to ask about any promotional opportunities. "For example, a radio station may host a business breakfast series in which qualifying advertisers are included as sponsors," Schmidt says. "Or, a station may also customize a promotion exclusively for your business."

In addition to on-air exposure, you may be able to capitalize on in-person exposure to potential customers. "Your company may be allowed to provide samples or sell product, do demonstrations, and/or distribute promotional materials at the event," Schmidt says. It depends on the client whether sponsoring events makes sense, Hroncich says. "If it's an event featuring the most popular DJ in the area, you're going to have to pay a little more appearance fees, but it may really lend credibility if you have a popular on air personality reading your commercial or endorsing your product," he says. "That goes a long way."

Cross promotions with other advertisers. Schmidt recommends that businesses ask the radio station sales representative about other advertisers who may be interested in cross promotions. "Each advertiser would mention the other in their advertising, often providing an offer such as something free or discounted with purchase," she says. "For example, a supermarket may advertise a discounted ticket to an area attraction with the purchase of specific food items. The attraction, similarly, would promote the supermarket." Cross promotions can be rewarding for both advertisers, as they are increasing their airtime and exposure, while simultaneously providing a consumer incentive to help drive sales for both businesses.

Determine if you qualify for co-op advertising funds. Schmidt says co-op advertising funds may be provided by a manufacturer whose products the retailer sells. "The amount of funding the retailer receives is generally based upon meeting a sales benchmark of the manufacturer's product," she says. "For example, a particular brand may pay a percentage of the store's advertising, provided that the radio commercial mentions the brand and/or slogan a designated amount of times." Co-op funds may accrue yearly or quarterly, but have specific deadlines in which to use the funds, otherwise they lapse. "It's important for retailers not to overlook this valuable potential source of advertising funding," Schmidt adds.

Tap into the radio station's online audience. Most radio stations have websites, and "stream" or broadcast their programming online. Generally, for a minimal investment, advertisers can add value to their on-air radio campaign by also advertising on the station's website. Sometimes, Hroncich says, radio stations will sometimes throw in website advertising as part of the "value add" in an advertising contract.

–––––

How to Buy Radio Advertising On a Budget: Recommended Resources

The Radio Advertising Bureau
The sales and marketing arm of the radio industry, the RAB has nearly 7,000 members including some 6,000 stations in the U.S.

Radio Locator
The most comprehensive radio station search engine on the Internet.

Radio Ad Lab
An independent organization funded by radio industry companies to further the understanding of how radio advertising works and to measure radio's effectiveness.

Arbitron
A media and marketing research firm serving the media -- radio, television, cable and out-of-home -- as well as advertisers and advertising agencies.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Google is working on a social networking solution to compete with Facebook, although when asked if the solution will resemble Facebook, CEO Eric Schmidt said, "The world doesn't need a copy of the same thing." They are talking with top game developers like Playfish and Zynga (the company that brought Farmville to Facebook).

Google already owns Orkut, a social network that enables instant messaging and the sharing of photos and videos, just like Facebook.

If you remember, I previously blogged about four guys who were taking on Facebook with their own solution, Diaspora. Will anyone ever be able to tame the Facebook beast, or are all attempts in vain?

Google is big and smart and rich and Facebook is a UI nightmare, so maybe there's a way for Google to win here, but they haven't won at everything and they don't make money on everything. They still make most of their money from search ads.

Lotsa luck guys!

Read more of Curt's musings

Venture capital firm Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham sent the VC blogosphere into a tizzy this week when he tweeted:

“Convertible notes have won. Every investment so far in this YC batch (and there have been a lot) has been done on a convertible note.”

At issue for everyone was whether this was 1) true and 2) a good or bad thing.

If you’re interested in the various opinions, I offer up these links:

Fred Wilson, a well-known New York VC: Some Thoughts On Convertible Debt

Foundry Group managing director Seth Levine: Has Convertible Debt Won? And If It Has, Is That a Good Thing?

The Business Insider: What’s All This Noise About Convertible Debt?

Those are some pretty big responses to a 25-word Twitter message. In the end, no one could really agree on who benefited from the trend. The most common answer: well, it depends.

But back to Graham himself. He offered a follow-on post at his website explaining why he thinks the rise of convertible debt is a positive trend for both entrepreneurs and investors. The short answer is that it speeds up the fundraising process and is generally fairer to everyone involved.

In terms of legal complexity, drawing up a convertible note is a breeze compared to equity. Therefore it's a lot cheaper. Additionally, you don’t get sucked into the debate over valuation.

By far the biggest influence on investors' opinions of a startup is the opinion of other investors. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves. Any startup founder can tell you the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but "who else is investing?"

Since no one wants to be the first mover when it comes to investing and putting a valuation on a company, it’s easy for fundraising to grind to a halt.

Graham argues that the beauty of convertible notes is you can bypass the groupthink and give different prices to different investors, rewarding those taking more risk and those likely to help you in the future. He refers to this variable pricing as “high-resolution fundraising.”

(This is presumably opposed to the low-resolution process of fixed-size equity rounds where no individual investor is willing to pipe up with his or her intent to invest or valuation.)

This seems a lot more equitable to Graham (pun not intended):

Bolder investors will now get rewarded with lower prices. But more important, in a hits-driven business, is that they'll be able to get into the deals they want. Whereas the "who else is investing?" type of investors will not only pay higher prices, but may not be able to get into the best deals at all.

And whether or you're on board with this kind of system, it doesn't much matter to Graham: “Different terms for different investors is clearly the way of the future.”

You've probably spent a lot of time and energy building up your business, so now it's time to locate those people who love to shout from the mountain tops how great they think you are. Why? Well eventually you'll want to reach out to these very special people, thank them and treat them extra special.

At my company VerticalResponse, we create a list of advocates from different channels so that when we're ready to really motivate them even more than they already are, we can do it easily. So where do you start?

Your Employees - Your employees can be the very best advocates for your business. You know who your best employees are and those who love what they do. Ask them to talk about your business on Twitter and Facebook if they'd like, and to post that they work for you on LinkedIn.

Best Customers - Look to see who your best customers have been, these are probably people that have purchased from you a number of times. Then based on your criteria, create your "best customer" list.

Survey Responders - If you're sending out customer satisfaction surveys, why not monitor who responds positively to your surveys? Then create your "survey advocates" list.

Google Alerts - Sign up for FREE Google Alerts with your business name, your name, even you competitors name. See if there is anyone who keeps talking about your business more than a few times. Call this your "google advocates" list.

4Square - If you've got a local business, monitor who becomes the Mayor of your business on 4Square. When they check in, make sure you know and you find them and give them a special discount or deal. They'll be sure to visit often and tell their friends. Call this list your "4Square Mayor" list.

Twitter - Search your twitter handle on twitter.com. You will see who is talking positively about you. We use TweetDeck and set up a variety of keywords to track. Then from that easy interface we can manage our conversations with them. Make sure you RT them asking them to send you an email, include your email address. "Thanks for the RT! Email me at [email address] for a special deal!" You only have 140 characters so make sure you can fit it all and you will get their email address so you can start to build your email list of "Twitter advocates."

Facebook - Create a Facebook Fan Page and monitor who is speaking up with comments and likes. Set up a "Reviews" Tab and ask your followers what they think about you. Then message them back thanking them. Ask for their email address so you can send them something (free product, discount.) For anyone who "Likes" what you write, add them as a friend on Facebook. Then message them and ask for their email address as well. Start to build your list of "Facebook advocates".

Blog - Check out those who've commented on your blog. Most blog platforms enable you to see their email address. These will be your "blog advocates."

Now that you've collected all of your advocates, keep this list fresh at least every month. Then be sure to reach out to them with an email marketing campaign, thank them and give them some extra special love.

Are you finding your best advocates? If so, how? Please comment!

Each day, Inc.'s reporters scour the Web for the most important and interesting news to entrepreneurs. Here's what we found today:

Google vs. Facebook: the employee bidding wars are on. Sure seems like a good time to be a developer at Google. According to TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, Google is combatting an increasing number of employee defections to Facebook by offering some astounding perks: in one recent case, Arrington writes, Google offered a developer threatening to leave for Facebook "a 15% raise on his $150,000 mid level developer salary, quadruple the stock benefits and...a $500,000 cash bonus to stay for a year." The most concerning part for Google? "He took the Facebook offer anyway," Arrington writes.

Ten B-School courses not to miss. The debate over whether an MBA is of value to entrepreneurs starting a business will likely rage on forever, but for those who do choose to go back to school, Business Insider has a list of the 10 MBA courses entrepreneurs must take. Using data gathered from professors, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs, the article lists the courses that have proven valuable to entrepreneurs facing real-world business dilemmas. Among the must-take courses are the core finance classes as well as classes on feasibility analysis and new venture management.

Flex your personality muscle. Last month a group of online marketing and social media trendsetters came together to share advice on how companies could increase their influence online. This week the New York Times' MP Mueller reports how the findings of the aptly-titled "Influencer Project" can help small businesses. Overwhelmingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the experts agreed that good social media skills really boil down to good communication skills. The same things people have been doing for centuries offline -- telling great stories, listening intently, being transparent -- seem to work online as well. Use social media platforms to share your stories, passion, and ideas with consumers along with the products they purchase. Consistency is key to forging relationships and resonance with your audience. For more social media tips, visit our Social Media Toolkit.

When will your cell phone be your wallet? Perhaps as soon as next month. Sure, the Japanese already have tap-your-phone-to-pay technology, and call it osaifu keitai. Now it's coming to the United States. Visa is releasing an iPhone case that makes the smart phone compatible with tap-to-pay consoles. And MasterCard is using tags that stick directly to phones. But these are just temporary solutions - Nokia will include near-field communications (NFC) chips in all new smart phones next year, Fast Company reports. At that pace, NFC should be ubiquitous in the United States in three to five years.

31 start-ups named world's tech pioneers. Yesterday, the World Economic Forum announced a group of 31 tech start-ups having a noteworthy impact on the world (via ReadWriteWeb). Past winners include Twitter and Kevin Surace's, an Inc. Entrepreneur of the Year, Serious Materials. Some winners this year include the location-based social network Foursquare, and the augmented reality company Layar. The winning companies and their technologies were chosen for "empowering people in all walks of society by giving them more information, more options, a bigger voice in the world around them and more control over their own health and their impact on the environment."

Entrepreneurs on the campaign trail. Today's Wall Street Journal tells the story of a few companies who attribute the bulk of their growth to political campaigns. Take VictoryStore.com. The Iowa-based company, run by a former Republican party chairman, expects to nearly double its revenue this year thanks to a new product line: cardboard cutouts of political incumbents. Other businesses, like Broadnet, are replacing automated campaign phone calls with interactive broadcasts of live town hall meetings. It seems regardless of who wins the Senate and House elections in November, there are some business owners who stand to win either way.

Dr. Seuss on innovation. In the Harvard Business Review, Scott Anthony writes that bedtime reading helped him visualize why a company was approaching innovation the wrong way. Remember the story of the star-bellied sneeches? Well, they thought themselves superior to the sneeches without "stars upon thars." Sylvester McMonkey McBean unveils a machine to add a star to the belly, and then one to remove stars. Eventually, no one remembers who had a special star in the first place. How can this apply to business? When structuring a company, creating an autonomous group - like a board or a review panel or a marketing group - remember to make sure it is actually autonomous, and isn't just a special label applied, like a star upon the belly of a sneech.

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Thirty seconds into one of the insanely popular Twilight films (or a quick look at any Twilight poster) and you know that Taylor Lautner, a.k.a. Jacob Black and the guy whose pecs are usually on display, would win a match of muscle against a mere mortal.

But by challenging Lautner to a push-up contest, the owner of a trailer company just might come out the stronger man – or at least with stronger sales.

The saga began last month, when Lautner started legal proceedings against McMahon's RV of Irvine, California, after a dispute over a customized trailer.

Lautner, 18, was planning to use the custom-painted, upgraded vehicle on the Pittsburgh set of his latest flick, Abduction, this summer, but was unable to relax in his new $300,000 toy, as the dealership failed to deliver it by the June 21 deadline. When McMahon's RV finally did deliver it, Lautner and his company Shark Kid Entertainment claimed it was not safe to drive. (The RV company says Lautner paid the full purchase price, accepted delivery of the RV, and did not attempt to return it. The company denies any wrongdoing.)

So Lautner and his dad Dan, who negotiated the contract, sued McMahon's RV, claiming breach of contract and fraud—and that the late delivery caused him emotional distress, according to the Associated Press.

Brent McMahon, the 47-year-old owner of McMahon's RV, was not cowed. The former RV salesman turned entrepreneur (he started his company in 2000, after 14 years working in the field), flexed his PR muscles, challenging the Twilight star to a push-up contest to settle their differences.

McMahon – whose company website claims its "one of the only RV dealerships in the world that employs a dedicated Customer Satisfaction Department" -- said he'd hand over the damages if Lautner won, but would give the cash to charity if he lost. (Lautner's legal team had told McMahon they'd settle for $40,000, which is when McMahon suggested the push-up contest.)

Asked about McMahon’s chances of beating the super-fit Lautner, McMahon’s attorney joked: "He works out regularly, but he’s a 47-year-old man. He’s no Taylor Lautner."

Team Taylor, however, isn't giving him a chance. They've rejected the challenge, with lawyers insisting the move demonstrates the trailer company's "lack of professionalism."

"McMahon RV's response to our client's legitimate claim further demonstrates the lack of professionalism that Mr. McMahon, his company, and his employees have exhibited from the outset, and that compelled the filing of this lawsuit in the first place," Lautner's legal team said in a statement.

The team does, however, "welcome the opportunity for [McMahon] to resolve the matter by making a $40,000 donation to the charity of Mr. Lautner's choice."

So far, McMahon hasn't let Lautner's refusal get in the way of (possibly) doing well by doing good – he's said he'll donate $50 to the Children's Hospital of Orange County for every motorized RV sold until December 2011.

So, there's Apple's new social network for iTunes called Ping. It was just announced this week and as Steve Jobs himself described it; it's "like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes."

We all know how this goes. Jobs launched it, so count on Ping to be Webster's newest verb by Friday. (As in, "let me ping you that song" or "what's the name of that new group? Can you ping it to me later?").

But wasn't there already a Ping brand out there? What about the golf brand, Ping?

It turns out, Apple has already cut a deal with the owner of the Ping name in golf. Ping's parent company, Karsten Manufactoring, has even put out a press release blessing Apple's new music endeavor.

Every business owner likes to think that he or she has a commitment to quality. If that were truly the case, of course, no product would ever disappoint, and no service would result in a complaint. So how can you improve quality at your company? Here are 5 steps you can take to put you on the right path.

1. Make a commitment.

W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, famously laid out 14 points for management—chief among them, the notion of "constancy of purpose."

Deming argued that a company's commitment to quality had to come from the top, and it had to be reinforced over and over again. Unless a business views quality as its single, non-negotiable goal, workers will inevitably feel the need to make tradeoffs and quality will slip.

"Constancy of purpose means that quality decisions are not situational," writes the operational expert Rebecca A. Morgan. "End of month quality is the same as beginning of month. It means that the long term benefit of the organization is not sacrificed to hit quarterly targets."

So are you ready to commit? If you are, you should tell your staff—and then think about how you will handle the first conflict between your stated objective and a pressing deadline or an attractive short cut.

Dig Deeper: The Power of Purpose

2. Track mistakes.

If you are going to commit to quality, first you must define exactly what quality is. For manufacturers, this process involves statistical quality control, the process of setting a product's specifications and then sampling a small number of units from the production line to see how closely they measure up to those specs. Standards are set and, if too much deviation occurs (or if quality appears to be trending in the wrong direction), the manufacturing process is altered.

Tracking quality is admittedly more difficult in a service business, and efforts by groups such as the International Organization for Standardization (known as ISO) to create meaningful benchmarks beyond manufacturing have had mixed results.

One way to gauge customer satisfaction (and, by extension, the quality of your service) is by tracking what is called a net promoter score. Devised by a Bain consultant named Fred Reichheld, a net promoter score keeps tabs on the number of customers who would recommend a business to their friends. A customer who answers 9 or 10 is seen as a promoter; a customer who answers 7 or 8 is seen as passive; and a customer who gives a company a score of 6 or lower is seen as a detractor. By subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters, a company arrives at its net promoter score.

Dig Deeper: How to Address Quality Issues

3. Invest in training.

An old saw of the quality movement is that any business with a quality control department is doomed to poor performance, for it has demonstrated to every other employee that quality is not his or her chief concern. Instead, quality experts recommend that businesses train workers at all levels to look for ways to improve quality and to ameliorate problems.

Training takes on several dimensions. For starters, you should set up a new-employee initiation program that trains workers to focus on quality issues from their first day on the job. Different CEOs have different perspectives on how best to do this. Ralph Stayer, the quality-obsessed CEO of Johnsonville Sausage in Sheboygan Falls, Wisconisn, believes your existing employees should be put in charge of training new employees, because only they can provide a firsthand perspective on how your company's operations work. Ari Weinzweig, founder and CEO of the Zingerman's Family of Companies in Ann Arbor, Michigan, takes a different approach: He personally leads all new-employee orientation training sessions (which last several days) because he believes an employer never has a better chance of instilling values and a sense of purpose than right after he or she has hired a new employee.

Whether you hand train duties to your employees, take them on personally, or some combination of the two approaches, it's important that you provide workers with a history of the company through the lens of quality. Let them know what problems you have had in the past, how you corrected these problems, and where your company stands with respect to its quality goals today. You should also go over your definition of quality in detail, and show them how you measure quality (see the previous section.) Finally, train workers to see the connection between their actions and, more broadly, their work ethic, and the company's overall performance. By tying individual behavior to an overall system of work, and then showing where that system can, on occasion break down, you will be giving workers the information they need to be good stewards of your business.

Dig Deeper: Ralph C. Stayer on How Johnsonville Sausage Embraced Quality

4. Organize quality circles.

Your staff members may roll their eyes at the introduction of such a dated technique, but organizing employees into quality circles can be an effective way to identify and address problems. Simply put, quality circles are groups of employees who are encouraged to assess processes and recommend improvements, all with the goal of promoting quality, efficiency, and productivity. The concept was developed by Deming in post-war Japan, and made its way to the United States in the late 1970s. At one point, half of all large corporations had adopted quality circles, but then interest in them faded.

That's a shame. Quality circles, by any other name, are teams of workers who are given the authority and responsibility for making a business better. To succeed, experts say that participation in a quality circle should be voluntary; circles should draw members from all corners of a company; and the circle should set its own agenda (rather than pursuing a company owner's agenda.)

Once you have invited workers to join a quality circle, provide them with adequate resources to pursue their analysis, and schedule a time in the future at which they may present their findings. It is important that you act on their recommendations, even if the group's conclusion is not necessarily one you would have drawn yourself. Remember, the purpose of the exercise is less to solve a particular problem than it is to engage workers in the process of finding and addressing concerns. Moreover, you should be tracking customer complaints or product defects on a regular basis, so if the circle's recommendations do not produce the desired result, you'll know it, and be able to act.

Dig Deeper: How to Set Up Quality Circles

5. Have the right attitude.

Too many people turn the quest to improve quality into something oppressive. No less an authority than Deming rejected the idea that the quality management had to be dreary and involve a lot of negativity. "The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace," Deming moaned in an interview in the 1990s.

This attitude is not necessarily easy to adopt and runs afoul of some of the basic management practices we take for granted. For example, Deming was not a fan of performance reviews, as the writer John Case has explained. "[I]f your evaluations are fair, you will determine that half your workers (by definition) are below average, and you will tell them so," Case writes. "Result: half the work force is instantly discouraged and demoralized, and any sense of common purpose is undermined."

Rather than pointing out inadequacy wherever it might be found, Deming believe that the job of managers was to frame the pursuit of quality as an interesting, noble, and worthwhile goal. If you are to truly improve quality at your business, whether you manufacture products, distribute goods, or perform a service for your clients, your first step (and also the hardest) is to resist the temptation to dwell on your company's flaws and instead rally your team around the cause of rooting them out.

Dig Deeper: Zero-Defect Management

Steve Jobs just wrapped up another keynote–Chris Martin from Coldplay is playing a little send-off right now. As far as Apple announcements go, the keynote might have felt like a bit of a letdown, but there were three important reveals:

1. Apple TV

The scuttlebutt: An iTunes-connected TV box–Kevin Rose guessed it would be renamed the iTV–that would run iPhone apps, thus creating an opportunity for app entrepreneurs to invade the living rooms of millions of Apple fanboys.

The reality: The device is still called the Apple TV. It's cheap, it looks sweet, and there are cut rate prices for video rentals. But no app store.

The upshot: A big letdown for entrepreneurs, who would have had a shot at reaching consumers in yet another place. I expect that apps will eventually come.

2. New iPods

The scuttlebutt: Apple would launch a new version of the iPod touch to keep pace with the iPhone 4.

The reality: Delivered! The new touch is basically an iPhone 4 without the phone. It includes the same display and processor, plus two cameras for video calls and the ability to record videos in high definition. Plus there's a new line of the smaller iPods. Jobs called this "the strongest lineup of iPods we've ever had."

The upshot: Great news for app developers, especially those making games and communications applications. During the keynote, Jobs pointed out that the iPod touch is the most popular portable game player in the world, with more than 1.5 billion entertainment apps downloaded. The improved iPod Touch should make the device even more attractive–and further broaden the market for game companies.

3. Wardrobe

The scuttlebutt: Black mock turtleneck, of course.

The reality: Crew neck!

The upshot: Bad news for high neckline holdouts. Your icon has left you.

On the heels of Amazon’s new lower-cost Kindle, Sony has announced the launch of three e-readers that are slimmer and lighter than the company’s previous models, with improved touchscreen technology. All three devices have E Ink Pearl paper-like displays that are readable in direct sunlight. Here are the details on each model:

The Pocket Edition has a 5-inch touchscreen and 2 GB of memory, enough to store up to 1,200 books. It comes in silver and pink. Cost: $179

The Reader Touch Edition has a 6-inch touchscreen and 2 GB of memory, along with dual expansion slots for adding up to 32 GB of additional memory. You can also play MP3 files and AAC audio files on the device, which is available in black or red. Cost: $229

The Reader Daily Edition, which has a 7-inch touchscreen, provides a wireless connection to Sony’s Reader Store using AT&T’s 3G network. It also has WiFi and basic Web browsing capability. Like the Touch Edition, it has 2 GB of memory with the ability to add up to 32 GB. It comes in silver. Cost: $299