As this may be the last post for awhile we would like to thank our contributors, our readers, and fellow bloggers who have inspired us.  Good luck to all of you!

Thank you,

Jake Adams

One of the biggest issues that entrepreneurs face is solving problems before the problem destroys their businesses.

Many entrepreneurs usually do nothing at all or wait too long to solve problems and then the problem takes a toll on their businesses.

This article will provide you with 5 problem solving tips that you can immediately use the next time you encounter problems in your business.

1. Strategize – Many of the world’s best poker players and chess players think ahead and employ a winning strategy every time that enables them to beat their competitors and you should too when solving problems.

When you have a problem that must be solved take the time to step back and think about what’s needed to solve the problem instead of stressing about the size of it.

In poker terms think about what cards that you have to play to help you solve the problem. The cards that you have to play are endless and can be anything from assets that you can sell to pay down debt, people that you can speak with for help & consultation etc.

2. Break it down into steps - Another easy thing that will help you to solve problems more effectively is to break the problem down into steps that are necessary  to solve the problem.

There’s nothing easier than breaking a problem down into A, B & C steps. The step process takes the problem from being something huge and complex and turns it into something that you can accomplish.

3. Find a mentor - Another great way to solve problems easily is to find someone who has already been in the trenches and has solved the same problem that you’re going through. If you can’t find an entrepreneur to connect with in your area try speaking with a trusted friend or family member to talk with about the problem because the very act of talking about the problem is the most important part of the problem solving process.

4. Get away from the scene of the problem - If you’re still having trouble solving the problem and can’t come up with a plan, break it down into steps or find a mentor to speak with  about the problem you should get away from your home or office and get your mind on something else.

Getting away from the problem for a little while can help you to refocus and recharge your energy so that when you come back to your office you will be ready to take a fresh look at the problem and come up with creative ideas to solve it.

5. Take action - Once you’ve worked a strategy to solve the problem it’s important to take action NOW and not waste critical time. Many people waste time when it comes to solving problems even when they have the solutions that they need to solve them. To keep from getting caught in problem solving quick sand make immediate action steps part of your plan to solve the problem (example: calls, emails etc) this is important to do because if there are easy things that you can do immediately to solve the problem you will make quicker progress instead of thinking about all of the steps outside your office that you need to do to solve the problem.

Jeremy Raglin is a internet marketer and successful home business owner.  Follow his blog at www.destroythe9to5.com.

Entrepreneurship

“The wish to acquire is a most natural thing, and men who manage to acquire are always applauded (or at least not blamed) when they succeed.  What is an error and worthy of blame is when a man cannot acquire something, but desires to obtain it in any way he can.”

Determination and Focus

“A prince must therefore have no other thought or objective, nor dedicate himself to any other art, but that of war with its rules and discipline, because this is the only art suitable for a man who commands.  It is such a powerful art that it will maintain the position of one who is born a prince, but will also often raise mere private citizens to that rank.  Princes who give more thought to luxury than to arms often lose their principality.  In fact, the quickest way to lose a principality is to neglect the art of war, and the best way of acquiring one is to be a master in this art.”

Business Ethics

“And yet we cannot define as skillful killing one’s fellow citizens, betraying one’s friends, and showing no loyalty, mercy, or moral obligation.  These means can lead to power, but not glory.”

Human Resources

“The mercenary and auxiliary armies are useless and dangerous.  A prince who holds a state that is founded on the strength of mercenary armies will never be firm or secure, since such armies are divided, ambitious, without discipline, and fickle – brave in the face of friends, cowardly in the face of enemies.”

“The reason for this is that all that keeps mercenaries on the battlefield are the negligible wages you pay them, which are not sufficient to make them want to die for you.  They are eager to be your soldiers as long as you are not at war.  The moment there is a war, they either rake flight or desert.”

Education and Mentorship

“As for exercise of the mind, a prince must read histories and study the actions of great men so he can see how they conducted themselves in war and examine the reasons for their victories and defeats, in order to imitate the former and avoid the latter.  Above all, the prince must follow the example of another great man who had been praised and honored before him, always keeping his predecessor’s deeds and actions in mind.”

Organization

“A wise prince must observe such methods, and never remain idle in times of peace but vigorously take advantage of them so he can be ready for times of adversity, so that when Fortune changes, she will find him prepared to resist her.”

Leadership

“This raises the questions whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the contrary.  My reply is that one would like to be both, but as it is difficult to combine love and fear, if one has to choose between them it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

“I conclude that since men love at their own will and fear at the will of the prince, a wise prince must build a foundation on what is his own, and not on what belongs to others.  At the same time, he must do all in his power to escape being hated, as I have already said.”

Personal Brand

“What will make the prince contemptible is for him to be perceived as undependable, frivolous, effeminate, pusillanimous, and irresolute, against which a prince must guard himself as from the plague.  He must do his utmost to that his action will be perceived as imbued with greatness, courage, dignity and power.  And as for the private affairs of his subjects, he must be adamant that his decisions are irrevocable.  He must maintain a standing such that no man would venture to cheat or deceive him.”

Public Relations

“A prince must also prove himself someone who admires ability, furthering skillful men and honoring those who excel in what they do.  He must also make certain that his citizens can go about their work unhampered – in trade, agriculture, and all the other professions – so that no one will be afraid of accumulating possessions out of fear that they might be taken away, or afraid of starting a business for fear of taxes.  The prince must reward whoever wants to do these things and whoever wants to improve either the city or the state in some way.”

The Board

“The choice of advisers is very important for a prince: Advisers are able or not, depending on the prince’s wisdom.  One can assess a prince’s intelligence by looking at the men with whom he surrounds himself.  If they are capable and loyal, one can consider the prince prudent, because he was able to discern their ability and managed to keep them loyal.  But when these mean are lacking in quality, one can consider the prince as deficient, because it it in choosing his advisers that he can make his first mistake.”

Trust

“The only way for a prince to guard himself from flattering adulation is to make it understood that he will not be offended if he is told the truth.  Then again, however, if every man is free to tell him the truth at will, the prince quickly becomes a figure of contempt.”

Market Entry

“If we take two cautious men, one might attain his goal and the other not; similarly, two men might succeed through entirely different courses of action, one through caution, the other through recklessness.  The reason for this is the nature of the times that either conforms to or conflicts with their courses of action.”

“Therefore, I conclude that when Fortune changes and men rigidly continue in their ways, they will flourish so long as Fortune and their ways are in accord, but they will come to ruin the moment these are in discord.  In my view, however, it is better to impetuous than cautious, because Fortune in a woman, and if you wish to dominate her you must beat and batter her.  It is clear that she will let herself be won by men who are impetuous rather than by those who step cautiously.  Therefore, like a woman, she is more partial to young men, because they are less cautious, wilder, and command her with greater audacity.”

Glory

“Nothing can bring a prince more esteem than great feats and extraordinary actions.”

A lot of entrepreneurs don’t think they need to do any type of marketing because new business may come to them by word of mouth or because people in the community know them and their business has a great reputation but what happens when people stop calling? Your business will start dying and you need marketing to generate new business.

Here are 3 tips that you can use to jump start your marketing efforts.

Tip 1 – Define what your customer is worth

This step is easy to figure out. All you have to do is determine what your average sale price is and that is what your customer is worth.

For example: If my average sale price is $4,000 then my customer is worth $4,000.

Tip 2 – How much are you willing to spend on a new customer?

If you were able to spend $100.00 to get one new customer how many times would you spend that $100.00?

Tip 3 – Before setting a marketing budget follow the 7 percent rule

The easy way to figure out how much you should spend on getting a new customer is to focus on spending 7% of what your average customer is worth.

For example: If my new customer was worth $4,000 then I would spend $280.00 to get that new customer.

Once you know what you should spend to get a new customer the next step is to start creating your marketing plan.

How should your marketing plan function?

* It should include elements that run 24/7 and are easily automated.

* It should be spread across a wide variety of mediums. For example: Don’t just advertise on the Internet, you should spread your marketing budget out across the board on advertising mediums like print, radio and television.

Many advertising mediums are very inexpensive right now due to the recession and this means great deals for you.

* It should bring in new sales or new sales leads every single day.

* The elements of your marketing plan must include elements that are trackable so you’re able to see what’s working and what isn’t working.

Last of all, the most important part of any marketing campaign is to test, test, test and re-test your marketing messages by writing new advertisements, changing copy, changing headlines etc because changing one word in an advertisement can easily bring in more sales and add more revenue to your bottom line.

Marketing doesn’t have to be a dirty word. It can actually be something that you enjoy and make a regular part of your daily business once you get started.

Successful entrepreneurs are students of marketing and never stop learning new marketing methods to grow their businesses. If you’re just getting started with marketing you can begin your marketing education by checking out books on marketing at your local library or learning from the wide body of marketing knowledge available online.

Jeremy Raglin is a internet marketer and successful home business owner.  Follow his blog at www.destroythe9to5.com.

Tech Startups Duke it out in Snowball Fight – A few brave souls from NYC’s tech crowd ventured into blizzard-covered streets last Monday for venture capitalist Charlie O;Donnell’s 2^nd annual tech snowball fight.

Why You Should Make Your Competitors Your Frenemies – Conventional wisdom in most companies is that “the competition is the enemy”.  Many startups take this too far and should instead view competitors and enemies + friends.

Survival Skills: Richard Branson – The British magnate wants to kite surf the English Channel for his next adventure. Good interview!

-          Related article: Will Richard Branson’s Virgin America Fly?

Google Targets Small Businesses with $100 Million Worth of AdWords Credits – Google needs to find its next leg of growth and local is where it is putting a lot of its fire power.

8 Social Media Resolutions for 2011 – Keep your marketing on social networks meaningful in the New Year by being original and authentic.

14 Ways To Be A Great Startup CEO – Excellent advice on how to handle the less “glamorous” side to being a startup CEO.

Use Your School’s Resources to Start a Business – Starting a business while still in school can be tough but there are ways to minimize that difficulty.

Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011 – The rise and collision of several trends (social, mobile, touch, geo, cloud) keep spitting out new products and technologies which keep propelling us forward.

Some Social Entrepreneurship Grad Programs – Sampling of U.S. grad school programs focused on social entrepreneurship or social innovation.

7 Tips for Business Forecasting – Forecasting sales and cash flow is never a simple task, and the shaky economic recovery is making the process downright perplexing.  Here are a few tips.

100 Things to Watch in 2011 – Great slideshow by marketing agency J. Walter Thompson

What makes this book so revolutionary is not only the important questions it raises but that it provides a workable framework for your company to follow, complete with enjoyable case studies.

Below is a few our favorite excerpts (warning: this section is a bit long, it was difficult narrowing down the best quotes of the plethora to choose from.)

Creating Blue Oceans

“The only way to beat the competition is to stop trying to beat the competition.”

“In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here, companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand.  As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced.  Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody.”

“Blue oceans in contrast, are defined by untapped market space, demand creation, and the opportunity for highly profitable growth.”

“The creators of blue oceans, surprisingly, didn’t use the competition as their benchmark.  Instead, they followed a different strategic logic that we call value innovation.  Value innovation is the cornerstone of blue ocean strategy.”

“Value innovation occurs only when companies align innovation w/ utility, price, and cost positions.  If they fail to anchor innovation w/ value in this way, technology innovators and market pioneers often lay the eggs that other companies hatch.”

Analytical Tools and Frameworks

Blue Ocean authors

“Executives have received calls to be brave and entrepreneurial, to learn from failure, and to seek out revolutionaries.  Although thought-provoking, these are not substitutes for analytics, execs cannot be expected to act on the call to break out of existing competition.  Effective blue ocean strategy should be about risk minimization and not risk taking.”

“To fundamentally shift the strategy canvas of an industry, you must begin by reorienting your strategic focus from competitors to alternatives, and from customers to noncustomers of the industry.”

Reconstruct Market Boundaries

“The challenge is to successfully identify, out of the haystack of possibilities that exist, commercially compelling blue ocean opportunities.”

Reach Beyond Existing Demand

“To achieve this, companies should challenge two conventional strategy practices.  One is the focus on existing customers.  The other is the drive for finer segmentation to accommodate buyer differences.  Typically, to grow their share of a market, companies strive to retain and expand existing customers.  This often leads to finer segmentation and greater tailoring of offerings to better meet customer preferences.  The more intense the competition is the greater, on average, is the resulting customization of offerings.  As companies compete to embrace customer preferences thru finer segmentation, they often risk creating too-small target markets.”

Get the Strategic Sequence Right

“To maximize the profit potential of a blue ocean idea, a company should start with the strategic price and thendeduct its desired profit margin from the price to arrive at the target cost.  Here, price-minus costing, and not cost-plus pricing, is essential if you are to arrive at a cost structure that is both profitable and hard for potential followers to match.”

“A business model built in the sequence of exceptional utility, strategic pricing, and target costing produces value innovation.  Unlike the practice of conventional technology innovators, value innovation is based on a win-win game among buyers, companies, and society.”

Overcoming Key Organizational Hurdles

“To overcome these political forces, tipping point leaders focus on 3 disproportionate influence factors: leveraging angels, silencing devils, and getting a consigliere on their top management team.  Angels are those who have the most to gain from the strategic shift.  Devils are those who have the most to lose from it.  And a consigliere is a politically adept but highly respected insider who knows in advance all the land mines, including who will fight you and who will support you.”

Build Execution into Strategy

“To build people’s trust and commitment deep in the ranks and inspire their voluntary cooperation, companies need to build execution into strategy from the start.  That principle allows companies to minimize the management risk of distrust, noncooperation, and even sabotage.”

The Sustainability and Renewal of Blue Ocean Strategy

“Because blue and red oceans have always coexisted however, practical reality demands that companies succeed in both oceans and master the strategies for both.  But because companies already understand how to compete in red oceans, what they need to learn is how to make the competition irrelevant.  This books aims to help balance the scales so that formulating and executing blue ocean strategy can become as systematic and actionable as competing in the red oceans of known market space.”