bizthreads.net: Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Building strategic alliances. With each passing day, the Internet is allowing businesses to form joint ventures and strategic alliances with other businesses. Whether you're using an affiliate system through Clickbank.com or you're selling Amazon.com books on your site, the opportunity for more and more strategic alliances are out there.

Consider who you can partner with, and why:

• Find like-minded businesses that provide complementary (non-competing) services to your niche and partner with them to maximize profit and customer loyalty.
• Find like minded businesses that want to share resources (like offices or office staff) to increase profits and improve your bottom line.
• Find like minded people who want to sell your products or services for a percentage of income. These people — if they feel a sense of ownership and partnership in what you do — will sell more than your top sales people.

Strategic partnerships are critical… and a growing opportunity. We'll see more of them in the future.

Occasionally, you might find that you have to send files that are bigger than what your email capabilities allow. Artists, graphic designers, software designers, professional photographers, writers, and architects are just a few of the many types of businesses that need big file sending capability.

YouSendIt.com allows users to send files up to 1 Gigabyte for free. (They earn their revenue through advertising, which the receiver views). There are also paid business memberships providing ad-free 2 Gigabyte file transfer.

It's a great way to send those huge documents you might not be able to send otherwise.

In a recent article on MoreBusiness.com, we talked about the huge impact W. Edward Deming had on global business with his drive for quality.

Normally, I'm skeptical about the latest and greatest practices that come around. Ideas like Total Quality Management (TQM), Management by Objectives (MBO) and Management By Walking Around (MBWA) are all good ideas with marketing acronyms but (I feel) they fall short of real leadership.

Deming was different.

He didn't just talk about managing a business based on numbers, I think he was a visionary for a new and better world: he wanted to see businesses around the world working together in friendly competition (maybe like teammates in a NASCAR race?) to create a world where everybody wins.

Pie-in-the-sky dream? Maybe. But it's exciting to think about the overall benefit when every business works for every business to win. It reminds me of someone who once said that when the tide rises, all the boats rise…

Economics in Plain English by Leonard Silk

I am not an economist and I've never really wanted to be one. (Although I do read The Economist when I get a chance).

But lately I've been thinking a lot and talking a lot with entrepreneurs about the concept of supply and demand and its impact on the bottom line of small businesses. This has led me (reluctantly, at times) to dive into economics books. When I wake up, I fear I've lost what little I gleaned.

So I went to the library in search of an “Economy for Dummies” type of book to give me some of the back story on supply and demand. That's when I stumbled on a little book called Economics in Plain English by Leonard Silk. Although I've read other books that claimed to put Economics into plain English, this book really did.

At first I was worried because the version I have was published in 1986… and a lot has happened in the last 20 years to business and economics. Things like the Internet.

But I picked up the book anyway and started reading it, at least to give it a chance. I was completely engrossed. Silk was an economics columnist for the New York Times and he worked at Business Week; he knows a thing or two about economics and plain English.

The book didn't start in the typical way: he proposes that every idea in economics can be simply expressed and he criticizes economists for not doing so. There aren't a lot of graphs or charts… maybe 4 or 5 of each in the 230 page book (which looks more like a novel than the voluminous tomes I've tried to read before).

What I love about Silk's style is that I will read a chapter and by the end I will realize that I've learned a lot about economics along the way without feeling like I'm trying to get through a textbook. His book is so easy to read. It covers different types of markets, different concepts, the national economy, and the world economy in a way that is balanced, thoughtful, and easy to read.

I've never thought I'd say this but he elevates the idea of the economy to an art form. I will buy this book.

Related Website: Credit card balance transfer offers are ideal for cutting your debt.

Adobe has cleverly positioned itself as THE place to go for an easy, transferable way to move information. This move was so successful that the 2007 version of Microsoft Office was to provide PDF transferability, meaning office documents could easily be turned into PDF files at the click of a mouse.

But no longer. Recently, talks broke down between the two companies. At this point, Adobe has been silent on the issue and Microsoft has suggested that it's because Adobe wanted Microsoft to charge its customers more for the Office program.

On the blogosphere, people are wondering whether Microsoft has an ulterior motive. It's possible, but the immediate impact on business is this:

• There will still be an extra step when transferring a Microsoft program into PDF file… and that's typically when errors in the document happen.
• Adobe — currently the champion in read-only files — may feel the backlash from bad press and lose its position as king of readable data… which could be problematic for business owners who sell digital download.

The first quarter of the year is a distant memory. The second quarter of the year is racing by faster than a NASCAR race. It will finish in about a month but that month will feel like a week.

Are you ready to face Q3 and Q4? As we near the halfway point of the calendar year, take a quick pulse of how you feel about your business and your attitude. It's easy to get bogged down in the minutia of the day. As you read this blog, take a step back and renew your “bird's eye view” of your business to renew your passion.

And, as Q2 winds up, create 3 goals for yourself to carry you through Q3 and Q4:

1. What kind of success would you measure as “good” success?
2. What kind of success would you measure as “great” success?
3. What kind of success would surprise you?

Strive to create surprising successful for your business in the next 6 months. Make 2006 the year that you surprised yourself.

When you face a challenge in your operations, what do you do? When budgets are tight and you're watching where every dollar goes, it can be challenging to find the right solutions to solve problems when they come up.

Need a networked time management solution? Need to get a financial calculator? Need to automate your invoicing process? Need to create better spreadsheets?

One option is to spend the time getting into your car and driving to the office supply store. You can walk among the shelves and look at a few different software options and listen to a commission based sales person tell you why the more expensive one is better.

Or you can bookmark:
http://www.morebusiness.com/tools/download/

This site is a big and growing portal to shareware that lets you solve those operational challenges inexpensively with affordable, downloadable software you can purchase online.

This will save you time, money, and effort. They say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is this line:

Productivity is always a challenge for entrepreneurs. It's so easy to default to putting out fires and that mentality takes your mind off of building your business.

What you need is to find strategies that let you automate business building so that it can operate virtually on its own, allowing you to focus on other things WHILE your business grows.

A site like MailerMailer lets you do just that.

Permission based (or “opt-in”) email marketing lets you ask for and receive people's email addresses and then market to them on a regular basis. But just doing that on your own can be time consuming (which equals costly) because you have to manage opt-in lists, take people off of the list when they unsubscribe, ensure that you are compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act, AND create your marketing message.

But an email management system like MailerMailer does that for you; all you have to do is create a regular marketing message… they manage the lists and ensure CAN-SPAM compliance. And when someone else is taking care of those critical details, you can be far more productive!

I admit to being critical of governments that become inefficient, slow moving, and bureaucratic. No other business can expect to be successful when it's that unhealthy. It's no wonder, then that I am thrilled to hear about times when a government demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit that makes this nation great.

Philadelphia made me proud when they formed a joint partnership with EarthLink to blanket the city with a WiFi service. Read more about it.

WiFi is technology that allows people to access the Internet without cords attached to walls; it's all wireless: computers that use WiFi technology send a signal to a nearby hub that is connected to the Internet. Until now, some businesses and homes had small Wifi networks so that the people who worked at the business or lived in the house could use their wireless internet anywhere in the area.

EarthLink partnered with the city of Philadelphia to put WiFi hubs on 4,000 of the city's streetlight posts, blanketing all 135 miles of the city. Now, anyone with a WiFi-capable internet can use the service anywhere in the city.

Imagine the benefits to small business! As an entrepreneur, you can conduct your business on a park bench or in the back of a cab. If you're walking down the street and get a call from a client, you can process their order immediately. As well, this agreement has turned Philadelphia into a giant shopping mall: as technology progresses, we'll see people shopping from their laptops, PDAs, and cell phones while they wait for the bus or walk the dog. Running your business and selling more stuff is made possible with blanketing WiFi technology.

Other Websites: Philadelphia Apartments Apartments, Homes and Rooms for Rent in Philadelphia

It's very popular to find non-business related topics and turn them into business-related topics. Over the years I've bought and read The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun by Wess Roberts, and a collection of Napoleon's Military Maxims by the MBC Library of Military Masters.

I've read leadership books about other famous military leaders, including Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Powell.

Although all of these books celebrate the life or teachings of a military leader, I've found them in the business, management, and leadership sections of bookstores. I think it's easy to repackage military maxims and concepts as business; but they end up requiring interpretation and sounding like pat answers to the difficult questions we face in business.

Knowing that Napoleon recommends two ranks of musketeers instead of three in battle won't help you when you're faced with a difficult business decision. Knowing Sun Tzu's formula for fighting different sized armies won't help you when you're sitting in a boardroom in a presentation.

If you're looking to add a book to your business library, avoid most of the military/business crossover books today. The best one in the above collection is Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but I'd still recommend reading it if you have an interest in history and not to develop business acumen.