Thanks to David Letterman, top ten lists are everywhere. A quick Google search of “startup advice” yields over 3.3 million hits. So where do you start? When it comes to your startup, do you really want your business advice to be a joke?

There are many ways to find reliable advice to help your startup become a success.  For business tips, you can check out magazines such as Inc. and Entrepreneur, or magazines which focus on your specific industry. You can meet people and network through your localBNI International chapter, or make connections online using LinkedIn.

In our experience, some of the best advice has come from talking to people we know, face-to-face. Whether it is an old friend, an acquaintance, or even just the owner of a store you frequent, you know someone who has started a business successfully. Ask them for a few minutes of their time, and come prepared with a question and a notepad. Everyone has a battle story to share from their past experiences, and a piece of advice that got them through it.

• “Focus. You’re new, you’re small, you have limited resources.  Don’t try pursuing more than one market. And be careful not to pursue opportunities that are too big. The support they require can crush you.” Yitz Francus, CEO, ASAP Edit
• “Work ON your business, not IN your business.” Many business owners get caught up in the daily tasks, and don’t focus on long-term growth.   Joe Witte, Executive VP, Guru Corporation
• “Don’t be afraid to ask your friends for help. I have friends who know about Washington, DC incorporation law, and were more than happy to sit and talk for the cost of a lunch.” Alon Cohen, Senior VP, FightMetric
• “Don’t underprice yourself. Know your value and stand behind it. It is tempting to lower your prices just to get a new client, but if the price is too much for that client, then they are not the right client for you.” Miriam Gitelman, Partner, New Day Interactive
• “Have Respect, Integrity, and Passion. Treat everyone with respect and do the right thing just because it is the right thing to do. You should do what you love and love what you do.” Daniel Matlis, President, Axendia

There are millions of startup companies out there. Challenge yourself to talk to people you know about your business every day. You may find the perfect advice you need to help you take your own business to the next level.

Why does it seem that everybody today has a very negative attitude? We know that we are in a recession and eventually we will get out of it and have a bright and prosperous future, but why don’t people see the possibilities?

If you ask a business person “how is your business going?” They may tell you, “It was bad year, it’s bad today, and it will be bad next year.” You get a negative answer, negative this and negative that. It seems that we are surrounded by negative entrepreneurs, which is never good for building business.

Business people go to the bank for a loan, and the banks are not receptive in this economy unless the business has collateral. Due to this, many business people in 2009/2010 have tapped into their credit cards, relatives and friends to borrow money to stay afloat and pay for their business and personal bills. We also hear that unemployment is up, housing is down, gas prices are going through the ceiling, and the stock market is going south so we continue to talk, read and hear only negativity from the media.

The first six pages of the newspaper are negative and listening to the news on radio and television is negative. Many times I am afraid to ask someone how they feel, because I know I will have to listen to a negative reply. Being negative does not help your business, but it can destroy it.

According to Webster’s dictionary, the definition of negative is: “Containing, expressing or implying a denial or refusal that says “no’ (a negative reply), opposite to something regarded as positive, specific a) lacking in positive character or quality, lacking evidence, affirmation, etc. Having the effect of diminishing, depriving or denying” (a negative personality and so on).

When everybody feels negative reactions to most life events — be it in their business or personality — they should stop complaining and do something about it. There are many ways to find the answer because nothing is impossible. Go to the library or your favorite book store and search books showing you how to improve your business. Go online and search videos or articles about how to improve your business. Talk to successful business people in your field and outside your field. Read bios on successful people who have built their businesses and not only survived but thrived in challenging times, such as Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jeff Hayzlett (Eastman Kodak), Jack Welch (former chairman of General Electric), Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg and mayor of New York City), Donny Deutch (Deutch Inc.) and many more.

If you have a budget for it, discuss with with business consultants that specialize in your field.
Author Jeffrey Gitomer stated, “Negative people are worse than negative occurrences. The argument is over in 10 minutes, the person may hang around for years.”

I would like my readers to try my 24-hour Getting Ahead test. Take one full day and:
•  Do not use any negative words in your vocabulary
•  Be positive with all your statements
•  Do not have a negative thought about yourself or someone else
•  Wake up happy and eager to go to work with smile
•  Go forward and look at the big picture.

We’ll look at more ways to stay positive in a recession in my column on June 9. In the meantime, please email my column to any negative friends, relatives, associates or acquaintances.

Milton J. Paris, is the President and Founder of Getting Ahead in Business,  business coaching and business consultancy in Monroe Twp. New Jersey. (973) 619-9203      http://www.gettingaheadinbusiness.com/

By Joe Witte, Executive Vice President and Partner, Logo Design Guru

Are you seeing more traffic come to your website? Seeing more leads come through your email? But not seeing the results in your revenue?

Here are some tips to help you convert these leads to customers.

1)    Call/Email immediately- remember, if someone found you online, and took the time to phone/ fill out a lead form, chances are they did this with another company. Being the first company to contact that individual is critical. If you don’t reach them on the phone, follow up with an email that includes all of your contact information and the best time to reach you. Consistently stay in touch with these leads over the next 3 to 6 months.

2)     Have someone confident and knowledgeable call your prospects- your prospects may be the most important people you speak to today, because they could be your customers tomorrow. It’s an easy task to delegate, but ensure it’s delegated to someone who represents your company well, and is knowledgeable.

3)    Collect emails from lead forms- If someone filled out a lead form, and it includes their email address, collect that data and store it in an email marketing system such as www.iContact.com or www.ConstantContact.com.  Then you can send these interested parties a monthly newsletter or discounts.

4)    Rate your leads by opportunity- Not all leads are equal. If one person has expressed an immediate interest, and has a budget of $1000 for your widget, he is worth more than someone who says they are mildly interested and has a budget of $500. Help your sales team prioritize the leads and follow up accordingly.

5)    Provide monthly offers, discounts or coupons and update them regularly. Make them fun and interesting.

6)    Create urgency with your prospects, and give them a reason to buy NOW.

7)    Have a call to action on everything you send out… include “Call now”, “Email Us”, “Buy Now”… make it easy for people to find contact information and take action when they are ready.

8)    Have marketing materials professionally designs, and ready to send. Use metrics and visuals in your marketing materials. If you have to write proposals for your business, have a template that allows you to turn them around quickly.

9)    Ask your prospects/leads where they heard about you- and when you start to see a pattern, INVEST IN IT, OPTIMIZE, DO MORE.

10)    Optimize your advertising campaigns. Clearly communicate with your advertising partners what’s working, who your best customers are, and what’s not working. Good marketing requires optimization, testing, improvement, tracking and expanding on those results that work well.

Joe Witte is a partner at Logo Design Guru, and has successfully started 3 small businesses including CentricSource and Travel Ad Network.

Spring is traditionally the time of year associated with rebirth and rejuvenation. Flowers are in bloom, the doldrums of winter are over, and everybody’s mood seems to improve. If your house is anything like mine, Spring is also the time for “Spring Cleaning” and the undertaking of minor and some not so minor household repairs and improvements. From putting away the winter wardrobe to taking a harder look at that old torn window screen, it’s a great time to evaluate and fix little things around your home.

Once your house is in order, what about Spring Cleaning for your business? Do your marketing materials all match up and look consistent? Is the content on your website up to date and fresh? Is your current marketing or advertising plan working? If not, maybe it’s time to clean your business and evaluate whether your brand needs some small improvements.

Clean Up and Update Your Website

When was the last time you read over the content on your company’s website? If it’s been a while, you may not realize that some of the information may be so outdated that it doesn’t even apply to your business anymore. Is your pricing correct? Are there any old promotions still lingering? Are you and your customers sick of looking at the same old photos all the time?  Does the navigation and layout look dated and out of touch? Do you have broken links on your site that lead nowhere or to an error page? If you answered yes to any of these questions it may be time to update your website. Remember your website will never really be “finished”. It is an evolving, almost living component of your brand that needs to periodically change and be refreshed. Nothing says “I don’t care about my businesses’ appearance” to customers more than a stale website. You wouldn’t wear the same exact clothes everyday for 3 years, so why would you let your website look the same. Instead of making your website an ancillary part of your brand, make it the engine and driving force for new business.

Try a New Approach to Marketing

With all of this renewal and rebirth in the air perhaps it’s time to re-think or update your marketing strategy as well. How and where are you getting your message out? What is working and what isn’t? Perhaps it’s time to try something new. Have you thought about Search Engine Marketing as a strategy? Do you ever Google your business’ name to see where it appears? Is it on the first page of the results, or do you have to go through page after page before you find your website? Did you know that 42% of internet users click on the top search result? If your business has a great website, and you want potential customers to find your business, then you MUST invest in Search Engine Marketing for your website. Optimization is the fuel that drives visitors, and more importantly possible sales, to your site. It can be your most valuable marketing tool. If you haven’t yet considered it, it’s time to talk to an expert about it.

Update Your Logo

Design styles change over time and it doesn’t take long before your logo can look outdated, making your business appear behind the times. Sure, an established brand is a good thing, but an old logo can send out  the wrong signal. Upgrading your logo is a simple investment and does not mean changing it completely. Many companies change their logos over the years, but still maintain their brand. An update, such as color change, font change, new tagline or a re-draw on your original design shows a fresh, inspiring new look that says a lot about your business and demonstrates its quality.

Maintaining a fresh outlook and keeping the parts of your brand up to date helps build brand loyalty and brand freshness. A little “Spring Cleaning” may be the key to a successful Summer and Fall.

Setting up a website for your business can be complicated, but your business’s online presence is the foundation for forming a viable brand and is essential to your success.

Many design companies offer web design, but do not provide their clients with web hosting services. What does this mean for you? It means that the company designs your website, and that’s it. They hand you your files, and send you on your way. Most clients assume that once the design is complete, the company will show them what steps to take to get the site live on the internet, however, this is rarely the case. It is left up to you to find a web hosting company (a company to upload and store your website so that it is visible on the internet).

Design companies may recommend a hosting provider, but it is then up to you to contact them, establish an account, and make sure your site is up and running. With such a complex undertaking, the last thing you want to do while managing your business is worry about another vendor, where to send your website’s files, and what to do if something goes wrong. It is always best to make sure the company that designed your website can also host and maintain it.

1. One Point of Contact

If there is a problem or you need to make changes to your website, it’s much more reassuring to know you can make one call to your design company and speak to the same person at the same company each time. If you were to deal with multiple companies, you would have to speak to multiple representatives, who, in turn, waste more of your time playing “catch up” than actually assisting you. With one company, one assigned representative builds a relationship with you, so that they know all about your company and website and can assist you in a timely manner.

2. Troubleshooting

If you have spent any time using a computer, then you know occasional problems are a fact of life. Forms occasionally quit, databases stop responding, and your site crashes from too many visitors, the list can go on.  Often, a design or development fix is the solution. Having separate design and hosting companies makes it complicated to resolve simple problems. It may require a lot of back and forth phone calls and if you are not sure whether the problem is from your design or your hosting, who do you contact? Let one company take care of this for you. With one phone call, the problem can be fixed in a matter of hours, not days.

3. Maintenance

What happens when your business has a new product or service and you need to update your website? Do you have the time to change the photos, site navigation, or hyperlinks? Do you want to hire someone to do this on a regular basis? If you answered NO to any of these questions, it’s best to go with the company that has designed your website and is hosting your website. Who better to change, modify, or develop than the people who designed the site in the first place? In addition, you can call that point of contact mentioned above. One phone call and it is done. You have enough things to worry about, don’t let your businesses website be one of them. At Logo Design Guru, we take care of your maintenance so that you can focus your priorities where they belong: Your business.

In the past few years, it seemed the trend for cell phone development has always been, the smaller, the better. It was such a joke that even the popular movie, Zoolander, mocked the concept with a tiny, thimble sized cell phone. Once smartphones arrived, the idea of flatter, larger phones became the better choice, with touch screens, of course. Ideas are always progressing, and it seems Apple starts most of them. With Apple’s new release of the iPad, handheld devices have taken on a new look, a new style and a new size.

The iPad seems to work as an iPhone, iPod, Kindle, and MacBook all in one. This sounds like a great concept, except for its kinks. The device does not allow you to multitask, using the iPhone’s OS as opposed to the Mac’s OS X. It is a little too large to shove in a pocket, but smaller than carrying a laptop around due to the lack of extra accessories like a keyboard or mouse. It’s different, yet the same since most of the things it does have already been around. The product targets a larger audience since it has something for everyone, but seems more a toy than a useful product for small businesses.

Apple has always been trying to get involved in the corporate world by selling Macs to any interested business. With the release of the iPhone OS 2.0, Apple clearly attempted to create products to fit the needs of corporations. Apple hardened the iPhone’s security profile, added Exchange support, and created mass configuration and deployment tools for the previously released device.

For the iPad, it contains the same software foundation, so it includes those same features. The iPad uses iWork, its Office-compatible productivity suite, and is meant to be functional as a presentation tool. Although this may seem useful, the iPad’s functions are not powerful enough to keep up with corporate use. If anything, it would give employees reasons to be distracted throughout a workday.

Like the iPhone, the iPad works as a tool to support most daily activities in one compact device. It has the potential to be the turning point in the industry of phones, computers or music players, but also could be just another stepping-stone in Apple’s development. Overall, the product is lacking in most consumer wants and needs and an affordable laptop may have been a better way for Apple to go. Perhaps future versions will finally get it right. What do you think?

Many businesses have blogs on their websites, which can be very beneficial. Blogging allows you to offer advice, share thoughts and ideas and directly converse with your current or potential clients everywhere at the same time. Blogging is a fun and educational way for a business to get involved with the community. A blog has great opportunities to offer information, but it also functions best when the posts are updated frequently with fresh content. This may seem easy enough, but where does your content come from?

Blog content should be original and relatable. If your blog is business related, business tips and stories make very interesting content. Honest opinions from other entrepreneurs always make the best advice. Entrepreneurs reading your posts are in the same place that you are and learning from each other will lead us all on a good path.

Content can be a challenge to think up sometimes, but that doesn’t mean the first thing you should do is find someone else’s blog post and copy and paste its content. It is fine to be inspired by someone’s idea and develop your own take on it. It’s also okay to discuss someone else’s post openly and include their content, but only if it is an excerpt and given quotes and proper acknowledgment to the writer. The excerpt, however, shouldn’t be more than a paragraph or so in length, and should also have a live link to their original post.

As a writer myself, I know that when you work on a blog post, you research and put time and effort into it and it’s upsetting when some time later, you receive a Google alert with the same identical content that you recognize attached to someone else’s name and blog. It is a frustrating concept, in which you feel angry and cheated, but the truth is that stealing content isn’t worth doing and it doesn’t even benefit the thief in the long run. Sure, they may have acquired some “new” content to post, but over time, duplicate content actually hurts the search optimization of the site and their rankings are bound to go down.

Don’t be a thief. Blogs are meant to share genuine thoughts and opinions and although content writing can be difficult at times, it’s better to have the satisfaction of knowing that ideas you share actually belong to you and are completely original. It gives more credibility to your business and is another step toward success.