You run your own business, hopefully successfully. You probably are smarter than a fifth grader. The more important question is, just how smart do you think you are? Are you the kind of leader that thinks he knows it all? Or maybe you don’t really think that but if you take a step back and analyze how you work and how you behave at work, you just might see that you send across that message.

This post is meant to be a wake up call for all small business owners out there. We have to understand the importance of learning. More than that, we have to understand that learning is a lifelong process and we just can’t know it all. No matter how smart we may be, no matter how much we know, no matter how much experience we may have had, there is always something new that we can learn.

How exactly can we continue learning? It’s not that hard. I believe that the first step is to keep an open mind. Recognize and acknowledge that there is always something that can be learned. With this attitude, it will be easier to find learning experiences in most everything.

In concrete terms, one way to pick up new insights is to interact with other business owners. You don’t even have to do this face to face. CEO blogs, web sites, books, and forums are all good ways to exchange information and learn.

Another way is to always keep yourself updated with regard to your field. Journals, web sites, forums, and other regular publications can help with this. For sure, new developments will arise – and you cannot afford not to know about these things.

You may be smarter than a fifth grader, but you have to outsmart yourself in order to go further.

The last thing most people would think about when starting a business would be their exit strategy, after all you’re just getting started! Planning your strategy is actually a MUST. It’s a must because you never know how things will turn out and having no exit strategy for every possible scenario could lead to wasted opportunity or worse, something disastrous.

You need an exit strategy for any eventually including success. If you think about it a successful business means that it could possibly outlast your ability to manage it, but only if you have an exit strategy in place so that the whole business won’t come toppling down when you’re gone. So what’s your business strategy for success? Will you be leaving it in the hands of family, a trusted right hand, or go public with it? Before you decide on a strategy to go with make sure you consider the feasibility of each choice factoring things such as cost, training needs, and timetable.

Be sure that the timetable is realistic. Remember that in business timing is one of the most crucial things. If you already have existing partners/investors you should discuss the exit strategy with them because THEY might have their own exit strategies and their timing might not coincide with your plans.

You also need an exit strategy for failure; a thing people would rather not think about but is vital if you want to bounce back faster. In this case have a baseline criterion to help you determine if it’s time to bail out before you lose too much. Figure out what to do with the remaining stock, with your employees, with your lease contract, and all the other practical details.

This way, however things end, you’ll be prepared.

There are a lot of marketing strategies and techniques available to the business owner. The trick is in being able to analyze and make educated guesses as to which activities will yield the best results. Of course, there really is no perfect guarantee that the conversion rates will soar, but with observation, testing, and critical analysis, you are bound to get the results that you want.

Web presence has always been a popular term. It means that people know that you exist and that they can find you online easily. One way you can achieve a strong web presence is by exposing your content to your audience.

What do I mean? You have a web site, right? You want people to visit it and see what you have to offer. This means you might have to engage in activities such as paid search so that your site will come up as a sponsored link (such as in Google). This is one way to go about it.

Another way is to push your web site content to other locations which receive more traffic. Let us say you have videos on your web site. What is the first web site that comes to mind when I say video? I bet it’s YouTube. The idea is to publish this video on YouTube as well. The chances of people discovering that video through YouTube are way higher than if you let the video remain on your web site alone.

The same principle applies to other context such as text and photos. You have to figure out which sites aggregate various content and make sure that your content gets in there.

You have to face it – VoIP just might be the best solution for your business’ telecommunications needs. While the technology has been around for so long, not everyone is using it. This is due to so many reasons but the bottom line is that more and more business owners are seeing the benefits of implementing a VoIP system for the company. If you are on the hunt for a VoIP provider, here are some questions that can help you get the most out of it.

How easy is it to add or remove phones?
The technical term usually used is “scalable.” Ask potential VoIP providers if their system is scalable. This also means that you can add or remove phones WITHOUT having to spend more money. This is quite important if you have plans of expanding in the near future.

Is your area serviced excellently by the provider?
Just like mobile phone providers and other similar services, VoIP service may not be the same in all areas. As such, you need to make sure that potential providers work excellently in your area. You can ask existing customers in your area and even ask the provider for a test run.

What is included in their customer service?
VoIP is great but it is not without problems. If something happens and your connection goes down, how will customer service help? How fast will they fix things? What other problems are covered by their customer service? You should know all these things before making a decision.

We’re in the middle of the first work week of 2010. How are things going at the office? I sure hope that your year is off to a good – no, great – start. If it is not that great, here are some things that you can do NOW. It is not too late anyway.

Take a look at your personal expenses. What does this have to do with your business? While things just might turn out to be much better in 2010, a lot of small business owners are saying that they are taking home less and less money from the business. Of course, being the owner, you have more to lose. As early as now, see what you can cut back on personally, just in case you won’t be able take home as much money as you want.

Prepare for tax time NOW. It’s still several months away, but you know just how hectic the tax period is. This can take your time and focus away from running the business efficiently. As such, do your preparations as early as you can, in increments. This will help you keep focused on the more essential things.

Don’t borrow too much. Common sense, really, but this year, resolve to depend on yourself as much as you can. You might have to dip into your savings, but that is better than owing other people money and having to pay interest on it.

Stay healthy. You are the boss. You make decisions. You run the business. If you get sick, your business will suffer, and you will spend more on medical expenses.

We’ve all heard about how Twitter and other social media platforms have proved to be excellent tools for business. Perhaps you’ve even created a Twitter account yourself – you might even be quite active in using it for the business. If so, then you would also have been exposed to the issue of personalization.

Good business communication with the public depends on many things, and one of them is showing the “human” face behind the business façade. On Twitter, one problem that may arise is if you have several employees maintaining one account. How would people know who is posting which message?

Luckily, the people at Twitter are trying to address this issue. They are currently trying out a feature wherein business accounts can have personalized notes which give an indication as to the identity of the person posting the tweets. Unfortunately, this is still NOT open to the public.

To get an idea of how it works, check out @Starbucks. You will see a small note at the bottom of the post telling you who created the message. You can then click on the Twitter name to go to the personal account of that employee.

So what is the point? Again, personalizing your business Twitter account will help you reach out to more people out there. After all, people would rather interact with a live person than some lifeless drone that they cannot connect with. At the end of the day, you want them to think of your business as human, and not some machine.

Less than a month, and it’s Christmas Day! During this time of the year, people look forward to lots of gifts and freebies. Why not take advantage of the prevailing spirit and promote your business as much as you can?

One way by which you can do this is to use your business Facebook or Twitter account (create one if you haven’t already!) to launch a contest. This is a great way to promote your business without costing you much. In fact, it could very well be a free thing for you as well.

Why hold a contest? As I said earlier, people love freebies, and contests give them an opportunity to get something without paying for it. The good result for you is that you gain more attention and, hopefully, new customers as well.

Here are some things to bear in mind when holding a contest.

One, make it easy. Contests are supposed to be fun. Do not make the participants jump through hoops just to qualify. Being a follower on Twitter or a fan of Facebook should be enough.

Two, make it worth their while. What’s in it for the participants? Make sure that they will want to join and win. A good idea is to provide a gift cheque for your product or service – it’s a win-win situation.

Three, get the word out. You can hold a contest but if you do not let people know about it, no one’s going to join. So more than announcing it once on Facebook or Twitter, be more aggressive about it. Use other means to promote the contest – your web site, for example. Also, make sure that the rules and stipulation are clear so as to avoid potential problems.

Photo via National Bingo Online

It used to be that mobile communication devices were only used by doctors and high level business executives. These days, even the average office worker can be connected wherever he or she may be. More than being connected through e-mail and mobile phone messaging, though, technology now allows people to connect to their offices while on the road. This means easier access to files, and perhaps better productivity.

Those in the technology sector realize this need and have been working to provide various features to small businesses; the same features that big corporations have access to is now available to small businesses as well. One company in particular has made this their goal.

Zdnet recently featured Egnyte, which is an online file server provider. This company is launching applications for the Blackberry and Android, geared towards the small business. More details:

Today, the company is unveiling Android and Blackberry apps to add to the iPhone app previously released. It’s also releasing the findings of a survey that it commissioned that found that half of all small businesses are using mobile devices to conduct business and that the majority had been in situations where they needed access to their files while in transit. In a statement, the company said:

Egnyte’s on-demand file server enables both Mac and PC business users to have online file storage, file sharing capabilities and automatic backup in one solution. The new interfaces, which require no additional software installation on the device, leverages a mobile drive — “m Drive” — that lets mobile users access all of their data stored via the Egnyte file server.

While not everyone in your business may have the need for this kind of connectivity, the availability of such a feature will certainly be useful for at least a handful of your employees – including yourself.

Christmas is the time to give, and most often, that also means having to spend. After all, a lot of people equate giving with cash and gifts that have to be bought. When it comes to companies – big or small – it has become a tradition to give gifts or bonuses around Christmastime. While this has been the tradition, things have been changing, especially with the economic crisis that has been prevailing for quite some time.

In fact, AP just released a report on a survey in this regard. The details:

NO BONUS: More small-business employees can expect no end-of-year bonuses or gifts for 2009.

A recent survey of small business owners or managers showed fewer of them planning gifts or cash for their workers. “Business owners are still feeling pinched cash wise,” said American Express business adviser Alice Bredin. AmEx’s small business division conducted the survey.

Last year, 44 percent of those surveyed said employees would get an end-of-year bonus. This year, only 31 percent did. Even fewer are planning raises: 16 percent, compared with 30 percent last year. Meanwhile, in 2008, 46 percent of owners or managers said employees would get holiday gifts. This year, it’s 35 percent.

The business owners or managers surveyed oversaw companies with fewer than 100 employees.

This is definitely bad news for small business employees, but perhaps business owners can find a way to lessen the impact of not being able to give bonuses? What are you planning to do for your employees this Christmas?

Photo courtesy of Acme Climate Action

Social media, social networking, social web sites – we hear of these things practically all the time now. Employees from all sorts of industries have various social networking accounts that they use, even at work! Many employers are quite concerned, especially since these sites may eat up bandwidth that could be used for more “productive” purposes.

The question remains, however, of whether these social media platforms can be made useful for business purposes. The truth of the matter is that IF you want your business to stay competitive, you NEED to engage in social media activities. What are the reasons for this? There are several, but the main thing that I can think of is the fact that social media platforms serve as an alternative means of communicating to the outside world; a means which is practically free; a means which reaches out to a much wider audience.

Let’s look the reaching out part. I don’t have hard numbers, but I can say without doubt that a huge majority of people in the WHOLE WORLD are engaged in social media activities. Facebook and Twitter are only a couple of the most popular platforms today, and a lot of businesses have already set up their own accounts. Why? Because they know that they can communicate with existing and potential customers through these sites; customers which they may not reach otherwise.

Of course, there is the FREE part. No need to pay consultant fees. No need to pay for the account – unless you want to upgrade. You can have someone in your staff to maintain the account, or you can even do it yourself!

So yes, social media should be an important part of marketing your business.