Business Information for Entrepreneurs by an Entrepreneur

Everyone's writing a “leadership secrets” book these days. I've thought about it but then I realized that I don't have enough leadership secrets for a book… and they're not that secret anyway.

In business, I try to lead with four simple rules. None of these should come as a surprise to anyone. They are tried and true rules that have served me well for years:

1. Dream big. Part of the fun of starting a business is envisioning its massive success years down the road and working to build toward that success. I don't want to build businesses with the hope of being a small corner store; I want a business that will put vast conglomerates like GE or Microsoft to shame. Will I ever achieve it? Who knows, but I'll have a lot of fun trying.
2. Plan to succeed. Planning is so essential to a business. Businesses often fail when they fail to plan. I have dedicated myself to helping other businesses succeed through proper, careful planning.
3. Gather a strong team. We can't do it on our own. We need to surround ourselves with a group of people who can work well together. Each person's weaknesses should be accommodated by another's strengths.
4. Execute tirelessly. Entrepreneuring is about lighting a fire in your soul for something and fanning it into flame. There will be times when you're exhausted but often the only way to be successful as a business owner is to execute your plan and keep pushing yourself to execute it further. That doesn't mean you don't take vacations, but it does mean that make sure you enjoy the journey as a journey.

For those business owners who do a lot of traveling, http://www.cosmopod.com/ is a great option. I've seen business owners use a laptop or a Palm Pilot device without as much success: perhaps they had the computer but not the file they needed because it was still at their office on their desktop. I've seen business owners who kept all of their work files on their laptop, only to have the laptop take a nasty spill during travel… losing access to the files when they were needed most.

That's why I like CosmoPOD. You can download their software for free and you end up with an online office that accepts emails, has office applications that let you work with Word and Excel documents, and can store up to 1 gigabyte of information; often enough for most business travelers to carry most of their advertising material. Although your web office is ad supported, you still end up with a vast amount of virtual real estate so you can log on at any computer and access the documents you need the most… when you need them the most.

I am an avid computer user. I like how convenient it is to keep all of my documents in one place, easy to find… and it doesn't take up a lot of space (unlike my filing cabinet in the corner). Although I'm not currently using one, I have used a Palm Pilot to help me store and retrieve information and share it with my computer.

Although I try to stay technologically current, there is one thing that I have so far not been able to replace in a computer.

My annual calendar. All you have to do is typically look around the Internet for programs — whether freeware, shareware, or commercial — and you'll usually find something that suits your needs. But I have yet to find annual calendar software I enjoy.

Until that day comes, I keep a big annual calendar on my office wall. It's the kind you can get at an office supply store for $20 and you write on it with smelly markers. Perhaps it's the size that I find useful; computer screens are getting bigger but aren't quite big enough yet to give you the at-a-glance that you get from the annual calendar.

My recommendation: get and use an annual calendar to give yourself an at-a-glance view of the year. It makes planning so much easier.