"I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." ~ Larry Bird

I just love this quote from Larry Bird (who was a professional basketball player, and later coach, for those of you who don't know him). Yes, things always tend to work out, and you always tend to achieve success when you give it your all.

The best is when people look at successful athletes and entrepreneurs and say "look how lucky they are." Well if you call working all hours of the day and maintaining a laser-like focus on your goals "lucky," then I guess they're right. But you and I know better.

I grew up watching Larry Bird. My dad was a huge Boston Celtics fan (which is relatively odd considering he grew up in New York City). So, I became a huge Celtics fan too. And I was a big fan of the heart of the Celtics, Larry Bird.

This guy never gave up. And he nearly always hit the clutch shots.

(If you have 52 seconds and can tolerate terrible video quality, you need to watch this incredible steal by Larry Bird on YouTube. I clearly remember watching this live with my dad in 1987: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vwJlvB-Po)

But as great as Larry Bird was, he would not have won so many NBA Championships (he won three), if he didn't have great teammates (same with Michael Jordan).

As an entrepreneur, you also need great teammates. Since you can't possibly build a great company by yourself.

In fact, great entrepreneurs are more like Larry Bird the coach (who "hired" and coached his players into being the best they could be) than Larry Bird the player (who performed key tasks and made his co-players better).

The key is this -- you need to find, hire and then train and coach the best people. Because there are TONS of bad people. I learned this very early on at Growthink. Years ago, I generally gave people the benefit of the doubt. If they said they could do something, I figured they could. And then I quickly realized that some people "have it" and some people don't.

I think "having it" is the quality of people who "do what they say and say what they do" and always try to do their best. You want people who "have it" and at the same time people who are qualified and uniquely skilled at the position you need to fill. For example, while I "have it," there's a whole bunch of positions that I'm not qualified to fulfill or which wouldn't inspire me to do my best work.

So, how do you find these great people who "have it" and possess the skills you need. Here are my recommendations:

1. Event Networking: great people have several common traits, one of which is their dedication to ongoing education. That's why great people generally go to events and conferences. You also need to go to these events, where you'll find some very talented individuals.

2. Being Sociable: I've heard lots of stories of people meeting people at sports events, supermarkets, on a plane, etc., and striking up conversations that results in great hiring decisions. I must admit that I'm not the most sociable person outside of work; but I'm getting better at this.

3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great online network to find qualified people to come work for you. Join relevant LinkedIn groups to find folks with similar interests and who are looking to further their careers. And reach out to the best ones.

4. Recommendations & Referrals: Oftentimes the best hires are the ones that were recommended to you by friends and colleagues. Send emails out to your network and advisors asking if they know someone with the skills you need. People generally only recommend people that they believe are competent, since their own reputations are on the line.

5. Executive Recruiters: while this will cost more money in the short-term, executive recruiters (also known as "headhunters") can find you great candidates. This is what they do. Importantly, they will often find you people who aren't actively looking for a new job. These are often the best folks. I mean, would you rather hire an unemployed person looking for any company that will take them, or someone who's thriving at a company but sees great opportunity in helping you grow your venture?

Importantly, in its relative infancy, eBay used executive recruiting firm Kindred Partners to find and hire Meg Whitman. Whitman turned eBay into a multi-billion dollar company and herself into a billionaire.

Using one or more of these five tactics will get you qualified job candidates. But, before you hire any, I highly suggest you give them two tests as follows:

1. A skills test: whenever possible, you should test the skills of the job candidate. If you are hiring someone for a research job, give them a research assignment. If you are hiring someone to be a receptionist, do mock calls with them. Etc. I realize that for some jobs, it may be harder to test, but get creative since you want to make sure they will be able to perform.

2. A culture test: if someone comes highly recommended and passes a skills test, it still doesn't mean they're the right hire. They MUST match with your company's culture. For instance, if they're a stiff, and your company thrives on fun and creativity, then they're not the right match. Your company culture is critical, so don't ignore this key test.

Hiring the right players for your team is critical to your success. There are no wildly successful 1-person companies that I know of. So, follow these steps so you can build a great team and a great company.

Note: I've also used Craigslist to find people. I have found good people on Craigslist, but I've also found some really bad ones. But it's possibly worth trying as long as you do the two tests before hiring them.

Suggested Resource:  To become the ultimate leader, you need to do a lot of things, like hire the right people, create the right culture, establish accountability structures, etc.

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"Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done."

This quote from Amelia Earhart is one of my favorites.

And I think it is especially applicable to entrepreneurs. Since most entrepreneurial achievements are ones that seemingly couldn't be done.

Take Google. Would you have thought that this startup, which initially faced heavy competition from other search engines like Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Lycos, and others would eventually dominate the industry?

Or take Apple. Would you have bet in 2004 that Apple would develop sensational products and become the world's largest company based on market capitalization? And that from 2004 to 2011, the company's revenues would grow EIGHT times?

Both of these feats, and virtually every other feat achieved by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies have seemingly been impossible. But, they were achieved.

Which leads to the question of "why?" Why were these entrepreneurs able to achieve these amazing feats while most other fail?

From my work helping entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses for over a decade, and from reading countless books on success, I have identified 5 key reasons why entrepreneurs achieve success.

And I expect that Amelia Earhart thought and did these things as well on her way to becoming a legend.

1. Surround yourself with winners

Success coach Jim Rohn said, "You are the average of the 5 people you hang around with most." It's true. If you hang out with losers, unfortunately you'll be a loser. But if you hang out with winners, you'll become a winner. Because winners have a different way of thinking. And winners (particularly other successful entrepreneurs with whom you should be spending time) have often already encountered and overcome the challenges you face in your business.

How do you surround yourself with winners? Meet them at networking events. Seek them out (e.g., successful local business owners and executives). Etc.

Amelia Earhart also surrounded herself with winners. She was mentored and taught by famous air racer Frank Hawks and pioneering aviation teacher Anita Snook. She also spent significant amounts of time with ultra successful entrepreneur and book publisher George P. Putnam.

2. Identify your limiting beliefs and then overcome them

Limiting beliefs are beliefs that we hold either consciously or subconsciously that serve as obstacles to achieving and attracting what we want.

For example, each year many schoolchildren are told by teachers that they "aren't smart" or "won't amount to much." As a result, these children often carry, throughout their lives, this extremely negative and limiting belief. They incorrectly believe, at either conscious and/or subconscious levels, that they can't achieve success, and as a result they don't.

This holds very true in business, and, as such, it is imperative that you both identify and overcome your limiting beliefs.

For example, do you hold any of the following limiting beliefs?

• I don't have enough time to become a successful entrepreneur


• I can't start or grow my business since I don't have enough money


• Failure is shameful, and if my venture fails I will be shamed


• I can't be a successful entrepreneur because I'm lacking certain educational degrees


• I can't change or improve; I do things my way and that's who I am

These false beliefs and "excuses" prevent many entrepreneurs from achieving greatness. So identify these beliefs and force yourself to expose of them.

3. Accept the idea of failure

While you shouldn't dwell on the possibility of failure, you must accept it. If you don't, you may be striving in your business to prevent failure, rather than striving to achieve success. The latter will always help you achieve better results.

It turns out that actual failure is never as bad as we think it will be. Specifically, research shows that when people fear the worst and it happens, it's not as bad as they thought it would be, and they recover quickly.

MANY entrepreneurs have failed before achieving success. Milton Hershey, P.T. Barnum, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Donald Trump -- all of these super successful entrepreneurs failed big at one point in their careers and had to claim bankruptcy.

That's why I love this quote from Phil Knight, the co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc. - "people only remember your last success." So, even if you've failed before, or fail again, as long as you end up on top, that's all people will remember.

4. Dream positive

What you think about in your mind often comes true. So you need to stay positive. For example, rather than thinking about what to do to prevent customers from leaving you, think about ways to better satisfy your customers and get them to tell all of their colleagues about you.

At the end of the day both of these thoughts are similar, but framing it in a positive light is proven to increase your chances of success.

5. Believe in yourself

The biggest barrier to your success is often believing that it is possible.

Consider this story as told by marketing consultant Dan Kennedy:

"One man I know, who made over $100 million in his business in its first three years from scratch, had gone broke in business several times before. After the three years of remarkable success, he said, "Making $100 million is about the easiest thing I've ever done. Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took 20 years."

You must believe in yourself if you want to succeed. You CAN do it. Simply stating that you can do it in front of a mirror every morning for 30 days will improve your belief in yourself. Maybe that sounds "hokey" to you, but it works, and if you really want to become a super-successful entrepreneur, it's worth doing.

As some of you may know, I started my career with The NPD Group, which is one of the world's largest market research firms.

One of the things I learned there was that statistics can be easily manipulated. That's not to say market researchers purposefully falsify their research. Rather, what I'm talking about is how statistics can easily be manipulated during interpretation.

For example, I can say that 93% of pet owners prefer brand X. But, if I didn't mention that my sample only included pet owners in the highest income zip codes, my results clearly wouldn't be telling.

But sometimes market research is as clear as daylight. And such was the case when I read the latest statistics from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The seemingly good news from the NVCA was that the amount of venture capital funding grew 22% from 2010 to 2011.

However, when I dug deeper, I found some deeply disturbing news. Specifically I found that the lion's share of this funding went to later stage companies (companies who have already raise previous rounds of venture capital, have revenues, and are looking to grow further before being acquired or going public).

In fact, the NVCA's numbers showed that in 2011, venture capital investments in seed companies or startups declined 48% versus 2010. Down forty-eight percent. That's huge. And that's terrible. Since it means that venture capitalists are now less willing to bet on higher risk, earlier stage companies.

What it also means is that if you want to raise equity capital, you need to rely more heavily on individual or "angel" investors. While angel investors have always been a huge source of early stage equity funding, they are now more important than ever. Since venture capitalists want to see that you have raised this funding and progressed your business before they'll fund your future growth.

So, how should you decide if angel funding is right for you? Answer these questions:

1. Can you make significant progress with your business for less than $1 million?

While I've seen companies raise more than $1 million from angel investors, the average angel investment in a company is only $338,400 according to the Center for Venture Research.

So, think about your business and figure out if you could accomplish significant milestones for this amount of money. Specifically, you need to accomplish enough milestones to make your company cash flow positive, or enough that shows investors you can execute and that it's less risky for them to write you a larger check.

2. Are you willing to give up equity in your business?

There are still many entrepreneurs and business owners who are concerned about giving up too much equity and/or losing control of their company.

Let me start by saying that capital is the MOST important thing to your business. In fact, running out of capital is the reason why most businesses fail. And with capital, your business gains massive competitive advantages such as the ability to hire better personnel, buy better equipment and technology, etc.

Now, in terms of giving up equity to investors, consider this important yet simple mathematical fact: 100% of nothing is nothing. And without the capital, your company may be worth nothing. As such, it is my experience that a small piece of a big company is better than a large piece of a small company. For example, a 10% piece of a successful company (perhaps a $10 million company) is twice as great as 100% piece of a small company, perhaps a $500,000 business.

Importantly, equity investors want YOU to maintain the lion's share of your company's equity, since they know it will give you the motivation you need to work really hard and make the company a huge success. In general, you should expect angel investors to want 10% to 35% of the equity of your company.

3. Are you willing to kiss a lot of frogs?

The process of raising angel funding (which you can learn to do here) includes a lot of frog-kissing. That is, you need to speak with a lot of individuals in order to find the few that will write you checks.

It can clearly be done, as tens of thousands of entrepreneurs raise angel funding each year, but you will need to invest time and meet a lot of people in order to raise the funding.

Few things are more exciting than building a company from nothing to a thriving enterprise. Doing so nearly always requires a significant cash investment. Unfortunately venture capital firms are no longer making nearly the number of such investments as they once did. But angel investors are. And if you're an entrepreneur seeking funding, you should start speaking with these angels now.

When I was a kid I played ping pong quite a bit. We had a ping pong table in my basement and I would play a lot with my dad, my brother and my friends.

I was always a good athlete, and have pretty good hand-eye coordination. So that, combined with a lot of practice, made me pretty good. In fact, I actually won a bunch of local ping pong tournaments at my school and the town recreation center.

And then one day when I was watching TV, I saw the professionals playing ping pong. Most notably, the Chinese national team was playing.

And quickly, any thoughts I ever had of being a great ping pong player faded. I mean, these guys were just awesome. They played at a completely different level; hitting the ball faster than I ever thought imaginable.

So, what made these Chinese ping pong players so great?

They clearly became great from hours and hours of practice. And they clearly became great because of focus and emulation. What I mean by this latter point is that many US kids become great athletes by constantly watching and emulating their favorite basketball, baseball and football players. They buy their jerseys, have their posters on their walls, etc. Which constantly inspires them and serves as a reminder of what they'd like to achieve. That's why the US has the best basketball, football and baseball players in the world. On the other hand, in China, many of the kids emulate the great Chinese ping pong players and thus excel in that sport.

But the Chinese ping pong players achieved greatness and dominance in the sport for another reason. This reason is summed up beautifully in Donald O. Clifton and Paula Nelson's book "Soar with Your Strengths" in which they wrote the following:

The Chinese have long held the Olympic gold medal in Ping-Pong. At the 1984 Olympics, when they again captured the gold, the coach of the Chinese team was asked by a reporter, "Tell me about your team's daily training regimen."

"We practice eight hours a day perfecting our strengths."

"Could you be a little more specific?"

"Here is our philosophy: If you develop your strengths to the maximum, the strength becomes so great it overwhelms the weakness. Our winning player, you see, plays only his forehand. Even though he cannot play backhand and his competition knows he cannot play backhand, his forehand is so invincible that it cannot be beaten."

Importantly, what the Chinese coach said is a proven leadership theory known as "Strengths-Based Leadership Theory."

Strengths-Based Leadership is a way of improving a company's success by developing the organization's strengths. The key to this proven philosophy is that people have a significantly higher ability to further improve on their strengths versus fixing their weaknesses.

Makes sense doesn't it. Yet most entrepreneurs and leaders do the opposite; they focus on improving their and their employees' weaknesses. This leads to frustration and lack of high performance. Rather, you should be constantly improving your strengths, so, as the Chinese ping pong coach stated, your strengths are "so invincible that you cannot be beaten."

So, how do you implement this in your organization:

1. List your organization's strengths

A strength is defined as the ability to exhibit near-perfect performance consistently in a given activity.

Create a list of the strengths that you and your employees have.

2. Rank your organization's most important strengths

With your list of strengths, figure out which ones are core to the success of your organization. For example, strengths that allow you to produce a better product or service for your customers would be key as it can give you sustainable competitive advantage.

Rank your key strengths.

3. Invest in further developing your employees' strengths

Invest time, energy, and money (via training, education, etc.) in further developing your employees' top-ranked strengths so they get even better and you can dominate competition.

Remember, just having a strength isn't good enough. Consider professional athletes. They all have great strengths. But the world's best professional athletes are the ones that constantly practice and improve on their strengths.

4. Outsource your weaknesses

To operate, every company needs to perform many tasks that may fall outside of their strengths. For example, a company who is incredible at making the best wines needs to do many other things. Such as answering incoming phone calls, shipping the wines (to distributors, retailers and customers), creating and maintaining a website, etc.

Importantly, if their wine is that superior, than these other functions are far less important and do not require the company to have competitive advantage.

So, such a firm should outsource these tasks to another firm who focuses on these functionalities (e.g., a web design firm, a trucking company, etc.). They could also consider hiring people who have strengths in these areas. However, in this case, they may also need to hire an operations manager to manage these hires so that they company head can continue to focus on their strength of creating the best wine.

In summary, great leaders do not create companies that are great at everything. Rather, they figure out their key organizational strengths and further develop the most important ones. This gives them lasting competitive advantage. I urge you to do the same.

If you're a sports fan, you probably have a favorite coach. And it's probably not the coach of the Chinese national ping-pong team.

For me, I greatly admire both John Wooden and Vince Lombardi, although both coached before my time. More recently, my favorite coaches include Joe Torre, Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, Bill Parcells and Jimmy Johnson.

Each of these coaches do/did a great job of finding the right players and developing their strengths. As a result, each of them achieved massive success.

You can too if you follow my proven formula to becoming a better leader. Click here to learn the formula.

In my last blog post, I talked about the powers of Crowdfunding and how it not only provides money to entrepreneurs, but it provides customers and a massive marketing push.

But, I didn't have time to discuss one of the keys of Crowdfunding success, which is to effectively market your Crowdfunding raise to others.

It is important to always remember that the best product or service doesn't always win; usually it's the company who best MARKETS its product or service that wins.

Likewise, it's often NOT the best companies (i.e., with the best team or product/service) who successfully raise Crowdfunding dollars. Rather, it's the companies who most effectively market their Crowd Financing raise to others who succeed.

So, how do you market your Crowdfunding raise so tons of people fund you?

To answer this, I'm going to use the classic 4Ps of Marketing: Product, Price, Place and Promotions.

Product:
You always need the right product to get sales. In the case of Crowd Financing, your "product" is 1) your company (what you are building) and 2) what your offer is to those who fund you.

With regards to your offer, make it compelling and creative. For example, some entrepreneurs have given crowdfunders cool rewards such as invites to attend their launch party, public acknowledgements to them on their websites, and some have even named products after top crowdfunders.

Price:
With regards to price, people will obviously be more prone to write you a $50 funding check today for a promise to ship you a $100 product later versus requiring a $75 payment today.

Place:
Place refers to where you sell your product. In the case of Crowdfunding, there are several "places" or Crowdfunding platforms you can use. Three of my favorites are Kickstarter.com, RocketHub.com, and IndieGogo.com.

Promotions:
Here's where it starts to get really exciting. Promotions are how you tell others about your Crowdfunding raise so they fund you.

The easiest group to tell and convince are your friends, families and colleagues.

But huge Crowd Financing success comes when you can get thousands of strangers to hear about what you're doing and fund you.

Now some people think that the way to do this is via social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, as well as email and your website.

This is partially true.

I say "partially" since social networking sites are merely mediums with which to share information. The key is to have information that's worthy of being shared.

So, what information is worthy of being shared? And what information do people share with tons of others?

The answer is "viral" information. Such information is defined as that which people readily pass to their friends and colleagues.

Here are some more famous examples of viral information used by businesses.

Viral Offers: Groupon has grown quickly and to a massive size by offering viral offers; offers that are so appealing that people spread them to others who might be able to use them.

Viral Unique Concept: A few years back, Alex Tew created "Million Dollar Homepage," a website on which he sold one million pixels for $1 per pixel. It was an extremely unique concept and people started talking about it and purchasing pixels. Alex generated over a million dollars from the venture.

Viral Cool: The manufacturer of Blendtec blenders made a series of videos called "Will it blend?" Its videos test its blender chopping up various products including an iPad (over 13 million views), an iPhone (over 10 million views), a glow stick (over 8 million views), an iPod (over 5 million views), marbles (over 5 million views). It has also created videos blending Wii remotes, rake handles and more. Collectively these videos have resulted in tens of millions of views and millions of dollars in Blendtec blender sales.

Viral Inspiring: our friends at Grasshopper.com, created an inspiring video called "Entrepreneurs can change the world." The video has been viewed over 800,000 times to date on YouTube.

As you can see, viral marketing can get thousands, tens of thousands and even millions of people to hear about you, your company and your Crowdfunding raise. And it can thus result in you raising tons of money and gaining tons of customers for your company.

So start getting your creative entrepreneurial juices flowing and figure out ideas for spreading news about you, your product or your company virally. Once you come up with the idea, create the content (e.g., develop the video or other information), and then market it (by sending it to your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and asking them to forward it to their friends).

Want Crowd Financing for your business? I recently developed a simple-to-follow program called "Crowdfunding Formula."

The program is a series of videos I recorded that walk you through each of the 14 steps to raising rewards-based Crowdfunding. Many of you have already joined the program and raised money.

If you haven't, click here to get Crowdfunding for your business now!

Crowdfunding is the latest and greatest way to raise money for a new business, or even a new product or service you want to launch.

But importantly, Crowdfunding offers a ton more value than just the initial funding it provides, pretty much making it a no-brainer for entrepreneurs to use.

Before I get to the "hidden benefits" which make Crowdfunding so valuable, I need to provide a little background on the concept of Crowdfunding.

To start, Crowdfunding is the process of getting a group of regular individuals (versus banks, venture capitalists or angel investors) to collectively fund your venture.

One of the first Crowdfunding examples is that of Australia's Blowfly Beer. Blowfly Beer, through emails and internet word of mouth, got 40,000 people to invest in their company. The investment pitch was pretty simple -- give us money and we'll give you equity and beer.

As you might imagine, not only did this fund the company's launch, but it gave it a large initial customer base to leverage.

But before you think about going the route of Blowfly Beer, you must understand that if you are based in the United States, you can't use this funding method.

That's because equity investments in the U.S. are controlled by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which prohibits this. Note that legislation is currently underway to try to make it legal in the United States (and I will continue to follow the legislation and update you).

But for now, there IS another Crowdfunding option which Americans, and entrepreneurs throughout the world, can and should use.

This option is a type of Crowdfunding I call rewards-based Crowdfunding. Rather than giving up equity, in this type of Crowdfunding, entrepreneurs give rewards. These rewards are typically future delivery of their product or service.

Let me give you an example.

Let's say you have an idea for a product that you expect to sell for $50. And that if you had funding now, it would take you six months to build and ship the product.

So, today, you get 5,000 people to pay you $40 for it (a 20% discount).

You would then take the $200,000 (5,000 X $40) and use it to develop your company infrastructure and develop and deliver the product.

As you can see, rewards-based Crowdfunding is essentially pre-selling your product and typically at a slight discount to make it worth the "investor's" while.

So it should be clear now 1) what Crowdfunding is, 2) what rewards-based Crowdfunding is, and 3) that it can effectively be used to raise funding for your business.

In fact, just one of the several rewards-based Crowdfunding platforms (Kickstarter.com) boasts that in 2011, over 11,000 entrepreneurs raised over $99 Million on their platform.

Now, while getting funding for your business is great, I want to give you the 5 other key benefits that Crowdfunding offers entrepreneurs like you (because I think they're equally if not more powerful):

1. Market Research

Pre-selling your product is incredible market research. If people buy it, then your marketing message is on target and there is a real need for your product or service.

If people don't buy it, then maybe a market doesn't exist, or you need to adjust your marketing message or target market.

In any case, getting this market research BEFORE raising or trying to raise a ton of money is invaluable. It allows you to test whether you have a winner before going through this process.

2. Built-in Customer Base

When you get others to fund you via rewards-based Crowdfunding, you build a customer base. If you provide a good product or service, these customers will be prone to buy more products and services from you (the same products, upgrades and/or new products you develop) in the future.

3. Case Studies/Testimonials

In today's world, with so much information and opinions, it's hard to know who to trust. And at the top of the list of who and what we trust are the testimonials of our friends and others.

So, by getting testimonials from the customers you gain from Crowdfunding (assuming you delivered them the product/service and they liked it), you can influence more customers to buy from you.

Likewise, if your offering permits, by offering "before and after" profiles of your customers, you can develop Case Studies which influence future customers to buy from you.

4. Word of Mouth Marketing

People who fund your company will tell their friends about it. Particularly if you make them feel like founders/initial investors (which you can easily do via email and on your website and/or via direct mail).

Played correctly, Crowdfunding can result in thousands of customers, most of whom can tell numerous friends and colleagues about your products and services. This word of mouth marketing can be worth millions of dollars.

5. PR

Local media sources are enamored with Crowdfunding as it's new and unique. As a result, countless entrepreneurs who have raised Crowdfunding have been profiled in local newspapers, radio shows and TV broadcasts.

So, with little legwork, raising Crowdfunding can get you lots of PR.

In summary, Crowdfunding can give your business a ton more than just funding. It can give you a massive marketing push and advantage that can ultimately lead to your company's success.
   

Want Crowdfunding for your business? I recently developed a simple-to-follow program called "Crowdfunding Formula."

The program is a series of videos I recorded that walk you through each of the 14 steps to raising rewards-based Crowdfunding. Many of you have already joined the program and raised money.

If you haven't, click here to get Crowdfunding for your business now!

Raising money from Crowdfunding is so much easier and faster than traditional sources of funding like venture capital and angel financing. In fact, I recommend that most entrepreneurs raise money with Crowdfunding first, start growing their companies, and then approach venture capitalists later for additional funding (at which time you will be able to give them much less equity since your company will be more valuable).

And, as you learned above, Crowdfunding will give you far more than money to launch your business, product and/or service.

Access Crowdfunding for your business now!

No business runs smoothly all the time. And I think that all businesses can continually be improved.

So, you might ask, how can you improve a poor business, and how can you continue to improve it over time.

The answer in my opinion is pretty simple. That is, if you use the system I've adopted and used over the past few years.

The system is very straightforward: take the business or business process you are trying to improve, map it out on a piece of paper, and then, for each process, figure out 1) what you are doing, 2) what you are tracking, and 3) ideas for improvement.

Let me give you an example. Let's say your firm provides accounting services for small businesses. Your big challenge is increasing revenues and profits, which is generally going to be comprised of three smaller challenges:

1. Getting more clients
2. Fully satisfying those clients
3. Getting clients to buy more from you

So, how does your accounting firm achieve this goal of increasing revenues and profits? As stated above, step 1 is to map out your processes on a piece of paper.

I can see at least four processes in play here:

1. Lead sourcing: how your accounting firm gets new leads
2. Lead conversion: how your firm coverts these leads into prospects (more on the difference between "leads" and "prospects" later)
3. Prospect Development & Closing: how your firm converts prospects into clients
4. Fulfillment & Upselling: how your firm completes client work and upsells them on additional work they need

The next step is, for each of the four processes, to figure out what you are doing, what you are tracking, and ideas for improvement.

Let's start with the first process, lead sourcing. Lead sourcing here is defined as getting an individual to contact you (either via telephone, email, visiting your website, etc.) because they have a possible interest in working with you.

Your current list of "what you are doing" may include:

• Getting referrals from customers
• Getting referrals from partners
• Newspaper advertising

Your current list of "what you are tracking" may include:

• How many leads you are getting each month

And your "ideas for improvement" may include:

• Trying new forms of promotions such as radio advertising, social media marketing and direct mail
• Improving your customer referral program by offering rewards
• Better tracking lead sources and which leads convert so you know which lead sources generate the most customers

Here's the punch line (I'll complete the process below, but I want you to understand the end result here), by breaking up and scrutinizing all the specific processes involved in the whole system, you will identify ways to massively improve performance.

Let's move on to the second process, lead conversion. "Lead Conversion" is the process of converting an individual from a "lead" (someone who has gone to your website and/or called you) to a "prospect" (someone who has shown a more serious intent of buying from you).

Your current list of "what you are doing" may include:

• Fielding phone calls and emails from leads
• Routing them to your best salespeople

Your current list of "what you are tracking" may include:

• How many calls and emails you receive each month
• How many calls and emails become clients

And your "ideas for improvement" may include:

• Developing a better telephone script to use when handling incoming phone inquiries
• Outsourcing incoming phone calls during off hours so leads can reach you 24/7
• Improving the time delay from when the receptionist speaks to the lead and the lead speaks to your salesperson
• Identifying which salespeople perform best with which types of leads and routing accordingly

The third process to improve is "Prospect Development & Closing" or how your firm converts prospects into clients.

Your current list of "what you are doing" may include:

• Conducting initial needs analysis calls with prospects
• Preparing price proposals

Your current list of "what you are tracking" may include:

• How many proposals you give each month
• What percentage of proposals become clients

And your "ideas for improvement" may include:

• Better training your sales people
• Finding better sales people
• Creating better sales scripts
• Improving the quality of proposal documents
• Better follow-up on prospects who initially reject proposals

The fourth and final process to improve is "Fulfillment & Upselling" or how your firm completes client work and upsells them on additional work they need.

Your current list of "what you are doing" may include:

• Face to face meetings and calls
• Preparation of key deliverables sent via email and messenger

Your current list of "what you are tracking" may include:

• How satisfied your clients are
• Number/percentage of clients who re-purchase the same service over time
• Number/percentage of clients who purchase additional services from you

And your ideas for "improvement" may include:

• Have additional points of interaction with clients (e.g., extra meetings; video chat conversations) to build more rapport during engagements
• Bring in a senior manager into all engagements to check work and provide additional insight to better satisfy clients
• Create formal processes that require your staff to ask for referrals, testimonials and additional work opportunities during client engagements
• Adding additional tracking to learn which staff members get the most referrals, testimonials and additional work opportunities

To reiterate, by breaking up any process into smaller pieces and then scrutinizing each of the smaller pieces, it's simple to come up with TONS of ideas for improvement. You will also identify new processes to add which further boost your profits and competitive advantage.

In fact, the problem quickly switches to an implementation issue which is: "how do I start implementing all of the great ideas I came up with."

Here I suggest putting all of the ideas, along with their category (which process they relate to) into an Excel spreadsheet. In a column next to each idea, rank the idea from "1" to "5" with "1" being an idea that can make the most significant and immediate impact on your bottom line, and "5" being ideas that will take longer to implement and/or may not impact your bottom line as much.

Then, sort the ideas by rank. Finally, create a Gantt chart showing which ideas you will start implementing first, next and then last.

By following this systematize approach, you can improve anything. It's real work, but it's relatively fun, and it always leads to success!

Every year for the past decade I have heard the same thing, regardless of whether the economy is doing well or poorly.     

And what I hear is entrepreneurs saying that it's so hard to raise money.      

Importantly, whether times are good or bad, the process of raising money is pretty much the same. And whether times are good or bad, the challenge of raising money is still the same. That's because when times are good, there are more entrepreneurs seeking funding. When times are bad, funding sources are a little tighter with their money, but fewer entrepreneurs are contacting them. So, it all evens out.     

So, how should you go about raising money in 2012?

Here are six rules to follow:

1. Bootstrap as much as you can. Bootstrapping is the process of running your business with no outside financing. While you clearly can't accomplish as much as if you had outside funds, bootstrapping forces you to get creative and to figure out how to do more with less funds. Importantly, when you bootstrap, you can 1) start to prove that your business will be viable, and 2) prove that you can execute on your venture. Both of these will help you significantly later when you do seek outside funding.

2. Start by raising smaller amounts of funding. No one is going to write you a $5 million or $10 million check for your business until you've proven your concept. Bootstrapping will help progress your business; but also figure out the smallest amount of funding you could use to progress your business further and raise that amount. Once you raise the smaller amounts of money, and start growing your venture, the larger amounts of money will become much easier to raise.

3. Determine the right sources of funding for now. This is the area that trips up most entrepreneurs. For example, if you're not a technology company and you haven't already proven your concept, venture capital is probably not right for you. But that's ok, since there are tons of other forms of funding that can be a great fit (e.g., angel funding, crowdfunding, vendor financing, etc.). So you must understand all the funding sources that are available to you, and go after the ones that are most applicable.

4. Develop relationships now.  Sure, you are most likely to raise funding if you have a quality product/service that has real growth potential. But, even more importantly, you will attract funding if the funding source likes you and your management team. Because investors and lenders bet on people; even a great product or service won't make it unless it's backed by a quality management team.

So, start building relationships with funding sources now. For example, even if your company may not be ready for venture capital for another 12 months, start meeting with venture capitalists now. These relationships will not only make you much more likely to raise the funding later, but these contacts may be able to introduce you to other funding sources.

5. Develop your business plan and keep it up-to-date. Your business and your business plan are always changing. You need to start now by documenting your vision in the plan. The process of developing your plan will force you to think through your business. It will identify new opportunities. And it will give you ideas on how much you might be able to accomplish via bootstrapping and/or smaller funding amounts (numbers 1 and 2 above).

Keep adding and updating to your business plan so that when you meet an interested investor, you can quickly and easily get your plan to them.

6. Keep your eyes and ears open and network. You never know who will ultimately fund your business. So the more people you meet the better. The more people you tell about your business the better. The more events you attend the better. The more Advisors you attract the better. And so on. You need to constantly get the word out about your venture to the right people to find the ones who will fund you. And when you meet someone who is not the right fit, don't forget to ask for referrals. Since they might just know the perfect investor for you.

Suggested Resource: Want funding for your business? Then check out our Truth About Funding program to learn how you can access the 41 sources of funding available to entrepreneurs like you. Click here to learn more.

If you've purchased any of my capital-raising products or followed my essays, you've undoubtedly heard me say that you should never send an investor your business plan cold. (By "investor," I'm mainly referring to venture capitalists and angel investors.)      

Rather, you should always start with a "teaser" email. A "teaser" email is an email that "teases" the investor by giving them a bite-sized amount of compelling information about your company.       

The goal of the email is to see if they are interested. If they are, you will follow up with more information (maybe your Executive Summary and/or full business plan) with the goal of getting a face-to-face meeting with the investor.     

There are two reasons you shouldn't send your business plan in your initial email. First, you don't want to "over-shop" your deal. Over-shopping is letting too many investors know about your company. If too many investors know about you, the law of numbers states that many investors will pass on investing in you (remember, most investors passed on the opportunity to invest in Google years ago).

So, if an investor isn't even interested in your market space or teaser email, they certainly won't invest in your company. And here's what can happen -- an interested investor asks this investor (the one who isn't interested in your space) if they've heard of your company. That investor says "yes" (since you unwittingly sent them your plan) and that they weren't interested. And then their disinterest persuades the once interest investor from funding you.

The second reason you don't want to send out your business plan in your initial email is for confidentiality reasons. You just don't want your business plan out there for everyone to see. Rather, wait until the investor shows that they are at least somewhat interested in your venture before sending it.

So, now that you know that you should start by sending investors a "teaser" email, the question is what to include in the teaser.

Here's the answer: the teaser email should include 5 to 6 bullets about your company and should be very short (200 words or less).  The goal, once again is simply to create a general interest in your venture so the investor commits time and energy to learning more about it (by requesting additional documents or setting up a meeting).

Your bullets should describe what space your company is in and credentials that make you uniquely qualified to succeed (e.g., credentials of management team, customers serving already or showing interest, etc.).

Now one of my subscribers asked me a great question the other day --  what should my subject line be on my teaser emails?

In fact, she said that she felt subject lines such as "Unique Investment Opportunity," "Please Invest in our company," and "Great Investment Opportunity" don't catch investors' attention and/or could turn them off.

And she is 100% correct here.  You should never send emails with subject lines such as these to investors.

So, I put together a few Subject line "templates" for you to use here:

1. Re Your Involvement in XYZ Company

Where XYZ company is a company that the VC has funded and which is in your general space. You would start the email with something such as "based on your investment in XYZ company, I think you will be interested in what we are doing..."

2. "New in XYZ Space" or "XYZ Space Introduction"

Where XYZ is the "space" that you are operating in (e.g., the financial software space). The first line would tie the subject line to what you are doing.

3. Referred by XYZ

Where XYZ is a referral source that knows both you and the investor. This works extremely well, but clearly you must first get the referral.

4. Comment on Your Post About XYZ

Where XYZ is a post that the investor recently wrote on their blog about a subject. In your opening line you explain what you agree with in their post and then tie it to your company.

To summarize, send investors a teaser email instead of your business plan to start. And realizing that they receive hundreds of emails every day asking for funding, make sure your subject line stands out and seems like you're offering them value.

Suggested Resource: Want funding for your business? Then check out our Truth About Funding program to learn how you access the 41 sources of funding available to entrepreneurs like you. Click here to learn more.

Below are four of my "favorite" questions that Growthink's Insider Circle members asked me in 2011 via both the "Ask the Experts" service and our live member call-ins [to clarify "favorite," there were many questions that required me to spend 10 minutes or so to answer them on one of our live calls; I couldn't include any of those here or this essay would be way too long].    

Q1. What's the best way to cost-effectively increase awareness of our products as we expand into other markets?     

A. I would use PR, contests and sampling.    

1. PR: PR is mostly a matter of finding an interesting "hook" that the media finds exciting. Figure out what a listener of the nightly news would find interesting about your product, and use that to pitch multiple media sources.

2. Conduct contests on Facebook. If done right, this could get you awareness among tens of thousands of consumers (and businesses). Two great tools to use for this are Strutta.com and Wildfireapp.com

3. Sampling. For many products and services, customers need to sample it in order to realize they want/need it. So identify a highly defined target market, and let them sample your offering.


Q2. What are the best ways to find the market research I need?

A. To find Industry sizing and overview information, use the following queries in Google to find the market size, trends and the names of key competitors in your industry:

• [Industry Name] "market size"
• [Industry Name] statistics
• [Industry Name] "market trends"
• [Industry Name] companies
• [Industry Name] "market share"

Most industries have industry portals, typically top trade journals and associations, that offer tons of great industry information. Search the following queries in order to find these industry sites:

• [Industry Name] "trade show"
• [Industry Name] journal
• [Industry Name] association

To find more competitors that you may not know about, do this: Once you have a partial list of competitors, expand your list by doing a search on Google that includes the names of the competitors you already have. For example, search on:

• "competitor 1, competitor 2, competitor 3, etc." (without quotes)

This will often result in a page that includes those competitors, hopefully as part of a bigger list of competitors.

Also, doing the following Google search on one of your competitors will find related sites and possibly new competitors:

• "related:www.competitorURL.com" (without quotes) (e.g., "related:www.google.com" gives you yahoo.com, msn.com, etc.

Q3. What online marketing tools do you recommend?

A. Here are a few tools I really like:

1. KeywordSpy.com (http://www.keywordspy.com/) and Ispionage (http://ispionage.com/)

Both of these tools allows you to see how your competitors are marketing themselves online. Among other things, you can see the keywords they are advertising on, their estimated ad budgets, their advertising copy, and what keywords they rank organically on.

This analysis allows you to identify where your competitors are getting their best online traffic, so you can replicate it.

2. SnapEngage (http://www.snapengage.com/)

SnapEngage offers online chat on your website. We've been using this with for the past few months with excellent results.

3. BrowserCam (http://www.browsercam.com/)

BrowserCam allows you to see how your website looks in any browser / operating systems combination (e.g., how it looks when someone views your site on a Mac using Safari or on a PC using Chrome, etc.).

4. Compete.com (http://www.compete.com/)

Compete.com allows you to see how much traffic a website is getting, how that traffic is changing over time, and how it compares to others in the market.

Within the premium (i.e., paid) features of Compete.com, you can see the demographic profile of the visitors to your and your competitors' websites, and the sites that refer the most traffic to them.

This is really cool; particularly since if you know the sites which refer the most traffic to your competitors, you can contact them and try to get links to your website included there too, so you can "steal" some of their traffic.

5. Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com/)

Quantcast allows you to see the demographic profile of visitors to your website and your competitors' websites.

You'll learn whether visitors tend to be male or female, the age breakdown of visitors, their ethnicity, whether or not they have kids, their income levels and their level of education.

If your competitors get a fair amount of website traffic, Quantcast can also show you some cool additional data, including other sites which visitors to your competitors' websites also visit, and traffic frequency (e.g., % repeat vs. one-time visitors).

Q4. What's the best way to grow my business?

If I had to give you just one tip for growing a successful business, it's figuring out how to get residual revenues from your customers.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs and small business owners serve customers once and do a terrible job getting the customers to come back. Rather they waste tons of time, energy and money continuously searching for new customers.

The most successful companies have fewer customers and serve them over and over again. Figure out how you can maximize the lifetime value of your customers. How will you nurture them and stay in touch with them over time (e.g., direct mail, email)? How will you get them to refer more customers to you (e.g., referral programs)? How will you get them to pay you over and over again (e.g., monthly/annual service contracts; book/wine/product/service of the month club, etc.)?

Once you figure out how to generate residual revenues from your customers, you'll be off to the races.