60 Resources For The Entrepreneurs

December 30, 2009Leave a comment

In previous time, I’ve shared tons of resource for entrepreneurs and you know when you’re in business you need to grow venture capital for your organizations or business firm, have to understand and know about legal issues and accounts management, web design and internet marketing, advertising and lots of issues. However, one of my favorite writer Neil shared something cool resource for the web users. I wish you really enjoy it.

60 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs – The Entrepreneur’s Handbook

December 30, 2009Leave a comment

Neil Patel is the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal

As a first time entrepreneur you probably have tons of questions. And every time you do a Google search for an answer you are bombarded with too much information and in some cases that information contradicts other things you have heard. Due to this, I have created a list of 54 resources that should help you out.

Legal & Accounting

Legal and accounting issues may not seem important when you are starting your company, but they are. Legal and accounting mistakes that you make early on can haunt you for years and can be expensive to fix. So if you are going to start a company you should do things right from the get go.

S Corp. vs. LLC: Which Structure is Right for Your Business – Determining the type of legal structure for a new business can be daunting for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Learn more about S Corporations and Limited Liability Companies (LLC), and decide if one of these business structures is right for you.
Legal Zoom – a cheap way to get incorporated.
Findlaw – a directory of all the lawyers throughout the US.
Bookkeeping 101: Debits and Credits – Accounting ends with score keeping but begins with record keeping. The first task of accounting is to accurately record transactions. Transactions are events that change the composition of a firm’s assets, liabilities, and equity.
Accounting Basics – This explanation of accounting basics will introduce you to some basic accounting principles, accounting concepts, and accounting terminology.
Docstoc – A free place to get legal documents and templates which can drastically help reduce your legal fees and in some cases allow you to do some legal stuff yourself.
You’ve Been Sued: What Do You Do? – Everything you wanted to know about being sued.
Opening a Business Bank Account – Business bank accounts and your identity.
Closing Down Your Business Permanently – If you’re shuttering your business for good, there’s more to it than drawing the blinds.
Legal Issues to Consider When Starting Your Business – There are a multitude of legal issues to think about when it comes to starting your business. Everything from your business name to its structure to its operation has legal implications.

Web Design

Design is something we tend to take for granted. Not only is important for your website to look good, but you also want to make sure it is usable and converts.

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design – The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.
Google Website Optimizer – A free tool that will help you maximize your conversions.
Web Developers Handbook – Everything you need to know about web design and development.
CSS Vault – Web design inspiration.
A Roadmap to Web Standards – Before you start designing your website, make sure you are complying with web standards.
Signal vs Noise – A design and usability blog by 37signals.
Crazy Egg – A simple tool that shows you how website visitors interact with your website.
How to choose a website design agency – Choosing the right web design shop can be a tricky thing.

Internet Marketing

You can have a great product or service, but if no one sees it you will never make any money. Now this doesn’t mean you have to hire a marketing firm to help you out, but you could learn some basic things about Internet marketing.

Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – The basics of search engine optimization.
Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – Interested in leveraging the social web? Here is what you need to know first.
Top Ten Things You Can Do To Get Blogged On – Getting bloggers to blog on your company isn’t an easy thing. If you flow these rules and you should be successful at it.
How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines – What you need to know if you want your corporate blog to get traffic.
Web Analytics: An Hour A Day – Google’s analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, breaks down web analytics and the tracking needs you may need for your website.
Dullest – The blog of Google’s main search engineer, Matt Cutts. Before you get into search engine optimization, you probably want to read his blog.
MailChimp – Sending high quantities of emails isn’t an easy thing to do. In most cases your emails won’t go through unless you use a service like MailChimp.
Banner Basics: Create Ads That Work – Banner advertising isn’t dead… you just have to learn how to effectively use them.

Hiring Employees

When you don’t have much cash in the bank, you can’t afford to make hiring mistakes. Sooner or later you are going to have to hire a few employees, so you better know what to look for.

When to hire your first employee – if you are considering hiring an employee, you should read this first.
5 tips for hiring your first employee – Microsoft breaks down some useful tips for new companies.
9 Steps Before You Hire – 9 good tips for first time business owners.
ADP – Payroll can be a hassle. ADP provides good payroll solutions for a very affordable price.
How to Fire an Employee – If you hire a bad employee you better learn to fire them.
When to Fire an Employee – Analyzing when it is time to accept that a performance improvement will not happen.
Fully-Baked: The real cost of adding a new employee – Employees cost more than just their salaries.
201 ways to turn any employee into a star performer – A book that you should read if you want to maximize your employees output.
Tsheets – Employee time tracking software.
RescueTime – Employee time tracking and time management software.

Raising Venture Capital

Raising money can be a pain in the ass, especially if you have never done it before. If you want to raise money, you need to know the basic terminology that venture capitalists use, how to create a pitching deck, and how to get in front of venture capitalists.

Vfinance – A directory of venture capitalists, angel investors, and business plan templates.
Forbes Midas List – A list of the top 100 venture capitalists for the year 2009.
The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – Before you make a powerpoint that showcases your company and how much money you are raising, you should read this.
How to Raise Venture Capital – An detailed overview on how you can raise money.
Venture Hacks – A blog for entrepreneurs that discusses everything about venture capital.
The Funded – An online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide.
How To Raise Venture Dollars – Ben Elowitz who has raised over 40 million dollars breaks down the tricks to raising money.
Paul Graham – Awesome essays about venture capital and entrepreneurship.

General Business Advice

Other entrepreneurs have already solved many of the problems you are going to face. So when you run to into these generic problems, here are some websites you can turn to.

Inspired Startup – Successful entreprenuer Andy Liu breaks down how to take your startup to the next level.
The 50 best business blogs – There are thousands of business blogs, but here are the 50 best according to Times.
The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Starting A Business – You don’t want to make any of these mistakes.
10 Timeless Business Tips From 10 Millionaires – If you want to be a millionaire then you better learn from them.
Solving Your Business Problems – Start solving your problems before they even take place.
Struggling Entrepreneur – The Struggling Entrepreneur is a free podcast series that deals with the issues, challenges and problems of the individual who wants to be an entrepreneur, but who encounters a somewhat difficult path and appears to be struggling.
Smarta – A support community for entrepreneurs.
Litemind – Exploring ways to use your mind more efficiently.
Mixergy – Successful CEOs share their experiences with the masses.

Living The Frugal Life

Although it may sound sexy to be an entrepreneur, most entrepreneurs don’t make a ton of money. You are going to have to learn to live a frugal life so that you can continue to do what you love and not worry about paying your mortgage.

Little Steps: 100 Great Tips For Saving Money For Those Just Getting Started
75 Painless Money-Saving Tips – Saving money can be painful, but here are 75 ways that are painless.
Strapped For Cash? Billshrink Can Save You Thousands!
High Yield Savings Accounts at 20 Largest Banks – If you are going to keep your money with a bank, might as well be a bank that has high yield savings accounts.
Scrooge Strategy – 1 premium tip every week that helps you save money.
How to Reduce Rent – Rent is probably your biggest expense, here are a few ways to reduce it.

Conclusion

There are a ton of resources out there for first time entrepreneurs, but these are the main ones I use. Do you have any other recommendations?

How To Understand You Have Ego Problem

December 28, 2009Leave a comment

After reading a post about Ego, I’m feeling that ego can kill a person’s working productivity, efficiency and making a man fully inactive. Even, a man normally don’t understand wand fell about this matters and but gradually it is decreasing potentiality and that’s really important and happening inside human being. Don’t you think you should track and keep away from Ego type things.

Written on 9/14/2009 by Srinivas Rao. Srinivas is a volunteer for the Quality of Life Project. The website shares best practices on getting the most out of life from well known types like Richard Branson and Tom Skerritt to lesser known but equally interesting individuals. The mission of the organization is to help people live more enjoyable, purposeful and contented lives. Srinivas also writes at www.theskooloflife.com.

The ego is one of most self-destructive mechanisms of a person’s character and his or her abilities. In fact if you look at some people who’ve achieved massive success only to lose it all at the end of their lives, it’s almost always a function of the ego that results in this. As strange as the following examples might be, drug dealers, and gangsters in the movies are blatant examples of people whose egos have ruined their success. There are two characters that really exemplify this: George Jung (Johnny Depp in the movie Blow) and Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington in the movie American Gangster).

If you have seen the movie Blow, you know that the life of the main character is driven by the desire to never to be poor after growing up in financial dire straits. As a result he chooses a career as a drug dealer. Early in the movie, he becomes quite successful, ending up with a dream home, his dream girl, and almost everything you think would be enough in life. In fact every single time I watch this movie, I think “If he had just quit while he was ahead, then imagine how different his life would have turned out.” But, greed, and perhaps the desire to keep proving to himself that he was capable of more, ultimately his ego, led him to 60 years in prison.

The character of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington in American Gangster) is another example of how ego got the best of somebody who could have quit while he was ahead. Although he was off to a bad start from the get go, even more so than George Jung, there comes a turning point in the movie when the ego of Frank Lucas takes over. In the desire to to keep expanding his operation Frank starts to partner with other people and eventually attracts the attention of the police. What’s interesting to note however is that there is a point in the movie where he acknowledges the destructive power of ego when he tells his younger brother “The loudest person in the room is the weakest.” Yet, he still falls victim to his own ego.

6 Signs That You Are Ego Driven

Concern with Approval of others
In his book Manifest Your Destiny, Wayne Dyer mentions that there are three tenets of self actualizing people according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of those is that you should be independent of the good opinion of other people. It’ s easier said than done, but comes with a sense of freedom and liberation that allows you to truly shine. Who you are independent of the good opinion of other people is the most authentic person you will ever be. This is the most attractive quality in anybody, in a world where people are overly concerned with looking good in front of others. Ironically I learned this in a business school class and of all places, the corporate world may seem like a strange place to not concern yourself with the good opinion of others. But if you come from a place of authenticity and hard work, you will be much more well liked by your corporate peers. Self actualization is at the top of the Maslow hierarchy and most leaders are self actualized.
Fear of asking for help
If you are afraid to ask for help, or you don’t want to ask for help because you want all the credit, then your ego is driving you. I made this mistake a few years back when I attempted to launch a job web site for MBA students. In my own bad judgment, I decided to take on the project alone after discussing it with some classmates. The desire to get ahead quickly and launch the site was the work of my ego. Ultimately, it ended up being a failure. If my ego hadn’t gotten in the way, and I had worked with the other students, I would have saved a few friendships and the site might have succeeded.
Comparing and Competing
People who are driven by ego often fall victim to what I call the comparative and competitive disadvantage. Comparing yourself to others is the ego in one of its most vicious forms. It’s a perpetual losing battle because there will always be somebody better and always somebody worse than you are. Even if you are the best in the world at what you do somebody will always be right on your tail. If you keep seeing your life as a competition with those around you, then you will continually be dissatisfied and the ego will drive your life.
The constant need for more
Greed is also a function of the ego. I think if there’s anything our movie characters could teach us, is that there comes a point where you do have everything you could possibly want, and getting more just for the sake of having it is an exercise in futility.
Lack of presence
Ego driven people continually live in the past and always plan for the future. They never live in the moment. They are always thinking of the next great phase of their life, even when this one is perfect. By forgetting to enjoy the present, we set ourselves up to live in an ego-driven limbo.
The need to always be right
This is another one of the ego’s most destructive functions. People who have a need to continually be right are headed for the ultimate downfall. These kinds of people will often get far in life because of their persistence and aggressiveness. But, these are also the people that will fail when they are on the brink of MASSIVE success. Their need to be right will be their downfall and years of hard work can be destroyed in minutes when this portion of the ego takes over. Leaders with this attitude ultimately alienate all those work for them, and eventually stop receiving the kind of input that can propel them forward because they are so adamant about being right.

When you can learn to let go of the ego, the level of success and fulfillment you will achieve will be dramatic.

Only with your ego in check will you have the ability to reach your full potential.

Courtesy for the content and photo for How to Manage Your Ego So You Can Reach Your Full Potential

Software Testing

Breaking bad for good reasons

Month: December 2009