Starting a business is like pulling off a band-aid RIGHT OFF!

Collected here are 6 immediate steps you can take to get started on your path to financial freedom.

Lease an Office

With so many tenants moving out, you can easily grab a sublease from an office and get your own unit. The trick is, to make the decision as fast as possible. The more you sit around and think about it, the less likely you’ll do it.

Get the office before you even have an idea, it’s the best motivation you’ll ever find.

Market Your Skills

Will someone pay you to do any sort of work? Test the market for your skills by posting some notices on Craigslist and respond to WTB (wanted to buy) posts online. If people are willing to pay you to work, you have an immediate income for when you get started on your new venture.

Save Your Money!

If there’s one thing all businesses need, it’s working capital. Make sure you have enough money to runway your own personal living expenses at least 6 months, and more likely 12 months. You’ll want to make revenue as soon as possible, but it’s better to be overprepared when it comes to financing.

Make Your First Sale Before You Have a Business

Are you extremely cautious about quitting your job without any guarantees? Well then start selling your product/services. If you actually land a big account, you’ll have to work your ass off to deliver on it, but you’ll have a guaranteed income coming in and the only risk will be staying in your job and losing this opportunity.

Stop Working 40 Hour Weeks and Work 80 Weeks!

Hate your boss? Hate your job? Even clock-watch until it’s 5pm? These are just a few of the motivators that help entrepreneurs appreciate life as their own boss. Working for yourself you’ll often work about 80 hours a week, but you’ll love every minute of it.

Do You Want To Be Rich?

Besides taking Government bailouts and receiving $40+ million bonuses, the best way to get rich is to work for yourself. Every day you develop your business you grow the overall value of the company, but working for someone else, you’re just helping them build up themselves, and you don’t get any long-term return.

Not all business people are rich, but almost all of them are happy.

Cut back on expenses, start spending money more wisely, but a big piece of living through a recession is learning to seize this opportunity, through online affiliate marketing.

You can easily make an additional $1,000 per month, all in your spare time.

Local Affiliate Marketing

Businesses are looking to retain current clients, and cut back on any and all marketing expenses, because the most obvious area to cut back in any business is marketing. You don’t see a direct benefit, and hope you can continue to rely on the brand of the business and current customer workflow.

The beauty of online affiliate marketing, is its the answer to every businesses’ problem. They need new customers to survive, but only want to pay for customers, not impressions or exposures or sponsorships.

How Does It Work?

Online affiliate marketing is a simple transaction, and works like this:

- A local cosmetic dentist is looking for new clients. They have cut back on advertising in the local paper and on the radio, where they were spending thousands of dollars, and seeing returns months later

- A marketer like myself can offer these dentists the ability to pay for new client leads. I set up lead sites, like I have for Florida Loan Modifications that educate consumers, and collect contact information (a lead).

- The dentist then pays me for these leads, often $20 or more, and so the process begins

How To Get Started?

To get started with online affiliate marketing, it’s really quite easy. You just need to start a new site, and start writing stories. You can use iContact to collect names, and once you have a steady flow of new signups, start reaching out to local businesses and offer them your services.

So at $20 per lead, and 3 leads per day, that’s more than $1,000 per month, which isn’t bad for something you can easily do on your spare time.

The safe harbor of the DMCA states that Web services are not liable for copyright infringement if the content is stored “at the direction of a user.” UMG tried to argue that Veoh should not be covered by the safe harbor because it did a bunch of things with the music and video content after it was stored on its servers, including converting it into Flash, breaking it up into chunks for peer-to-peer distribution, and allowing other users to stream it or download it.

The judge, A Howartd Matz, didn’t buy the argument. He found Veoh’s position to be “more persuasive,” noting that user’s must agree to Veoh’s Terms of Service before uploading a video, and that the terms of service clearly prohibit uploading copyrighted material. In other words, the initial act of uploading is considered to be user-directed storage under the DMCA, and whatever Veoh does to process the video after that cannot be used to get around the letter of the law.

This ruling is a godsend to those startups on the edge of legality, and as long as you comply with the DMCA, you are legal. That is, until another court ruling comes along, but since we’re ruled by a series of prior court cases, this should be more ammunition for those sites looking to deliver new, innovative content for users.

How To Retain Top Talent

Buy Your Employees Lunch
It seems simple, and almost sounds wasteful, but when you put the number to the paper, buying your employees lunch can be one of the best financial decisions you make. Let’s look at the numbers:

• 20 Employees, Paid at $20 / Hour
• Average Lunch Break 1 Hour
• Total Cost:$400 (In lost productivity)
• Cost For Lunch Per Person $4
• Total Cost For Lunch:$80
• Total Savings:$320

As you can see, if you’re spending $4 per person (say a pizza costs $12 each), you’re saving $320 in productivity, plus you keep your employees happy be saving them at least $4 per person on lunch.

Dual Monitors
This is another great cost-saving measure for companies, and an easy way to show your employees that you care. For anyone that’s ever worked on a single 15″ monitor, dual monitors are like moving from your twin in college to a queen once you graduate.

Dual monitors are like night-and-day compared to a single, small monitor. Having two monitors allows your employees to increase their productivity, get more work done, and reduce eye strain and stress. This is often an overlooked perk, but it is crucial for any company looking to get the most out of their best talent.

Flexible Scheduling
This is yet another great perk for employees that doesn’t cost your company any money at all. Life and work share a delicate balance, so to accommodate work-life balance, flexible scheduling can allow your employees to work around their schedules. This can work in a couple of ways:

• Allow your employees to have a 1 hour buffer period. If they’re scheduled to come in at 9, it’s okay if they come in at 8, and it’s also okay if they come in at 10.

• Telecommuting. Often times, employees can spend upwards of 2 hours commuting to and from the office. If they spent this same 2 hours working, you would see a huge increase in productivity, and a lot happier employees. Set aside certain days that employees can telecommute. Try to schedule all meetings on one day, so employees can work from home on off-days.


Let Your Employees Pick Their Computer
Humans love choice. So why not empower your employees with a choice in their computer. If you’re in the Internet industry, your company lives and dies by its technology. So often, companies buy 20 of the same machine, and when a new employee is hired, they are issued the standard (usually a Dell) computer. Facebook offers employees the choice of a Lenovo Ultraportable or Apple Macbook Pro.

So they say: PC or Mac? They only buy 2 machines, but suddenly that choice is empowering. When looking at making new hardware purchases, narrow your choices down to 2 options. You don’t have to go the complete Mac vs. PC route, but why not give employees the choice between a desktop and laptop (if they have a laptop, they can work from home too). Mix things up further by adding on additional monitor choices, and you’ve got a pretty happy, personalized employee.

When building a great company, the greatest resource you have are your employees. The goal of management is to foster innovation, growth, and to enable your employees to do their greatest work. Bill Gates didn’t build the Windows empire by himself, and as much micro-management as Steve Jobs does, he didn’t build the iPod on his own. All of the great CEOs have empowered their workforce to be great, so use these ideas as a starting point and start empowering your top talent, and they’ll reward you by staying on as loyal employees.

Everybody knows about the free lunches, and bouncy balls and full decor that adorn the Google offices, but here are some of the perks you may not be aware of. To apply for any positions, head over to Google’s job page.

The Perks of Life at Google

Cold Hard Cash

Who wouldn’t like a $1 million bonus? I know I would. Take the case of Niniane Wang, a 27-year-old engineer who received a million-dollar founders’ award for her work on a program that searches computer desktops. This bonus was setup to keep Google’s best talent and encourage further innovation by rank-and-file employees. Who says you have to be an Investment Banker to cash in a 7 figure bonus check?

Have a Baby? Dinner’s On Google
Google really does want to save the world. If you are a new parent, and have a baby, Google will allow you to bill them up to $500 for take-out food. The last thing you want to do after working 12 hour days is have to cook dinner, so Google foots the bill and keeps employees happy, mommies happy, and baby happy.

The Google Shuttle Bus
How would you like to not have to sludge through rush hour traffic and instead sleep get right to work on your way to work? Aside from saving money on gas, this WiFi equipped shuttle-bus is better for the environment, and makes your commute social. Talk about that episode of LOST on the way to work, or catch up on your fantasy football team …all on your free commuter bus.

Say Goodbye to Laundry Day
Do you hate doing laundry as much as me? And what about taking your clothes to the dry cleaner? Google offers free laundry and dry cleaning services to employees, so you can put your clothes in the wash, get some work done, drop your clothes off in the dryer, and grab the clean clothes as you leave to go home. I don’t think there’s any guarantee socks are not subsequently lost in the dryer, and mixing whites and darks is strongly suggested.

The Doctor Is In
Have a doctor’s appointment? Going to be late for work? No longer. With Google’s in-house doctor, you can get your annual checkup or go in for that nasty cough. Whether or not you want to visit this same Doctor on your day off is up to you.

The Punchclock is Dead
Hate the 9 to 5 grind? What about the 3-12am shift? Night owls are more than welcome at Google, they’re encouraged. Google allows workers to have flexible schedules, so that employees can work around life’s dilemmas, and still maintain productive.

This will be great for YouTube growth, but I don’t know how well this is going to play out for monetizing YouTube.

It’s a pretty cool feature none-the-less, meaning you can browse through pretty much any YouTube video from any widget on any site. Grooveshark just released their widget, but unfortunately it doesn’t include the ability to listen to any song on a remote site, although we may see that functionality employed in the future.

Gainesville is the hub of North Central Florida. 110,000 residents live in Gainesville, and 50,000 of which are at the University of Florida. And these students get hungry. They like to eat out, and they like to get delivery to their dorm or apartment or house, because nobody likes cooking.

There are a number of current delivery options for Gators, and there are also a number of startups that have been spun out of this huge Gainesville delivery market.

Gainesville Delivery is Big Business

ChompMenus
This company was started by some college students going to Penn State. They were hungry late one night, and wanted to order food, but didn’t have any menus infront of them. Their solution? Create an online menu for their college town.

They’ve taken this model to the University of Florida, and now they have ChompMenus. It’s a directory of online menus for local restaurants, and they charge restaurants to be a featured restaurant on the website. Simple model, but easy to execute. The biggest challenge is selling the contracts to the restaurants, but it’s definitely something that can easily be duplicated or replicated in towns across the country.

Gator Food
So you know what you want to eat, but your favorite restaurant doesn’t deliver. What are you to do?

That’s where Gator Food comes in. They also have an online menu option like ChompMenus, but take the extra step of providing a great service for restaurants. You can call it “outsourced delivery,” they provide delivery services for restaurants.

So say you just opened a small pasta shop, Lucas Pasta in Gainesville, instead of having to hire a delivery driver, get insurance, and go through all of that hassle. You can work with Gator Foods, and they take care of all the delivery for you.

This is a great model and I think one of the areas that has the biggest opportunities for local businesses. Take an aspect of a business model, say delivery, which causes a lot of headaches for business owners, and create a business strictly out of delivery.

How To Start Your Own College Company

The best thing about being in college is everyone loves the city they’re in. All you have to do is shout “Go Gators,” and you’ll immediately receive a warm reception.

Apply this same methodology for working in your college town. We’re all Gators, so let’s see how we can work together. Small business owners like to work with fellow entrepreneurs and they LOVE to see kids in college trying to blaze their own trail.

So if you come up with an idea, start setting up meetings, talking to local business owners, and see what you can accomplish. The ideas mentioned above are simple, but what they did that you didn’t do is get off their ass and start the company.

So get going, if you have an idea, act on it, and let’s start building the next great set of college busineses, big or small.

The new Italian wines that will retail from $12 to $30 and include Sangiovese, Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir varieties. The fit is obvious, as Italian food and wine were an integral part of the show’s storylines.

The wines are being marketed via a licensing agreement between HBO and Vesuvio Import Co., a wine importer named after an Italian restaurant from the series.

HBO has previously licensed the Sopranos name for several different products including “The Sopranos” gaming slot-machines, CAO cigars and “The Sopranos” cookbooks, but this is its first wine effort. “We feel that these quality Italian wines are the perfect complement to all of our other carefully planned product extensions for ‘The Sopranos’ brand,” James Costos, an HBO spokesman, said in a statement.

The best place to introduce a new product: Japan. The worst place: China.

Broad scope
For the study, Gerard J. Tellis, director of the Center for Global Innovation and professor of marketing at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, and his co-author, Deepa Chandrasekaran, assistant professor of marketing at Lehigh University, looked at data for consumer household products over 50 years and across 31 developed and developing countries. To rank the countries, they created an “innovativeness metric” based on the time it takes for new products to take off in a particular country.

Why Is Japan The Best?

Regional differences could be a factor and he [Gerard Tellis] explained that this could be because the evaluation was done on a national level, not on a regional level, and that his next study with Ms. Chandrasekaran will look at just this. “Within the U.S., I would expect the coastal areas to be more innovative than the interior. I don’t know if that would match the blue states vs. the red states that they have in political science, but that is a testable hypothesis that we are going to attack next.”

For now, the study can save marketers “a lot of time [and] get quick results,” contends Mr. Tellis. “This ranking of countries tells you which to launch in first.” The authors also recommend a “waterfall” approach to launches, staggering them from one country to the next, and they created a hazard model for the study to determine how many years it will be before products “take off” in a national market.

Mr. Tellis noted that globalization has not made the world flat — products take off in different ways, and this is especially important to keep in mind in an economic recession when resources are limited and competition is tough. “Having this knowledge is more important than ever before because you can’t be extravagant,” he said.

Startups Launching In Japan First?

So are we going to see a lot of startups doing a soft launch in Japan? For the most part, this would be an interesting strategy. Assuming you could launch in English, this would give you an initial market test, and hopefully allow you to build traction and start earning some revenue.

Then, when you take your start-up to the States, you would be ready to go.

What do you think?

Now I’m not going to talk about shoring up your weakest links, but a good way to help shield yourself from deficiencies is to have some star players.

Tom Brady is the best quarterback to ever play the game. He was able to win three Super Bowls with not exactly first-round ballot hall of famers.

The most recent quarterback to put together 3 Super Bowls was Troy Aikman, and he ha Emmitt Smith running behind him and he was throwing the ball to Michael Irvin (both hall of famers).

Hug Your Stars, and Let Them Know They’re Important

So what did the Patriots do? They signed Tom Brady to a longterm contract, made him feel secure, happy, and part of the team.

Determining who your key players are in the organization and make them happy. Let them know they’re important to the long-term success of the organization. Doing this when times are good is even better, but since we’re in bad times, it’s even more dire.

When times are hard, you’re going to be pushing harder on your employees you know can handle the stress and workload, and hope they can help the company pull itself out of this trench.

If you haven’t invested the time and effort in making them happy, and secure, they may get happy feet and start dancing around.

Don’t Mistake a Blackhole for a Star

Just like in football, if you give a huge contract to a show-boater or a big talker, who you think brings a lot of value to the team, like perhaps a Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens, etc. you may be shooting yourself in the foot.

Nothing kills a team faster than a player who thinks they’re better than the team.

You could spend all of your cap money on this big-name player, only to see them fizzle out. When you could have “spread the wealth” to 5 role-players who more than fill up this superstars shoes.

A Startup is a Team

To ensure your company works to its maximum potential, you need everyone playing for the same team.

Divisions are easy to come by in companies, whether it be between marketing and sales, sales and development, management and everyone else. These barriers cause companies to not work to their full-potential.

Find ways to identify these barriers, eliminate them, and you’ll find your startup working as a team more, and reaching better and better heights.