VerusNova

I have compiled a list of “success snippets” from various sources and on occasion my own experiences and advice I received.
I believe that these are essential to becoming a successful business owner and entrepreneur. Some are related to each other — to be sure — but each has something significant to impart.

1. Take that first step; take action
2. Learn to take the “No”s with the “Yes”s
3. Stay true to your mission (statement)
4. Ask for what you want
5. Find a way to differentiate what you do or your products
6. Treat others with respect, always
7. Trust your instincts
8. Sell yourself first, no one will buy from you if they don’t like you (period)
9. Start small — Dream big
10. Ensure your business model is scalable
11. Choose your company name wisely
12. The single most important business activity is - Networking
13. You must believe in (and use if applicable) what you are selling/offering
14. Know your customers
15. Listen to your customers — give them what they want
16. Word-of-Mouth is still the best advertising method
17. Reinvest most of your earnings into the business
18. Don’t try to do it all by yourself; Find and hire experts
19. Get a mentor
20. Understand and apply the basic principles of money management
21. Be Persistent
22. Study other successful people
23. Invest in yourself - get more skills, education, and knowledge
24. Learn something new everyday
25. Know the difference between risk, and calculated risk (i.e. research beats luck)
26. There are riches in niches - find an unfulfilled desire or a problem in that niche and solve it
27. Focus on your core offerings - don’t spread yourself too thin
28. Communicate thoroughly, clearly, and frequently with team members, employees, and customers
29. Choose your partners wisely
30. It’s not just about the work - Play, Have Fun
31. Surround yourself with the best people
32. Never underestimate the power of a good idea
33. The only way to conduct business - is ethically
34. You are your brand!
35. Always aim for the win-win
36. Do what you love
37. Don’t second guess those tough decisions
38. Do what you say you are going to do
39. The trend is your friend
40. Study other businesses and learn how they make money
41. Identify spin-off opportunities
42. Don’t let your expenses outrun your income
43. Adapt or die
44. Identify mistakes early and change course
45. You have 2 ears and 1 mouth, so - Listen twice as much as you speak
46. Establish rapport upfront
47. Seek continuous incremental improvement (kaizen)
48. Be willing to make mistakes; be willing to fail
49. Always have a backup plan
50. Follow-up is the key to great customer relations
51. The world is Flat
52. When speaking: make eye contact; use their name; smile
53. Quash instant-gratification: don’t let short-term rewards distract you from your long-term goals
54. Pay attention to the details
55. Sell more by removing people’s obstacles
56. If something works, do more of it (and vice versa)
57. It’s cheaper to keep a current customer than acquire a new one
58. Under-promise and Over-deliver
59. Give something back
60. Believe in yourself!

BONUS:
Read The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris

==> Click here for your Free eBook - Million Dollar Habits

“Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits” –
Robert Puller

Here is a nice article from Ego Development blog:
The Top 10 Most Positive Habits of Life

Time is the most precious resource for any consultant or sole proprietor. The CardScan Small Office / Home Office Solution helps you spend less time locating contact information and reaching out to contacts – and more time cultivating the relationships that lead to initial sales and continuing business.

CardScan is a small desktop device that quickly and accurately reads the printed information from business cards, email or internet contact data into the fields of a powerfully searchable, highly compatible contact database.

Turn your business cards into digital contacts. Find out Which CardScan business card reader is right for you!

Here are 15 sites I found useful in the past few weeks:

Qrimp is smart on-demand software that simplifies the automation of business processes - and make Web Apps in a Snap!

Net Tools is a comprehensive (and free) set of host monitoring, network scanning, security, administration tools and much more, all with a highly intuitive user interface.

The port forwarding tester is a utility used to identify your external IP address and detect open ports on your connection.

blist is the world’s easiest database

ShipGooder - search for rates from FedEx®, UPS®, DHL®, Purolator®, the U.S. Postal Service®, Canada Post® and local carriers.

Spot Merchant - Create an e-commerce business with this professional and easy to use web2.0 store

Tersus is a Visual Programming Platform for creating rich web applications without any coding

Helperoo is an email support system with small in mind.

Rondee - Free scheduled conference calls -really

Google Sites makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information.

OStatic - determined to be the most comprehensive web destination for information and insight on Open Source Software and Services

Wuala - Share files with you friends, privately. All files encrypted. No file size limits. No traffic limits. Free.

Jungle Disk is an application that lets you store files and backup data securely to Amazon.com’s S3 ™ Storage Service (15 cents/gigabyte)

MyFabrik - Manage all media files in one location

Apatar - Combine your on-premise data sources with the web without coding. Feed data from/to APIs, and mashup building tools.

MyFax.com allows you to send and receive faxes using email, the web or a handheld device. Plus, there is NO setup fee, NO hardware or software to download and each customer receives a FREE toll-free number upon sign up! These benefits, coupled with the low cost of just $10 per month, make MyFax.com a successful industry leader!

For VerusNova readers –> Special Offer: Buy 2 Months Get the 3rd FREE

If you have a blog or website that has frequently updated or valuable data that would attract the mobile crowd - here is an easy way to instantly turn your website into a cellphone friendly site for free: WireNode.

We detect all mobile phones, which access our platform and we try to render the best output for it.
We know the phone type, model, manufacturer, screen resolution, preferred markup language and image types and other parameters. Based on this data, our mobile detection core decides, which output format it will give to each particular phone.

Here is the WireNode mobile version of VerusNova: verusnova.wirenode.mobi

—

Please visit the New VerusNova Store.
Here you will find some of the services and products that I have used in the past 2 years as well as those recommended by my colleagues. Especially check out the great free materials at Brian Tracy’ site!

Rogomo - Find experts, or be one and earn cash

YouTube video fast search at: http://www.yvoschaap.com/youtube/

Currency Converter for the traveler or arbitrage mogul.

FilePub - free file hosting up to 20GB files.

SlyDial - send someone a voicemail without ringing their phone; good for ex’s, and to leave that message with the boss so you can say “I called you but you didn’t pick up.”

SendLoop is full-featured newsletter campaign management suite.

The Free account gives you 25 emailings a month with lots of features including:
* Free image hosting
* Unlimited lists
* Unlimited campaigns
* Free newsletter templates
* Free support

Pricing is easy -
For each campaign you send, you pay a flat delivery fee of 1 cent per recipient. Every month 25 free email credits are added to your account. So every month, you send to 25 recipients free. There are no setup, hidden or monthly fees. Only pay when you send campaigns with Sendloop.

Get your own Toll Free or Local Number with voicemail for as low as $9.99 per month

Why would any small or medium business spend tens of thousands of dollars on a PBX when they can spend $10/month with companies like RingCentral?

The rich menu of business features of RingCentral Online is unmatched in the industry and provides advanced functions unavailable in even the most expensive PBXs, including:

Toll Free Numbers
Local Numbers
Voicemail
Internet Fax
Virtual PBX
Extensions
Dial-by-name Directory
Call Forwarding
Answering Rules
Call Screening
Call Controller+SoftPhone
Message Alerts
Music on Hold
Click-to-Call Out
Click-to-Call Me
Outlook Integration
Call Logs
Calling Card
Recorded Greetings
Unified Messaging
Auto Attendant

Jiffle selectively shares your calendar with your contacts 24 x 7, and allows you to insert a link to your calendar into your Outlook e-mails with one click. Your calendar can be shared with unlimited contacts through Outlook if desired. You select who views your calendar. Only invited contacts can gain access, and they will see only “Available” time slots. Available time slots are presented to your contacts in their respective local time zones, and appointments are automatically reconciled by time zone and converted when confirmed by e-mail.

Jiffle also integrates with WebEx Meeting Center and Webex Connect. You can now schedule and host meetings on WebEx in one quick step.

TaxTrackr by InvestorGuide.com

You pay a lot in taxes, and you have a right to know how that money is spent. This has traditionally been difficult, but now TaxTrackr shows you what Uncle Sam does with each dollar you pay in federal taxes.

I find this interesting from a small business perspective when you see how much of this money goes toward … well, not what you would expect.

Unlimited Conferencing - reliable, quality conference calls for only 6.5¢ per minute.

Their conferencing services and pricing plans are designed to suit the needs of a range of customers, from small businesses that do only a few conferences a month to large corporations that do hundreds of conferences a month. Unlimited Conferencing offers a full suite of audio and web conferencing services with lots of features, good performance, quality and an eye to security.

There are many price offerings including a flat-fee monthly or a pay as you go per minute plan.

PsPrint is a different kind of online printing company. By combining the very best in web technologies with state-of-the-art production facilities, PsPrint is able to deliver online printing convenience combined with competitive prices and consistent quality.

But we’re more than just an online printing company. With our expert Mailing Services, PsPrint is also your direct mail partner, with the marketing solutions you need to make your promotional mailings a success. They focus on small business.

PsPrint offers many options:

• Professional Mailing Services at PsPrint
  
• Free Online Design Tool - Design It! At PsPrint
  
• Full Color Booklets & Catalogs from PsPrint
  
• Full Color Postcard Printing, Brochures, Stickers, Calendars and More!
  

For VerusNova readers, here is a coupon: Save 10%, up to $75, off any product by entering code buynow

I was surprised recently to realize many of our clients thought we were a bigger company than we are (we have 4 employees and a few 1099). I never purposefully misled anyone in this regard so I was curious where the impression came from…After asking a few of my long-time customers some questions I realized that most of that impression came from the systems and processes we put in place early on.

So - How can you take a 4 person company and make it seem like a much larger corporation? Even better - can it be done for free? (hint: yes.) Leveraging technology can help you not only make you seem bigger to your customers and potential customers, but can streamline your business processes. Maybe you can actually stop working before dinner tonight?

Here are the four open source and/or free apps I use (and simply couldn’t do without)…

[1] Website

Every company can create a great website even if you less artistic talent then an aardvark (like me). A few good Wordpress templates and creative commons graphics, maybe a photo or two of you own and you’re up. The great thing about Wordpress is that once you customize your template you can post via email, Blackberry, or 3rd party software. You can have different types of users (ie.e permissions) so that many can contribute and you don’t need to rely on one person for all content. Also, with a good Spam protection plug-in (e.g. Akismet) you can have users and clients post messages for an even more informative site. We have tabs on our site for support, marketing, technical information, and client-specific access to documents. It acts as our central portal for anything related to our company for both customers and the general public.

[2] Receptionist

I still can’t believe how good Asterisk PBX is for the price. basically if you purchase a linux server and possibly a interface card or two, sign-up for a VOIP subscription service you can have a $20,000 PBX for about $1000 plus $30/month. It is completely customizable and includes conference calling, voicemail, call forwarding, multiple-IVR, etc. We use a particular incarnation of Asterisk called TRIXBOX. This includes a nice GUI interface (FreePBX) to make it easy to configure, SugarCRM integrated with Asterisk contacts, and a few other items. Basically all you need to do is create a CD from the ISO image, load it in the server and follow the directions. You should have your PBX running in an afternoon. We use the very nice XLite software phone from Counterpath, but you can also buy VOIP phones or uses ATA converters. We have our extensions roll over to our cell phones after 5-6 rings (follow me), we have a separate menu for the support hotline and we get full monthly reports detailing calls received and made for the month. This software really makes everyone think we have some swanky office in downtown instead of my friend’s basement. We also found a female with a great speaking voice on craigslist and paid her $20 to record the few messages we needed for our PBX and mail the WAV files to us. Awesome!

[3] Help Desk

HelpStream (formerly PathWorks) is an online Support and Trouble Ticket application that was started by some Ex-IBM, PeopleSoft, Remedy executives. The best thing about this online application is that it has most of the features you find in a full-featured trouble ticket and support desk application without the setup or maintenance required. If you don’t want branding and don’t mind some unobtrusive ads, you can even use it for free.

Helpstream can be used for customer service, IT help desk, bug tracking, and a wide variety of other case tracking and user self service requirements. It’s a powerful, affordable, easy–to–use solution for fixing technical issues faster. Helpstream customers include organizations of all sizes, in a variety of industries.

I like the FAQ and KnowledgeBase feature that lets my customers search for solutions themselves Before they call me. (Although you need to train/incentivize them to do so I learned.) Once a ticket is submitted I get an email to my corporate distribution list which sends it to all the agents and also sends us SMS messages so we know we have a request. Then based on agreements with our customers on response time - we login and work the issue. I looked at some of the other OpenSource ticketing solutions like OTRS, but found that for the effort - HelpStream was our best bet.

[4] Customer and Partner Collaboration

Knowledge Tree is an open source knowledge-base and document management application. It can be used to collaboratively work on manuscripts, proposals, or marketing materials, etc. I use it to create project specific file cabinets and keep all pertinent files where anyone can access them easily. Examples of documents included: Current project plan; meeting minutes; Visio diagrams; technical guides and brochures; purchase orders, etc. It automatically sends out notifications and has user rights that allow lots of granularity of control. We use this mostly to prevent spending time emailing updates to everyone and remembering who is supposed to get what document. It avoids managing our FTP server (the old way we did it), and it makes us look more professional since we can brand the site. There is a link to this server on our Wordpress Website.