Hate Networking? 3 Ways to Get Over It

Here's how to make networking work for you--and your business.

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Networking is at the top of the list of things that make me the most uncomfortable. 

Most people who know me are surprised to learn this, because I am a consummate extrovert, but, in truth, I find it daunting to talk to people I have never met, and I hate pretending to be interested in people who are clearly networking to social climb. In the past two years, however, networking has become a very important part of how I grow my business.

Consider these three ideas to take the discomfort out of networking and use it to create real value for your business:

Listening is the best way to start a conversation.

Most people think about networking from the perspective of what they are going to say. Instead, think about networking in terms of what someone else might have to say to you. Last week, I was at an event with other business owners, and a woman mentioned a new sales manager who had just joined her team. Rather than bringing up my own recent hiring challenges (which happened to be at the top of my worry list), I asked her how long it had taken her to find the new recruit, and when she confirmed that the process had been long, I asked what resources she had found most helpful in her search. She gave me several ideas I had never even thought of, let alone tried.

Honesty begets honesty. 

Networking tends to bring out the braggarts, the people for whom everything is going just great: stellar sales, smooth cash flow, and growth potential to last a lifetime. We can all spin our stories to sell the audience on how great our businesses are, and doing so is sometimes a great survival skill. However, I find that ditching the PR pitch and honestly talking about my challenges has saved my business more than once. About a year ago, at a networking event, I had a powerful conversation with a business owner I had just met about some financing issues I was having, and it's a damn good thing I did. He gave me excellent tips on how to assess the potential peril my business was in, and several specific ways to reverse the problem. Had I kept quiet about my woes, I would have missed a valuable learning opportunity.

Everyone has something interesting to impart. 

Networking makes people nervous, because they worry they may be thrown together with people with whom they have nothing in common. In my experience, the people who are the most different from me are also the most likely to teach me something valuable. Stepping outside of your circle is one of the most effective ways to begin thinking outside your box--and networking is the perfect chance to get access to a bevvy of different types of thinkers, all in one location. At an entrepreneurs breakfast earlier this year, I sat at a table with no one I knew. I gave myself the assignment to learn about each person's business, and in the process, I discovered--from a leadership researcher!--a print-on-demand method I could use to make T-shirts to promote my brand. I also found out from the owner of a consulting business about a website-creation tool that would let me sketch out how I want my site to be reorganized. And, just by chance, I wound up talking to an IT guy who tipped me off to an alternative resource for searching for new suppliers, and they proved to be more effective than the one I had been using. None of these people are in my industry, nor did their products overlap with mine, yet they each told me about something I could use.

So think again before you consider skipping a networking opportunity or contemplate hiding out by the buffet table. Networking can make the entrepreneurial journey less lonely, provide you with great nuggets of advice, and force you to do something outside your comfort zone--all of which are fundamental to growing your business.

Vanessa Merit Nornberg: In 2004, Vanessa opened Metal Mafia, a wholesale body and costume jewelry company that sells to more than 5,000 specialty shops and retail chains in 23 countries. Metal Mafia was an Inc. 500 company in 2009. @vanessanornberg

Hey, Mark Zuckerberg: It's Time to Start Charging for Facebook

Inc.com columnist Phil Simon says Facebook could solve a few key problems with one simple solution: Charge users--they'll pay.

Associated Press

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg:

You're clearly one of the smartest entrepreneurs around today. Despite that (or maybe because of it), there's no shortage of talking heads giving you unsolicited advice. Add me to that list.

With Facebook closing in on one billion users, kudos are in order. You've built the single most popular website (nay, company) in history. To your credit, you've consistently put the user experience at the top of your priority list ever since you founded The Facebook back at Harvard.

But you're not in Cambridge anymore.

The Tide Is Turning

The user experience doesn't appear to be at the top of Facebook's priority list anymore. To be sure, that list is no longer just yours, even though you control 57% of your company's voting shares. Your company needs to make more money--and fast. Many people are telling you that you have to run more ads, especially on mobile devices. Historically, you've resisted this, but Facebook's recent actions and changes indicate that you're softening your stance here. Some portend that if you don't crack the nut on monetizing mobile, Facebook will go the way of MySpace.

While admirable, your company's quixotic mission to connect the world has to be tempered with the short-term financial realities that all publicly traded companies face. And that's why the Facebook user experience is being compromised.

You might have read the TechCrunch piece on the subtle design and semantic methods that your company has adopted to trick users into giving up even more personal data. For two reasons, I'm not contending that this practice is illegal or even unethical. First, everyone uses Facebook voluntarily. No one is compelled. Second, Facebook has every right to attempt to make money. It isn't a government utility; it's a business. Real estate, employee salaries, and data centers cost money.

However, there's a growing backlash among many users that Facebook has gone too far, even among Generation Y. Start-ups like App.net aim to create ad-free social networks, even if that means charging users a modest annual fee (in this case, $50).

Which brings me to a modest proposal: Charge me.

Simon Says

Yes, you've always said that Facebook was, is, and will always remain free. That's fine, but I don't mind paying for greater control of my data. I'd love to opt out of sponsored stories in my news feed, downright ugly and space-consuming ads on the right-hand side of Facebook, and other potentially unscrupulous things of which I'm not aware.

My hunch is that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Let's say that 10% of Facebook users (about 100 million) pay $25/year for a premium (read: ad-free) experience. That's $2.5 billion in revenue.

Will a Facebook Plus/Freemium model solve all of your company's problems? Of course not. There's no easy solution. However, I'd argue that this new revenue source would stem the decline in your stock price and, for a modest fee, allow others to buy a better user experience.

Sincerely,

Phil Simon

Phil Simon is the author of four management books. His fourth, The Age of the Platform: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Have Redefined Business, is his most ambitious yet. @philsimon

5 Leadership Lessons You Won't Learn in B-School

Forget vision, passion, and other B-school platitudes. Here are the nitty-gritty details on what makes leaders great.

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First he spoke about the importance of inspiration. Then he talked about the power of passion. Then he discussed the value of vision.

Then I almost fell asleep.

I was sitting in on a class, and the professor was describing the traits of a great leader. I certainly didn't disagree with his list: vision, passion, inspiration, dedication, fairness, accountability. Those are important traits of a great leader. Still, I realized I would retain very little of what he said. Platitudes are hard to remember, much less put into practice.

After all, "Inspire your team" is great advice, but how do you pull that off?

So, as I walked away, I realized that most of what I know about leadership didn't come from business schools or conferences or seminars.

The best leadership lessons are ones I learned the hard way:

1. Data comes and goes, but feelings last forever.

Facts and figures are important. Explaining the logic and reasoning behind a decision can help create buy-in and commitment. Charts, graphs, tables, results, etc., are useful--and quickly forgotten.

But make an employee feel stupid or embarrass him in front of other people and he will never forget.

An employee made a comment in a meeting, and I instinctively fired off a sarcastic comeback. (For a long time, I was like a sarcastic-comment sniper, who figured that if I had the witty shot, I should always take it.) Everyone laughed but him.

And our working relationship changed forever. I apologized on the spot and apologized again later, but the damage was already done.

Spend twice the time thinking about how employees will feel than you do thinking about data and logic. Correcting a data mistake is easy. Overcoming damage you cause--whether intentional or not--to an employee's self-esteem is impossible.

2. Great ideas are never found in presentations.

Presentations are a great way to share detailed and complex information. Presentations are a terrible way to share great ideas.

After I drank too deeply from the Six Sigma Kool-Aid, I started interrupting employees who came to me with ideas by telling them to "put something together." Some would: Then we'd whip out our multicolored belts and talk intelligently about their data, their analysis techniques, their conclusions... Ugh.

Most wouldn't bother. Looking back, I don't blame them.

Great ideas can be captured in one or two sentences. Your employees have those ideas.

All you have to do is listen. And your employees will love you for listening, because I guarantee people they used to work for never did.

3. The "volunteer penalty" kills the flow of great ideas.

Your best employees tend to come up with the best ideas. It's natural to assign responsibility for carrying out an idea to the person who came up with the idea. Plus, if that person is a great employee, it's natural to want them to take responsibility, because they're more likely to get it done.

Of course, your best employees are already working extremely hard, so assigning them responsibility every time they have a suggestion naturally stops their flow of ideas.

As one outstanding employee finally explained to me, "I finally realized I needed to stop suggesting things to you, because every time I did you just added another responsibility to my plate."

Sometimes the employee will welcome the responsibility for carrying out their idea. Other times they won't.

How do you know which way a particular employee will respond?

Ask.

4. Sharing only the positive always results in a negative.

Imagine you're sharing the reasoning behind a decision with your team. Naturally, you describe the positive outcomes of the decision. So you whip out your pom-poms and start cheering.

Meanwhile your employees are instinctively looking for negatives, since almost every silver lining for the business has a black cloud for at least a few employees. I once described how a change to paper dust collection would improve the air quality throughout the plant, but I left out the fact that as a result a few employees would spend at least part of each day looking like they had rolled in a bathtub filled with flour.

Never leave out the negatives, even if those negatives may be potential rather than actual. Talk openly about any downsides, especially when those downsides directly affect employees. Show you understand the best and the worst that can happen and what that might mean to your team.

When you freely discuss potential negatives, employees not only respect you more, they often work harder to make sure those potential negatives don't occur.

5. Data is accurate, but people are right.

You're smart. You're talented. You're educated. Data analysis is your best friend. Sometimes your data will lead to an inescapable conclusion, and yet you should still make a different decision.

I once moved two crews of about 30 people to a different shift rotation because I knew the resulting process flow would automatically improve overall productivity by about 10%. I also knew--because they told me--that most of them would hate the new rotation, but I held firm, because I knew great leaders are willing to make tough decisions and do whatever it takes to get results.

It turns out I had that all wrong.

Sure, my new shift rotation worked on paper. It even worked in practice. But it screwed up the family lives of a number of great employees, and I finally pulled my head out of my (butt) and shifted everyone back to the old rotation. We found other ways to improve productivity.

Sometimes a decision should be based on more than analysis, logic, and reasoning. No decision should ever be made in a vacuum, because a decision must eventually be carried out by people.

Leadership should be data driven, but great leadership is often subjective and even messy.

If your employees don't agree with you, ask why, but don't ask just so you can defend your position. Ask in order to learn.

You know things your employees don't know, and they know things you don't know--until you listen to what they say.

Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden

5 Tricks to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Your new site is slick--but what if it's a digital ghost town? Try a few of these tricks to flag down more visitors.

Flickr/jezarnold

It doesn't matter how slick your website looks: If no one comes to it, good luck building that Web business.

Some entrepreneurs use the time-tested technique of paying for ads to get traffic. Others generate buzz through promotional stunts, or try tweeting with reckless abandon. But those aren't your only options. Here are five strategies to try to push your traffic numbers skyward:

1. Pay pennies for YouTube views.

The concept of paying for ads (à la Google Adwords) has been around for years. One new technique, though, is to pay for YouTube viewers. Virool.com is one option. You can post a video, and then pay about one penny per view. The idea is that Virool pushes your videos out to a targeted audience culled from its network of publishers. Once someone watches your video, he or she may want to visit your website as well. Just be sure your site is set up to cater to Web viewers: Offer other videos and media as well as an engaging call to action.

2. Get specific on Twitter.

Twitter is one of the best ways to generate traffic, because you can target users, groups, and topics. Experts say the trick is to get specific: Send tweets to popular social networking gurus who might respond, and make sure you actively retweet those in similar fields. "The average person on Twitter reads around 200 tweets a day," says Jeffrey Powers, a popular blogger and podcaster. "Reposting a tweet is not a bad idea: 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., and 9 p.m. are good times to tweet. The best time is between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. I have my content retweeted constantly, which adds to my reach."

3. Run on Groupon

Ryan Chaffin, an investment and marketing expert, says one good strategy is to run a Groupon. This might seem like a stretch for a company that does not sell a product, but every business has something to sell. For example, a Web design company might run a coupon offering services for half-price. When bargain hunters investigate what your company offers, you'll probably get more traffic to your website. Note that the approval process to post coupons can take up to two weeks.

4. Launch a Kickstarter campaign

You may not want to seek funding from Kickstarter, especially if your company is already solvent--but that's not why you'd try this strategy. Kickstarter's major advantage is that it's incredibly popular. That means, if you create a campaign, even if it is for one part of your marketing activities or to create one new product, it can be an effective way to generate traffic and attention quickly. Erin Cheyne from Mousetrap Group, a text-message marketing company, says Kickstarter is one of the best traffic generators around right now, mostly because people are curious enough to click.

5. Write a counterpoint blog post

Joseph Turian, the president of MetaOptimize, a technical consultancy, says one way to generate buzz on your site is to write a guest blog that offers an alternative viewpoint and get it published on a popular website. Say everyone else is buzzing about Kickstarter or Groupon. Offer your take on why you think neither site is worth the time. (Of course, only take this option if you genuinely hold that viewpoint.) Make sure that your post includes a link back to your site. And be ready for some backlash and visitors looking to post negative comments.

John Brandon is a contributing editor at Inc. magazine and writes the Tech Trends column in every issue. He also writes the Tech Report column for Inc.com. @jmbrandonbb

Rise & Fall (& Rise) of David Steinberg

He rose to the top of the Inc. 500, then failed spectacularly. Now he's back with another fast-growing company--no less ambitious but a lot wiser.

Michael Lewis

David Steinberg near his New York City office

Momentum is like cholesterol. There's a good kind and a bad kind.

In the mid-2000s, David Steinberg grappled with the bad kind. InPhonic, his seller of mobile phones and services, was No. 1 on the Inc. 500 in 2004. It went public that year. But as Steinberg pounded furiously toward revenue of $400 million, the company started to sway beneath him like a rope bridge on a windy day. Ultimately, it collapsed, filing for Chapter 11 in November 2007 to facilitate the sale of its assets to an investment firm.

Within 30 days of resigning as CEO--not long before the filing--Steinberg had moved the furniture out of his old office in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood and into his new office in a building right next door. While InPhonic expired nearby, Steinberg was giving birth to a new company, which he holds up as an exemplar of good momentum. XL Marketing provides lead-generation and customer-acquisition services for companies in several industries and for big brands; Steinberg projects it will do $100 million this year. The business, now based in New York City, is growing so fast that had Steinberg launched six months earlier and thus qualified for the 2011 Inc. 500, he would have become the first founder ever to land two companies in the top spot. (Why isn't XL Marketing on this year's list? Steinberg chose not to apply. The company wouldn't be No. 1, and so really, what would be the point?)

F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong: There are second acts in American lives. And the most resilient entrepreneurs don't even require intermissions.

We are sitting in Steinberg's sparsely decorated Manhattan office, our conversation occasionally drowned out by the banshee shriek of sirens tearing down Madison Avenue below. Loose limbed and genial, Steinberg is giving his first substantial interview in more than three years. With so much going right, he is, understandably, not eager to revisit InPhonic's last days. But we cannot talk about the sanguine present without acknowledging the sanguinary past.

So Steinberg answers--more or less patiently--questions about the series of unfortunate events that commenced in 2006, two years after InPhonic's IPO. In relatively short order, the District of Columbia attorney general's office and the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, filed lawsuits over InPhonic's rebate programs; accounting errors forced the company to restate several quarters' worth of earnings; a strategic partnership collapsed; and shareholders filed a class action (later dismissed). In November 2007, InPhonic filed for Chapter 11, and its assets were sold to Versa Capital Management, which relaunched it as Simplexity. (Simplexity still operates Wirefly, the popular wireless-services retailer that Steinberg built inside InPhonic.)

Steinberg's take on all of this squares with that of most commentators. Growth: too fast. Focus on profit: insufficient. "I wouldn't say we didn't care about profit," says Steinberg. "We did. But we were more focused on growing the business." Unfortunately, infrastructure wasn't scaling as fast as sales. "We had effectively the same finance team as a $20 million company as we had as a $400 million company," he says. "We were processing millions of transactions. And quite frankly, we had not built the internal controls and systems."

The company also carried too much debt. When a deal that would have given InPhonic some cash and allowed it to spin off distribution fell apart, the bank called its loan. "We had the wrong balance sheet," says Steinberg. "And in August 2007, there was no refinancing of anything."

Steinberg also blames InPhonic's status as a public company for inflating the problems. "Had we not been public when a lot of that stuff happened, it would have been no big deal at all," he says. "But we were a sizable public company and attracted the attention of certain lawyers who like to sue sizable public companies." (Both the FTC's and the D.C. attorney general's lawsuits were settled.)

But Steinberg never stopped believing that with InPhonic, he had built a great company. "When I left I was, if not the largest shareholder, in the top three," he says. "Nobody lost more money than me. I'm a believer. And I don't regret that.

"The guys who bought it got an incredible deal."

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture. @LeighEBuchanan

Success Secret: Change Your Internal Dialogue

Don't talk yourself out of success. Improving the words you use to describe your own experience can make your future brighter.

shutterstock images

Everyone in business knows that words are important. Some companies spend millions of dollars to get the perfect wording for their corporate, marketing, and sales messages.

Since words are important, it's absolutely crazy to be careless when you're communicating with the most important person in your business world: you!

Just as the words you use to describe your company to customers predetermine how successful your company will be, the words you use when you talk to yourself (meaning in your own mind) predetermine how successful you will be.

If your internal dialogue constantly uses words that leech your energy, you'll always be fighting an uphill battle. What's more, that negative self-talk has a habit of slipping into the words you say to others, which can cast a pall on everything you do.

By contrast, if your internal dialogue uses words that uplift you, you're greasing the wheels to become more successful. What's more, a positive internal dialogue is inevitably echoed in your day-to-day speech, making those around you more success-prone, too.

Because this is an important point, I'm going to illustrate it with one of the examples from yesterday's post: Rejection.

How the Word Rejection Creates Failure

I cannot tell you how many times I've heard the following remarks from would-be entrepreneurs: "I don't like selling because I hate rejection." They're usually not aware that they're making an important part of their job more difficult than it needs to be.

The word rejection carries emotional baggage. It conjures up memories like 1) getting shot down when asking somebody out on a date, 2) not getting a hug from a loved one when a hug was desperately needed, and 3) not being "good enough" for somebody else, even though you did your best.

Making a lazy mental association of selling with rejection is just plain stupid, because nobody like being rejected. That's the last thing you want in your mind when you're trying to communicate the value of your ideas and products.

Top salespeople--the ones who earn millions of dollars a year--never think about selling in terms of rejection. If a situation or customer call doesn't go their way, they use different words, like speedbump or God's delays are not God's denials.

I'm not talking about something theoretically here. I know from my own personal experience that using a more powerful word than rejection to describe your sales process can accelerate your success.

When I wrote my first business book, I got 20 so-called rejection letters before I got anyone interested in it. Here's a fact: Some writers feel utterly crushed when they get even one rejection letter. Many of them give up, because the "rejection" makes them so miserable.

In my case, though, I wasn't bothered, because I never thought of them as rejection letters. I thought of them as stepping-stones. Every day, I removed those letters from their folder, laid them out on the floor, and physically walked over them, imagining how fabulous I'd feel once I got my first big book contract.

I then used that emotional energy to sell the book idea to even more agents and publishers. Eventually, those stepping-stones led to a contract, and that book later became a huge success, launching my career as a professional business writer.

How to Change Your Internal Dialogue

If you really want to be successful, you'll spend the extra effort to edit your internal dialogue so that it supports your goals. This is not at all difficult, and here's the basic recipe:

1. Listen to Your Thoughts 

As you go through the day, be mindful of the words that you use, in your own mind, to describe your experiences and those around you.

2. Write Them Down 

Recording your internal dialogue on paper will help you see more objectively the words you use, because you take them out of the context of your habitual mental use of them.

3. Categorize Each Term 

At the end of the day, mark each word or term as positive, neutral, or negative relative to what you're trying to achieve.

4. Substitute More Powerful Words

For negative words, devise neutral alternatives. For neutral words, devise positive alternatives. For positive words, find alternative words that are even most positive.

5. Post the Alternatives Where You Can See Them

This is just a simple list with the old words in the first column pointing to the new words in the second column.

6. Make the Substitution Habitual

Whenever the old words show up in your internal dialogue, consciously substitute the alternative word. Continue until the substitution is automatic.

Here's a quick example, taken from the world of sales:

• Rejection->Speedbump
• Frustration->Nervous Energy
• Afraid->Excited
• Failure->Sales Lesson
• Boss->Coach
• Feeling Good->Feeling Fantastic!
• Disappointed->Surprised
• Cold calling->Dialing for Dollars

The more time you spend transforming your internal dialogue in this way, the more your thought processes will reinforce your quest for success.

If you like this post, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.

Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

Most Important Failure to Embrace

Maybe you already proudly "fail fast and fail often." There's one type of failure you're probably still avoiding--but shouldn't.

Jupiter Images/Getty

For something so painful, failure--at least as a topic--is awfully popular.

Look around. Smart people say we should all fail fast and fail often. Smart people say failure can be the best teacher, and that failure is the foundation of innovation. Evidently Silicon Valley loves failures, and you should too.

As a result you may have decided not to fear failure... and to actually embrace it.

That's cool, but there's another type of failure you probably aren't embracing, much less seeking--but you should.

Here's why.

If you are like most business owners you have what John Updike, referring to the baseball player Ted Williams--long before Ted became better known for the whole cryogenics thing--called an intensity of competence: You know, thoroughly and completely, your business, your market, and your customers.

And everyone knows it.

That means your employees let you think you're right, even when you're not. Few are brave or presumptuous enough to tell you otherwise.

They have no choice but to tell you what you want to hear.

And that makes you the king or queen of your business.

Wearing a crown is a powerful feeling but royalty has its downside. When you're all-powerful it's incredibly easy to stop questioning your decisions, your perspective, and your approach to solving problems.

Even worse you can lose the ability to see yourself from your employees' point of view. It's almost impossible to run a company and lead others when you've lost all perspective on what it's like to make mistakes--and not have all the answers.

So what can you do? Go do something difficult--and fail.

Except this time set out to fail in a different way. Don't fail fast and often inside your business. Business failures cost time and money that most of us don't have; I've never seen an operating budget with "Intentional Failures" as a line item.

Instead fail at something outside your business. Set a reach goal you know you can't reach. If you normally run three miles in 21 minutes, try to run five miles in 35 minutes. Play a sport and compete with people who are a lot better than you. Try to do your high school kid's homework. If you aren't willing to step outside your business, just go help an employee do her job for a few hours and try to keep up: I guarantee she'll outperform you.

Just make sure to give whatever you pick your all. Do your absolute best. Leave no room for excuses. The goal is to fail... but not for lack of trying.

In my case I like to fail at physical activities. While I may be decent at what I do for a living, when I go riding with local pro cyclists or play pick-up basketball with college kids they don't care about my professional accomplishments. I'm judged solely on my merits on a bike or a basketball court... and I'm definitely found wanting.

And that's a good thing. Failure isn't defeating; failure is motivating. Failure doesn't just motivate me to improve a skill. Failure also provides a healthy and instant dose of perspective. Failure makes me more tolerant and patient of other people who struggle or fail.

Why? It's really hard to feel superior or judgmental or dismissive--of anyone--when you just got your rear handed to you.

So go fail. Afterwards you'll be a different person. At work you'll still be the king or queen, but you will have left your crown at home.

Your employees will appreciate the difference.

And who knows--they might even start telling you what you need to hear.

Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden

Smarter Way to Build Your Website

Building a website may seem like a small part of your business development, but it shouldn't be. It's often the first thing people notice about your company.

Eutokia/Flickr

Finding a Web designer was one of the easiest parts of starting Altruette. We posted an ad on Craigslist--which seemed like the most unprofessional thing to do at the time--but within days we had dozens of applicants for the job. We just happened to visit a company called Mars Design first, and it was mainly because it was conveniently located near another meeting we had that day. We were immediately impressed with their work, and they were willing to work with our budget.

We realize now that it could have been a serious disaster. Building a site is expensive, and for small businesses like ours, it requires a big percentage of your budget. But we lucked out. We've talked with countless entrepreneurs who have struggled to build their own site or have overpaid for a site that they've ended up hating.

And for a company without a brick-and-mortar storefront, the look, feel, and functionality of our website is extremely important. The site serves as our only window for the world to see in, and our content must serve as our sales team.

The easy part was finding Mars Design. Figuring out the next steps wasn't as simple. Fortunately Marshall Cohen, Mars's founder and creative director, guided us through the process. So we figured we'd team up with Mars--which we still work closely with--and create a plan of action that any start-up preparing to build a consumer site might find useful. Here's what we learned along the way--and what any business that's just starting out should consider before building its site.

Choose your team.

Not all studios are the same. Again, we lucked out on the Web developer front, but we haven't always been so fortunate with vendors. Now we try to meet or interview three companies before we hire a new vendor. So do your homework. Studios come in all sizes and have different specialties. Check their portfolios and ask for references. Look for consistency among their work and a good sense of style. Do they have a specialty such as e-commerce or nonprofit? How big is the team that will be working on your project? 

Figure out your budget.

First and foremost, refuse the urge to just find the cheapest quote. We went with a team approach--Mars Design has both designers and developers. We know one-person shops that can do both, but we liked the team at Mars. "The two--design and development--are separate specialties," Cohen warns. "Because technology changes so rapidly, it's nearly impossible for any one person to keep up and offer an all-around quality solution."

And there are other things your studio should consider when designing and developing your site, such as ongoing search-engine optimization and online marketing. Make sure you know what you're getting. It's not uncommon to need a couple of revisions to your designs before you're happy with them. Ask how many revisions are offered as part of the contract. Working with a small team has a lot of benefits. You'll get the best of both worlds--individuals that specialize in different areas and at lower rates than the bigger studios offer--because it won't have the overhead costs of a larger firm. And you'll often get more personalized service, which is one of the things we love about Mars Design.

Brainstorm ideas.

This is the fun part and will impact your brand well beyond your site. Study other websites and take notes on what you like about them. "Pay attention to details like style, layout, navigation, functionality, color, logo, etc," Cohen says. The sites you love might not be in the same industry, but don't discount them. This exercise will also help you nail down your overall branding--things such as logo and colors--if you haven't already done so. But be sure to review as many competitors as you can to make sure you differentiate your brand. "Also make sure you take time to navigate through these other websites to figure out what you like or dislike about the experience," Marshall suggests. Do you find it confusing? Is it user friendly? Is the information clear and concise?

Define your goals.

You need short- and long-term goals so that a studio can build your site with your company's growth in mind. Think about how things may change over time. Early on Cohen asked if we wanted PayPal or a seamless checkout. We hadn't thought much about it until he pointed it out. Cohen suggested we use what's called a merchant account instead of PayPal. He made it clear that PayPal is easier and less expensive but that we would be happier with a seamless merchant account instead. We decided we wanted our site to be as professional looking as possible from the moment we launched and followed Cohen's advice.

Other questions he says you should ask yourself include: Who will manage the website content to keep it fresh? Will you be doing this yourself or having an employee handle it, or would you rather not get involved and have your design team handle it? We do a little of both. If the changes are significant, we hire Mars to do it. If it's a simple edit to the site, we can usually handle it on our own. Who will manage shipping? Will your products be shipped through a fulfillment house? If so, your website will need to integrate with the fulfillment center's system. For us, connecting our site to our fulfillment center was our biggest technical hurdle. It required a lot of back and forth, but it now operates seamlessly.

Build a site map with your Web team.

Building a site map is important. "It's like a family tree--it shows the relation of pages and information within a website. Pages are typically organized in hierarchical fashion," Cohen says. Your Web design team can help you build the site map and determine which pages are necessary. However, it's very helpful to start looking at other websites to see how information is presented. Is it broken down into small, digestible pieces? Are those pieces on individual pages or separate pages?

Define your target.

The goal of your site is to reach your target demographic and communicate with them in a language they speak. You need to know your customers so well that your website answers any questions they might have and makes it easy to buy what you're selling. To help you do that, here is a list of questions to ask yourself and your team:

• Who is your target audience?
• How old are they? Are they men, women, children, or a combination?
• What key information does this audience need? What inspires them? What influences their decision-making process?
• Where do they live? Will they be visiting your site during work or at home? (We always hate when we open up a site with annoying music. It's fine if customers shop while at home, but it will drive them away fast if they're visiting while at work.)
• What do they expect when they visit a company site like yours?
• How are they using the site? Are they Web savvy, or are they just beginning to use the Web for online business? What might scare them off?

Choose a memorable domain.

Finding a memorable domain that's available is nearly impossible these days. We spent months trying to figure out what name best represented the brand we were building. We were obsessed with finding a single word that spoke for the brand, and we weren't happy until we found it. It was such an unexpectedly tough process that we think it requires a future column of its own.

At the end of the day, working with your Web team will require a lot of give and take. But when it comes to anything technical, heed your Web developer's warning. Cohen told us early on not to hit a certain button when we were on the back end of our site. A few days after we launched, we decided to post a new blog. It was Thanksgiving morning. When one of us (we won't name names!) couldn't get the blog to publish, we hit that button. The site disappeared from the Web instantly. Cohen was forced to get on his computer and get to work. He got the site back up, and we learned our lesson. And we had one more person to be thankful for that day.

Lee Clifford and Julie Schlosser: Lee Clifford and Julie Schlosser are the co-founders of Altruette. They make a line of classic charms that each benefits one of 35 different charities. Previously, they were both editors at Fortune magazine. @AltruetteCharms

On the Scene With 6 Fast-Growth Companies

Red Frog Events, No. 9

"Most people smile when they jump over flames, because, well, it's just fun," says Joe Reynolds, founder of Red Frog Events, a Chicago company that puts on extreme races and other events. The flame jump is one of a dozen extreme obstacles at Red Frog's signature event, the Warrior Dash, pictured here at the Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. The 5K run, which takes place in dozens of cities in North America and Australia each year, also requires participants to crawl through mud and under barbed wire. Founded in 2007, Red Frog posted $31.7 million in sales last year and is on track to host 85 events this year, including urban scavenger hunts and pub crawls.

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  Playing With Fire

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  Power to the People

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  Free to Roam

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  A Matter of Life and Death

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  Someone Has to Do It

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  A Hard Day's Night

Nicole Carter covers start-ups, small business and entrepreneurship for Inc. Nicole was previously a reporter and web editor at the New York Daily News, and her work has also appeared in Consumer Reports magazine. @ncarterinc

Overwhelmed? Try This Simple Cure

There are 8,760 hours in a year. Here's the real reason you feel like you can't get anything done--and what to do about it.

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There's never enough time in the day, is there? Taking a day off or making time to work on that promising new project is all but impossible. And forget about hiring a new employee--who has the time to train a new person?

You do, in fact. There are 8,760 hours in a year, and if you manage them well, you can move mountains.

I'm not going to offer productivity tips here; instead, this post is about the excuses entrepreneurs use to push away fear, maintain control, and ward off the what ifs.

What's Really Going On

If you're putting something off due to a perceived lack of time, there's a chance that your perception is skewed. Often entrepreneurs feel frustrated when they've gotten nothing done, in spite of being busy and overwhelmed. But poor time management serves a purpose: It masks fear. Even worse, it can be a form of self-sabotage.

Recently I worked with someone who was literally making herself ill by exaggerating the demands and responsibilities of her job. As we explored the truth behind her stress and anxiety, she revealed some significant personal issues at home. She felt extremely overwhelmed and confused by those problems, so she unknowingly constructed this wonderful distraction at work to avoid her personal situation.

I say wonderful because people have such an uncanny ability to protect themselves in this way. Sometimes you simply aren't ready to face a problem, and your subconscious mind helps to put it off. The danger in that, however, is when you allow it to go on for too long, resulting in complete avoidance, increased stress, and many other unfortunate consequences.

What to Do About It

So how do you know if you are struggling with a simple case of poor time management or if you're pushing away fear and making excuses? My clients love this simple process. See how it works for you.

1. Write down your belief about a frustrating situation.

There is no way I can take a vacation.

2. List all of the possible consequences if you defy this belief.

For example:

• I will fall so behind at work that it won't be worth it.
• Something really important will fall through the cracks.
• I'll feel guilty about taking time away, because successful people work hard.

3. Now open your mind to a different perspective on each of these consequences.

Do this by beginning each sentence with "And so." Challenge yourself to reverse your beliefs or find a logical solution. Create as many challenge statements as you can. The following examples relate to the beliefs listed above.

• And so I will make sure that my assistant learns how to do x, y, and z. That way I won't have to catch up on tedious tasks when I return. I've been meaning to do this anyway.
• And so I will do my best to tie up loose ends on projects before I leave. I will also add an out of office message to my voicemail and email and inform my top clients that I will be unavailable for a few days. There's nothing that I can't resolve, so why predict a disaster?
• And so this means there will never be a perfect time for a vacation. But successful people do take vacations. I am successful; I deserve a vacation. In fact, I need a vacation so that I can keep up with my success!

As you perform this exercise, listen to that little voice inside. Each time you make an excuse, the voice will try to get your attention. It might say something like, "Really? You don't seriously believe that, do you?" or "That's not true! You're just afraid because..." Learn to distinguish between fear and intuition. It's the intuition that's on target and the fear that misses the mark.

Marla Tabaka is a life and business coach who helps entrepreneurs and small-business owners grow their companies faster. She coaches for Make Mine a Million and has 25 years of experience in corporate and start-up ventures. @MarlaTabaka

How to Hire Better Employees

Hiring doesn't have to be hit or miss. Treat the process as the most important strategic planning your company needs, and you'll get better results.

shekhardesign/Getty

The success of your business is in the hands of your people. They take hundreds--probably thousands--of individual actions on your behalf every day, and if the sum total of all those actions is a net positive, you win.

If the overall result is a net negative, you lose.

It follows, therefore, that one of the most important tasks of any leader is to ensure that the hiring process is in itself highly successful. After all, every new employee you bring in to the business either raises the competence of the organization as a whole (enabling you to grow and prosper) or lowers it (slowing the organization down and imperceptibly dragging it toward decline and failure).

And yet I see so many business leaders approach the hiring process with the same degree of amateurish clumsiness as a faded D-list celebrity on Dancing With the Stars.

If you want to hire great people every time, you need to drop the amateur-hour approach and address the hiring process with the same degree of fierce professionalism as you would the development of a strategic plan or the design of a new product or service.

Here's how to do just that:

1. Ditch the "secret sauce" mumbo jumbo. We've all read the magic questions so beloved of celebrity CEO's when they're asked about their hiring techniques: "I ask them what their spirit animal is," or "I look deep in their eyes and ask them to tell me a situation when..."

It's all baloney, and they know it. Hiring is a complicated business, made more complex by the fact that the person at the other side of the desk has read all that nonsense, too. You don't think any interviewee worth his or her salt hasn't got that stuff down? 

Answering your much-loved "curveball question" is a trivial irrelevancy at best and a complete red herring at worst. Do it if you must, but realize that it has little or nothing to do with whether the person across the desk from you is a great hire. 

2. Know precisely what you're looking for. What are the five key skills a successful candidate must have to succeed at this job? And what are the five key attitudes or behaviors that will enable him or her not just to succeed but to excel at it?

You need to know these key skills and behaviors, clearly and unambiguously. Talk to previous incumbents of the job, to their internal and external customers, and to their peers. Write the skills and behaviors down, and polish their definitions until they shine with clarity. 

Yes, this is hard work--much harder than wandering in to a job interview armed only with a fuzzy and incomplete understanding of the role and a couple of magic questions. But being prepared is vital if you are to stand any chance of consistently hiring great people.

3. Get proof that they have it. The hiring process (and yes, hiring should be a process, not an event) must have one purpose only: to prove to you, without a doubt, that the candidate you choose possesses the skills and behaviors needed in order to excel in the job for which you're hiring them.

This means that the process must include tests (Do they need to write code in PHP and jQuery? Give them some coding to do); role plays (Do they need to sell? Take them on a ride-along and watch them sell); simulations (Need to make snap decisions under pressure? Let's see them do it); and anything else necessary to give you the proof you need.

If your hiring process is still essentially a dialogue in which you lob vaguely associated questions at the candidate hoping that by the end of 45 minutes you'll have formed some hit-or-miss notion of the person's overall likelihood to succeed, your hiring success rate will be equally hit or miss.

4. Involve others. Later today or tomorrow, try parallel parking your car without using the rearview or wing mirrors. It'll take forever, your neck will be sore by the end of it, and you'll end up many feet from the curb. Having just one person make the hiring decision is just as inefficient.

To consistently hire great people, you need multiple perspectives. Use hiring panels of two or more people as much as possible, and during the hiring process expose the candidates to the other people they would most interact with. Use internal and external customers in particular. Think of the perspective that brings to the process.

Les McKeown is the author of the best-seller, Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track - and Keeping It There and is the CEO of Predictable Success, a leading advisor on accelerated organizational growth. His latest book is The Synergist: How to Lead Your Team to Predictable Success. @lesmckeown @lesmckeown

Why I Wasted a Perfectly Good Doctorate

Patrick Mish quit his high-profile job at Northrop Grumman to start electronics accessories company M-Edge Accessories.

Chris Crisman

Eureka Moment Patrick Mish found inspiration in his wife Devon's fondness for digital books.

COMPANY PROFILE

Company: M-Edge Accessories

2012 Rank: No. 91

3 year growth: 3,185%

2011 Revenue: $37.2 million

Patrick Mish's father, a NASA engineer, always had this advice for his son: Play it safe. Get your engineering degree, find a safe, stable job, and you'll find yourself successful and happy. But after earning a doctorate in aeroacoustics at Virginia Tech and entering the work force, Mish began to wonder whether he was cut out for corporate life. As told to Nicole Carter.

You'd think working on the Navy's next-­generation destroyer for Northrop Grumman would be a really exciting job for a guy who just got a Ph.D. in aeroacoustics. My team was charged with making the ships superstealthy. But this wasn't my dream job; it was blatant bureaucracy. Outside contractors did most of the technical heavy lifting'the stuff I wanted to do.

Alone in my little cube, I would often think, There's got to be something out there that I can sink my teeth into. Then, one day, it just hit me: I'm going to make e-reader accessories.

"Alone in my little cube, I would think, There's got to be something out there I can sink my teeth into."

I know what you're thinking: You've wasted a perfectly good Ph.D. and thrown a great career away. But hear me out.

My wife has always been an avid reader, so when Sony came out with its first e-reader, in 2006, we both were excited about this new technology. For whatever reason, it got our wheels turning. We realized there weren't many accessories for it: no cool book lights or covers. We both thought, Now, here is a great opportunity in a new market. I started small. After cold calling a few manufacturers, I landed on one I liked and began designing and selling a small quantity of accessories online, after work.

But I wasn't ready to be an entrepreneur just yet. I wasn't ready to risk everything on a new business.

In addition to my wife's hesitations ("What about the mortgage? The kids?"), I knew I needed to become a better salesman. A friend introduced me to the owner of an IT company who was hiring a sales rep. I had several meetings with him. It took more than a little convincing. At our last meeting, I literally pounded my fist on the table and said, "Are you going to give me this job or what?" He did. And I quit my job at Northrop.

Turns out, the sales job was significantly more demanding than the Northrop Grumman job. But I focused, learned how to do the job, and did it well. After eight months, I resigned and started M-Edge full time.

So was this whole thing a huge risk? Not to me. I look at it like this: The Ph.D. taught me to be a fast learner and to have self-discipline. Northrop Grumman taught me to be a good collaborator and how to settle disputes between competing interests. The sales job, obviously, helped me develop relationship skills. It was a process of building an entrepreneur who not only could start a business but could also run a business long term.

And my dad? I'm not going to say he didn't raise his eyebrows when I left Northrop. He raised me on the values of the Great Depression, when you were lucky to have work. But today, he offers nothing but support. In a way, his old-school values have been my biggest asset as an entrepreneur.

 

Nicole Carter covers start-ups, small business and entrepreneurship for Inc. Nicole was previously a reporter and web editor at the New York Daily News, and her work has also appeared in Consumer Reports magazine. @ncarterinc

5 Most Common Marketing Mistakes

Effective marketing means stepping back, doing your homework, and (usually) starting over from scratch.

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Over the past decade or so, I've reviewed dozens of marketing plans and hundreds of sales messages, and watched thousands of companies try to establish themselves in some of the most competitive markets in the world.

My main take-away from this experience is: there's an incredible amount of really lousy marketing out there. I'm not just talking the "inept" kind of lousy, I'm talking the "would stink in a deep space vacuum" kind of lousy.

1. No Concept of the Ideal Customer

Many marketers have a completely product-centric view of the world. They know their product up, down and sideways, but have only a vague idea of who might actually want or need it, or how they'd actually use it. Worst case, the marketers don't think that's important because their product is so "state-of-the-art" that it's obvious why it's a good thing to buy.

2. No Time Spent Listening to That Type of Customer

Even when marketers DO have a concept of the ideal customer, they often spend little time actually listening to those customers. They do "market research" and run demographic numbers, but when it comes to just sitting down and listening (really listening)... that's simply not on the agenda. Not surprisingly, the result is marketing messages that don't mean anything to the people who are supposed to buy.

3. No Idea of What That Customer's Customer Wants

Even when marketers DO listen to an ideal customer, they listen for the wrong things.  They try to find ways that the product their marketing can fulfill the customer's needs.  While that sound's smart, it's actually stupid. In business-to-business sales (which is the bulk of most sales activity) what's important is not satisfying the customer's needs, but the needs of the customer's customer. That's what's driving your customer's business. Your product only counts if it counts to the end customers.

4. Inability to Formulate a Meaningful "Value Proposition"

Even when marketers DO understand their customer's customer, they often have an extraordinarily difficult time formulating a value proposition that makes sense to both the customer and the end customer. Doing so requires an understanding of the business dynamics that permeates the entire supply chain, a concept that's unfortunately beyond the ken of all but the most experienced marketers.

5. Inability to Articulate a Value Proposition in 25 Words or Less

Even when marketers DO have a great value proposition, they have a tendency to do "group writing" that always results in long-winded sentences, full of abstractions, biz-blab and jargon. Writing a crisp message is a specialized task that only a talented individual can accomplish. It's a rare skill, as evidenced by the truly awful marketing messages floating around, even inside otherwise great companies.

What's the solution?

Well, don't get mad at your marketers, who are trying to do their best at a very difficult job. The real solution is to step back from your marketing milieu, research potential customer bases, spend lots of time listening until you thoroughly understand how their businesses work.

Then, after you REALLY understand what's going on, give the writing assignment to a professional writer and resist the urge to let the process devolve into group editing, which is the messaging kiss of death.

There's really no shortcut.

If you like this post, sign up for the free Sales Source newsletter.

Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

10 Cities for Fast-Growth Companies

The Bay Area is all about emerging tech companies, and it's the place to be if you're in search of funding. Top VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Accel Partners fuel the area, as do many angel and early-round investors. Accel backs San Francisco list-topper AdRoll, for instance. Stanford also produces engineers, many of whom create companies in the area, and earn a two-year city payroll tax credit in the process (Twitter did this recently). Still, the Bay Area does not top the list of the cities with the most Inc. 5000 companies.

Lessons From a Scientist-Turned-Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurs Talk About Getting Started

When Bonnie Schnitta started SoundSense, a noise-reduction design firm, she knew to get input from non-scientists. Plus, other entrepreneur stories.

Bonnie Schnitta, founder of SoundSense, a noise-reduction consultancy, seeks out advice from financial and legal experts.

Media: How I Use YouTube to Market My Small Business1:21

Terrence Kelleman, owner of Dynomighty Design, a product development firm, found a huge audience on YouTube. Here's how.

PERSISTENCE: Don't Accept 'No' For An Answer1:27

Eric Albee, CEO of Aromatic Fusion, a fragrance product company, was denied an extension on his line of credit. So he found a different way to take on his first contract with Bath & Body Works.

Action: Why Gotham Dream Cars Founder Ignores Traditional Media0:44

Noah Lehmann-Haupt, founder of Gotham Dream Cars, a luxury car rental company, focuses exclusively on targeted Internet marketing.

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  PIONEER Lessons From a Scientist-Turned-Entrepreneur1:08

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  MEDIA How I Use YouTube to Market My Small Business1:21

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  PERSISTENCE Don't Accept 'No' For An Answer1:27



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  ACTION Why Gotham Dream Cars Founder Ignores Traditional Media0:44

3 Secrets to Taking a Real Vacation

Forget playing the martyr. It's time for you to get away and take a real vacation. Here's how.

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Two years. To be precise: Two years, one month, and three days ago.

That's the last time my husband and I took a real vacation. I'm exhausted. I miss my husband. I miss myself.

All of these circumstances forced me to be honest and admit that the biggest obstacle to my grossly delinquent vacations is not actually my work. It's me.

I'm sure you can attest to how difficult it is to make time for a vacation--especially during those intense start-up years. And it becomes exponentially more difficult when you're talking about taking a true vacation, one that involves a calm mind, your devices being shut down, your kids with their grandparents. Plus, it's long enough for you to actually rejuvenate.

If that's not already difficult enough to obtain, consider that my husband, Khary, and I have an added challenge: Because he and I are CEO and CFO of our own family business, our absence leaves a double leadership gap.

But "all work, no play" is not only no fun; it can tank your business. That, coupled with my pent-up stress, forced me to get my mind right about finally taking a true vacation. I came to terms with some truths that I hope help you, too.

1. It helps to underestimate your importance. 

Say it with me: "You. Are. Not. That. Important." Now repeat, and let that sink in. It is dangerous to be so essential to your small business's daily operations that things will suffer if you're gone a week. More likely, it's a case of separation anxiety and of your overestimating your importance. Your team is bright, capable, and talented, which is motivation enough to consistently resist the temptation to micromanage. (Who wants to be that person? Wasn't your desire not to feel the Man's foot on your neck a major motivation for shirking traditional Corporate America? So do unto others...).

Recognizing that's easier said than done, I suggest practicing with a staycation. Alert your staff that you are unavailable for a couple of days. Aim to stay disconnected. But if you slip up, use it to reinforce to yourself that your team will step up. If an issue is mishandled or there's an emergency that you wish the staff actually had interrupted you for, now you have the ideal opportunity to recalibrate, prepare, and ensure there is a common understanding of what constitutes an emergency worthy of disrupting your vacation.

2. You can survive without the Internet. 

Overusing technology is an addiction. Period. If we don't struggle with the so-called hard stuff--drugs, alcohol, gambling--we often take false comfort in our more "socially acceptable" addictions, such as caffeine, money, power, and yes, technology. Rationalize all you want, but addiction is addiction. So let's just quickly admit that and get to weaning ourselves off our devices. Traveling to a lush location only to stay connected is not a vacation--that's remote work, kids! Crack is indeed wack, and so is selling yourself short by sneaking in time on email, Facebook, or whatever your digital drug of choice happens to be.

3. You may have to work hard to convince yourself. Here's how. 

You guessed it: Time to put your money where your mouth is. Set the date for your next vacation. If you dare to miss it, find someone you will actually stay accountable to and pay a fine for every extra day until you take it. And I'm not talking chump change. Make it an amount that hurts. And no, this money cannot be used on your vacation! Donate it, or give it to the person holding you accountable (assuming he or she is not your traveling partner).

Ironically, after my husband and I finally planned a couples-only, fun-filled Martha's Vineyard getaway for this week, we were forced to cancel at the last minute because of, you've guessed it, business. I was devastated! But I reminded myself that even though this cancellation couldn't be avoided, there were others in the past that probably could have been. So we've already rescheduled for a much warmer island: Jamaica. 

And because I like to practice what I preach, Amani Liberia (a nonprofit that teaches women how to create, market, and manage businesses through textiles and sewing) is the beneficiary of the very overdue vacation that we just had to cancel.

Selena Cuffe is the president & CEO of Heritage Link Brands. Previously, Selena served as a marketer for the Council on International Educational Exchange and the Procter & Gamble Company. @selenacuffe

Inside the Lives of Extraordinary CEOs

What makes Inc. 500 CEOs tick? We asked the entrepreneurs on this year's list how they run their companies (really well) and manage their private lives (not so much). We also asked them for their thoughts on the economy, the government, leadership, and raising money. It turns out that besides launching the fastest-growing companies in America, the CEOs of the Inc. 500 have a lot in common. Click for more

Why Cheerleaders Make the Best Employees

Heidi Sweeney of Slate Rock Safety hired a team full of cheerleaders for her uniform company.

Michael Edwards

We've Got Spirit--Yes, We Do Heidi Sweeney at her local high school

COMPANY PROFILE

Company: Slate Rock Safety

2012 Rank: No. 408

3 year growth: 924%

2011 Revenue: $2.3 million

Heidi Sweeney had a wide range of jobs, including show-horse handler and marketing manager, before starting her company, which sells uniforms to utility workers, firefighters, police, and military personnel. So, she doesn't have a long list of prerequisites for employees. The only thing she requires is that they have a cheerleader's enthusiasm--literally. As told to April Joyner.

Before I started my first company, I had worked as a receptionist. I was also given a little bit of marketing responsibility, and eventually I was allowed to go from marketing 5 percent of the time to marketing full time. That dramatically influenced the way I hire and manage employees. I try to give them opportunities to grow beyond their position.

We don't require people to have master's degrees and 15 years of experience in their positions. My business partner, Chad Wilson, and I look for people who are intelligent, have diverse work experience, and are very flexible. It's odd how it's turned out. All 12 of our employees are women, even our warehouse workers. That's not by design. We've interviewed as many men as we have women.

If you look at all of us on paper, we're very different. A friend of mine once told me that hiring a whole bunch of Heidis is not a way to build a great team. You need people who are introverts, who are detail oriented, things that I'm not. But once, while we were having a staff meeting, it came out that almost all of us had been cheerleaders. By no means was it a prerequisite for coming here, but it's a fun common bond. Our employees all bring a positive attitude and high energy, which works well for a growing business.

One of our value statements is, "Own every victory, every challenge, every mistake, and every failure, because we will experience them all." That goes right along with cheerleading: When you take a risk, I've got your back. It's about people working together to achieve a goal, whether it's a human pyramid or a business.

We're definitely a team. When our salespeople are trying to get a big government contract, everyone in the company knows they're working on it, and we all celebrate when they land the sale. There are also times when somebody from marketing may need to fill in for shipping and receiving.

We work very hard not to be your typical office of women. Communication is very important to me. There's just no place for passive-aggressiveness when we're moving this fast. Everyone knows that by the time something gets to me, I'm going to go in and say, "Let's sit down and figure it out," because having an office full of drama is just not an option.

I spend a lot of time talking to employees about what's going on in their world. If you're thinking you want to buy a house in three years, and you want to move into a certain position to do that, I need to know. And even if your dream means eventually leaving the company, then I understand. We had one employee who left us to live out her life's dream to be a missionary in Thailand, and we got together to celebrate that. It's important to me that people are able to evolve and get fulfillment from their jobs.

I want to make this a place where everyone wants to be. On Friday mornings, I will make coffee and play some high-energy music, like Salt-N-Pepa, on Pandora. I like to bring energy. Let's take the day by the horns, go and make sales, and do everything we have to do.

April Joyner is a reporter for Inc. magazine. She regularly covers sales and marketing topics and writes on start-ups for Inc.'s Elevator Pitch column. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. @aprjoy

Top Female CEOs of America's Fastest Growing Companies

Strategic Communications
Louisville, Ky.

No. 43
2011 Revenue: $45.4 million
Three-Year Growth: 5,186%

Kathy Mills' company, which ranked No. 608 on 2011's Inc. 5000 list, provides voice, video, and data solutions to federal, state, and local municipalities. Mills and her seven siblings have always had strong entrepreneurial spirits. As children they all sold candy to earn money. Now, all seven own their own businesses. Mills started Strategic Communications in 1994 and focuses on hiring and empowering passionate employees. "If you're really passionate about what you do, you're going to be successful," Mills says.

7 Tricks to Living With Jet Lag

There's no cure-all for jet lag. But there is a sane way to travel.

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I spend my life on planes. Often, when people ask where I live, I answer simply: "Seat 7a." I work equally in the U.S. and Europe, with a few side trips to the Far East, so I'm regularly asked how I handle jet lag. I've read a lot of the science on the subject, tried out most of the remedies, and found no magic cure.

Instead, to some degree, I try to ignore jet lag. I learned to do this because I found my kids had no interest in it; when I came home, they just assumed I was on their schedule and had no sympathy for any excuses. It taught me a good lesson. 

So here are seven tricks I've learned to help me cope:

1. When you're on planes, don't work or watch movies. 

Too much time in front of a screen in an airless space numbs the mind. It can feel like a nice break, but it won't give you energy. So bring an old-fashioned, hard-copy book and enjoy the freedom you have to read without interruption. On most flights I take, I can start and finish a book, and I find I remember it better because I wasn't interrupted.

2. Don't eat.

These days you're rarely offered edible food on planes anyway, but I find my body is always a lot happier if I eat when I'm on the ground. I know business-class meals are supposed to be a treat. But the truth is, they're the most expensive fast food in the world. So ignore them. Instead, have pizza at the airport before you board.

3. Try not to drink.

I definitely feel better if I don't drink alcohol. However, if I'm boarding a long flight at the end of the day, I'll have one glass of champagne or wine. Then I stop.

4. Listen and sleep.

On long flights, I always listen to the same audio book. I still have no idea how it ends, and my sense of its narrative structure is bizarre. But I've conditioned my body to recognize that whenever I hear that voice, it's time to sleep. I'll take a generic sleep aid, like Tylenol PM, and get anything between four and seven hours of sleep. (What I must never do is listen to this book while driving.)

5. Be where you are.

As soon as I arrive, I do my best to get acclimated into the local schedule. This is for no other reason than that it distracts me from how discombobulated I feel. If I'm on the same schedule as everyone else, I act normal, even if I feel distinctly strange.

6. Go to bed.

When I get to a destination, I try hard not to schedule dinners or evening meetings. This isn't always possible--when it is, I go to bed as early as I can. That may mean waking early the next day, but that's fine: I can always get work done while others sleep.

7. Take time to recover.

After long or complicated trips (my last one was nine flights in 12 days), I try to schedule a recovery day. The longer the trip, the greater the accumulated chaos on my return. I also find that I want time to reacquaint myself with my office and my routine. The first day back is invariably nesting time: I look like I'm working, but really I'm just reminding myself of home.

Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur and author. She has been chief executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation, and iCAST Corporation. In 2011, she published her third book, Willful Blindness. @M_Heffernan

How to Know Exactly What Your Customers Think

The key to tapping into your customers' thoughts is to listen--really listen--to what they have to say. Only then can you sell effectively.

shutterstock images

Many people wrongly believe that selling consists mostly of pitching a product, a solution, or an idea. In fact, the most important part of selling is listening to the customer, especially after you've asked a question.

Unfortunately, most people are really bad at listening, not just to customers but to everybody else. With that in mind, here is an easily followed six-step method:

1. Ask thoughtful questions.

Everybody knows that closed-ended questions (i.e., those with one-word answers) are conversation stoppers. However, that doesn't mean all open-ended questions are created equal. Rather than asking obviously leading questions (e.g., "What are your needs when it comes to widgets?"), use questions or statements that invite the customer to expound upon a situation without a preconceived agenda (e.g., "Tell me about how your company uses widgets").

2. Relax and breathe deeply.

The popular term "active listening" is misleading. Listening is by its nature a passive activity in which you put yourself into a frame of mind that's receptive to what the other person is saying. This is only possible when your body isn't itching for action. Therefore, when you're listening, make a quick check of your body, relax any tense muscles, and consciously take deeper-than-normal breaths. When you first start doing this, it might take a couple of seconds, but if practiced regularly, it will quickly become habitual.

3. Suppress your internal dialogue.

While somebody else is talking, it's deceptively easy for your mind to take control by mentally finishing the customer's sentences and deciding what you're going to say next. Other people sense that you're doing this, realize that they haven't been heard, and resent you for being disrespectful. Therefore, when you're listening, put your mental focus on the actual words that the customer is saying. Imagine yourself listening to an audio book or radio program that's so engrossing that it takes you out of yourself. Again, this takes some practice.

4. Take a moment to consider.

Because you've suppressed your internal dialogue, you're going to need to a little time to think about what the customer actually said, and then formulate your response. Weirdly, some people think that pausing makes them seem stupid or inattentive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Customers--like everyone else--are always complimented and pleased when a listener cares enough to take the time to really consider what they've actually said.

5. Acknowledge what was said.

Before you add your thoughts to the conversation, confirm to the customer that you've listened and really heard what was said. If the customer's statement was relatively simple, your acknowledgment should just be conversational, anything from "Ah!" to "That's interesting." If the customer said something complex, though, you should briefly summarize what the customer said. This not only confirms that you've been listening but also allows the customer to correct misconceptions and provide clarifications.

6. Address what the customer actually said.

The previous five steps are pointless if you use your speaking time to talk about where you wish the conversation were going, as opposed to where it is actually going. This is not the time for a sales pitch or a sales message or anything canned. Confine your comments to what the customer actually said, your reaction to it and your thoughts on the subject. Only then should you move the conversation forward with another thoughtful question or a request for the next step.

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Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. @Sales_Source

Meet 9 Extraordinary Fast-Growth Companies

Public Engines
Draper, Utah

No. 297
2011 Revenue: $2.7 million
Three-Year Growth: 1,247.5%

This five-year-old start-up prevents, reduces, and even solves crime with easy-to-use, cloud-based technology. One of the company's products, Crime Reports, maps out where crimes have been committed using Google Maps. Another, TipSoft, lets people report crime directly from cell phones. 'People have all types of information--they just don't have a safe venue to be able to provide that information to police,' says the company's founder, Greg Whisenant. TipSoft has received over 2.4 million tips to date, resulting in 243,000 arrests, removal of 24,000 weapons from streets, and the recovery of $3 billion in stolen goods and contraband.

8 Ways to Keep Your Brain Innovative

When I return from the Serengeti, my brain feels new. It's as if the hot African sun sears away mental fog. You can replicate this--closer to home.

Jamie Grill/Getty

Kenyan Children Foundation

Geil Browning with the Kenya Children Foundation, February 2002.

For many years, I have had the privilege of leading groups of family members, friends, colleagues, and clients to Africa. We do volunteer work for the Kenyan Children Foundation; we dig, scrub, build, teach, and--at all times--give as much love as possible to the AIDS children the Foundation serves. Every evening, no matter how late it is, our group convenes to discuss our day. This is not a vacation. This is work--expensive work! Yet year after year, people jump at the opportunity to join me. 

People want to join me because of the wonderful feelings that come from helping children whom society has otherwise abandoned. There is also the excitement of visiting such a dramatically different part of the world.

Also, after our work is done and we return home, we all notice an interesting phenomenon. Our brains feel new. Our eyes see differently. It's as if the hot African sun seared away all our mental fog.

"It seems crazy to think that I had to go that far to gain perspective," says Lauren, a human resources executive at a Fortune 1000 company. "But life there is simpler. We had no TV or radio or newspapers for three weeks. Unplugging gave me such an appreciation for life. Kenya reminded me of what's important: the beauty of the earth, good food, and fellowship. By getting off the daily treadmill, I was able to get back on it with far more patience. The Serengeti gave me the gift of seeing the bigger picture. Now, in my work, I don't get so wrapped up in the day-to-day challenges that I lose sight of the greater goal. My brain built new pathways and connections, and reached new 'aha' moments that have made my decision making more clear, my life less stressful, and my heart more grateful."

When I am in Africa, I not only begin to see the "bigger picture," as Lauren says, but I also gradually get into the rhythm of "Africa time." An 8 o'clock appointment may or may not happen at 8 o'clock. When it happens, it happens. Africa time causes the structural part of my brain to eventually give up and go on a holiday. I also find that the analytical part of my brain is forced to yield to more innovative and more social thinking--so I use the opposite parts of the brain on which Western society is largely based. All these shifts make my brain more open to inspiration and new ideas.

On the treadmill of our daily lives, we are far too busy for Africa time. Blogger J.D. Gershein notes that the expression "I've been crazy busy" has become the new professional apology, and asks, "How on earth did we arrive at the crossroads of manageable busy and clinical insanity?"

The problem with being "crazy busy" is that it does not allow freewheeling thought. Think of the bright ideas you've had when you were washing your face or even sound asleep. A recent article in The New York Times titled "The 'Busy' Trap" points out: "History is full of stories of inspirations that come in idle moments and dreams. It almost makes you wonder whether loafers, goldbricks, and no-accounts aren't responsible for more of the world's great ideas, inventions, and masterpieces than the hardworking."

Working incessantly is counterproductive. Our brains can handle only so much. A wonderful article by Sara Robinson called "Bring Back the 40-Hour Work Week" notes that every workday, "odds are good that you probably turn out five or six good, productive hours of hard mental work, and then spend the other two or three hours on the job in meetings, answering e-mail, making phone calls, and so on. You can stay longer if your boss asks, but after six hours, all he's really got left is a butt in a chair."

Although corporate America has not gotten the message, there is mountains of evidence that working longer hours does not produce better work. In fact, the overworked brain begins to make mistakes, and it is possible for teams to reach a point at which they are working longer hours just to correct the errors they made from working longer hours! Dramatic examples of the consequences of brain fatigue include the Exxon Valdez disaster, the space-shuttle Challenger explosion, and numerous times when air-traffic controllers have been overtired.

So what can you do to work smarter, prevent burnout, and make sure your brain is always open to inspiration?

1. Work fewer hours.

Working the longest hours of anyone is just foolish.

2. Clarify your goals and core values.

What are you ultimately trying to accomplish? Are you spending too much time spinning your wheels on tasks that are irrelevant?

3. Track your time.

Being ruthlessly efficient allows you to block out periods of nonwork time.

4. Don't overpromise.  

This is especially challenging for entrepreneurs, given that in many cases you won't get the job unless you tell the client you'll get it done in record time--for the least amount of money.

5. Say no.

Learn to walk away from jobs that will be a nightmare.

6. Hire help.

If you refuse to delegate, you end up hurting only yourself by working longer hours. You will have to learn how to not be a perfectionist and how to not be a control freak.

7. Get a life.

Make sure you have a good life outside of work and that you're not trying to escape something by working too hard.

8. Unplug. 

Block out periods of time when you will let your phone take messages and let your email collect unread. It's not going anywhere.

Fortunately, you don't need to travel halfway around the world to learn how to make your life less busy and your brain more innovative. By working smarter, you'll have an opportunity for strategic thinking and planning during prime time every day, instead of squeezing your most important visionary work into late nights and weekends.

Geil Browning is founder of Emergenetics International, an organizational development firm in the U.S., Singapore, and the Netherlands. She co-created the Emergenetics Profile, a psychometric thinking and behavioral workplace assessment. @Emergenetics_