Interesting interview with the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. He talks about his path from academia to social media.

Click here for the entire article

• It’s okay to be brief
When people ask me about work/life balance, I just laugh. But I try to be time-efficient by scheduling meetings in appropriate increments –15 minutes or less sometimes. I’ve also tried to build a culture that understands writing brief e-mails is not emotional coldness.

• Be willing to change course
Entrepreneurs tend to believe, “I’ve got my idea, I’ll go until I die.” But I advise them to take seriously the questions about whether their [business] plan is irredeemably flawed and whether they need to change what they’re doing. Be diligent about failing fast so that you don’t spend five years doing something that’s just going to fail.

• Don’t be a perfectionist
I frequently tell Internet entrepreneurs, “If you’re not somewhat embarrassed by your 1.0 product launch, then you’ve released too late.” There’s value in launching early, getting engaged with customers, and learning from them. That can direct your progress.  

There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting.
David Letterman

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
Karl Marx

There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.
Colonel Sanders

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost

If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn’t be in this business.
Samuel Goldwyn

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
James H. Boren

Small Business Friendly Tax Policies -green is friendliest, red is least friendly, and blue is somewhere in the middle

The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council released its yearly ranking of states by the friendliness of their tax policy. Happy to see Nevada at the top of a good list. Click here for the whole story. 

Rieva Lesonsky, author and former editorial director for Entrepreneur magazine, attended the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) National Small Business Week celebration in DC last week and writes about the sunny outlook. Click here to read.

Since the first PCs were brought into the workplace over 20 years ago people have talked about the paperless office. It has been a long time coming but we now have the tools necessary to make at least most of the back office paperless. Accounting systems kill trees, but they don’t have to. Most accounting programs (including QuickBooks) have available tools that can automatically catalog and file the registers and reports your accounting systems are generating as .pdf files. These programs include a database for filing and a tool to find and view your reports. Some will also allow you to file scanned document, like invoices from vendors, as attachments to registers.

Here some of the benefits of implementing a paperless system:

Save on hard costs: Take a look at your printing costs: paper, toner, printer service, and eventually replacement. Electronic storage space, on site or remote, is a fraction of your printing budget.

Save time filing:  Either you or your staff members are spending time each month standing at the filing cabinet sorting papers that may never need to be seen again. Over the course of one year, you may find your payroll is funding a full-time salary for all of the time spent filing.

Save time finding: The papers you are looking for are always the one that didn’t make it in the right file. By storing the documents electronically, each file can be retrieve instantly. Even if it is filed in the wrong directory, electronic files can be found using search tools like Google Desktop.

Save on real estate: How many square feet of your office is dedicated to file storage? Some business are paying monthly fees to store paper offsite.

Save time restoring: Paper is susceptible to fire, water, and theft. With your month end processing, write your paperless directories to CD or some other  removable media and take it off site so you have multiple copies in different locations.

Save time destroying: When the time comes to purge your paper files, you either burn up your shredder or hire a vendor to dispose of your files. When the time comes, you can destroy your CDs and erase your electronic files. Talk to your IT resources first.

Save your mind: The stacks of paper to be filed that were previously collecting on your desk won’t continue to be the last item on your to do list. Without moving from your desks, those papers will be cataloged and filed as soon as you approve them.

 Aside from purchasing and installing a integrated application, a system can be hacked together inexpensively. Of course you will need an application for to create .pdf files. The price of Adobe Acrobat Pro has increased dramatically but several low-cost or free .pdf converters are available; we have used both CutePDF and doPDF.

Your structure may differ, but by creating a hierarchy of directories on a network hard drive that is being secured by your regular backup procedures, you are ready to take your first steps away from the filing cabinet.

Root Directory: Paperless

Sub Folders: Accounts Payable/Check Register; Accounts Payable/Invoice Receipts; etc.

Paperless files

Create a naming convention that includes the date, for an Accounts Payable Check Register, perhaps APCR042109 so it can be identified if it is inadvertently relocated to another folder. Making the default printer in your accounting application to the .pdf converter to save redundant mouse clicks. You are ready to GO PAPERLESS! When you’re ready to take the next step, expand your folder structure and begin scanning vendor invoices, packing slips and contracts too.

Some of our customers feel uncomfortable initially after their implementation and promise to continue printing hard copies. You may choose to do the same thing but after a few days of staring down the papers to be filed or a few trips back to the cabinet, the feeling passed for them as they learned to trust the systems we put in place. In the end, they admit that going paperless had a dramatic impact. It could change your life too.

I have heard this conversation many times recently, in the office, with friends and at the Customer Service Excellence Award ceremony I attended. This is a program developed by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce to recognize people for their outstanding customer service. At the ceremony all of the nominees accepted their awards, had a picture taken with the mayor, picked up their snazzy pin to show off to everyone!

Before distributing the pins, the host of the ceremony thanked everyone for a job well done and reminded everyone of the importance and the impact great customer service has during a slow economy. It can make or break your business. The concept seems like a no-brainer but to my surprise, I still hear stories from friends and colleagues about their awful experiences.  Keep in mind, when dealing with your customers that they are the key to your success.  Great customer service is essential all the time and especially during this rough economic time. We want to impress them and we want them to return. Customers are less likely to return to your business if they do not get the type of customer service they expect, or better. Make sure that you always follow through. Word of mouth is an effective, low-cost method of marketing. Remember, every customer who has a good experience will share it with 1 or 2 people. Customers who have experienced negative service will share that with 8 to10 people.

I have followed (sometimes loosely) the five sentence email rule that may have originally been documented by Guy Kawasaki. I’ve gone so far as to include a reference in the signature block of my personal email.

Now David Silverman at Harvard Business Publishing has outlined ten (mostly) sensible ways to make your emails more readable. Some of his suggestions, like deleting redundancies and making sure you provide context are good reminders. His recommendation that you wait up to a day before sending an email doesn’t seem to have much practical application and while I haven’t counted the number of revisions this piece has gone through, I feel safe in estimating it hasn’t undergone the 30-50 revisions he proposes some emails receive.

Perhaps I’ve missed something.

Seth Godin is setting a trend. He has simple, quirky, back to basics advice in a complicated technological age. Marketers talk about him on a first name basis, Seth (like Cher) - they read his blog posts religiously, post links on Facebook and quote him in conversations.

Though his marketing insights are profound, some of the most helpful information for business people is his “common sense” observations and recommendations on customer service and sales. Here are a few favorites:

“Top Twelve Ways to Grow Your Business in a Down Market”

“The Vice President of No”

“Sell”