Which are you? Are you sure?

A freelancer is someone who gets paid for her work. She charges by the hour or perhaps by the project. Freelancers write, design, consult, advise, do taxes and hang wallpaper. Freelancing is the single easiest way to start a new business.

Entrepreneurs use money (preferably someone else’s money) to build a business bigger than themselves. Entrepreneurs make money when they sleep. Entrepreneurs focus on growth and on scaling the systems that they build. The more, the better.

The goal of a freelancer is to have a steady job with no boss, to do great work, to gradually increase demand so that the hourly wage goes up and the quality of gigs goes up too.

The goal of the entrepreneur is to sell out for a lot of money, or to build a long-term profit machine that is steady, stable and not particularly risky to run.

The trap is simple: Sometime freelancers get entrepreneur envy and start hiring other freelancers to work for them. This doesn’t scale. Managing freelancers is different from being a freelancer. Managing freelancers and saving the best projects for yourself gets you into trouble. The cash flow gets you into trouble. Investors don’t want to invest in you because you can’t sell out if you’re a freelancer at heart.

If you’re an entrepreneur, it is impossible to succeed by using your own labor to fill the gaps. That’s because your labor is finite. It doesn’t scale. That’s because if it’s a job only you can do, you’re not building a system, you’re just hiring yourself (and probably not paying enough either).

The solution is easy. If you’re a freelancer, freelance. Figure out how to do the best work in your field, the best work for the right clients. Don’t fret about turning away work, and don’t fret about occasional down time. You’re a freelance for hire, and you need to focus on your reputation and the flow of business. Find partners if you like but keep the cash flows separate.

If you’re an entrepreneur, don’t hire yourself. Build a business that works, that thrives with or without you. It might not be good for your ego, but it will be good for your bank account.

Whatever you do, don’t mix em up.

If you’re like me, you have a love-hate relationship with the phrase “boost productivity.” You know it’s important. Your business depends on it. But who has time to focus on boosting — let alone doubling — productivity in tough economic times?

Well, the fact is, in our current economic recession, increasing productivity is one of the most important things you can do to save your business from going under.

Boosting productivity will:

• Increase your profit.

• Improve your efficiency.

• Ready your business to get back in the game quickly when the economy opens up again.

Implement the following week-by-week steps, and you’ll find yourself doubling your productivity in six weeks or less.

Six Weeks to Doubled Productivity read more

Have you searched on your company’s name or product on Google, Yahoo! or MSN lately? If not, it’s time to do so. In today’s business world your online reputation is just as crucial to your success as any other marketing strategy that you deploy.

What are we talking about? Online Reputation Management or ORM, is the ongoing act of monitoring a brand or name online, proactively protecting the name via online channels, and skillfully counteracting negative online content from parties unrelated to your company. These words can come from several sources, namely blog postings, consumer alert sites, community web postings, even unique websites that were created for the sole purpose of defaming a name or company. read more

So you want to take the plunge and go global with your product or service. How do you begin?

Let me give you a competitive start: Produce the highest quality product or service at the lowest cost and sell that product in every market on the face of the earth. If you do this, you will successfully globalize your company.

The real reason for exporting is to globalize your company and prosper in the 21st century and beyond. Any product or service can be exported. You just need a track (or a plan, as my colleague Tim Berry would say) to run on and a manageable process.

My track allows you to close your first export deal in your target country and worldwide markets by following five steps. It won’t happen overnight, but by the end of this blog series (if you stay with me), I guarantee you will know how to export. It will be up to you as to whether you actually do it. Each of the steps will be explained. This post covers the trial run phase. Subsequent posts will feature points 2-5:

1. Plan the trial run
2. Prepare the export team and organization
3. Enter the trial market
4. Close the first deal
5. Evaluate the trial run

Plan The Trial Run

In planning the trial run, these are the questions you must ask yourself: read more

This week I’ve been out on the West Coast meeting with various companies, and in nearly every conversation Twitter, the social media site, has come up. No doubt about it — Twitter is one of the hottest social media sites for businesses today.

Invariably, one of the questions I was asked is “what do you write about on Twitter?” So, let me take a shot at answering that question here.

First, you have to remember at all times that Twitter is a “social” media site. One definition of the word social is: “Inclined to seek out or enjoy the company of others; sociable.”

And that guiding principle — of seeking out the company of others and being sociable towards them — should be your umbrella approach. If you are spending most of your time writing about YOU or YOUR OWN BUSINESS — then you’re not being very sociable are you? “Self-centered” does not equal “sociable.” read more

In many countries including the United States, it is not customary to haggle in most shopping situations. But The Wall Street Journal’s “Independent Street” blog suggests that in this economy it might be better for retailers to engage in selective haggling rather than price slashing. The trick is letting the right customers know that you are willing to negotiate in order to win their business. Kelly Spors writes:

As a consumer, I’m afraid of offending a business owner by suggesting they lower a price. So if I don’t like what I see, I generally leave and go somewhere else. But if the sales associate asked me if I’d be willing to buy an item for less, they might just win my business. … You don’t, however, want to haggle with customers happy to pay full price..

Sites like pricegrabber.com and beatmyprice.com serve as haggling surrogates in the online space. With a little training and a keen eye, brick-and-mortar retail establishments can benefit from the same bargain-hunter mentality without resorting to drastic price cuts across the board.

For more on this, read Spors’ full post — Let’s Make A Deal: The Benefits of Haggling In The Bad Economy

I completely understand that some people are either not in a position to save their business or perhaps are doing so well that it’s not worth their time to rescue a business hurt by the economy.  However, I have put so much of my time and money into my projects that I decided I must find a way to “succeed.”

If my “success” is extremely tiny compared to my projections when the economy was strong, so be it. But surviving through the hardest of times would be a huge personal success for me.  I also feel like strategies I learn during these trials may serve me very well in the long run.

“Be Greedy When Everyone Else is Scared”

I am taking advantage of a strategy that stems from this famous quote by Warren Buffet. While he manages a multibillion dollar investment company, and I am practically invisible on the financial scale, the strategy still makes sense to me. read more

During the holidays, we are bombarded by dozens of pleas for charitable giving.  Especially during a down economy, nonprofits and charitable causes are typically suffering from low response because consumers tend to give when they are not preoccupied with how to pay their mortgages.

But what if you are a small business owner?  Whether it is the holidays or yearround, does your small business give to charity?

I think we can assume that most people and small businesses give charitably out of genuine concern and care.  People like to associate themselves with businesses that support meaningful projects.  It’s makes us feel good.  Thus, the marketing benefit is that this attaches a likability factor to your business.  And, yes, consumers are looking for reasons to like you (because they typically don’t like your prices).

Big companies have long employed charitable giving into their strategy of getting customers to know, like and trust them.  McDonald’s has a long history with Ronald McDonald House Charities and Subway is affiliated with the American Heart Association.  As a father of an adopted daughter, I love Wendy’s because of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption (OK, so it’s their Frosty, too).

How will your business share your success to impact your community and the world?  Recognize the importance of rallying your team behind a passion greater than your organization itself.  Differentiate your organization by focusing on selfless acts of community service.

Here are a few of the most common ways to participate philanthropically: read more