[TheVOICE] – Prototypes, Marketing Tips, Women & Outsourcing

A lot is going on in the world of startups, business owners and entrepreneurs. Here are some great articles you should read from the week of December 16, 2012.

CEO Blog Nation

1. 4 Things You Should Know To Boost Your Business (Rescue a CEO) – With very tough competition nowadays among online businesses, it follows that the demand for website development Melbourne is expected to increase.  A business that is internet based is dynamic and requires a lot of attention as well as patience to eventually get the desired results.
2. Monday Morning Motivation: Fight for What You Want (Hearpreneur) – To start this week off well, here is some motivation to help small business owners and entrepreneurs.
3. Entrepreneur Bookshelf: Lessons from the Library (Teach a CEO) – You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken nuggets from our library and provide them for entrepreneurs and business owners.
4. Business Helps Men Look Their Best On A Budget (Hearpreneur) – Jake Kuczeruk has found a solid footing in a unique business field. As Chief Marketing Officer for Tie Society, offers men a Netflix-style rental service for neckties and menswear accessories. As the largest and number one business in the field, the tie rental service continues full steam ahead. With the emergence of online rental services, the niche of menswear had an opening to be filled.
5. Home for the Holidays (and the Foreseeable Future): Seven Reasons Why Today’s Boomerang Kids Can’t Hack It in Business – I received this post in my inbox. Of course I disagree with the viewpoint, but it’s always good to hear different thoughts. I do believe entrepreneurship isn’t something that is taught, but the importance of it is starting to become more apparent.
6. Proudest Business Accomplishments [ANSWERS]: For every entrepreneur and business leader there is a moment when things just go right. Whether it’s getting their business off the ground or being awarded a prize for your hard work, accomplishments make all the effort and time worth it. The proudest moments may be something as simple as finding the ideal kind of paper to print your documents on or filling the first customer order.

Across the Web

1. The 20 Best iOS And Android Apps Of 2012 (TechCrunch) – Nearly six years after the debut of the iPhone, mobile applications are beginning to mature. The best mobile apps of 2012 – with a few notable exceptions – are more about refined practicality rather than anything revolutionary.
2. Helping Women Business Owners Access Capital (Small Business Trends) – Women-owned businesses are one of the fastest growing segments of the small business community. Today, about 30% of small businesses are owned by women, compared to about 5% in 1970. This is good news. However, women business owners still face several challenges when it comes to growing their businesses and accessing capital.
3. 5 Practical Ways to Market Your Startup on a Budget (Under30CEO) – While marketing is important, it doesn’t have to be very expensive.  In fact, you can market your startup on a relatively small budget if you don’t have a big budget and this article shares 5 practical ways you can do that.
4. Zach Cutler: 5 Useful Tips to Keep Your Startup From Getting Bogged Down (Huffington Post) – Running a business involves putting out a great product or service — but many products and services may not succeed due to a lack of infrastructure, planning and attention paid to the minutiae of day-to-day operations.
5. Mary Ellen Biery: What Worries Businesses Most About the “Fiscal Cliff” (Huffington Post) – Accounting and business advisory professionals say continued uncertainty is their clients' biggest concern when it comes to the so-called fiscal cliff, according to a recent survey by Sageworks Inc., a financial information company.
6. Tech Trend: Avoid Spending on Websites that Will Be Obsolete Later this Year (Step-by-Step Marketing) – I would like to help prevent you from spending money on websites that will not function correctly on updated web browsers that will soon be released by Google, Apple Safari, Microsoft, and other companies for use on mobile phones.
7. Blog Site Down! What To Do When Your Site Crashes (SmartSMMBiz) – Having your blog site down is one of the most nerve wracking things that can happen to a blogger. But in my case, all it took was a few steps to get back in business
8. How to Succeed in Marketing in 2013 (“I” of the Consumer) – Success in business often starts with a solid offering. Your product or service needs to fill a need, and needs to fill that need better, or cheaper, or simpler than your competitors. But you aren’t going anywhere if your marketing doesn’t match your offering.
9. Figuring Out The Best Time To Deploy New Features (Adam McFarland's Blog) – In my last post I wrote about all of the small features that we’ve been rapidly releasing lately for Detailed Image. One of the challenges I always have is figuring out when to deploy a new feature to the live website. I used to just deploy as soon as the work was done. The problem was, this would usually be towards the end of a long hard day, and if anything went wrong I’d be left working in a sub-optimal state to fix things. I ruined many a nights by doing this. Once I get into 10+ hours of serious programming, I get to the point where I need a day to recover.
10. Managing an Entrepreneur (Women on Business) – There is an inherent fear for people that aren’t entrepreneurs. They believe that hiring an entrepreneur will somehow infect the rest of the staff and cause them to defect.  While this may be true to a degree, there is so much more your company can gain from having an entrepreneur in its presence. Here are my go to lessons learned.
11. 6 Approaches to Maximizing Good Business Habits (Startup Professional Musings) – Most of the entrepreneurs I know realize they have some bad habits, like maybe procrastination or not listening well, so they focus on dropping these. New studies indicate that a more productive approach would be adopting new good habits and behaviors that clearly move your business forward, like good time management and implementing customer recommendations.
12. Crowdfunding? Make Sure You Have the Crowd First (Under30 CEO) – More and more entrepreneurs are using crowdfunding to raise dollars and awareness for their startup ideas, yet many people overlook a key principle: before you can get the funding, you have to have the crowd.
13. Tim Ferriss on Manufacturing and Prototyping a Product (Shopify Blog) – Tim Ferriss is no stranger to manufacturing and prototyping products. Before he started writing books, Ferriss built companies. One of his first ventures, BrainQUICKEN, took two weeks and $5,000 to launch. This sports nutrition ecommerce store quickly grew to $40,000 a month business. We asked Ferriss for his best advice on how to prototype and manufacture a product. Here's what he had to say.
14. How To Explain What You Do (Mike Michalowicz) – There is a danger in simply sharing a one or two word title of what you do. The reason is your customer may already have defined what that means in their head, and it may be totally different than what you really do.
15. The Biggest Trends in Business for 2013 (The Young Entrepreneur) – Remember when virtual reality was all the rage? What about the daily-deal explosion? We love a good story and a quick cash infusion, but when it comes down to it, we’re far bigger fans of businesses built on a solid…
16. How to Hire Effectively in Your Small Business (Succeed as Your Own Boss) – When is it the right time to bring on a part time or full time person in your business? Are you ready to move past happen stance or inconsistent support? Have you considered what to consider as you interview each candidate?
17. A Wave of Start-Ups Helps Small Companies Outsource Their Tasks (NY Times) – Small-business owners are like Swiss Army knives: expected to handle dozens of specialized tasks without falling apart. But even the sharpest entrepreneurs have it tough this time of year — inevitably, some will outsource part of their workload to other enterprising people.
18. 5 Last Minute Holiday Marketing Tips (Fox Small Business) – Key marketing tips that retailers can use this holiday season.
19. 5 Steps to a Stress-Free Website Redesign (Entrepreneur) – Here are five basic steps to a clean, simple and stress-free website redesign.
20. 5 Ways to Push Your Company Past the Startup Phase (Open Forum) – Any entrepreneur who has launched a company will tell you that running a startup is stressful, time-consuming and full of high risk. Before a company is truly able to transition into the growth stage of its business, it must pass through many ups and downs. But while roughly 80 percent of startups fail in the first five years, there are a number of things that entrepreneurs can do internally, to help push their company past startup and into phase two. Here are the most important things to keep in mind.
21. How small business owners can avoid a holiday financing hangover (On Small Business) – t’s not all work for small business owners during the holiday season. Sure, things might be awfully busy this time of the year, especially if you run a retail company, but you’re going to be spending some time on the other side of the register as well.