A Note to Readers

By JOSEPH BURGESS

Arthur S. Brisbane's tenure as public editor will end on Aug. 31. His final column appeared in print on Aug 26.

Margaret Sullivan's first day in the office as public editor will be Sept. 4. She hopes to begin blogging, posting on Twitter and responding to readers soon after her arrival. Her first column will appear in the Sunday Review later in September.

You can follow her on Twitter at @sulliview.

This blog will be undergoing layout changes over the coming weeks to incorporate new features. Stay tuned.

Joseph Burgess is the assistant to the public editor.

Pitching an Organic Cigarette for Hipsters

By CAROL ROTH

In my last post, I reviewed a company focused on helping students find their passions. This week, I review a pitch for a product that may seem a bit contradictory in nature - an organic cigarette.

You can view the original video pitch and my review of the pitch below.

Here's the pitch:

And here's my review:

Hestia Tobacco positions itself as the first truly independent organic cigarette company, and there are a number of strong elements to the pitch. It starts very clearly with David Sley introducing himself, the company and a three-pronged investment thesis. What he has created is an organic cigarette company, aimed at the young, socially conscious market that still engages in smoking.

Mr. Sley seems to know precisely who his customer is: hipsters who shop at “farmers markets and vinyl record stores.” I have a clear picture of who that consumer is - but the size of the market seems a little fuzzy. He claims there are 20 million smokers between the ages of 18 and 35, but how many of those smokers fit the hipster mold?

Also, he cites 40 million smokers who consume 15 billion packs of cigarettes in the United States each year, but that isn't relevant if half of those individuals are not part of his target market. Plus, there is an inherent question as to why people who are socially conscious would pollute the atmosphere and their own bodies with smoke - other than because they share the often hypocritical nature of most human beings. The market-size validation could have been bolstered by citing the sales and growth rate of the main organic cigarette competitor in the market, American Spirit - more on that brand later.

Mr. Sley also overcame a big hurdle by noting one objection right upfront. He cited rising cigarette taxes as an explanation for positioning Hestia Tobacco as a premium brand. He argued that with rising taxes, a pre mium pricing strategy becomes less of a barrier, and I do agree with that. But the math on what the strategy will net isn't entirely clear. He mentioned profits of $25 a carton, but that was the only income- statement-related number in the pitch.

Competition is often a red flag in a pitch, and it was here - although not as much as I expected. Mr. Sley says there is only one other major marketer of organic cigarettes: Natural American Spirit, a subsidiary of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, one of the largest tobacco companies and the maker of Camel, Salem and many other major brands. As Mr. Sley correctly points out, this gives American Spirit less credibility as a truly independent brand, which is probably important to the target customer. On the other hand, it also gives the brand tremendous resources, making it an 800-pound gorilla of a competitor. Additionally, when there aren't a lot of competitors in a market, there is often a reason; sometimes there just isn't a big enoug h opportunity or the barriers to entry are too high.

Distribution is another issue. Assuming that organic cigarettes do appeal to independent thinkers, how is Hestia going to reach them? I would imagine that standard distribution (like the drug, mass and grocery channels) would be very difficult for a small brand to crack. And I can't really see this product being sold at Whole Foods.

I also have some concerns about the production of the pitch. The narrative voice-over of the gentleman smoking landed somewhere between pretentious and creepy for me. Investors want to engage with the entrepreneur, and this did not give a warm and fuzzy first impression. I suggest erring on the side of sounding genuine rather than hip.

Finally, when you are pitching, it's critical to know your audience. With a polarizing product like tobacco, you want to ensure upfront that your investor is amenable to the offering. I personally am an antismoking advocate, so I am the last per son who would invest in this company (but I tried to remain objective from a business standpoint in this review).

Given my feelings about smoking, I would not take a meeting on this pitch, but I do think it presented some compelling information as a business opportunity. If I did not have a moral issue with the product, I might well have been interested in taking a further look.

What do you think?

Carol Roth is a business strategist who has helped clients raise more than $1 billion in capital. You can follow her on Twitter.

Pre-Publication Disclosure of Dowd Column: A Breach of Two Boundaries

By ARTHUR S. BRISBANE

My final column as public editor was published in print on Sunday. However, I remain on duty through Friday and want to offer my take on the controversy this week over the pre-publication disclosure of a Maureen Dowd column. I see this as a problem of boundaries â€" the failure to maintain them.

The facts, in brief: a year ago Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd asked Mark Mazzetti, a Washington-based national security reporter for The Times, to help her fact-check one item in a column she was preparing for publication in print on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2011.

Mr. Mazzetti did this for her but then emailed the entire column text to Marie E. Harf, then a public affairs official at the C.I.A., writing: “this didn't come from me… and please delete after you read. See, nothing to worry about.”

The e-mail came to light through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group. The Mazzetti e-m ail was just a piece of a larger picture Judicial Watch was interested in filling in â€" which centered on the claim that the Obama administration has tried to exploit the killing of Osama Bin Laden for political gain.

The Dowd column reported that filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal were accorded special national security access to assist them in the making of a film about the Bin Laden operation. Ms. Dowd's column said:

“The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama's growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president's cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 - perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

“The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

“It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president's image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently - to the surprise of some military officers - at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.”

It was the nugget in the previous paragraph â€" concerning Mr. Boal's appearance at the C.I.A. ceremony â€" that Mr. Mazzetti was asked to fact-check.

However, it is clear that Mr. Mazzetti went beyond fact-checking a single item when he passed the column in its entirety to Ms. Harf. His message â€" “see, nothing to worry about” â€" seems to suggest that he thought the full text would allay concerns about what Ms. Dowd was planning to say.

The Times's public statement on the matter from spokeswoman Eileen Murphy was minimal:

“Last August, Maureen Dowd asked Mark Mazzetti to help check a fact for her column. In the course of doing so, he sent the entire column to a C.I.A. spokeswoman shortly before her deadline. He did this without the knowledge of Ms. Dowd. This action was a mistake that is not consistent with New York Times standards.”

I asked Jill Abramson, the executive editor, whether Mr. Mazzetti was doing a source a favor by providing the text of the column and she replied, “I can't provide further detail on why the entire column was sent. I can assure you that Mark was not doing the C.I.A. a favor. He is an experienced, terrific reporter. Your suggestion is flat wrong.”

Mr. Mazzetti was also circumspect, saying: “I did make a bunch of calls and was doing this on deadline. As part of the process, I also did send the column. It was definitely a mistake to do. I h ave never done it before and I will never do it again.”

I have searched The Times's body of ethics-related guidelines and can't find anything that directly addresses circumstances like this. The formal ethics policy has a statement saying that staff members “may not seek any advantage for themselves or others by acting on or disclosing information acquired in their work but not yet available to readers.”

Times editors, however, tell me they interpret that section to refer to financial or other material gain or advantage. I am advised further that The Times does not have a formal policy on sharing an entire article pre-publication for the purposes of fact-checking.

Whatever Mr. Mazzetti's motivation, it is a clear boundary violation to disclose a potentially sensitive article pre-publication under such circumstances. This goes well beyond the normal give-and-take that characterizes the handling of sources and suggests the absence of an arm's-length rel ationship between a reporter and those he is dealing with.

Mr. Mazzetti told me: “I absolutely believe we should have an arm's-length with sources and my only priority in this case was to help a colleague and help The Times.”

The second boundary violation relates to the oft-cited wall separating news from editorial. After all, in this case a news-side person was fact-checking for a colleague working on the opinion side. The wall is extremely important to The Times because it insulates the news side, which embraces a standard of neutrality in news coverage, from the opinion side, which is free to take sides.

Mr. Mazzetti argued that this simply a case of helping a colleague: “There absolutely should be strong separation but I think in the case of checking facts and helping colleagues, I don't see there is any breach. She is not assigning me stories, I am not assigning her columns. It is colleagues helping each other.”

The problem, I think, is t hat many will not see it that way. The facts and appearances of this case strongly suggest that The Times should redouble its efforts to strengthen the boundaries that are so essential to cultivating reader trust.

Finding Effective Advertising in Surprising Places

By MP MUELLER

Branded

An insider's guide to small-business marketing.

Recently, I heard that riff of music that I always hear when confronted with a piece of fine advertising. At the time, oddly enough, I was paused at an intersection in Austin, Tex., staring at the back end of a delivery truck for a local hardware store, Zinger Hardware.

On the truck's back door was the following message (I took a quick shot with my phone camera): “Dear Potential Carjacker, This is NOT a Zinger delivery truck. Instead of beautiful Zinger furniture, all you'll find inside are priceless diamonds and bags of money. We're sorry for the inconvenience and wish you well in your search for Zinger merchandise.” A sincere sign off was followed by the store's tagline: Hardware, Furniture and Everything in Between.

This rear end real estate could have just offered the company's logo and location info. Or it could have just had “wash me” sketched into its road grime. But the company took the road less traveled and entertained those in its wake, creating an impression of a retailer that has a sense of fun and that might have something unexpected in store for its customers.

There are companies that will put your ads on trucks and drive them around. Depending on the city and number of people who can be expected to see your ad, the costs can range from $400 to $4,500 a month. You can also put your message on those semis that carry billboards on flatbeds. They can cost $500 to $1,200 per day. But it really makes sense if you already have a truck driving around. Undervaluing your truck's branding potential is like hanging the Mona Lisa in a double wide.

While wrapping your delivery truck requires an investment, Michael Ferweda, founder and chief executive of Zinger, says it's wort h it. “People are always tooting their horns as you go by, and you can see in your rear-view mirror people taking pictures with their camera phones,” he said. Ahem.

It costs about $5,000 to wrap a 14-foot, cab-forward box truck, but Mr. Ferweda said the return on investment has ranked high, right after print advertising, which requires a much larger investment. “We do a lot of deliveries, and our truck is always out,” he said. “We knew we needed to get people's attention, and it didn't necessarily need to be hardware related. It needed to stand the test of time and get your attention.”

So he enlisted the help of a local freelancer to write some copy. Together, they gave lots of thought to how much and what kinds of copy belonged on each side of the truck. “When you are doing branding on a truck, you have such a short instance to grab viewers,” Mr. Ferweda said. “If someone is standing on the side of the street, think about what the pedestrian wi ll see. Then, on the back, you know you will have cars behind you.” That translates into an opportunity for longer copy.

But the key is to entertain. Nobody is going to remember your copy - or take photos of it - if a brand is just chest-thumping. Here's another truck ad you might enjoy.

MP Mueller is the founder of Door Number 3, a boutique advertising agency in Austin, Tex. Follow Door Number 3 on Facebook.

Starting Over After a Cyberattack Shuts Down the Business

By DARREN DAHL

Last week we wrote about the situation faced by Peter Justen, chief executive of MyBizHomepage, after the company's former chief technology officer set in motion a series of crippling cyberattacks against the company's Web site.

Once valued by its investors at $100 million, MyBizHomepage was founded in 2006 by Mr. Justen as a way to help small-business owners access financial metrics that can help them run their companies. But then, apparently angered by Mr. Justen's decision not to sell the company, the chief technology officer tried to start a competing company. When Mr. Justen found out, he fired the officer along with two co-conspirators. And that's when the cyberattacks began. They rendered the site all but useless, and Mr. Justen struggled with what to do next.

In February 2009, Mr. Justen and his board concluded that they would have to take the site offline, which would effectively cl ose the business and saddle board members like Joe Silbaugh, who had invested more than $1 million, with a devastating loss. “We essentially had no choice because we no longer had a product,” Mr. Justen said. “We also decided to be up front about the decision and explain what happened along with an apology. When bad things happen you can hide under the rug and hope it goes away or you can go public with it and take the teeth out of the tiger. Some people were understanding while others were not.”

The decision did not please the company's vendors, some of whom quickly filed suit over unpaid bills. But many of the company's channel partners, who helped distribute the product, decided to stay on. “They told me they liked our product, and they were going to stick with us,” Mr. Justen said. “In tough times, you really get to see who your friends really are.”

Ignoring advice from his lawyers, Mr. Justen, who also had invested heavily in the company, dec ided not to declare corporate bankruptcy because he did not want to give anyone the opportunity to purchase the company's intellectual property. He also turned down multiple offers to leave the company and take salaried employment. Rather, he asked his original investors to support him in rebuilding the company from scratch. “We held a shareholder meeting and I told them I would kill myself in trying to restore the company to what it should have been,” said Mr. Justen, who also liquidated his 401(k) and his children's college funds and invested the money in the company. “Fortunately, they gave me that chance.”

Mr. Justen spent the next two years rebuilding the company, which is now called Five Plus. It features an online subscription software package that synchronizes with a company's QuickBooks software and presents an easy-to-digest version of critical financial figures such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, cost of goods sold and cash on hand. The ne w software also embraces social media technology, enabling users to connect with each other and to compare their financial results with those of their industry peers.

While the new business is up and running, Mr. Justen said he and the business remain under cyberattack. In one instance, he was forced to fend off a denial-of-service attack against the new site that attempted to redirect his customers to a site where fraud claims against Mr. Justen and the company's investors (including Mr. Justen's 87-year-old mother and deceased father) had been posted. Mr. Justen said he continues to work with the United States Secret Service in attempting to track down the former chief technology officer.

After this case study was published last week, the unnamed former employee contacted The New York Times and identified himself as James Bird. He denied that he had been on the lam and offered an address in Santa Monica, Calif., where he said he is living. While asserting that Mr. Justen owes him $25,000, Mr. Bird acknowledged that he had in fact hacked the MyBizHomepage site.

Mr. Justen discussed the experience - and responded to reader comments - in a brief interview that has been condensed and edited.

You have said that you discovered after the attacks that Mr. Bird had been living off the grid - no driver's license, not paying taxes. Didn't you have to have his Social Security number to pay him?

Yes, we paid him as a contractor and did have a Social Security number for him. But what are you going to do with it? He doesn't use it for anything we could track him with. He doesn't have credit cards or bank accounts. He paid cash for everything, including his car.

Why didn't you run a background check on him before hiring?

I had known him for more than 15 years. I was like a mentor to him. He came over to our house for dinner six times a month and played with my kids. He was a very talented software engineer and I high ly trusted him.

Why was he upset after the sale of the company didn't go through? What was in it for him?

He had stock options in the company that would vest over different triggers or events, like a sale. He was in line to make a substantial amount of money.

Were you surprised that two of your senior officers went along with Mr. Bird?

Yes, I was quite surprised. One of them had worked for me for three years as a trusted financial adviser. I think they just got caught up in the drama of it all. I terminated all three individuals on the same day.

Do you think Mr. Bird had help in sabotaging the company?

Yes, I think all three of them worked together. Jim did the technical stuff and the other guys did the rest. They went to our clients and told them they were starting a new company and that Peter's company had failed. They would even pull up the site, which Jim would then crash, as proof.

What lessons do you draw from this experi ence?

I realize I made many mistakes and I have learned a number of things from this experience. Inspect what you expect and trust but verify come to mind. A big lesson I learned was to separate business from personal. I let my personal emotions cloud my better business judgment.

What do you say to the readers who asked why you didn't conduct a security audit on the system?

When you're a start-up, you have to make some tough calls about where to spend your money. You throw nickels around like they're manhole covers. At the time, there didn't seem to be any reason for us to spend $70,000 to verify something that didn't seem to be a risk. Jim was a cyber security expert. Our software was rock solid against attacks from the outside. I just never expected someone I trusted so much and had known for so long to do what he did from the inside. That's why with our new system, no one else has all the keys to the kingdom and we keep multiple copies of our backu p code in different locations. We've taken as much precaution as is humanly possible to make sure this doesn't happen again.

What did you do to protect your customers once you knew the system had been hacked?

The customer information was never a target. As part of our design, we never collected any personal data on our customers like bank account information. That was part of our design. All we collected was data like company revenues and receivables. But it wasn't connected to any personally identifiable information.

Were you surprised by the reactions of readers?

I'll admit that I thought some of the comments must have come from people who have never stepped foot in the arena and tried to start a company - people who never shed blood, sweat and tears trying to build something. But when you hear from customers who tell you that what you built helped save their company, that's what makes it all worthwhile.

Following Up on a Restaurant\'s Unconventional Strategy

By IAN MOUNT

A year ago, we told you about a dilemma facing Red Iguana, a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Salt Lake City. Its owners, Lucy Cardenas and Bill Coker, were facing a two-pronged problem with their first location. First, a happy problem: their restaurant had gotten so popular after appearing on the Food Network's “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” that customers regularly had to wait an hour to be seated. At the same time, the city was about to build a light rail line down the middle of the restaurant's street, a project that had the potential to force the business to close for several weeks.

To ease the customer wait and protect themselves from downtime, there was little doubt that Red Iguana's owners needed a second location. But the way they decided to expand was somewhat surprising. Ms. Cardenas and Mr. Coker decided to open a second location with the same name and menu just two blocks from their first, a plan that went agai nst conventional wisdom and was rejected by most of the experts we consulted at the time of our original article.

But the strategy quickly found success. During its first full year, 2010, the new restaurant had revenue of $2.1 million. Still, that was only a little more than half of the original restaurant's annual take of $3.9 million, which itself was down from $4.2 million in 2009. So, would the new location be able to build on its early success (without cannibalizing the original business)? And what would happen when the construction project shut down the first location?

We recently checked in with Mr. Coker, and the new location seems to have built on its strong start. The original location is on track to bring in $4.2 million during 2012, he said, which would match its income from the height of its popularity in 2009 (when it was the only restaurant). And the new location should pull in about $3.2 million, he said.

“Wha t we've seen is that there are a substantial number of our clientele who prefer location No. 2 to No. 1 because when the patio is open, there are more seats, and we have a counter and indoor waiting area and valet parking in the evenings,” Mr. Coker said. “It's more spacious and quieter than the original, and some people prefer that atmosphere. Others prefer the original. It's actually turned out to be to our advantage that it's not a cookie-cutter of the original; we're able to accommodate two different types of clients. Also in terms of operational ease, it's a tremendous advantage to our kitchen managers to be able to stabilize food flow by running two blocks to the other restaurant.”

Almost as important, the second location saved the company from what could have been major economic damage caused by construction of the rail line. As a member of a community board advising the city on the construction, Mr. Coker negotiated a deal whereby the street in front of t he original Red Iguana would be rebuilt last, so that the construction company could concentrate all of its efforts on the site - thereby turning a three-to-five week job into a weeklong project.

And then, to best use the week during which the original restaurant would be closed, Ms. Cardenas and Mr. Coker  - after employing announcement cards, banners, Facebook and Twitter to point their customers to the new restaurant - laid out a seven-day plan to renovate the original location using restaurant workers as labor.

At 9 p.m. on July 8, when the original location turned on its “closed” sign, the city began tearing up the street, and Red Iguana's staff started dismantling their restaurant. Directed by paid trade contractors, a third of the staff from the original location (including a professional painter and plumber) took part in a $250,000 renovation. Working 24 hours a day, alternating crews of from 30 to 50 people moved the restaurant's furnishings outside into a circus tent set up for the occasion; laid an epoxy floor; installed $25,000 of stainless steel equipment in the kitchen; and repaved the parking lot.

“Normally I don't think a restaurant could pull off a $250,000 renovation in seven days, but that's the kind of experience I have from the entertainment business, coordinating multiple crews simultaneously,” said Mr. Coker, who in the early 1980s had worked as an assistant director and production manager on a series of Burt Reynolds buddy comedies, including “The Cannonball Run.”

At the new restaurant, the owners added 28 outdoor seats, increased staff with another third of the employees from the first location (the final third took vacation), and began offering valet parking at lunch and dinner every day.

And on Monday July 16, one week after it closed, the original location reopened. According to Mr. Coker, even without the seven days of income, the first location took in $282,000 in July, ba rely $300 less than in July 2011.

A Start-Up Tries to Prepare Students to Work in Start-Ups

By JESSICA BRUDER

Start

The adventure of new ventures.

For new graduates, shifting from college to a full-time job can deliver a jolt of culture shock. That's doubly true for those who join start-ups, where teams are small and newcomers are often expected to acclimate quickly, finding their way without much formal training.

Enter Boston Startup School. Designed as a “finishing school” for young people seeking jobs in the city's tech start-up scene, the program's inaugural six-week session graduated 72 students this month. It was directed by Aaron O'Hearn, who also heads up special projects at TechStars Boston, where the idea for the program grew out of the awareness that most start-ups have little time for human resources, recruiting and professional development. “We wanted to graduate people who can operate with ambiguity, wh o can understand where they are and what needs to get done,” Mr. O'Hearn said.

The first session offered four tracks of study â€" marketing, software development, product design, and sales and business development â€" housed at the Harvard Innovation Lab and taught by 50 volunteer instructors. Though Boston Startup School is a for-profit entity, the program was tuition-free, with operating costs underwritten by “hiring partners” â€" Boston-area companies like Brightcove and Trip Advisor, which received early access to the students â€" along with sponsors that included Microsoft and Silicon Valley Bank.

“For me it's about how you give them the tools to be successful,” said Mark Chang, an associate professor at Olin College who is currently on leave and serving as the director of product at edX, a non-profit online educational venture from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It's like a modern reinvention of trade school.”

Mr. Chang helped develop the curriculum for Boston Startup School, a process that involved tapping dozens of start-up leaders to learn what skills young hires weren't getting in college but needed in the workplace. “We're not here to create rock stars, unicorns, superheroes or ninjas, whatever the buzzword is right now,” he added. “We've only got six weeks. We're here to get them a little bit closer.”

So how did things work out?

Despite the short time frame, this summer's crop of students managed to dance around whiteboards for a homemade music video and create Shepard Fairey-inspired posters honoring the program's organizers. More to the point, Mr. O'Hearn said that more than half of the students have been hired since the program concluded on Aug. 1 with the students pitching their skills in front of representatives from nearly 100 young businesses. Boston Startup School began accepting applications for a second ses sion on Aug. 27. The new class is scheduled to arrive Nov. 5.

Angus Davis, chief executive of Swipely, a customer loyalty and analytics start-up, said he was impressed with the program's graduates and has already hired one for his engineering group. “The toughest thing is finding talented people as we seek to grow our team,” he added. “We've got a few others in the pipeline. We'll see how it all pans out.”

A Boston Startup School alumna, Nicki Haylon, 22, said she had planned a career in book publishing after graduating from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. Now she's in late-stage interviews for marketing jobs at several Boston start-ups. The six-week program, she said, “blew my mind from the first day” and helped her realize that “it wasn't so much the publishing industry I liked, so much as being with a tight-knit group of people who are working passionately to create something.” This month she accepted a job with Libboo, a Boston star t-up whose online platform aims to connect authors and readers.

Have you hired fresh college graduates? What additional skills do you wish they had had? Would a program like Boston Startup School's be useful to you?

You can follow Jessica Bruder on Twitter.

This Week in Small Business: Trash Talk

By GENE MARKS

Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

What's affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: Still Waiting for the Fed

The Federal Reserve discusses taking action. Dylan Matthews thinks it will, but Tim Duy believes the chances of another round of quantitative easing are diminishing. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts a contraction in 2013, and Neal Lipschutz writes that “even if the ‘fiscal cliff' gets resolved, our outlook is still anemic.” However, small-business bankruptcies continue to drop, and Jeff Miller says we are in the early stages of a long-cycle recovery.

The Economy: Trash Talk

A National Federation of Independent Business study lists the top five concerns of small-business owners. Corporate earnings point to further g loom, but the Chicago region shows increased economic (PDF) activity. Import traffic in July was the best in two years, but sea container counts show the economy still struggling. Low demand is keeping unemployment up, and weekly jobless claims rise unexpectedly. Sales of new residential homes (PDF) also rise, and the housing recovery appears to inch forward. Growth in the chemical industry is expected to remain slow through the end of the year. Carbon emissions drop, and Brad Plumer explains what trash tells us about the economy.

Cash Flow: Lending Problems

Capital One says small-business finances improved in the last quarter, but an Irish-American pub owner is one of many entrepreneurs who have faced challenges securing a loan. Minorities have also struggled to get small-business recovery loans. Sian Phillips offers some tips for saving money at your office and your business.

Your People: Open-Plan Offices Create Stress

The end of a strike at Caterpillar is a blow to the labor movement. Two researchers consider how lighting improvements have affected productivity. Employees feel more stressed and less productive when they work in open-plan offices. Principal Financial Group says the best companies increase their focus on keeping employees well. Independent young workers prefer to work at small businesses. Emily Suess explains how to fire an employee. Southwest Airlines asks its employees for help. Verizon blacks out vacations near the expected iPhone introduction. This tiny basketball player will make your jaw drop.

Management: Declining With Age

Henry Rollins offers three rules for success as an artist and an entrepreneur. Kevin Purdy explains what successful entrepreneurs do with the first hour of their days. Why pay attention to baby boomers? Because half of adults age 65 or older are online. Carol Roth explains what a 76-year-old can teach you about social networking, and t hese old people share their lifetime advice. Entrepreneurial confidence may decline with age, but Jerry Seinfeld and Alec Baldwin haven't lost their touch. The Tootsie Roll empire's secrets are revealed. Scott Anthony explains how to turn customer intelligence into innovation. Cleve W. Stevens says profit should not be the sole goal of your business. Here are a few easy ways to monitor your competition. TED names its 20 most popular talks.

Sales and Marketing: Sugarpova

Jan Van der Linden and Naveen Jain urge you to bring more science to the art of sales: “Selling based on facts and insights is a critical skill and will become dramatically more important.” Jill Konrath believes that the “the Dreaded D-Zone” is the root cause of most sales failures. Seth Godin offers some tattoo thinking. Simon Jackobson explains how your small business can use customer-relation management to increase sales. Maria Sharapova, the tennis player, names her new candy line “S ugarpova.” Here are five ways that getting back to school can get you back to business. These are the five top Google analytics reports for social media marketers. Allison wants you to keep your “snark” positive. Tamara Weintraub shares six tips to make your display advertising work, including: “Optimize your landing page. Your landing page should not only contain a similar design aesthetic, but it should also contain the same value proposition and feature any offers mentioned on your display ad.”

Red Tape Update: Costs and Benefits

The Postal Service versus Amtrak: which is more wasteful? A survey finds most small-business (PDF) respondents want the Affordable Care Act repealed. Edward Aldean says government regulations have both costs and benefits: “The burden of federal regulation has grown substantially over the past three decades, with real costs to U.S.-based manufacturing, and continues to grow. But the most costly regulations are those d esigned to improve air quality, reduce energy consumption and ensure safe working conditions - goals the public generally favors.” This great graph shows marginal tax rates through history.

Around the Country: A Shortage of Farm Labor

Deloitte is introducing an initiative to demonstrate how inner-city small businesses can position themselves to compete. The Export-Import Bank plans to open an office in Seattle for small-business exporters. California's farm labor shortage is the “worst it's been, ever.” A San Francisco grilled cheese purveyor becomes one of a dozen small businesses from across the country to win the Mission: Small Business competition. Small-business owners are still scrimping on travel, and Steve Strauss offers great advice on getting around. A few small-business owners teach Senator Scott P. Brown about beauty.

Around the World: India Gets Down

In Africa, small businesses are learning lessons from big companies. The Panama Ca nal's growth prompts American ports to expand. India's consumer price index is down to only 9.86 percent! Maelle Gavet says Russia is an amazing place to be an entrepreneur. China's manufacturing falls to a nine-month low but assumes a growing role in American infrastructure. Further aid for Greece is debated.

Technology: Microsoft Responds to Apple

While Apple's market cap reaches an all-time record, Microsoft updates its logo. Apple also wins a $1 billion jury award from Samsung. The growth of the Internet over the past 10 years is staggering. And Janko Roettgers shares five things he's learned from 20 years of e-mail, including: “Sure, I also use all of those other ways of communication. But I grew up with e-mail, and it will always be what I'm gonna check first thing in the morning.” A new hover vehicle is unveiled. A Google contractor talks about the dark side of the Internet. Hewlett-Packard posts a record quarterly loss and loses 4,000 employees. Broth er International introduces a new series of color inkjet printers for small businesses. Amazon introduces a low-cost data storage service. This innovator's camera is at the leading edge of computational photography. PayPal joins with Discover to boost the momentum of mobile payments.

Tweets of the Week

@garyvee: I have no interest in making the most money in the world. I have an interest in having the most people at my funeral.

@PFripp: Shameless self-promotion is not only desirable, it's essential. Advertise yourself!

@ValaAfshar: Managers who are first interested, second interesting, will be successful with social media.

The Week's Bests

Steve Cooper says that one of the eight ways fantasy football can boost your business acumen is by teaching you not to draft Raiders: “Why? Because I really, really don't like the franchise. What this means in the business world is, don't go into business with a company or person that you don't like.†

Anthony K. Tjan says that lack of guts may be the most common barrier to entrepreneurial success: “Guts are about having the courage to initiate, endure and evolve around an idea. This trait can be absolutely influenced, amplified or acquired over time - and building up guts may thus be the most important way in which entrepreneurs can be developed.”

This Week's Question: How many people are you expecting at your funeral?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.

Square Offers Plan for Small Businesses

Square, the mobile payments company, is offering a deal that may be advantageous to small businesses processing more than $10,000 in transactions a month.

Can This Company Recover From a Cyberattack?

By DARREN DAHL

A case study we've just published explains the challenges faced by Peter Justen, chief executive of MyBizHomepage, a Middleburg, Va., provider of business accounting software. The business was shut down by a wave of cyber attacks that apparently came from a disgruntled former employee.

Mr. Justen founded the company in 2006 to give small-business owners an easy way to view their financials and isolate important metrics. A serial entrepreneur, Mr. Justen raised several million dollars from investors to start the company, which its investors valued at $100 million at its peak in 2008. At about that time, Mr. Justen and his board, seeing tremendous growth opportunity for the business, especially in international markets, turned down an offer to buy the company.

Mr. Justen believes the decision not to sell rankled the company's chief technology officer, who decided to try to form a competing sof tware company. Upon learning of his technology officer's action, Mr. Justen says he fired him. A series of cyber attacks against the MyBizHomepage Web site followed and essentially shut the company down. You can read the case study to learn the details.

We asked a business owner and several experts in the realm of digital law and security what they thought Mr. Justen should do to save his company. Please tell us what you think in the comments section below, and next week, we'll follow up with another blog post that will explain what Mr. Justen decided to do.

Norm Brodsky, a serial entrepreneur and columnist for Inc. magazine in New York City: “Mr. Justen should focus on restructuring or starting a new company using his intellectual property. Bankruptcy won't help. His only asset is his software, which they will just auction off and sell to the highest bidder. He should also be honest about how he played a role in what went wrong. Why didn't he run a background check on his C.T.O.? And why did he fire him without first putting a plan in place to protect the software? He can't afford to make those mistakes again. I always say you should trust everyone but also keep your eyes open.”

Mark Davis, senior director at the White House Writers Group, a consulting company in Washington, and the co-author of “Digital Assassination,” a book on cyber-terrorism: “Mr. Justen has no choice but to go public with an apology and an explanation. He should put up a YouTube video explaining what happened and what action steps they are taking to rectify the situation and make sure it won't happen again. On a personal level, he should take the time to snail mail everyone who received a fake e-mail from him as a way to set things right.”

Joy Butler, a business and entertainment lawyer in Washington who wrote “The Cyber Citizen's Guide Through the Legal Jungle”: “Mr. Justen and his company have limited legal options going forwar d unless they can locate the C.T.O. The company might then seek redress by suing for breach of any non-compete or confidentiality provisions that may have been in the former C.T.O.'s employment agreement. I would also caution Mr. Justen about how much information he discloses about the events at his company. On the other hand, he does need to let his customers know about the fact that there was a security breach or the company could face legal ramifications itself.”

John Mutch, chief executive of BeyondTrust, a global provider of security software: “I think the first wave of security was focused on external threats. Now people are realizing that the threat from the insider is a malicious threat that can be catastrophic in a lot of ways. Unfortunately for Mr. Justen, he probably needed to lock the system down before firing his C.T.O. If he decides to go forward, he should consider building role-based security around his company's critical assets that limits who can access what.”

What do you think?

How the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur Branded Himself Too Well

By MELINDA F. EMERSON

When Mike Michalowicz published a book in 2008, he was looking for a name that would stick. He chose: “The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.”

He wanted to tie the concept of doing whatever it takes to succeed in business to an everyday object. He chose toilet paper because he figured people would remember it. “Everyone has been stuck without toilet paper at times,” he said, “but we all find a way to survive. That is how entrepreneurship is - you often get stuck with your pants proverbially around your ankles”

Initially self-published, the book was later republished by Harper Collins, and people did remember the name. In fact, it stuck too well. “People couldn't remember who I was,” said Mr. Michalowicz. “They called me the Toilet Paper Guy. The T.P. Man. Few knew my name.”

As it happens, his real name is hard to spell and hard to pronounce (it's mi-CAL-o-wits) and something people had struggle d with almost all of his life - even after he became an entrepreneur at 24, starting and building three companies with no outside investment money. He sold two of them - Olmec Systems to a private equity firm in 2002 and PGLA to Robert Half International in 2006 - and is now running his third, Provendus Group, a consulting firm that helps companies whose growth has stagnated.

One of the cool things about social media marketing is that you can build a brand with pretty much any name you want. In Hollywood and in marketing, you can always give yourself a new name, and for Mr. Michalowicz, Toilet Paper Entrepreneur was it. Once his book was finished, he pulled together a two-person team, his executive assistant from his first company and a recent college grad who was adept at social media and e-mail marketing. They created the Toilet Paper Entrepreneurs Facebook group, and he defined the criteria to join the group: “This is what made you a T.P.E.: You don't believe in looking for money to start your business. You are doing something you really believe in. You don't believe in business plans - three sheets is all you need.” Then he and a few friends invited their contact lists to join the group, and it had nearly 1,700 members the week it made its debut.

He then created his Twitter handle, @TPEntrepreneur, which he has since changed to @MikeMichalowicz, and established a daily blog. He enjoys making jokes, mostly at his own expense, and takes a just-say-it approach to social media, which his fans seem to love. “I like to keep things real and I love to joke around,” Mr Michalowicz said. He said he never promised get-rich-quick schemes, “because it doesn't exist, and I am always making jokes about entrepreneurial situations and myself.” He shares information on his blog, but his community members also learn from each other.

The T.P.E. community started treating his blog posts like appointmen t television. Every time a post went up, one of his team members would blast out an e-mail to the Facebook group sending them to the blog. Visitors would see a pop-up ad within five seconds of arriving that invited them to download free book chapters.

Every Wednesday his blog featured an “On the Roll” video to answer questions from his community or offer business tips. He would always do something funny or some kind of stunt at the end of the video. He also used the Web site Help A Reporter Out to solicit content for his blog. He regularly posts questions on business topics and then curates answers from his loyal readers and other small-business owners to create a blog post. He hired a coder to build a simple system that allows followers to submit business tips, Web site links and a head shot directly into a database for his blog posts. This saves him lots of time and lets him turn all of these submissions into one massive post with 50 to 100 contributors. Here's a n example of one he did on contest ideas for promoting small businesses.

Once the post was published, an e-mail would go out to all of the people who submitted telling them that they were on his blog that day and asking them to help get the word out. The e-mail would include language to tweet or to use in a Facebook post, and he always invited readers to put the post on their blogs, too. He did this to build links, Google ranking and traffic. He also used a marketing tool to create pop-up ads on his Web site that invited people to subscribe to his blog and join his e-mail list.

Before long, he was getting 1,000 visits a day. At its peak, the blog attracted up to 70,000 visitors a month and his e-mail list now has nearly 15,000 names. He makes money through his membership club, book sales, speaking engagements, sponsorships, and consulting.

But now, four years later, he has decided he wants to teach people his real name. “Being the Toilet Paper guy helped people get past having to pronounce my name, but at the same time, it painted me in the corner of potentially having to stick with toilet paper for the rest of my life,” he said.

So now, he's actually trying to kill the T.P.E. brand. “The brand became so strong, so fast, that people call themselves T.P.E.ers,” he said. “I love that, but I recognize it needs to change. I decided I have one shot at having my own name be the brand and it was now or never, so I've started pushing Mike Michalowicz for everything I do.”

As part of the plan, he is releasing a new book with a new metaphor under his own name. In “The Pumpkin Plan,” Mr. Michalowicz writes about his own business struggles, feeling like a hamster on a wheel trying to grow his business, until he decided that pumpkin farmers, the kind that grow record-breaking pumpkins, hold the secret to entrepreneurial success. “When you focus on growing one pumpkin exclusively, it can grow to colossal size, ” he said. “When you spread seeds everywhere and try to grow everything, the only guarantee is you will never grow something to colossal size. The formula is basically seven steps from selecting a seed, to watering properly, to managing the root, to over-the-top attention. And while some times colossal businesses don't come from it, the formula is sound.”

It's the same formula he is using to build his new identity.

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development firm. You can follow her on Twitter.

It\'s Not Too Soon to Think About Crowdfunding

By TOM SZAKY

I have taken a real interest in equity crowdfunding and its potential impact on social entrepreneurs. One reason: I would have loved to have been able to take advantage of it when I was doing my initial financing of TerraCycle.  Had crowdfunding existed then, I would have been able to raise money faster, on better terms, and from a wider range of investors - all good things when it comes to financing a small business.

Here's a quick update on where things stand (I have written about crowdfunding previously). Broadly speaking, a federal equity crowdfunding law that passed in April as part of the JOBS Act will allow an American company to use an online crowdfunding platform to raise up to $1 million from the general public without these shareholders counting toward the company's private shareholder cap. I see this as a big opportunity because now entrepreneurs will be able to gain capital and momentum with an early shareholder ba se that is invested in the company's success.

Although the law was passed in April, many of its specific provisions require further consideration and official rule-making by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. The S.E.C. has until the end of 2012 to complete its rules. From what I've heard, the agency is working hard to hit this goal but it could spill over into 2013. After this, Finra has to write the rules that govern how the online intermediaries get registered and set up. Then these rules have to be reviewed and approved. Unfortunately, this could run into the second half of 2013.

But there are things entrepreneurs can do now to lay the groundwork for successful crowdfunding later. Here are three ideas:

1) Start crowdfunding now. You can use the current crowdfunding model, which is sometimes called “perks-based” crowdfunding or “donation” crowdfunding. In other wor ds, you can pre-sell your product or give it as a perk to people who donate money to get your business off the ground. You can do this now on sites like Launcht.org, which focuses on social entrepreneurs and socially responsible projects, or on ThreeRevolutions, which focuses on sustainable agriculture and food projects. (Another site, the William James Foundation, expects to introduce a crowdfunding platform by early September as part of a business plan competition.)

I think sites like these offer a great way to start building a following and to assess whether anyone cares about your product or service. If you do this, you may have a crowd in place when equity crowdfunding comes along while others will still be looking for theirs.

2) If you are successful with the current model, you can use the money you raise to prove your concept, earn revenue and let your customers guide you. Then use public relations to expose your success, as I discussed in an earlier post.

3) Meanwhile, pay attention as the rule-making proceeds. Take this time to prepare for a crowdfunding offering around the middle of 2013. You will need to be ready to issue shares of your company to a potentially large number of shareholders. You will need to prepare financial statements for review and you will have to be ready to offer a valuation of your company. There will be other considerations, but if you're ready with these pieces, you'll be in good shape to move quickly.

Tom Szaky is the chief executive of TerraCycle, which is based in Trenton.

This Week in Small Business: Reinventing the Toilet

By GENE MARKS

Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

What's affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: A Running Mate

Mitt Romney picks Paul Ryan. Here are Mr. Ryan's positions on small-business matters, and here is a discussion about whether Mr. Ryan is  the right candidate for small businesses. Aaron Carroll digs into Mr. Ryan's Medicare proposals. Jillian Berman wonders whether Wall Street will like him. The president of the National Federation of Independent Business explains why small businesses are so big in politics. Bill Murphy Jr., offers five lessons in entrepreneurship to be learned from Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney.

The Economy: Breweries and Wineries

July retail sales jump, and some big box retail stores are growing. Breweries and wineries are also seeing significant growth. June conveyor shipments are up 35 percent over the previous year, and industrial production increases. Builder confidence continues to improve, but machine-tool orders slip and conditions in the New York region (pdf) have deteriorated. Small-business confidence declines, Google's Motorola Mobilityis cutting 4,000 jobs, and FedEx is offering buyouts to employees. Timothy Taylor laments the country's stagnant R.&D. effort. Consumer prices stay flat, producer prices climb more than expected, and Lam Thuy Vo explains what the prices on a very old menu can teach us about the economy. Meanwhile, the nation's economists are quietly evacuating their families (according to The Onion, anyway).

Technology: Reinventing the Toilet

A new report says New York small businesses face a technology gap; barely half feel they are using technology enough (pdf) to be competitive (and a third do not have a Web site) . Among some cool new ideas: bacteria-eating viruses that may power cellphones, software to prevent texting behind the wheel, an implant that helps blind mice see and an advance that could turn wastewater treatment into an electricity producer. Bill Gates sponsors a reinvent-the-toilet challenge. Samsung expands its lead in the smartphone market but Research In Motion is not giving up. Pinterest introduces iPhone and Android apps. Google Plus introduces studio hangouts for musicians. American broadband growth slows. Brian Moylan suggests five apps  the world desperately needs, including one that will let you do the following: “At a party, you run into a guy who greets you by name. You've met before, but you have no idea who he is. Snap a subtle photo of him. The software uses facial recognition software to troll Facebook and Google Image searches to ID him.”

Your People: Do You Delegate Too Much?

Gad Levanon sums up the main trends in the labor market. Josh Tolan explains how to use video to recruit talent. Disney is sued by a Muslim employee over its dress code. Devan Perine reports that healthy employees contribute to healthy businesses. A Somali pirate becomes professional. Peter Nguyen discusses the delicate nature of delegating: “Not everything in your business should be delegated. … Make sure you are the one signing legal documents, closing deals with big clients, handling big press publications and keeping a close eye on company numbers, even with a C.P.A.'s help.” (Jay Goltz reveals the one task he can't delegate.) Researchers at Small Business Labs say that Gen Y is delaying adulthood. A trucking company announces a program for owner-operators.

Management: The Dumbest Questions

Bradley Collins explains how public libraries are a boon to small businesses. This little accounting trick is behind 30 years of scandal. Here are five ways to make your business stand out, including: “Don't be a jack of all trades.” The terms “F-bomb,” and “sexting” are in the new Merriam-Webster dictionary. Here are three reasons not to discount your prices. Martin Zwilling says the best entrepreneurs ask the dumbest questions. Marcus Sheridan shares a story of rejection and growth. In this video, Kirby Ferguson explains why everything is a remix.

Your Marketing: No More Robocalls

Citibank's senior vice president for social media says: “In most cases, customer service in social media or social service is a failure.” But a bigger brain may help. A new tool will help drive customers to buy from more ethical businesses. Telemarketers are now prohibited from using recorded messages in New York. These five brands use education to engage. Mike Vickers explains how to become preferred in business. Here are four marketing tips from a Canadian convent and a few e-mail tips learned from “Seinfeld.” Jill Konrath suggests some e-mail prospecting tips of her own. Here are the Ten Commandments for business card marketing.

Start-Up: Immigrants Start Businesses

Immigrants started 28 percent of all new businesses in America in 2011 - despite accounting for just 12.9 percent of the population. This start-up feeds other start-ups (literally). A tech entrepreneur explains how Europe (yes, Europe!) is rocking the start-up world. A start-up wants to resell old digital songs. A membership club aims to soothe start-up stress with elite deals and access. Susan Schreter learned these lessons from Oprah Winfrey's start-up, including: “It's not ever wise to initiate customer-facing operations without 100 percent leadership attention and focus.”

Finance: Join the Club

Robert Moore describes the clubby world of venture capital. Eric V. Holtzclaw offers tips for getting cash faster. A report says that almost half of United States bank account holders will be using mobile banking by 2017. Small businesses are having trouble getting microloans.

Around the Country: Chinese Diapers

Niagara Falls, N.Y., takes a broad approach to attract more people. These five graphs show how crazy it is to compare California to Greece. Real estate in Minneapolis is hot. Syracuse may be the next city headed for bankruptcy. Frito-Lay rolls out more electric trucks in California. A paper mill reopens to make more diapers for the Chinese, and a Chinese firm looks to invest $1 billion in a Texas clean energy project. Carbonite is holding a disaster-planning webinar for small businesses. A walk-on football player gets a scholarship.

Around the World: Russia Grows, Europe Sinks

Troubles abroad keep cash flowing to the United States. Russia posts a 4 percent growth rate even as Europe sinks back into recession. Africa grows too hot to grow chocolate. Grenada did the best at the Olympics (per capita).

Red Tape: Social Security Turns 77

It's the 77th anniversary of Social Security, but its surpl us is dwarfed by future deficits. An egg-regulation bill is being pushed in Indiana. The new immigration rules go into effect. The cost of the auto industry bailout goes up, and Michael Panzner believes the job market and auto-buying market are out of sync. Daniel Costa says the State Department just created 4,000 new jobs in Alaska.

Tweets of the Week

@pamslim: Happy Sweet 16th birthday my self-employment. You have given me an amazing life along with a great living. Thank you!

@alanlepo: My new business plan. Rebuild some type of collaboration tool from 1995 using shinny new web and mobile tech and call it innovative.

@TheJoeGirard: You're not gonna find business sitting down and blaming the recession.

This Week's Question: Have you tried to get a microloan?

When Social Media Marketing Doesn\'t Work for You

By MELINDA F. EMERSON

John Edgar Lacher owns the J.Edgar Investigation Agency and is an avid reader of this blog. Recently, he left the following comment on one of my posts,  “Using Social Media to Test Your Idea Before You Try to Sell It.”

The social media thing such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others have done nothing for me. Personally, I think it is all just another money trap. I have spent thousands of dollars on marketing such as SEO, adwords, etc with little or no results. Everyone has got their hand out but no one has the ability or the experience much less the interest to help someone. Everyone is wrapped up in their own little world tweeting and facebooking. I have better luck with face-to-face meetings and referrals from people that know me. I would much rather spend the time and money with a face-to-face meeting than anything else.

In part because I think there are a lot of people who fee l the same way Mr. Lacher does, I decided to contact him to discuss his experiences.

It turns out he is a licensed private investigator with an office in San Diego. In business since 2008, Mr. Lacher, 64, started the agency after being laid off by American International Group at the start of the Great Recession. He specializes in insurance claims investigations, but he also investigates fraud, theft, property damage, or elder abuse. And if you think your spouse has been cheating, he can look into that, too.

Private clients have been his biggest source of revenue, but things are rough right now (he has been supporting himself with his Social Security checks). He knows he started his business at a difficult time, and he says the competition in California for P.I. work is intense. “There's a lot of retired law enforcement, ex-military and former F.B.I. agents who have come to this area,” he said, “and it's hard to compete with the ir credentials.”

So far, he hasn't found social media to be of much help. He canceled his Facebook page, because he felt it was more personal than business, and he didn't think he needed to be there. “I had a lot of people who would ask questions about how I do private investigations, but I never got a single client from it,” Mr. Lacher said. “I got a bunch of stupid comments from people, which was really annoying.”

He is on Twitter but has only tweeted a few times. He has had the most success with LinkedIn, where he has a premium account that costs $24.95 a month. He says he invested in it because business has become global. “I started using LinkedIn a year or so ago, I am a premium member so I can see the profile of people that I would not have access to. I have 650 connections to date. It's a great asset for me to be able to do business intelligence. I have not been getting any business from LinkedIn yet, but I am hopeful.”

A year ago, he i nvested $94 a month in a Web site he got through Web.com. Disappointed, he pulled it down after six months. Then he decided to build his own site, which is still up. Six weeks ago, he gave a webinar on GotoMeeting.com, offering a session on Investigation 101. He was thrilled with the attendance but didn't win any business from that, either.

He has thought about trying Google AdWords, but some of his colleagues in the business cooled him on the idea. “I was concerned about doing Google AdWords because people were commenting on an industry listserv that competitors were clicking on the ads from other private investigators to drive up the budget.” So he hasn't tried that yet.

After discussing his frustrations, he asked me. “Where do you start first? Where do I put the money at?”

There are five steps that I think everyone should take if they are serious about using social media as a marketing strategy, but there are always a few things to consider. Soc ial media marketing is a long tail strategy for a small business - it can take a lot longer than six months to see results. And it starts with a strong Web site.

Even once you have connected with someone, social-media-networking takes considerably more time than face-to-face networking. I believe it takes seven quality contacts before you can start talking commerce, but I've read industry estimates as high as 21 meaningful contacts before you can close business. Here are the five steps I suggested for Mr. Lacher.

Invest in a real Web site: Mr. Lacher's site is not helping his brand. Just as you would never call a plumber to do a carpenter's job, you have no business developing your own Web site (unless that is your business). Hire a professional. For $500 to $1,500, you can get a basic WordPress Web site or blog site that will represent your business well. Your site should have helpful content and at least three to five ways to engage potential customers, includi ng offering an e-book download, newsletter sign-ups and free webinar sign-ups.

Know your keywords: No search-engine optimization campaign will work if you don't have the right keywords. You need to know how your target customers search for services online. Free tools like Wordtrakker and Google Keyword Tool can help.

Use a listening strategy: As a small-business owner, you can't be everywhere in social media, but where you should be is where your target customers are hanging out. LinkedIn is the right place for Mr. Lacher. Keep spending time there, start using the Answers area to demonstrate expertise. Join groups where target customers belong, and share helpful information. Post your webinar materials through SlideShare to amplify your content.

Start blogging: Once you get your site fixed, start blogging. The best way to demonstrate your expertise is to share techniques and success stories. Be sure to use your keywords in your blog posts.

Share help ful content: One of the best ways to attract clients with social media is to position yourself as a resource. And don't just share your own content - be generous and share the information of others in your industry. It's a great way to build strategic alliances and make friends.

Mr. Lacher wants to grow his agency to the point where he could hire two people full-time who would be licensed under him. Right now, he is looking for a bilingual woman to help him with marketing.

What have you found difficult to do in getting started in social media? Have you been able to figure it out?

Melinda Emerson is founder and chief executive of Quintessence Multimedia, a social media strategy and content development firm. You can follow her on Twitter.

When Looking for a Loan, You Can\'t Fight Gravity

By AMI KASSAR

Getting a loan for your business is not a simple proposition. There are many types of loans, and many criteria that go into evaluating how much you can borrow and what you can expect to pay. There are thousands of lenders to pick from, and each one may have a slightly different proposition to suggest.

When you're in the market for a loan, it's smart to do some homework and figure out where you fit. It's also smart to hear several opinions. That said, once you've heard the same thing several times, you probably have a pretty good idea what your prospects are. At that point, you have a decision to make.

At MultiFunding, this is where we often see small-business owners get stuck. This is particularly true if the owners don't love the terms of the financing they are being offered. In this situation, there are several important points to consider.

First, despite the general sense that the loa n market has been all over the place, it's actually pretty competitive. Lenders fight with one another to get different types of loans. But once you've figured out where your company fits into the ecosystem, you really can't fight gravity. If you are eligible for a certain type of loan, it's unlikely that you are going to be able to twist a lender's arm into offering you a more favorable type of loan. The first loan you are offered will have certain pricing and conditions that are associated with the risk the lender is taking. Once the bank has made this calculation, it rarely changes.

That said, it's important to remember that the type of loan your company is eligible for today could well change six months or a year from now. Companies change and evolve, and so do loan markets. It's important to review your loans on an annual basis. Some small-business owners get stuck because they think the loan they pick will last forever. This is not the case.

Once you've nai led down your loan type and pricing, you should step back and ask yourself questions like, “Will this loan allow me to focus on growing my business and making it more profitable?” and “Will I stop lying awake at night worrying about cash flow?” If so, it's probably worth taking the loan.

Right now, we have two clients who are trying to fight gravity. One of them is an electronics distributor. Because the business shrunk by 50 percent during the recession, its bank - even though the business stayed profitable - decided to call the line of credit. Since then, the distributor has been slowly paying down the credit line and holding on for dear life. In the last three months it has twice needed to take emergency financing in the form of expensive merchant cash advance loans.

What the company desperately needs to do is to pay off the line of credit - and move to a factor. While the factor will be more expensive, it will lend the distributor all of the working c apital it needs. As a result, the owner will be able to sleep at night and focus on getting the company back to pre-recession levels. At that point, there will be no problem going back to a bank and getting a new line of credit.

We have another client who has a high-end used car business that owns its own real estate. It has been banking with the same bank for seven years where it has a floor-plan line of credit (against retail inventory) and a real estate loan. But the bank was sold and the new parent company won't do floor-plan lines anymore. In today's loan market, finding a floor-plan lender for used cars can be all but impossible. We actually managed to find our client one, but he wouldn't accept the terms. He is trying to fight gravity, and it will catch up with him eventually.

It's not enough to understand your own business - you also have to understand credit markets and where you fit into them. And most of all, you have to understand that they keep chang ing.

Ami Kassar founded MultiFunding, which is based near Philadelphia and helps small businesses find the right sources of financing for their companies.

Would You Take a Private Equity Investment?

By YOU'RE THE BOSS EDITORS

In a small-business guide we've just published, Puneet Mehta talks about feeling “razzle-dazzled” when private equity investors approached him about buying into the online marketing business he had founded in 2006 in Atlanta.

“Our goal was to expand rapidly with private equity, put in a bunch of sales teams, get some distribution networks going,” Mr. Mehta explained. He ended up with $1.5 million in private equity growth investments and venture capital. “But I realized after we had raised the money that there were so many clauses that came with it that I had lost complete control of the company.”

You can read the guide, which was written by Jessica Bruder, to see how that turned out and to hear what business owners suggest you should consider before accepting private equity. As for Mr. Mehta, he has sworn off outside financing altogether in his current endeavor, a start-up called Local Marketing I nc., which he said was profitable and generating several million dollars a year in revenue. “Now we basically get approached by a bank or a company every month to give us money,” he told Ms. Bruder, “but we don't need it.”

Of course, there can also be compelling reasons to take the investment capital. Right now, there happen to be a lot of investors looking for deals and a lot of businesses looking to sell.

What do you think? Would you take private equity?

Buying Versus Renting, Owners Consider the Advantages

By ADRIANA GARDELLA

At a recent She Owns It business group meeting, the conversation focused on real estate. The business owners also touched on the related subject of working remotely, a topic we'll explore further in coming posts.

The Megawatt Hour, a start-up owned by Deirdre Lord, rents an office in shared space. To try to lower costs, the company has moved three times in the last two and a half years. When its lease on “really dumpy space” in Queens was up, Ms. Lord said she found more centrally located space in Manhattan that eased commutes for the staff. Ms. Lord does not foresee owning. “We rent, and we will only rent,” she said.

Considering the cost of office space, she wondered what the group thought about letting employees work remotely.

“I feel you really lose something,” said Beth Shaw, who owns YogaFit. In fact, she feels so strongly about the issue that she regrets installi ng separate offices in her current space. Even walls can render your employees too remote, she said.

“It's really funny that you brought that up,” said Alexandra Mayzler, owner of Thinking Caps Tutoring. She said she approved employee requests to work from home once a week. But then it turned into twice a week. Although she says she believes that productivity can increase when employees work independently from home, she doesn't think working remotely is good for the company culture. “Somebody's out one day, the next person's not there the next day, and there's no structure,” she said.

“I had that same issue in my office,” said Ms. Shaw.

Susan Parker, who owns Bari Jay, a dress maker, returned to the issue of renting or owning commercial real estate. Her company rents space in Manhattan's Garment District. When she and her sister took over the business, Bari Jay had two months left on its lease. “We ended up just getting a year extension, and i t took us over six months to end up signing a lease for the same exact space,” she said. “When you have 11,000 square feet, you cannot find a lease.”

She said she considered moving to an identically priced, slightly smaller but nicer space with 24-hour access (her current building has limited hours, six days a week). But ultimately, the thought of moving and uprooting operations persuaded her to stay put. “I'm here for a long time,” she said.

Johnson Security Bureau, which is owned by Jessica Johnson, operates from a townhouse in the Bronx. The company bought the building in an estate sale almost 20 years ago. Before that, she said, Johnson Security rented space in the neighborhood. Ms. Johnson said she was happy that she did not have to worry about long-term leases and utilities, which would be more expensive if she rented.

Ms. Mayzler runs Thinking Caps Tutoring from a rented Manhattan apartment (not her residence). The company's branches in Tex as, in Austin and Houston, operate remotely with employees who work from home.

“Have you thought about incubator space for Texas?” Ms. Johnson asked.

Ms. Mayzler said that, for now, she needed more space only when the company hosted pizza parties for its Texas tutors. So far, she has rented conference rooms for that purpose. But this year, there will be more tutors. Additionally, it would be nice to find inexpensive space as Thinking Caps begins to do more team-building activities.

YogaFit is seeking less space. Ms. Shaw has been trying to sell the company's building in Torrance, Calif., on and off for a year. She said she bought it for $1.4 million in 2006 and did extensive renovations, including creating the offices she now wishes were gone.

“If everybody was in one place, there would be more communication and productivity,” she said - not to mention less texting and eating at desks. The office walls aren't the only drawbacks to the space, w hich is in a rather isolated area 30 minutes from Ms. Shaw's home on the west side of Los Angeles.

Even though she invested in renovations, Ms. Shaw said she would be happy to sell the building for the price she paid. She would then like to buy much less expensive loft space in downtown Los Angeles. But her building hasn't come close to selling. She wondered if she is using the wrong agent.

She said there was a large Asian community in the surrounding area and that it's a popular location for Japanese companies, including Honda, Nissan and Toyota, all of which have offices nearby. “Maybe I need a Realtor that will market the building to the Japanese or Chinese market,” Ms. Shaw said, adding that Chinese investors are buying in Los Angeles.

“Have you thought about having an event where you invite Asian fitness professionals in and then maybe that will help spread the word?” Ms. Johnson asked.

“I love that idea,” Ms. Shaw said.

“Who decided that you should buy the building?” Ms. Parker asked.

“I decided because I'm not a good renter,” Ms. Shaw said. “When YogaFit started, we were under a bar, and beer leaked into our yoga studio for seven years.” Unlike Ms. Parker, Ms. Shaw said she had not worked with a business coach or a group like Entrepreneurs' Organization to help with such decisions.

How has your business handled the real estate decision?

You can follow Adriana Gardella on Twitter.

Can a Banker Think Like an Entrepreneur?

By ADRIANA GARDELLA

In a just-published New York Times article, I write about Jolyne Caruso, a Wall Street veteran who founded the Alberleen Group, a company that applies the incubator concept - ubiquitous in the world of tech start-ups - to investment banking. The Alberleen Group provides seasoned investment bankers with the infrastructure and working capital to start their own firms. In exchange, it takes a revenue share.

Ms. Caruso got the idea for her venture after observing that many bankers - and their clients - were disillusioned with the big banks. New regulations, altered compensation models, and (for clients) the potential for conflicts of interest contribute to the “misery factor,” she said. But for bankers looking to strike out on their own, the costs of starting a boutique investment bank can be prohibitively high and the connections needed to fund deals can be elusive. The Alberleen Group offers help with both. Every membe r of the incubator's advisory board, which includes E. Stanley O'Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, is also an investor in the company.

The incubator's success will depend, in part, on its ability to field teams of bankers who think - and operate - like entrepreneurs despite having spent careers at the much larger institutions that have long dominated the industry. “The jury is still out on us,” Ms. Caruso said.

But she added that it's clear that the old model is no longer viable for many clients and bankers - which could make investment banking incubators as plentiful as their technology counterparts.

You can follow Adriana Gardella on Twitter.

The One Task I Can\'t Seem to Delegate

By JAY GOLTZ

The other day, three yearly license plate renewal stickers arrived in the mail for three of my company vehicles. This meant someone would have to put the stickers on and replace the registration card in each of the cars. Normally, that someone would be me. While I have become quite adept at delegating almost everything else, the combination of vehicles and stickers has long been a surprising source of grief, education and humor for me. I have given speeches about my failures to manage this process.

It started about 25 years ago. I had been in business almost 10 years, and I was trying my best to master the art and discipline of delegation (I had read a business book or two). Back then, in Chicago, car owners needed to buy a new vehicle sticker and attach it to the windshield every Jan. 1. I decided that this was a task that could easily be delegated, so I handed a razor blade to one of my employees and asked him to do the honors . Convinced that I was on my way to management enlightenment, I moved on to more important matters.

But when I got in my car that night, I was surprised to find that the sticker had been placed halfway up the windshield instead of in the lower right corner, where it would be out of the line of sight. I had to live with it there for a year - a constant reminder of my poor delegation skills - because getting the sticker off is next to impossible.

By the time that year had passed, I owned a car and a van, so there were now two stickers that needed attention on Jan. 1. Should I handle it myself? No! I had learned a lot about leadership in the past year. Specifically, I had learned that you have to delegate and give instructions. “Put the sticker two inches from the bottom and two inches from the side,” I directed as I handed the razor blade to my trusted accomplice.

Thirty minutes later, he came back. “Are you done?” I ask ed.

“Yes,” he said. But it was a hesitant yes, and I could tell there was more. “What do you mean, yes?” I asked, mimicking the hesitant tone.

Well, the stickers were on, he said, but he couldn't find the razor blade. What? You mean it might be floating around in my car or the delivery van? He shrugged. We never did find it.

Year 3: Would I give up and do it myself? No! I am a manager. Again, I had learned more over the previous year. Delegate. Give instructions. And follow up! Besides, the temperature was near zero, which is another strong motivation to delegate.

“Here is the first sticker,” I said. “Put it two inches from the side and bottom. Don't lose the razor blade! When you finish the van, come back to me and I will give you the sticker for my car.”

Ten minutes later he returned. Victory! In fact, he had managed to get the sticker off in one full piece, something I have never been able to do. The right guy with the right i nstructions; I was becoming some kind of guru of delegation. I gave him the second sticker for my car. I moved on to more important things, the whole purpose of delegation.

Half an hour went by, and I realized that he had not come back for a final victory lap. I started to go toward the door, when I saw him coming out of the bathroom. He looked as sick as a frat boy the morning after a night of drinking.

“Did you get the sticker on?” I asked.

“No.” It was a weak no, almost an “I am about to cry” no.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I broke the windshield,” he said. “I used a blow-torch to get the sticker off, and the windshield exploded.”

Years $4 through 25, I put all of the vehicle and license plate stickers on all 11 of my cars, trucks, and vans myself. I enjoy it. It doesn't take long, I get to make sure the registration and insurance cards are all in order, and I do it with pride. I am a picture framer at heart. I make sur e that all of the stickers are straight and in the right place. I clean the glass professionally. And I don't break the windshields. Luckily, Chicago has changed the replacement date from Jan. 1 to July 1 (maybe the city administrators felt sorry for me). Which gets me back to what happened the other day when the three new license plate stickers arrived.

I had these three stickers in front of me. Two of the vehicles were out on deliveries, but one was sitting in my parking lot. My assistant drives this vehicle, and I asked her for the keys, so that I could get into the glove box to change the registration card. “I can do it,” she said. “The plate has one of those plastic shields on it, and you have to take it off with a screwdriver.” And then she looked at me with a look that only someone who has worked with you for 20 years would give you, a look that says, “Get over it. Really. This is not brain surgery. I can do it.” But? But? I stood there for 20 second s thinking. And then I broke. After all of these years - and probably 300 stickers - I decided to believe again. I gave her the sticker and I went home. What could go wrong?

The next morning, I pulled into the parking lot. I walked past her car, and there it was. The renewal sticker was on the plate - but in the top left corner (see photo above). The little indentation for the sticker is in the top right corner, along with five years of half-peeled-off stickers. NOOOOOOOOOOO! What had I done? I walked into the office and looked at her the way you look at your dog after he eats your favorite shoe.

“I know!” she said. “I was changing it this morning, and George” - our delivery and installation guy, who has been with us 17 years - “walks up and says, ‘Let me do that.' I was scraping off the old stickers and he grabs the new sticker off the ground and says, ‘You can put it on either side.' And before I can react, he slaps it on!”

Of course, the card clearly says to put the new sticker over the old sticker, and since these stickers are not intended to be removed, I'm going to be looking at this for the next year. And that is my sad, tortured story of failed delegation. Now, let me assure you, again, that I have successfully delegated far more difficult tasks. And I'm sure I could delegate this one, too, if I really wanted to. The truth is, I've come to enjoy handling this myself.

So, I have two questions: What lesson do you think I should take from all of this? And am I alone in this - or is there anything you do that you know you could or should delegate, but you choose not to because: a) it's just easier to do it yourself, b) it's too easy for someone else to mess it up or c) you have some other anal-retentive reason.

Jay Goltz owns five small businesses in Chicago.

A Tutoring Company in Search of a Tag Line

By ADRIANA GARDELLA

For the last couple of months, Alexandra Mayzler, a member of the She Owns It business group, has struggled to come up with a new tag line for her company, Thinking Caps Tutoring. Thinking Caps, which she started in her college dorm room, has outgrown its current tag, “Students teaching students.” Settling on something new that both sounds good and differentiates the company has been so difficult that she wonders how she ever came up with the first one.

Ms. Mayzler recently asked the group for feedback on one of her latest ideas. She said she had lost any sense of what was good or bad and was trying to choose just a handful of tag lines to test on a focus group of parents - the people who pay for Thinking Caps' tutoring services.

“Right now we're at ‘Find your brilliance,'” she said, adding that the logo included a cartoon character with a light bulb over its head (visible at the top left of Thinking Caps' Web site). The character will become more hip after a planned makeover. Ms. Mayzler said she wanted to steer clear of talking about results. “It's about finding your own individual brilliance,” she said.

“I like the light bulb,” said Beth Shaw, who owns YogaFit.

Deirdre Lord, who owns the Megawatt Hour, thought the appeal to each student's individuality was effective.

“When I picture the light bulb with the slogan, it all comes together,” said Jessica Johnson, the owner of Johnson Security Bureau.

What do you think of “Find your brilliance”? Do you have a better idea?

You can follow Adriana Gardella on Twitter.

This Week in Small Business: The Van Indicator

By GENE MARKS

Dashboard

A weekly roundup of small-business developments.

What's affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week.

The Big Story: Mobile Payments Go Mainstream

Starbucks makes a big investment in the mobile payment provider Square, which demonstrates how mobile payment options are growing for small companies. Kevin Casey offers five things small businesses should know about Google Wallet, including: “Your larger competitors are already using it.” Adrian Swinscoe says that mobile payment is one of four ways technology can improve customer service: “Whether you are a food truck or one of the many businesses that frequent festivals, farmers markets, trade fairs and many other events, mobile technology is allowing businesses to move from cash-only operations to ones that can take card payment s, better aligning themselves with many of their customers' cashless lives.”

Economy: The Stock to Own

A survey from Wells Fargo and Gallup shows a decline in small-business optimism, while one from Constant Contact finds that 2012 hasn't been so bad for most small businesses. And the Van Indicator signals a recovery on Main Street. Robert Laura says that if you are bullish on small-business growth, this is the stock you should own. Michael Sivy offers nine reasons the economy feels so bad. Christopher Mahoney explains why the stock market keeps shrugging off bad news. But housing prices register a slight increase, and Bill McBride explains why that is a good thing: “Flat to rising prices give home builders a better idea of the pricing needed to compete in the market - while more consumer confidence in house prices is leading to more demand for new homes.” The weekly hotel occupancy rate is above 75 percent for the first time since 2007, and nonfarm product ivity (pdf) increased.

Your People: Free Background Checks

The number of job openings in July remained unchanged from the previous month but employers have advertised the most jobs in the past four years, a sign that hiring could pick up in the coming months. The auto industry plans more hiring, and a man becomes very excited about a train. Extended benefits are coming to an end. Victor Fiorillo explains how you can run a background check on anyone free. Flossing, diaper changing and the “pantsing” of a co-worker are all things you can see in an office elevator. A survey finds many small-business owners do not intend to retire. A New York man holds a funeral for a Honda. When Google employees die, their spouses gets half of their salaries for 10 years.

Management: The Netflix of Neckties

Nicole LaPorte says that if your company's name gets in the way, you should change it. Here are five things entrepreneurs can learn from Olympic athletes. This 17-year-old wins the gold for fastest texting. Karl Young suggests five ways to stay motivated in your home office, including: “Consider getting out of the house for a while - go for a jog, swim or run on your lunch break.” Joe Evans asks whether your culture matches your business model. Brian Lane wonders if on-demand manufacturing sites are changing the market. This little company is the Netflix of neckties. Gay people may be better entrepreneurs. Happy 100th birthday, Julia Child!

Marketing: More Mobile

A Dunkin' Donuts text-messaging promotion increases store traffic 21 percent. Here's how Whole Foods gets social media right. James Furbush loves this Sears commercial. Jay Heyman says you should be touchier. A social media dashboard maker that helps small businesses manage their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn postings raises a million bucks. Here are three hyperlocal networks for small businesses. David Bratvold says there are f ive ways crowdsourcing improves your content marketing. Twenty-six percent of consumers get access to their social networks on mobile devices, and Michael Tasner explains how you can empower your customers using mobile: “Consumers these days want emotional connections with the brands and businesses they support; they want to feel empowered, and brag to their friends, usually through social channels, how they received 10 percent off because they are now the ‘mayor.'”

Finance: Facebook Banking

Jim Brendel explains the basics of crowdfunding. U.S. Bank is inviting small-business owners in 12 cities across the country to explain why their businesses are unique for a chance to win $5,000 in radio advertising and $5,000 for a charity. “Facebook banking” shows signs of life.

Start-Up: Put Women on the Board

Here are five start-ups to watch from DreamIt's latest conference. These are the top five American cities for start-ups. A Latin Ame rican start-up accelerator is taken over by 500 Startups. To create a company that won't fail, put women on the board. Leticia Leite shares the pros and cons of start-up life, including: “Doing work that I love, and being able to do it from anywhere in the world (time zone permitting), has given me a level of flexibility that is invaluable.” Here's how a few “e-tailor” start-ups are challenging Amazon in a $200 billion market.

Around the Country: Mohawk Guy

The goal of this event is to help 1,000 women get a Web site up and running on the same day. Dell and Manta team up to put on events to help small businesses grow. Score announces the winners of its 2012 small-business awards. The top 100 small-business influencers are named. This is how manufacturers helped NASA's recent Mars landing and how the Mohawk Guy became a Web sensation. Here's this week's edition of “your tuition dollars at work,” and two high school grads show a better way to get an edu cation than going to college. American airports are on pace to post their best year for on-time arrivals.

Around the World: H.M.S. Romney

This was the silent star of the London Olympics. Italy's economy sinks deeper into recession. German industrial orders fall. Output in India shrinks. China disappoints in July. Spain and Italy are downgraded. Japan's economy is looking weak. The Queen's Jubilee hits British manufacturing output. The Netherlands has new e-mail addresses. A Ugandan billionaire introduces Africa's first multilingual portal for youth mentorship and entrepreneurship. Historians remind us that the British sent H.M.S. Romney to Boston to enforce tax laws in 1768.

Red Tape Update: The Price of Pizza

The election outcome may determine if some businesses drop their health care coverage. Papa John's vows to raise prices because of health care reform. Certain government economic recovery programs for small businesses will expire in Septe mber.

Technology: Even More Mobile

A new, flexible battery could lead to gadgets that fold up. A company provides mobile modular power for remote areas. Disney figures out how to make any plant into a multitouch sensor. A 5-year-old Skypes with Jeremy Lin. Google Chrome grabs a third of the browser market and Google adds e-mail to its search results. Verizon Wireless enhances its portfolio of mobile tools for small businesses with Microsoft Office 365. This is how most mobile app makers make money. Paper clips are banned.

Tweets of the Week

@levie â€" The Mars Rover has to fly 350,000,000 miles to do its job. It turns out your commute isn't so bad after all.

@ValaAfshar â€" Ideas are the easy part. Learn to execute with a passion. Celebrate discipline.

@JonahLupton â€" Am I the only person that likes going into business conversations, calls and meetings with a structured game-plan?

The Week's Bests

Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman believe that if the customer is always right, you're in trouble. “If we go back five years, customers used to have few options but to speak with suppliers relatively early in a purchase as most information about possible solutions wasn't available anywhere else. In many ways, it was the golden age of the solution sale. Today, with the explosion of information on the Internet and the rise of third-party purchasing consultants, that's no longer the case.”

Boyd Cohen says smart cities should be more like lean start-ups: “Lean start-up principles suggest that innovators should develop a hypothesis about likely reactions to a minimum viable product and be prepared to rigorously measure the results. Smart city solutions frequently involve the use of sensors and real-time data to enable city staff to monitor key metrics and modify systems to improve performance. For example, I recently wrote about a new city development in Portugal that will make use of over 100 million sensors for a planned population of only 225,000.”

Christine Erickson explains how to master social media like a comedian: “Humor sells. The fastest way to establish a relationship, build trust and get a customer to value your presence is to make them laugh. Comedians are active thinkers. A skilled comedian is confident and aware of what his audience needs. He knows what the next joke in his routine will be - he doesn't ask the audience. A brand should know what its customers need by studying how they think and how they react to different marketing approaches.”

This Week's Question: Will your business accept mobile payments this year?

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.