I went to an entrepreneurial seminar the other day on how to become a passive investor in your own business.  Scott Fritz was the guest speaker.  At the end of the presentation, he handed everyone his book, “The 40 Hour Work Year.”

I took it home that night and read it cover to cover.  It was a quick read.  Even though book was almost exactly his script at the seminar, I felt that it had a few good takeaways that I thought I would share.

In the book and at the seminar, Scott Fritz talks about his childhood and his first memories of being an entrepreneur.  I think we all have those memories.  I remember at one point in my childhood I had a paper route and at another, I partnered with my grandfather and we had a dog walking service.  Although neither of these businesses was lucrative, they still inspired me to start and create my own business.

Scott Fritz then talks about how he started to live a 40-hour work year.  He said it didn’t start off that way.  He worked for 60+ hours a week in the beginning when he and a partner opened up a PEO business.  PEO stands for Professional Employer Organization, a company that offers human resource and employee administration outsourcing services.

His prerequisites for starting a business was that the business needed to have five components: annuity income, service business, low barrier to entry, strong cash flow and be scalable to reach a national market.. He goes on to tell the reader that within a couple of months, he landed a big client and was on his way to changing his lifestyle from the 60+ hour work week to the 40-hour work year.

The way he started to back out of his business was that he developed a “mindset philosophy,” which is a guideline on how to define your life and decision-making process.  The three key points are:

•    Enjoy Life (first and foremost)
•    Make Money
•    Do Deals

When he was working in his business, he had people constantly coming into his office asking for advice. He decided to set a rule that the only way people could talk with him is if the program was very important.  He found that the knocking on his door stopped and his staff started to figure things out on their own.  After that, he also talks about structuring processes and sticking with commitments.

The book is chock full of good information along with worksheets to fill out in order to help you figure out the direction in which you want to go.  The book is an easy read and is only 112 pages long.

The other takeaways I got from the book include:
•    If you are hiring a sales person or any staff for that matter, don’t be concerned with the annual salary.  Break the salary down month-to-month and see if you can cover the salary on a monthly basis.
•    Mr. Fritz also suggests that you have processes for everything including hiring, screening and selection.
•    He had his staff put together standard operating procedures on their jobs so that if a staff member were to get a promotion, someone could easily fill his/her shoes.
•    Lastly, he suggested creating the top five priorities for the first, second and third year of business.  Most people just “wing” it in business.  But Mr. Fritz really had structured processes that he followed.

The other day I was talking with a group of entrepreneurial friends and I told them that if I take away one or two points from a book or a seminar, then I’m happy.  It’s when I don’t learn anything, that I become unhappy.  This book made me happy.  It was interesting to see someone go from nothing to being able to enjoy life and not just focus on his work.

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This blog was first published in Blogcritics.org.

1. Start Building a Global Brand

You think only the likes of Coca-Cola and American Express deserve significant exposure overseas? With the advent of the internet, smaller companies and entrepreneurs are finding affordable ways to go global.

2. Work on Your Business Plan’s Financials

There is no way you are going to impress potential investors if your numbers do not add up. You should learn how to create a reasonable sales forecast, cash flow and expense budget for your start up.

3. Improve Your Website’s Search Engine

It is imperative that you master search engine optimization techniques and attract more traffic to your website. This way you are more likely to increase sales.

4. Find a Mentor

As you know, a mentor is someone with more business experience than you who serves as a trusted confidante over an extended period of time. A true mentoring relationship works in both directions – they learn about new interesting ideas from you, just as you learn timeless wisdom from them.

5. Hire a Web Developer

Bringing in someone to build and maintain your company’s presence might be a crucial moment in the life of a growing company.

6. Write a Killer Marketing Plan

Start by focusing on these key components:
deadlines, expectations, and specific thoughts on implementation.

7. Make Money on Foursquare

Using this geo-location service, your customers can alert their friends, colleagues or family members every time they patronize your business.

8. Discover What Kind of Leader You Are

According to one expert, your answers to a color quiz will indicate what kind of leader you are. A panel of 900 CEOs recently participated in a 60-second online color personality test, and the results were striking.

About the Author:
Angela Kambarian is a President of Essential Communications in Long Beach NY.
She provides marketing consulting and writes results-driven marketing commucation materials for different companies, organizations and entrepreneurs.
For more information, please visit her website at www.kambarian.com

In the advertising and marketing business, digital is its own channel.  Rare is the vendor that provides a truly integrated single source worldview of a brand. A really smart person once said to an important client “campaigns are overrated” which stuck me with a ferocity that shook my world, but he was right.  A campaign, when well-defined and well-equipped is a powerful selling mechanism.  It’s what people talk about. But translating campaigns across silos is not easy. Heck, anyone who has ever worked at an ad agency knows campaigns don’t always transfer across media.  A great design-driven print campaign may not work well in radio or a murderously effective TV campaign may not work as out of home.  It’s tah-woooh.  And those silos are under one roof.

Competing Market Forces
A bunch of hearty souls are trying to bring online and offline selling under one roof.  Yet a greater number of very skilled entrepreneurs are out there selling against the one roof approach — creating even greater and greater specialization.  A friend at CatalystSF told me that there are over 200 social media agencies in the New York area alone.  So what do you do about these two competing forces — the shops who want more pie and are trying to integrate and the shops selling best of breed, stand alone digital marketing specialties?  Well the planner in me usually starts problem solving by “following the money.”  In the case of integrated vs. stand alone I say “follow the strategy.”

If you find a potential partner with a sense of business strategy that transcends tactical discussions, listen. Business strategy first. Marketing strategy second. Message strategy third and tactical fourth.  I don’t care if its RGA or TBWA. Peace it up!

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Steve Poppe has his own blog, http://spoppe.livejournal.com/ and can be reached at steve@whatstheidea.com.

I’ve been going on a lot of new business meetings the past couple of months and meeting with lots of different people.

It’s interesting how people are different in how they want information presented to them, how they make their decisions, and how they communicate.

One of my prospects took three months to finally make the decision that they were going to hire our firm. They wanted several rounds of the proposal presentation, lots of background information on HJMT, and wanted to talk to our clients.

However, another prospect decided to join the firm before our proposal presentation even ended. Both prospects are great people and both have turned into great clients, they just have different personality types.

Several months ago I learned about the DISC personality assessment and how someone can be classified as a dominate, influencer, steady, or complaint. Learning how to identify someone’s personality type and then learning how they prefer to be communicated with has really helped me in those different situations.

A new challenge I just experienced was being in a meeting with several people from the prospect company that each have a different personality type, and each wanted something different. So I’ve been trying to figure out how I can have multiple personalities all at one time…

P.S. We’ll be spending some time on DISC personalities at our upcoming staff summit next week. Each of our staff members took an assessment and it will be interesting to talk about all of our personalities.

Stay tuned…