This week’s Entrepreneur University comes thanks to Dianne Crampton. Dianne is an Executive Leadership Coach and Team Building Consultant and creator of the TIGERS team development model. For the past twenty years she has helped leaders and teams achieve goals with high levels of collaboration and teamwork.

Today Dianne discusses how to avoid the 6 big mistakes entrepreneurs make when growing their businesses.

“Family owned businesses are one of the largest growing employment segments of the U.S economy according to the U.S. Small Business Association. Fifty percent of the gross national product is generated by these companies – some of them quite large and publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

In Canada, according to RBC Royal Bank, there are more than 821,000 women entrepreneurs in Canada, who annually contribute in excess of $18 billion to Canada’s economy. This entrepreneurial market trend is growing in all segments of the economy.

One of the largest issues facing family owned businesses and entrepreneurial start-ups, however, is succession leadership and passing the baton from one generation to the next. If you are next in line or at the helm of a family owned business here are some pitfalls to avoid as you search for investment capital to expand your operations.

1. You can jeopardize your capital position by selling more preferred stock to raise money at a lower price than the initial offering. Your second release of stock should cost more.

2. The best time to raise money is when you do not need it. Maintain adequate reserve funds. If you have money, it is easier to raise more.

3. The more shareholders you have the harder it is to keep everyone on the same page. Sell as few blocks of stock as you can.

4. Keep your board small and put them through a core values and culture process as part of your long range planning. It is very hard to remove someone from your board.

5. As you grow your company, you must accept that it will have to be reinvented through each major growth phase. The core strengths you start with can end up being a liability when you strive to systemize your operations. For example, a directive leadership style with a seat of the pants ability to get things does not work well when operations must be systemized. Many start-ups and family owned businesses out grow the founder very quickly … until the next creative growth phase.

6. Once you have acquired venture capital you have sold your company. Still repayment terms are sometimes impossible to pay off. Make sure you engineer your exit strategy when you secure venture capital funding to avoid the unfortunate boot.

From a consultant’s perspective, all too frequently core values and culture are ignored from the board room to front line services. Whether building your founding team, purchasing a new business, building the one you have or selling, values and culture bring balance to your team and work strategies.”

Have you made any of these mistakes as you tried to grow your business? If you’re just starting to grow are you worried about anything on this list?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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Our 29th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Kate from The Queensboro Blog. You can read what she had to say about us in her blog post: Youngentrepreneur.com: A Great Resource for Queensboro Customers.

Kate is a horticulturist, writer, voracious book reader, practitioner of yoga, cook, volleyball player, traveler and blogger. Blogging for Queensboro, and bringing the “behind the seams” tidbits and stories to Queensboro customers is her favorite job responsibility. She also enjoys looking at data! (She gained this appreciation only after taking four years to complete her thesis research and finish her paper. Now that data does not involve a school grade, she enjoys it!)

Kate identifies “shopping” as her main job hazard. She can find a use for just about every single one of Queensboro’s products—and is steadily acquiring each item from Queensboro.com, embroidered with her personal logo. Kate also keeps her finger on the pulse of apparel news around the ‘net. While this task is specifically research-oriented, it also results in clandestine (shhh—don’t tell her husband) personal purchases upon returning home from the office. It is a sacrifice she is willing to make. Must keep on top of the industry!

Thanks for the review Kate!

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Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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Last week I asked you what the best business advice was that you ever received and you responded!

So far the top results are:

“You cannot always stick around to see the results.”

“Don’t get caught up in making the best decision up front. Make a decision and make that decision the best.”

“Solve important customer problems. If you do that everything else follows.”

“A good many studies of research scientists have shown that achievement (at least below the genius level of an Einstein) depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity. .. It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem- which only restores that equilibrium of yesterday.”

“There are two things I try and do in business: 1. I never try to beat any body. I only try and beat myself. 2. I try and do my job better today than I did it yesterday.”

“Ethics first, then profit. And… throw away your junk mail or you’ll waste precious time on the most unproductive activity in the world.”

“Our subconscious minds responsibility is to keep us healthy correct? Keep the heart beating, muscles working, body healing, and all of that stuff. Well when I set up a goal or an affirmation I then back track it to preservation of the body. When you can link whatever desire you have to, how will this preserve my body and keep me healthy? This carries much more weight than, I want a million dollars, or a new car, or house.”

“Choose your battles!”

“Market yourself in busy and slow times. (That includes today’s sluggish economy.)”

“If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it.”

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

“Don’t put all your eggs in one friggin’ basket.”

“Do atleast 1 thing towards your success each day!”

“JUST DO IT!”

“Do not trust anyone. Everything in business is business, never let it get personal.”

“If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.”

“Keep costs as low as possible and focus on getting revenues as high as possible. Don’t be wastefull and track EVERYTHING!”

“You must take the challenge whether you succeed or not - the most important thing is –at least you tried.”

“Never ever give up”

“You have to learn from your mistakes, which inherently means you are going to make mistakes. Just don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

Thank you for the great advice so far! We still have another week left in the poll before I put together the final results and sort them by category. Do you have words of wisdom to share? What is the best piece of business advice that you have ever received?

Cast your vote today by commenting below or by visiting our forum post here.

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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It’s no secret that anchor text of your links help increase your prominence in Google’s rankings. The simple idea here is that instead of having your links say “click here” or “more info”, you should put your keywords in the the anchor text to increase your relevancy score for those keywords.

This strategy can be applied to internal links on your own website between pages or when asking for links from external websites.

But how many keywords can you put into the link? If you put a whole paragraph of text will Google recognize all the words or just the first few?

According to a new test by Hobo, a Scottish SEO firm, Google stops counting keywords after 55 characters (roughly 8 words).

What does this mean for your efforts to rank on the first page for that all-elusive key phrase? Make sure that your keywords on your links are within the first 55 characters! Check all your internal links and make the necessary changes immediately.

To take it a step further you can also log into your Google webmaster tools  to see which other websites are externally linking to your pages. What keywords are they using? Can you contact them and potentially get them to rewords unhelpful anchor text?

For SEO, it’s the usual 80-20 rule: You can get 80% of the way there doing 20% of the work. If you’re not targeting a difficult keyword then just changing title tags, file names, H1 tags and throwing in a few links will get you on page 1 in Google’s results.

If you are battling it out though with your competitors for a really tough key phrase then this anchor text strategy is worth exploring. Happy testing!

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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Most entrepreneurs I meet are running a mile a minute, have a million ideas in their heads, and barely have enough time to eat lunch every day. They chase every conceivable opportunity that comes across their tables because it might be an opportunity to make a quick buck.

The downside of chasing these opportunities is that you’re doing just that - constantly chasing. If you’re not focused in on being the best at one thing then you’ll always be chasing that next dollar.

I wanted to keep this post short today and let you reflect on one of my favorite pieces of business wisdom of all time. I just actually put it up on my wall at the office to keep a constant reminder for when I fall off track and someone comes up to me with a “great opportunity.” It’s by Andrew Carnegie:

“And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret: concentrate your energy, thought, and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it; adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.”

How focused are you on your business? Are you determined to stay on track or do you find yourself falling off very quickly?

I would love to hear your thoughts on Mr. Carnegie’s formula for success.

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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He was the fifteenth of seventeen children and his father didn’t have enough money to send him to school, but that didn’t stop Benjamin Franklin from becoming one of the most prominent figures in early American history.

As one of the Founding Fathers of the U.S., Franklin was also an entrepreneur, inventor and writer whose legacy would leave a lasting impact the world over.

With his commitment to personal achievement and to improving the lives of his fellow Americans, Franklin proved to be one of the most successful statesmen, writers, entrepreneurs and intellectuals of his time.

Given that his father was a soap maker who couldn’t afford education for his 17 children, Franklin’s success is all the more astonishing. How did Franklin take control of his situation and turn his destiny around?

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

Energy and persistence conquer all things. Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun-dial in the shade?
Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

He that blows the coals in quarrels that he has nothing to do with, has no right to complain if the sparks fly in his face.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. Never confuse motion with action.
If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting. A penny saved is a penny earned.

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Genius without education is like silver in the mine. Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out. The man who achieves makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all - doing nothing.

Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to get leisure. Drive thy business or it will drive thee.“

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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This week’s Entrepreneur University comes courtesy of Casey Gollan. Casey offers Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs and products for extraordinary business growth. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses.

Today Casey shares with us his advice on how small business owners can increase their cashflow:

“Cashflow Idea No. 1. Use ‘cashflow’ sales checklists.

For sales people, get them to ask every single customer to make another ‘add-on’ purchase with the one they’ve already made. A great way to do this is to have a shopping ‘checklist’ of what the customer could buy.

Cashflow Idea No. 2. Use ‘cashflow’ payment checklists.

For your administration team. Have a checklist of your customers and when their payments are due. Set up reminder e-mails/sms’s/and faxes for each customer to ensure their payment is received on time.

Cashflow Idea No. 3. Increase your prices.

Increase your prices and you may notice a couple of things. Firstly, ‘nothing’ may happen! That’s the ideal. Secondly you may lose a couple of customers, but they’ll typically be the ‘hard’ ones to deal with. If you increase your prices by 5 or even 10% across the board you’ve got heaps more profitability and more cashflow.

Cashflow Idea No. 4. Invite your past Customers to buy from you again.

Collect your customers details and then regularly invite them back to your business. There are many ways you can do this. You can make them an offer, have a ‘closed door’ sale, a new season VIP sale night, send them a monthly newsletter, telemarket them or let them know you’ve got a gift waiting for them when they call back.

Cashflow Idea No. 5. Change your trading terms.

Good cashflow is all about getting your money in as quick as you can, and paying it out as slow as you can. So change your trading terms to get your sales income in as quick as possible. If you’re at 30 days, change it to 14, 7 or even COD. The quicker your terms, the better your cashflow.

Cashflow Idea No. 6. Pay out slowly.

The other part of having good cashflow is paying out your suppliers ‘slowly’. Do it slowly, but keep a good relationship with your suppliers. So find out when is ‘acceptable’ for them. Currently, you may be paying on 30 days. Yet they may accept 45 or 60. If that’s the case you’ll have another 15 to 30 days to use the money.

Also consider paying on your credit cards. That way you’ll get an extra 30 to 55 days interest free. And if you have a ‘frequent flyer’ rewards system on your cards you can accumulate points faster.

Ideally try and follow the 7/60 rule. Have your money come in within 7 days, and pay your bills around 60 days.

Cashflow Idea No. 7. Accept only ‘good’ customers.

In light of the previous two points, only deal with customers that will gladly follow your trading terms. You may not like turning your back on some ‘slow’ customers, but it’s worth it when you get all ‘fast’ paying customers.

Cashflow Idea No. 8. Use only profitable marketing.

Try, test and measure all of your marketing. Financially analyse each marketing campaign so that you know it’s making a profit or a loss. Then use only the profitable ones. You’ll probably find that you’re wasting money on some marketing that isn’t bringing you in any money.

If you’re not marketing, start testing some small ads/flyers/e-mails and keep going until you find something that works, with an offer that works in an ad that works. If you’re already advertising, test your headline, test other offers, test other mediums.

Cashflow Idea No. 9. Get someone else to endorse you

If you want a lot of business quickly, you could find someone with a database that’s full of people who suit your target market. Then organise with them a relationship whereby you both end up winning and have them endorse you to their database. You may do the same for them, as did a hairdresser and a gymnasium, or a restaurant and a menswear shop.
These 9 ideas can increase your cashflow, and thereby increase your small business growth. So take each idea over the next 9 days and try each one in your business.”

Have you tried any of these techniques? What have you done to increase your cashflow?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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Our 28th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Katie from Why Down Books. You can read what she had to say about us in her blog post: YoungEntrepreneur.com - Sharing the Wealth.

“Why Down Books gives comprehensive book and industry reviews to provide you, the consumer, with the latest and most up-to-date information about products and industries you care about. If you’d like to see a book or industry reviewed, send us a comment, and we’ll be sure to post it!”

Thanks for the review Katie!

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Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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It’s time for another Young Entrepreneur poll! This time we’d like to know “What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?”

From all the people you’ve met, stories you’ve read, interviews you’ve listened to, what is the one piece of advice that has stood out the most and has helped you with your business?

Please share your wisdom by commenting here or in our Forums so that other up and coming young entrepreneurs can benefit from the advice as well!

To vote in the forums please check out our post:  What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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It’s been an exciting month if you are an online marketer with a series of Google updates and announcements. The two that made the biggest impact on me were:

1) AdSense Will Be Integrating With Analytics

“Here in AdSense, we’re big on data. From spreadsheets and graphs to weekly reports and metrics, we constantly turn to numbers when running our business. In a similar vein, we’ve heard your requests for more data to help you run your AdSense websites, which is why we’re excited to announce the integration of one of our personal favorite reporting tools, Google Analytics, with AdSense. We’re gradually rolling out this functionality to publishers, and you’ll see an invitation link at the top of your ‘Overview’ and ‘Advanced Reports’ pages when it’s been enabled for your account.

By integrating your AdSense account with a new or existing Analytics account, you’ll have access to in-depth reports about user activity on your site. In addition to the wealth of metrics already available in Analytics such as unique visitors and visitor language, you’ll now have access to granular reports that break down AdSense performance both by page and by referring site. Armed with this new data about user behavior, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions on how to improve the user experience on your site and optimize your AdSense units to increase your revenue potential.

We’ve highlighted a few ways to use the integrated metrics below, but we encourage you to be creative! Come up with your own to discover how useful (and fun) new data can be:

* Discover untapped markets. Use the geographies report to determine which regions are under-represented in your site’s user base. Optimize your site’s content to attract more of these under-represented users.

* Drive high-earning traffic to your site. Use the ‘Referring sites’ report to determine where the users who are making you the most money are coming from. Focus your efforts on getting traffic from these sources.

* Delve deeper into AdSense reports. Use the visualization feature to look at trends in your site’s AdSense performance over time, or by time of day.

Again, this feature is not yet available to all our publishers, but please keep checking your account for an invitation. “

2) Google Explains How Their Linking Algorithm Works

“Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are merit-based and freely-volunteered as an editorial choice, they’re also one of the positive signals to Google about your site’s importance. Other signals include things like our analysis of your site’s content, its relevance to a geographic location, etc. As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.

How do these signals factor into ranking?

Let’s say I have a site, example.com, that offers users a variety of unique website templates and design tips. One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.

Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.

So how can you engage more users and potentially increase merit-based inbound links?

Many webmasters have written about their success in growing their audience. We’ve compiled several ideas and resources that can improve the web for all users.

Create unique and compelling content on your site and the web in general

• Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

  If you’re interested in blogging, see our Help Center for specific tips for bloggers.

• Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.
• Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.
• Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.

For more actionable ideas, see one of my favorite interviews with Matt Cutts for no-cost tips to help increase your traffic. It’s a great primer for webmasters. (Even before this post, I forwarded the URL to many of my friends.

Pursue business development opportunities

Use Webmaster Tools for “Links > Pages with external links” to learn about others interested in your site. Expand the web community by figuring out who links to you and how they’re linking. You may have new audiences or demographics you didn’t realize were interested in your niche. For instance, if the webmasters for example.com noticed external links coming from art schools, they may start to engage with the art community — receiving new feedback and promoting their site and ideas.

Of course, be responsible when pursuing possible opportunities in this space. Don’t engage in mass link-begging; no one likes form letters, and few webmasters of quality sites are likely to respond positively to such solicitations. In general, many of the business development techniques that are successful in human relationships can also be reflected online for your site.

Now that you’ve read more information about internal links, outbound links, and inbound links (today’s post , we’ll see you in the blog comments! Thanks for joining us for links week.

Update — Here’s one more business development opportunity:
Investigate your “Diagnostics > Web/mobile crawl > Crawl error sources” to not only correct broken links, but also to cultivate relationships with external webmasters who share an interest in your site. (And while you’re chatting, see if they’ll correct the broken link. This is a fantastic way to turn broken links into free links to important parts of your site.

In addition to contacting these webmasters, you may also wish to use 301 redirects to redirect incoming traffic from old pages to their new locations. This is good for users who may still have bookmarks with links to your old pages… and you’ll be happy to know that Google appropriately flows PageRank and related signals through these redirects.”

How will this information impact your business? I would love you get your thoughts once you’ve had time to digest this post!

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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