For additional information and registration please visit
www.russiahouse.org/wrf.php

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1. You can start it in your *spare* time, just carve out x hours / day / week to do *damage*.

2. Keep your expenditures down, be creative. Money doesn’t create great companies. Hard work & great people create great companies. In fact too much money will make you fat & happy (that’s not good). Stay lean and mean as long as possible. And don’t sell your soul to the devil for outside money. They want control for their money. It generally is not worth it to give up your control. If you and your management team don’t have 51% of the controlling votes, be very worried and fix that asap.

3. Pick something you like doing, then it won’t be much of a chore to do.

4. Social media and networking (both online and in-person) take marketing costs down to zero. Again, it’s just a time investment. Network, network, network…

5. Test. Measure. Refine. Rinse, repeat.

6. Never stop learning. Become a student of your business, business in general and of life.

7. Give back, help others.

8. Now is the time to start, now is the time. (here is Seth Godin’s entry on “When to start”)

9. When you are hiring employees, hire people smarter than yourself & that share your values. Otherwise you will find out about the law of crappy people pretty quickly. The same applies to finding co-founders. This is like marrying, you need to court first. Don’t rush in, fools rush in as Elvis said. Try before you buy. If you are in doubt, pass. A lot of the best deals in your life are the ones you don’t make.

10. Outsource, automate and eliminate as many annoying non-core to your biz tasks as possible. Put your focus where it should be. If you are a designer, focus on design and the biz of design. If you are an accountant focus on accounting and the biz of accounting.

Outsource automate and eliminate what others can do better and cheaper than you can. E.g., I handle all the essential but bothersome tasks of registering domains / hosting email and developing websites / web hosting. These are all tasks that can nickel & dime small biz’ time and energy. *shameless plug, over.*

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Resources:

This is a great site with lots ideas and tips from other entrepreneurs. http://mixergy.com/

Here’s a good snippet of material from Mixergy.

Watch this — David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08

Neil Patel has a pretty comprehensive list of resources.

The Entrepreneur’s Handbook – 59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Applications to Grow Your Business

Y Combinator founder Paul Graham’s seminal essay  “How to start a startup“

Mark Cuban’s — A Couple of My Rules for Startups

In Mark’s post there’s a link to Jason Calacanasis’ “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)”

Kevin Patrick’s “Ten Commandments of Endurance”, I believe they apply to starting and running a company.

Simon Sinek’s presentation @ TED video: How great leaders inspire action. Start by asking why.

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Reading list:

Rework

Founders at Work

Built to Last & Good To Great

Outliers: The Story of Success

The 4-Hour Workweek & the http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity & watch David’s presentation @ Google here

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose & watch Tony’s presentation @ google here

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Summation:

Create very small goals that are attainable and scale up from there. You will become disillusioned if you decide you’re going to create the next huge company that’s a fusion of Apple, Google, Facebook & Walmart. Those are lightning strikes. Mark Zuckerberg says start by doing the easy tasks. This way you gain momentum, and before you know it you will be passing milestone after milestone. Paul Buckheit creator of Gmail & Friendfeed said with Gmail, they tried to get 100 happy users inside Google. It was harder than they thought, then they scaled up.

Friends or ‘the crowd’? Answer; the crowd.

Using my friends to discover movies, music, books…it’s fine in concept. However, I find the social graph an extremely flawed notion. E.g., I’ve rated nearly 2k movies @ Netflix. Their computers / robots / algorithms know what I will like better than my friends do. The problem with getting the firehose of updates (stream) on Facebook, et al., is that the feed is not contextually relevant. Say what? That is, it’s not segmented to your tastes, it’s scattershot.

I choose highly vetted and organized data vs. the F-book blast of banality. E.g., there are services where I found people with similar taste in music; Last.fm, the late great Imeem, and http://blip.fm/nateal33t I trust their judgement more than I do of my “friends”. Using a social service to cross reference and find me friends based on my musical taste, I can trust this method because it’s relevant data. This is why I love Yelp, nateal33t.yelp.com I have Yelp friends who have steered me to great restaurants, hotels, camping grounds, you name it. I see someone on Yelp who has similar taste to mine in X, I then compare that to what the crowd says. Then my chances of finding a place that I will like are exponentially better than just walking into a place off of the street.

Segmented social media friends by category (music, food, movies…) will deliver better recommendations than my friends will. Better yet, segmented friends by category, crowdsourced finds + robots = win. Think Amazon’s recommendations or Netflix’s recommendations along w/ user reviews = perfect.

The bottom line is that using these tools I expend far less energy searching for stuff. The right stuff will find me effortlessly.

ChannelPro “Social Networking, Just for Partners” By Samuel Greengard | New sites such as Partnerpedia, PartnerUP, and even IBM’s PartnerWorld offer “an effective and targeted marketing tool that connects my company with partners and customers,” says Nathan Greenlee, a solution provider from Denver.

Forbes – “We’re currently using Partnerpedia for its portal and social networking features, and have already seen business coming from the community,” said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new lead management feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy and cost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”

Reuters – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new leadmanagement feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy andcost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”

Tech Target – “Do social networking sites deliver ROI for channel partners?” By Amy Kucharik.

Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal at (aTs) al33t solutions — a small, Denver-based provider of IT on-demand for SMBs and Partnerpedia Open Community user — said his company uses the site for collaboration and to save time. “I don’t have to go blind into trade shows or networking events anymore. I can see who’s going, what they do, etc. The old way was to go to some lunch or dinner event and hope you met the right people. Now, you can both qualify and network online. That saves a ton of time.”
Greenlee said that his company had also experienced strong ROI from social networking. “In the case of Partnerpedia, we spent very little time there and have two very strong partners that we are moving forward on projects with. We found like-minded partners there with little to zero effort. So that was impressive. We will definitely spend more time on that particular site.”
Greenlee said it’s best to stick with the site you are using rather than spreading out into newer sites. “The more you participate, the more goodwill you build up,” he said. “Also, smart sites give value, discounts, and preference to members. Just as with in-person networking, you have to be smart where you spend your time and money.
Social media: Present and future of channel marketing? Regardless of what platform channel partners choose or the amount of investment they make, social media platforms may be an inescapable part of the future of channel marketing. “Our attitude is, they’re here to stay,” Greenlee said. “Don’t embrace them at your own peril. As collaboration tools and as platforms to market companies, they are the present and the future.”

Wall Street Select – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions.

TradingMarkets.com – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions.

TmcNet – According to Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions…

Whohub.com interview with Nathan Greenlee, co-founder of (aTs) al33t solutions.

Partnerpedia interview with Nathan Greenlee, co-founder of (aTs) al33t solutions on social media available on iTunes

Constructive Media – Partnerpedia Now Offers Built-in Lead Management … community,” said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions…

Digital 50 – The new built-in features are part of the Partnerpedia Open Community and … said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (ats) al33t solutions…

Phone Plus Mag - said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new lead management feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy and cost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”

Allbusiness.com – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions.

crmdirectory.com – “We’re currently using Partnerpedia for its portal and social networking features, and have already seen business coming from the community,” said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new lead management feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy and cost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”

StreetInsider.com – “We’re currently using Partnerpedia for its portal and social networking features, and have already seen business coming from the community,” said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions.

The Free Library – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new lead management feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy and cost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”

TTnet – said Nathan Greenlee, co-founder and principal of (aTs) al33t solutions. “The new lead management feature is very exciting for us since it provides an easy and cost-effective way for us to manage our sales leads and pipeline.”