You may have just started your business and do not know how to scale it or have an idea and are not sure how to launch it or even how to make sure it is a good idea. This is the time to take a step back and get some help. You can start by reading this.

At all stages of a business it is important to seek outside counsel to make sure your business is on track. However, in the start-up phase it is critical. Vetting the idea and the business plan is critical to success. There are many resources out there to help. Some to help you get going and provide you support can be relatively low cost or even free.

Local Library

The local library and its librarians can be a world of help and can either turn you on to workshops to help meet your needs or direct you to books that will help. Visit Chicago Public Library -- it has an area with online resources that can help you get started.

S.C.O.R.E

A nonprofit organization made up of mainly retired business professionals that are dedicated to helping small businesses get started, grow and operate. This is a low to moderate cost option for business workshops on various topics or even one-on-one assistance to work on your specific business, offering as much or as little assistance as needed.

N.A.W.B.O.

The National Association of Women Business Owners is a great source for women in business. Providing networking, resources and information for women at all stages of business.

If you need a bit more intensive help and are ready to jump start your business an organization like Impact Engine may be just what you need. Impact Engine is a 16-week accelerator program for the impact entrepreneur. It's accepting applications now until June 30, 2013 for its second class. It's looking for entrepreneurs that want to address today’s societal and environmental challenges. What's somewhat unusual -- and good for you! -- is that the Impact Engine is not limiting the opportunity to just tech startups. It's open to all types of ideas that want to have a positive impact.

These are just a few of many resources out there including local chambers and industry associations that can provide support. Take some time to explore and find the resources that match your needs so that you can give your idea the best chance of succeeding.

As managing partner of MJF Partners LLC, Ms. Flynn brings over eight years of experience in small business and non-profit development. Prior to founding MJF Partners, Ms. Flynn was the executive director of the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce. As executive director she brought her passion for independent business and community building to Lincoln Square and created a sense of place that helped to transform the Lincoln Square Community. Flynn is a skilled and experienced executive with a proven track record of creating a successful business climate balanced by strong values of sustainability and community. This experience is utilized as she partners with businesses to maximize resources and opportunities to exceed their goals.

As working from home and freelancing becomes an undeniable fact of life, so do co-working spaces -- places where people and companies gather to work next to each other, collaborate and share ideas.

My game company, Lunar Giant, recently opened its first co-working space called SpaceLab in the Chicago suburb of Mokena, about 45 minutes south of the city. Though not the first space we’ve started (we also founded the hackerspace Workshop 88), there have been some real challenges and new lessons to learn along the way.

Here, we'll go into the work behind building an online community for a co-working space.

Building an Online Community

An online community is critical to the success of any organization reliant on membership. Building a strong online community generates passive leads and keeps existing members engaged. It also helps you generate buzz for events.

By using these online tools to promote offline events, you’ll bring people together and get them interested in what you’re doing.

Meetup

People use Meetup to find events and organizations near them. It’s a very passive tool for recruiting new members as well as announcing new events to people who “join” your group. There’s a small monthly payment ($10-15 depending on the plan), but after that, the time investment for maintaining this is rather low. I create a Meetup group right at the outset of every community I build. You’d be surprised at how fast the membership grows from zero to 300.

Wordpress and Themeforest

People sometimes focus too much on the things that don’t matter when they’re starting a business. A website is not one of those things, but building a custom one at the outset generally is. I’m a server management guy myself, but if you aren’t into that, you can grab hosting at a place like Bluehost for about $4 a month, do a Wordpress quick install using the tools they provide and then wander over to Themeforest for a nice looking skin for your new site. Use your blog to announce events, show the things happening at your space, provide information about what you’re doing, and show pricing for signup.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite handles event tickets, check-ins and payments. Any time you’re going to host an event, use Eventbrite.

Talkerapp

I found out about this tool from the guys at Workshop 88. Talkerapp is a free chat tool that you can use to keep all of the members in the organization talking. Great for creating a sense of community, even when people aren’t at the space. 

Jay Margalus is a game developer at Lunar Giant, an adjunct professor at DePaul University, and the creator of the co-working space SpaceLab. He can be reached @Poplicola on Twitter.

As working from home and freelancing becomes an undeniable fact of life, so do co-working spaces -- places where people and companies gather to work next to each other, collaborate and share ideas.

My game company, Lunar Giant, recently opened its first co-working space called SpaceLab in the Chicago suburb of Mokena, about 45 minutes south of the city. Though not the first space we’ve started (we also founded the hackerspace Workshop 88), there have been some real challenges and new lessons to learn along the way.

Here, we'll go into the upfront and ongoing costs of opening a co-working space.

Upfront Costs

Costs are based on assumptions of real estate in your area, as well as a lean startup methodology. Starting small (both as a space, and in the amount of “stuff” you buy at the outset) is important to staying on budget.

• Rent: Your initial payment will be one month, plus another month down. When looking for spaces, consider location, size and investment required for updates. At about 1,000 square feet, in a good location in the suburbs, with minimal buildout required, you’re looking at about $2,000.
• Insurance: You’re looking for a bare bones plan that’ll insure about $20,000 in assets. This will run you about $500.
• Furniture: This includes chairs, tables and bookshelves. Bargain hunting at thrift shops, Goodwills and such is a always a good idea. Expect to be shelling out $1,200 - $2,000, minimum, for the furniture you need just to get going.
• Other Necessities: Whiteboards, projector, router, printer, fridge, coffee maker and a door access system. $1,400.

Ongoing Costs

• Utilities: Always overestimate on this. $200.
• Internet access: Comcast Business Class Premium will be $110.
• Maintenance: Random costs you’ll incur monthly, including printer paper, ink and repairs will run about $100.
• Rent: $1,000. This is not included in the total, as it’s already counted in upfront costs.

Total: $5,510 - $6,310

Jay Margalus is a game developer at Lunar Giant, an adjunct professor at DePaul University, and the creator of the co-working space SpaceLab.  He can be reached @Poplicola on Twitter.

Chicago graduates Derek Tarnow, 26, and Zahra Tashakorina, 28, turned a class project into a professional innovative concept that caught the attention of technology accessory company Logitech. 

Talk to any business owner and they’ll tell you rebranding can be a slippery slope. JCPenney, for example, has received backlash from customers for many branding decisions, including the hiring (and firing) of CEO Ron Johnson, signing on spokesperson Ellen DeGeneres, implementing new sale strategies and changing its logo, just to name a few. After losing and confusing much of its core customer base, JCPenney has launched a new campaign to help it reconnect through more effective marketing and messaging. Consider the following tips to help revamp and update your brand identity successfully.

Don’t underestimate your employees

Communication is important. Communication, coupled with employee training is the golden ticket. Employees are your greatest brand ambassadors and internal branding has become just as vital as external branding. Training your employees to communicate your message ensures everyone is on the same page and understands the how and the why behind the brand change before launching externally. Gathering input from employees is often very powerful -- they are the ones in the trenches and can offer valuable insight about your core customers and their wants and needs.

Enhance the company culture

Rebranding offers an opportunity to take an honest look at your work culture to take stock. Do you have a purpose? Is it reflective in your business brand? Keep what is working and change what isn’t. Having a culture based on shared values and respect is key when preparing to launch a “new” identity. Everyone on the team needs to be confident in the brand and be able to talk eloquently about the direction it’s taking.

Develop purpose-driven messaging

I love this quote from Roy M. Spence, Jr., author of “It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For.” He says, “When the ashes clear from the economic Armageddon, the only organizations left standing will be the ones that actually stand for something. Without a purpose that improves peoples’ lives, and contributes to the greater good, organizations will struggle.” Essentially, if you aren’t purpose-driven, you’re not going to survive. Develop good content that can be shared consistently across all marketing channels including social media, PR, advertising and word-of-mouth.

At the end of the day, understanding who you are and what you stand for is the most effective way to revamp your brand successfully, and ultimately, to gain new, loyal customers. That goes for big and small companies alike. Understand your purpose, live it and communicate it for long term brand success.

George Rafeedie is the founder of Tell Your Story Brand Communications Inc. After years at bigger agencies and corporations, George started to build a nimble and flexible agency for companies who don’t need a big, fat agency. He loves business-to-business marketing and storytelling, and has a purpose of making things happen so organizations can be successful and its people happy. Follow George @grafeedie or find out more at linkedin.com/in/grafeedie. He can be reached at grafeedie@tellyourstoryinc.com

The term “social media” can be intimidating for most small businesses. But for small businesses, social media is a potent promotional tool.

Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. You are probably most familiar with Yahoo! and Google. It is through these search engines that your customers do their “shopping” for services and products. The more mentions you have, the easier it will be for customers to find you.

Some 167 million people will shop online this year, which will increase to 192 million by 2016 (spending an average of $1,800 per person per year). Social commerce sales should total $9.2 billion by the end of this year and are expected to climb to $14.25 billion in 2013 and $30 billion in 2015.

I have used social media from the very beginning of my Assisting Hands franchise. Not only is it the best way to reach my target audience of technology-savvy baby boomers, but healthcare is the most widely searched topic on the Internet. So having a social media presence was a no-brainer.

The first thing you must do is to invest in a workable, well-designed website. Don’t put up a website just to have one. It must reflect your business’ advantages, so it is worthwhile for people to visit it. It needs to convey why your services or products are better than your competitors.

If you don’t really have any skills in this area, like most of us, hire a firm that knows how to create websites. Not your college-aged kid or nephew/niece, unless they really know how to build a site. A well-designed site promotes your small business, while a poorly designed site detracts from it.

Make the site easy to navigate. That is, make it easy to move from page to page so visitors can find what they are looking for. If you waste people’s time, they won’t return to your website. That also means regularly adding new content so the site doesn’t get stale.

Your site must attract attention immediately. The use of graphics helps, as well as bold print and topics that will resonate with visitors.

The biggest mistake small businesses make is not promoting the site. People aren’t going to visit your website if they don’t know about it. List the website on every piece of promotional material you distribute, including business cards.

If you are uncomfortable with social media, think about attending classes at the local community college. They often have computer classes especially for small business.

Invest in social media and it will bring dividends to your small business.

Contributed by Richard Ueberfluss, PT, MBA, FACHE, the president/owner of Assisting Hands® Home Care franchises in Hinsdale and Naperville; and who is also a regional franchise developer. Contact Richard Ueberfluss at assistinghands.com/Naperville.

Chicago weather is dreary and confusing and very weird, so here’s some sunny news: According to Intuit Payroll’s May Small Business Indexes, “revenue trends of the nation’s small businesses with fewer than 20 employees shows that small businesses created 35,000 jobs in May.”

Also from the Indexes:

• “The revenue index indicates that small businesses overall saw revenue decline in April of 0.6 percent. Among the industries tracked by the Index, none saw an increase last month.
• The ‘Real Estate, Rental, and Leasing services’ industry saw the biggest decline in April at 1.5 percent, followed by ‘Retail’ with a 0.8 percent declined, followed by ‘Healthcare and Social Assistance’ services with a 0.7 percent decline.
• Average monthly pay for small business employees remained the same at $2,676 in May, or 0.0 percent; and monthly hours worked decreased 0.12 percent in May, corresponding to 106.7 hours.”

Apparently, small business revenues are approaching pre-2007 recession levels. So, keep it up, small businesses! You can read more here.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

I’m going to level with you: I’m frustrated. Why? I make my living managing social media accounts for OpticsPlanet.com, and I love to come up with clever new ways to reach people and see what other companies come up with. But lately I keep seeing amazing companies fail miserably on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. I’m not going to name names, but if you take a quick look at some of the world’s biggest brands you’ll notice they only get half of their social media marketing right. They ask interesting questions and provide humorous or thought provoking material to get the conversation started.

But then they stop. The conversation ends. There’s no follow up or appreciation for fans who comment or like their posts. A little later they start another conversation in which they have no intention of partaking.

Would you want to talk to someone who does this to you?

This approach is very old-school marketing. I, the marketer, tell you what to do. “Buy this.” “Enter our contest.” “Sign up for my newsletter.” And that’s it. You do it.

But social media is about dialogue, and dialogues have a give and take. The best thing about the back and forth is that it makes for great conversations.

A great example of how I was able to leverage dialogue came up in the last week. I posted a picture of a firearm from a recent trade show, and asked our fans which of the rifle scopes we sell they would use on that gun. I received around twenty or thirty comments in the first half hour, which was less than I’d hoped for. So I responded to almost every comment. I asked follow up questions about why a fan picked one scope over another, or if their choice was for military or hunting purposes. Not everyone responded back, but enough did to boost the comment total to over 120. Even though I accounted for about a third of those comments the number of people who saw the post skyrocketed. Facebook looks at how well a post engages fans and promotes those posts that do the best. By having an old fashioned conversation with fans I was able to personalize OpticsPlanet and spread a post to a larger number of people. I’m sure you can see why I didn’t ask the question and walk away.

So step down from the soapbox, shake some hands and have a conversation. 

Brian Coughlin is an SEO analyst for OpticsPlanet.com, the leading Internet retailer for technical and high performance gear. His passion for social media engagement and search engine dominance helped OpticsPlanet rank in 2012 on the Social Media Top 300 by Internet Retailer.

During my 5+ years as a freelance web developer, I worked with a variety of clients. Some were really exciting to work with and made me excited to work on their project, while others were boring and failed to keep much of my interest.

Over time, I began to notice attributes about certain clients that made them fun to work with. These became the type of clients I sought to work with again and again.

Show your passion for your project

Developers enjoy working with clients who are passionate about their idea and are excited to see it brought to life. They don't want to work with people who could care less what happens to their project and show little day to day interest in what's being built. Let your developer see how excited you are to be building your project, and they'll get excited too.

Demonstrate your existing knowledge

You've researched your idea a ton and you most likely have some solid knowledge on what it is you want to create. Let your developer know this! Developers enjoy working with people who are educated about what they're creating because that signifies a certain level of commitment.

Show your commitment to your project

Developers enjoy working with clients who are serious about and committed to their project. They prefer clients who want to build a solid relationship and aren't going to disappear after three days because they decided weren't serious about their project after all. The more that you are committed to your project, the more that your developer will be excited to work with you.

Tim Jahn is the co-founder and CTO of matchist, the leading matching site for entrepreneurs and startups to find top quality developers.

It’s no secret that Chicago has been thrust to the front of public education debates. Between the Chicago Public Schools strike last year and the current controversy surrounding CPS school closings, residents have questioned whether it’s the school system or the city that is failing our kids.

The scrutiny on the inner city schools has caught my attention, but it has also focused toward one school that’s doing something positive amid the chaos. The Chicago Tech Academy, founded in 2009, is located in the heart of Pilsen and provides students something not many neighboring schools can offer: opportunity.

Here, high-school students learn how to write code, build mobile apps and build a start-up from the ground up, all while fulfilling the state math and English requirements.

Now, thanks to the involvement of Chicago’s Lightbank office, a venture capitalist firm, the students are also learning how to write business plans, and develop, pitch and fund their start-up ideas. The students turn out scalable solutions for real world problems. Just recently, four sophomores presented their own business plans to a panel of investors, entrepreneurs and Chicago tech leaders; the winning idea was a price-comparison scanning app and review aggregator for in-store shopping.

Students don’t face economic or social barriers for acceptance into the program, and many of the teachers at Chicago Tech Academy are retired industry professionals who are there because of their passion, not because of a paycheck.

The Chicago Tech Academy is graduating its founding class of seniors on June 15 and continuing to educate all those interested in becoming tech entrepreneurs.

Adam Fridman is the founder of MeetAdvisors.com, a social network for entrepreneurs. MeetAdvisors allows for professionals to give free advice to those seeking help with their business ventures. Forbes has coined MeetAdvisors "Yelp for entrepreneurs." Armed with a Master of Science in Finance and experience in corporate finance and investment banking, Adam spent the past 10 years tackling a number of ventures with a focus on business development and strategy.

Recently you may have noticed a change in the LinkedIn search function. The obvious change is that the search bar has moved from the right side to the center of the screen. How you are able to search using LinkedIn has fundamentally changed.

Along with that, there are some new features for your normal search, when you search from your main new feed page, and there are a few opportunities with these changes. No longer do you select from a drop-down what type of thing you are searching for. Now the search function automatically displays connections, companies and groups in one long search column. Plus, you now have the ability to search by skills.

In a piece last month I discussed the state of endorsements and their apparent lack of relevance. Is the search going to be where we finally see a reason to ask for endorsements?

Prepare to be disappointed, for now.

At first rollout the search function was a little chaotic. The companies and groups search seemed to be functioning normally. It was the skills search that provides interesting results. It has evened out a little, but not fully.

When conducting a search on skills the results are a little inconsistent with expectations. Search for “social media” and it returns the usually expected industry experts. Search for “SEO” and a few weeks ago a guy with zero connections, but the word SEO as the first keyword in his headline was displaying as the first return. That has since been fixed, but when you search for “LinkedIn” and Hillary Clinton outranks Jeff Weiner, the CEO of LinkedIn…enough said.

It is difficult to see how LinkedIn is creating it search returns. When you look at who is ranking there appears to be no correlation to the amount of endorsements they have. Even after doing a scrape of their LinkedIn profile for most used keywords the functionality of the ranking is not clear. What this does mean for you is there is now a streamlined search function within LinkedIn to find connections, groups and companies. Even though it is not perfected, it will help you find better groups to join and easier access to better new connections. 

Jabez LeBret is the author of the Amazon No. 1 bestselling law office marketing book How to Turn Clicks Into Clients. As a partner at Get Noticed Get Found, a legal marketing agency, over the last nine years he has delivered over 800 keynote addresses in six countries. His main area of expertise is managing Gen Y in the workplace, advanced Facebook strategies, LinkedIn strategies, Google+, SEO, local directory optimization, and online marketing. 

We all make task lists -- and no matter how you manage them, whether online, with an app or with a Post-It note, eventually there are tasks that just keep getting rewritten. As these guilt-ridden tasks follow us from week to week, we feel conflicted as to when we'll find time to get them done.

The problem may be something you haven't thought of. Perhaps the task that follows you from week to week isn't actually a task. Ask yourself with each task, "Is this really a task? Or is it a project?"

• Tasks are singular in nature. "Take out the trash" or "file papers on desk" are clear tasks that will take a specific amount of time with a definitive set of skills.

• Projects are compounded -- multiple sets of tasks that come together. "Strategic Plan for 2014" or "clean the house" aren't singular tasks you can do in any one moment.

After you’ve differentiated which items on your to-do list are tasks, and which are projects, here’s how you break the projects down into manageable, schedule-able tasks.

1. Break projects into minuscule tasks. What are the small tasks you would need to complete in order to get the project off the ground and completed successfully?
2. Order your tasks. Know where you need to start and where you need to go. Picking up a project in the middle of the list may leave important tasks undone. First thing's first.
3. Note the time it takes to complete each task. If the first step in the project is a time consuming task, but the rest of the project is quick and easy, you know you'll need to set aside a larger chunk of time at the beginning to complete the project successfully.
4. Press the start button. To complete a project, you must actually start the project. Add to your task list the first task in a project immediately, and you’re more likely to finish the full project.

By identifying your "didn't do" items as tasks or projects and laid out the key steps to making a project easily digestible, you might just find that your task list gets done every week and less of those items are making it from list to list.

Marcy Twete is the founder/CEO of Career Girl Network and the author of the book "You Know Everybody! A Career Girl’s Guide to Building a Network That Works," to be released in summer 2013.

“If I saw the train coming today, I’d let it hit me again.”

This comment came from a 25-year-old young man I interviewed for a branding assignment. The client is a $2 billion leader in the medical device industry. Over the past few years, they acquired eight companies and needed to do a comprehensive re-brand: new name, new logo, look, website and messaging platform. After a series of focus groups, it became clear that telling the stories of their patients and clinicians was the most compelling way to engage the marketplace.

It turns out, their founder was a Civil War vet who lost his leg and designed the first prosthetic limb with a knee. The young man who said the remark above was just 15 when he was hit by a train and lost both legs below the knee as well as his right arm. Today, he’s a rockstar. He counsels veterans and serves as an ambassador for the company that helped him build a new life.

For marketers seeking to engage with their customers or attract new prospects, there is nothing as compelling as storytelling. In simple, black-and-white photography, we put the young man’s image on the home page with his own words. Click through rates skyrocketed. Along with his story was the story of a 60-year-old man who suffered similar disabilities following a motorcycle accident. He spoke of being in the oil business (the accident happened six months before the Gulf spill.) He told me, “I knew if I could get on a boat and help with the cleanup, I’d get my life back.”

You may be thinking, “Okay, this company does dramatic things. It’s ripe for storytelling.”

Yes, but every company has its lore. Just spend some time with internal teams. I’ve heard things like “I have over 4,000 resellers and they all have manufacturer’s reps; I don’t know who’s buying my product.” That was the basis of an entire new sales and marketing push. And this one: “”We’re flat lining; without a disruptive new product, we’re stalled out.”

That one kick-started an ideation session that resulted in a whole new category of sanitary surgical instrument kits -- distributed through vending machines! Stories are not just the stuff of sexy headlines; great stories are the heart and soul of the brand. They not only serve as a communication tool, but fuel for innovation. Where do they reside? With your people and your customers. Just ask them!

Brooke Lighton is a principal at Connascent, Inc., a branding and sales consulting firm based in Chicago. Brooke is a native New Yorker who started her career as a science writer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She segued into advertising, working first as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and later as a Group CD at Foote Cone & Belding. In 1988, Brooke launched her own agency, Lighton Colman. Today, she is a principal and heads creative services for Connascent, a branding and sales consulting firm. You can see their work at www.connascent.com.

Once upon a time, “Angry Birds” was just a little-known game on the App Store. Eventually, though, well, I don’t need to tell you about what’s become of the title by Finnish computer game developer Rovio Entertainment. It’s a massive empire now, with its most recent outposts being an online TV show (which a “Simpsons” writer is assisting on) and now a book.

It can be easy for a small developer to look at that and scowl, or look at it with puppy-dog eyes and wonder, “How can I replicate this success?”

I can’t answer that and won’t be trying to in this post. Instead, I am taking a closer look at the expansion itself and trying to tease out whether there’s such a thing as being too saturated as an IP for an App Store game — and how to tell when it’s time to branch out into new territory.

“The key to expanding your services while not blowing the budget is to go slowly,” explains Flynn Zaiger, CEO of OnlineOptimism. "It has taken the ‘Angry Birds’ franchise 4 years — equivalent
to a century in Internet time — to expand to the point where they're now on bookshelves. You can't just expect everyone to want your brand in multiple formats next week. Start by producing your product in a new, and just slightly different format.”

Zaiger is referring to the puzzle game’s evolution from iPhone game to a game on other platforms, too, and also incorporating other IPs, like “Star Wars.” It does indeed create the perception that the game is bigger than it already is, which is silly to say when discussing “Angry Birds,” but you know what I mean. But it also enables them, as Zaiger says, “to transform from a simple time-waster to two words which stand for fun, friendly, and slightly silly entertainment.”

“There is an opportunity for expansion for almost everyone with a little creativity,” says financial planner Hank Coleman.

But before you start picking out pools and butlers, there is, of course something to remember with this whole thing: “It’s bad because as a popular culture phenomenon, it's really an outlier
rather than the norm,” says Gregory Ciotti of Help Scout. “Most businesses expand through a more natural groundswell effect, such as trickling up their SMB solution to the enterprise level.”

The groundswell effect is important to note — nobody’s going to hold it against the original game that made “Angry Birds” so popular if its spinoff soda isn’t so great. So, grow slow, and maintain quality.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

After reading a post by my business coach about three mistakes small business owners often make, one mistake in particular resonated with me the most: don't be an island. It's something, especially as an introvert, that I tend to do really easily. What's an introvert, you ask? Does it mean I'm shy, afraid of public speaking, slightly weird and unsociable? Not at all. And it's certainly not an unusual personality type for successful leaders -- think Steve Jobs, Larry Page or Warren Buffett. What it does mean is that we embrace solitude, we seek depth over breadth, and we exude calmness. Because our default setting is to live in our own brains, though, sometimes we just plain forget to share what we're thinking and seek out commiseration.

But you don't have to be an introvert to be an island. Even the most outgoing, thrill seeking, soak-it-up-socialite business owners can get buried in paperwork or lost in management. When I start to feel stacked-up emails closing in around me and wonder if I'm the only one mishandling my work/life balance, I try to remember something my horse trainer tells me: "Don't look at the ground unless that's where you want to end up." In other words, look where you want to go. Chances are, when you open up your peripheral vision a little and relax, you'll find other people within arm's reach.

I used to think that "not being an island" meant going out to networking events, bar hopping with business buddies or spending a lot of time on LinkedIn. And granted, those are always options and can definitely put you in front of a lot of mainland. But if you're like me and do better in one-on-one scenarios, think about grabbing lunch with a friend in your industry, asking a supplier how they deal with strong headwinds, or even finding some common ground with a new client. Seriously, one of the best conversations I had recently was with someone who called my shop looking for a better business card experience, after having just been burned by a cheap and fast printer.

After I sit down for a quick cup of coffee with another business owner, I feel a little less like it's just me against the world. And when I do manage to get myself to a networking group (preferably one where I already know some folks), I'm reminded that I'm not totally crazy. Maybe we all default a little towards high school when we're staring at the ground. We think our problems are unique and that no one could ever understand what we're going through. Being a business owner is hard sometimes. A lot of the time. Take my advice and try to remember to look up every once in a while.

Nina Interlandi Bell, co-owner of Tweedle Press, a small letterpress printing company in Chicago’s Rogers Park. Nina is Tweedle Press' fearless leader of design, letterpress printing, and sustainability research. Her laserlike focus and penchant for mission-hood make her prone to both fits of creative excitement and, occasionally, an overwhelming urge to do everything.

Who doesn’t love a good joke? Sometimes the funniest ones are only funny to a handful of people -- an "inside" joke. Mingling your way through a crowd, shaking hands, meeting, greeting and getting to know new people. Good for business, right? Absolutely. And then an inimitable opportunity presents itself. The "inside joke" sparks laughter only among those who are “in” on the joke, perhaps even to the consternation of others. Inside jokes demonstrate that you and the others engaged are recalling something you’ve already shared.

Inside jokes identify you and the others involved as being on a separate, and higher plane of camaraderie, one not yet enjoyed or even understood by the others. It reveals a familiarity and a bond between you that the others don’t share. We could probably each recall at least one memory of sharing an inside joke. I know I sure can. Not only can I remember a time and place, but more affectionately, I can recall the people with whom I’ve shared inside jokes. While they may be silly and even insignificant in nature, they have the potential to promote and progress a relationship toward an even closer bond with each chuckle or peal of laughter.

The Humor of Seriousness

With all due attention to business etiquette, it is also important to foster an atmosphere of relaxed communication with others, especially in the earliest stages of a professional relationship. Failing to do so can be costly in the way of lost opportunities that might have been generated by something as simple as a smile or a laugh. No extra cost or effort at all. Consider how many people you encounter in a day who fail to offer a simple smile. Don’t make the mistake of being one of them. It is sadly humorous to contemplate such needlessly missed opportunities.

The Seriousness of Humor

I’m not suggesting business schools teach standup comedy, but humor can open the door for serious business, whether directly because of it or by referral to others. Why is that? Let’s call it the “likeability” factor. It distinguishes you, sets you apart from others and in a business context, from your competition. How often do you like to be around others with whom you share that type of camaraderie where humor freely flows versus those with whom there is none? The thing about relationships, meaningful ones, is that they have established various levels of emotional bonds. Humor, in all seriousness, is one of those factors that help to achieve that bond, furthering the relationship.

While humor is no substitute for substance, you can use humor to build camaraderie and establish deeper bonds with those you meet. Focus on establishing an “inside joke” rapport. It’s not about the punch line. It’s about the bottom line.

Mike Muhney in a recognized expert in the field of relationship management. He is the co-founder and co-inventor of ACT!, the software product that created the entire Contact Management software category and is acknowledged as the catalyst that started the entire CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry. Today, he is the CEO and co-founder of VIPorbit Software, creator of the Mobile Relationship Management category for users of smartphones and tablets, beginning with the iPhone and iPad. VIPorbit provides full-featured, affordable solutions to today’s mobile device user. VIPorbit can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store or www.viporbit.com.

Social media has allowed two key things to occur:

1. Brands, and even CEOs, can now engage directly with their audience.
2. Small business and startups have the chance to market like the big boys.

When I worked in a corporate PR agency implementing multi-million dollar campaigns we didn't have social media, and, it has since, changed everything when it comes to connecting with your audience. Now, small business and startups can come up with their own kind of PR campaign that will attract media and grow awareness through social media.

What do I mean? Let's look at one example:

Got Milk?

I can only imagine what the Got Milk? campaign would have looked like in its heyday with the help of social media, in conjunction with PR and advertising. I can imagine the number of teens posting pictures of their walls covered with Got Milk? ads on Facebook (a contest we actually held); not to mention the speed with which call for entries for a number of contests would have spread in general; college students across the country interacting with the Got Milk? Mobile, spreading the word and posting photos on Twitter; moms sharing how they get their kids to drink milk; even the leak of the latest celebrity mustache photo session videos.

This all started with one simple idea that any small business can develop and take viral.

Today, all it takes is a little creativity and the ability to develop something that connects and is relevant to your company. Companies like yours do it every day and you can too with some these tips

• What do you want to accomplish? Get your brand out there, increase engagement, increase sales, all of the above?
• Define your target audience and what matters most to them about your company. This will give you a starting point for the next step as well as understand how your audience will most likely engage with your company.
• Brainstorm. There are no bad ideas in brainstorming, just the one's you cross off. Gather your team for a session that will flush out that perfect, creative idea and messaging that your audience will connect with, along with prizes, how to win and how the campaign will end...all the details.
• Plan it out. Just because you have the idea doesn't mean you put it in play tomorrow. It takes planning to create a successful campaign. You really have to think through how it will go, what messages go where and how long will it last. Maybe your campaign will attract media interest....you'll need time to put a PR plan in place, as well as advertising like Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc.
• Management. A campaign like this can require all day, daily monitoring. Define who on your team is going to be fully committed and responsible for managing the day-to-day of your campaign; creating reports, engaging will all users, etc.
• Make a big deal about your winners. You've created so much hype through the campaign you don't want to end it like a wet noodle. Use the new following you've created to celebrate your winner(s) and toast your success!

Jennifer Fortney is president of Cascade Communications, a boutique virtual PR and marketing communications company in Chicago focusing on small business and startups. In her 15+ year career she has worked with some of the top Fortune 500 companies and a wide variety of small businesses and startups across the country. A journalism major with music minor from the University of Kansas, she is also the PR Instructor at SCORE Chicago and founder of @MyStorySource live media pitch feed on Twitter and Facebook. @SmallBizPRXpert

More than 100 million Americans play mobile games and NPD reported 59 percent of all play happens on mobile devices. Despite rapid growth in the mobile gaming space, developers creating the games we know and love, are not necessarily generating sustainable incomes. In one case, developers who created a critically acclaimed tablet game made so little, they ended up homeless. This is not an isolated situation. Last year, 80 percent of mobile revenue went to just 20 developers, indicating that current monetization methods aren’t doing enough to support the industry.

For developers looking to monetize their content, 2011 was the year of mobile advertising; 2012 saw the rise of the freemium model. However, developers who want to build successful businesses need to experiment with new monetization models. This year is shaping up to be the year of real-money gaming, with the rise of tournaments and cash competitions.

Developers can enable tournaments in a variety of games to heighten competition, letting players enter free tournaments to win virtual currency or pay an entry fee to play for cash. Rather than interrupting gameplay with pop-up ads, tournaments become an important part of an existing game, making gameplay more fun and engaging. Furthermore, where cash competitions in skill-based games are allowed (currently 37 U.S. States), tournaments generate new direct revenue for developers, who get a cut of entry fees.

While cash competitions provide direct revenue, free tournaments enhance existing mobile monetization methods by increasing the time players spend in game, and the opportunities to monetize them. Both types of competition boost player retention. In fact, cash and free tournaments, translate into more downloads, higher DAUs (daily active users), and longer sessions.

My company, Skillz, the first platform technology to enable cash tournaments in U.S. mobile games, launched in April. With Skillz, developers can quickly and easily enable free or cash tournaments. Developers are already seeing promising results:

• 3D Cave Runner increased 7-day user retention from below 4 percent to over 18 percent -- a 330 percent increase by integrating tournaments.
• In Big Sport Fishing, players who entered tournaments played almost three times longer than peers.
• In GnarBike Trials, Skillz created paying users where there were none before, adding over $5 of revenue per paying user per month. Plus tournaments increased existing advertising revenue as much as 100 percent.

Cash competitions and tournaments offer a new monetization option for developers so they can spend time focusing on what they do best: making great games.

Andrew Paradise is the CEO and founder of Skillz.

I was born into the snack business, so I guess you can say I have 33 years of experience in the industry. Not to mention, I was born with the name Cretors, since I am the great-great-great granddaughter of Charles Cretors, the inventor of the popcorn machine. However, my career in snacks officially began when I joined Cornfields Inc. in 2006 to help my mom manage my father’s (Henry Cretors) business after he passed away.

As a leading, healthy-foods private label company, we recently invested some of our own capital toward launching two retail brands, GH Cretors popped corn and Hi I’m Skinny Sticks. Both brands have launched with an absolute bang, with GH Cretors becoming nationally available in less than three months. The following is my advice for launching a brand and making your way in the snack industry. Everyone has their own recipe for success, but this is what worked for us.


The first step is the product itself. You can have all the “attributes” in the world, but if it doesn’t taste great, you won’t keep your customers.
 
The second is a strong, clear brand image and voice. Packaging is the only tool that we have to catch our customer’s attention. In fact, we only have a few seconds to grab them as they walk down a very crowded aisle. It’s not easy to tell a story in three seconds visually. Have a purpose and a story for your brand. This not only engages your direct consumer, but it provides excitement for the buyers at retail. This was at the forefront of our minds when designing the bags for GH Cretors and Hi I’m Skinny.
 
Third, is that the brand must be supported at the retail level. We have found that having strong sampling programs is our strongest marketing tool. Sampling gets your product in the hands and mouths of snackers, and it hooks them. Once we have them hooked, we know they’ll be back for another bag or two.
 
At Cornfields Inc., we also have the advantage of controlling our own destiny because of our existing private label business. Unlike some other brand builders, we own our own manufacturing. This allows us not only to control costs but to be very nimble. We can react quickly to industry trends -- a task that large multi-nationals are often challenged with.  It also helps that we have a passion for the products and brands we are going to market with. This is reflected in the attention to detail we have put toward every element of our products and their packaging.  
 
Though it’s not a top three, an undeniable element of success in the snack business is a little bit of luck. Sometimes the stars are aligned and all of the pieces fall in to place, just like a perfect bag of popcorn.

Claire Cretors serves as president of Cornfields Inc., a leading, healthy-foods private label company and creator of the G.H. Cretors and Hi I’m Skinny retail brands. After joining the company in 2006, Claire became executive vice president in 2007 and president in January 2012.

For many years, business has focused nearly entirely -- some might argue completely -- on the customer. Customer relationship management systems, contact managers, Rolodex systems (yep, they’re still around), notes on business cards, they are all designed to help facilitate a better focus on customers and prospects. These systems help sellers collect data about their customers, things like where they like to vacation, what colleges their kids go to, what their hobbies are. Why does that information make a difference when it comes to selling your product or service?

What’s “Sold” First?

You’ve got something to offer? That’s great. It meets people’s needs? Sure, but yours is not the only one that does. So, what is your most important first step? It isn’t what you’ve got to sell in the way of your product or service. It isn’t your better price. It’s not even your better service, as important as customer service is. You’ve definitely got to differentiate yourself from your competitors. But what is the most unique thing that you have in your arsenal that you can use to stand apart from competition and gain that all-important competitive edge? The answer is you.

What the Prospective Customer Needs First

We’ve all heard the saying, “People do business with people they like.” You’ve got to differentiate yourself, first by being liked, and second by being liked more than your competitors. Your initial efforts need to focus on letting customers and prospects get to know you. Don’t tout the kinds of industry-centered credentials; share your personality, and in doing so, you’ll provide a sense of your authenticity.

Use Your Customer Data to Share What Matters to Them

Depending on your target market, and what you know about them, share the kinds of qualifications and/or credentials that might interest them. For example, if you’re from the Midwest, which is known for its strong work ethic, let those customers with a similar background know you were raised with those beliefs and how that has played out in your career. This invites a personal discussion between two people of similar viewpoints and experiences before it invites a discussion between two potential business people.

I’ve never read or heard anyone say that people do business with businesses that they like. People do, in fact, do business with people they like. Who you are, and what you are, can be your most competitive edge.

Mike Muhney in a recognized expert in the field of relationship management. He is the co-founder and co-inventor of ACT!, the software product that created the entire Contact Management software category and is acknowledged as the catalyst that started the entire CRM (Customer Relationship Management) industry. Today, he is the CEO and co-founder of VIPorbit Software, creator of the Mobile Relationship Management category for users of smartphones and tablets, beginning with the iPhone and iPad. VIPorbit provides full-featured, affordable solutions to today’s mobile device user. VIPorbit can be downloaded from the iTunes App Store or www.viporbit.com.

Reaching new opportunities is an ongoing challenge for many Chicago business owners. Katie Jeep, owner of Musical Magic, has cracked the code in forming mutually beneficial partnerships within her community. Similar to the story of “Stone Soup”, Katie’s success came from bringing business together to all give a little for the benefit of the community. Learn how you too can benefit from your business neighbors.

Expanding business meant there was a need for promotional photos, so Katie turned to Mark Brown Photography in her Roscoe Village neighborhood. Mark loved Katie’s music and in turn keeps it on rotation in his shop where customers frequently ask and get directed to Musical Magic. This word-of-mouth generates customers and appreciation as those customers become in the know for where to turn in their community for masterful children’s photography sessions and ongoing musical activities. Take away: share services with local business where you can.

A further success story has come from Katie’s partnering with Stroller Strides, a new moms' fitness craze. The partnership comes in the form of a shared newsletter with included coupons. Sign up for Stroller Strides and get a discount on your next Musical Magic class and vice-versa. Take away: share discounts with local business to benefit customers.

Katie has also learned that it’s not easy going it alone as a business owner. Her packed classes leave her with little down time so she’s partnered with Angie Rush, licensed therapist, to teach a musical swaddle and toddle class. The best part is that the Musical Magic clientele reap the benefits. Take away: share expertise to take the pressure off in your own business.

Generating new customers is always a gift, however, Katie feels the greatest bonus is the camaraderie she now shares with other business owners. Discussing business strategies over coffee has brought yet another revelation where customers can enter and win raffle prizes from participating local business. The gift of partnerships will keep giving.

If you’re looking to partner with your local business why not reach out for a shared coffee, stop in as a patron, or swap services to begin down the road of positive partnerships in your business community.

Chelsea Duggan is currently running Milestar Babies while chasing her sprinting boys, Trouble One and Trouble Two. She enjoys being an entrepreneurial guinea pig, serving up delectable scones with a posh accent, and playing every single day.

If you sometimes feel you’re on a treadmill getting nowhere, then you have to pick up the New York Times bestseller, “The One Thing.” It may change your life.

Most of us spend too much time multi-tasking, working with checklists and spreading ourselves too thin, then feel frustration at our lack of progress. Co-authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan challenge us in their book to get big by thinking small. You achieve success not by working more but working less. Simply put, trying to do too much doesn’t work.

“Going small is a simple approach to extraordinary results, and it works,” they write. “It works all the time, anywhere and on anything. Why? Because it has one purpose -- to ultimately get you to the point. When you go as small as possible, you’ll be staring at one thing. And that’s the point.”

That doesn’t mean you don’t shoot for the moon. Your ultimate dream is possible -- if you prioritize everything and put your time and focus on the most important thing. Ultimately, you accomplish a lot over time.

They give success story after success story to support their claim. Colonel Sanders started KFC with a secret chicken recipe. The Coors company grew 1,500 percent in 20 years with one product, beer. Apple started with one product, the Mac.

The co-authors take us down the road of all the myths and lies they say mislead and derail us, including multi-tasking, a disciplines life, willpower always on call, a balanced life, big is bad, and everything matters equally. A to-do list, they write should only contain Should Dos, not Could Dos. They challenge us to ask ourselves: “What’s the one thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” You need to ask yourself a lot of questions and dig deep for the answers to identify the one true thing.

The key to “living by priority and for productivity” is by doing something they call “time blocking.” Most people spend too much time each day working on tasks that don’t really matter. For the best results, block off your time in the morning -- for four straight hours. Yes, you read that right, four hours. “Protect your time at all costs,” they write. “Build a bunker, store provisions, sweep for mines (i.e. turn off your cell phone), and enlist support.”

In the end, the people who go on to produce extraordinary results, work fewer hours, not more. Time blocking makes it possible, leading to a simple, more straightforward approach to life and of course, success. It’s your choice. I, for one, am sold.

Chris Ruys is passionate about helping organizations increase their visibility and build their credibility to reach their business goals and objectives. The firm, Chris Ruys Communications, does this through the development and implementation of communications strategies that include traditional and social media marketing channels. We operate in collaboration with a network of graphic designers, media & speaker training professionals, professional photographers, videographers and other specialists, as needed. Specialties: Strategic communications, written materials, media relations, social media strategies, special events.

Would you be surprised to learn that 50 percent of all sales are closed in follow-up communication? What is even more staggering is that only 10 percent of seasoned sales professionals follow up more than once after a sales call or interaction with a potential customer. I’m not suggesting you need to become a seasoned salesperson, but as a sales expert, I know first-hand the importance of the follow-up.

According to Grant Cardone’s book "Sell Or Be Sold," the sales professionals who experience the greatest success, meaning close the most deals and make the most money, are the very 10 percent of people who follow up with customers more than one time.

What does this mean for you and your business? It means that by developing a sound follow-up system, you stand to gain fifty percent more business. While it may sound too good to be true, simply doing the common things uncommonly well will separate your business from the rest of the competition.

Follow these simple steps to implement a successful follow-up into your business.

• Become a conversation catalyst. Follow-up communication happens after the initial sales conversation. I hear people say all the time that they are unsure how to locate their target market or how to connect with them. One surefire way to become a conversation catalyst or get the conversation started is to give away a freebie. Pharmaceutical companies do this all the time with free samples, which get the representatives in the door to start a sales conversation with a doctor.

• Record everything. Develop a system to keep track of how you want to follow up after a sales call. Be sure to include the mode of each individual follow-up. Examples of possible follow-up modes include emails, phone calls, written letters or face-to-face meetings.

• Don't stop. Ever. Many people will give up before they see benefits. Don’t be one of those people. Why? The follow-up is about keeping the conversation moving forward. All things being equal, friends buy from friends. All things being unequal, friends buy from friends.

Continuing to follow up in an authentic way will create a relationship. Implementing a follow-up system can help develop sales connections that pay off like manna raining down from heaven: paying clients!

Kendrick Shope is a sales expert and coach. She created a sales strategy called "authentic selling" that focuses on engaging conversation, dynamic ideas and compelling results.

There is something inherently appealing in the letters CEO. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s assumed you want to be the “top dog.” It’s undeniable: Becoming the CEO of your own company is a powerful statement.

The question many CEOs forget to answer, though, is whether or not they’re truly meant for that role. Do you really want to be the CEO? Are you choosing those letters because you’re supposed to? Perhaps you want to be the chief of something entirely different, and the best executive to lead your company is not one of its founders.

Consider the example of fashion flash sale giant, Gilt Group. Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Alexis Maybank founded Gilt respectively as the chief executive officer and chief merchandising officer. Since 2007, Alexis Maybank has served as chief marketing officer, the president of multiple new business lines with the company, and chief strategy officer. Alexandra has remained the chief merchandising officer since the business’ inception.

In the choices Alexis and Alexandra made in leading Gilt Group, the two recognized key individual strengths. Alexandra excels in fashion partnership building and has remained in the same position since 2007. Alexis has a penchant for development and strategy and Gilt has allowed her to accept roles in the company’s new initiatives. In addition to fostering the strengths of its co-founders, Gilt Group made the addition of outside leadership a key priority, only strengthening its foundation in the process.

As an entrepreneur, ask yourself — do you want to be an Alexandra? Or an Alexis? Are your skills best utilized in one C-level role that allows you to play to your strengths long-term? Or are you best for your company in a role that allows you to strategize, build and embark on new ventures?

You also must be willing to accept that someone else could be the best CEO for your company, which means you can be the chief of something entirely new and different. It might be a difficult concept to grasp when you think about changing the title on your business cards, but it’s worth it to take your company to the next level.

Marcy Twete is the founder/CEO of Career Girl Network and the author of the book "You Know Everybody! A Career Girl’s Guide to Building a Network That Works," to be released in summer 2013.

Deciding things is hard. It’s draining. It also can mess with your mind without you realizing it, according to a new study from Uri Simonsohn (of Wharton) and Francesca Gino (of Harvard Business School) after examining 10 years of MBA admissions.

Basically, what happens is after making important decisions, like when interviewing candidates all day, humans engage in what’s called “narrow bracketing.” Cognitive Scientist Art Markman breaks down the study’s findings in Psychology Today: 

It seems that interviewers like to have each day’s ratings balance out. When an interviewer sees 3 or 4 good candidates in a row, they become concerned that they are giving too many high ratings. So, if another good candidate comes walking through the door, they get a lower rating just so that the ratings for the day are not uniformly high.

It stinks, but we know it’s true. I was holding auditions all weekend for a new web series, Bike Gang, I’m doing with my friend Ceda, and although I hadn’t read this study yet I did my best to guard against it. We were having some people send in video submissions who couldn’t make the in-person auditions.

We’d sit down and discuss who we thought we’d like to see again, who we’d like to pocket for other projects and who we’d like to let down gently. At some point I realized: “Hey, we don’t have all of our best people yet, necessarily.”

It’s a sort of mental game of chicken we do: We’re sick of thinking so hard about a single decision (much less nine or 10 of them), so you just say, “Eh, sure. We’re good enough.” But “good enough” is a compromise that can backfire. At the same time, you’re also aware you can think yourself to death, so you just sort of tell yourself you’re making the best decision you possibly can, even if you know you aren’t.

All of this translates into being on the other end of the table: You can use this natural bias to your favor by simply signing up for the first possible availability and making as great an impression as you can. You’ll know people will be fatigued by the end of the day you’ll still stand out.

Sad but true. Read the full study here.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

Groupon’s March quarter was better than expected — to the tune of the stock now hovering around $7.50. As Mashable crunches the numbers, “most of that revenue growth came from North America, where sales increased by 42 percent year-over-year. However, Groupon is still handicapped by its international operations, where sales decreased by 18 percent year-over-year.”

That’s a new wrinkle on the Groupon story.

Elsewhere, though, we’re hearing familiar things. For example, Groupon South Africa’s CEO, Wayne Gosling, has just come forward admitting that his region has “had huge mess-ups in terms of our products and delivery, which has been well documented... we were handling stuff, but not as dynamically as we could be.”

That’s why Groupon SA has recently appointed a new head of customer services, Katja Alves. In a very PR-ish statement, Alves said “consistency of excellence [is what] I am looking to foster and continue to drive here at Groupon in co-operation with the international push to standardize our processes and consumer expectations.”

Groupon is also facing challenges elsewhere around the globe. In India, competitor Snapdeal told the press that it represents “the pivot Groupon always wanted to make.” The company, you see, started off as a deal-lister but now sells “everything from consumer electronics to women’s shoes — all from third parties, akin to the Amazon Marketplace.” There’s a full interview with the company over at allthingsd.com.

Other international challenges for Groupon: Groupon Taiwan has been hacked. More than four million registered users were compromised as a result, but reportedly no credit cards have been affected. So, that’s something, right?

On the Andrew Mason front, “Hardly Workin’,” the former Groupon CEO’s planned “seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce” is still forthcoming. 

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

So, you’re ready to get a loan to help enhance and grow your small business, but you aren’t quite sure where to start. Here are three basic questions you should ask yourself:

1. Is now the best time? Just because a loan sounds like a good idea doesn’t mean it’s the best time for one. Do your homework.
2. How much do I need? Of course extra money can help, but have you figured out exactly how much those upgrades cost?
3. Will I be able to repay the loan? This is critically important as defaulting on your payments will not only affect your relationship with the lender, but your credit will suffer as well.

Don’t worry if you are unable to answer these questions, because a meeting with a small business banker can help assess the best solution for your business.

During the assessment you should expect the banker to:

1. Ask a lot of questions. Your banker will want to learn as much as possible about your business and its history.
2. Request to see financial statements. Your banker will want to see several years of personal and business financial statements to understand the health of your business.
3. Visit your business. Your banker may want to visit your place of business to observe operations, meet key decision makers and evaluate potential collateral.

The application process for a business loan varies by bank and customer. No two situations are the same. Four primary elements that banks consider during the loan process:

1. Good credit. Banks review the credit history of the owner(s) of the small business.
2. Ability to repay. Banks want to make sure the business has the cash flow to repay the loan.
3. Collateral. What collateral will be offered to back up the loan?
4. Experience. Generally banks want to see a few years of profitable business operations.

New business owners who may not currently qualify for a direct loan from a bank should consider exploring small business grant programs offered through the city or local community organizations. Organizations like, the Women’s Business Development Center provide small businesses with advice, support and connections with lenders who specialize in new and emerging businesses. Recently Citi partnered with the City of Chicago and ACCION to support the Chicago Microlending Initiative as a way to provide capital to small business owners.

Mindy Mercaldo is the Illinois president and Chicago market president for Citibank. Mercaldo has over 24 years of experience in retail and small business Banking.

Are you busy all day but at the end of the day not sure what you got done? Is it hard to delegate tasks that someone else could and should really be doing?

Then it's time to evaluate your systems for getting things done. Think about each task that you need to get done and ask the following questions:

• Is it essential?
• Does it move your business forward?
• Does it increase the bottom line?
• Is it critical to running your company? If not, why are you doing it?
• Do you have to personally do it? If not, delegate it.
• Can it be scheduled so that it is consistently done at the same time every day, week, or month?
• Can a procedure be written so that it can be done by more than one person and done to the same standard each time?

As a business owner it is hard to delegate tasks because you want them done the way you want them done. However, if your focus is only on the day to day it will be hard to grow or even sustain your company. Your focus needs to be on the big picture, the strategy and direction of your business.


Schedule time, even a whole day, to think through tasks you are doing and why.  This will help you determine where your time goes each day.  Once you determine what is taking up your time and what you really should be spending time on, your days will be more effective.  

Consider the following actions to help create effective days and weeks.


1. Use the list you created and divide it into daily, weekly, and monthly items.
2. Delegate with clear directions and expectations anything you do not have to do.

3. Schedule the items that you have to do into your daily routine so that you make time for them.
4. Hold a weekly meeting with any staff to make sure goals and expectations are being met.

Scheduling the items into your day is extremely important. If what you need to do is on your schedule, you start to see where your time goes and what you can realistically take on and do well. Once you have control over your tasks you can get more done and feel productive without feeling overwhelmed. 

As managing partner of MJF Partners LLC, Ms. Flynn brings over eight years of experience in small business and non-profit development. Prior to founding MJF Partners, Ms. Flynn was the executive director of the Lincoln Square Chamber of Commerce. As executive director she brought her passion for independent business and community building to Lincoln Square and created a sense of place that helped to transform the Lincoln Square Community. Flynn is a skilled and experienced executive with a proven track record of creating a successful business climate balanced by strong values of sustainability and community. This experience is utilized as she partners with businesses to maximize resources and opportunities to exceed their goals.

It’s impossible to ignore the many ways mobile devices have influenced small business owners. In fact, a recent survey by Constant Contact found that 66 percent of small-business owners are now using mobile technology.

This makes sense when you consider your customers are spending more time on their smartphones and tablets. According to Digiday, mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans’ media consumption time -- triple what it was in 2009. What’s more, Cisco predicts that by the end of this year, there will be more devices on Earth than people.

Still, according to that small business owner survey, that leaves another 36 percent of you that aren’t using mobile technology. The main reason cited is not knowing enough about mobile tools and apps to make the most of them. This isn’t too surprising given how many options are available.

The key is to identify those mobile tools that complement your core engagement marketing efforts including email, social media and event marketing while accommodating the needs of your on-the-go customers.

To help you cut through the noise, here are five ways you can use mobile technology to further engage customers.

• Create mobile-friendly emails that can be easily downloaded and read on smaller screens. After all, 43 percent of email is opened on a mobile device.

• Optimize your website for mobile so that customers can easily download vital information. This includes store hours, locations, and menus that can be quickly viewed on a smartphone or tablet.

• Support mobile payments. This type of app is especially helpful if you’re at an offsite location and want to be able to take orders on the spot.

• Consider a mobile registration app. If you’re using an event marketing tool to grow your business, a mobile registration app allows customers to easily check in while you eliminate long lines.


• Take advantage of the popularity of location-based services such as FourSquare. This mobile app lets users “check in” to locations to meet up with friends and/or be rewarded for their loyalty to a business. Along with rewarding existing customers, consider offering a special incentive when they check in with a friend.

Once you dive in, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to use mobile tools to connect with customers. Just remember that it’s not about changing your current marketing programs. Rather, it’s about expanding your approach to support your increasingly mobile customers. 

Steve Robinson is Constant Contact’s small business expert in Illinois and Wisconsin. A knowledgeable marketing expert with 30 years of experience, Steve has helped thousands of small businesses, associations, and nonprofits develop and implement effective email marketing, social media and online survey strategies. A popular speaker and educator, Steve gives small businesses and nonprofits the tools, techniques, and strategies they need to grow and expand their business and to maximize the power of relationship marketing. Steve’s experience in small business ownership, business development, sales, and fundraising help associations, small businesses and nonprofits achieve success.

Successful entrepreneurs know the importance of surrounding themselves with a great team, not just the form of their paid employees, but on their company’s board of directors and in less formal mentorships surrounding their businesses. Being able to pick up the phone and ask for advice from a trusted mentor is invaluable in making key decisions in any business.

What kinds of mentors should you have? Every entrepreneur should have a bevy of mentors and advisors to lean on when issues arise. These three will be key to the success of your business.

1. The Horizontal Mentor

Often, we think of mentorship as an older or more established individual mentoring someone new to the business. While these kinds of mentorships are valuable, you must also find a mentor who is a peer -- a horizontal mentor, if you will. Look for an entrepreneur whose business started at the same time yours did, who might be encountering the same challenges and want a peer mentor to work through them together.


2. The Five-Year Goal Mentor

Where do you want your business to be in five years? Perhaps you hope to be venture-capital funded at that time, to have a certain number of employees, or to have conquered specific geographic markets. Look for a mentor entrepreneur whose business looks today the way you hope yours will look in five years. Ask that individual for advice on the path he or she took to get there.


3. The Legacy Mentor


Entrepreneurs are asked constantly about their business’ exit strategy. What is the ultimate goal for your business? Selling it to a larger company? Taking the company public? Leaving it to your children? As you think about these kinds of questions, you’ll also want to find a mentor who has accomplished the same legacy in his or her business that you are seeking in yours. If you want to sell your company in 10 to 15 years, find a successful entrepreneur who has been through the process. It may be that you’ll change your mind about your exit strategy, but having a mentor who can guide you through the options well in advance of decision-making time will be incredibly valuable.

Marcy Twete is the founder/CEO of Career Girl Network and the author of the book "You Know Everybody! A Career Girl’s Guide to Building a Network That Works," to be released in summer 2013.

The story of the entrepreneur is an almost mythological one in American society. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are rightly revered by many because of their ingenuity, tenacity and ability to succeed despite the odds. Less known are their friends and family, who bear a tremendous amount of the burden to allow these visionaries to succeed.

Want to be an entrepreneur? Your most important early conversations should not be with your co-founder or investors but rather your significant other. As a profession, entrepreneurship can bring out the absolute worst in a person. There are the material challenges -- I know very few “startup folks” who haven’t worried about making a rent or mortgage payment. But, more challenging than material concerns are the time and emotional considerations. Running an early stage company takes tremendous amounts of work, with weeks of 70 to 90 hours not being terribly uncommon. Oftentimes the work includes the obligatory cocktail parties, dinners and networking events that may not seem like traditional “work”, but are still both required and exhausting.

Unfortunately, all of that time takes a significant emotional toll. After the blood, sweat and tears, you may end up feeling further behind than at the beginning. I’ll admit to feeling occasional pangs of envy for folks who delivered pizzas to my apartment, because at least they knew they were getting paid for their time. There are many moments in the life of an entrepreneur when we have no such certainty.

So who has to deal with those challenges and carry that burden? Well, first and foremost the entrepreneur. But, at least as the entrepreneur, you have some sense of control and direction. Those who love you must first deal with seeing much less of you, and when you do get to enjoy time together the entrepreneur may very well be stressed, irritable, or exhausted.

My advice? Be as open and transparent with those who are closest to you before and during the process. Let them know this will be hard, that you’ll be less available, and that it will undoubtedly take its toll. Make sure they’re prepared for what’s ahead, and do your best to help them understand what’s happening in your life. The difference between being able to survive and iterate long enough to make your company successful and the runway ending before your exit may very well be the help and support that they offer you.

Erik Severinghaus is a Chicago-based serial entrepreneur and business leader. Erik was part of the founding team for iContact (a leader in email marketing) and spent six years as a consultant in IBM’s IT Optimization Practice before founding his current company, SimpleRelevance. SimpleRelevance specializes in marketing personalization and helps companies easily send the right email content to the right person at the right time, leading to revenue increases of 30-300 percent per email campaign. Learn more at SimpleRelevance.com, Find Erik on Google+ and follow him on Twitter.

Business partnerships are pseudo-marriages, and finding a cofounder who complements you can be as grueling as dating. However, the relationship between partners can be the deciding factor in a startup’s success. We credit four philosophies for our success and growth.

Don’t cofound with friends

We met in a business setting before becoming friends. Jeff was an intern at a software development company where Jim was a leader. By meeting in a professional manner first, we built a foundation on respect before becoming close friends. We have seen startups split because cofounders were friends first and took advantage of the friendship in business dealings. Now, our families vacation together, we go to Bears games and some weeks we talk more with each other than our spouses. However, mutual respect has always been the basis of our friendship.

Do have similar spending habits

Before we formed a startup together, we looked at how we both spent money personally. While there is arguably no right or wrong way to spend money, partners need to spend it in a similar way. Business partnerships break up over money issues just like marriages do. Since we both spend frugally, we don’t fight about finances.

Don’t be a carbon copy of your partner

Having a cofounder who complements your skills increases your competencies within the partnership. If both founders have the same experience and specialties, capability gaps will exist. Jeff had the technology brains, great ideas and existing clientele; Jim had the capital, management experience and professional network to start our company on a sound footing. Our mutual skill sets cover all the bases needed for our firm.

Do factor in morals

We had both been burned at past companies that did not treat their employees in a fair way, so it was important that we both had the same moral standards to run the company in an agreeable way. If there was one French fry left between us at the end of lunch, we would both push it to the other guy. We had no hesitations joining together in business.

Since our foundation was built on these four principles, all it took was a walk around the park and a handshake for us to form our 50/50 partnership. Seventeen years later, we haven’t changed a thing.

Jeff Scheper and Jim Lagattuta are the co-founders of Prescient Solutions, a Chicago-based IT outsourcing firm providing CIO-level advisory support and on-site IT services to organizations and government entities.

Thanks to TV, it seems that pitching investors for funding or for a chance to win prize money to launch or boost startups has become more and more mainstream, and desirable. If you are looking for a chance to get in front of potential investors and pitch your business in Chicagoland, here is a list of must-attend events:

BNC Venture Capital Group

A smaller, selective event, BNC Venture Capital meets the first Tuesday of each month to introduce three early-stage companies seeking capital from accredited investors (angels, VCs and private equity firms). Companies make a 10-minute pitch to a mixed audience of investors, service providers and entrepreneurs followed by 15 minutes of Q&A. They encourage coaching prior to the pitch to ensure you make the best presentation possible.

Submissions: Send your executive summary and PowerPoint pitch deck for consideration (an email is provided on the website).

Event dates: The first Tuesday of each month. Suggest signing up for event invitations.

Our Recommendation: A more casual environment and great opportunity for startups that have fine-tuned their pitch but need opportunities to practice and get valuable feedback. It is definitely worth it to attend a few events beforehand to enhance your pitch prior to submitting, as well as meeting and talking with attendees.

Technori Pitch

Technori Pitch is a monthly showcase of innovative starters launching their brand new company, and has loads of local sponsorship and support. It has quickly become the hub for impassioned entrepreneurs, developers, designers, tech companies, investors and general tech enthusiasts.

Designed to be a showcase of launching startups, Technori Pitch gathers 550 people together in Chicago, every single month, to watch as five startups demo their company on-stage. To date, more than 100 companies have presented on their stage.

Submissions: Technori does require all hopefuls to apply for the one of five slots available at each event. The more exciting and innovative the better. The application process is pretty simple online but not everyone is selected.

Next Event: May 28, 6 p.m.

Our Recommendation: Definitely for well-practiced startups and not the faint of heart. Technori looks for startups that truly disrupt the market or create an entirely new niche or trend, and the process is highly selective. You really must attend a few events prior to applying to pitch to see if your business is a fit. And, if you don’t get selected, the after party is always fun and offers the opportunity to rub elbows with some leading Chicago innovators, investors and startup experts.

Funding Feeding Frenzy

They call it “Shark Tank Meets the Apprentice.” Next to Technori, VentureSHOT’s Funding Feeding Frenzy is the grand daddy of them all when it comes to pitch events and the potential for getting real funding for your startup -- now.

Held twice a year, this event attracts the best of the best startups and pitches in front of a panel of top investors, VCs and entrepreneurs who provide valuable feedback to make your pitch better. In the audience are a number of potential investors looking to add to their portfolios and coming to hear pitches. An exhibition area allows many more companies the chance to present their businesses to attendees, even if not selected to present. A number of awards for top Best in Show winners, decided upon by the panelists and investors, including a complimentary mentoring session at VentureSHOT, one of Chicago’s top incubators.

Submissions: There is a small application fee to submit online. Although not required you can provide a video (three minutes or less) that shows off your company. A team of judges will sift through all the applications to choose 10 final presenters. There is an additional charge if you choose to have a table in the demo/exhibition area. Each finalist will be allowed 10 minutes to present and 15 minutes of Q &.

Next event: June 18 and December 2013, TBD.

Our recommendation: This event is for those businesses that are well-practiced, had some mentorship and truly ready for funding to take them to the next level. Best to attend the day-long event to experience it and understand why they call it the Funding Feeding Frenzy. Great opportunity to network, watch and learn. Totally worth getting a demo table and purchasing a ticket for the VIP luncheon called “Meet the Money."

Jennifer Fortney is president of Cascade Communications, a boutique virtual PR and marketing communications company in Chicago focusing on small business and startups. In her 15+ year career she has worked with some of the top Fortune 500 companies and a wide variety of small businesses and startups across the country. A journalism major with music minor from the University of Kansas, she is also the PR Instructor at SCORE Chicago and founder of @MyStorySource live media pitch feed on Twitter and Facebook. @SmallBizPRXpert

Thanks to TV, it seems that pitching investors for funding or for a chance to win prize money to launch or boost startups has become more and more mainstream, and desirable. If you are looking for a chance to get in front of potential investors and pitch your business in Chicagoland, here is a list of must-attend events:

Chicago Startup Pitch Night
Focused in some of the world’s key startup cities, Startup Pitch Night provides the platform for early stage startups to practice, refine and perfect their pitch. It provides anonymous, peer-based feedback and encourages trial and error without the formal application process. It's a vibrant and fun event with high variety, speed and brevity at its core, coupled with a short talk on the next steps after the refinement of the pitch, from a startup industry leader.

Event dates: Launching in Chicago this July. Join the Meetup group for more information.

Selection process: Stay tuned to its website, or join the Meetup group, for details.

Our recommendation: I spoke to an organizer of the group who is excited about Startup Pitch Night launching in Chicago. Definitely worth attending to learn more about their process and for networking. Looks like a good practice opportunity for beginners.

SCORE Chicago Annual Elevator Pitch Contest 

If you are unfamiliar with SCORE, it is the mentoring and learning arm of the Small Business Administration. Long known for offering up a collection of highly experienced, retired executives to small businesses looking for mentorship, it has begun to expand in recent years with more offerings. The Annual Elevator Pitch Contest is presented by the Office of City Treasurer Stephanie D. Neely in coordination with SCORE Chicago and offers a First Place Award of $5,000, plus additional prizes and opportunities.

Submissions: Ends June 9, 2013.

Requirements:
• Round 1: Written 60-second elevator pitch
• Round 2: 60-second YouTube video of your written pitch
o Must attend a free SCORE Chicago Workshop on Elevator Pitch and Compelling Video Message
o Automatically entered into “Snipitch” Contest aimed at helping to create the most “buzz” for the contest on social media. Winner receives a complimentary booth at the Small Business Expo 2013.
• Third round: Businesses will receive a time slot on Chicago CAN-TV for a more in-depth look at their business proposition.

Our Recommendation: Ideal for first-timers who have never pitched before to learn and practice the initial qualities of a good pitch to investors.  

Jennifer Fortney is president of Cascade Communications, a boutique virtual PR and marketing communications company in Chicago focusing on small business and startups. In her 15+ year career she has worked with some of the top Fortune 500 companies and a wide variety of small businesses and startups across the country. A journalism major with music minor from the University of Kansas, she is also the PR Instructor at SCORE Chicago and founder of @MyStorySource live media pitch feed on Twitter and Facebook. @SmallBizPRXpert

As an entrepreneur, the most precious commodity you have is time. It's enough just to be CEO, accounts receivable/payable, secretary and janitor, but throw in public relations efforts and it feels as if one ball must fall in order to keep a new one in the air.

Truth is that in the beginning stages you most likely don't have the funding to pay for professional PR help. However you desperately need to get the word out, generate interest and sales in order to create a PR budget. It's the chicken and the egg. So what do you do?

I am here to tell you that DIY PR is totally possible with some time management tips. And, when you're ready to work with a pro, you will be more knowledgeable about PR, your story/message and your audience.

• Keep it highly targeted. I call it the Bowl of Spaghetti Theory: You throw a bowl of spaghetti up on the wall and watch to see what sticks. Some use this theory in PR by blast emailing press releases to media/bloggers and it never works. The best approach is a highly targeted one where you go directly where your audience is. Know your audience and you will know where to target your press release.

• Research the media you want to be in. Do they even cover your industry or business? You might want the "Oprah Effect" by being highlighted in "O" magazine, but editors are mostly interested only in lifestyle consumer products and services, not your computer software program. It's important to find the right media outlet that will not only reach your target audience, but will also be interested in what you have to offer. You wouldn't pitch your energy drink to the local magazine's theater editor, would you?

• Break it down. You see an opportunity for your product/service with 500 media outlets and bloggers, but with limited time that seems entirely too daunting a task so, paralyzed by the enormity, you choose to do nothing. My suggestion: Pick your top 10 or 25 media outlets (depending on your time) and chip away at the long list slowly but surely, with a focus on those that will definitely be interested to create quick hits. Give each grouping about a month and then move on to the next grouping, only following up with those media that showed previous interest.

• Make the time. Schedule out time in your week, about two to three hours, to work on your PR efforts. That means developing a media list, writing your press release, pitching media and follow up. If you stay focused and really commit during that time, you will be happy to see how much you can accomplish. It may take some time to get started, but once you get rolling and generate interest, it will be easier and worth it!

• Be available and attentive. It's important to make sure you are available to media who do show interest in your business. This means getting back to them right away when they call or email, even if they can only do an interview with you in the next hour. This is what you wanted, right? So make sure you are responsive to their requests, meet their needs, answer their questions all in as timely a fashion as possible. Otherwise, you might miss out and your efforts will all be for naught.

Jennifer Fortney is president of Cascade Communications, a boutique virtual PR and marketing communications company in Chicago focusing on small business and startups. In her 15+ year career she has worked with some of the top Fortune 500 companies and a wide variety of small businesses and startups across the country. A journalism major with music minor from the University of Kansas, she is also the PR Instructor at SCORE Chicago and founder of @MyStorySource live media pitch feed on Twitter and Facebook. @SmallBizPRXpert

That is, if they’re using office equipment to look for another job on company time. I mean, it happens a lot, though I haven’t heard of people getting fired all that often for something like this. But it makes sense that people look during work since you want to move on from your current job for a variety of reasons and looking for a job is, in and of itself, a full-time job.

But did you know you can also be fired for strolling into work late from “the dentist” or a “lunch meeting” looking slightly nicer than you normally do?

Okay. Let me back up and explain why. The always, always super-excellent small-business blog Free Enterprise explains that “minding the possible wrongful termination claim, an employee can be fired for looking for another job, as long as the employer uses legal means to gain this information.”

The Internet is totally fine to use, but only if you aren’t breaking privacy laws. Think of how private investigators used to (or still do?) find dirt on people: They’d root around in their trash or tail them. Obviously, you don’t want to be following your employees around, but if people are posting things publicly to suggest they’re looking for a new job, it’s open to anyone to read — and therefore, it’s fair game to read.

On the other hand, if you’re a boss looking for reasons to fire your employees, maybe that’s part of why people are wanting to leave. FindLaw suggests you should think about addressing people’s unhappiness at work — and more people are unhappy at work today than ever — before dismissing them outright.

Something to consider.

One other thing: Don’t forget people might be using their smart phones or other some-such in an attempt to “stay off the grid” of your work computers in their searches.

But, again, talk to them before cutting them loose. That’s how you earn a reputation, or make it worse.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

This one comes from Gamasutra, the games-industry-focused site, but it still has plenty of relevance to entrepreneurs and anyone who wants to make apps. There are plenty of legitimate complaints to be made against Apple’s service, but, unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, it’s the best thing we got going. It’s centralized. Everyone’s there. But, yeah, there are a lot of problems.

Although, it should be stated, that Apple is aware of these problems and complaints. Since Steve Jobs’ death, there have been a number of huge Apple missteps (like the “continuously improving” Maps app, which infamously got an Apple product manager fired), and the App Store is no exception. Earlier this year, the App Store was hiring editorial people to help make that part of iTunes much more user-friendly. To add trailers of apps in use. To help improve what’s called “discoverability.”

That’s the problem with the store being successful, though: It gets harder and harder to find stuff in the store.

So, rather than gripe to Apple and be a digital drop in the e-bucket, there are things to do that are much more proactive.

There’s an infographic over at Gamasutra laying all this out. I won’t recite them here, but some are kind of interesting and aren’t super-common knowledge. For example:

• Don’t spell numbers.
• Use your company’s logo.
• Use URL-safe characters.
• Have friends and family rate your game.

Read the full list here.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

I stumbled upon a post called “Why Images Matter to Your Content Marketing” over on networksolutions.com, so this must mean that there are some skeptics over there who think words and words alone are enough to get your message across in your marketing.

That might be true, if you’re an artful designer with some really inventive and unusual ideas to grab attention. But, even at a glance, it’s easy for words in ads alongside articles like this to blend in with the article. It’s like Google AdWords — whatever you think of them and their efficacy, our brains are conditioned to block them out or just ignore them. I forget the exact statistic, but I believe we are exposed to something like hundreds, if not thousands, of ads on a daily basis.

It’s a little like what going to Tokyo is like for most Americans: We’re struck by how neon the city is and all the activity and the unexpected “craziness” that city provides. For example: I vacationed there a few years back and will never forget the time I was passing through a mall and saw a mandrill in a sailor suit performing for fruit.

To everyone there, it was just an everyday occurrence. But me? I’ll remember that for the rest of my life.

All of this is a long way of saying that, yes, you definitely need images in your marketing to keep your content from disappearing into the periphery. There are other reasons, too, Network Solutions points out: “Images also provide an important way to improve your content’s rank in search engines. If you include images in a blog post, for example, be sure to tag the image with the keywords you want your business to be found for when customers do a search.”

If you’re still skeptical, read the full post here.  

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

On May 16, I received the award for the 2013 CIO of the Year by The Executives’ Club of Chicago, AITP and SIM. This is a great honor considering the competition from several CIOs of Fortune 100 companies in the Chicagoland area.

Personally, I am very humbled and believe that I have been selected as the winner due to my focus on constant innovation, driving business value through the strategic use of IT as well as my visionary ability to drive organizational growth through the tactical use of technology.

It has been an enthralling journey at optionMONSTER and our flagship subsidiary tradeMONSTER, building the technology team from the ground up and driving innovation as a team to raise the bars of technology in the trading industry; being first to launch browser based platform with streaming data throughout, and first to launch HTML5 mobile trading platform.

Here are few key battle-tested habits and lessons that I consider important to technology leaders.

Balancing Risks and Innovation

Innovation can be successful only if there is:

a) right business case for it
b) a fallback plan
c) right team behind it.

Evaluating a business case and performing a proof of concept to test whether the technology is mature enough for a business case is the starting step. Once that’s proven, an agile development plan with a fail fast and move forward approach will minimize risks embracing innovative technologies like HTML5, Cloud, open source etc.

Enabling technology as major business differentiator

Success to getting a seat at the table for IT is to enable technology solutions to become a business differentiator that can contribute to the bottom line as well.

Strategic use of IT and building profitable partnerships

As a CIO, to understand the direction of the business and prioritization and generate revenue through profitable partnerships. In our case we partnered with a number of companies and generated revenue through use of API, co-branding of platforms etc.

Building a fluid organizational model

No CIO can succeed without a competent and highly motivated team. A fluid structure with several horizontals and verticals within the IT organization can help cross-train resources, understand business processes and create leaders.

Building an IT team focusing on user experience, collaboration and innovation

Hire resources with business acumen and mentor them to visualize user experience helps to create a culture of collaboration and innovation.

IT leadership is not rosy, but the battles, relationships, challenges and the successes makes it special for technology leaders like me.

Sanjib Sahoo is the Chief Technology officer of tradeMONSTER. Rated " Best for Options Traders," tradeMONSTER is setting a new standard of excellence and innovation in the online brokerage industry. tradeMONSTER was the first online broker to deploy a streaming desktop-like trading experience in a web-browser, featuring professional grade tools in a dynamic and customizable interface combined with integrated investor education, transparent commissions and an extremely knowledgeable and dedicated customer service team. Sanjib took a lead role in recent launch of patent pending “tradeMONSTER mobile” and was awarded the “2013 CIO of the year” by Executives’ Club of Chicago, AITP and SIM.

It doesn’t seem to make sense, but who am I to disagree with four experiments conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Yale and Harvard? As the headline indicates, the aforementioned researchers found that volunteers' sense of “time affluence” increased when they did selfless acts. Here’s the skinny: 

Although people’s objective amount of time cannot be increased (there are only 24 hours in a day), this research demonstrates that people’s subjective sense of time affluence can be increased: compared with wasting time, spending time on oneself, and even gaining a windfall of  “free” time, spending time on others increases feelings of time affluence. The impact of giving time on feelings of time affluence is driven by a boosted sense of self-efficacy – such that giving time makes people more willing to commit to future engagements despite their busy schedules. 

If I may riff off this, let me bridge the gap further to the entrepreneur community: Being your own boss is stressful. You are constantly busy and constantly appraising potential opportunities and deciding what you should do. Sometimes you are more lucid than other times, but there’s never a shortage of work to do.

By doing something selfless, like mentoring, doing speaking engagements or taking a call with a recent college grad on how you “broke in” or “got started,” I think it helps you reconnect with where you got started and how much you’ve accomplished. I realize this when I teach, which, while I get paid to do it, sometimes I do realize how far I’ve really come when I have students who are folks I used to be in classes with. It is’t the easiest thing for self-employed people to have — that sense of accomplishment. We are driven and we are always thinking about what’s coming up next.

But it’s just as possible we’ve lost our direction or are missing something simpler to reconnect with. The study says that “helping others can actually increase feelings of time affluence and alleviate people’s perceived time famine – despite the fact that giving time necessarily consumes more of one’s objective time.”

In other words, it refocuses you.

So dig deep, and quit all the frettin’, y’all. Someone helped give you your start, right? Don’t lose sight of that. 

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

Seamless North America and GrubHub, two major players in the online food-ordering sector, announced Monday they plan to join forces. Reportedly, the merger will grant customers in 500 cities access to more than 20,000 local restaurants.

That’s a lot of Tiramisu.

"I'm excited about three things: I'm excited about the expanded restaurant network that our diners will be able to use," GrubHub co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Mike Evans told the Tribune. “I’m excited about the larger number of diners available to restaurants and finally, the combined products for the two companies makes for a stronger offering."

Evans will be COO at the combined company, Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will be president, and GrubHub co-founder and Chief Executive Matt Maloney will be CEO. The joint company will have offices in Chicago, New York, Salt Lake City and London.

Also, as the Tribune points out, the merger is not a mere doubling of manpower or focus. Each company has had different strengths historically: “GrubHub is focused on the consumer segment of diners ordering food at home in the evenings, while Seamless got its start on the corporate side, connecting restaurants with employees who could expense their meals.”

The combined company’s name will be determined following regulatory approval.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

Desiree Rogers is adding another line to her resume.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel tapped the former White House social secretary to chair the board of Choose Chicago.

Rogers is currently the CEO of Ebony and Jet.

Choose Chicago is a marketing organization that works to lure businesses, tourists and conventions to the city.

Rogers takes over for Bruce Rauner, who is expected to run for Illinois governor on the Republican ticket.

Rogers and Emanuel worked together in the Obama White House during his time as chief of staff. She resigned in the wake of a furor in which a couple of reality show imposters gained access to a White House dinner.

Rogers previously worked for AT&T, Allstate, Peoples Energy and the Illinois State Lottery.

Groupon Co-Founder Brad Keywell has famously lamented that Chicago’s best tech folks flee here for Silicon Valley. “There are gaps between different constituencies in Chicago, including academics and the government,” he said in an interview. “Silicon Valley, on the other hand, has day-to-day connectivity and technology transfer. The structure of those connections doesn’t exist in Chicago, or, if it does, it is very weak.”

Well, Keywell’s disciple, and other big-name Groupon founder, Andrew Mason, has decided to heed his words and move to San Francisco. In a blog post, Mason writes: “If there's a silver lining to leaving Groupon, it's the opportunity to start something new... As part of this, my wife and I are moving to San Francisco later this summer.”

Mason also writes about his plans to provide support to Chicago’s startup scene. He’s going to spend one day a week at Y Combinator “for the next several months, trying to make myself useful to the incoming class of startups.”

Then, in typical fashion, Mason has to make us question whether any of this is for real by also announcing that he has recorded an album of “business wisdom”: 

I managed over 12,000 people at Groupon, most under the age of 25. One thing that surprised me was that many would arrive at orientation with minimal understanding of basic business wisdom. "Haven't you read any business books? Good to Great? Winning? The One Minute Manager?" I'd ask. "Business books? Not really our thing," was the typical response. I came to realize that there was a real need to present business wisdom in a format that is more accessible to the younger generation. 

It was with this in mind that I spent a week in LA earlier this month recording Hardly Workin', a seven song album of motivational business music targeted at people newly entering the workforce. These songs will help young people understand some of the ideas that I've found to be a key part of becoming a productive and effective employee. I'm really happy with the results and look forward to sharing them as soon as I figure out how to load music onto iTunes, hopefully in the next few weeks. 

C’mon. You’d buy it. 

Heck, maybe it'll be a free gift to people making purchases on Groupon Goods? 

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

Branding is a top industry buzz word, and the desire to have a strong, influential brand that inspires customer loyalty is a top request from many of my clients.

My favorite definition of “brand” is: "An experience living at the intersection of promise and expectation --  because it reminds us we have to be consistent, thorough and authentic throughout the entire engagement/sales cycle."  Some companies do well reeling you in but fail with client service or product offerings. Others have great products and service, but their branding elements are unclear or do a lackluster job extolling the company’s virtues.

As a marketer, it is exciting when I find a brand that does all of it well, which is what I experienced while visiting the DavidsTea location in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. As I chatted with David Segal, one of the company’s two co-founders, his passion and vision for the brand was evident, infectious and showed through everywhere you looked. Here's what other entrepreneurs can and should learn from his example.

Be clear on what you are offering to the marketplace and how you are special

David loves tea, and thought purchasing it should be a light-hearted, enjoyable experience. Noticing many of the tea stores had the same look and feel, he saw, and seized, the opportunity to create a different experience that was modern and friendly.

DavidsTea wants to be known as a fun and quality brand, so each branding “touch point” communicates that. The branding colors are a vibrant teal paired with the cleanness of white, which allows the colors and textures of the product to show well. The language on the web, marketing materials and press kit is upbeat, informative and engaging. Even the fonts used are playful, young and fresh. @DAVIDsTEA also reads very well as a Twitter handle.

Give your end user exactly what you promised them and then some

Now that you have your client's attention of your client, it is time to deliver. This is where many brands fall short.

When you walk into a DavidsTea retail location, you are greeted immediately and pleasantly offered a taste of tea so you can discover right off how delicious it is. The tea canisters are designed so you can touch and smell the samples. Plus, product names like “Chocolate Rocket” and “Honey Bee” are smile-inducing, so that doesn't hurt.

The packaging and displays are bright, neat, and appealing -- and the branded tea accessories are just as fun and innovative as the tea itself. The website is inviting and easy to navigate, and is full of consumer-pleasing info (like calorie count). To keep you coming back, DavidsTea offers three handpicked teas for free with every online order. How fun is that?

Jetta Bates-Vasilatos is founder of Twist Communications and a life stylist with 10+ years of award-winning consumer engagement/strategic planning experience for luxury and global brands like BMW and Coca-Cola. She also serves as an on-air correspondent and writer with a focus on luxury and experiential tourism, lifestyle, sustainability, and personal finance (how to be chic yet savvy). Jetta has appeared on stations such as WCIU-TV, KBS-TV(Korea), ABC-7, CLTV and KBC-TV (Kenya), writes for national print publications such as Essence, Recommend, Ebony and HomeStyle Design and is the host of the Jettasetting segment on WVON radio.

Visit her website jettasetting.com, find realtime tips on her Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter: @jettaset.

Whether you’re selling online, in person or both, events are a great way to grow your business. At first, hosting a successful event may sound like it requires a lot of work and a big budget. But thanks to the latest technology innovations, event marketing is now one of the easiest, most inexpensive ways to attract customers.

This fact hasn’t gone unnoticed when you consider that more than 40 percent of small businesses are hosting 13 to 14 events per year, on average. These include in-person and virtual seminars, networking events and social gatherings. So if you’re not including events in your marketing mix, odds are that your competition is using them to strengthen ties to their customers -- and possibly yours.

To help you drive awareness and fill all of your physical and/or virtual seats, here are four tools and tips that will help you make your next event a big success.

Email Marketing

Looking at your subscriber base, determine which customers would most benefit from the content and focus of the event. Based on the interests of that audience, create personalized email invitations.

To generate more excitement leading up to the event, send weekly updates highlighting what attendees will see and learn at the event. In your messages, include a social-sharing bar so readers can pass along the details of the event on social media sites.

Online Event Tools 

Online event marketing tools can help you automate, and thus simplify, so much of the logistics work, freeing you up to focus on giving attendees the best experience possible. Whether it’s setting the vibe through an event homepage, automating registration and payment, or seamlessly checking in attendees through a mobile app, you can save yourself a lot of legwork, and focus on the real reason you are hosting the in the first place: to build strong, lasting relationships with attendees.



Social Media

Create a dedicated Facebook event page and regularly update it. You can also use it to engage attendees by asking questions or posting a short poll. And let’s not forget about letting attendees know about the event’s Twitter hashtag and encouraging them to tweet before and during the event.

Daily Deals

Offer a deal to existing customers when they bring a friend to your event so you can engage existing and new customers upon arrival.

With events gaining in popularity and payoff, it may be time to amplify your efforts in this area while reducing investments in less fruitful marketing activities.

Steve Robinson is Constant Contact’s small business expert in Illinois and Wisconsin. A knowledgeable marketing expert with 30 years of experience, Steve has helped thousands of small businesses, associations, and nonprofits develop and implement effective email marketing, social media and online survey strategies. A popular speaker and educator, Steve gives small businesses and nonprofits the tools, techniques, and strategies they need to grow and expand their business and to maximize the power of relationship marketing. Steve’s experience in small business ownership, business development, sales, and fundraising help associations, small businesses and nonprofits achieve success.

It happens. You’ve been interviewed two or more times and they’ve been coy about the compensation, or hazy about some of the specifics. Either that, or everything seems great and then you suddenly get another, better offer unexpectedly.

Whatever the reason, you find yourself in the position of being offered a job and you no longer want it.

So what do you do?

This isn’t the sort of thing people become masters at: It’s a sensitive act of professional gymnastics since you want to basically break up and still stay friends. Easier said than done, friends.

Lifehacker inspired this post with their own on how to accept or decline a job offer. I want to talk about the latter exclusively here. Lifehacker says a lot of things and goes over the many, many reasons you might want to turn a job down. Here’s what Lifehacker considers completely admissible reasons to walk away from an offer:

1. You received an offer after learning during the interview process that the organization was not the right place for you.
2. You received an offer that had too many aspects that didn’t meet your ideal job description.
3. You attempted to negotiate for the terms you needed from the offer and were either unsuccessful, or the organization was not open to negotiations.

So, again, what do you do?

Lifehacker says email is an acceptable way of handling the let-down. Not exclusively — it says you can call or email. I’m telling you: you should call. If they took the time to meet with you in person, you can make the time to call and deliver the bad news. Lifehacker says you should:

1. Thank them for their time and help.
2. Tell them that you are declining the offer.
3. Give them your reasoning for declining.
4. Tell them you would appreciate the opportunity to stay connected.
5. Tell them to let you know if you can ever do anything to help them reach their goals.

Why? You want to maintain a good relationship with the place because, well, who knows: They might have something that’s a better fit for you later. Regardless, you don’t want to burn any bridges. You never know what the long-range future holds, so don’t damage your immediate future.

David Wolinsky is a freelance writer and a lifelong Chicagoan. In addition to currently serving as IFC’s comedy, film, and TV blogger, he's also a comedy-writing instructor for Second City and an adjunct professor in DePaul’s College of Computing and Digital Media. (He also co-runs a blog behind the DePaul class, DIY Game Dev.) He was the Chicago city editor for The Onion A.V. Club where he provided in-depth daily coverage of this city's bustling arts/entertainment scene for half a decade. His first career aspirations were to be a game-show host.

Lately, I have taken an interest in finding charities that exude both an altruistic and entrepreneurial spirit. There is absolutely nothing wrong with accepting online donations, but I am interested in finding non-profits with some extra entrepreneurial edge and two Chicago organizations jumped out.

Altruism is great, but it targets a small percentage of people. For those who want something in return for their generosity, Tix4cause is a great way to give back.

It’s brilliant in its simplicity: Unused tickets from sporting events, theater productions and more are donated to tix4cause. Cause-based buyers then purchase the tickets, and up to 100 percent of the proceeds go to a charity of choice. Enjoy a fun night out while supporting your favorite cause.

The second company that caught my attention is The Holiday Heroes Foundation, a charity started by a 14-year-old girl named Heather and her older sister Haley.

Heather was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at eight years old and used her struggles as the inspiration to start Holiday Heroes to ensure other kids going through the same experience could have a little relief.

The Foundation collects gifts from donors and visits various hospitals six times a year for special occasions: Valentine’s Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas/Chanukah. They decorate the hospital wings, play with the kids and give them gifts.

As an entrepreneur, I’m business-focused and so are most of my colleagues. Sometimes we forget that the non-profit industry boasts amazing examples of entrepreneurism. Tix4cause and The Holiday Heroes Foundations are refreshing examples of innovative businesses that pay it forward. 

Adam Fridman is the founder of MeetAdvisors.com, a social network for entrepreneurs. MeetAdvisors allows for professionals to give free advice to those seeking help with their business ventures. Forbes has coined MeetAdvisors "Yelp for entrepreneurs." Armed with a Master of Science in Finance and experience in corporate finance and investment banking, Adam spent the past 10 years tackling a number of ventures with a focus on business development and strategy.

As the founder of a Chicago public relations firm that has worked with many startups and small businesses, I know that gaining traction, users and interest from potential investors are all top priorities. But it is especially nice when you see a client spend valuable time and limited resources to support community, donate to a charitable organization, and bring awareness to an important cause. VineSprout client ParkWhiz, the company that enables users to find and reserve parking in advance, has done just that.

ParkWhiz wanted to find a charitable organization that could benefit from their service. It decided to support the 10th Annual Walk Now for Autism Speaks event on Saturday, May 18, at Soldier Field. From the Autism Speaks website, the walk “is a fun-filled, family friendly event and is our single most powerful force to fund vital research that will lead us to the answers we need.” You can read more about Autism, the complex disorder of brain development, by clicking here.

ParkWhiz found a connection between their service and Autism. Raising children can be difficult, but parents with autistic children face much greater challenges every day. Removing the frustration of finding a parking spot downtown or at an event is just one small factor that can provide some relief. ParkWhiz sponsored the Walk Now event, provided free and discounted parking spaces around the event, and hopefully made things a bit easier, even if just for a day.

Whether you have realized it yet or not, chances are good that your startup has the ability to make an impact on a good cause. Even the smallest action can have a profound effect. Who can you help? How might your product or service benefit someone in need?

Ben Pavlovic is the co-founder of VineSprout, Inc., the Chicago public relations firm that specializes in growing startups by getting them in the news. VineSprout has worked with graduates of Excelerate Labs, Healthbox and Incubate Miami. Follow @VineSprout on Twitter.