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Inches

Inches:  "The margin for error is so small..." "On this team we fight for that inch.  On this team we tear ourselves and everyone around us to pieces for that inch.  We claw with our fingernails for that inch.  Because we know that when we add up all those inches, that's the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying!" "In any fight, the guy who wins is the one who's willing to die for that inch." The parallels to entrepreneurship are striking. [youtube]9rFx6OFooCs[/youtube] You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.

The Ultimate Entrepreneur & Small Business Toolbox

These hundreds of links are the culmination of years spent on the web researching, reading, and saving the absolute best of the best resources for anyone looking to start or grow a business, whether that's freelancing, building an app, or selling a product/service. The topics covered are as follows: Entrepreneurship, Small Business, Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Advertising, Analytics, WordPress, Data Visualization, Videos, Negotiation, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pitching, iPhone Development, PR, Blogging, Photoshop, Pricing, Icons, Usability, Email Campaign, Textures, Landing Page, User Interfaces, Web App Building, A/B Testing, Logo, and Internet Marketing. I'm going to stop right here and tell you to start using Instapaper (on the web, your iPhone, and even your Kindle), and creating "subject" folders to manage all your intellectual capital.  If you already have Instapaper, then it's as easy as following each of these links, then clicking the "Read Later" button you installed to your browser.  Or, you could just bookmark this post! UPDATE:  if you don't have an instapaper account and are not logged in, y ou will not be able to use these links. If you want something super portable, here is my entire download-able account (an HTML file, which you can either follow the link to or right click and 'Save As'): seanMeverett Ultimate Entrepreneurship & Small Business Toolbox

Web Design

Even if you're not a web designer, understanding the tiny details that separate good from great design can make all the difference in the world when it comes to increasing your sales.  How often have you left a website because it was too confusing or how often have you stuck around on another website because it was visually appealing and did things you'd never seen before?  When all it takes is a split second for someone to get distracted on the web, can you afford not to practice good design principles?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you read any of these links on SEO, you'll quickly realize that I'm definitely NOT performing best practice adding all these links to my website (which I'm not "no following").  Thus, I'm giving this website's "authority" to all these wonderful blogs and authors because I truly value their content.  Not to mention the fact that Google and the other search engine's are probably going to flag my site as a "link farm".  Oh well, it's not always about link building.  Sometimes it's about giving credit where credit's due.

Social Media

The most over-used term in 2009 is back for more in 2010.  Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumble, Reddit, FriendFeed, and...the...list...keeps...going.  Fortunately, these links represent those posts that have risen to the top of the over-written and reported pile.

Online Advertising

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.  It's called arbitrage.

Analytics

A subject close to my heart.  The more numbers the better.  The problem lies in mis-interpreting the data or over-analyzing to the point of creating optimization bias.  We're also building an analytics web app that's going to finally bridge the gap between on-site and off-site analytics, something never done before.  Read a bit more about it at Evolyte Analytics.

WordPress

Easy to use and infinitely customizable.  This site is built on it, you should probably have a couple built on it too.

Data Visualization

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Videos

YouTube didn't blow up for nothin' and it takes significantly less backlinks to get a better page 1 Google PageRank (i.e., SEO) than text.

Negotiation

You negotiate every day, whether you realize it or not, with your significant other, your friends, at the workplace, even with your family.  Why not get a little better?  The secret, in one phrase, is care...but not too much.

Entrepreneurship

This is what it's all about.  Follow your dreams and change the world in a big way.  Believe it or not, networking is probably the most under-appreciated yet most important aspect of entrepreneurship.

Twitter

I love twitter.  Seriously.  And the reason I love it is two-fold.  First, you can steepen your learning curve on any subject faster than any other method, and second, because I love sharing interesting things with others (hence the reason this post is ridiculously long with links).  If you're interested in keeping up with links like these, you should follow me on twitter here:  @seanMeverett

Facebook

Ah, the bane of my existence.  Where Farmville and Mafia Wars updates continually spam my feed, and people who think they're sarcastically witty start their status updates with "Dear ___", followed by unoriginal dribble or upload risque pics like they're still on MySpace.  I'm not mad at you though, just keep uploading pictures of your cats and we'll be kosher.

LinkedIn

Yah, I know, not much content.  I do have a few videos, however, that I can't share due to copyright constraints.

Pitching

If you've never given a presentation, or if you plan to ask a VC or Angel Investor for a bit of cash flow, then you should take a look at the link below.  I'd also recommend searching for Dragon's Den on YouTube, which is somewhat similar to the American Idle concept, but replaces singers with entrepreneurs and Simon, Paula, and Randy with VCs.

iPhone & iPad Development

Self explanatory.

Blogging & PR

If you don't know what a blog is, you should probably just call it a day.

Photoshop

This is a graphic designer's greatest tool.  I don't pretend to be anything of the sort, but I have been known to hack around with it from time to time.

Pricing

This is one of those art-and-a-science sort of things.  It's the single "easiest" way to impact your revenue (positively or negatively).  Pricing is hard, especially dynamic pricing where you charge the highest price possible for each unique customer.  Fortunately, a few of the guides below will help you in your quest.

Icons

You'd be surprised how many things can be represented with a simple icon, and how these basic icons can impact behavior on the web.  For example, I recently reviewed a sign-up section of a landing page that asked for the typical information (name, email, address, etc).  The goal was to determine a way to increase the conversion rate of folks signing up.  By adding a simple lock icon with a green checkmark next to the 5 information fields, it increased the conversion rate by a staggering +50%.  That.  Is.  Insane.  Like I said, a picture's worth a thousand words, a

Dreams

The Notorious B.I.G. said it best in Juicy: It was all a dream I used to read Word Up magazine Salt'n'Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine Hangin' pictures on my wall Every Saturday Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl I let my tape rock 'til my tape popped... Dream big.  Dream bigger than big.  Nothing great ever came from mediocre ideas.  The gap between dreams and achievement, however, can only be bridged with two things:  surrounding yourself in the idea and doing.

Idea

The very first question you need to ask yourself is are you passionate about your idea?  And I don't mean as a passing hobby. Do you lay awake at night thinking about every possible angle?  Do you have internal debates about the pros and cons of specific aspects of the idea?  Do you read everything you can get your hands on relating to the idea, whether through blog posts, news articles, or academic research papers?  Does it fill you with so much excitement that time starts to slip away (instead of dreading the time commitment)?  Do you find yourself giving up things other people find "important" and not really caring? If you answered yes to all these questions, then keep reading...

Just Do It

Having lofty goals and being an expert in a subject is great, but you need to start somewhere.  Get off the internet, out of the house, and talk to a real life, breathing human being.  Talk to him or her about your idea and actually listen to what he or she says, both the words and the unspoken subtext.  If you do this enough times, you'll understand whether your idea has legs.

Legs

If you feel confident about the idea, then it's time to start sprinting.  Do whatever is necessary to make it work.  Take small steps and keep making progress.  Let me repeat that so you understand:  KEEP MAKING PROGRESS.  As soon as you stop, your dream is dead. You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.

I vs We

If you're on a team, whether business, social, or athletic, the only time "I" should ever be used instead of "we" is when expressing your personal opinion or accepting fault:

Don't:

"I did this awesome thing."

Do:

"We did this awesome thing." "I think that this is the process we should use, but we will need to all agree." "I apologize for not meeting your expectations."

Respect

As an aside, I respect people much more who are quick to accept blame, but slow to accept praise. You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.

Entrepreneurship

After years of strategizing, doing, failing, iterating, and finally succeeding, this is the most concise yet accurate way to approach any startup I've found to date. Via skmurphy:

Get the Product Right

  • Find 30 prospects.  Set up meetings.
  • Demo your idea / alpha / beta / product.
  • Ask questions (lots of questions).
  • Take copious notes.  Score your results.

Ask Critical Questions

  • Do you have this problem?
  • Does this solve your problem?
  • How much would you pay for this?
  • Base hit or home run?
  • How would you spend $100 of our money?
Some call this the new Lean Startup religion based on building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I just call it efficiency. You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.

Measuring Performance

Of people: Don't measure number of meetings, or time commitment, but value added. Of debt: If you can borrow at a lower rate than you're earning, then that's positive arbitrage. Of efficiency: Producing the highest quality output with the least number of iterations (but only if you do it faster). Of athletics: The reaction of the loser. Of life: The number of people crying at your funeral. You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.

Twitter

Lets kick things off by posting the most popular tweets measured by the number of included link clicks:
  • The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Applications to Grow Your Business bit.ly/bFQsqu
  • How to Earn Money on Twitter | The Social Media Guide bit.ly/bPgSYq
  • Anne Holland's Which Test Won - A/B Test & Multivariate Testing Education for Marketing Professionals bit.ly/9KAAlN
  • Marketers: ‘Twitter is your small forward, Facebook is the point guard’ bit.ly/cp1BLQ
  • No Apple stock split...for now. bit.ly/aR3Iiu
  • MarketingSherpa: New Chart: What Social Metrics are Organizations Monitoring and Measuring? bit.ly/9HUX4x
  • 9 Tactics for Rapid Learning (That Most People Have Never Heard Of) bit.ly/cD9X9H
  • Naps Can Seriously Improve All-Day Learning Abilities bit.ly/9HywRM
  • Are You Making These Business Mistakes? bit.ly/9o8rdz
  • 20 Social media blog posts that are well worth bookmarking bit.ly/c93KDK
  • Teaser video for Evolyte Analytics: Social Media ROI, Identifies Influencers, Online Ad Optimization, eCommerce Lift bit.ly/9owY2y
You should follow me on Twitter I follow people because they teach me something, are my friends, or are funny, but hopefully all three. If you're new to Twitter, then be sure to read my post on the Evolyte blog called How To Use Twitter Syntax Like A Novice & Pro You should follow @seanMeverett on Twitter here.