How to live the entrepreneurial dream while minimizing your risks and maximizing your success. (Warning: This ain’t easy.)

Starting a business is easy. You can do it in a day.

Starting a business that lasts is a lot harder, even if you put all your time and money into it. And the all-in approach is a lot riskier, since the more time and money you invest the more you put at risk.

So if you haven’t yet taken the entrepreneurial plunge, how can you live your entrepreneurial dream while minimizing your risks and maximizing your chances of success?

Simple: Start your business—and keep your full-time job.

Except in rare cases, keeping a full-time job is the best approach for first-time business owners.

It’s also the hardest approach, since sacrifice, discipline, and a massive amount of hard work will be necessary. But that’s okay; if you aren’t willing to work hard and sacrifice, your new business will fail whether you keep your full-time job or not.

Here are six steps to minimizing risk while building a solid foundation for small business success:

1. Live like a college student.

Almost every business venture requires spending money before making money. (And if money isn’t required, time certainly is… and time is money.) Some small businesses take years to turn a profit.

A huge percentage of start-ups fail because they run out of money, and even if you do not, chronic money problems can lead to making poor long-term decisions.

Never assume personal savings will see you through. Eliminate every bit of personal spending that isn’t necessary.

Before you start your business, cut all your personal expenses to the bone.

2. Work incredibly hard at your current job.

When small business capital and cash flow are tight, losing your income is the last thing you can afford. Be a superstar. Work as hard and efficiently as possible. Get more done than anyone else you so you can leave on time without regret—and without raising concerns about your performance and dedication.

Work incredibly hard at your job so your evening and weekend time is yours, not your employer’s.

You’ll need it.

3. Set a daunting schedule.

When your “normal” work day ends, your start-up workday is just beginning.

Decide how many hours you think you can spend on your start-up every evening and add 25 to 50%.

Then commit to that schedule. Write it down, and if your schedule says you will work from 5.30 p.m. to 9 p.m. every evening, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends, work those hours.

See the schedule you create for your start-up the same way you see your schedule for your current job—as non-negotiable.

Then work that schedule.

4. Ignore the temptation to whine about your daunting schedule.

Say you start a consulting business. Once you land a few clients you’ll be working every evening and most weekends.

That’s not a bad thing; it’s a good thing. Landing clients means you’re generating revenue.

You may have to get up early every day to take care of emails and voicemails before you head off to work. In large part your clients will choose your work hours for you.

Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Keep reminding yourself that having demanding clients is great because it means you actually have clients.

Resist the temptation to complain or feel sorry for yourself. Happily pay the price—it’s a price most other people won’t pay.

5. Be Ebenezer Scrooge.

At first you’ll be tempted to spend your profits. That’s natural.

Don’t. Reinvest every dollar you earn. Use profits to set up the business infrastructure you need (not the one you want, but the one you need.) Buy supplies. Buy equipment you’ve been renting. Advertise. Or save cash to tide you through inevitable revenue downswings.

Don’t think of profits as income; think of profits as a tool to further establish your business.

6. Keep your full-time job longer than you want.

Deciding when to quit your job and go into business full-time is the hardest decision you will make.

It’s impossible to make an objective decision when you’re tired, stressed, sick of your full-time job, sick of your boss… or when you just want your life back.

But don’t quit too soon. When in doubt, hold out. Always focus on numbers, not emotions.

Your financials—personal and business—will tell you when it’s finally time to quit your job.

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Source: Start-up

Too anxious to take a vacation? An expert insists stepping away can actually improve your business–if you do it right.

Vacations: We all know we should take them for our mental health and the health of our relationships, but many entrepreneurs stress that stepping away from work responsibilities will harm their businesses and land them with a painful backlog of tasks upon their return. But j2 Global, a company that provides cloud-based communication solutions to small firms, insists that actually, getting away can significantly improve lnot just for your marriage or your stress levels but also how you run your company long term.

Mike Pugh, vice president of marketing at j2, explained to Inc.com in an interview that while j2′s recent poll of small business owners revealed that more than half are planning on either skipping their vacation entirely or working through their time away, his experience working with small businesses shows that “vacations are good for the soul and for the business.”

A recent Intuit study confirmed this, finding 82% of small business owners who took a vacation experienced an increase in job performance when they came back. So how can you manage both to get away and to get a post-vacation productivity boost? Pugh has four tips.

1. Tell people you’re leaving.

Yes, it sound simple, but Pugh insists many business owners neglect to inform those around them that they’re leaving, robbing themselves of lots of freely available assistance. “Between instant messaging, email, text messaging, and phone, if someone wants to find you, they will work very hard to find you. That makes for nagging presences while you’re out on the beach,” he explains, suggesting that the simple step of telling colleagues about your trip in advance, setting an away message on your email or changing the voice greeting on your phone can make a big difference.

“Most people want to help someone on vacation, and if they know that you’re gone, they’ll leave you alone until you come back. But people don’t take enough advantage of that help they can get from their network,” Pugh says.

Of course, not all businesses can afford to tell their customers they’re jetting off for awhile, but more can than are willing to admit it to themselves, according to Pugh.

“If you’re running a retail store and anonymous customers are wondering where you are, that’s different,” he concedes, “but if you’re a real estate agent you can very easily tell one of your clients that you’re going to be away for a long weekend. It’s contextual but it definitely works with vendors, with other suppliers and contractors and, in some cases, can work really well with customers also.”

2. Use your vacation as a forcing function to delegate.

“Sometimes you don’t do something until you have to, so use a vacation to delegate and empower others,” Pugh suggests. “Small businesses tend to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. There are vendors, employees, your next door neighbor in a retail establishment, an outsource person that you use for some of the work, people within your network who can take on more.”

Using your vacation to force yourself to get these folks to shoulder a larger share of the load “can be a great way not only to get away, but to realize that you don’t have to do it all yourself when you come back.”

3. Set office hours.

This limits not only your stress, but the stress of those you’re vacationing with. “In the ideal world you leave on vacation and never think about work again until you come back, but then reality strikes and you realize either you worry too much to let go, or an issue comes up that actually needs your attention,” Pugh says. “If you need to work while you’re on vacation, pick a time of day and a finite amount of time—maybe an hour in the morning and an hour at night—to check email, check messages, return phone calls. You’ll be available if there is work to be done, others know that they have touch points when they can check in, and then you can disappear with a clear conscious.”

Your traveling companions will thank you too. “As a person who’s taken this advice to heart myself, my office hour in the morning has turned out to be a great time for my wife to get a massage,” Pugh says. “Office hours are a way to not impose on the rest of your party so that work can’t break the flow of a trip.”

4. Pilot cloud-based solutions for more efficient working.

“If businesses can divorce themselves from all the premise-based components of their business, especially the communications, IT, and back-office parts, they make it much easier to keep the important stuff flowing,” Pugh says, suggesting that vacations offer a great opportunity to try out simple cloud-based solutions that allow small businesses to stay lean and agile. Trying out things like Google Apps, Dropbox, or phone-routing solutions like j2′s own eVoice, helps entrepreneurs to work from their hotel rooms, andt can also benefits their businesses after they return home.

“Going on your vacation brings you back as a more productive person. It’s the change of scenery but also thinking: ‘How would I do the important stuff if I wasn’t in the office? How would I do it faster and more efficiently?’” Pugh says.

All in all, Pugh’s advice boils down to using your vacation not only as an opportunity to work on your tan or practice your fishing or golf skills, but also a way to reflect on what’s really important in your business, what you’re needlessly obsessing about and what you could accomplish more efficiently. Vacations, he says, function as a reality check. “We look at how busy our day is and we think we can’t possibly get away and then we find a way to get away. We find out that some of the stuff we were doing beforehand really wasn’t as important as we thought it was,” he says.

“When we come back and see 100 or 1,000 emails, we realize that 90 percent of them didn’t really need to be dealt with. Opt out of newsletters or wean some of our network off of daily contact and on to weekly contact. Then, on the flipside, realize what were the things that I was doing on vacation that were important to the business. Focus on those because that’s what really makes my business go. Breaking away lets us see what’s important.”

What tips do you have to reduce vacation anxiety?

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Source: Start-up

The upcoming Facebook IPO will make this group worth billions. How many Silicon Valley start-ups will they create?

You probably already know about the PayPal Mafia—the influential and wealthy group of former PayPal executives that spawned many of Web 2.0′s biggest hits. But soon, there may be a new generation of Silicon Valley start-up bosses in town. When Facebook goes public, these current and former Facebookers-turned-entrepreneurs and venture capitalists will be worth billions. What’s more, this group is rich in ideas and connections. So when they’re not backing promising start-ups, you can bet they’ll be tinkering on something of their own. Here are the Mafiosos to watch. —John McDermott

Parker first disrupted the business world—and caught the ire of the music industry—in 1999 when he launched Napster. After founding online address book company Plaxo in 2001, he joined Facebook as its inaugural president in 2004. Since leaving the company under questionable circumstances, he formed Founders Fund with investor and former PayPal executive Peter Thiel. Parker also has been enlisted to help woo the music labels he once irritated: He is a Spotify investor and board member. This June, he will reveal his stealth start-up Airtime, which he created with Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning.

Thiel’s résumé includes many of the darlings of the social Web: He was CEO of PayPal, a LinkedIn investor, and one of the earliest backers of Facebook. He remains on the Facebook board and maintains a 2.5% stake, which could be valued at up to $2.5 billion after the IPO. His newest ventures are far more eccentric. Recently, Thiel invested in biotech start-ups looking to reverse the aging process and Blueseed, a moored boat that will float in international waters and serve as a business incubator. Thiel’s Founders Fund also flew 50 engineers and entrepreneurs to Hawaii for a secretive three-day conference.

The former Treasury Department chief of staff and Google vice president made news recently about her insistence on leaving work at 5:30 every day to spend time with her children. Although the Facebook COO has yet to found her own company or invest heavily in other start-ups, the upcoming IPO will give her more than enough to do either—with almost 2 million shares, her stake will be worth roughly $1 billion.

Moskovitz was Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommate and is the youngest person on Forbes’s list of billionaires (he is eight days younger than his former boss). In November 2009, the Facebook co-founder left the company to co-found Asana, a workplace productivity start-up, with former Facebook engineer manager Justin Rosenstein. (Rosenstein is the man responsible for Facebook’s ubiquitous “Like” button.) Moskovitz owns 7.5% of Facebook, a stake that could be valued as high as $7.6 billion. To get Asana off the ground, he landed angel funding from Thiel and Parker, among other Silicon Valley notables.

D’Angelo began working at Facebook the summer after his sophomore year at California Institute of Technology and eventually became the company’s chief technology officer. Cheever was Facebook’s software engineering manager for three years, until he and D’Angelo left to found Q&A website Quora in April 2009. Quora’s $11 million in initial funding came from fellow former Facebooker Matt Cohler, a partner at Benchmark Capital. Back before Facebook acquired Instagram, D’Angelo played a Godfather-like role at the fledgling start-up—he helped the company find engineers, gave feedback on initial features, and was an initial investor.

Hired in 2005 as the vice president of product management, Cohler was the seventh Facebook employee. He remains a “special advisor” to the company, but his primary responsibility today is as general partner of venture capital firm Benchmark Capital, whose investments include Quora and Asana. Cohler’s role as venture capital Mafioso comes with experience: Before he started at Facebook, Cohler was protégé to Reid Hoffman, another member of the PayPal Mafia.

Facebook Connect is a set of APIs that streamline the login process across countless other sites across the Web, and Morin is one of the men responsible for the feature’s development. Since leaving Facebook in February 2010, he co-founded Path, the buzzy social network that declined a $100 million buyout offer from Google less than a year after it was launched. Whether or not that was a wise decision remains to be seen. He’s also invested in a slew of tech start-ups, including inDinero, TaskRabbit, and Tumblr.

Saverin was the Facebook co-founder Zuckerberg pushed out of the company by diluting his shares. (Hello, fans of The Social Network.) Don’t feel too bad for Saverin, though; he was given about $1 billion worth of shares in a legal settlement (now worth $2 billion). Is he really a legitimate Facebook Mafioso? He still lists himself as an active co-founder on his LinkedIn profile, but Saverin’s level of involvement is suspect. Reports say he was last seen living a playboy lifestyle in Singapore. He’ll have to do something with his new wealth, but after renouncing his U.S. citizenship, it seems increasingly unlikely he’ll funnel some of it back into Silicon Valley. Read more: Mark Zuckerberg’s Smartest Moves

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Source: Start-up

You don’t have to be Einstein to apply this success theory to your business. But, trust us, the results can be nothing short of brilliant.

In 1992, after significant time laboring over a title for his new book, Jack Canfield thought of the name, Chicken Soup for the Soul. He recalls getting goose bumps and a feeling of certainty that this book title would carry his labor of love into the hearts of people around the world. Even his co-author, Mark Victor Hanson, Canfield’s associates, friends, and family were enamored. Yet 144 publishers and 14 months later, that certainty faded to doubt and concern.

Committed to his life principles, Canfield persevered and convinced a publisher in Florida that his book would certainly sell a few thousand copies. Today, Chicken Soup for the Soul has become an international brand with over five hundred million books sold.

“I have lived by one crucial principle since I was 24 years old,” says Canfield. Taken under the wing of self-made millionaire, philanthropist, and author, W. Clement Stone in the ’60s, Canfield learned that assuming 100% of the responsibility for his life is key to happiness and success.

“I don’t blame or complain about things like the economy, the government, taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don’t have control over,” says Canfield. “The only thing I have control over is my response to these things.” Canfield calls this principle E+R=O. Today, he and his staff live by it.

First, take the E (for “event”): What is going on around you? We are living in a “bad economy” and, individually we have no control over that. “It’s how we respond to this recession that produces the outcome, not complaining that our results are poor because of it,” Canfield says. “We have to constantly change our response to these events to create better outcomes.”

Then, add the R (your “response”): According to Canfield’s principle, there are only three “R’s” that you have any control over: your thoughts, the images that you hold in your head (visualizations, worries, fears and fantasies), and your behavior (what you say and do). Change these images, fears and your behavior and the events will no longer control you or your outcomes.

Then imagine the O (for “outcome”): Visualize what you want to happen, rather than the negative outcome that you believe your environment will produce, and take action accordingly. You cannot control your outcome but you can influence it strongly.

But to successfully apply the E+R=O theory, you must have a pretty good idea of what you want out of life. Canfield believes that everyone is born with a unique life purpose. “It’s not an accident that musicians become musicians and engineers become engineers, it’s what they’re born to do,” he says. “If you can tune into your purpose and really align with it, setting goals so that your vision is an expression of that purpose, then life flows much more easily.” Straying from your purpose into areas that you don’t know much about, and don’t feel passionate about, will not produce the results you’re looking for–and you must be willing to work hard and burn the midnight oil to capture your dream.

“I worked from 10 p.m. until 1 a.m. every night for a year to write the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book,” Canfield recalls. The willingness to pay the price and understand and commit to your priorities is a necessary trait for those who desire success.

As a reminder of his priorities, Canfield keeps a sticky note in his office identifying one of his top operating strategies: The Rule of Five. “Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day,” suggests Canfield. “If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day,” he explains, “it doesn’t matter if it’s an oak or a redwood; eventually the tree has to fall down.”

But success strategies will only take you so far if you are emotionally “stuck.” Many people simply don’t take action on their dreams—despite knowing what the steps should be. It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to feel stuck, even paralyzed, by fear, the negative impact of past events, and even life trauma. Canfield has increased results for his audience and clients by an astonishing amount since he incorporated the powerful method known as the Emotional Freedom Techniques into his teaching regime some six years ago.

“We literally help people transform their lives and businesses with EFT,” says Canfield. In his recent book, Tapping Into Ultimate Success: How to Overcome Any Obstacle and Skyrocket Your Results, Canfield and his co-author, Pamela Bruner, teach their readers to eliminate what they call “stoppers” so they can achieve their vision, purpose and goals.

“Overcome your barriers, intend the best, and be patient,” Canfield says. “You will enjoy more balance, more growth, more income, and more fun!”

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Stop giving it away! We asked successful young entrepreneurs to brainstorm creative ways that small businesses can spread word and boost sales without resorting to the likes of daily deals sites.

The Young Entrepreneur Council asked 11 successful young entrepreneurs to share a creative way to market a business without resorting to daily deal sites. Here are their best answers.

1. Who Are Your Allies?

Doing joint-venture marketing with companies targeted the same customer base can be an excellent way to lift sales without relying on coupon sites. For example, you can upsell each others products in your shopping carts, or do email blasts promoting each others non-competetive products. It’s a win-win scenario—if you can find the right partners.
—Matt Mickiewicz, 99designs

2. Solve Problems for Your Customers.

Search Yahoo! Answers for questions related to your niche that you are knowledgeable on. Provide a helpful answer and put your website in the source field. When you actually help people as opposed to spamming, people will be more likely to click on your link and check out your site. Yahoo! Answers also ranks very well in search engines, which is a nice bonus.
—Josh Weiss, Bluegala

3. Give Away a Little Taste…

What most people don’t realize is that you have to “buy” customers and if you go out of pocket and give away your product or service for free the first time, you will be able to reach many more people than any other traditional marketing campaign will allow you to reach. You need to look at the lifetime value of that customer’s repeat business.
—Louis Lautman, Young Entrepreneur Society

4. The Ultimate Thank-You Note

Spotlight your customers with testimonials. How are your customers using your products or services to improve their business? Just ask and then feature them on your blog. People are tired of hearing about your business, but they do care about themselves. Give them a place to tell their story and they will share it with their networks.
—Benjamin Leis, Sweat EquiTees

5. Show Them Who’s the Big Winner!

No matter the small business, there is a clever way to invite customers to participate in a fun and exciting contest of some kind. For a restaurant, it might be some sort of eating contest to promote a local favorite. For a clothing store, it could be photo submissions of your favorite jeans. Establishing this shareable content will create positive buzz for the business.
—Logan Lenz, Endagon

6. Be a Thought-Leader, Online and Off.

Give away an eBook that provides useful information that is relevant to your industry. Potential customers will begin to think of your company as a thought leader in the space and may even share the eBook with others.
—Bhavin Parikh, Magoosh

7. If All Else Fails, Facebook

Facebook Ads allows you to get very specific about who you want to target. This makes it an amazing platform for businesses of any size. Try using it to offer a discount or free product that allows you to capture prospective clients to your mailing list. For example, you can target people on their birthday by sending them a message or a gift?
—Natalie MacNeil, She Takes on the World

8. Start Creating Content, and Creating Value.

Your content is your marketing. Give away your expertise, share something of value and publish it where people are looking. Answer questions in forums and on LinkedIn. Share your knowledge with people on your blog or a webinar. Prove to your audience that you are a trustworthy and valuable source and the new leads will come in. Coupons are short-term.
—Lucas Sommer, Audimated

9. Did You Hear?

High conversion happens when someone hears about your product or service through a friend. Instead of sharing the revenue with daily deal sites, reward your best customers through a referral program! When they share your brand, thank them by offering free or heavily-discounted products.
—Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

10. Run Your Own Daily Deal!

Even if you don’t have a huge email database as daily deal sites do, why not run a first-time special on your site for 24 hours? The key is to send the special to unsuccessful or not-so-warm leads from the past—not to clients who are already loyal.
—Devesh Dwivedi, Breaking The 9 To 5 Jail

11. Offer the Exclusive Invite.

Coupon sites definitely don’t work for some small businesses. If you’re having trouble seeing how they would work for yours, consider offering coupons to your business events. Hosting a workshop? Put out a coupon for it. Even if you don’t get many biters, these can raise your brand awareness.
—John Hall, Digital Talent Agents

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Source: Start-up