Our partner, Business Online Payroll can help make your payroll processing painless. With your monthly subscription of only $49.99 (a 50% savings over traditional payroll services), you’ll get worry-free, comprehensive and convenient full-service payroll.

They handle the tedious payroll details — to alleviate your hassles
With Business Online Payroll, you simply go online and enter payroll hours or use the One-Click button. They handle all the time-consuming, tedious details.

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They stay on top of regulations — to keep you penalty-free
Most people would agree that payroll would be a cinch, if it weren’t for staying knowledgeable about rules and regulations. When you use Business Online Payroll, they help you stay in compliance.

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They remove administrative burdens — so you can get back to business
With Business Online Payroll, you don’t have to be in the office on payday or spend time administering data. With our convenient online system, you really can have a paperless office.

• Provide direct deposit and email notifications, letting employees know they’ve been paid
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They provide friendly customer support — so you will never have to go it alone
At Business Online Payroll, They like to say, “We’ve got your back!”

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They give you HR tools and resources — so you can run your office more efficiently
Included with your service, you receive easy access to a variety of tools right from your payroll account.

• Business forms like I9s and W4s that can be automatically pre-populated with information from your payroll account
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It’s easy to enroll. Simply click on the Get started with Business Online Payroll link in the Online Payroll widget on the home page dashboard in your account.

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Picture this: a room full of technology professionals, sitting around a large conference table. Project managers, business analysts, technical writers, network admins, database administrators, software architects, developers, designers and more.

Back in my Enterprise IT days, this was a common site. We’d all gather, sometimes multiple times per week, to put our heads together on our enormous multi-million dollar program. The kicker, though, was that 75% of the participants in the room were consultants.

One day, out of overwhelming frustration at how many hours per week I was spending in pointless meetings when I had real work to do back at my desk, I did a little round-the-table math, based on what I knew of the rates/salaries of the people in the meeting.

By the time I was done, I’d tallied that each team meeting was costing the company $1,500. Per hour. And not only did we have several of those large meetings per week, but subsets of that group would have anywhere from 5-10 additional meetings per week on top of that!

What was worse of all was the awareness that at least half of those meetings occured out of habit, and not out of an actual need to either make a decision or collaborate on the resolution to a problem. We were meeting for no better reason that so we could say that we met.

I was thinking back to his exercise when reading Barney Austen’s guest post on MyVenturePad, called “Meetings – A Total Waste of Time.” Of course, most of Barney’s points are long-standing reminders of the well-established rules of Meeting Management 101: have an agenda, make sure decision-makers are in the room, etc.

But as an entrepreneur what I am constantly struck with is the actual cost vs. value of a meeting. When someone else was paying my salary, this wasn’t something I was anywhere near as concerned with. But now, knowing that my consulting time is billed by the hour, I am acutely aware of the fact that any time I spend in a meeting is detracting from billable client work I could be doing. So that meeting time better be worth while, or I need to cancel it.

I have worked with some other consultants making the transition from employee to entrepreneur, and I’ve seen many of the struggle with the same thing: common patterns of behavior in enterprise environments are suddenly irresponsibly expensive in entrepreneurial ventures. And the new business owners who understand that are quick to adapt. But some struggle with it more, because it’s a common tool used to justify their job.

One of the best consultants I ever worked with once said to me, “I’ve been a consultant too long. If I don’t produce something tangible every day, I feel like I haven’t justified my paycheck.” As a result, she had the world’s greatest project documentation. It was always updated, it was always detailed and it was always extremely thorough. What it wasn’t was always necessary.

Bootstrapping a startup is a different animal. And finding the right people to work with is important, because the last thing a lean organization that is trying to be cash efficient needs, is unnecessary meetings burning through time and resources — especialy in the cases that those resources are paid by the hour.

A simple rule of thumb: only schedule meetings if there is a decision that needs to be made, and then only include the people needed to make the actual decision. Even more importantly, don’t let Outlook or Google Calendar’s default settings drive you to automatically scheduling it for an hour. If you think that getting a quick decision is possible, then keep it to half an hour. (Side note: new teams tend to love me, because I am the queen of the 15 minute meeting. No matter how long I schedule the meeting for, my goal is always to be done in 15. And I usually am.)

There are, of course, other types of meetings. But, as an entrepreneur, everything that I do in my business should be tied back to tangible, measureable results. So while a sales meeting, a vendor meeting or a team member feedback session could be extremely important, an entrepreneuer should always stop and do a time management inventory to make absolutely certain that the purpose of the meeting is clear, and that it can be served based on the list of confirmed attendees.

If it’s not, the answer is simple: change the meeting. Cancel it, reschedule it or just change whose coming. And if you think that seems like a waste, then I challenge you to add up how much that meeting is costing you. Then decide whether or not it’s worth it.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

I’ve worked for some interesting characters over the years. Some bosses have been great, some bosses haven’t.

I’ve worked for extroverted sales geniuses, and introverted operational wizards.  I’ve worked for people who create chaos just by breathing, and for people whose very presence manages to calm everyone without even speaking.  I’ve worked for brilliant absent-minded professor-types, and I’ve worked for walking computers who never miss a single detail.

By and large, I’ve been extremely lucky and have learned a lot from most of them — even if we didn’t always get along or understand how to communicate with each other.

Over the years, something has become clear to me about each of these incredible men and women.  I’ve come to realize that the difference between a good boss and a great boss is the ability to create a legend. That mystique is how a great boss attracts and builds a great team.

Being a good boss is a skill; being a great boss is a talent.

• A good boss helps cover you while you’re on vacation; a great boss kicks you out of the office and forces you to go on vacation when he sees that you need it and aren’t doing it yourself.
• A good boss works with you on your professional goal planning and development; a great boss inspires you to set goals you never previously considered — and then drops challenges in front of you for a bit of added incentive.
• A good boss lets you vent and cry and scream in his office when you’re at the end of your rope; a great boss notices the signs before you hit a boiling point and takes you out for drinks first.
• A good boss hires strong, experienced people and then works to build them into a cohesive team; a great boss looks for talent, develops leaders, sets demanding expectations and then gets the hell out of the way.
• A good boss looks for smart people; a great boss looks for people he believes are smarter than he is.

Great bosses make work worth going to every day, even when the project is late, the client is angry, the team is frustrated and all you want to do is buy a one-way ticket out of town. A good boss is helpful and diligent. But a great boss is who you’d rather walk through flames than run the risk of disappointing.

I was thinking about this while reading Steve Blank’s article on VentureBeat, “Incentives are one thing. Legends are another.” Steve recounts a story where, as CEO, he took financial incentivization to a new level, by generating some healthy, motivating drama around it. And, ironically, he did it by appearing to “not get it” and then pleasantly surprising his team.

What’s good to note about Steve’s story, is just that: it’s a good story. And, especially in the early days of a venture, sometimes we need good stories to help propel the mystique enough to keep us moving through that tough uphill climb.

When I think back to my early days in startups, the power of some of those stories still moves me. Whether it was a client story or a team story or some other story, human beings are drawn to stories because they are experiential and personal. There is a power to having and cultivating good stories when you are a startup, and it’s all part of what Steve shared in his memory: successful people take enormous paycuts to do inhuman amounts of work to achieve heroic efforts. And while there are definite ego strokes to be had by success, there are small touches that don’t cost a lot, but which can make the difference between a “good” experience and a legendary one.

As the boss, part of your job is to build a company that can retain talented, energetic people — especially when the outside world can offer more immediate, tangible motivators than you can. No company can thrive if your best team members lose interest and walk out the door. So how to do make sure that your people remain engaged, despite insane amounts of work and huge personal sacrifice?

Steve’s advice is good: find ways to build the legend. It’s not as hard as it may seem, and — even when money is tight — there are ways to do it that require more in the way of attention and consideration than actual dollars and cents.

And, in the end, the biggest difference is simple: a good boss is content to have a happy team; a great boss is only satisfied with an inspired one.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

Back in December, I did a series of blog posts on the how to wrap up your financial records for 2009. Now that 2010 is officially here, you might be getting around to reviewing 2009 records and getting ready for tax time. As you prepare to wrap up 2009 from an accounting perspective, here is a look back at our series on how to “Close the Books on 2009” and how WorkingPoint can help, including:

Introduction to Closing Your Books
With the new year just days away, you may be gathering your depreciation schedules and other adjusting entries to close your books, preparing to print your financial reports for the year, and getting ready for a new year of recordkeeping. WorkingPoint makes it easy to transition from one year to the next by providing you easy ways to record your adjustments as well as handling some of them for you!

If you just started your business or you’re new to accounting for your  business records, I would be honored to walk you through closing your books at year-end, starting with a look at what is involved in keeping records for your business from a process standpoint.
Read More about the Accounting Cycle»

About Adjusting Entries
Adjusting entries record changes in account balances that occur outside of normal business operations, e.g. bills and invoices, etc. Account balances change for a variety of reasons but in general there are two types of adjusting entries: accruals and deferrals.
Learn About Accruals and Deferrals and How To Record Adjustint Entries in WorkingPoint»

About Closing Entries
In addition to adjusting entries, closing entries are made to “close-out” certain accounts balances at year-end and move them to Retained Earnings. Today, in computerized accounting, much of this is done under the hood. No longer do you have to transfer balances from one account to a holding account and then move the holding account to Retained Earnings.

In WorkingPoint, we don’t consider income and expense accounts temporary. So unlike other popular systems, we don’t zero out the balance in the accounts. You can always see the amount you have earned or spent since you began using WorkingPoint to manage your business activity.
Read More»

Financial Reporting
About the Income Statement
The Income Statement is the report most business owners use to gauge how their business is doing for a specific period of time because it answers the question: “Am I earning more than I am spending?” In the case of closing the books at year-end, the reports shows you how you did for the entire year.

Review all of your account totals as displayed on the report. Make sure things look good to you and are in-line with what you would expect to see. If anything looks off, click on an account link to view the detail of the transactions that make up the total. You may have chosen an account by mistake or entered a transaction twice or make a data entry error in an amount, for example total should be $1.00 and you have $10.00. If you find errors, this is the time to correct them.
Read More»

About the Balance Sheet Report
The Balance Sheet can be your company’s most important decision-making tool. The Balance Sheet report conforms to the standard accounting format by showing all of a company’s assets, all the liabilities, and the owner’s equity.  Because the Balance Sheet uses a standard format, you can consistently compare your company’s financial position from one quarter to another, or compare your company’s Balance Sheet with another’s.

When reviewing your Balance Sheet for the end of the year, be sure that your account balances look right to you. That is, is your Accounts Receivable account reflecting only open invoices, is your Accounts Payable account only reflecting open bills, does your credit cad account balance include all 2009 purchases and payments? If you carry inventory, is the inventory value correct?
Read More»

About the Cash Flow Statement
The Cash Flow Statement is a great report to run at the end of the year so you can see how your cash was used. If you are working with a financial advisor, they may ask you for this report to help you evaluate your spending and offer suggestions or advice on how to manage your cash to meet your business goals.
Read More»

Last week I was invited to join a new local networking group that focuses on building business referals for its members. One of the conditions of the group is that only one member per industry joins, preventing multiple people from attempting to draw on the same pool for prospective clients.

From a distance, this sounds like a reasonable idea, and so I filled out my paperwork to join. And then I was denied, because I was considered a direct competitor to someone who is already in the group.

The reality is, only about 20% of my business competes directly with this other business — and it’s not even the core part. She is a website designer and developer. While we do help clients with that, that is not our core business and when we do that type of work, we will typically work with designer/developers in collaborative projects to get that work accomplished.

Yet, according to traditional ways of thinking, we are competitors and that’s that.

This entire episode reminded me of a recent article on YoungEntreprneur, called The Rapidly Changing Rules of Online Competition. And like so many other exchanges I encounter every day, it was a great example of a clash between the “traditional” way of doing things, and the “new” way of doing things.

The YoungEntrepreneur article approaches the topic of competition-vs-collaboration from a classically Gen Y perspective. Generational statistics show that Millenials are far more collaborative than older generations, and that it’s not a toolset issue, but a mindset issue. So, for YoungEntreprneur’s target demographic, the idea of forming a coalition of peers with overlapping offerings to build collaborative teams is not a crazy notion.

For Generation X and older, this is rarely how we approach most things. Competition is just that, and you don’t get to your goals if you share with your competitors.

The problem with this theory, however, is at the heart of the Game Theory proposed by Economics Nobel Laureate, John Nash (see the video clip on YouTube, if you haven’t seen the movie A Beautiful Mind). Doing what is good for yourself without consideration what is good for those around you may foster strong competition, but it also fosters social alienation. In a world of mechanical processes this may be fine, but in a human-centric world that requires collaboration for success, this is ultimately short-sighted.

The YoungEntrepreneur article makes this point very well, and recognizes that Generation Y has a more innate understanding of these social rules than many older demographics. There is a direct relationship that entrepreneurs — especially ones in collaborative fields — need to understand in order to be successful:

• The democratization of data empowers entrepreneurs as individuals, because we are no longer dependent on having a full-fledged firm to be able to provide valuable goods and services.
• But no entrepreneur (no matter how big the firm) can be all things to all customers. Entrepreneurs specialize, and no two entrepreneurs will offer precisely the same services.
• In order to provide a truly good customer service, multiple entrepreneurs need to come together in a collaboritive effort to serve customer needs efficiently and effectively as a team, rather than trying to over-stretch a single entrepreneur.

Consequently, the old paradigms of what constitutes “competitors” need to be re-examined and explored for opportunities, rather than summarily dismissed or eyed with suspicion. Where older generations see business as a race, Gen Y sees it as a relay race where an individual’s success cannot be defined in isolation.

So if the rest of us want to stay competitive, we better start learning a lesson from ‘the kids.’  We can be competitive, but we just need to figure out how to do it a bit more collaboratively.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

Have you sent out your IRS Form 1099s yet?
They are due to eligible recipients by January 31, 2010. Since that is a Sunday, the IRS had extended the due date until Monday, February 1, 2010.

Log into your account today and run your 1099 report to see who you need to send a 1099 to.

Want to learn more about the WorkingPoint 1099 report, check our our online Help Center.

The world of work for knowledge and information workers has seen enormous shifts over the past decade, and it is something that impacts a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs.  According to the 2006 US Census, 49% of US businesses were based out of the home.  While these ranks used to be dominated by the trades (e.g. construction, electricians, plumbers, etc.), advances in technology have swelled the ranks of the home-based knowledge worker (e.g. consultants, web designers, developers, writers, etc.).

This creates a whole new set of challenges when it comes to getting work done.  Because information-based work is almost never done in a vacuum, most of us work in teams.  And a large percentage of those teams can go weeks — if ever — without seeing each other face-to-face.  Making this work well sounds like it should be easy given all of today’s technology: email, Skype, ooVoo, Twitter, etc.  But, as usual, the issue that requires the most management is not the technology, it’s the people.

Becky McCray of SmallBizSurvival recently posted an article on MyVenturePad discussing this very thing.  In “6 Tips for managing a distributed workforce,” she discussed several valuable tips in successfully leading a team that is all working remotely (presumably from their homes).  In addition to some of her great tips — ranging from reading The One Minute Manager to explicitly declaring the weekend off — here are a couple more items that I’ve recently been reminded are critical to the success of a virtual team.

Clarifying priorities.

All of us are familiar with the Scope-Resources-Time triangle and we get the relationship between all of them.  One of the most difficult things to manage through is when each member of the team is assuming a different leg of that triangle is the highest priority.  (This can be especially challenging when your priority is your deadline, but you’ve got team members who are perfectionists and want to spend time on things that could be considered enhancements, vs. the most critical requirements.)  To help manage that, I’ve taken to writing a one-sheet project summary for everyone — the client and the team, and the top of the sheet includes the prioritization of those three elements (including supporting notes).

Different projects have different priorities, and everyone needs to know what matters most in order to prioritize options and decisions.  A project leader can’t assume their team reads minds or is going to guess correctly.

Rules of engagement.

These are vital at an organizational level, at a team level and at a project level.  No need to be onerous about it, but it needs to be done.  Things like the Employee Handbook that Becky mentions in her post fall into this category at an organizational level, but having smaller versions at a project level is critical to keeping everything on track.

Things like predictable status updates and check-in times become more and more important to manage if you are working with a team spread across time zones and/or a client with a very formal schedule. This can also mean being explicit about when synchronous vs. asynchronous communications are needed.  There are some things that are just harder to do over email, even though that might be everyone’s preference.

Roles and responsibilities.

This can be part of the Rules of Engagement, but is also a broader question.  A common problem is having several people who are jacks-of-all-trades working on multiple things (this seems to be a particularly common quality among freelancers).  But the the problem which evolves is ownership.  Who is RESPONSIBLE for making sure certain things are handled correctly.

Talk through assumptions.

One of the hardest things about a distributed team is that you are very limited in your ability to witness a person’s reaction to a piece of information.  Whether it’s someone taking offense at a comment and getting angry, or whether it’s taking an off-the-cuff comment literally when it was never meant that way, we rely on face-to-face communications for so much of our understanding of how other people are perceiving what we say.

Figuring out how to do this via technology over distance can be really, really hard.  Rephrasing and repeating back what people just heard is a start, but recognizing that it’s necessary to make sure that people are not taking their communications for granted is a huge part of the leadership of distributed teams.

Ask, Then Decide

Not sure if members of your team prefer email vs. phone calls?  Ask.  Is your designer a morning person and your developer a night person?  Ask.  Does your client spend mornings in too many meetings to be available for questions until after lunch?  Ask.  If your designer uses a Mac, your developer is on Linux, and your client is on Windows, what tools do they like for collaboration?  Ask.  Skype or GTalk?  Ask.

Ask first.  If you do, not only will you be in a position to make better decisions, but you’ll also probably be surprised at how many new things you learn from other people whose experience can come in handy.  If it helps, create a questionnaire for each person to fill out when they join the team, and use that to craft a process that works for that team.  Early morning meetings are not going to be productive if you’ve got a team of night owls.  So make sure you ask first, and then plan.

I love so many things about the distributed team model, but some things simply are harder when working this way.  It is easy to take things for granted, to uncover (and then recover from) casual misunderstandings, and to rely on multi-sensory input to facilitate strong communication when you are working in the same physical space with people.  You can tell when someone is having a bad day, you can see when what you just said confused them, and you can hear how they discuss ideas and concepts in a more casual context to gauge how they are interpreting information.  We often forget how much we rely on casual interactions in the workplace to get things done.

As soon as you move to a virtual team, many of the informal techniques we rely on to communicate are handicapped, if not out-right eliminated.  This means being much more deliberate about how we communicate with each other.  Given that the vast majority of the information exchange in human communications is non-verbal, this is a very counter-intuitive thing for many of us to do.  But if you’re going to make a virtual team successful, it’s something that you’ve got to train everyone — starting with yourself — to do, and do well.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

Different entrepreneurial ventures require different things — both from the business and from the entrepreneur.

If you are a freelancer with a specialized skill set who wants a comfortable income and a flexible schedule, then your plans are going to look different than if you are a family building a long-term business that you can pass on to your kids, or if you are a tech innovator looking to create massive market disruption and a big-bang exit strategy.

There is a great series on VentureHacks, guest written by Venture Capitalist Mark Suster, on the ten qualities he looks for in an entrepreneur before he writes a check. (It’s a three part series: see part 1, part 2 and part 3.) Obviously, his list is clearly geared towards the high-impact, disruptive market-type venture.

1. Tenacity
2. Street Smarts
3. Ability to Pivot
4. Resiliency
5. Inspiration
6. Perspiration
7. Appetite for risk
8. Detail Orientation
9. Competitiveness
10. Decisiveness

But in reality, when you look at the ten qualities he has identified, they are also applicable to lifestyle businesses and freelancers as well — even if some of the scale or mechanics might look a little different.

Part of what I like about this list, though, is that it gives me a great list to start when building out a plan for my business, the type of goals that I want to achieve, and the type of partnerships I need to build in order to make it happen — because, like it or not, I do not score a perfect 10 on each of these qualities.

As an exercise, consider this list. Now, imagine the business you want to build. On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), what level of strength in each category do you believe is necessary to achieve your business goals. Then, in another column, how would you rate your personal strengths in each of these categories. (Even better: if you have a partner or someone who knows your really well, have them grade you, too.)  So your grid would end up looking something like this:

Now look at the two columns side-by-side and examine the deltas. What are you going to do about them?

• Are these gaps that can be closed by bringing on the right partners?
• Are these gaps something that you can close by some behavior modification and discipline?
• Are these gaps an indication that you need to re-examine your business goals?
• Are these gaps likely to entirely derail your plans, or merely impede them?

I think this list is extremely helpful, because nothing in business is black-and-white. Everything is some shade of gray, and the best way for you to build a business that makes you feel successful (based on whatever your personal definition of success happens to be), you need a good map. A list like this provides a great place to start.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

One of my single biggest frustrations is talking to entrepreneurs and hearing horror stories about having their websites built. I hear them all the time: an entrepreneur pays someone a ridiculous amount of money for five static HTML pages that he/she cannot update themselves, and then disappears, never to be heard from again.

Even worse is when I hear this story and then look at the website, only to discover that it’s hideously ugly, has absolutely abysmal SEO potential and looks like it was built in Frontpage in 1999.

Yet, without fail, I hear this story — or some version of it — at least twice per week. And it drives me batty. Some people are just inexcuseably unscrupulous. Most solopreneuers or small businesses do not need a fancy site, but they need one that they can manage themselves. And yet I rarely see “web consultants” do a proper job of educating their clients on how to get what they truly need, vs. just what a consultant can sell and crank out quickly.

Heather Nolte discusses this same issue on StartupNation’s blog, in her post called, “Can a Consultant Save You Cash…and Heartache?” Like me, Heather recounts how invaluable a good consultant can be, if inserted into your business at the right time.

So, how do you know if your consultant is the right person or just the person who happens to be right there?

Don’t Marry the First Girl You Kiss
An old cliche, to be sure, but beware of this trap. It’s far too easy to be so intimidated by a topic that we grab onto the first person who appears to be able to solve it, but try to resist that urge. I met with a man earlier this year who had been sold on the idea of a whole web package for an insane amount of money. By the time I met with him to discuss what the consultant had proposed, it was too late. The client had swallowed the consultant’s story about what he needed, and they were off to the races.

Shop around. Ask for references. And then, when talking to references, ask them who else you should talk to (these are called second degree references and are often the best sources of information).  And, when in doubt, reach out to your network — LinkedIn is especially good for this.  Tell people you are interested in contacts that they can personally vouch for.  You may be surprised how many of them have recommendations.

Teaching vs. Doing
There are some things in our lives that we simply need to know how to do; there are others that are such rarities or specialties that it is unreasonable to expect us to do as well as the experts. In business, this is even more common. Finding the line can be hard, though. And one of the true hallmarks of a good consultant is that they can tell you where the line is in their field.

For instance: A roofer is not going to suggest that you scramble up a ladder to climb out on your roof and re-shingle it after a storm knocks a tree branch down. However, a good roofer should show you how to watch for the signs that re-shingling needs to be done. He should also give you advise about surrounding tree branches, storm conditions and other things that are reasonable for you to keep an eye on.

Finding a consultant who can DO is important. But finding one who can teach you what you need to do is critical. So be sure to ask, “What do I need to know how to do to make this work/keep this working on an on-going basis?” See what they say. If they say, “Nothing.” be a bit wary and confirm that with a few other sources. Very few things are truly maintenance free.

Educate Yourself
In a world of democratized data, real time communication and personal branding, there is no reason in the world that you shouldn’t be able to spend a couple of hours worth of research, doing a bit of homework before you start meeting with prospective consultants/vendors. Before you start talking to individuals, find the industry experts in the field, the thought leaders, the authors and the business experts who service that marketplace.

Things like Google Blog Search and Twitter Search are amazing sources of information, and with a few key searches, you should be able to find out who the most reputable leaders are in almost any industry, and get a little bit of background so that you don’t walk in to meet with a consultant cold. You do not need to be an expert, but you can’t be blind, either.

Always remember: this is your business. You can’t expect anyone else to be as concerned with it as you are — and that concern starts with making sure that you are prepared to ask good questions, and not pay the wrong person the wrong amount at the wrong time for the wrong services.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.

There is a show I have recently become addicted to watching. It’s Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. While most tech entrepreneurs gush about Shark Tank, I think that Kitchen Nightmares is one of the best shows about entrepreneurship imaginable.

For those unfamiliar with the premise: restaurant owners with struggling restaurants (usually on the brink of going under) invite celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsey, to spend one week in their establishment on an aggressive turn-around effort. Gordon’s formula is pretty simple: come in, try the food, observe how the organization functions, dig into what is going on ‘behind the curtain’ (so to speak), evaluate what it will take to distinguish the restaurant from its competition, and then set about an updated plan of attack, culminating in a “re-launch” that is centered around a new menu.

The reason I think ths show is such an amazing example of entrepreneurship is because of the following:

• The restaurants are all small business.
• They started off as being someone’s passion and dream (often at the expense of their savings and fiscal stability).
• One way or the other, the owner must take responsibility for the condition of the business.
• In almost all cases, the owner is on the brink of bankruptcy.
• In all cases the owner is either directly or indirectly at the root of the problem.
• Fixing the business requires changing how the owner functions within the business.

There is one particularly interesting phenomenon that often occurs in episodes, though, that is a specific point of interest: the market research.

For many entrepreneurs, the phrase “market research” is a big, scary term that conjurs up visions of expensive consultants conducting all kinds of behind-the-scenes black magic to give us answers to mysterious questions. On Kitchen Nightmares (in both the US version, and it’s British predecessor), Chef Ramsey’s version of “market research” usually involves walking down the street and talking to random passers by, sometimes having them sample food and getting their feedback, but always by asking them questions.

• He asks if they have heard of the restaurant.
• If so, he asks what they have heard of it (to understand its reputation).
• He asks when the last time they ate there.
• He asks why they don’t continue to eat there.

If he’s got new food samples, he’ll often also ask them what they think and what they’d be willing to pay for something on the menu.

At no time during this process does Chef Ramsey use the phrase “market research,” and yet that is precisely what he is doing. It’s very simple. It’s very straight-forward. It’s very unassuming. And it cuts right to the heart of the matter.

The key, of course, is listening to the results and acting on them. Sometimes the answers that come back upset the restaurant owners (usually around food quality and price), but the ones who put their ego aside and make the changes their prospective customers want are always the most successful.

This is a point Seth Godin recently made in his post, “The ubiquity of competition.”  Your customers always have alternatives.  If you are not meeting their needs, you can always be sure that someone else will.  You don’t have to like that fact, but it simply is a fact.  And if you are not talking to them and getting their feedback on how you can improve, then you are missing out on opportunities to build your business.

So when was the last time you spoke to potential customers to find out what it would take for them to patronize your business? No exhaustive surveys, nothing fancy, just a conversation. I’d be willing to bet that asking a few basic questions is a sure-fire way of getting some valuable ideas on ways to help grow or update your business.

The first step, though, is to ask.

Alora Chistiakoff is an entrepreneur, blogger, content strategist and project manager who has been developing online business and technology for startups for more than a decade. She co-owns The Indigo Heron Group, Inc., a content strategy firm in Austin, Texas.