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10 Things Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know   A business is a living entity with needs of its own, and unless the leaders pay attention to them, the business will fail. As an entrepreneur who specializes in a done-for-you service (it doesn't get any more done-for-you then handing clients a piece of copy plus the exact strategy for how to use it to get the best results in their business) you would think I would be the last person who would need to coach someone around mindset shifts or through their blocks.      Alas that is not the case. You would be surprised at how many times I've been hired (and fully paid) for copy the clients have loved but never used. Why? Well, there are as many reasons as entrepreneurs out there but a good chunk of the time it has to do with some sort of block. So how do I respond? As much as I can, I try and step in and work them through whatever has got them stuck (although I really am not a coach). Which means having a few coaching skills in my back pocket has proven to be amazingly helpful. There are 10 tips to know...

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(1 ) Numbers run a Business.. A business is a living entity with needs of its own, and unless the leaders pay attention to them, the business will fail. There's only one way of knowing what those needs are: by looking at the numbers and understanding the relationships between them. Numbers will tell them how good your sales are, whether you can afford to hire a new salesperson or office manager, how much cash you will need to deal with new business coming in, how your market is changing, and so on. You can't afford to wait until an accountant tells you these things.    (2) Sale Collection Every business that generates receivables is, in effect, a bank. When you deliver a product or a service in the belief that the customer will eventually pay you for it, you are making a loan, and you should treat it accordingly. That means determining whether customers are creditworthy and finding out in advance how long they take to pay their bills. It also means getting into the habit of checking the quality of your loan portfolio regularly and making sure your average collection time is what it should be.      (3) Check Short-Term Liabilities Every business that generates receivables is, in effect, a bank. When you deliver a product or a service in the belief that the customer will eventually pay you for it, you are making a loan, and you should treat it accordingly. That means determining whether customers are creditworthy and finding out in advance how long they take to pay their bills. It also means getting into the habit of checking the quality of your loan portfolio regularly and making sure your average collection time is what it should be.      (4) Don't go with Short Cuts It's only natural to look for shortcuts, especially when you are on your first venture. You constantly search for easier ways to make your company grow faster, and sometimes you'll find them. Unfortunately, they almost always come back to haunt you. I speak here as someone who has tried just about every shortcut in the book -- like hiring salespeople from competitors and promoting employees just because they are available. It finally dawned on me that my shortcuts were serving only to prolong the process of building the great company I wanted. Why was I in such a hurry, anyway?

(5) Care About Cash Most people don't understand the value of cash when they go into business. If they did, they wouldn't waste it by purchasing things that they don't really need and deplete their start-up capital without getting their business any closer to viability -- that is, the point at which the company can sustain itself on its internally generated cash flow. But it's not just start-up entrepreneurs who waste cash. The corporate landscape is littered with the corpses of companies whose leaders thought the good times would last forever and spent money they hadn't yet made on luxuries they didn't need. Make the money first. If you are smart, you will put some of it aside for a rainy day.  (6) No Friends in Business Don't do business with friends. Friends, I learned, inevitably make assumptions that hinder your ability to do what's best for the business. Even though I could tell them up front that they would be treated like any other vendor, they still expected me to make exceptions for them. When I wouldn't, the relationship went sour, and I lost a friend as well as a supplier. It's even more important to understand that you can't be friends with your employees. I'm not saying you shouldn't treat them with respect and affection, but neither you nor they should ever forget that it's a business relationship.      (7) Focus on your Gross Margin Focusing exclusively on sales is very dangerous, especially when you are starting a business with a limited amount of capital. Why? Because sales do not necessarily result in cash flow, and cash is what you need to survive. Instead, you should be focusing on your gross margin -- the percentage of profit you make after covering the direct cost of whatever it is that you are selling. In my opinion, gross margin is one of the two or three most important numbers in any business and by far the most important in a new business. You have to pay all your expenses out of gross profit.        (8) Identify Your Compitators Not everyone who does what you do is your competitor. Rather, you compete against only those suppliers that offer the same services, are more or less equally reliable, and charge prices similar to yours. I came to see that our real competitors were extremely important to our long-term success. They played a critical role in shaping our reputation in the industry--which was our most valuable asset -- if only because their opinion carried more weight than that of any other group. When they spoke well of us, everybody listened. So I made a habit of treating them with the respect I hoped they would show us, and I insisted that our salespeople do the same.    (9) Culture drives a Company When I started my first business, I didn't realize that companies had cultures, let alone that cultures might actually affect the businesses' performance. It was only 15 years later that my wife, Elaine, joined CitiStorage -- that I began to think seriously about the matter. She introduced programs that fundamentally changed our culture, making it much more employee friendly, with business games, contests, educational programs, new employee benefits, and group activities. It dawned on me that setting the culture was ultimately the CEO's responsibility. Not only did I have to give Elaine the resources she needed, but I also had to modify my behavior to fit in with the new regime and make sure that everyone else went along.        (9) Set Your Goals For my first eight years as an entrepreneur, I always put my business goals first. My life was one full-bore, supercharged, nonstop, 24/7 rush to create a high-growth business. You know how that turned out. Fortunately, my descent into Chapter 11 came early enough in my life to learn the appropriate lessons and make a fresh start. Building a successful business is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. It is a way to create a better life for you and those whom you love, however you -- and they -- may define it. You need to do the life plan first and then keep revisiting it, to make sure it's up to date and your business plan is helping you achieve it.