I saw a lemonade stand today, something I haven’t seen in a long time. Warm childhood memories came rushing back as I watched the two kids playfully wait for their next sale. Naturally I had to buy a glass, and it was delicious.

It dawned on me that these two kids were probably netting a larger profit than most of the local businesses in the area, and that made me laugh! Because of their youth, inexperience, lack of formal education and outside influences, these kids were doing something simple and pure. They were focusing on one thing and doing it well.

They were selling lemonade. One flavor, one size and one price. There were no up sells or discounts, no additional employees and no complicated point of sale systems. “This is a cash only establishment,” the young girl firmly told me.

As we grow older and “wiser,” we tend to complicate things, in life and business. More is better we’re taught. More features, more products and more options. It’s taken me twelve years to realize this uncomplicated fact: Simplicity is key. A three word phrase that holds more power than any business book or publication.

37signals.com, Google, Facebook, In-n-out, Ipods, Flip cameras, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Youtube, Twitter, Tumblr, Plentyoffish.com and Subway. What do these businesses have in common? They are simple and focused.

When developing your new business concept, never be afraid to embrace that lemonade stand simplicity. Focus on the key objective of your business. If you’re developing a website, watch out for feature creep. If you’re opening a restaurant, keep the menu simple and stress quality over quantity of items.

As a thought experiment, I imagined what would have happened if I took over that lemonade stand for a week and let my little entrepreneurial devil go unchecked. First I’d buy a cash register, there’s no way I can trust these little kids to handle the money properly. I’d implement credit cards using my trusty Iphone credit card swiper, which means I’d also have to open a bank and merchant account. One flavor is boring, we need at least three. And while we’re at it, we should offer small and large sizes. While word of mouth advertising is good, I think we should make some discount coupons and hand them out around the neighborhood. Did you apply for your resell number yet? We’re going to need that if we plan on expanding throughout the rest of the neighborhood. Did you do a cost analysis on the lemonade yet? What do you mean you’re only 9, that’s business 101 kid! Better add a little more water to that mix so we maximize profit. This isn’t fun anymore? Stop complaining. Who said business is supposed to fun!? Give me a few years and I’ll turn you into Gordon Gekko.

See what I mean. It’s easy to complicate things. But don’t! Simplicity is key. Repeat that out loud until you’re blue in the face, and then repeat it some more!

And now it’s time for me to go back and get another lemonade..

I’ve often heard the term “born leader” or “natural leader” and those terms make most think of leadership as a god given talent. I, on the other hand, think it is a mind set. To be a good leader, or perceived as a good leader, confidence is crucial.

To be a good leader, one does not have to be out spoken or aggressive. I’ve met many people I consider leaders that are soft spoken and passive, but their actions and words reflect confidence in themselves.

Confidence in the way you speak and even walk, as well as your mannerisms is important in controlling how others perceive you. Leaders tend to keep their heads held up, their shoulders rolled back and they maintain eye contact. When you shake a person’s hand, shake it firmly. When you walk into a room, walk in thinking like you own it.

Silence can also be an important characteristic. Great leaders listen. Sometimes they pose questions or offer suggestions and allow others to fill in the blanks, gently nudging them in the right direction. People are smarter than you think. Often they don’t need to be directed, just given a soft kick in the rear end.

To me, a great leader isn’t someone who tells people what to do. A great leader is someone who can empower others to figure out problems for themselves, to improvise and adapt on their own. The rewards for everyone are much greater that way.

I may have gone to USC business school, but my real schooling came from what you see above. This was the first major business I began. This is where a boy became a man, where the young Michael Mulhall was replaced with the harder, wiser and stronger Mike Mulhall. I may not have fought in any wars, but I waged a great many battles while running this establishment.

I exited the business about 5 years ago, but the mark it left on me will last forever. I experienced more owning and operating this business than most would experience in two life times. The business itself was based on a faulty plan which I relied on my ex-partner in the venture to develop. Unfortunately, I was very young and very naive. I wish I knew then what I know now.

While I had many positive experiences, it’s the negative ones that I learned the most from. I lost some money, but more importantly, I lost family and a piece of myself. It’s those losses that put tears in my eyes. Fear, confusion and guilt are an entrepreneur’s worst enemies, and they must be conquered and controlled to attain success. Here is what I learned from these experiences:

• Hope and excitement can seriously cloud your decision making ability. Learn to recognize that.
• NEVER have family involved in your business. But always heed their advice, especially your father. He knows a thing or two about life. Trust me.
• Perception is reality. But as an entrepreneur, it’s unhealthy to hold everything inside.
• Always trust your gut…no matter what.
• Always let life and love come before business. We’re not here that long, so enjoy it.
• Don’t waste time hoping for the best. Just plan for the worst. And if the best occurs…celebrate.
• Bad things happen, whether it’s your fault or not. Don’t dwell on it. Just keep moving forward and I promise things will get better.
• If you don’t have a real, no bullshit business plan, you don’t have a business. You have simply placed a bet.
• Lastly, it’s ok to fail. Anyone who has succeeded or done anything great has also tasted the bitter flavor of failure. That is normal and should be expected.

Here is my old business as I walked by it today. This is what inspired me to write this post. After I stepped away from the business some years ago, it declined rapidly and closed soon thereafter. Now they’re ripping it down to build a WalGreens. Standing in the parking lot, watching the bulldozer rip apart everything I built, I felt numb. I felt strong. But I also felt sad. A piece of me was being buried in that rubble.

As the dozer’s arm turned, I saw the main wall and caught a glance of the last remnants of the business I built. I had scrolled our motto, “A New Beginning,” across the walls in large letters to remind my members that we can always start over. As I saw that phrase for the last time, I smiled as I whispered it to myself. I had forgotten the importance those three words hold.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson

In the words of Seth Godin, this book will make you very uncomfortable and that is a good thing.

I love this book!

It’s an out of the box view of how to start and run a modern business. With chapter titles such as Meetings are Toxic, Your Estimates Suck, Drug Dealers get it Right and Resumes are Ridiculous,  Jason and David have turned the business world on its head.

In the spirit of this book, I’m keeping this review short and simple. This book is easy to read, straight forward, honest and cutting edge. Buy it, borrow it, read it.

(I used to feel like this dude ever day!)

For a long time, I was plagued with constant headaches. They weren’t as painful as migraines, but they occurred every day, all day. I tried everything to cure them. That included banging my head against the wall and popping tylenol capsules like tic-tacs. Unfortunately, nothing worked!

After speaking to a few friends who had the same headaches, stress levels and hectic schedule I did, I came to the realization that these headaches were simply a symptom of our busy lifestyles. Stress is the number one cause of these types of headaches. I finally found a cure, and it didn’t come in the form of a pill.

Put simply, I had to learn how to “chill.” Here is a few things I did to rid myself of this problem:

1. Stop taking pills and start drinking more water. For all those people taking pain relievers and chasing them down with massive amounts of coffee (you know who you are!), stop! Tylenol doesn’t help and caffeine can actually spur on these types of headaches.
2. Go Rag Doll at least 3 times a day. This works! At least 3 times a day, you need to find a quiet place, completely relax your body, take deep breathes and work on clearing your mind. Do this for no less than 5 minutes. When I say rag doll, I really mean it. After doing this enough, you’ll learn how to relax every muscle in your body, which can relieve headaches, stress and anxiety. When you become “stressed”, a process in your body referred to as a “cascade of cortisols” begins. This process basically puts your body into a flight or flee mode thereby creating anxiety. The rag doll exercise relieves this.
3. Workout! Whether it be calisthenics in your living room or a brief jog down the street. Physical exercise is crucial to living a healthy lifestyle and it will help relieve that nasty tension causing those headaches.
4. Make sure the A/C is working. A warm work environment doesn’t help and can actually be counter productive.
5. Most importantly, take a step back. Whenever I got a headache, my first instinct was to power through it and continue working. Just ignore the pain. Right?? Wrong! Your productivity falls more than you think. These headaches are your body’s way of telling you something is wrong. Your body is saying “Hello?! Are you there? I need attention and if I don’t get it, I’m gonna kick your ass!” So try to lighten your workload and spend a little more time on you. Don’t worry, the work isn’t going anywhere!

These are the steps I took to decrease my anxiety and headaches, and I’m confident they can help you. These are things I learned from personal experience, not from google searches. There are no magic pills or quick cures.

I’d love to hear some of your remedies as well. Feel free to send them to me and I will post them for the rest of the readers!

Rome was not built in a day. Yea I know…so cliché, but so true. No matter what kind of business you plan on starting, the beginning is not going to go smooth. It never does and it never will.

Whether it is a restaurant or a dotcom, things just pop up and cause headaches. The only thing one needs to remember when this occurs is to stay calm and find solutions.

We unveiled our new menu tonight at my restaurant and it was chaos! It reminded me of our grand opening two years ago. Food was flying in all directions in the kitchen, customer wait times were exceeding 40 mins (yikes!), employees were getting into fights with each other and numerous other problems occurred. But as a seasoned entrepreneur, all I did was observe and learn.

Don’t try to fix all the problems at once. You’ll have a heart attack or your head will explode (seriously). Begin fixing problems or as I like to call them “inefficiencies” one at a time.

A clipboard and a calm demeanor can do wonders when observing your business (that not so well oiled machine) in action. I’ve noticed time and time again that many business owners get caught up in quickly “band-aiding” the problem instead of trying to understand why the problem occurred in the first place. That’s a total rookie move, and it took me 10 years to figure that out.

So when the sh%# hits the fan, just step aside, plug your nose and endure. If you keep a cool head and fix the cause of  the problems, everything will be just fine.

There are no one way streets in a successful social marketing campaign. Remember that.

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of businesses trying to harness the power of social media. They register their Twitter accounts, start fan pages on Facebook and maybe even create their very own blog. That’s definitely a step in the right direction. However, that’s only the beginning.

Many businesses think this is enough and simply start blasting away with ads and bulls%@$, as they did “back in the day” through more traditional channels. A TV commercial is a one way street, as are most radio ads or billboards. Marketing via social media is not.

All one has to do is look at the phrase “social media,” social being the keyword here. It’s all about interacting with your customers. Not by simply posting events, alerts and ads (dare I say spam) on social media sites, but by seeking out and responding to customer feedback. Empower the customer, give them a sense of belonging and they will love you.

If a user comments on your Facebook fan page, respond to it. If someone new begins following you on Twitter, acknowledge and thank them. It can be that simple.

For anyone that still can’t grasp the idea of social media marketing, here it is in a nutshell: Interaction with customers, or perhaps we should now call them fans or friends, on a two way street, where communication flows back and forth.

That’s it! Now go forth and start building a fan base.

-Mike Mulhall

It seems like the new buzz word these days is visualization. In the books, magazines and blogs I read, everyone is talking about the power of visualizing your success.

One book in particular said that visualizing your goals in your mind is one thing, but creating a tangible visual aid is even more powerful.

I always tell colleagues that one of my ultimate goals is to be on the cover of Wired magazine. I think about that every day. So I made the above picture last night and taped it to my wall. I stare at it constantly, and deep down, I can see it happening! It’s a great feeling.

I used Adobe Photoshop, but I found some great sites that will help anyone get on a magazine cover. Let’s face it, if you make it onto on the cover of your industry’s magazine, you’re doing well. The sites are:

• http://www.magmypic.com/
• http://graphics.imagetemplate.net/magazines/

And it doesn’t have to be a magazine cover. Get creative and try having fun with it. Maybe your goal is to buy a new car or a house in the near future. Follow my examples and see what happens.

People start blogs for a variety reasons. Some start a blog to generate an income, some do it out of passion and many businesses create blogs to engage their existing customers. Blogging, which is an integral part of  any social media marketing strategy, can do wonders for a business, whether it be brick and mortar or virtual. The first question a potential blogger should ask is what are their motivations and expectations. Determining this will make choosing the correct blogging platform much easier.

Do you plan on creating an income generating website, or do you simply want to share your life, talents, expertise and opinions with the world? If the latter sounds more to your liking, then I would suggest checking out Tumblr or Posterous (a great mobile blogging platform). Simply sign up for an account and you will be blogging in less than two minutes. Seriously! However, these types of platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. See below:

• Strengths: Simplicity, ease of use, ease of cross-platform integration (facebook, twitter, etc.) and a built in audience. These platforms are built more for “lifecasters,” which many predict to be the future of social networking.
• Weaknesses: A lack of flexibility, they are very difficult to monetize, they don’t optimize well with search engines, they don’t have very much design potential and they lack features and add-on applications. These platforms operate in giant, semi-closed networks of  fellow bloggers that interact with one another, but have minimal contact with “non-bloggers” that are just surfing the net.

Now for everyone else out there that wishes to venture into the wild (the wild web that is), I would suggest checking out Wordpress. Wordpress is a blogging platform that requires more work and effort, but offers a lot more flexibility and potential. Here’s a simple breakdown of what you need to do to create your own self hosted blog:

1. Choose a hosting service. I use Godaddy, but there are a lot of these types of services out there. I like Godaddy because they’re a one stop shop for everything, they offer Wordpress specific hosting plans and they have good customer service.
2. Choose a domain name. I think people over emphasize choosing a name for their website sometimes. Create good content and people will find it no matter what. Food for thought: Myspace was actually a furniture website before becoming a social network and Google was supposed to be spelled “Googol.” They messed up the spelling when registering the domain. Oops!
3. Install Wordpress. If you don’t use Godaddy, you’ll have to install Wordpress. Go here for simple installation instructions.
4. Choose a theme. This is the fun part. Wordpress is incredibly flexible. Check out Themeforest, Rockettheme or Wordpress Themes. You can choose any theme you want for your blog and it requires no programming and little design work on your part.
5. Get some plug-ins. Wordpress has thousands of free plug-ins / add-ons that range from creating a chatroom on your blog to adding a shopping cart to automatically optimizing your site’s SEO.
6. Start writing! - And that’s it. Check out Mary’s post, Blogging 101, for great tips on how to successfully engage your readers.

For a great comparison of different blogging platforms, check out this article as well. It’s clear and concise.

Now get out there and start sharing. And if you need any help, don’t forget I’m always just a click away.

(You can also find this article at MoreThanMary.com as well as more very helpful articles on life, fashion, fitness and travel.)

Do you have a great business idea but can’t find the funds to start it? An angel may be looking for you. Angel investors are individuals looking to invest their own funds into new businesses. Generally, they look for high risk, high reward startups that are in need of $50,000 to $750,000 of seed capital. Don’t confuse them with venture capitalists. VC’s usually manage pools of other investor’s money in a fund.

Financially, the capital an angel investor can provide upfront can allow an entrepreneur to start operations and scale quickly. However, the knowledge and experience an angel can bring to the table may prove to be even more valuable.

Most angels are successful entrepreneurs, meaning they have the contacts and insight to make your idea a success. They’ve already made the mistakes and learned from them. An angel can serve as a mentor for you and your business, and that can be priceless.

Because of the difficulty of acquiring loans in the more conventional manner, angel investing is becoming a popular option. How do you find your own private angel? Here are a few tips:

1. Check out your local trade organizations – Networking is crucial to finding investors.
2. Visit your Chamber of Commerce – Chamber meetings and mixers are great networking opportunities. It’s also a great way to gain local business contacts.
3. Check out PartnerUp.com
4. Google search – Do a quick search on angels in your industry. Your search is bound to turn up some related forums and discussion sites. These can be good tools in finding your angel.