Great faith. Great doubt. Great effort. It takes all three to bring anything meaningful to fruition, and it’s good to keep those in mind if you’re trying to start or grow your own company.

1. Great Faith: To build a business — or start anything new — you have to believe in yourself and your ideas. You can envision something that others cannot. You think up a new business, process, design or technology that hasn’t existed before.
2. Great Doubt: Even the best-laid plans and the best-planned businesses can fail. You have to allow yourself to clearly see and anticipate potential problems. If you do not bring a healthy and respectful appreciation of the challenges you’ll face when building a new business, you’ll be unable to withstand the difficult times.
3. Great Effort: Nothing succeeds without hard work. I’ve seen hundreds of people with great ideas who have never made a dime.

Great faith. Great doubt. Great effort. It takes all three. Others will challenge your ideas and question your chances of success. Without great faith, you’ll be shaken. Without great doubt, you won’t listen. Without great effort, they’ll be right.

usatoday.com

Business 2.0 Magazine looks at scrappy entrepreneurs who are squeezing big money out of websites that tap into the latest news, trends, and search fads.

When word of a whites-only scholarship at Boston University hit the media last fall–drawing coverage from bloggers and biggies like ABC alike–Daniel Kovach smelled opportunity. His goal: to boost traffic to the website he runs, Scholarships Around the US. So he paid a writer to crank out “The White Man’s Guide to Getting a Minority Scholarship,” which reveals that some schools do offer scholarships to “nonblack” students–and added it to the mix.

Then Kovach planted a link to the article on recommendation site Digg, where it jumped to the coveted front page. That, in turn, led other sites to link to the article. And Kovach landed a top search ranking on Google for phrases like “white man scholarship.” Read the rest of this entry »

Marshall Goldsmith is an author of management-related literature, professor, consultant and executive coach. Born in Valley Station, Kentucky, he received his BS from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, his MBA from Indiana University and his Ph.D. from UCLA. From 1976-2000 he became an Assistant Professor and then Associate Dean at Loyola Marymount University’s College of Business. He currently is a University Professor at Alliant International University.

Goldsmith also works with entrepreneurs, including Jonathan Klein, who started Getty Images. In an interview with FSB editorial director Brian Dumaine, Goldsmith dissects five common (and particularly annoying) habits that he says can hold back even the best small-business owner.

1. Winning too much
2. Starting with ‘no,’ ‘but’ or ‘however’
3. Adding too much value
4. Playing favorites
5. Goal obsession

Are you an entrepreneur who can relate to these habits? Can you name other annoying habits?

FSB

While recovering from a bout of food poisoning, Stewart Butterfield had a sick-bed epiphany. Part of the online game let users share photos with other players, and Butterfield thought that feature could stand on its own as a Web-based product. “It was a very different idea, but cool,” he says. He came up with ten pages of notes and designs for Flickr, the popular online photo-sharing site.

That was on December 8, 2003. The first version of Flickr was launched by February 2004, and it was an immediate hit. “From the outset, potential acquirers knocked on the door,” says Caterina Fake.

Unlike other photo-sharing sites, Flickr focused on building an online community. Fake and a colleague spent days and nights greeting people on the site and introducing them to each other. “If you build a social network that takes off, that’s the Holy Grail,” says Fake.

But six months later, in March 2005, Yahoo bought Flickr for about $30 million. Butterfield and Fake celebrated by buying a new Prius. They moved their offices from Vancouver to San Francisco, and their entire staff of 24 moved with them. Butterfield continues to run Flickr for Yahoo, and Fake is in Yahoo’s technology-development group.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine

We all know the drill: To make sure you have enough green for your golden years, you’re supposed to max out your 401(k) contributions, invest in index funds and growth stocks, and not - repeat, not - splurge on that top-of-the-line Ferrari. All sound advice.

But where’s the fun in that? And what about now, when you’re actually, you know, living your life?

Well, we believe it’s possible to both live the good life and turbocharge that retirement account. In the articles linked below, you’ll find ideas for investments and startup opportunities you won’t see reported in the business section of your daily newspaper.

Like locking up rights to wind-farm and solar-power sites and then leasing them back to renewable-energy companies. Or snapping up a sampling of the works of today’s underground artists for a surprisingly quick and profitable payoff. Or investing in real estate in places where supermodels lounge on the sand and beach houses can still be had for six figures or less. Want a preview? Aim Google (Charts) Earth at Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Maybe you’d like to go into business for yourself, or just want to ride the next wave. Think organic fast food, online luxury-goods rentals, and pet health insurance. And take a look at cooking schools for kids and upscale retirement communities.

Sure, your accountant might raise her eyebrows, but that’s OK - while you’re waiting for your 401(k) balance to grow, nothing says you have to sit around and watch the grass grow too.

Consider these five options:

1. Going global: Buy real estate in exotic locales.
2. Power play: Snap up rights to wind and solar sites.
3. Collecting profits: Invest in unknown artists.
4. Getting on the farm: Cash in on these crops.
5. Franchise this: Be your own boss.

Business 2.0 Magazine

Without credit, I had to come up with a fresh approach to funding my cosmetics startup.

The bill was more than $60,000, due in 30 days, and I had no idea how I’d cover it. There was no way the contract was going to pay off by then, but there was also no way I could turn that contract down.

Read the story of Mascara Plus.

Few niches crashed more spectacularly during Web 1.0 than the pet sector. In the space of just nine months in 2000, Pets.com managed to raise a jaw-dropping $82.5 million in an IPO, air a $1.2 million Super Bowl ad starring its sock puppet mascot, land funding from Amazon.com (Charts), build a network of cavernous warehouses … and go out of business without making a penny in profit.

So when San Francisco Web designer Ted Rheingold co-founded Dogster.com in January 2004 as a kind of canine version of Friendster, the news drew smirks from the few who bothered to notice. How could Dogster, a pet site cobbled together on weekends and launched on a shoestring budget, expect to succeed where lavishly funded pet sites had flamed out? The consensus on Dogster.com was unanimous: It would fail. Read the rest of this entry »