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So, you're smart. But stop it already with the inflated vocabulary. To make the biggest impact, take a cue from the simplicity of Apple's branding and ditch the big words.

"I'm Bill Gates. Takes a genius to understand me."
—Rapper Flo Rida in Good Feeling

I hear that song on the radio and cringe. Flo Rida's lyrics suggest it's a good thing that it takes a genius to understand him—that complexity makes him, in fact, a genius. In reality, the opposite is true: It takes a genius to be able to communicate in a way that is understood by absolutely everyone and anyone. This inversion is one of the most important things for a creator to understand.

This was the core finding of a 2006 study by Princeton professor Daniel M. Oppenheimer, wittily entitled "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly." Of the study's Stanford undergraduate participants, 86 percent admitted to puffing up their language at some point in an academic or professional context.

It's an easy mistake to make. Those with higher IQs typically have large vocabularies. Thus we assume the converse must be true: if one uses a lot of big words, clearly one must have a higher IQ. There is a catch in this logic, however: readers, and users of software, are self-centered and also very lazy. In practice, we users care a lot more about our own experience of trying to understand something than recognizing the subtle genius of others.

In a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained one of the company's most core values: "We believe in the simple, not the complex." You can see this philosophy borne out in every aspect of Apple's customer experience: hardware, software, the retail experience, packaging, even down to words it chooses to describe products.

In Adam Lashinsky's recent book Inside Apple, Apple exec Bob Borchers recounts that Apple boiled down the iPhone to three simple things: 1. It was a revolutionary phone; 2. It was the Internet in your pocket; 3. It was the best iPod ever created. Apple's consistent success is defined by its ability to describe a complex and powerful product in the simplest terms possible.

Microsoft has served as a foil to Apple's simplicity for decades. Flo Rida's allusion to Bill Gates might be somewhat appropriate given the unusual amount of complex corporate speak found in Microsoft's product naming and marketing. For instance, products featured on the website of Microsoft Expression (a brand ironically aimed towards designers) include Expression Encoder Service Pack 2, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5, and Expression Web *SuperPreview* Trial. It makes you wonder what exactly all of those products do, since it's not immediately obvious from their names alone. I'm a little afraid of finding out what "SuperPreview" means, as it will occupy neurons in my brain better suited towards more productive goals. Luckily, it's easy to avoid finding out because the product description is expertly hidden in a giant block of text.

Flo Rida might be able to get by on a catchy beat and a memorable hook. Microsoft's engineering capabilities may make its naming gaffes forgivable. The rest of us will have to try create things that can be understood by geniuses and non-geniuses alike, and that very feat requires a bit of genius of our own.

Don't just sit there while the clock is ticking on your business idea. Go where the nerds are.

Almost everywhere you look, the barriers to starting a company are falling. Seed funding is easier to come by, startup costs are lower than ever, markets have never been more open. However, the technical skills required to execute the next groundbreaking idea are more in demand than ever before. If you are an entrepreneurial engineer, the world is yours for the taking. But what if you don't know how to code? What if you can't lead an engineering team? How do you find that code ninja, that "Ruby on Rails" rock star that you need to turn your brilliant insight into a billion dollar exit?

There is no shortage of networking events for start-up people, but they are the last place to look for a technical co-founder. Those meetings are crawling with non-technical people like you, or engineers with ideas they want to pursue. You need to go where the nerds are, where they feel comfortable, and you can't go just as a tourist—you need to go to places like this:

• Meetups There are hundreds of Meetups organized around technical topics. Engineers get together to discuss programming challenges and then drink beer and eat pizza. Stay silent and take notes during the first part. When the beer starts flowing, start asking beginner-level questions, and try to understand the answers. Bonus points: Bring the conversation up a level to broader design decisions.

• Nerd Hobbies If you can work up some enthusiasm for orienteering, dowsing, telemark skiing, Ultimate Frisbee, historical re-enactments, chess, Dungeons and Dragons, LARPing, war gaming, or board games, you'll meet a lot of great engineers. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an annual 48 hour-long scavenger hunt called The MIT Mystery Hunt. Volunteer to bring food, sleeping bags, and caffeine to a team and then get out of the way. Bonus points: Actually help solve a puzzle.

• Concerts and Local Jams There's a huge overlap between musicians and engineers, but it does you no good to hang around Justin Bieber shows. You've got to go far off the pop or frat rock scene and into "smart music" shows like Kraftwerk, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, They Might Be Giants, Rush tribute bands and the like. If you can play an instrument, tune up, and drop into a Sunday afternoon open jam session. Bonus points: Bust out an a cappella version of "Meet the Elements."

• Engineering Schools It sounds obvious, and you'll run into competition from the major Internet companies that recruit there, but an exceedingly large percentage of the people at engineering schools are actually engineers. Your local school has speakers, films, discussions, and panels every week that attract possible co-founders for your startup. Pick out talks that are relevant to your project and hang out after the event ends. Bonus points: Audit or actually take a night-school class. It's a great way to appreciate how hard programming is.

• Anything Tolkien or Lucas You've missed your chance to capitalize on the Lord of the Rings midnight openings, but fear not. Consider camping out for the re-reissue of Star Wars: Episode 1, this time in 3D. Gatherings that pay tribute to these mythmakers are easier places to have a conversation, but there's no distraction from the fact that you'll never know as much about Gimli as these folks will. Bonus points: Recount Boba Fett's origin without a crib sheet.

• Hackathons Real computer engineers are so into computer programming that they do it after work too. Companies large and small organize Hackathons so they can find great programmers. Just walk in the door like you know what you are doing, pick a spot against the wall, and find someone to cheer for. Bonus points: Don't spill beer on someone's keyboard.

There are other options, of course, including forming genuine, non-mercenary friendships with school or work friends. That's how I found my technical co-founder, and we've been together for five companies. But you've got to start somewhere, and the clock is ticking on your idea. So don't wait. Get out there where the nerds are.

A new study offers another reason to break a sweat that's specifically relevant to entrepreneurs: You're less likely to be a jerk to your employees.

There is no shortage of reasons to exercise. From the ability to keep squeezing into your favorite pants to wide ranging health benefits and even claims that breaking a sweat helps keep your brain in shape, the less active among us are routinely urged to laced up our sneakers and hit the gym. But if you haven't been persuaded by the standard reasons to exercise, perhaps a new study can provide you with some entrepreneur-appropriate motivation.

The research out of Northern Illinois University found that bosses who exercise less are more likely to be nasty and abusive to their employees, venting their stress on their team members rather than on the treadmill or in the weight room. Why is it that fitter managers are less likely to put down and stress out their employees? Eric Casaburi, a certified personal trainer and CEO of RetroFitness, explains:

It's not exactly that bad behavior and a lack of exercise are linked; it's built-up stress and a lack of an outlet for it that creates the bad behavior. A lot of managers get caught up in small and big stresses at their office and get the "kick the dog" syndrome. They end up looking for an outlet for that stress and often it's one of their employees. Where as, if they would have had a good work out or a two- or three-mile run, that becomes their outlet, instead of the employee. That negative energy dissipates with exercise because that exercise is serving as stress relief.

You're busy, we know, so how much gym time is required to channel your frustration in a less destructive way? Surprisingly little, according to the researchers. "Only moderate levels of exercise were necessary to minimize abusive supervision, such as one to two days of exercise per week, and the type of exercise seemed to make little difference," read the release announcing the study.

If you've been meaning to start an exercise program but your insane business-owner's schedule has been getting in the way, Casaburi has some advice. First, don't beat yourself up about when or what type of exercise you do. "Anytime is a good time for exercise when stress relief is the result," he says. Second, start thinking of your exercise goals in the same strategic way you view other business priorities, as essential for the long-term, smooth functioning of your business.

"Treat your health like your business. If you treat yourself and your health like you do the business, you’ll give it the respect it needs," concludes Casaburi.

What do you do to blow off steam at our outside of work?

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It's not all Super PACs and mudslinging. In fact, every business executive can learn valuable lessons from inside the Beltway and on the campaign trail.

Just because every American seems to be fed up with politics and politicians doesn't mean every business executive can't learn valuable lessons from the Beltway.

I've been following some of the most successful campaigns of the past four years and have embraced five public relations strategies in particular that have worked like a charm. See how many make sense for your business:

Go on a listening tour.

While it didn't exactly work for Hillary Clinton in 2008, it makes a world of sense for any senior executive charged with increasing awareness and enhancing credibility. Too many C-suite executives are content to hunker down in their corner offices and rely on the latest market research reports to determine their positioning and messaging.

Don't be a lemming. Grasp what the Beltway strategists already know: What worked last year won't necessarily succeed this time around. That's because your target audiences are better informed, more skeptical and less loyal than ever.

That dictates a listening tour. By that I mean monitoring online and offline audiences each and every day. Find out the individual wants and needs of every constituent. When appropriate, engage in conversations with them. And, remember that, if you don't keep listening and framing your positioning with the findings, you'll end up unemployed, declaring bankruptcy, or both.

If Mohammad won't come to the mountain...

Beltway strategists go far beyond listening tours. They insist their candidate hit the bricks and press the flesh. Senior business executives need to do the same thing. In fact, it's critical that a CEO and her marketing communications team routinely meet key customers and prospects. Far too many of my peers rely on second-hand information from sales forces to formulate their programs. Don't fall into the Ivory Tower trap.

Ask to be a fly on the wall as your sales executive wines and dines a key prospect. Attend trade shows and conferences where leading industry issues and trends are discussed and relationships formed. Again, don't rely on the sales team to be the sole point of contact. The candidate (in this case, the CEO) needs to be in the trenches (and so, too, does his or her communications team). The same holds true for employee meetings. Don't rely on a human resources executive to tell you the health of the organization. Don a lab coat, wrap a stethoscope around your neck, and examine the patient yourself.

Anticipate the negative.

While most people think politicians are only good at slinging mud, they're actually incredibly adept at responding to negative news. That's because Beltway strategists anticipate potential crises by simulating them. They actually stage a mock crisis and evaluate, in real time, how each member of the campaign staff should (or shouldn't) respond. You should do the same.

Examine your business. Identify the vulnerabilities. Could your business be interrupted by a cyber attack? What about product recalls? Workplace violence? Whatever your particular Achilles Heel may be, simulate the actual event and decide who, on the management team, is responsible for what. It's so much better to figure out a crisis response strategy before the crisis ever occurs.

Don't forget third-party endorsements.

While it may have been temporary, do you remember the huge bump New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's endorsement gave to Mitt Romney's campaign? The same occurred in 2008 when John Kerry endorsed Barack Obama. Third party endorsements should be part of every organization's business communications strategy. You should routinely reach out to strategic partners such as the presidents of industry trade associations, leading academics, heads of NGOs and others to create co-bylined articles, co-sponsored speaking engagements and other win-win strategies.

Better yet, form an "official advisory board" consisting of external advocates, create a microsite linked to your home page and provide a new bully pulpit for them to wax poetic on their views. You'll be providing free publicity and, God forbid, when the proverbial sh*t does hit the fan and your CEO is led away in handcuffs, the advocates can be called upon to provide critical (and highly credible) third-party endorsements about the fundamental soundness of your business.

Keep your friends close...and your enemies closer.

Beltway strategists live in a 24/7 war-room-populated world. They are ever vigilant to trends and issues as well as what their opponents are saying and doing. You should do the same. With new and affordable tracking software such as Radian6 available, there's no excuse for you to not have the latest news and announcements of your entire competitive set pushed to your desktop, laptop or PDA each and every morning.

When you do, you'll be able to formulate a rapid response that, in some instances, might even outflank your competitor's big, new product announcement. Beltway strategists earn their stripes by turning an opponent's apparent victory into a smoldering ruin. And, you can do the same.

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They're low-cost, and provide the typical office amenities--conference rooms, photocopiers, etc. But there are other less tangible benefits for entrepreneurs.

Garages and bedrooms may be the archetypal home of scrappy new ventures, but these days entrepreneurs have another option when it comes deciding where to locate a fledgling business: coworking spaces. These communal offices draw independent workers and start-ups to a shared office environment, usually at relatively low-cost, providing conference rooms and photocopiers as well as other less tangible benefits for entrepreneurs.

What are these? CNBC recently rounded up a few ways co-working spaces help new businesses succeed, including low overhead and networking, but to get a fuller picture of the advantages these spaces offer entrepreneurs we went straight to the horse's mouth, emailing a handful of space owners and start-up founders who built their businesses at coworking spaces for their perspective on the coworking experience for entrepreneurs.

Liz Elam, founder of Link Coworking in Austin and an organizer of the upcoming Global Coworking Uncoference Conference, who also wrote the CNBC piece, expanded on the networking benefits of spaces like hers when we got in touch, noting that interactions with fellow coworking members often go beyond what we traditionally think of as networking to encompass emotional 'support.' This reflects the community focus of many involved in coworking. She writes:

The number one reason that a new business should join a coworking space is for the community support. Opening your own business is scary. It’s a huge risk personally and professionally. Coworking members will support you. They will let you bounce your ideas, give you honest feedback and cheer when you on when you have a success. It’s a ready-made, diverse support mechanism just waiting for you to walk in and join. We have named numerous businesses, changed website flow and even tasted products at Link.

Casey Bernard, who started her business CheckInsights out of Link, backs up Elam's assertion that coworking is a valuable source of support for entrepreneurs, both for the touchy feely emotional benefits and nuts and bolts exchange of skill. "I was working at home alone after moving to Austin from Dallas," Bernard explains. "I felt so isolated and wasn't meeting people in meaningful ways through the typical networking events and by working at coffee shops." So she joined Link and saw benefits:

One day someone was in for a tour and Liz found out he is an IP attorney. She introduced us and we chatted about my concept and he helped me file a provisional patent. Since then, just being around other entrepreneurs who share ideas and provide support has helped. Before I did my first demo of my product with a potential client, I grabbed a conference room with another marketing research professional who gave me feedback and support.

Craig Baute, owner of Creative Density in Denver, agrees that freely flowing feedback is a key benefit for entrepreneurs. "In a coworking space lunch time or anytime can become brainstorming sessions with some pretty smart people. The startup doesn't have to wait for a pitch night to get feedback," he says.

Another way to look at the community benefits of a coworking space is as a way to encourage serendipity. "You are able to quickly build out a diverse social network, which can potentially leads to new clients, new investors or resources to help you get the work done. This is what some in the coworking movement refer to as 'accelerated serendipity,'" says Don Ball, co-founder of CoCo in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

"In our space we have seen networking and relationships happen faster than in other environments," says Noelle Stary, co-founder of Launchpad Creatives in New Jersey, echoing Ball's sentiment.

But space owners aren't only interested in selling the intangible benefits of coworking. Like the CNBC piece they also point out that working in one can save cold hard cash for strapped entrepreneurs. "The best part of starting a business in a coworking space is the ability to be flexible and quick," writes Baute. "If you need a task done outside the partners' skill set then there is likely someone in the community that could help you out for a few hours. If you were working on your own, the startup would have to create a job posting or search Elance or oDesk and hire someone. This takes valuable time and hires someone with questionable skills."

Have you considered housing your business at a coworking space?

Is your product or service a coveted diamond or a chunk of coal? See the forest for the trees by following one author's inventive process.

If you view sales as pitching your service or product to a prospect you might be cheating yourself of profits. In the end, we are all selling ideas, not products and services—and when you view your company as an idea that can help your customers, it opens up a world of possibilities.

"The trouble is that our ideas are never very clear," says Dan Roam, a bestselling author and founder of Digital Roam Inc., a management-consulting firm. This author, who wrote a popular visual-thinking business book, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas With Pictures, believes that we have lost our minds—our visual minds, that is. Appearing everywhere from Fox News to the White House, Roam helps to solve complex problems through visual thinking. He says we have the ability to make even the most complicated ideas crystal clear.

"Our very best ideas start out pretty ugly—like a pile of coal," Roam says. "They are dirty, dusty, and unclear—the worse Christmas gift you can give someone. If you offer up a chunk of coal when you pitch your idea there is energy in it but no one wants to touch it."

But you can transform that idea into a diamond. Diamonds are structurally the exact same thing as coal; they are both 100 percent carbon. In the beginning they are both dusty and dirty, but a diamond goes through pressure and heat—and then a lot of fine turning. Through this process it becomes something that people never want to let go of. If you do the same thing with your ideas you can turn every idea you have into a diamond—and diamonds sell themselves.

"As business people we need to do this in all of our PR and marketing. And certainly in every one of our sales calls," Roam says. "We don't want to present anyone a pile of coal; present them with your idea as a diamond."

In his latest book, Blah-Blah-Blah, What to do when Words Don’t Work, Roam addresses a problem: We talk so much that we don't think very well. His solution? A way out of the blah-blah-blah; what he calls "Vivid Thinking." Let's take a look at the Vivid Forest concept—use this mnemonic device to remember the process that will transform your blah, blah, blah sales pitch into a gem of an idea that prospects can't resist!

The Vivid Forest

F – Find the form of the idea. Presenting an abstract concept, waving our arms trying to describe it, we will lose our audience right away. They want to see something clear and that has form. This is easy if you are selling something like a bicycle but it's not always easy if we're selling a social media service, for instance, or a branding campaign. In these instances there is not form or picture to show, so we have to find it by looking at the underlying pieces of your idea. What does it look like? Find an analogy to describe the form of it. Is your idea something that helps people to move from one place to another, like a vehicle does? Or perhaps like a calendar that helps us move through time. What would your idea look like? Don’t convey it as a concept; convey it in a concrete form.

O – Use only the essentials. When we introduce our idea to someone new we don't tell them the entire thing. Rather, it's just the essentials of the idea. Keep it simple. Remember the acronym, BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front, which is used in armed forces. Decide in advance what the bottom line—the take away—is up front. If they are compelled by it—and if it's in form they will—they will give you time to you say more. If you begin with all of the details and nuances you will bore your prospect to death before you even get to the essentials.

R –Make your idea recognizable. Your idea needs to look like something the person has seen before to make it stick. For instance, the titles of many business books are very recognizable "things." You don't need to know what these books are about because you are already pulled in by the title since it's something familiar. Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink is a good example. You already know that a blink is something really fast; it pulls you in. Find a visual metaphor that makes your idea recognizable and describe it by using a familiar experience: "My new tool is like skiing down a mountain; you start at the top and by the time you get to the bottom you’ve achieved your goal really fast and have had a great time!" Whatever your analogy, make it simple and recognizable.

E – Make it an evolving idea. If the idea is finished, and there is no room for your listener to participate and they are not going to care about it. They want to participate too, we all do! They want to help the idea evolve as it relates to them. Build in some points where your customer can add to the process. Like dot-to-dot drawings—start out by having connected most of the dots but leave the last few for them to connect so the idea becomes their own. A really vivid idea is always complete, but never done. There is always room for our client, audience, prospect to add something of themselves so they can internalize it as something of their own. Then, they will grab onto it and you will never get your diamond back!

S – A great idea spans differences. A crystal clear idea (a diamond) does not obscure contradictions—it brings them right to the front. Make sure it’s not about just one thing to the exclusion of all else. If I told you that "you should buy my tool because it does everything, it’s perfect and there is nothing else out there like it," you will never believe me. But if I said, "now I recognize that the X, Y, Z competition is already out there, and here's how we are different," your prospect will listen. Your idea spans differences by saying we are "this" and "that." It spans the entire problem.

T – Make sure it's targeted. If we really want to take our idea from coal to diamond and get people’s attention we must make it targeted. An idea that’s not aimed at anyone in particular is an idea that nobody listens to. Make sure that your idea matches what they need. This is not about pandering; claiming that you can give them anything that they want. Target your idea to the audience to make it more appealing to them.

Think of your F.O.R.E.S.T. as a checklist, rehearse it in advance and run your spiel through the F.O.R.E.S.T. before presenting it. Take a piece of paper and draw your ideas out, hitting on all six of the letters. If you do these 6 things before your sales meeting, you have just won the sale!

Join me for a fun and insightful interview with Dan Roam on the Million Dollar Mindset. Visit us live Monday February 20 at 2 p.m. ET or download the podcast later!

Frustrated that your office fussball table or employee wellness program doesn't seem to be motivating your team? Here's why your perks are ineffective.

Maybe you bought your employees a ping pong table or let them telecommute one day a week. Maybe you brought in a massage therapist or offered free fresh fruit in the conference room. Whatever perk you offered, you probably weren't doing it 100 percent out of the kindness of your dear entrepreneurial heart—you also expected your investment to pay off in improved morale and increased productivity. But everyone's puttering around not looking noticeably happier or getting much more done than before. What went wrong?

It's a question tackled by a couple of thoughtful posts recently. The first, a piece on Fast Company by Dr. Serena Reep, a communication and management coach, argues that no matter how generous your sweeteners, all your efforts to engage and inspire your employees will come to naught if you get your company culture wrong:

Some work/life solutions in the workplace do not produce the magnitude of improvements they are hyped or expected to. Why? So long as employees view these tools as the employer’s way of getting more from them while paying them the same wage, they remain less useful as tools of increased productivity and loyalty. The problem is one of perspective.

When a corporate executive asks me what I recommend they do to change the paradigm of an ineffective corporate culture, I respond, "Concentrate on the soil." Concentrating on corporate soil isn't providing "more stuff." And while it is laudable to give new mothers nursing stations to breastfeed their infants, on-site gyms or gym memberships for athletic employees, and childcare facilities for young parents, this isn’t the soil. These perks should be a result of good soil, not the soil itself. Perks such as these should be part of a larger cultural context, one that the employees believe in.

This perspective—that your team will see your incentives for exactly the self-serving carrots they are unless you've convinced them of the importance of the larger mission of your organization and their value within in—is echoed by venture capitalist Brad Feld in another recent post with the pithy title "You Can't Motivate People."

Feld agrees that trying to bait employees into working harder with cool office design or lifestyle enhancers often simply doesn't work. Using his own efforts to encourage himself to get cracking on a book he's supposed to be writing by transplanting himself to sunny Miami as an example, Feld writes:

There is no external force "motivating me" to write this book. I'm doing it because I want to, find it interesting, challenging, and think it'll be a useful thing for the world…. If you generalize this, it plays out over and over again every day. The great entrepreneurs I know work incredibly hard at creating environments that are motivating. They don't pound away at the specific task of "motivating people," rather they pay attention to creating context, removing barriers, being supportive, putting the right people in the room, and leading by doing. All of these things create a context in which people are motivated.

It could be as simple as a warm day on the ninth floor of a hotel overlooking the beach, which I know is an ideal place for me to write. Or it could be an awesome office environment with incredibly challenging problems. Or it could be a set of people who are amazing to spend time with. In any case, the context is the driver of motivation.

It seems that Reep's somewhat opaque term "corporate soil" lines up nicely with Feld's more straightforward idea of "context." Whatever you call it, both these authors seem to feel that the larger environment, including the apparent worth of the work itself and the interaction between team members, is far more essential to motivation than gym memberships or an office espresso machine. These perks are nice, of course, but they're like sprinkles—they're of little interest to anyone if you don't have the cupcake of a good corporate culture to add them to.

Are you putting the cart before the horse by focusing on perks before you have your company culture sorted out?

What does a pet product start-up have in common with a Girl Scout selling cookies? They can both teach you about mobile payments.

After moving to Florida in the economic downturn, Anthony Santarsiero did some market research to start his own business. When his dog got sick on chicken jerky that had been produced in China, he decided a line of pet products that included freeze-dried treats as well as dental and medical holistic remedies was what the world needed.

"There's a big drive for holistic and natural remedies that follows the human purchase trends within the past six months," said Santarsiero. "I saw an opportunity for food and products with no chemicals, made in the USA." TerraPaws was born.

After sinking his life savings into starting the company, finding chemists to formulate natural products, and creating inventory, he realized how many players there were selling this kind of product, and admits: "I didn't do my homework well enough." Things weren't as cut and dried as he had thought, and sales were tough to come by.

After negotiating with vendors for more lenient payment terms (net six months in some cases), he and his two salespeople hit the road, selling not only at local stores and events in the Clearwater region, but going up to three or four hours away, at American Kennel Club shows, Humane Society events, ASPCA days, and the like. With table setups and booths, they did their best to sell products. People would come by the table, like the stuff, but they often didn't have cash or checks to buy. Santarsiero had anticipated this. When he set up his website he had also worked with provider Sage Payment Solutions to get mobile payment capability. Terra Paws was able to take credit cards at shows, and the salespeople were able to close deals at local chains and distributors with a swipe of a card.

Santarsiero said "When we present the product, we try to make the sale, and having the ability to get a credit card sale is huge. The other day we walked into a chain and ran a $7,000 charge for an order on a sale." With that kind of cash flow, and immediate access to the money, his business quickly turned around.

The Girl Scouts found similar success by adopting mobile payment technology. When the Girl Scouts tried out taking mobile payments, the organization found a 13 percent increase in sales. It chose Sage as a provider as well.

Of course, many start-ups are on smaller accounting systems, and they're using mobile solutions like Square.

For Santarsiero, his advice to fellow merchants is that "Any business owner looking at not being able to buy inventory should consider mobile payments. Ask for the money, and make it easy for people to pay. We're not waiting, we're not factoring, we are just getting paid."

When a marketing initiative fell through, my husband and I were left holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory. Here's how we turned things around.

I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who hasn't asked herself the questions: "What the hell am I doing?" and "How in the world did I get into this situation?" According to the SBA, only 33 percent of businesses survive beyond 10 years. Sometimes, one might wonder: If the odds are so stacked against me, is it even worth trying?

At the five-year anniversary of my company, Heritage Link Brands, our biggest marketing initiative of the year fell through. Just a few weeks before it was to begin, our customer, with whom we'd partnered to do the initiative, furloughed 2,000 employees, affecting its ability to execute the very program we spent months working tirelessly to execute. Overnight, my husband and I were left holding a bag of inventory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no clue how we were going to pay our suppliers or staff. Our pillow talk was spent discussing how we could reshuffle funds to cover day-to-day expenses like our mortgage, child care for our two children, and student loans. What a brutal time!

Thank goodness everything worked out, and our company is stronger for the experience. But trust me when I say it was tough.

In the spirit of learning from my hardships, here are some tips on how my company decided to trust ourselves to "know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em:"

• Reach out to trusted advisors: Ours (many of whom had been in our situation before) coached us on how to manage the difficult-but-frank conversations that we had to quickly have with our staff and suppliers as soon as we knew we wouldn't be able to pay our debts in time.


• Communicate! Often times this may require eating a few pieces of humble pie. In our case, we were very candid with our customer about just how serious the implications of their action (or lack thereof) was to our bottom line. Depending on how they respond, you'll quickly know just how much or little they value your service or product (and relationship). In our case, they committed to making good on the failed program. But sometimes it's when the rubber meets the road that you find out whether or not you need to cultivate or quit your customer.


• Swipe your credit cards: Yeah, I know this sounds counterintuitive, but as a result of the economic downturn, we knew the prospect of getting traditional funding was bleak. While there were other finance vehicles we could have explored, their interest rates were higher than we wished to spend and not as attractive as leveraging low interest consumer credit cards my husband and I had available.


• Come to grips with making hard choices—quickly! It's never easy to lay off people, especially when you recognize just how deeply the effect will be felt by your organization. However you have to be ready for anything when it comes to sustainably managing and operating a for-profit business. If you don't take decisive measures (i.e. becoming more efficient when expenses spiral beyond the revenues to support it), it could result in the loss of the entire enterprise.

• Call on your passion to see you through. Never have I read where starting a business would be easy, and chances are you haven't, either. You likely knew this would be a hard road even before you decided to take the plunge. So take an inventory of "why" exactly you decided to get into business for self in the first place, and see if those same reasons still apply. Every amazing entrepreneur I know has honed two difficult skills: 1) the ability to make mountains move to save their business, and 2) the ability to walk away from a business in which they are no longer passionate. Passion can save a business that others may have thought had no chance, just like compassion can save entrepreneurs from forcing themselves to stay the course with a business, even after they realize that is not the best decision.

Weekly wine tip: To soothe the anxiety of difficult decision making, indulge with the 2006 White Oak Syrah. With silky texture and smooth tannins, you know exactly why Wine Enthusiast gave this fine wine 91 points!