Money Tree VII, http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodomut/

I have a confession to make. I’m a business book addict. It's an unhealthy relationship that drains my bank account and generally leaves me with few, if any, useful insights. Yet for some reason I can't seem to pass through the coffee-stained aisle of my local book mega-store without picking up a few of the new releases. I've even taken to strategically removing them from my bookshelf, so house guests don’t’ mistake me for a cliché-spouting, new-age, faux business 2.0 guru.

The funny thing is that, despite having read virtually every hot business book out there, the most important lessons I've picked up while nurturing my business from scrappy startup to even scrappier, slightly more mature, startup, were learned the old fashioned way: by living and learning.

So, with that being said, I submit to you the top 3 startup lessons that I learned the hard way.

1. Focus on the Pain Points

Don't roll your eyes…This lesson isn't as obvious as it seems. Every single founder thinks that his or

A new breed of software tools aims to give access to big-business financial analysis to small business owners. For far less than it costs to hire an accountant, a math-averse entrepreneur can subscribe to one of a number of user-friendly online services that can extrapolate strategic data from your inputs, or even directly from QuickBooks.

One vendor has trademarked the term “valuation as a service” to describe the software it provides. The data these tools help generate are useful to any business owner hoping to sell the company, get a bank loan, or share financials in a contract bid. Some users even claim the information they’ve gleaned has helped them increase their value.

Writing in Colliers’ Magazine last year, Scott Gabehart, author of The Business Valuation Book and professor of valuations at the Thunderbird School, and Michael Carter predicted:

The rise of the Internet, together with the public availability of real-time comparable metrics, social media technologies, and

As a small business owner, being under- or uninsured can cost you your company and land you in jail. Greg Bivona, a retired insurance industry executive who now helps entrepreneurs as a SCORE mentor, recalls a 2005 case in which a Bloomfield, Conn., trucking company owner met both those fates when one of his uninsured dump trucks caused a catastrophic accident that resulted in 5 fatalities.

That owner was found to be willfully negligent, but business owners are frequently unaware that they are insufficiently insured. “A lot of people don’t understand the pitfalls and risks [of being under-insured],” Bivona says. “Often they minimize what they should have, they go cheap. I understand why; I was in the business. They’re between a rock and a hard place. But you don’t want to go too cheap and have exposure.”

The start of a new year is a good time to conduct an annual re-evaluation of your business insurance coverage. If your staff, office space, or business has reduced in recent years, you

entrepreneurspouseIt's a new year and we've added a great new content partner to our lineup at Yahoo! Small Business Advisor - Business2Community. B2C is supplying us with great articles on marketing and sales in particular and small business in general. We also took a look at how mining 'Big Data' (one of the new business buzzwords) can help even small businesses with sales. The other big topic for the week was how to balance your business and personal life for an entrepreneur so that your spouse can be a partner for work as well as home. We've also continued out Startup Diaries series with more entries coming every couple of days.

If you haven't taken the plunge yet, hopefully some of these articles give you the impetus to start your own business — and if you do, we have tools to help. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing dashboard that you can try for free even if you don't use our other products.

Some other great small business

The Radius Intelligence team in San Francisco

Small business owners may be interested to know that a fellow entrepreneur has raised more than $18 million from investors, including $12.4 in a funding round led by American Express this week, for technology that makes it easier for salespeople to find you and, if you sell to small businesses, for you to find customers.

Radius Intelligence is the brainchild of Darian Shirazi, who gained notoriety at 17 as Facebook’s first intern and later dropped out of college to start his own company. Descended from entrepreneurs in Iran—one set of grandparents imported fabric to make and sell clothing and another re-manufactured brand-name products such as Nivea and PertPlus for the local market—Shirazi says he grew up thinking about the needs of small businesses.

He also had a bent for big data. So at 21 he set out with his two Palo Alto, Calif., roommates to build a knowledgebase that would help small service and product suppliers better target their sales.

Since 2010 Radius has amassed an

Following on our previous post, Agreed to marry an entrepreneur? Some spousal advice, we spoke with Meg Hirshberg, author of For Better or For Work: A Survival Gide for Entrepreneurs and Their Families. The book and her Inc. Magazine column, Balancing Acts, are based on her experience married to business owner Gary Hirshberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yogurt company.

Hirshberg, who married at 30 and began raising a family during the 9 years it took Stonyfield to become profitable, offers these 7 pieces of wisdom that might help you adjust a little easier to the particular brand of wedded bliss you’ve agreed to.

1. Ask questions now. There’s no time like before you’ve exchanged vows to ask crucial questions of your entrepreneur and perhaps even a lawyer to understand what’s at risk if the business goes belly up. Many entrepreneurs take out a line of credit or use their home as collateral for a small business loan, Hirshberg says, so it’s completely

With wedding proposal season behind us, it’s time for those who’ve recently become engaged to an entrepreneur to ready themselves for the ride. According to many who’ve been there, marriage to a business owner can feature experiences you aren’t likely to get when you’re wedded to someone who works “for the man.”

“You are about to embark on an exciting adventure. Embrace it!” says a New England software developer who stood by her serial-entrepreneur husband for 20 years before he hit on a major success. “This person will make sure you life is never dull.”

Indeed, journalist Meg Hirshberg, whose husband founded Stonyfield Farm, compares being along for the ride in a business venture to being the passenger in a car he navigated along California's winding coastal Highway 1. “He was driving and loving it, and I was feeling nauseated because of all the twists and turns," Hirshberg recalls. "One person is in control of the wheel, the other is sitting there being jerked around feeling sick."

problemsolvingSolving business problems is what keeps us all employed!  It is an interesting dynamic because once you solve or fix one problem another problem typically arises.  The word problem is defined as “a puzzle, question, set for solution”.  There are good problems (i.e.; increased sales/growth) and there are bad problems (i.e.; decreased revenues/sales) both require the same problem solving process and if problem resolution is successful, new challenges arise.

So you ask, why would an increase in sales and business growth be a problem?  The problem (albeit a good one to have) is determining how to handle the growth from a process, customer and logistical perspective.  For example, if you have a start-up software company that caters to a specialized niche and growth is faster than projected, your company will be scrambling to find the manpower, service support and logistics to ensure the customer experience is superior for new clients.  Start-ups need to make a great first impression with