There is a special community when business owners get together, let down their guard and start asking each other real questions. Who is your community?

Your business is being buffeted by negative economic forces that you cannot control. So what should you do about it?

Ever wonder what other business owners are thinking about, what they might be doing differently, or how their results might be better or worse than yours? I think about that all the time. We are hosting a survey that will compare, in a quantitative way, the attitudes, actions and results of business owners across a wide range of variables.

Over at Anchor Advisors we’ve ventured into the age of YouTube, Vimeo and streaming video online and the results have been amazing. We’ve had a bunch of folks ask how we did it, so Devan and I created a post to so you can make your own.

Devan Perine guest posts to talk about working as an intern at Anchor Advisors. Now that my internship is over, I’m reflecting on some of the (very many!) things I have learned working with the team.

Initially I was hesitant about the value of an intern for my business, but this internship process has really sold me on having some inexpensive, hardworking, talent as part of the team, it’s moved us forward toward our goals and has freed me from a bunch of tasks that I just wasn’t getting done.

6 months into my Evernote journey I’m more in love with this note taking and organization app than ever. It’s a little hard to describe what it is and why it’s so valuable. Maybe by seeing how I use it you might see a way it could be helpful to you.

One of the most motivating things we can experience is the feeling that our efforts, our work is making progress. Bonus points if we are making progress to a big goal that matters to us. Entrepreneurship creates just that kind of situation. We define the goals, we work hard and each day (hopefully) we get to see progress. Having control over that feeling makes us feel free! But how do we keep that feeling going as we build a staff?

Your employees don’t have the same rewards for their extra effort that you do. If you want their commitment to rise you need to connect with their values and give them a way to measure progress.

If you own a professional services firm you know that getting to the “right” prospects is a battle. First, you have to know what kind of prospect you want, and you have to create a target list. That’s the easy part. Now you have to find a way to connect to the decision maker in those organizations in a way that demonstrates your expertise near the time when they have a need for that expertise.

Here are three ideas, that we have seen work for our clients.