Today’s guest post is written by Marc Girolimetti.

I’ve been blessed by living among entrepreneurs my entire life. I’ve learned a lot from them and they inspired me to drop the dreams of being the next Jacques Cousteau and head straight to Babson College, which has been named the #1 undergraduate program for entrepreneurship for 15 consecutive years.

As a result of choosing a life of working within and founding a couple of start-ups, I get to dabble in adjunct teaching of entrepreneurship at Boston University.

As a result I can say one thing: Entrepreneurs suck.

I’m addicted to start-ups, but it’s begun to take its toll on me emotionally and financially. “One more hit,” I say. “Then I’ll quit.”  That’s because no illegal narcotic can give you a better rush and ruin your life more deeply than choosing to be an entrepreneur. Continue Reading »

Did you see Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of GE, on 60 Minutes last Sunday?

He’s been given the jobs czar title by President Obama, with the sole charge of convincing companies to hire, and Lesley Stahl was there to understand more.

Her big question…whether or not the man who has sent more jobs overseas than any other chief executive has what it takes to create jobs in America. Continue Reading »

Erica Allison is a mom, wife, and entrepreneur/owner of Allison Development Group: Strategic public relations and marketing firm in Western, N.C.

Many of you know by now that I’m a mom.

I also consider myself to be an entrepreneur.

I jumped into running my own business four years ago, with a brief interruption to have baby #2, then got back in the saddle this past June 2010.

I used to think being a mom and having your own business was “the life.” That was when I had the one. Add in #2 and it’s flipping hard. Really hard.

Please don’t misunderstand. I love being a mom. I also love having my own business and even if I tried, could not deny my entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, I am both. Continue Reading »

Does anyone else think 27 degrees is too cold for March 25? If it’s going to be this cold, I WANT SNOW! This in between – can’t ski and can’t cycle – weather sucks. Just like spin.

While you’re here, check out the “Dear CEO” eBook that was written by 31 of my friends. So far Danny Brown and Laura Scholz have announced their giveaways. So go check them out, and enter their contests, if you’d like to win a copy!

In this week’s Gin and Topics, we explore the entrepreneurial spirit of social, which means the good, the bad, and the ugly! Continue Reading »

I met Carol Roth last year and immediately loved her. She’s smart, fiercely independent, and tells it like it is. What you see is what you get with Carol and it makes her even more lovable. As a friend, she’ll tell you if you have spinach in your teeth or a booger hanging from your nose, but she’ll also tell it to you as a would-be entrepreneur or business owner.

And that’s her claim to fame.

Carol is an investment banker turned business advocate. She works with companies the size of mine and all the way up. And the advice she gives is always the same: Frank and honest.

She’s written her new book, The Entrepreneur Equation, that way…in a very special Carol way. It’s a book I wish I’d had six years ago, when I was contemplating organizing a business structure and hiring a team.

It’s not often you come across a book (or a person, for that matter) who will tell you exactly what it’s like to run a business. For those of you who dream of working for yourself, this is a must read. It will dispel some of those not-living-in-reality ideas you have (kind of like John Falchetto has done for me about moving my business to Italy) about running your own business.

If you’re thinking about going out on your own, you’re just starting a new business, or you’ve been in business for yourself for a long time, this book is for you. If you never to plan to work for yourself, this book is not for you.

She claims to be a recovering toy addict, but you’ll see in the video, I’m not so sure she’s recovering.

And with that is my review of The Entrepreneur Equation… (click here if you can’t see the video in your RSS feed).

Dang. It’s time to chose a Top Five contest winner. And I don’t know what to do. There are SO MANY great ideas…and some that won’t work, but really made me laugh. In retrospect, we should have narrowed it down and let you guys choose your favorite. But we promised to choose, and announce, today so that ship has sailed.

We really love Gin and Topics from Barry Silver, Pure Ginious from Brandon Emkes, Thank Blog It’s Friday from Vince Roberts, SpinCycle from Jennifer DeVitt, Gini’s Mind Mined from Paul McConaughy, Spin Sucks, But Friday Rocks from Ken Mueller, The Friday Afternoon Wine Flight from Lisa Gerber (though she can’t compete!), and We Did All the Hard Work for You, You Just Have to Read from J.D. Kimple. And so totally inappropriate ones (but VERY funny) such as: Abbie Fink’s Nooner and Danny Brown’s Premature Factulation

And then, Barry’s and Lisa’s ideas made me consider our own wine:thirty, which is every Friday at 4:30 in our offices. So you see, we have a dilemma.

We really love Gin and Topics. But what if someone from my team eventually takes over the top five post? Then that name won’t work. So Thank Blog It’s Friday and Spin Sucks, But Fridays Rock work for more strategic reasons. And, after the first few, you can begin to abbreviate Thank Blog It’s Friday to TBIF and include a subhead for the week. But Gin and Topics is really good.  Crap.

I think we have a winner (that took you seconds to read but about an hour for me to write)! Barry, it’s yours! Even though it may not fit strategically, we’ll cross the bridge when (if?) we come to it. We’ll send you a copy of Branding Yourself by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Gin and Topics it is.

And with that…the top five stories of the week. Continue Reading »

Did this week feel like the longest in history…even though it was only four days? Man! Maybe it’s because I got sucked into making changes to the Arment Dietrich website last night (through the super amazing content management system Clockwork created for us) and I looked up and it was 9 p.m. I’d ask you to go check it out and tell me what you think, but it’s not finished yet. So hang on for a week or so! But perhaps it was long for all of you, too. More likely it was fitting five days’ worth of work into four.

But a short week doesn’t mean there wasn’t great content out there. Following are the top five stories for week ending Sept. 10, 2010. Continue Reading »

Today I am grateful for my friend Sara Wilson, who is a fantastic writer with a very curious mind. Following is an exerpt of an interview she did with me on how the franchise industry is using social media (I’ve changed to businesses here for purpose of reaching a larger audience).

Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich, believes that, as long as employees abide by a general code of conduct, they should be free to establish their own social media presence. “I don’t advocate companies maintain control of social media, just like they shouldn’t maintain control of e-mail, phone calls, and what is or isn’t said at a cocktail party at a trade show,” says Dietrich. “If there is an online code of conduct, training, and a toolkit given to all employees on how to get started and where to spend their time, social media will work the way it’s supposed to — by allowing customers, employees, and stakeholders online access to the people with whom they do business.”

Read the entire article on AllBusiness.com.

Today I have a guest blog post on Find Your Nerve, the brain child of my friend Steve McKee.

Steve runs an ad agency in Albuquerque, McKee Wallwork Cleveland, and is the author of “When Growth Stalls.” A couple of months he called me and said, “The economists claim the recession is over, but what are we, as business owners, doing to reinstate spending?” And then he threw the idea of Find Your Nerve past me.

The result is a blog dedicated to business owners who are not letting the recession keep them down, but doing what they can to change the status quo.

Rather than cannoblize our readers, I’ll give you an excerpt from my post today here and you can go check out his blog for more.

One year ago, my company had a couple of “life-changing” events. Each of them, alone, could have put us out of business. They both happened within six weeks of each other. I went into a pretty deep depression. I beat myself up. Why didn’t I pay attention to the signs? How did I not know our industry is a key leading indicator of the economy? Why did I do some things my gut told me not to do? Were people going to think that I had a good three year run, but I couldn’t grow a business beyond that? How was I going to tell my staff we had to close? How was I going to tell our clients? How was I going to pay our outstanding vendor bills? Why had I built a business only to have nothing to show for it?

Read more here and check out the other guest bloggers, as well!