BusinessPundit offers this advice:

“Here are the top ten things I either did, or wish I had done, before I started my first business.”

Read them here.

Great article on managing your email here.

Dr. Cornwall offers this great article about starting a business.

Most highly successful entrepreneurs will tell you that along the road to success in their businesses they were often on the brink of failure. But they persevered. They found a way to make payroll. They found a way to make that critical sale. They found a way to keep the wolves away from the door just long enough to make it through the tough times. They found a way to pick themselves up from a business that did not succeed and move on to the next one that might. As Thomas Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

 All small business owners should read the whole thing.

Many people seem to forget that while the Federal tax rate is very high, you also should consider the amount of State and Local taxes into the mix.  Here’s a list of the States ranked by their State and Local tax burden (not including Federal Taxes).

You don’t need to go to a top school to get your MBA (Masters in Business Administration), Josh Kaufman says you can get the same basic education by following his Personal MBA program.

Marketing guru Seth Godin offers his advice on vetting your business idea.

(Via BizOpportunities)

Inc Magazine offers their guide to raising startup capital.  The current trend is for most entrepreneurs to self-fund their businesses which, of course, we think is great.

(via BizzBangBuzz)

From Wired.com’s Webmonkey.

Something I’ve always suspected.  More here…

(Via BizOpportunities)

Fascinating read here.  He’s pushing the Microsoft products pretty hard, but of course, so would I if I were him.

Visit this link and join the debate.

I’ve long wondered who started the myth that “9 out of 10 businesses fail” when I’ve seen so much data to the contrary.  Finally Dr. Cornwall has noted that this is a complete urban myth:

There has never been a study that shows this high a failure rate — ever. Some studies using flawed data showed as high as 60%, but they count a business that is sold as a “failure”. If the company no longer existed, it was counted in the failure column. Now with better data the studies indicate 40-50%. And remember, with training and education these failure rates drop to 15-25% in other surveys.

I’ve also seen before that business “failures” according to the statistics from the Census and the SBA often include people who have closed profitable businesses for whatever reason.  

So in the long run, the real rate of failure of new businesses is probably around 25% provided you learn some basic business skills.

(via Biz-Opportunities)