There are two professionals every business will need early on: an accountant and a lawyer. The reasons for hiring an accountant are pretty obvious, you need someone to help you set up your “chart of accounts,” review your numbers periodically, and prepare all of your necessary federal, state and local tax returns.

The reason for hiring a business attorney may not, however, be so apparent. A good business attorney will provide vital assistance in almost every aspect of your business, from basic zoning compliance and copyright and trademark advice to formal business incorporation and lawsuits and liability. First, some general rules about dealing with lawyers:

If you are being sued, it’s too late. Most small businesses put off hiring a lawyer until the sheriff is standing at the door serving them with a summons.

The time to hook up with a good business lawyer is before you are sued. Once you have been served with a summons and complaint, it’s too late–the problem has already occurred, and it’s just a question of how much you will have to pay (in court costs, attorneys’ fees, settlements and other expenses) to get the problem resolved.

America’s judicial system is a lot like a Roach Motel — it’s easy to get into court, but very difficult to get out once you’ve been “trapped.” Most lawyers agree that while nobody likes to pay attorneys’ fees for anything (heck, let’s let our hair down–nobody likes paying or dealing with lawyers, period), but the fee a lawyer will charge to keep you out of trouble is only a small fraction of the fee a lawyer will charge to get you out of trouble once it’s happened.

Setting up an e-commerce site couldn’t be simpler. Simply pick one of the following that’s right for you, log on and get started.

Going Solo

Many experts and entrepreneurs believe that building your own website is a no-brainer, thanks to the inexpensive, easy-to-use and sophisticated e-commerce services available.

“If you’re a one to two-person firm, [you have] someone on your staff [who] can design a website and you only sell a few products, there’s no reason not to do it yourself, particularly with the out-of-the-box solutions available nowadays,” says John Jantsch, a marketing coach, author and creator of the Duct Tape Marketing system for small businesses.

Jantsch, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, built his site, www.ducttapemarketing.com, in 2001 and says you can create a robust site for less than $150 per month, plus a few hundred dollars for software. Popular tools include Microsoft’s FrontPage and Macromedia Dreamweaver.

After setting up your website, you’ll need a shopping-cart software program or service so you can take orders, calculate shipping and sales tax, and send order notifications. This costs about $29 to $79 per month. The most popular options include GoEcart.com, 1Shoppingcart.com and ShopSite Inc.

Your next step should be to obtain an internet merchant account from your bank, allowing you to accept credit card payments online. If your bank turns you down, try others and consider offering to move all your accounts to that bank to up your appeal. Or you can perform an online search for “credit card processing” to find a variety of companies offering accounts to budding online businesses.

You’ll also need a payment gateway account, which is an online processor that hooks into both your customer’s credit card account and your internet merchant account. The gateway verifies information, transfers requests and authorizes credit cards in real time. Leading providers to smaller merchants include Authorize.Net, CyberSource and VeriSign.

An even less expensive way to get started accepting online payments is to use PayPal, an account-based system that lets anyone with an e-mail address securely send and receive online payments using a credit card or bank account. PayPal is free, but the company charges 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for every transaction under $3,000. The company also has a product called PayPal Website Payments Pro, which offers basic shopping-cart functionality and costs $20 per month plus transaction fees.

Of course, you still have to actually host your site. You can do it yourself on a computer that can be dedicated as a web server and that has a broadband internet connection, but such systems are costly and have limited capacities. Your other option: Use a web-hosting company. Many entrepreneurs swear by some of the bigger names in web hosting, such as Affinity Internet, Go Daddy Software, Hostway, Interland, iPower, Network Solutions, 1&1 Internet, Verio and Yahoo!.

But some entrepreneurs prefer small, local hosting providers since they offer a direct contact–especially important if your site has an outage. Whether you use a large or small provider, basic hosting services–as well as domain-name registration and e-mail accounts–cost about $10 per month.

There’s also a free option: Microsoft plans to launch a beta version of Microsoft Office Live early this year, providing small businesses with their own domain name, a website with 30MB storage, and five e-mail accounts, each with 2GB storage. Visit www.microsoft.com/office/officeliveto check for availability.

If you’d rather not build your site yourself, there are many hosted web or e-commerce solutions that can help. Web-hosting companies generally offer a combination of site-building tools; product catalog tools; shopping-cart technology; payment, shipping and marketing strategies; tracking and reporting capabilities; domain registration; and hosting.

eBay offers a storefront solution called ProStores. ProStores–which is available to everyone, not just eBay sellers–offers a full-featured, customizable web store. Unlike eBay Stores, ProStores sites are accessed through a URL unique to the seller and have no eBay branding.

ProStores sellers are responsible for driving their own traffic, and items on ProStores sites sell only at fixed prices. The cost of a ProStore ranges from about $7 per month with a 1.5 percent transaction fee to about $250 per month with a 0.5 percent transaction fee.

Hosted solutions generally start at about $30 to $40 per month, plus setup fees of up to $50 per month. Some companies also charge transaction fees. Keep in mind, $40 will only get you basic functionality–bells and whistles cost a few hundred dollars per month.

Jacquelyn Tran, founder and president of Perfume Bay Inc., a Huntington Beach, California, company that sells cosmetics, skin-care products, perfume and home fragrances on its website, uses a full-featured e-commerce service from Yahoo!.

Tran started Perfume Bay in 1999 and now offers more than 30,000 types of products, with 2005 sales of $8 million. During startup, Tran hired a web designer to build her site. Her total startup cost was high, coming out to $50,000. “This included advertising, a custom-built shopping cart–everything,” she says.

A few years later, Tran decided to sign on with Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (then called Yahoo! Stores). “The program was easy to use, fairly customizable with a lot of great features, and fully integrated,” says Tran, 28. “This was very important because we depend on having a really easy-to-navigate site.” She also found a web designer through Yahoo! to help set up the new site. Tran saw a difference almost immediately: “We got more orders,” she explains.

Tran chose Yahoo! Merchant Solutions’ most expensive offering: Yahoo! Merchant Professional, which costs $300 per month, plus a one-time setup fee of $50 and a fee of 75 cents per transaction. Hiring a web designer costs an additional $2,000 to $10,000. Still, that’s a lot less than it cost Tran to set up her customized site. “Looking back,” she says, “I wish I had gone to Yahoo! first.”

Sebastian Moser, U.S. director of technical development at Chesterbrook, Pennsylvania-based 1&1 Internet, says that before you sign on, make sure your hosted e-solution offers:

• A full wizard-driven setup: Most merchants need a proper wizard-driven system that takes you from start to a fully operational, production-ready e-commerce storefront.
• Many templates: An e-commerce solution provider should have many different templates to meet the needs of its varied customers and their products.
• SSL encryption: The system should include the option of SSL encryption-a protocol for transmitting private docu-ments via the internet. This means your customers’ credit card information and address is transmitted securely.
• A database-driven system: This allows a system to be inte-grated with your customer database, so you can send out promotional e-mails.
• Payment beyond paypal: PayPal serves the needs of a lot of e-tailers, but not all of them. The best hosted e-commerce vendors offer several payment gateways.

Before starting an e-commerce site, many companies test the waters by selling on eBay. They have good reason: Today, the eBay community includes 168 million registered users worldwide. “The most obvious reason a new business chooses eBay is the access to our enormous customer base,” says Jim “Griff” Griffith, dean of eBay Education.

To sell on eBay, you need to register and create a seller’s account. Listing an item is an easy five-step process, but Griff suggests you do your homework first: Research eBay to learn what the market value is for your items and what eBay sellers of similar items are doing on the site.

When you list an item on eBay, you’re charged an Insertion Fee ranging from 25 cents to $4.80, depending on the item’s selling price. You’re also charged a Final Value Fee if your item is sold. Final Value Fees start at 5.25 percent of the item’s closing value.

You may also consider opening an eBay Store, which costs from $15.95 per month to $500 per month. eBay Stores let you sell your fixed-price and auction items from a unique destination on eBay. You can create customized categories, add your own logo or choose one of eBay’s on-line images, and list item descriptions and selling policies.

Your eBay Store is promoted in several ways: Your listings and user ID include a “red door” icon inviting buyers to visit your eBay Store. The eBay Store Directory can also guide buyers to your Store. And you receive your own personalized web address to distribute and promote.

One company that has made the most of its eBay Store is Jeff Atchison Enterprises Inc., dba Dad’s Toys. The Dardenne Prairie, Missouri-based company, which started in 1999, sells high-end gadgets such as flat-screen TVs–many of them on eBay.

Founder and president Jeff Atchison set up a basic eBay Store in 2002. Why? “To add credibility to my listings,” says Atchison, 41. “It shows people you are more of a permanent presence on eBay.” It also allows Atchison to keep all his listings organized on one website that can easily be viewed by customers. Tactics like this have helped Atchison grow his company to an estimated revenue of $2.1 million last year.

Ready, Set, Sell!

Once you’ve got your website up and running, you, an in-house IT staffer or an IT consultant should optimize it for best results. Lisa Schneegans, executive vice president of Praxis Software Solutions, a Minneapolis provider of internet solutions for small and midsize companies, suggests 10 ways to optimize your website:

1. Test your site early and often. Plan ahead to ensure your site can handle heavy shopping traffic.
2. Test your content for misspelled words, broken links, busted pictures, etc.
3. Make sure images load quickly. A slow-loading page may drive customers away.
4. Install, verify and test all patches and upgrades.
5. “Load test” your site to see how much traffic it can support. A web maintenance service can tell you how you do.
6. Create sample transactions. These can simulate expected customer traffic and web transactions. By running “synthetic” transactions periodically–say, every five to 15 minutes–you’ll know if there is a problem before your customers do.
7. Check the performance of your network provider. You can do this by looking at a site that is simi-lar to yours in your area but connected to another network.
8. Add cross-sell and upsell opportunities throughout your site. This means, for example, suggesting table linens on the dinnerware, silverware and glassware pages. Offer “Top Gift Suggestions” or “Bestsellers” to improve sales and drive impulse purchase opportunities.
9. Make it easy to find and contact live customer service. Providing an easy-to-find phone number on the site helps online shoppers feel more secure. Clearly state your company’s return policy.
10. Make your search function more effective. Your search function should accommodate common misspellings by returning similarly spelled items or your site’s most popular search terms.

Taking Shortcuts

If you don’t want or need a full-blown e-commerce site, check out the following quick, low-maintenance ways to sell merchandise and services.

• Craigslist.org: Craigslist.org allows you to post items for sale for free. More than 10 million people use Craigslist each month, and there are more than 6 million classified ads and 1 million forum postings each month.
• Gorage.com: Want to avoid paying auction commissions? Then try Gorage.com, an online garage sale, classified ads section and storefront shopping alternative that offers flat-rate pricing for listing items online, allowing sellers to avoid paying auction commissions. The pricing structure is based on the number of “selling spaces” a user chooses, which together make up the seller’s “gorage.” Gorage.com pricing plans start at $5.
• SwapThing.com: Have a limited amount of cash? Tired of being outbid in auctions? Then try SwapThing.com, a site that lets you swap or sell everything from music, art, trading cards, old schoolbooks–even personal services. You can list items for free; the site charges each party $1 for every item swapped or sold.

Want to spend your day getting things done instead of putting out fires? Here are some ways to do just that.

Technology

Streamlining your business technology can make life less of a headache for everyone. Entrepreneurs often “don’t realize they can make things easier,” says Kevin McElligott, founder of iTech Developers, a Nevada City, California, technology consulting firm and hosting provider. Here are a few ideas to get your technology in tip-top shape:

1. Serve it up. A server can act as a digital filing cabinet for your growing piles of documentation. Compared to daisy chaining several PCs, “Servers give you a lot more reliability and improve your business,” says Mike Beltrano, supervisor of product management for servers at CDW Corp., a Vernon Hills, Illinois, server company. Another bonus: By keeping important documents on a central server, it’s easier to back up all your important documents daily.
2. Phone it in. Are you wasting time running between voice mail on your cell and office phones? VoIP systems offer a great deal of personalization and features for a rock-bottom price. In fact, VoIP can be up to 40 percent cheaper than a traditional small-office phone system, and it offers useful features for any small business.
3. Take it online. If you’ve taken the leap of setting up an accounting package to handle your bills, take the extra step of automating the process. See if your accounting software can automatically generate invoices as well as e-mail reminders for late payments.
4. Hit the web. Your website is a potential client’s main access point to your business. Don’t worry as much about fancy graphics as making sure visitors can get the information they need. An online FAQ list can cut down on the time clients spend calling with basic questions and prevent a frustrated client from going elsewhere.

Money

Money might not be the root of all evil, but it is the cause of many headaches for business owners. Here are five tips for managing your money better:

1. Bank on it. “One of the assets business owners have is their cash,” says Manny Calzon, vice president and finance manager for the central district of Merrill Lynch in Tampa, Florida. But many entrepreneurs don’t understand how much they’re paying in service charges to their banks every month. Request a bank analysis statement that breaks down the generic service charges found in your monthly statement.
2. File taxes electronically. Companies with $10 million or more in total assets that file 250 or more returns a year are now required to file their 2006 taxes electronically. “Small businesses are going to be scrambling,” says Bradford Hall, managing director of Hall & Company CPAsin Irvine, California. “They’re going to [need] an automated payroll service that files electronically for them.” So get a head start now to make life easier later on.
3. Pay now, not later. Can you pay smaller bills in advance? If you have a monthly bill for $15 but opt to pay $90 for six months of service, you’ll save $1.95 in stamps and you won’t incur late fees. Best of all, you’re not wasting time paying bills.
4. Upgrade your accounting systems. “A business that’s projecting $10 million-plus [in sales] should be on a sophisticated system,” Hall says. Software packages such as BusinessWorks, Enterprise, Great Plains (which was recently acquired by Microsoft) and MAS 90 offer increased sophistication for a growing company and will make life much easier come tax time or, heaven forbid, an audit.
5. Make your (bench) mark. It’s common for growing companies to do business without understanding how they stack up against similar companies in their industry. Most likely, your accountant has industry profit and overhead statistics at the ready–data you can keep on file for future strategy sessions without having to do your own legwork. Says Hall, “Businesses aren’t taking advantage of it.”
6. Obey the urge to merge. You might pay slightly more, but renewing all your insurance policies on the same date with the same agent lets you sit down once a year to review insurance for the entire business instead of having different renewals pop up three or four times a year.

Management

Day-to-day management of employees and processes is probably the single toughest job for any entrepreneur. Want to simplify? Here’s how:

1. Hire strategically. Create an online application form, and have elimination criteria related to scheduling, salary and educational level. “Select out vs. select in,” says Suzanne Zuniga, COO of CorVirtus, a Colorado Springs, Colorado, HR consulting firm. Being more selective means you’ll hire sooner and get back to work.
2. Stay on schedule. Creating a schedule for employees is a time-consuming nightmare for every employer, especially in retail. But there are software packages–Asgard System’s Time Tracker, TimeClock Schedulerand TimeCurve Scheduler, to name a few–that let you scan for scheduling errors and track employee hours and earnings in real time. Some, like TimeCurve Scheduler, also integrate with QuickBooks to make payroll easier.
3. Rent a CFO. At some point, a bookkeeper won’t be able to keep up with your burgeoning bottom line. “One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is they don’t realize they need the sophistication of a CFO,” Hall says. Today, there are employment agencies that specialize in hiring out CFOs.
4. Tighten your supply chain. “Strong partnerships with suppliers and service providers [are] critical in the supply-chain excellence area,” says John DuBiel, managing partner of Raleigh, North Carolina-based Supply Chain Edge, a firm that helps companies identify, develop and execute their supply-chain strategies. Keep relationships strong by leveraging your buying power with as few service providers as possible. Says DuBiel, “Simplify and leverage all the volume you can.”
5. Outsource your HR function. Entrepreneurs spend up to one-third of their time doing payroll and benefits administration. They’re also risking penalties if tax payment deadlines aren’t met or filings are incorrect. “When you pay a company that you outsource to, you’re paying for the benefit of their mistakes on their dime, not yours,” Zuniga says. So outsource HR, and make your time count.
6. Have fewer staff meetings. Do you really need a staff meeting every week when an e-mail update might do? Fewer staff meetings mean less talk and more action. Workers will thank you for your brevity: In one survey, 60 percent of executives complained about the time they waste in meetings, and 74 percent doubted the meetings they attended were effective.

Marketing

Catching consumers’ attention is only getting harder. Here’s some advice for revving up your marketing efforts:

1. Do some data mining. What do customers think about your company? “You don’t build your brand by yourself anymore; your customers are equally involved,” says Michael LeBeau, CEO of Byte Interactive, a South Norwalk, Connecticut, digital marketing company. Simple customer comment cards or web-based survey forms can save market research costs.
2. Leverage partnerships. Strategic partnerships with local businesses will help you rise above the noise. Picking the right partner, however, can be very time-consuming. Simplify the process by looking to your own customers, vendors and suppliers first. You already know each other’s strengths in terms of services, products and marketing, which will let you move more quickly to develop effective cross-promotions and sponsorships.
3. Go directly to the consumer. Are you spending all your time knocking on big retailers’ doors and saving for TV ads when half of U.S. consumers have lightning-fast broadband connections? “I’m seeing more entrepreneurs starting to market their products directly to the consumer,” says Peter Koeppel, founder and president of Koeppel Direct, a Dallas direct-response TV media buying agency that works with clients including Cigna, Columbia House and DirecTV.
4. Get the message. It’s easy to lose brand focus in a world of in-person, over-the-phone, online, catalog and direct-mail sales. To simplify, divide your business into five main channels (website, catalog, direct mail, employees and customer service) and have one main marketing message every week (a sale, a new product, a new partnership and so on) that you communicate and track for consistency across all channels. You’ll see fewer customer-service hassles and less turnover from frustrated employees who can’t read your mind.
5. Consolidate your advertising legwork. Most business owners invite random interruptions from advertising representatives throughout the week. Instead, set aside a block of time–Monday afternoon, for example–when advertising people know they can reach you. Everyone will save time, and you won’t have to hide anymore.

Personal Time

“It’s very easy to let work consume you,” says Bo Short, president of the American Leadership Foundation, a Charlottesville, Virginia, nonprofit organization that offers leadership conferences and seminars. “But if you do, will it eat you alive?” Here are ways to create a more balanced life:

1. Decide what to outsource. You don’t need to have your hand in every single pie anymore; let someone else carry part of the load. Outsourcing a few tasks gives you time to focus on something else–even if it’s a round of golf now and then. Plus, “You’re the customer, and they’ll treat you better,” Short says. Learn to delegate to employees, too.
2. Create boundaries. Set aside 10 minutes after lunch to make and return personal calls. Set a time for leaving the office every day, no matter how busy you are. And spend at least two hours doing something fun before you burn some late-night oil. Your family will thank you.
3. Shorten your to-do list. “A to-do list is nothing but a wish list,” says Barry Izsak, president of Arranging It All, an Austin, Texas, firm that helps companies get organized. A long to-do list leaves less time to focus on revenue-generating ideas. Instead, focus on the top three urgent tasks for the day. The rest can wait.
4. Love your inner Luddite. Entrepreneurs who become slaves to gadgets “are running reactive businesses and being reactive with their time,” Izsak says. Try working unplugged–this means no internet connection and absolutely no phone calls–for one hour every morning. It will give you a sense of accomplishment that lasts all day.

It doesn’t make good business sense to spend large amounts of capital to store and maintain hard copy information. As with all aspects of a company’s business, using technologies that will increase productivity and reduce costs is vital to your profitability and success.

Because of the cost-savings available, many companies are changing their attitudes toward data storage and are looking at innovative ways to handle the flow of data. Today, there are several inventive and cost-effective technologies available that can streamline the processing and storing of hard-copy data, which, in turn, will save you money. Money that you can use to improve systems and invest in the future of your business. Let’s take a look at one of these new systems.

Defining the Solution

Digital archiving, also known as scan-to-file, is one of the best methods around for processing and storing documents. Simply put, digital archiving is the process of converting paper information to a digital representation of the original document.

These highly cost-effective conversions allow information to be stored and accessed easily, enabling companies to save time, storage space, money and resources, and increase their productivity and security.

Over time, digitally storing information will reduce the costs of document storage. It will reduce employee workload associated with filing, retrieving and re-filing paper documents. Additionally, it provides easy access to search, retrieve, read, print and e-mail imaged files.

Digital archiving also allows for expedient file transmission over the internet or an internal network. And it creates a flexible, electronic database of corporate documents, such as financial statements, required regulatory documentation, client and patient files, tax and legal documents–all of which can be password-protected to restrict printing and content extraction.

And there’s more good news: The process is simple. Information is scanned and stored on one of a number of forms of media, most often on CD-ROMs, but also on hard disks or other file formats. You then store the digital data in a secure location, either onsite or away from your business.

The digitally stored information can easily be retrieved by simply loading a CD-ROM or disk onto any computer. The document appears just as it did in its original hard copy form and can be saved to the computer, e-mailed or printed.

Digital archiving enables companies to put unlimited amounts of information onto CDs. Imagine taking 35,000 pages of paper and converting it to three CDs.

If you think digital archiving may be right for your company, here are a few questions to ask your visual communications partner:

1. How is information scanned? Who does it and how long does it take? Information can either be hand-scanned or fed into a scanner based on the type of data being scanned. Scanning should be done by a team of professionally trained and certified digital specialists, who know how to scan and archive your important documents. Scanning times will vary based on the amount of information being converted. For example, 1,200 pages can take up to four hours to complete.
2. Is the information secure while it’s being scanned for digital archiving? Most likely it is, but you need to ensure that the vendor has a dedicated and secure digital archiving imaging area designed with your sensitive documents in mind. Additionally, you need to verify that the information won’t be shared with any outside source, and your vendor should return all documents upon completion. In some cases, you and the vendor may determine that the scanning should be done at your location.
3. Where is the information stored? Typically, your vendor should store the information on CDs that will be returned to you for storage.
4. What format will the digitized documents be in? At a minimum, documents should be converted to PDF because that’s the widely accepted format for digitized information. Additionally, PDF formatting is approved and in use by a host of local, state and federal agencies. However, based on your needs, files can also be created in Word and other industry-specific software.

Too often, overnight success can quickly become a company’s worst nightmare. A small business that lacks the capital, staff or infrastructure to handle a big order or nationwide publicity can promptly get crushed when its product or service becomes a hit.

Even though every company should have a strategic plan in place before the big day arrives, most small business owners are so busy just trying to survive that planning usually gets put on the back burner. That’s why we’ve have put together this 10-step survival guide to help you think fast and react quickly when you wake up one morning to find the world beating a path to your door.

1. Take a deep breath. Don’t max out your credit cards, splurge on a big bottle of champagne or do anything crazy. While it’s only natural to want to celebrate the good news, remember that a big contract or great press doesn’t mean dollars in your bank account–at least, not today. So hold off on that Ferrari or tropical vacation.
2. Map out a strategy. Make a to-do list, crunch the numbers and marshal your human and production resources. It’s always easier to fight a battle on paper (or a computer spreadsheet) than to shoot first and ask questions later. No matter how much pressure you’re getting from your customers to deliver the goods right now, you need to take the time to sit down with your partner or staff to map out a plan of attack.
3. Get the money. Before you go on a hiring binge or start placing orders overseas, it’s important to figure out how much working capital you’re going to need to meet the market demand. Because employees and manufacturers generally won’t wait until you’ve sold the products and collected the money before you pay them, you’ll need a source of capital that you can tap immediately.
4. Reach out for help. Call on suppliers, personal contacts and the Internet to find extra hands to help you. If you think you can do it alone, think again. No matter how hard you work, there are only 24 hours in a day and you’ve got to sleep during seven or eight of them. That’s why it’s important to reach out to people who can help you.
5. Forge production partnerships. A small business making handcrafted soaps is going to be hard-pressed to fill a million-unit order from a large national chain completely on its own. That’s why it’s important to partner with manufacturers in the United States and overseas who can take your samples or prototypes and produce them in large quantities.
6. Create a distribution network. As news of your product or service spreads, you may start getting orders from consumers and retailers all over the country. If you’re like most businesses, you’re going to need help selling and servicing those accounts. Rather than hiring a national sales manager and opening offices in major cities, a more cost-effective option may be to sell your product through manufacturers’ reps.
7. Communicate with your customers. Communication is the lifeblood of any business relationship, but it’s even more important when your product or service suddenly takes off. The biggest mistake a business owner can make is failing to warn customers of shipping or production delays until it’s too late. This is especially critical in the apparel and toy industries where seasonality is important.
8. Leverage your success. The hardest thing about achieving overnight success is keeping it going. The last thing you want is to get stuck with a warehouse full of pet rocks. Creating line extensions like the Chicken Soup books or the For Dummies series is one way to keep your brand alive. Another is to find new markets for your products and services or new ways to publicize them.
9. Invest for the future. While it may be tempting to reap the profits from your hit product right away, it’s important to re-invest some of those profits to help your business grow. Whether this means paying down debt, buying new equipment, hiring another employee or opening another location, don’t pass up this opportunity to make your money work for you. It’s always cheaper to put your own cash to work in your business than to borrow money from a bank or give up equity to an investor.
10. Learn from your mistakes. After the excitement of the initial sales rush has died down, take a few hours to sit down with your staff to figure out what went right, what went wrong and what you think you could do better in the future. This will help you put a strategy in place for the next time you come out with a hit product–which could be sooner than you think!

More Resources

Got a hit on your hands and don’t know where to turn? Check out the Web links below to get the help you need today.

• craigslist: This is a great place to find freelancers and independent contractors, and it’s free to search and–in most cities–post.
• VendorSeek: This online marketplace helps match companies with vendors of products, services, equipment and staffing.
• Net-Temps: Here you’ll find employment listings for employers and seekers of full-time, part-time and temporary jobs.
• Manufacturers’ Agents National Association: This website offers a searchable directory of manufacturers’ reps and agents in the United States and worldwide.
• Credit-Card-Source.com: Go here to find help navigating your way through the maze of credit card offers so you can pick the best card for you and your business.