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Back in the day I went through a personal-growth seminar where the facilitator kept telling us, “You’re doomed!” At first, it was very depressing and negative. Duh!

But then it began to dawn on us - “we’re doomed!” It actually became a liberating thought.

If you were doomed, then what would you do? If you only had, say, a month to live, how would you live? The point was, if you are going to eventually die, or if things will go wrong (because things do go wrong), what is the point of worrying, or living with fear, or not doing what you really wanted?

The same is true in your business (side note: Is there anything I can’t relate back to small business? I think NOT!)

Things will go wrong. Business comes and business goes. You will have business problems. What can you do? One thing to do is to plan ahead, to the extent possible. This week’s USA TODAY column gives some hints and tips for preparing for natural disasters, power outages, unexpected shutdowns and the like. I even offer some free seminars from HP and SCORE to help you.

You’re doomed! Watcha’ gonna do about it?

More and more lately I find myself saying, “I feel like I do email for a living” - and not in a good way.

Death by email is not a pleasant experience.

Now I am not here to say email is evil or even bad. It’s great. Really, it is, I swear. I mean that! Well, mostly, I guess.

But I recall the time when I was about 10 years old and taking a walk with my sweet grandfather. He always used to counsel me, “Moderation in all things Stevie. Too much of anything is bad for you.”

Thinking I had him that day, I said, “But you can’t have too much milk, right Pop?” “Yes,” he said, “even too much milk is bad for you.”

I am not alone when I say that for many of us, we are full to the brim with the milk that is e-mail. Too much of it is a bad thing.

So what do you do, how do you handle the never-ending avalanche of email? Here are four solutions:

1. Declare e-mail bankruptcy. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, and certainly an understandable one, albeit pretty bold as well. The idea here is that when your inbox gets so full that you either are looking at emails that have been sitting there for, say, a year, or there are so many unopened and unanswered emails that you just can’t see a way out, you simply delete them all and start over.

If you choose this fairly radical solution, it is good form to at least send out a mass email, letting people know what you are doing and asking them to re-send their email if it is truly important.

2. Schedule it. Emails that I get that are important enough to answer but not urgent enough that they need an immediate response will sit in my inbox for up to a week, when I then sit down for a few hours and catch up.

An alternate solution is to mostly leave your inbox off – a wild thought, I know – and then treat email like regular mail. How often do you get regular mail? Once a day, right? Well, that’s the idea here. Once a day, open up your email and have at it. Then turn it off again.

3. Use a 4-hour workweek method. I previously mentioned Timothy Ferris’ great book, The 4 Hour Workweek and I want to again share two of his ideas here:

• Use an autoresponder. Set up your email to respond to every incoming message with an answer like, “Thanks for writing. I am busy with work right now and will get back to you as soon as I am able. If this is urgent or pressing, please call me. Thanks.” People who know you well enough to call might, and everyone else will have to wait – just like in the good ‘ol days before email!

• Outsource it. One of the main ways Ferris was able to stay productive yet substantially reduce his workload was by outsourcing any task he personally didn’t have to handle, like email. Yes, it will take a while to train someone to know what you need to see and what you don’t, but it may just be worth it.

4. Use the phone. Personally, one of the things I like best about e-mail, being a writer and all, is that it allows me to craft exactly the message I want to send. That said, there is plenty of value, and time to be saved, by doing more business by phone and asking people to do the same with you.

How many times have you gotten into an extended email exchange which could have been handled much more effectively with a 2 minute phone call?

Technology is great, except when it’s not.

So I am headed to L.A. tomorrow to golf in a celebrity golf tournament. I attend this event every year for a few reasons. First, it’s a great cause - Melanoma Research. Second, its a day of golf in L.A. on a Monday - duh! No brainer there. It also memorializes a friend of ours who died from Melanoma and it is great to honor him that way.

I also go for the cameraderie. But I won’t do, what I hate to do, is “network” - at least in the traditional way we think of networking. Is there anything worse than ruining a great day of golf than by passing out business cards hoping to get work?

Yuck!

Better - be yourself. Shmooze, have some yucks, duff a few, ask for a mulligan, tell a good joke, make fun of yourself. If I do that - if you do that at your next networking event - your chances of actually meeting someone and making a real connection will be much better.

Then, after you do meet and make a real connection, be sure to follow up.

Sure, networking is important, and of course it works. But what DOESN’T work is to pretend to network when what you are really doing is selling. Avoid that!

And hope that I break 100!

I have not received a paycheck as an employee since 1994. I spend almost every day thinking, writing about, and speaking about how to successfully grow and run a small business.

Remember the rule!

So how did my site redesign go so wrong?

It looks fine, but it took far too long and cost way too much. If it weren’t for my fantastic assistant and web guru Vivian, it would have been a complete disaster. As it stands, it is more frustrating than disastrous.

So what went wrong?

• Picked the wrong platform
• Picked the wrong designer
• Mistakes beyond my reach

So what did I learn? Mistakes happen; that’s the nature of business. But when they do, fix them as soon as possible, and if not fixable, remember the first Rule of Holes.

When in one, stop digging.

In 1998 or so I read a great book - Striking It Rich.com. It profiled 23 “incredibly successful websites you probably have never heard of.” The idea was that any small business could make money online - if you did it right.

One of the people profiled was Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com. I always admired Tim and was happy when I got a chance to interview him recently. Tim’s site now has - get ready for this - 1 million unique visitors a month! And he makes a ton of dough using nothing more, right now, than Google ads. Google ads. How much? Tens of thousands of dollars in ad revenue a month.

He uses SEO extensively and does no marketing other than organic search.

The lesson? Google ads!

Just got back from a trip to Vegas with the family (an oxymoronic term if ever there was one.) Has there ever been a bigger monument to capitalism than that place? (He asked, after blowing way too much dough.)

And if so, are there any small business lessons for us? Only this: People are willing to spend plenty of money if they can get good value. This is especially true in these leaner economic times. To the extent you can offer someone extra value, they are willing to listen, and pay.

Were our tickets to the Cirque de Soliel show - “Love” -worth $100 each? Yep, they were. Give value, get customers. That’s the Vegas lesson, baby.

Last time, I began my annual look at the top ten trends shaping small business. We wrap it up with a look at the Top 5.

No. 5: The China syndrome: It has often been said that the 20^th Century was the American Century and that the 21^st looks to be the Chinese Century. If the past eight years are any indication, that may indeed prove to be true, but whether it is or not, there is no doubt that what is going on half-way around the globe is having, and will continue to have, a profound effect on you and your small business.

Growing at a rate of about 10% per year over the past quarter-century, with a population well over 1 billion and about 20% of the world’s population, China’s capitalist revoltion touches everything:

· High gas prices negatively affecting your business? Blame China. The country’s thirst for oil to fuel its economic expansion means that you should never expect to see gas below $3 a gallon again, ever.

· Worried about global warming? China is no small reason. “China’s pollution problem, like the speed and scale of its rise as an economic power, has shattered all precedents.” (NY Times, August 25, 2007.)

· Concerned that your best customers may outsource what you do for them to a cheaper source? Bingo, China. According to the Asia Times last year, “After becoming the world’s workshop for mostly labor-intensive products, China has unveiled a plan to… [challenge India and] create 1,000 large-scale international service-outsourcing enterprises.”

Not just governments, the China Factor is something we all we have to learn to deal with.

No. 4: It’s the economy, stupid, part deux: 2008 looks to be a year dominated by the ripple effects of the sub-prime mortgage crisis: A sluggish economy and probably a recession. For the small business, the effects are substantial:

• Falling housing prices, rising interest rates, and increased mortgage defaults means that it will be significantly more difficult for small businesses to tap home equity to fuel startups, growth, or bailouts.
• This credit squeeze also means that getting a regular business loan will be tougher.
• And the overall belt-tightening means that business all around will be more of a challenge.

The good news is that because this is an election year, we just may see Washington try to prop up the economy and lessen the effects of the forces above.

No. 3: Green is the new black: Whether it was Al Gore winning an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize or the melting of the polar ice caps, there is no doubt that climate change is a trend not to be ignored. That it holds opportunities for small business is not incidental either.

According to Time Magazine, “Green investment by American venture-capital firms reached $2.6 billion in the first three quarters of 2007, the highest level ever recorded and nearly 50% more than the total for the whole of 2006.”

As such, whether you are looking for a hot sector for a new startup, want to do right by the planet, or just want to make employees and customers happy, going is smart business.

No. 2: Working smarter, not harder: Coming in at No. 2 on this list again this year is the changing way in which we work. Increased computer mobility equals increased business mobility.

This also means that there are many new ways to work that are far more viable today than even a few years ago: Flex-time, job-sharing, outsourcing, working from home, working on the road, virtual offices, virtual companies – the options seem to grow with every innovation. IBM now has 73,000 employees in India – up 40% from last year.

In his interesting book, The 4 Hour Work Week, entrepreneur and author Timothy Ferris takes this phenomenon to a whole new level, outsourcing much of his mundane tasks to virtual assistants.

And the No. 1 small business trend for 2008 is …

Networking 2.0: Networking used to be that thing you had to do: Trudging off to the local business mixer in order to exchange business cards and boring chit-chat with people you didn’t know but hoped needed your services anyway.

Welcome to the new world.

Networking 2.0 is altogether, 180 degrees, 100% different. Networking in this new wired world means locating compadres online via a vast network of shared colleagues using sites like LinkedIn, or getting the word out using Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube. Networking today means harnessing the power of the Net to expand your profile e-xponentially.

Every New Years, over at my USA Today column, I analyze the top trends in small business. Those columns always garner a lot of interest, so I thought it would be a good idea to recap them here - today with numbers 6-10, with 1-5 coming in the next post.

No. 10: Your PC is going virtual. Is your business? The wireless / online/ virtual revolution is coming to your PC, and I am not just talking about mobility, that’s old news.

What I am talking about here is that computer hardware and software as we know it is changing before our very eyes. Broadband Internet connections are not only becoming ubiquitous but faster, resulting in the transference of software and content from your hard drive to the Internet. Whether it is Microsoft’s Office Live or Google’s online applications, the Internet is now the groovy place for cool apps to hangout.

This also means that 2008 will see the growth of such useful gadgets as wireless dashboard printers, online data backups, and increased collaboration services.

And what about blogging, are you taking advantage of this incredibly powerful and inexpensive way to both grow your business and connect with your customers? I thought blogging was a fad, the CB radio of our time, but I was wrong. So I gave up, admitted defeat, and here you are reading my blog.

No. 9: The year of marketing creatively: As Advertising Age points out, 2008 is going to be a year where there will be a lot of competition for eyeballs. Between the presidential election, continued high gas prices, a slowing economy, and tight credit, “consumers will continue to pull in the reins as disposable income tightens dramatically.”

As a result, the flip side of the coin is that there will be plenty of room for creative marketing, especially by leveraging the sorts of e-tools mentioned above. Hitting potential customers with unique offers, in unusual places, “using unconventional methods,” is the sort of thing that can bust the box.

No. 8: Entrepreneurs of the world unite: The trend mentioned last year – small being the new big – continues to accelerate as microbusinesses transform the planet. Whether it is Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his groundbreaking Microloan bank, or Kiva.org offering loans, grants, and small business know-how to the developing world, micro business are radically changing the world.

Throughout history people have devised various systems to try and help the poor, whether it be a religion, charity, or Communism. But it turns out that the greatest thing ever invented to help someone out of poverty is . . . their own small business. The capitalist revolution in China has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in a generation; the single greatest anti-poverty program ever.

No. 7. Say hello to your new assistant – your cell phone: It was in the middle of a great golf game earlier this year when I knew that the tried and true basic boring business cell phone was on its way out. It was then that our pal Richie, a big, burly guy who owns Richie’s Bail Bonds, answered a call on his cell phone, a Sidekick. Previously, the only other Sidekicks I had ever seen were Paris Hilton’s and my daughter Sydney’s.

2007, of course, was the year that the iPhone was introduced, immediately upping the ante for all other cell phone makers.

The upcoming new generation of smart phones will be truly amazing. Get this: Japanese consumers already use their cell phones to scan McDonald’s wrappers for nutritional information. Like the iPhone and iPod, expect simplicity to rule the day with these new devices.

No. 6: Search is still king: As everything goes online, the function of search to your business continues to grow in importance. While the most popular Google (ASIDE: Coolest Google vireo ever - makes Willy Wonka jealous) searches of 2007 were of celebrities, what is illuminating is the fastest rising searches (note how many are potentially business related):

1. The iPhone
2. Webkinz (a stuffed animal you can play with online)
3. TMZ
4. Transformers

5. YouTube
6. Club Penguin (A networking site for kids)
7. MySpace

8. Heroes
9. Facebook

Social networking is that important? Sethe Top 5.

Owning a business or franchise is not for everyone. Is it for you? Here is my handy dandy quick quiz that will help anyone decide whether or not they are an entrepreneur:

Does the thought of leaving your current job make you more scared or excited?

If the idea of leaving your nice corporate gig, with its attendant benefits and perks, not to mention that nice, regular paycheck, makes you more nervous than excited, then starting a small business is probably not for you.

Marriage and Business are A Lot Alike!

However, if giving up all of that makes you happy because that means that you will finally be going off on your own, then you, sir (or ma’am!) are probably an entrepreneur.

Of course the idea of starting your own business and being your own boss sounds great in theory. Who wouldn’t want to chuck the rat race and start over again doing something they love? Yes indeedy, starting your own business is part of the American Dream; there is undoubtedly a certain romantic notion to the whole thing.

But, like anyone who has been married a long time knows, that first blush of passionate romance fades and transforms, if you are fortunate, into something deeper and more meaningful; it’s a different type of love.

And so it is with your business. If you start your own gig, you will be married to it. And, just like with any marriage, some are great and last a long time because they are a good fit. Others flame out rather quickly, either because they were not a good fit or that initial infatuation was just that and nothing more.

So you have to be careful when you fall in love with the idea of becoming your own boss because that initial blast of love is more puppy than pure. It is when you don’t get that paycheck after the first two weeks, or four weeks, or ever, that the cold, hard reality begins to creep in.

I should not be writing this post. I am under deadline for the second edition of The Small Business Bible and am supposed to be finishing it up. So why am I writing this and not that? Because I am tired of writing that, amigo!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know how lucky I am to be published and to get to write a book. But what I have also learned is how much work it is. Whenever I start a new book, it is like standing at the base of a mountain looking up. I know that once I start to climb it, there is no turning back.

My Mountain

So what do I do? Procrastinate, of course! Then I get behind and the mind gets focused and I write like the devil!

So this devil has two more days to finish his book before his kind editor becomes unkind. And so I have to say…

MrAllBiz OUT!