(More Than) A Pat on the Back

In times like these, entrepreneurs have to look outside of the usual suspects when it comes to sales.

Sometimes that means empowering your subcontractors and non-sales employees to do some selling for you.

But how to you reward this activity - and encourage more of it?

My Smart Answers column talks about establishing a bonus structure for employees and subcontractors who are asked to bring in new clients for a service firm.

Another Day, Another Rip Off?

What is it about the Internet that causes people to rip off content with absolutely no shame? Is there some Web protocol that I'm missing that outwardly encourages or tolerates this behavior?

Thanks to Google Alerts, I constantly find my articles posted on unknown (to me) websites with little or no credit to me or the publications I write for.

I don't even hope for permission or compensation any more, but credit would certainly be nice.

It really angers me to find something like I did today: Not only was an article that I worked extremely hard on posted on a site I'd never heard of, but there was no identifying information for me (beyond my byline) or the publication where it originated.

What's worse, the offending website seems to have obtained the article from an online syndication service. That means this company is making money by distributing my work without my permission, while violating the copyright of the publication that did pay me.

Arghhhhh ....

If you want to recommend an article, that's fine. But link to it so folks can read it on the site where it is originally posted. If you want to include a short abstract with the link, to catch peoples' attention, no problem.

But please don't do an uncredited, unauthorized copy-and-paste of the entire content. That's just wrong.

I've lodged my complaints over today's violations, both by phone and email. We'll see what kind of response I get. Based on past experience, I have to say I'm not holding my breath.

Has this happened to anyone else? If so, how did you handle it?

UPDATE: I did get responses to my complaints, both from the offending website and the syndicate. I haven't been able to connect with the syndicate yet, but the email exchange with the website representative had what my editor characterized as a "snotty" tone - on their part.

The idea that came through loud and clear is that my request was unreasonable and unacceptable.

However, when I pointed out the lack of copyright and the professional and legal confusion that could easily result from my name being on something that's unlabeled, the piece was removed from the website quickly.

My editor assures me he'll bring this up with the corporate suits responsible for such matters, and make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm still not sure the fault is on our side, but I'm very glad that rattling the cage got some action.

Obama Follow Up

The latest Smart Answers column is a follow up to my column about entrepreneurs and Obama.

This one is a round-up of reactions to policies coming out of the Obama White House.

More than anything else, I found that small business owners worry that they'll be forced to offer expensive health care coverage to their employees. If that's the case, many of them say, they'll have to lay off many workers or perhaps close their doors.

Without a doubt, most small employers would love to provide medical insurance plans for their workers. But it's simply too expensive for many of them, and even those that do have medical plans struggle with the annual cost increases.

Of course, not providing medical coverage severely handicaps many small companies when it comes to making the best hires.

If health care reform includes a way for small business owners to offer health insurance more affordably, or perhaps a viable public health care plan becomes an option - freeing up more individuals to work for smaller companies if they choose - I think entrepreneurs will be thrilled.

Entrepreneurs on the Pres

They're being bandied about by both sides in the political divide, but what do entrepreneurs really think about President Barack Obama and the new direction in which he's taking the country?

Turns out they're not so different from the rest of the populace, as I write in this week's Smart Answers column (this time with extra slide show!)

Here's another view of the president, "Obama as entrepreneur-in-chief," written by a pair of former entrepreneurs, one now a Republican ex-governor and the other the president of Babson College, which specializes in training entrepreneurs.

Garden Blogging

You may remember the organic garden where we rototilled, enhanced the soil and planted earlier this year.

Well, the hard work has really paid off!


We have already eaten some Cue Ball round zucchini, and we have Early Girl tomatoes and small pumpkins ripening:



Also flourishing are cucumbers, cantaloupe, white eggplant, bell peppers, green onions, watermelon and pole beans:


Cultivating the soil about 18 inches deep, and adding back layers of dried leaves, home-grown compost and organic manure was really hard work. But in all my years of gardening, I've never seen such healthy, vibrant plants.

The best part of the garden is that my younger son has caught the fever and has become my partner in the project.

I hope we'll be posting photos of gorgeous produce soon!

PR Peeves

In my business writing, it's become inevitable that I must interact with a lot of publicists and press relations' people.

As an old-school journalist who grew up on newspaper staffs, I prefer to deal with sources directly. But that's becoming less easy to do as more business owners, authors and consultants hire PR people to market them and their services to the press and the public.

For the most part, I've learned to work with PR people efficiently. And they often help track down sources and schedule interviews that would take me a lot of time and effort to do myself.

But there are some pet peeves that arise again and again - not only for me but for many journalists - in dealing with publicists.

So here are a few "do's and don'ts":

1) Don't over-promise. (This just happened to me, so it tops the list.) The publicist pitches a fascinating interview with specific details on what the source will be discussing. I plan a story, notify my editor and do the interview. But it turns out that the source doesn't speak to those details or hasn't actually done that research or doesn't quite have that expertise. Now I have spent time that I don't get paid for (as a freelancer), I have to kill the story with my editor and scramble for something new on deadline. Ouch.

2) Do be available. This isn't a huge problem for me these days, but when I was a beat reporter on a daily deadline, I needed to get a hold of sources immediately. I can't tell you how many times the publicist didn't answer the phone and couldn't be found in the office, all while I sweated and chewed my nails as an editor screamed at me to file the damned story already. If you're not readily available by phone or email, give out your cell phone number and answer it.

3) Do get the details right. A publicist recently misspelled her clients' name, which was also the company name, in some background she sent me prior to an interview. I have a reflexive habit of double-checking spellings, but this was the one time I didn't remember to do so. Issuing a correction is never fun.

4) Don't neglect to mention that someone else at the publication is already working on the story a reporter asks about. There's nothing more humiliating than turning in a piece and having the editor inform you that Joe Jones in Metro just finished a thumb-sucker on the same topic, or is working on it for Sunday. I try to read everything that appears in the publications I write for, but I don't always succeed. And I'm not privy to what other reporters are working on, since I'm not in the office. Letting me know saves me time, wasted effort and embarrassment.

5) Don't insist on "listening in" on even the most mundane interviews. This practice, unheard of a few years ago, is becoming ubiquitous with the rise of conference call services and I find it supremely annoying - grumpy curmudgeon that I am. I know you want to babysit your client and bill them for your time, but it wastes my time with the convolutions of conferencing everyone in and making formal introductions and blah, blah, blah. Reporters are perfectly capable of calling sources and interviewing them all by themselves - and we can do it quicker and easier without two or three other people on the line, chiming in with "helpful comments." If we need some background that the source doesn't have, we'll ask for it. Really.

Okay, my rant for the day is done.

Small Biz Casualties

We've read and heard a lot over the past six months about the big auto companies and their downfalls.

But what hasn't gotten much attention are the nearly 11,000 small companies that make parts to go into those auto production lines. They are typically family-owned enterprises with a few dozen employees, many of them clustered in the Upper Midwest.

I write about the future of those small tool-and-die and machine shops in this week's Smart Answers column.

Despite what could be a gloomy outlook for companies whose products are closely tied to failing corporations, there is a silver lining for the small firms that are willing to hustle and open to change.

In this week's In Box column, I answer questions about quarterly taxes and how companies can continue doing good even when money is tight.

Check them out!