25 Ways to Jump-Start Your Business

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17. Streamline Your Decision-Making Process

Do you ever find yourself inviting an employee to sit on a meeting just so he or she won't feel left out? If that's the case, then you may have a culture of over-communication. Entrepreneur Joel Spolsky says that the way to ensure the efficient flow of communication and speed up decision making is to appoint a manager to each project whose sole responsibility is to make sure that over-communication does not occur. Read more

18. Find Some Amazing Interns

Interns are a cheap way of filling in gaps on your staff and bringing energy and new ideas to the table. Of course, a bad hire, even at the lowest level of an organization, can cause stress. So how do you find an exceptional intern? The clothing line O'Neill found a novel way to identify talented teens for its internship program: The company set up a contest in which candidates designed clothes in order to compete for a job. Read More

19. Use Crowdsourcing to Control Inventory

ModCloth's Be the Buyer program lets customers go online and tell the company exactly what products they want—before they've been manufactured. Now the company can confidently gamble on what were once risky items by securing the most valuable of opinions before taking the plunge -- those of its customers. Read more

20. Mine Your Data

What can start as a useful database of customer information can become a slow or unresponsive monster when it grows to more than a terabyte -- or about 1,000 gigabytes -- of data. Hadoop, an open-source project, takes massive amounts of data, breaks it into smaller chunks, and distributes the pieces across a cluster of computers. It can track customer logs providing stores the ability to look for shoppers who bought diapers six years ago and target them with back-to-school promotions. Read more

21. Advertise on Facebook

After initially eschewing social networks, more marketers are looking to promote products and services on Facebook. How can you make sure your ad stands out among the site's status updates, party photos, and comments? Choose your target, test your ad's among different demographics, perform your own tracking with analytics programs like Google Analytics and HitsLink, and come up with catchy slogans. Our favorite: "Springtime is here. Time to get waxed." Read more

22. Create Some Cool Viral Videos

By creating clever Web videos, companies like Smule and Kiva Systems have been able to explain their technology to customers. "What people seem to like about the videos is that they are clearly made by the same people who make the app," says Smule Co-founder Ge Wang. "Our wackiness and quirkiness show through." Read more

23. Send Customer Coupons on Their Mobile Phones

Applications like Yowza and Foursquare let you send coupons to customers' cell phones. Tasti D-Lite, the frozen-yogurt franchise, rewards frequent customers who check in on Foursquare, for example. Did we mention that these coupon programs are (for now) free to use? Read more

24. Say Thank You More Often

Saying thank you for a job well done can pay huge dividends. A recent survey by the International Association of Administrative Professionals and OfficeTeam found that, while managers ranked promotions and cash bonuses as the two most effective ways of recognizing employee accomplishments, workers said they actually preferred an in-person thank-you or having a job well done reported to senior management. Read more

25. Don't Forget to Take Care of Yourself

It's often hard to achieve work-life balance when you're running an entrepreneurial company. But don't. "It's important to re-charge your batteries," says cosmetics entrepreneur Bobbi Brown. Her routine includes exercising in the morning, stealing a walk when she can, stretching between meetings, yoga--and enjoying the occasional martini. Read More

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