Foursquare and Gowalla are great. I just can’t help but think that they simply are not going to make it. While Foursquare has been the darling of a lot of media and bloggers out there (also maybe in talks with Yahoo) it has one glaring issue…
User base. It has to fight and fight for users. [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my thoughts on how to buy a small business. Since then, a number of people emailed me to ask how to actually run a small business. Easy enough!

For certain people, entrepreneurship is less about some high-tech idea put together by some college engineers and more about doing something tangible — like running a car wash or buying a bar. After all, what’s better than waking up and collecting cash from people that want to have their car cleaned every day or just want to hang out at your little dive bar?

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite that simple.

While watching TV last weekend, one particular commercial made me realize just how much the market is changing. Actually, it wasn’t really the whole commercial but a particular line — their tagline was “Lowest Cost of Ownership” and referred to Lexus’ decent fuel economy, durability, and resale value.

In Profitable Growth is Everyone’s Business, Ram Charan puts it perfectly:

Focus on hitting singles and doubles. Home runs don’t happen every day or even every decade.

This is a guest post by Thursday Bram, a freelance journalist currently located in Laurel, MD.

Seems that everyone’s interested in analytics these days — well, maybe not interested, but there sure are a lot of people talking about analytics on the web these days. Regardless, it’s great to see that people are starting to see the value of clear dashboards and actionable metrics. Though, I do wonder how they made decisions without all the fancy new dashboards that are available out these days.

If you’re a business and you’re on the web, chances are that you’ve heard all about the importance of having a RSS feed, newsletter signup, social networking links and a million other things. More importantly, you’ve probably installed a bunch of these on your site without considering how you’ll actually use them to make some money.

It’s interesting to note that many of the people that handed out business advice when the going was good have strangely gone quiet now that things aren’t looking so good on Wall Street. The reality of the current situation is that entrepreneurs still have to wake up every morning, head to work and pave a path to a better future.

A BusinessWeek article points out that tech that doesn’t work won’t let us work. Well said.

It’s interesting to watch an increasing number of mom & pop small businesses get online these days. There’s been no shortage of design shops and independent contractors that will charge a few hundred bucks to slap together some images and put up a website for you. Is it really worth it?

Seems like everyone’s talking about innovation these days — isn’t it pretty much a requirement for doing anything that people are willing to pay for? Ditto that for quality, teamwork and strategy.

I have a friend that recently bought a used car at full price. His excuse: “I asked for a discount but they didn’t give it to me so I gave up.” Sure, he could probably stand to learn a little bit about better negotiating but there is a better way to get a better deal.

Before I say anything else, I want to clarify that I’m not advocating cheating or cutting corners, but I’ve found in my own experience that the difference between a good accountant and a bad one can cost you thousands of dollars. A good accountant recognizes all the costs of running a business, offers tips for good investments (in turn, reducing taxes), and offers advice on how best to grow your personal wealth.