Clever entrepreneur and author Seth Godin posted an interesting piece on editors today. His point: the easy route for editors is the safe route, which avoids trouble – but also eliminates success.

“Sometimes, a great editor will push the remarkable stuff,” stated Godin. “That’s his job.”

I wholeheartedly agree editors often take the trouble-free route, which can result in lame material. However, it’s often not the choice of editors, but rather the suffocating layers of policies and bureaucracy enforced by the poor soul’s boss, department or company. Editors are, frankly, politicized and homogenized into submission.

Only once during my 16-year career as an editor and managing editor of two international corporations, both with 20,000-plus employees, was I supported to take a chance – with a feature highlighting several clients and communicating point blank what they valued, how they perceived our services, and what could be done to increase their satisfaction.

Out of the thousands of articles I wrote and edited over the years, that one received the most enthusiasm and recognition in the form of dozens of letters and calls by employees who were otherwise uninterested in company news. It created a buzz, got people talking about opportunities and generated genuine interest in the company and its future.

But that was one time. Otherwise, ideas and articles were pushed through endless approval processes involving directors, VPs, legal departments, marketing teams and even the CEO. In one case, I sat in a boardroom for three hours having a feature article dissected by 13 committee members. More often than not, the end products turned out to be dull, if not useless.

I recall pitching a unique newsletter concept to grab employees’ interest when there was a push to bring “fun” into the workplace. It was a format and style mimicking tacky tabloids with ridiculous headlines, complete with attention-grabbing photos of frontline staff and fun-filled captions.

The response from headquarters: “We’re wondering about you.” Not a speck of interest. Ironically, two years later, another company produced a very similar tabloid-type publication, which won them all sorts of acknowledgment and awards.

It brings to mind a quote from Tom Peters’ Essential Series book titled ‘Talent’. During a seminar in Sydney, a successful businessman stood up and said to Peters: “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre success.”

What a powerful philosophy – one that organizations should embrace.

The Globe and Mail’s Small Business Report recently featured an article on Webcopyplus, which discusses how we take an active approach to networking and resource sharing.

One of the many benefits Webcopyplus provides clients is direct access to an extensive network of talented and dependable web types. Ironically, the article prompted several new potential partners to reach out, possibly expanding our already broad range of contacts.

That’s valuable for clients, plus it helps our business. As the article mentioned, it’s unrealistic to stay on top of every emerging Internet and software technology. Hence, we lean on various web experts when called for and they call on us when the issues surround web copy.

Special thanks to Business consultant Mark Wardell and the Globe.

Online retail continues to grow, with a 58 per cent increase in year-on-year sales in 2007, reports Forrester Research. Online sales during the Christmas period are no exception. This year will bring good tidings to Europe’s online retailers, which will rake in €51 billion collectively between October and the year’s end — always the most important quarter for European retailers.

The largest online retail market is the UK, with 27 million online shoppers spending more than €700 each online during the Christmas shopping season — accounting for a record-breaking €20 billion in online sales. Germany’s online shopping spend has grown to €12 billion.

The categories that show the biggest uplift are the typical gift items — books, videos and DVDs, jewelry, toys, video games, consumer electronics and alcohol.

Despite a smaller Christmas season boost, the leisure travel category will claim the most online sales, accounting for 31 per cent of Christmas sales.

Forrester forecasts US consumers will spend (US) $33 billion during the 2007 holiday season, the time period from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

This represents a 21 per cent lift from the comparable holiday season in 2006. The reason for the increase? Consumers report being more likely to spend online across a variety of product categories ranging from jewelry to clothing and accessories.

Most consumers also expressed a continued interest in free shipping and a decreased willingness this year to pay for “frills” like gift wrap or rush delivery.

For any business - online or not — the odds are stacked against success. In fact, sources indicate as many as nine out of 10 businesses fail within five years.

Having the fortune to work with a host of successful businesses - from independent designers to global service providers - you start to recognize winning characteristics.

But what are the treacherous traits that are responsible for the demise of most businesses? Based on an accumulation of notes over the years, following are answers by some of the most renowned business experts of our times.

1. Undefined values
Entrepreneurs need to define their values, which guide all decision making, insists iconic motivational speaker Tony Robbins. If you know what you value most and truly want out of life — be it love, health, success, freedom, power, or comfort - Robbins noted you’ll find you can make more effective and rapid decisions. He added: “Your beliefs determine whether or not you feel like you’re meeting your values - they can either limit or liberate you.” Where do you start? Ask yourself this question: “What’s most important to me in my life?”

2. Business plans don’t target a market
The biggest mistake most companies make when writing a business plan is not having a target audience in mind, suggests Michael Miller, author of 75 non-fiction books. Ultimately, he said these businesses end up creating something generic, without a purpose or defined goal. “Looking at it another way,” noted Miller, “if you don’t know who your audience is, you really don’t know why you’re creating a plan – and a plan with no purpose is a plan for failure.”

3. Just dabbling
Learn every detail of your core business because the market only pays excellent rewards for excellent performance, stresses motivational speaker and self-help author Brian Tracy. In contrast, below average performance pays below average rewards, failure and frustration. His advice: “Read all the magazines in your field. Read and study the latest books. Attend the courses and seminars given by experts in your field. Join your trade association, attend every meeting and get involved with the other top people in your field.”

4. Being afraid to lose
Failure inspires winners, and failure defeats losers, wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki. He noted: “The greatest secret of winners is that failure inspires winning; thus, they’re not afraid of losing.” Kiyosaki explained there’s a big difference between hating losing and being afraid to lose. “The main reason over 90 per cent of the American public struggles financially is because they play not to lose,” he stated. “They don’t play to win.”

5. Fear of being judged
The fear of being judged, looking stupid, being wrong, failing or taking blame lurks just beneath the surface in the clever disguise of caution, claims marketing innovator Kay Allison, founder of Energy Infuser. And when you can’t put the full force of your enthusiasm and passion behind a new idea, she suggests that idea will be dead on arrival. “One thing I’ve learned is that whatever I focus on grows,” offered Kay. “So if I focus on the anxiety that gnaws in my belly, it gets so big that it’s paralyzing. On the other hand, if I focus on what my next appropriate action should be, it gets me into motion.”

6. Ignoring your gut instinct
Writer Malcolm Gladwell stated in his national best seller, Blink: “…if we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments.” He went on to say, “We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that — sometimes — we’re better off that way.”

7. “I can do it all” syndrome
If you don’t focus on your strengths and hire others to take care of the rest, you’re in trouble, says Mark Wardell, business author and Founder of Wardell Professional Development. “To be good at business does not mean you have to be good at everything,” he stated, suggesting business owners need to place more value on time. “When you invest your money, you expect it to return a profit,” explained Wardell. “Your time works the same way. When you invest rather than spend your time, its value increases dramatically.”

8. Pointing fingers
When you point a finger at someone, warns NFL coach Herm Edwards, three fingers always point back at you. “When you’re involved in something that fails or in something in which a mistake is made, more often than not, you’re to blame, too,” he wrote. “It’s just easier to blame the other guy, and this is a device that most people can see right through.” Before assigning blame, Edwards says it’s always best to ask yourself what you could have done differently yourself that might have avoided the error or mistake in the first place.

9. Fighting change
Accept change, insists Jack Welch, former GE CEO and best-selling author. “Business leaders who treat change like the enemy will fail…” he stated. “Change is the one constant, and successful business leaders must be able to read the ever-changing business environment.” Accordingly, it’s important to promote an openness to change by teaching colleagues to see change as an opportunity — “a challenge that can be met through hard work and smarts.”

10. Neglecting points of contact
Consider every point at which your company makes contact with a prospect: your office, receptionist, website, business card, sales call and so on. Business advisor and bestselling author Harry Beckwith stresses the need to study each point of contact, and improve each one significantly. Otherwise, it may be your only one — or even your last.

11. Wrong packaging
Author Robert G. Allen, who is credited with making many millionaires in the U.S., cited an “info-preneur” who spent years and tens of thousands of dollars creating a product called Compact Classics, which condensed all the great classic fiction and non-fiction books into a two-page format. No one bought it until it was re-titled to The Great American Bathroom Book. Allen reported: “The idea caught on and millions dollars later, the idea is still pumping out cash.”

12. Culture of bureaucracy
Good to Great and Built to Last author Jim Collins warns businesses to avoid bureaucracy, which he calls “the cancer of mediocrity.” He explained: “Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy…” The solution? Build a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship to get a “magical alchemy of superior performance and sustained results.”

13. Narrow-mindedness
The late Napoleon Hill, credited for influencing more people into success than any other person in history, wrote: “The person with a ‘closed’ mind on any subject seldom gets ahead.”  In fact, he noted, intolerance means that one has stopped acquiring knowledge. “The most damaging forms of intolerance,” he documented, “are those connected with religious, racial and political differences of opinion.”

Editor’s note: Business owners should check out The Big Makover, an event that promises to transform your company is just four days.

Webcopyplus recently completed an interesting project for B.C. Lions legend Jamie Taras, who’s taken his winning ways from the field to the boardroom with Team Taras.

Taras offers an incredibly unique team building event at B.C. Place Stadium. You and your colleagues get to partake in an inspiring session, which includes on-field team training amongst the football players and cheerleaders. To top it off, you get to cheer the team on to victory.

A spectacular way to take a break from the office and motivate your team!

Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘Before you quit your job’ takes you up several hundred feet to get an unobstructed perspective on what separates employees (who seek security) and entrepreneurs (who seek freedom). Moreover, the Rich Dad book reveals everything from how to deal with mental roadblocks to how to position yourself in your chosen industry.

Regardless where you’re at with your entrepreneurial endeavors, this book is worth picking up. While it sometimes overlaps Kiyosaki’s original ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ book, it contains several valuable gems.

While visting Seth Godin’s newest blog, which promotes his latest book, The Dip, I was moved by a magnificent opera performance by an unassuming mobile phone salesman.

Paul Potts, who confessed to having confidence challenges, earned a standing ovation within seconds of his performance and blew away the American Idol/ Britian’s got Talent judges. He went on to the finals and won the entire competition.

Regardless what business you’re in, this will prove to be an inspiration. Watch it here. It’s four minutes well spent.

During a coffee break at a Small Business BC web writing course I was delivering this week, an entrepreneur approached me for some advice specific to his business. After discussing a couple of solutions, he sighed and said, “things take forever to set up on the Internet.”

I grinned. Just a few short decades ago, business ventures required products to be built by hand, marketing opportunities were limited and distribution could involve railroads and steamships. Such vast operations would call for huge sums of manpower and money.

Today, a new idea can get out to market within weeks, and by a single entrepreneur.

There are countless entrepreneurs with blogs, forums, affiliate sites, software solutions, e-commerce sites, dating sites and so on making significant incomes, several boasting they work just a couple of hours a day.

That’s the typical workday of one individual who is taking full advantage of the Web. Consider the resources it would have taken not too long ago to connect more than 600,000 people daily and initiate over 500,000 relationships a year. Today, it’s done by one man, Markus Frind, from his 900-square-foot apartment in Vancouver, B.C. He created

www.plentyoffish.com in 2003, which brings in more than $5 million annually.

Absolutely, website development can be a nuisance. But it’s a small deed compared to the logistical challenges that businesses faced in the past. Delivering a package not even 20 years ago across New York City would involve a lot of people, steps, time and dollars. Today, that delivery is made in a matter of seconds with just a few quick clicks.

There’s no denying the Internet has rapidly changed the landscape of business. So fast, it’s sometimes difficult to keep in perspective.

Businesses are continuing to push more of their marketing budgets online.

Not too long ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported online advertising spending will grow faster in Canada than anywhere in the world over the next four years. Meanwhile, in the UK last year, Internet expenditures overtook traditional advertising in national newspapers. And in the US, Forrester forecasts companies will spend upwards of $26 billion on Internet marketing per annum by 2010 – approximately eight per cent of all advertising spending.

Webcopyplus conducted a poll to determine what entrepreneurs and small business owners spend to gain presence on the Web. Of the 60 polled, more than 38 per cent of businesses spend between $500 and $6,000 on online marketing annually, only five per cent spend more than $12,000, and the remaining 57 per cent spend less than $500 or less per year.

We were surprised that so many small businesses fell in the $500 or less category given the Internet’s one of the few areas where small businesses can compete with larger, more established companies. In fact, 10 per cent of poll participants indicated they don’t have an online marketing budget of any sort. It’s a case of small business missing big opportunities.

While Canada is expected to maintain the greatest growth in online spending during the next four years, PricewaterhouseCoopers reports countries in Asia and Latin America will fill the gap soon after.

“Latin America is an emerging market due to major middle class growth in Chile and Mexico, with Venezuela and Columbia not too far behind,” explained Rene Quijada, Founder of award-winning Kihada Works Design, a Canada-based design firm with artist and association affiliations throughout Latin America.  

“These countries are working hard to bring their technology and Web accessibility to US and UK standards,” added Quijada. “It’ll allow their businesses to better market themselves locally and to the rest of the world, especially North America.”