Typically, guests will give advice based on their industry knowledge and then end the show by talking a bit about their company or product. Of course, bizSugar doesn’t lend itself as easily to industry knowledge - there’s only so much you can say about submitting article links or posting comments. And while there’s a lot of advice out there about how to use social news and bookmarking sites to promote your products or service, most just offer hints on how to game the systems.

Therefore, because I’m also a marketing consultant and I’ve started several businesses over the years, I decided to spend the bulk of my time talking about overcoming the pitfalls of starting a business. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I soon found myself wishing I was in the direct mail business talking about five ways to save on postage.

You see, even though I knew my subject matter, it’s not the type of stuff I talk to my clients about on a daily basis - or even on a yearly basis for that matter. The information was lodged in the back of my brain, and I soon found myself with a tight throat - barely uttering words (at least it felt that way to me). I was a bit surprised because I’ve never really had a problem talking to large groups of people, much less a podcast where I didn’t have an audience watching me.

Why do I mention this? Many people have a fear of public speaking and if this was my first speech ever, I’m pretty sure I’d prefer death over speaking again. The problem was that I wasn’t prepared. Oh sure, I practiced what I knew I’d be talking about a couple of times, but it wasn’t enough to make me comfortable with the material - even though it was from my own experiences!

I was reading in Men’s Health magazine about how Navy SEALs practice their maneuvers over and over again to overcome the body’s natural tendency to lock up from fear. As one SEAL explains, “We push ourselves so far that we reach that level of fear where we think we’re going to die. You’ve done it a thousand times, so when you do it for real, there’s less fear. You go and do it just like you trained for it.”

And to think, all I needed to do was practice my material a few more times.

   
   
One of the funnier moments in the interview for me was when, after I was on my soapbox regarding the importance of having a business plan, Steve asks me, “So did you create a business plan before you launched bizSugar?”

“Uh, nope.”

I explained that bizSugar was more of an experiment than a business I was expecting to get rich off of. Still, I know I probably sounded like a hypocrite, so I’ll explain a little more here.

bizSugar is based on open source software, so I knew that I could start the Website for under $10,000 and within 30 days (after four months of working on the Website, I realized I’d already made one miscalculation). Plus, it was synergistic with my existing businesses, so it was more like a project than a whole new business (or at least that’s what I told myself).

What I couldn’t figure out was whether there was really a market for my idea. There were somewhat similar sites that I could analyze, but, at the time I decided to try this, there wasn’t anything quite like it. Building pro forma statements was pretty much impossible. So, for me, the cheapest way, in both time and money, to find out if this was a good idea was to use the strategy “ready, fire, aim.”

However, if it’s your first business or a risky endeavor, I’d still recommend a business plan.

But fear not, we have an answer.

The following will add the bizSugar voting button automatically to each post.

1. First, your blog should be set to save Post Pages, so that each post will have a unique URL. To verify or enable it, login to your Blogger Dashboard. Under Settings-> Archiving, set the “Enable Post Pages?” to “Yes” and save the settings.

2. While still in the Dashboard, click on the Layout tab and then the Edit HTML option. This should take you to your template code.

3. Click on “Expand Widget Templates.” This is located in upper right area near your template code.

4. Copy your entire template code and paste into a text editor.  

5. Now, let’s say you already have other voting buttons and want to add bizSugar’s to the list. Find the location where you want to add the code and insert the following:

<!-- bizSugar button -->   
<script type='text/javascript'>submit_url=&quot;<data:post.url/>&quot;;</script>
<script src='http://www.bizsugar.com/evb/button.php' type='text/javascript'/>

Now paste the code back into your template page and your finished!

6. But what if you want to create a custom location for your bizSugar button? We can do that too. First, in your template code, find the following snippet of code.

<p><data:post.body/></p>

This is the body of each blog post. If you want to put your button at the top of your post, you add the button code above it. If you want the button below you post, you add the code below it. For example…

7. Let’s say you want to add the bizSugar button to the top right of each blog post (like we have in this blog). You would add the following code right above the  <p><data:post.body/></p> snippet of code:

<!-- bizSugar button -->   
<div style='float:right; margin-left:10px;'>
<script type='text/javascript'>submit_url=&quot;<data:post.url/>&quot;;</script>
<script src='http://www.bizsugar.com/evb/button.php' type='text/javascript'/>
</div>

Now just paste the entire code back into your template page and you’re finished!

(By the way, notice the style tags ‘float:right; margin-left:10px;’ in the code above? Feel free to tweak those until you get just the right position for your button.)

Kansas City, Mo, May 14, 2008 - Business owners and managers have a new way to receive the latest small business news and ideas each week. bizSugar (www.bizsugar.com) announced today it has launched bizSugar’s Top 10 This Week, a weekly e-mailed newsletter showcasing the top-voted articles from the bizSugar.com Web site.

bizSugar allows users to discover, share and vote for their favorite business tips, trends, news and strategies on the Web.

“By letting users vote on how interesting or helpful each article is, bizSugar takes advantage of the combined wisdom of our members,” said bizSugar founder, John Holsen. “This helps us create a repository of top business knowledge and allows our members to spend less time reading fluff.”

Top 10 This Week further supports bizSugar’s mission to provide top business knowledge for the time-starved entrepreneur.

“We recognize that a segment of our membership is more active with the website compared to other members,” said Holsen. “Top 10 This Week allows us to meet the needs of a greater number of busy executives by bringing the best articles to them directly. The newsletter’s voting feature should also encourage frequent interaction with the bizSugar website.”

bizSugar’s Top 10 This Week is available for free to business professionals who sign up for a bizSugar account.

About bizSugar.com
bizSugar.com is a Web 2.0 business community, designed for owners and managers of small to medium-sized businesses, that allows members to discover, share and vote for the best small business news and ideas on the Web.

First, Lisa Alexander interviewed me for WAHNewsToday. WAHN is a new website that provides some great advice for home-based business owners and for people who sell for companies that use a multi-level marketing strategy. Lisa is the founder of WAHN and I know she must be working like crazy because I’ve seen a lot of growth in the site over the last two weeks. It’s got a good niche and I expect it will do well.

Next, Julie Power interviewed me for the Internet Marketing Report Online. IMR Online is the blog that complements the Internet Marketing Report, a print newsletter that covers some of the best ideas for online marketing. Julie writes both publications with a style that’s entertaining and easy to understand. You don’t need to be an internet marketing pro to implement her ideas and suggestions. I was already a fan of the print newsletter, so I’m definitely adding Julie’s blog to my reading list.

Finally, we launched the first issue of our e-newsletter, bizSugar’s Top 10 This Week. The publication, e-mailed to our members every Friday, lists the most-voted-for articles over the last seven days. You may think that it’s rather un-Web 2.0ish to offer an e-newsletter, but we realize that some bizSugar members are more active with the website than others; so it’s our hope that the e-newsletter will encourage less active members to visit and contribute to the site while they’re reviewing and voting for the top 10 stories.

Not a bizSugar member yet? Click here to sign up and receive the newsletter.

Yes, it was a great week. Oh, I suppose I could mention how a small modification to our code accidently messed up our e-mail list and simultaneously removed everyone’s avatar for a full day. But no, I won’t mention that - not at all. It was a great week.

Evan Carmichael has built a fantastic site for entrepreneurs. In addition to some powerful business information from well-known experts like David Allen, Jay Conrad Levinson, Michael Gerber, Jeffrey Gitomer, Seth Godin and John Jantsch, he also has over 100 interviews from famous entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jenny Craig, Mark Cuban and Hugh Hefner. And that just barely touches all of the features and tools on this site.

Evan’s site also has an extensive forum section with a large following. That’s where we come in. Evan and I are hoping to introduce some of his community to ours and vice versa. By doing so, we hope to increase the opportunities for knowledge and networking for both groups.

So go check out his site. I think you’ll like what you find.

To download it, locate the “bizSugar vote plugin” on our bizSugar tools page. As of this post, the plugin has not been tested with the new WordPress 2.5, but should work fine with other WordPress 2.x versions.

This is a nice little plugin that allows you to either automatically add a bizSugar vote button to all of your posts or manually add a button to only certain posts. With a little tweaking, you can fine tune the button’s position or modify which style of button you want to use. I tried to make the instructions as simple and thorough as possible, but if you have any questions, please let me know.

A big thanks to Michelle MacPhearson, as this plugin was adapted from her SphinnIt button.

We’ll be offering more social button options in the future, so stay tuned!

Alltop publishes stories fed from many of the top small business news and blog sites. You only get to see the headlines, but if you hold your mouse over a headline, you get a floating pop-up that gives you the intro to the article — good idea.

Kawasaki emailed us yesterday to let us know that bizSugar was added to their site. We were touched that he would add a site that wasn’t much older than his. Of course, if it were not for the quality of our story submissions, I’m sure this wouldn’t be the case.

Therefore, our hats go off to Guy and to the members of bizSugar who are keeping the quality high and the spam low.

That’s when I learned my first PR lesson: regardless of what you’re asked, prepare two or three sound-bites and make sure you squeeze them in to your answers.

This time it was a much easier and more enjoyable experience. Corey Kossack, President of the Club E Network, sent me the questions by email. You’d think it would be easy to answer questions when they’re emailed to you but, truth is, I sent him two rounds of corrections of my own answers! I thank Corey for his patience.

You can read the interview here: New social news site for business owners: an interview with the founder of bizSugar

If you aren’t already familiar with the Club E Network, check it out. It’s a social network for entrepreneurs that, in addition to its Facebook-type features, offers insightful videos and local events in many major cities. The site is still pretty new, but I expect it to grow into a powerful resource for entrepreneurs. Michael Gerber, author of the business classic, “The E-Myth,” is chairman and Ingrid Vanderveldt of CNBC’s “American Made” is the CEO, so it’s got some well-known talent behind it.

Not a line was written.

In retrospect, there were a few things we did wrong that I’ll probably talk about in future posts. But what’s important is that February came and so did the love.  Slowly, the business media took notice of us.

Their opinion: They like us! They really like us!

And we certainly like them. Thanks to everyone who wrote about us over the last few weeks. I hope there’s a lot more where that came from.

We just added a new section to the bizSugar blog called bizSugar buzz. That’s where we showcase comments about biz Sugar from journalists and bloggers alike. Take a look and see what all the buzz is about.

Before the change, the feature showcased the top voted articles Sunday through Saturday. While that’s a more accurate description of the term “Top this Week,” we thought it was rather unfair because an article submitted on a Friday or Saturday would probably never get a chance to be in a top position since the week starts over on Sunday.