Inc.com

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe says the difference between male entrepreneurs and female ones comes down to something men get that women don't.

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe on the value of scarcity and the imperative to keep things fresh.

How Gilt Groupe uses every and all social media platforms to build the Gilt brand.

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe on her greatest lessons, biggest inspirations, and most painful mistakes

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe reflects on the source of her company's freshest and most creative ideas.

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe on the different skills a founder needs at every phase of start-up's growth.

View the video on Inc.com at: http://www.inc.com/scott-gerber/alexis-maybank-the-three-skills-you-need-to-lead-a-growing-company.html

The co-founder of Gilt Groupe reflects on how the company maintains an intimate customer experience even as the company grows.

Abraham Lincoln was an early master of public relations. On the anniversary of his birthday, here's what you can learn.

Although Abraham Lincoln is often remembered as one of our greatest Presidents, few people have taken the time to study his complete mastery of the then-unknown art of what we today call public relations.

As a serious Civil War buff and quasi-PR expert (hey, I run a public relations firm, but I don't claim to have all the answers!), I've listed six sure-fire tips pioneered by Honest Abe that will help enhance the image and reputation of any entrepreneur:

1. Nurture the brand of you.

Abe Lincoln was an absolute master at currying favor with the White House press corps, sharing tips and quotes with many leading, pro-Republican reporters, and actually composing many speeches right in their newsrooms as reporters watched in fascination.

Tip: Establish relationships with the trade and regional press that cover your industry. If you begin sharing the types of tips and trends that Abe did, you'll soon find the media calling you for quotes, columns, and case studies.

2. Share the wealth.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin chronicled in A Team of Rivals, Lincoln populated his Cabinet with the very people he defeated for the presidency. They were the best and brightest thinkers in the land. Lincoln not only sought their counsel but made sure the media knew they were involved in key decisions.

Tip: One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face is scaling their business and persuading prospects to trust the owner's managers and employees and not him alone. The sooner you establish a strong team and publicize its abilities and points of view, the sooner you'll stop being perceived as a one-man band.

3. Embrace new technology.

In his superb book, Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails, Tom Wheeler describes our 16th President's complete mastery of an emerging technology called the telegraph. Like Twitter, the telegraph forced a writer to be concise. In one classic exchange with General Grant near the end of the war, Grant telegraphed Lincoln, stating: "If the thing is pressed I think that Lee will surrender." Lincoln's Twitter-like response? "Then, press the thing."

Tip: Take advantage of Twitter, blogging, LinkedIn, and other emerging technologies to heighten your own awareness and thought leadership (while demonstrating to Millennial employees and prospects alike that you're just as conversant with what's new as they are).

4. Use comedy to defuse a crisis.

When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton rushed into the Oval Office waving a report that the hugely successful General Grant had once again fallen off the wagon and had been drinking heavily, Lincoln leaned back in his chair and said with a sigh, "Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals." Conversely, when bedeviled by weak commanders, Lincoln attempted to use humor to motivate them. Exasperated by General George McClellan's unwillingness to engage in battle with Robert E. Lee, Lincoln sent a telegram that read: "If General McClellan isn't going to use his army, I'd like to borrow it for a time."

Tip: Comedy can be a huge strategic advantage as well as a differentiator for any entrepreneur who, like Lincoln, knows exactly how and when to use it.

5. Allow yourself to be vulnerable.

Lincoln was never afraid to be photographed at times of great despair. Nor was he afraid to share his grief with the nation when his son, Willie, died of tuberculosis in 1862. Lincoln also pardoned so many soldiers for so many crimes they had committed that Attorney General Edward Bates had to intervene and ensure that only the most deserving cases came to Lincoln's attention (otherwise, Bates feared, Lincoln's empathy would undermine the Army's discipline).

Tip: To err is human; to forgive, divine. I'm a big believer in allowing people to fail (as long as they learn from their failures). I'm also the first to share one of my failures with staff. I believe vulnerability is key to any entrepreneur's leadership.

6. Timing is everything.

Lincoln knew that by freeing the slaves, he would elevate the Civil War from a battle between the states to a righteous, moral struggle. But he first needed a major Union victory to reinforce the hopelessness of the Lost Cause. Unfortunately, Confederate Generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet consistently beat their Union counterparts throughout 1861 and '62. It wasn't until after the Battle of Antietam, which, although a stalemate, checked Lee's first invasion of the North, that Lincoln felt he had a positive enough outcome to announce the end of slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation a few months later.

Tip: Most entrepreneurs are adrenaline junkies who believe every move they make belongs on the cover of Inc. Let's just face the fact that (most likely!) it doesn't. Lincoln waited for just the right time and circumstances to announce real news, and so should you.

What would you ask the wealthiest man in America? Check out the highlights from the Microsoft founder's Q&A session on Reddit.

"I'm Bill Gates. Ask me anything." The creator of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation took to the interwebs Monday to answer the burning questions of tech geeks, humorists, and interested parties everywhere. The social news site Reddit hosted an "Ask Me Anything" chat with the iconic dot-com billionaire.

His answers ranged from the philosophical to the technical to the downright silly. Here are five unexpected things about Bill Gates from his brief sojourn online.

He’s cheap--when it comes to trust funds, that is.

“I definitely think leaving kids massive amounts of money is not a favor to them,” wrote the billionaire in reference to the (comparatively) sparse trust fund of $10 million that he and Mrs. Gates intend to leave their children.

Gates credited Warren Buffett as his inspiration, citing an article in Fortune in 1986 featuring the business magnate’s views on inheritance.

“[That article] made me think about it and decide he was right,” Gates said. “Some people disagree with this, but Melinda and I feel good about it.”

If naysayers of the leave-your-billionaire-kids-less philosophy exist, they certainly weren't present during Reddit's chat Monday. Gates was heaped with "Reddit gold" for this statement (perhaps an unnecessary accolade, several pointed out), as well as his views on wealth and philanthropy.

Though, as one Redittor was quick to point out: “A $10 million head start is nothing to sneeze at.”

He loves Andrew Carnegie.

OK, technically Bill Gates didn’t say that. But his philosophy on philanthropy and the obligation of the wealthy seems eerily similar to the “Gospel of Wealth” written by his industrial-era predecessor.

“This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth,” wrote Carnegie in 1889, “To set an example…to produce the most beneficial results for the community--the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his wisdom, experience, and ability to administer.”

Yeah, it’s a little archaic. But Gates’s words seem to echo the sentiment.

“Philanthropy is mostly about a broad set of people giving, but it helps if the most wealthy set a strong example,” wrote Gates. “I think there is a movement to do more, start sooner, and be smarter about giving.”

Still, he remembered to give a shout-out to the little people, too.

“Most giving is done by the middle class, so it is the backbone of generosity--particularly in the United States. A key thing is to support government aid, which is only 1 percent of the budget but helps poor countries in incredible ways.”

He's a dot-com billionaire and tragically misunderstood.

No, truly. Getting inside the mind of a Silicon Valley wunderkind can be a little difficult--even for the typically tech-savvy Reddit community. In one post, an anonymous Redditor asked Gates, “What one Microsoft program or product that was never fully developed or released do you wish had made it to the market?”

Gates’s response was a little, um, dense.

“We had a rich database as the client/cloud store that was part of a Windows release that was before its time. This is an idea that will reemerge since your cloud store will be rich with schema rather than just a bunch of files and the client will be a partial replica with some rich schema understanding.”

“I understood some of those words,” another Redditor replied.

He believes in the stork.

When asked, “Since becoming wealthy, what’s the cheapest thing that gives you the most pleasure?” Mr. Gates responded in typical (though perhaps accidental) billionaire humor.

“Kids,” he wrote. Followed by: “cheap cheeseburgers.”

The Reddit community was quick to balk, parrying with comments like: “Are you sure you have kids? Since when were they cheap?” and “Where are you acquiring these cheap kids from?”

“The stork,” Gates replied.

Oh. Of course.

He wants to cheat death.

When you are the wealthiest man in America, you are plagued by certain dilemmas that don't seem to affect the 99 percent. What do billionaires want for their birthdays, for example?

“Free software,” Gates quipped. “Just kidding. Books, actually.”

And what's on his bucket list?

Even for an innovator who is used to thinking outside the box, Gates’s answer was a little surprising. At the top of his current list?

“Don’t die.”

It seems the creator of Microsoft isn’t done quite yet. The Reddit community, for its part, took this information in stride.

"If anyone is going to be the first immortal, I guess he's the obvious pick," one commenter concluded.

Most of us don't feel we are using our time well--and we're right. We need to put ourselves on time budgets.

Last month my teen-age daughter was in a nervous frenzy over her first-ever midterms. It would only have provoked her if I’d said I wanted someone to test me. I read a solid three to four hours a day for work--magazines, blogs, new books. I at least glance at every headline in the New York Times: admittedly OCD behavior. I’ve been trying to shake it for nearly 30 years, since the days when I studied journalism and weekly news quizzes accounted for 20 percent of my grade.

Those quizzes were a pain, but at least they provided measurable ROI on all those hours spent staring at pages. What I’d welcome now is a more complex, customized test that assesses how much material I’ve retained, how much I’ve synthesized with other stuff I know, and how much I’ve transformed into something of value for Inc. readers and--by extension--for my employer, Inc. Theoretically all that reading makes me a choicer cut on the human-capital meat market. Still, I find the intangibility of my assets fairly freak-some.

Knowledge workers have trouble weighing the value of their own time. What they produce is background and context and insight and foresight: consequently an almost endless amount of work can go into any one of their deliverables. And since failure is currently considered not only an option but also a virtual mandate--if you don’t fail at least a little you must be too conservative--they can assume that false starts and missteps should be part of the process, drawing it out further.

Knowledge workers need help managing their time, but they don’t get it from leaders, who battle their own temporal demons. For an article in the new issue of McKinsey Quarterly, Aaron De Smet and Frankki Bevins surveyed 1,500 executives and found that just 9 percent were satisfied with how they spend their time. The most satisfied were also the most balanced--they divvied their hours relatively evenly among making operational decisions, setting strategy, and managing employees, stakeholders, and unexpected issues. They also mixed it up in terms of whom they worked with and how they communicated.

The other 91 percent were less thoughtful, or at least less disciplined about where their valuable hours are best spent. “The comparison I make is to capital,” De Smet told me when I called to talk about the study. “Leaders put in so much time and analysis and thought and discussion when deciding where to invest their money, which is a finite resource. Time is also a finite resource. But when deciding where to invest time they just use their guts. My question is, is that good enough?”

One solution is for companies to stop treating time management as a personal-productivity issue and instead treat it as an organizational one. Extending the capital metaphor, De Smet suggests creating a “time budget” that quantifies the number of hours required from leaders and other critical players to “finance” a particular initiative. De Smet also suggests expanding job descriptions to include recommended time expenditures for specific duties. “When people get to a new job they don’t know where to start,” he said. “E-mails come in. They start getting invites. And the pattern of how they spend their time ends up being dictated to a very large extent by external forces that are almost random.”

I like the idea of these time directives because they address the problem of sunk costs. I’m thinking of situations where people working on projects put in so much time they feel they need a result, even if that result will likely be sub-optimal and achieving it will take another 60 hours of labor. A budget lets them tell themselves and their bosses that the opportunity costs of their continued involvement are too great. The project should be abandoned or rethought or passed off to someone whose time is worth less.

Sure, we all waste time reading random stuff online and yukking it up with colleagues. But we waste more time working on things past the point where they return a satisfactory investment on our labor. Jim Collins famously recommends adopting a stop-doing list. A corollary to that is a stop-doing-after-this-point list. Or as De Smet put it, “Focus and finish. Or focus and kill it.”

Today's news of Pope Benedict XVI's resignation holds a message: leadership is defined by action and a capacity to get things done.

One of the many challenges a leader faces is knowing when it is time to move on.

Generally, this is not a problem for failed leaders, or leaders who aren’t held in esteem. They tend to get pushed out, or they get little hints that it’s time to leave.

It is, however, a problem for leaders who are successful, loved, and esteemed. Respected and admired leaders--even as they age and have possible decreased capacity--are rarely encouraged to leave. With no one suggesting that it’s time to go, this type of leader has to rely on his or her own judgment to decide if it is time to wind down.

In academia, many still live in the world of tenure, and are guaranteed their positions for many years. I marvel not at those professors who hang on, but at those academics who appreciate the need to move on--to search for something new, to make room for younger professors, or because of an awareness of their own decreased capacity.

While I have no data, it seems to me that those who move on the quickest are those who have achieved the most. They are the ones who hold themselves to the highest standards, and hold themselves accountable.

Today’s news of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation holds a message for all leaders, especially those pragmatic leaders who realize that leadership is defined by action and a capacity to get things done. The lesson is simple. As a leader, your responsibility to your organization, to your cause, and to your vision is realistic self-monitoring.

You may have been great in your time--and you still may be great--but ask whether you fit the moment. Is the environment that your organization is operating in now the one that you are most comfortable? Ask yourself the following questions:

Is my knowledge base static? If you find yourself more and more out of sync with changing technologies, changing markets, changing ideas and concepts, then you may have to seriously consider making room for the younger generation who can keep up.

Is my network expanding? Leadership is based on your ability to network, make new connections, and find new linkages. If you find yourself dealing with the same people all the time, then maybe it is time to reconsider your position.

Does the work demand more of you? This is neither a physical nor intellectual question. Emotionally, are you less engaged with the daily activities necessary to sustain forward movement?

Do you think others around you can do a better job? Leaders always recognize talent and exceptional people. Few leaders in their prime feel replaceable. But if you are struck that others around you can do a better job than you can, then maybe you should let them.

The primary lesson that leaders can learn from Pope Benedict XVI is honest self-reflection.

Leaders need to make an honest examination of what they can and are willing to do. Few CEOs, few entrepreneurs, few leaders are more committed to their vision or mission than the Holy Father. If he can recognize the challenges that face the Church and have the awareness that he should make room for others, shouldn’t leaders at least reflect on his example?

This is not to say that everyone needs to copy his behavior, but certainly everyone should have the responsibility to reflect on whether the time has come to move on.

Administrator Karen Mills is out. So what now? Four things that would make the Small Business Administration more relevant.

A bit over a year ago, President Obama was talking about what might have been a great government entrepreneurship mash-up.

He announced a plan to combine the Small Business Administration with four other government bureaucracies, weeding out inefficiencies and creating a giant, cabinet-level super-agency that would oversee how the government helps new ventures.

Thirteen months later, the SBA is still the SBA, and the head of the agency, Karen Mills, has announced she plans to step down.

So, what should the next iteration of the SBA look like? And, who should Pres. Obama pick to lead it? Here are four keys to creating a better SBA, and finding someone great to lead it.

1. Pick an inspiring entrepreneur as boss.

Last week, the president named Sally Jewell his pick to lead the Department of Interior. A lot of avid outdoor adventurers I know were excited. As president and CEO of the sporting goods cooperative REI, Jewell brings an understanding that's a lot different from a politician or a more traditional pick.

Wouldn't it be great to see someone whose nomination would make the same kind of impact at the SBA?

I hesitate to name names, but I'm thinking of the kinds of people who've launched true start-ups, overcome great challenges, and built them into giant, national brands. Granted, these are the kinds of people who have no shortage of opportunities. But as the saying goes, when the president asks you to serve, you have to say yes.

2. Get a better name.

It has survived for six decades. But, the SBA's name represents one of the worst Washington branding decisions since President Nixon's campaign called itself the Committee for the Re-Election of the President ("CREEP," for short).

I've been harping on this one for a while. Sure, the agency's mission is to help smaller businesses, but that's not exactly an inspiring moniker. I've spent a lot of time studying and interviewing entrepreneurs. I've met some amazing people who've worked in just about every field imaginable. The one thing they all have in common is that they don't "think small."

Granted, the "small" in "SBA" is supposed to refer to a business's number of employees or total revenue. But tell me, what inspiring entrepreneur ever talked about how he or she wanted to launch a "small business?" Wouldn't it send a message to rename the entire agency something more inspirational? Back-of-the-envelope, I'd vote for the Office of Entrepreneurial Opportunity. (Got another idea? I'd like to hear it in the comments.)

3. Consolidate and prune.

This one goes for any government agency, but it seems especially relevant to the SBA. Most entrepreneurs are on a never-ending quest for more efficient ways of doing things. You're not going to have two people doing the job of one--at least not for long, if you want to succeed.

Not so in government. In a study two years ago, the Government Accountability Office identified a total of 52 separate overlapping entrepreneurship programs at the SBA and three other government agencies (the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Housing & Urban Development, and Agriculture).

"Many of those offices were small and seemed entirely duplicative," The Washington Post reported at the time. "Twenty-one of the programs, for instance, targeted the same geographic regions."

Okay, so I've never heard of a government official actively working to shrink his or her department. But the more the government can do to shrink and consolidate programs, the more faith people might have in the SBA.

4. Break free of bureaucracy.

A few years back, I interviewed to work in the SBA's communications office in Washington. I took myself out of the running after the interview.

Why? Well, I realized I liked running my own business too much. But I was also struck by how strange it was that the government's effort to help small, dynamic businesses was funneled through a giant, decades-old bureaucracy.

I've known some really dynamic people at the SBA. But often, they commiserated with me about how thick the bureaucracy can be. And with a budget of $569 million and more than 2,100 employees. the SBA is always going to be constricted by all kinds of governmental hiring, firing, and decision-making restrictions.

As the saying goes, it's hard to turn a battleship. But, whatever steps the SBA can take--even symbolic ones--to demonstrate that it's different, and that it "gets" independent businesses, could mean a lot.

Even in fields where wealth is the last thing you'd expect, successful individuals focus on money, says author Lewis Schiff.

Conventional wisdom suggests that "if you do what you love, the money will follow." Unfortunately, when I surveyed the self-made successful, they overhwlemingly disagreed with that notion. Instead, in my survey of the most successful business people in America, I learned that you must always, always look for the opportunity in business.

To see if this was true, I looked at some unusual success stories, including those from people in the arts, where becoming wealthy is the least likely outcome. By examining the most successful fine artist alive, a clown that became a billionaire and a bit-player on the sitcom Seinfeld who went on to create a cottage industry around his character, I learned that following the money is important no matter what field you choose.

Check out these stories drawn from Business Brilliant Principle #1: Do What You Love, But Always Follow the Money. And ask yourself this. Are you really interested in being successful at what you love to do?

This video was shot at Maison 140 in Beverly Hills.

Gathering data is not enough--it's what you do with it that drives profitable growth.

Never underestimate the power of your business's database or customer relationship management (CRM) system. These tools hold valuable information that will help you understand your customers, better meet their needs, improve your service performance, and expand to other, underserved customer segments.

Our work with a large client underscores the importance of mining customer data at a granular level in order to create profitable growth. The client had an abundance of customer and market data but very limited insights into those customers and markets. The management team had a view of performance only at the business-unit level, so it was nearly impossible to identify individual segments that were strong or weak.

We quickly saw a need to shift from this high-level financial view to a more granular view of profitability and growth by customer, market, product, and geography. To do this, we had to clearly define the problem we were solving, the questions we needed to answer to get there, and where to find the underlying data. From there, we needed to develop insights that made sense to business users--and that were actionable.

By analyzing the information in our client's database, we were able to identify a number of trends that had been buried in the numbers. After piecing together data from many different systems to get a complete picture of a customer, we noticed that significant pools of profitability were concentrated in just a few key segments, products, and customers. However, our client's resources and incentives were not aligned with these key segments. The sales team was not incentivized to attract and maintain the most profitable customers, management teams were aligned with the wrong segments, and resources were not distributed across the highest-growth geographies.

Additionally, the client had a few large customers that were wildly unprofitable. These customers were valued internally as the highest revenue generators, but what our client didn't know was that it was losing money by serving them each year.

By updating these customers' outdated systems and renegotiating contracts, our client was able to save millions of dollars in costs serving them. Armed with more granular information, our client was able to make better business decisions about its customers, products, and markets.

Gathering a lot of customer data doesn't directly translate into meaningful information. You need to know what business problems your teams are looking to solve and how to use the data to find the solutions to those problems. Many companies make uninformed strategic decisions because they don't have clear visibility into their customers, products, and business segments. It is critical, therefore, to get your arms around the data you have, translate it into meaningful information, and distribute this information across the organization to drive more informed decision making.

Please send us your thoughts at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com

Associate Lindsay Comstock contributed to this article.

Likeable Media co-founder Dave Kerpen explains how Etsy and other businesses are already doing e-commerce on Pinterest.

Get a lot of bang for no bucks with these free business-oriented platforms.

Who doesn't like free stuff? I know I sure do, especially when it comes to tools that help me grow my business and boost my productivity.

To be sure, there's a ton of "free" apps and software out there and trying every single one of them would be next to impossible. But recently, I was impressed by the following three that, in my humble opinion, are worth a closer look.

It's pretty obvious by now that if your company doesn't have a mobile-friendly website, you're missing out on a huge pool of customer prospects. Back in the day, you'd have to hire a Web designer to develop your mobile site. Not anymore. The folks at Dudamobile have created a platform that makes it really easy to create a great-looking mobile version of your website, no design expertise required. Their editing tools are simple to use and you can set it all up in minutes. Cost: Free to start

In need of video content for your biz? Wibbitz creates a video clip based on the text you have published on your website or blog. (Works better for blogs, I've found.) Just plug in the URL, and it will analyze the text and instantly produce a video clip with computer-generated narration. It also selects images from your site to match what's being said, and you have a couple of customization choices, like the music soundtrack and screen size. The narration can get a little clunky at times, but it's definitely fun to try out. Bonus: The company says its videos can play on any device, including smartphones and tablets. Cost: Free

At my email marketing company, VerticalResponse, we rely heavily on Google Drive to share documents with the team. But did you know it goes way beyond just sharing documents? Google has business templates, too! Choose templates for invoices, timecards, project trackers and more. They're like Word doc templates on steroids--and in the cloud. Cost: Free

Got any free cool tools that have helped your biz become more efficient? Let me know in the comments below!

Did you enjoy this post? If so, sign up for the free VR Buzz weekly newsletter and check out the VerticalResponse Marketing Blog.

No start-up funds, Hurricane Katrina, and employee theft threatened to keep AAC Enterprises out of business. But Justin Hartenstein grew it to a $4 million enterprise.

Justin Hartenstein, founder and CEO of AAC Enterprises, faced shocking adversity early in his entrepreneurial life. AAC Enterprises, which develops and sells custom lighting for use in automobiles, was launched in Hartenstein's parent's garage and then nurtured in his fraternity house at the University of New Orleans. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck and forced Hartenstein to relocate to Atlanta. And when he finally got back on his feet and back to Louisiana, an employee swiped all of his company's proprietary designs and personal information while he and wife Tiffanie were away on their honeymoon.

But despite these challenges, the automotive L.E.D. light maker, with its brand Oracle Lighting, garnered a revenue just shy of $4 million in 2012 and a three-year growth rate of 260 percent.

His Metairie, Louisiana-based AAC Enterprises is one of the companies vying for a spot on the 2013 Inc. 5000. As applications arrive, we thought it would be worthwhile to shine a spotlight on some of these fast-growing private companies. (For more information and to apply, go here). AAC has appeared on the list every year since 2010, ranking at No. 1423 in 2012.

Hartenstein was always fascinated by electronics, and as he grew up this interest gave way to a love of cars. He began crafting products he would want for his own vehicle, and became especially enamored with automotive lighting. He launched a small online car parts store right out of high school, running the business mostly through Ebay. The company, he says, was bootstrap financed, because potential investors thought a business selling only car lights was a crazy idea.

"I told people we design lights that go on cars, and they’d say, 'who buys that? Who is your market?'" he says. He tried to explain that he had a niche market made up of mostly automotive enthusiasts--anyone who modifies their vehicle for car shows, racing, competition, or just for fun. "We found huge value in just specializing in one thing," Hartenstein says, but investors weren't convinced.

Hartenstein's original product was a fiber optic lighting kit, which he used to build the setup for his own car with his own money. A buyer approached him, and he turned around and built two more with that money. He sold them, and made four with the money from that. AAC slowly grew, operating from the basement of his college frat house in early years. "UPS was stopping by daily," says Hartenstein. "As business grew, we were shipping 30 packages a day from the fraternity house."

Eventually, AAC became too large to manage alongside a full-time college education. Just as Hartenstein was debating whether to leave school and pursue his business operation full-time, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.

"It was a blessing in disguise," he says. "I had to take time to figure out what I wanted to do." After a brief stay in Atlanta, he decided to come back to New Orleans. Early on, completely naïve with regard to crafting the necessary legal documents to protect his designs, an employee who had been working with Hartenstein from the beginning copied all his hard drives and stole all of the company’s information, while he was away on his honeymoon.

His ex-employee used that information to start his own nearly identical business. "He’s literally down the street from us," Hartenstein says.

"That hurt us in many ways, but it also gave me some inspiration," he adds. "When I felt like I had put in enough time that day, I would keep going, make one last sales call, wondering if [my competitor] was still working."

He also pulled the company back a bit, allowing AAC’s growth to slow to a volume that was more manageable, while focusing his energy on the company's strengths. "It’s so hard as an entrepreneur to pull back when all you want to do is make that business go to the next step," he says. "But I realized what I was doing to myself as far as putting myself in situations that were unmanageable, going after some accounts that were maybe a little too big. We realized there's never an end of that.”

Technology provides a vast array of great tools for leaders. But if used unthinkingly, technology can have a terrible effect on your leadership abilities.

I'm far from a Luddite. In fact, I'm an easily swayed early adopter. I love technology, and couldn't do what I do without it.

Used wisely, technology provides a vast array of great tools for leaders, enhancing their communications and ability to think and lead creatively. Used unthinkingly, however, technology can have the opposite effect--deadening a leader's ability to be effective and curtailing the impact of otherwise great leaders.

Here are the three most egregious examples I see daily of technology being used wrongly or unthinkingly:

Tool: Video meetings

Problem: Loss of focus and clarity

No, this is not about watching videos of LOLCats or dancing puppies on YouTube, distracting as that may be.

I'm talking about the use of video chat (Skype or Google hangouts, for example) as a leadership tool.

Web video is a technology that seems perfect for increasing your leadership reach--what's better than being able to interact face to face with people without needing to leave your desk?--but that actually dilutes your leadership impact.

How so? Well, apart from new relationships, where you haven't yet gotten to know the other person well, once you have established an audio link, video is nothing more than an unnecessary additional stimulus that detracts from high-quality, focused interaction.

I've proved this repeatedly in hundreds of virtual interactions over many years, since the inception of video chat. A voice-only call between people who know each other well almost always yields higher-quality, more focused, more actionable outputs, and in a shorter time. Video adds little except an unneeded, additional sensory distraction. (I'm excluding the use of screen sharing and document sharing, which of course can be incredibly helpful.)

Don't believe me? Try turning off the video in your next few Web conferences and see if it has a positive impact on the outputs. I'm betting it will.

Tool: Mobile alerts

Problem: Short-termism

Ping: You have a new voice mail. Beep, beep: You have a new text. Oh, look--a shiny red circle: You have seven new emails.

So what?

Unless you're holding the nuclear football or overseeing a fiscal meltdown, you almost certainly don't need to know about any of these--at least, not right now.

The problem about setting up real-time alerts on your mobile device is that you're essentially giving everyone who knows you unlimited power to attract your attention any time he or she wants to. And that's precisely what he or she does, all day, every day. And you respond, all day, every day.

The net result? Dealing incessantly with granular issues, responding to everything in the short term, constantly interrupted, you become a manager rather than a leader.

Next thing you know, you're in thrall to the pings, beeps, and buzzes. Every one you receive sends a little burst of dopamine through your system. You find yourself checking your mobile device if something hasn't come through for oh...the last two minutes or so. Now you're not even a manager any more. Instead, your mobile device is managing you.

Tool: Cloud sync

Problem: The banishment of 'Aha!'

Time was, if you wanted to do some work at home, you packed an overstuffed briefcase with every file and report you thought you'd need and hoped that when you got around to opening it that you hadn't left that one essential file languishing on your desk back at work.

Nowadays, with cloud sync, a leader in even the smallest business has always-on availability to every file, every document, anywhere. On the beach, at the airport, during your kid's recital, any document you need is just a few keystrokes away.

And precisely because it's just a few keystrokes away, where does your mind--and all your associated creativity--go when you have a spare minute? Right to those files and folders you grapple with when you're back at your desk.

Want to strangle your creativity? Longing to think in a rut? Enable cloud sync so you can jump on those files when you have a free minute. Alternatively, how about switching it off--or even better, carrying a nonsynced device--when you're heading in to some free time?

Who knows; you might actually have a breakthrough "aha" moment if you force your brain out of the cloud-sync rut.

When an ex-employee keeps contacting your staff, should you confront him or just let it go?

Dear Evil HR Lady,

I recently let an employee go at the three month evaluation time. After he was fired, he began emailing one of our employees who has a side business. The emails kept coming. Our employee let us know right away that it made him uncomfortable. The employee finally found a way to back out of the exchange, but it made me think about others he may be contacting. What are the rules around a company's clients once you no longer work for that organization? He is using his personal email account and we asked him to forward communication he had with one of our clients, but what can I do about the others?

He only worked for us for three months but his departure has been stressful and he's been somewhat passive-aggressive.

--Annoyed Former Boss

Dear Annoyed,

First, let's take a look at this from his viewpoint. He was fired and undoubtedly needs a new job. What he's doing, from his viewpoint, is called networking. All the career experts out there are telling people that the best way to find a new job is through the people you know. He knows the people at your office and therefore, he's contacting them.

He's also annoying. And he's not a good worker (or a good fit for your office). So here's the thing: He will burn out and go away.

And if he doesn't (because, hey, it does happen), your employees will tell him to go away, eventually. Which is precisely what happened the the first person he contacted. He found a way to extricate himself from the situation. Why? Because he's an adult and adults can handle telling someone: "Thanks, but no thanks."

If you start panicking and announcing to your staff that "Joe may contact you. Do not respond! Do not go to lunch with him! Do not introduce him to our clients!" your employees will start to believe that you are the crazy one.

You do not want this.

Now, if he starts using confidential information to contact your clients, or starts slandering your company, then that is a different issue altogether. You can take him to court to stop him from using information that he obtained while working for you. But even that, except in extreme cases, will cost you more money and more stress than it will just allowing this to blow over.

And sometimes information that people think is confidential actually isn't. For instance, if your website proudly lists your clients, you can't say, "Hey, he took a client list when he left!"

If he had been a long term employee, beloved by your customers, his continued contact might be a bigger problem. But, it's likely that your customers are annoyed by this as well and understand perfectly why you fired him.

And, if the reason for firing wasn't that he was a horrible person, but rather that he was just a bad fit for your office, you may wish to steer him towards something that he'd be good at. You don't, of course, have to do this; it's certainly above and beyond the call of duty. But, doing a good deed now and then keeps everyone happy. Plus, once he has a job, he'll stop trying to network with your staff.

Have a problem employee or a people management question? Send your questions to EvilHRLady@gmail.com.

Want to grow your business? Reclaim your child-like sense of wonder, that endless curiosity about the world around you.

A few years ago, I was in charge of my five-year-old niece for the day. As is often the case with five-year-olds, I was about to get a whole lot more than I bargained for.

I needed to run to the office for a minute--I was then the CEO of Virtual Shopping Inc., an early e-commerce player later sold to Europe's Wallenberg Group--so I told her to get in the car. As we walked to the garage, she looked down at the carpet and asked me how carpet is made. I knew there were big machines that sewed it, or something like that, but I didn't know much more. She was clearly disappointed.

When we got to the car, she tapped on the window and asked me how to make glass. I explained that it involved fire and sand. She looked at me like I was crazy. I was losing, two-zip. To a kindergartner.

When we got to the office, my niece did what all kids her age do. She questioned everything. "What is that thing? Why do you have two of those? What does that guy do? Why is that girl on the phone all the time?"

Exasperated, I silenced her questions with a bag of Cheetos. But when I sat down at my desk, something bothered me. It wasn't that she asked all those questions. It was that I didn't know the answers.

I thought: Why do we have two of those? What is that thing on the counter? And what about that girl on the phone all day?

Here's what I realized. I had gotten so used to my surroundings that I stopped seeing them. I got so used to the way I do business that I stopped questioning it. I had lost my child-like sense of wonder, that endless curiosity about the world around me. And it was a good bet that my employees had, too.

So here's what I did. I told my employees that I wanted us all to find our child-like sense of wonder again, and to start to ask basic questions about the way we did business. They loved the idea, even before they saw the results. And you know what? It worked. For example, those two things my niece saw? They were collating machines that no one had used in years. The person who ordered them no longer worked for us. And even worse--they were on a monthly lease!

I took it a step further. I got the team to play the "wonder" game about everything at the company, all our daily tasks. As a result, we discovered there was some work we were doing that no one understood why. Not even our customers! By reigniting a child-like wonder and questioning everything, we started to totally streamline the business.

After that day with my niece, I decided to force myself to wonder--about something I would not normally wonder about--on a regular basis.

My first wondering session was on why I can call an airline three times in a row (this was before online travel sites existed) and get three different prices for the same flight. Like a good, inquisitive five-year-old, I just kept asking why, until I could find an answer.

In this case, there wasn't an answer. So I started a company, Competitive Technologies, which made a robotic airfare search engine that grabbed up all the lowest fares for customers. Three years later, American Express acquired this company as part of a larger nine-figure deal. Good thing I reclaimed my child-like sense of wonder.

Do you still wonder about things the way you did when you were a child? Or do you walk past the same scenes every day, never pausing to notice what's what. Make it a point to stop, wonder, and ask an endless stream of questions. They'll lead you somewhere, I promise.