4 Lessons in Success From Millionaire Entrepreneurs

How great would it be to be a fly on the wall as some of the biggest companies are developed? Or to hear about the challenges entrepreneurs have faced on the road to their first million? Last week at the third annual Chicago Ideas Week, a group of successful entrepreneurs opened up about how they created their companies, shared the successes and struggles faced along the way, and the lessons learned from the experience. Here are their pearls of wisdom:

How to Create and Leverage a Stellar Board of Advisors

Editor's Note: The Grind is a weekly column that asks a revolving cast of young founders to take us through the daily rigors of running a business, as well as offer up advice on how they achieved milestones or overcame challenges.

In 2011, my co-founders and I were looking to get into a market we knew little about: foreign investment. We saw an opportunity in helping Chinese investors find projects in Latin America (my home continent), but we had a few obstacles to overcome: Neither of us knew Chinese or had any experience in international finance.

Is Your Business Partner Helping or Hurting Your Business?

History is full of magical partnerships that broke the mold, accomplished remarkable things and captured our imaginations: Orville and Wilbur Wright, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.

Some get on famously while others are infamously love-hate relationships. Some are timeless while others burn brilliantly and burn out in a flash. They’re as unique and unpredictable as the individuals involved, but one thing’s for sure: Partnerships work -- to a point.

3 Life-Changing Habits of High Performers

When it comes to being successful, high achievers have a number of habits in common. But that doesn't mean you can't be right up there with them.

Here are three qualities all successful people share and how you can make them your own:

How to Set a Crowdfunding Goal

In her book Cash From the Crowd, Sally Outlaw, founder and CEO of crowdfunding website peerbackers reveals the secrets of funding your business with help from colleagues, peers, family, friends and even perfect strangers through a crowdfunding campaign. In this edited excerpt, the author offers tips on deciding exactly how much money you should try to raise.

Establishing a Polished Image for Your Modern Business

If you run a startup, micro or Microsoft-size business, you already know there is always room for improvement. This is especially true as the times clearly demand that you, as business owner, align your entrepreneurial practices with the strategic ways of doing business.

While you implement a wealth of strategies to stay relevant to your niche market, there are simple yet highly ideal approaches to making your customers happy and giving them the convenience they need. More than anything, you need to exude an image of professionalism and earn your customers' trust.

Here are some strategies you may want to integrate to your business system to ensure your clients see you as the trustworthy, professional company they can rely on:

How to Decide Which Banks You Should Use

It's no wonder that people want to go to banks they can trust. When you're depositing your earnings, you want to know your finances are safe. Whether you prefer a branch where you've established personal relationships with tellers, loan agents, and other employees or you're looking for the most convenient option, there are branches for everyone. Here are some tips on how to decide which one is best for you.

Community banks allow for a more personable experience. If you prefer interacting with an employee to banking at a machine or a computer, this might be the best option for you. With community institutions, you can develop a long relationship that creates trust among all involved parties. When it comes time to take out a loan, things like your credit rating may be less important than if you walked into a national institution. If you don't travel very often and generally stick to the same path, going to the same community branch might be ideal.

Are You Open to New Ideas?

If you ask most senior executives if they are open to new ideas and approaches, they would say, "Of course!" But is that really true? Unfortunately, we found that not to be totally accurate. In fact, we found that openness to new ideas and thinking varied widely. Using our CliC innovation tool data which measures the trait Openness, we found there is a statistically significant, reverse correlation between size of company and willingness to actively engage to find new ideas. Thus, the bigger the company, the less chance executives enjoyed hearing about unique ideas and the less action they took to learn about new subjects. The implications are big for delivering innovative products and services.

3 Ways to Make Online Sales More Enticing

Most retail businesses tend to hold sales around the same time -- Black Friday, President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day -- the list goes on. But it's hard to stand out in a crowded marketplace and be heard, especially in e-commerce, where your competitors are just one click away.

The key to success in any business is gaining attention in your market. Here are three sale-strategies to help you stand out from your competitors:

5 Ways to Build Momentum For Your Business Idea

Entrepreneurship is en vogue. You cannot walk more than a few blocks in a major city without stumbling upon a startup accelerator. But while startups are central to this new economic age, making it as an entrepreneur is still tough. It means building the right momentum to get your business idea off the ground.

Here are five steps to give you a framework for building the momentum needed to successfully chart your own course:

Entrepreneurs Who Turned Hobbies into Million-Dollar Businesses

Kim Lavine started making microwavable pillows as gifts for her kids’ teachers in 2001, assembling them at her kitchen table in Grand Haven, Mich., using a corn kernel filling. Around the same time, her husband lost his job, prompting her to consider turning her pastime into a source of income.

She went from selling pillows out of her truck to setting up mall kiosks and incorporating her company, Green Daisy, in 2002. Within two years, Lavine’s Wuvit pillow was in national chains, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s and Bed Bath & Beyond, and by 2006, it generated more than $1 million in sales.

10 Top Crowdfunding Websites

In her book Cash From the Crowd, Sally Outlaw, founder and CEO of crowdfunding website peerbackers, reveals the secrets of funding your business with help from colleagues, peers, family, friends and even perfect strangers through a crowdfunding campaign. In this edited excerpt, the author offers details on some crowdfunding platforms that offer entrepreneurs the opportunity to generate funds for their new venture.

Protecting Your Brand with Trademarks

Keep your brand's integrity intact by getting a trademark for your business' logo, name, tag line and more.

Establishing a strong brand is pivotal to business success. Protecting that brand is equally important. Yet many small businesses overlook an important first step in securing their brand: trademarks.

Why Mixing Business With Pleasure Is Your Recipe For Success

Have you wondered why we're told not to mix business with pleasure? Or worse, why so many have come to accept this as the social norm?

For me, being an entrepreneur has always been about freedom. Not just the freedom from, but freedom to -- the freedom to pursue what I love and spend my time the way I want. Mixing business with pleasure is precisely the mentality behind my startup, Foursum Golf.

5 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your PR Agency

So you've decided to engage a PR agency, a solid first step in any company's marketing efforts.
A truly successful strategy requires your active participation. Here are five tips to help you make sure you're getting the most out of your firm:

1. Keep them in the loop. Communication is essential in any successful, ongoing relationship. This might seem obvious, but many companies have a habit of bringing in a new agency for an extensive "data dump" at the beginning, but ongoing communication takes a nosedive as things get busy internally. Once you bring agency staffers into the loop, be sure to keep them there. Treat them as part of the team, not like external vendors.

The Single Most Important Trait for Any Successful Entrepreneur

From the late Steve Jobs to Twitter's Jack Dorsey, certain entrepreneurs seem to spring from the womb predisposed to success. Not only are they exceptionally smart, but they also have a dogged belief in their own abilities and a similar unrelenting passion for achieving their vision.

Put simply, they don't do things like "regular" people. Case in point: Los Altos, Calif.-based Aaron Levie, the 28-year-old co-founder of online data-storage company Box, now valued at more than $1 billion. As a student at the University of Southern California, Levie shunned the typical college social scene. "If people were going out on Saturday night, I preferred to be on my computer and working on the next internet idea," he says. "I just recognized that I was a bit different than everyone else."

What Self-Service Business Intelligence Is and How to Use It

Q: How does self-service business intelligence make me smarter?

A: With a name like self-service business intelligence, you'd be forgiven for thinking this concerns DIY corporate espionage. But the term describes analytics, in a powerful form that doesn't involve hassling your IT, accounting or sales staffs to pull the information for you.

What Is the Real Survival Rate of Franchised Businesses?

Imagine you're thinking of leaving your job to open a business and decide to do a little research into franchising. A Google search may lead to an evenly balanced sermon on the pros and cons of franchise ownership. Or you may land on this gem from About.com: "Some studies show that franchises have a success rate of approximately 90 percent as compared to only about 15 percent for businesses that are started from the ground up. The increased probability of success usually far outweighs any initial franchise fee and nominal royalties that are paid monthly."

Most experienced franchisees would laugh themselves hoarse after reading that statement. But what about a novice entrepreneur who is considering going it alone? That's the type of thing that might get their heart set on franchising.

4 Tools That Take the Pain Out of Managing Payroll

Employees love payday but, for the small-business owner, managing payroll can be a chore. Taxes, benefits, overtime, vacation days -- even if you only have a few employees the process can take hours.

Need a short cut? Here are four tools and apps that can help make payday a breeze:

The 3 Scariest Things About Owning a Franchise

Owning a franchise is not for the faint of heart. The idea of being your own boss plus the upfront costs and extra obligations to a corporate business, can be downright frightening.

With Halloween around the corner, it's the ideal time to talk about some of the scary realities that come with owning a franchise. Before jumping into the business, make sure you are aware of these three hard truths:

How To Shop For A Bank #Enterpreneur

Choosing a bank for your business involves more than opening a new account at your personal bank or picking the branch office nearest your company. You need to understand what services you require and how much they cost. Ideally you’ll find a banker who will take the time to walk you through how to solve a problem, so you can go back to running your business. Still, some business owners may spend more time shopping for a $300 laser printer than they would shopping for a bank.

Here are a few issues to keep in mind when you look for a banker:

Why Serial Entrepreneurs Aren't Actually More Successful The Next Time Around

Are you a serial entrepreneur or a struggling one? What is the difference and does it even matter? Is it more important to play the game or win it? Do you get better at the game as you play it repeatedly?

While only you can truly answer these questions for yourself, they have been nagging me long enough to make me look for evidence. Before delving any further into the issue, though, I must add a caveat.

New Entrepreneurs - 3 Things to Avoid, 3 Things to Do

Many entrepreneurs share common histories of their first year in business, noting their mistakes at the beginning of the business ventures and the lessons they learned - the hard way.

3 Things to Avoid

Kathy, a new entrepreneur, shared that her dream was to open a crafts store in her small town. She had graduated from a liberal arts college and wanted to build a business around her artistic talents. She shared her story, noting her mistakes and what she could and should have done to begin her business differently.

Obama Says Shutdown Is Hurting Small Businesses

As a politician, you can do no better than to embrace a small business. Today, President Barack Obama played that card as he spoke at a Maryland construction company about the damaging effects that the government shutdown might have on small businesses.

Obama visited the loading area for the M. Luis Construction Company in Rockville, Md., this morning where he delivered the latest in a string of speeches aimed at strong-arming the House Republicans to pass a bill to fund the government without the condition that his trademark health-care reform bill be delayed.

Which Type of Crowdfunding Is Best for You?

In her book, Cash From the Crowd, Sally Outlaw, founder and CEO of crowdfunding website Peerbackers, reveals the secrets of funding your business with help from colleagues, peers, family, friends and even perfect strangers through a crowdfunding campaign. In this edited excerpt, the author explains the five types of crowdfunding to help you decide which might be right for you.

Even though many people think the term crowdfunding is universal, there are actually multiple options available for those needing to raise funds. These models of crowdfunding basically break down into those that offer a financial return for backers and those that do not.

How To Choose The Right Investment Banker to Sell Your Business

With U.S. merger and acquisition activity up 34 percent this year, now might be a very good time to consider selling your business.

Part and parcel to this exploration is deciding whether or not to hire an investment banker to help you. And then, which one to choose.

But first, a word of caution.

Why Your Customers' Cravings Are Your Key to Success

Most startups fail. But if you want your startup to avoid that fate, one thing you must do is to grow faster than the market into which you are selling your product.

Your startup's survival depends on your ability to overcome the natural reluctance customers have about doing business with you at any price.