Jerry Kalish of Retirement Plan Blog has responded to our post that reported on a U.S. News & World Report article trumpeting the benefits of 401(k)s for the self-employed and small businesses.

Kalish urges you to consider your specific facts and circumstances (in the light of his first BIZBOX response) to determine which retirement plan is best for you, and not to rely upon blanket statements of 401(k) superiority.

We've talked about the tremendous opportunity presented by Apple's iPhone (and, soon, the T-Mobile Dream, powered by Google's Android!) for inspired entrepreneurs to design applications that can form the crux of a successful start-up. All well and good, you might say--but what makes for a successful iPhone (or smartphone) application?

An article in Forbes suggests that you go to school on Apple's putt, looking for the characteristics of the awesome applications that Apple itself has designed (Apple allows other companies to list applications in its store pending its approval, but has also designed some of its own apps, which are also for sale/download).

Where Apple doesn't distinguish itself especially, according to the article, is in sheer inventiveness: while many of its apps are far from duds, they don't particularly stand out in terms of a sheer "wow" factor from many of the apps not designed by Apple.

So what makes Apple's apps special? Unsurprisingly, the same thing that makes Apple's products special: usability; consumer-friendliness.

This is not something to be underrated. Even the savviest computer--which, frankly, is probably not a smartphone's main target demographic in the first place--values ease of use. As one senior research scientist tells Forbes, "Novelty increases people's tolerance for unusable things. As they use it and the novelty wears off, some of these usability problems will start to be more irritating."

The article points to Apple's clear visual cues informing users how to unlock their phones--that now-famous sliding bar--as a great example of how Apple makes using its phone as easy, simple, and stress-free as possible. It also mentions that on the keyboard that appears when one is typing a url into Safari, Apple's Web browser, on the iPhone, there is a ".com" option, thereby saving you four types.

It's the little things. When you're talking about something as ubiquitous in a person's day as a phone, those little things add up. Something to think about as you set about designing that killer app.

There's a wise post up at Working Smarter, the blog of business graphics software SmartDraw, about what it calls "the key employee problem": namely, what you should do if that key employee--you know him or her, the one without whom your company's trains simply could not run on time--should suddenly and without lengthy warning need to be absent for an extended period due to any of the thousand natural or artificial shocks the flesh is heir to.

...Well, what do you do? Working Smarter suggests planning for an absent-employee rainy day by keeping an accessible, central database of all relevant company information (in other words, there should not exist any company information that you or another similarly-ranked employee could obtain only by going through your key employee) as well as planning for last-minute successions beforehand. The blog also recommends having key employees who leave under more managed, if still relatively sudden, circumstances--a firing or a quitting, for example--write down exactly what they did, so that his or her replacement will have an exact idea.

All of this is solid advice. But it also obscures a more fundamental point: ideally, you do not have one crucial, all-but-indispensable employee. We made this point in this post about one entrepreneur who took a one-month vacation without sweating (except at the beach) or causing his company harm. It doesn't just go for you, the small business owner: any one of your employees should be able to take a one-month vacation without preventing the company from running just about as smoothly as ever, or at least as smoothly as could be expected when you're down one man or woman (whether they should be permitted to take month-long vacations is another matter, of course). You should not stifle your employees from being independent-minded and going beyond the contours of their given job descriptions. But neither should you find yourself relying on the extraordinary dynamism or work ethic or what-have-you of one single employee.

It's a fine line, encouraging your employees to go above and beyond the call of duty without creating a potential absent-employee catastrophe. It is the best administrators who figure out how to walk that line.

The New York Times reports on a newly successful class of small business: makers of gelato, that delicious, gourmet, and lower-fat alternative to ice cream honed by the Italians for years.

"Gelato seems to be catching on," the Times writes, "joining artisanal coffee, cheese and wine in catching the fancy of food lovers. With less than half the butterfat of regular ice cream, gelato is less fattening and healthier, and its dense, rich flavor and smooth texture can be highly addictive."

The piece cites small gelaterias in such bourgeois bohemian outposts as Waukesha, Wis., Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and Bethesda, Md. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the city hardest-hit by this trend is New York; in fact, a few months ago, New York magazine was able to conduct a taste test of no less than six gelaterias concentrated within several square blocks of Greenwich Village. (The winner, Grom, has no more than a dozen or so shops, with the only ones outside of Italy being in New York and Paris.)

There's a broader point to be taken away from the piece besides the fact that you really ought to find out where the best gelateria near you is and head on over before it gets cold out. What is gelato? Not ingredient-wise, but brand-wise? It is exotic and foreign--Mediterranean, even. It is gourmet. It is aspirational. It is expensive! It's almost like a micro-luxury--micro in the sense that, in absolute terms, a cone is not going to set you back very much; luxury in the sense that, compared to the price of a sugar cone at the local ice cream stand, it is positively the Louis Vuitton of frozen desserts.

In these small gelateria, then, we see savvy entrepreneurs taking advantage of two larger trends: the somewhat-paradoxical phenomenon that, in this sagging economy, it is the luxury brands that have thrived the most, and the hipness of ingredient-sensitive, healthy, artisanal food products.

The point is, of course gourmet gelato is on the rise right now. And, moreover, all of the things that make gelato attractive--its organic nature, its sense of being finely, personally crafted--play right into the hands of small businesses, who will always have a much easier time convincing consumers of their authenticity that big corporations.

Now, it's your turn: what other sort of product or service sits at the confluence of current consumer trends, and is there for the taking by enterprising entrepreneurs?

Rieva Lesonsky of AllBusiness has a post up--written, heroically, while she was at Wrigley Field cheering on the National League Central-leading Cubs--on how to make "fans" of your small business. This is a crucial subject: enthusiastic customers will both keep coming back, even during lean times, and will do your marketing for you--will do, in fact, your most credible marketing for you. On top of that, this is one of those rare places where small businesses actually hold the advantage over big ones.

Pay attention to her advice, kids: this is how you build fans as devout as Cubs-lovers (while hopefully maintaining a better historical record than the Cubs, who last won the World Series in 1908).

Encourage return business. Get creative. Discounts, frequent purchaser programs...offer anything you can think of to keep your customers coming back for more of whatever it is you're selling.

Offer consistently strong service... One bad customer experience can negate several past good ones. Always be on the balls of your feet, making sure your customer service is stellar.

...while also providing the occasional surprise. "Surprise is an underrated business tactic," says Lesonsky. "Used correctly, it can keep your customers coming back because they’re not met by the same old, same old every time." Throw surprises your customers' way with special promotions, small giveaways, and the like. Again: be creative.

Make it easy for customers to pass on good word of mouth. It's not enough to hang up a sign that says, "If you like our service, tell a friend; if you don't, tell us" (though you should do that too). Make telling a friend as effortless as possible. An especially effective way to do this is to develop an email list and send out missives that are then easily forwarded. Just beause viral marketing depends upon third parties organically singing your praises doesn't mean you can't give it a little push.

Check out BizBooks Friday! BizBox is hosting customer service expert and author Joseph A. Michelli on Friday. Submit a question now, and check out his answers after Friday in order to get more tips on how to produce a positive consumer experience.

Peter Bell, a general partner at Highland Capital, gives Forbes a wonderful interview on all things cloud computing. Read the whole thing.

Takeaways:
Cloud computing isn't just hype. "There will be a lot of carnage. But there will be some good companies that emerge, similar to Web 2.0. Was Web 2.0 a buzzword? Yes. But when you look at Facebook or MySpace or Gmail, there's pretty significant value there."

Your concerns are real. "If you have a cloud and it fails, there isn't anyone to call. That may be OK if you're bootstrapping your operation, because you may be able to recreate your infrastructure. But as you get into mission-critical or more established business, there will need to be multiple levels of solutions."

Start-ups should be looking to be adopted by larger platforms. "There are too many companies looking for 10% of the market. What we're looking for are a couple things. There has to be enough value in the features they offer or in their subcontractor capabilities that customers will demand those features or capabilities. If management capabilities are optimized for the cloud, then the customer will tell the likes of IBM that they need to include it."

A few months ago I blogged about trying Dun & Bradstreet’s credit building service for my small business, Cedarcrest Capital, as an experiment.

Now, three months later, my score for them: Low.

In at least three different ways they’ve failed to live up to their promise and made it impossible to recommend the service to other small business owners. First, they failed to deliver on their original promise; next, they tried a fear tactic to generate additional business; and finally, they did not follow up to satisfy a customer who expressed dissatisfaction (that would be me).

A steep price-tag – close to $600 – supposedly pays for D&B to contact your company’s creditors with a view to verifying a history of timely debt payment. I provided the maximum allowed six creditors to D&B, with up-to-date contact information.

After a month, a D&B representative reported to me their inability to reach even three of my creditors, despite the fact that I know I could reach each of them with one phone call.

Having failed to deliver on the basic promise of the service, the D&B representative proceeded to try to sell me further, more expensive, services relating to monitoring my business credit.

When I pushed back over the phone and said D&B needed do a passable job with the original task before moving on to further sales, the representative attempted to sell through fear. He suggested that my lack of D&B Score will hurt my borrowing ability, and further that I’ll need to pay them additional sums to monitor my business credit going forward.

Now, I’m not a good candidate for the “fear sell” since my business has perfect credit; maybe this will work with less credit-worthy businesses. But I have to think almost no business owner would purchase more products from a company that couldn’t do their first job correctly.

When I politely suggested as much, the D&B representative decided that arguing with me was a better tactic than promising to follow up internally and make it right.

It seems he chose wrongly.

If you haven't checked a computer over the past several days, then you may not have heard of Chrome, Google's new Web browser, which the search giant has built to compete with the big guns: The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox and, most dramatically, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Much digital ink has been spilled over all things Chrome: its usability and accessibility, what it means for the Google-Microsoft war, and anything else conceivable. We thought we'd focus on (our corporate sister) Newsweek's take, which explores how Chrome can expand on cloud computing, as well as, in the newsweekly's words, "What Google's browser suggests about the way the search giant views the Web." It is, may we say, a way that could be particularly friendly to small businesses.

You are no doubt familiar with the concept of cloud computing, and with Google's suite of cloud computing software, from the email server Gmail to the word processor Google Docs and beyond--after all, we have not been shy about writing about cloud computing's upsides, cloud computing's downsides, cloud computing's future, and where Google stand in all of this (hint: at the forefront).

But Chrome moves Google, and cloud computing, several yards farther, if not longer. Chrome's genius, according to Newsweek, is to group Google's cloud computing software into an easy-to-use package. Chrome is a browser first; but in this aspect, it is also an operating system. In other words, its direct competitor may be Internet Explorer; but in one sense--and, down the road, certainly in an increasing sense--its looming rival is Windows.

Does this mean you should try Chrome? Well, not if you use an Apple--Chrome is only Windows-compliant for now (Google says they're working on an Apple version). And don't expect Internet Explorer to cede too much of its over-70% share of the browser market any time too soon.

That said, cloud computing is undoubtedly the way of the future. And it is also especially amenable to small businesses, in that it lets small groups of people with far-flung members create a virtual office with great ease and no overhead. Finally, as things stand now, Google appears to be taking the cloud computing lead. So it may be worth downloading Chrome and playing around with it: one day, you and your business may be using only it. We all may be using only it.

You asked, and customer service expert Michelli answered. We hope you enjoy last Friday's BizBooks conversation.

Quick sample:
Washington, D.C.: Is it easier to provide high levels of customer service when that is what your customer is paying for? i.e. luxury, high-end brands like Nordstrom, the Ritz Carlton etc.

Joseph Michelli: I think it is far more the expectation to receive great service as the price point escalates. Who expects great service at a quick "service" restaurant? But that is where the competitive advantage can take place. If great service doesn't cost more to deliver (assuming you learn how to select for service professionalism and effectively train it) then you can offer luxury service in a mid-range business. That's why I wrote the book The New Gold Standard - to offer insghts on how to bring luxury and legendary service to life in any business.

Sharon McLoone over at (BizBox sister site) washingtonpost.com has a great post up about recent advocacy steps, some timed to coincide with the political calendar, that have been taken by and on behalf of female entrepreneurs: the women who together own 10.1 million privately-held U.S. businesses, and who are demanding an equal playing field.

McLoone lists several exciting recent developments:

WIPP equality into shape! Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) has introduced a draft economic blueprint The paper outlines several goals in fields such as "Health Care, Procurement, Tax Reform, Access to Capital, Energy, and Telecommunications/Technology," according to WIPP President Barbara Kasoff. "These Principles will form the basis which will provide the economic stimulus that we need to grow our businesses, provide jobs, to increase GDP and unleash the full potential of women-owned businesses as well as all small businesses." According to McLoone, WIPP presented the draft at forums held at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Download a copy! Or wait until Tuesday, when a final copy will be released to members of both parties at a WIPP meeting in D.C.

Happy Twentieth, Women's Business Ownership Act! This Wednesday, Sept. 10, the National Women's Business Council--the bipartisan, federally-mandated advisor to the president, Congress, and Small Business Administration--is holding a reception in the Capitol to cheer the twentieth anniversary of the landmark law's passage. The party will be followed by an open-to-all roundtable in San Francisco in November. More info here.

Onward to 2020 The National Association of Women Business Owners, the NWBC, and others have commissioned the consultants at Quantum Leaps to help come up with a "Roadmap to 2020" that will, in Quantum Leaps's words, "provide a roadmap for all of the major national women’s business organizations to commit to between 2009 and 2020, in order to strengthen the women entrepreneurial sector, and to accelerate the growth of women-owned businesses in the U.S." Basically, it will involve getting each individual advocacy group to focus on its particular area in a coordinated fashion, so that all bases are covered by those best suited to covering them. Expect to see the roadmap unveiled before the end of the year.

Sorry, we couldn't resist posting one more excerpt from last Friday's BizBooks forum with customer service expert Joseph A. Michelli. We just love the answers he gave to two questions related to how to manage employees.

Alexandria, Va.: How do you find -and keep- good employees?

Joseph Michelli: Look for people who are serving you well in your day-to day life. If they are only satisfied with their job but not truly engaged, they will be vulnerable to your passive efforts to recruit them. Take your time to select not hire them (I have a section in The New Gold Standard just about this distinction and scientific selection techniques), use structured interviews, role playing, and formal assessment of talent. Keeping them is less about compensation and instead involves helping them grow, connecting them to something larger then themselves, giving them authority and respect.

_______________________

Anonymous: Given the current economy, what words of wisdom can you offer to leaders who are confronted with making unpopular decisions that might adversely affect employee morale?

Joseph Michelli: Business owners have to take the "risk of excellence." Often that means making unpopular decisions needed to move the company forward. Generally, people object more to the way they are treated in difficult times than the change decisions themselves. Most employees understand that not every business decision will favor them but there is no excuse for treating people poorly in the process.

But don't forget to read the whole thing.

Ever wonder how much your business--or any business (your local bookstore? the bodega on the corner?)--is worth? Well, check out BizEquity, a new Website that already contains the estimated market valuations of 10 million U.S. businesses (all with under $10 million in annual revenues), and that lets you conduct a FREE custom valuation.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Independent Street blog, the site is put out by small business credit-card issuer Advanta, which hopes eventually to let small business owners to draw attention to their for-sale businesses on the site.

If you're a small business owner, the site seems and at-best really useful and at-worst still interesting way to gauge just how much, ultimately, your business is worth.

And if you're not? Go a-searching for whatever small business you're curious about. You're likely to get hooked. And it don't cost nothin'!

Two recent articles tackle one of the most ubiquitous features of the entrepreneurs' world as well as the current economy as a whole: business failure. Not to get you down, but if you're beginning a start-up, well, there's a one-third chance you won't make it two years, a one-half chance you won't make it four.

Did we say you? We meant your business. Because the one common insight between the two articles is that you should abandon the fallacy that your business's success is the be-all and end-all of your well-being, whether we are discussing your personal life or even your business career. Reaching this apparently simple conclusion can be justiably difficult: you've spent months and years pouring your time, energy, and even money into one venture, and its slipping, and...what else could possibly matter? But, of course, the answer is: everything else.

The more hard-headed of the articles appeared at Entrepreneur.com, and it makes the salient point that pulling out all the stops to prop up a failing business can harm your future business prospects.

The easy way to conceive of this involves the situation that David Cohen found himself in as his mobile social networking platform iContact faltered. Cohen decided against using his investors' cash to keep the start-up running in order to reserve the potential to tap them for future ventures. Those investors ended up recouping 80%--"that's a pretty happy outcome for a 'failed' investment," as Cohen, who lived to fight another day, put it. So did Thea Snyder, who killed her 1call4all.com start-up when it crashed amid the 2001 tech bust in such a way (without declaring bankruptcy, for example) that some investors approached her about participating in a subsequent venture.

Meanwhile, the other article, in Forbes, focuses on you--yes, you, the part of you that may know on some level that there are many start-up idea-fish in the sea but is nonetheless bummed out that your failed one failed.

Here is what you should do:
Inspire yourself. One entrepreneur used a Teddy Roosevelt speech to get himself through tough times. Shakespeare is always a good bet, too. May we suggest a group reading, with you and your partners, your "band of brothers," of the St. Crispian's Day speech from Henry V?
Take a step back and consider how lucky you are. For one entrepreneur, who survived leukemia as a child, the smallness of his failed business was particularly stark. But we are all lucky in our own ways.
Creative destruction. One guy redid his kitchen. Try it!
Meditate. Who knows? Maybe your next great idea will come to you while you are in nirvana.

And we'd add one final bit of advice: don't let failure discourage you from starting anew. If you're an entrepreneur, it means that, at some point, the notion of risking something for the chance of greater economic and personal reward was very appealing to you. While no entrepreneur should wish failure on his- or herself, there is a sense in which it needs to exist to make the rewards all the sweeter.