Sleep less

It can be tricky trying to figure out how sell, market advertise, present, build, produce and finance a new product or service. In some cases, any number of those important steps can be arranged in any number of combinations leading to confusion of priorities and sleepless nights. Sometimes sleepless nights turn into sleepless weeks and sleepless months.

You can pay consultants and marketing firms thousands of dollars to tell you what to do, and they guarantee results. OK, that last part wasn't true. But they will present you with the glossiest brochures ever produced. They'll also give you a series of proposals on how to maximize your lead generation and website traffic through Search Engine Optimization(the Holy Grail in the webworld right now. Speaking of SEO, it is climbing the spam charts to become nearly as popular as replica watches, wiener pills, phenomenal software deals and instant online masters degrees.

The trade show circuit, while not that much fun and on the decline has been a major source of our research. You can get a lot of good insights and bad insights, nice compliments and nasty criticisms just by showing up. The trick is weeding through the suggestions and acting on the right ones. Another trick is not spending your energy solving a problem that you're sure exists, but isn't even slightly marketable. I considered doing some focus groupish things for a new product in the works. You know, head out across America for a series of town hall meetings to get some feedback. However, recent Obama Health Care meetings have scared me off the idea... I didn't want this lady to show up and hurt my feelings. People say that pump builders don't have feelings. We have feelings.