How one entrepreneur built his business from scratch by pitching deals to complete strangers - a few thousand times. In the 20 months his company has been in business, he must have spoken those words 1,000 times. Borba did $5 million in retail sales last year, and every deal he made started from a cold call.  Read this story of some incredible best practices on good, old-fashioned hustle and hard work.

• View the Complete CNN Money / Fortune Small Business Story

Scott Vincent Borba's ten-employee company makes beverages, candy, and cosmetics infused with vitamins and extracts that are clinically shown to improve the skin. His products are sold by high-end retailers such as Henri Bendel, Nordstrom, and Sephora. In December he signed a deal with Jamba Juice, but that deal really started a year earlier, when he made the first cold call to Jamba CEO Paul Clayton.

Business 2.0 reveals how Staples needed to simplify itself before it could reap the rewards of its new Easy Button ad campaign. The five-year branding odyssey that began in 2001 has helped make $16.1 billion Staples the runaway leader in office retail. In 2005 its profit was up 18 percent to $834 million. Second-place Office Depot (Research), meanwhile, booked 2005 earnings of just $274 million, an 18 percent slide, and OfficeMax (Research) posted a loss of $73.8 million. Staples now receives twice as many compliments as complaints. Here's a great article on what the retailer learned along the way.

• CNN Money Lead Story in Business 2.0
• Complete Business 2.0 Interview
  

MySpace topped the list with a 367% year-over-year growth rate adding up to 38.4 million unique users. The top 10 sites collectively grew 47 percent in the United States from the same month a year ago to 68.8 million unique visitors, Nielsen/NetRatings said. The sites reached 45 percent of active Web users as reported by Information Week.

• View the complete article

Article Exerpt:

MySpace, owned by News Corp. and a favorite among teens and young adults, topped the list with a year-over-year growth rate of 367 percent to 38.4 million unique users. Blogger, owned by Google Inc., was second with 18.5 million visitors and an 80 percent growth rate.

Classmates Online grew 10 percent to 12.9 million visitors, and YouTube and Microsoft's MSN Groups, which saw a 14 percent drop in visitors, rounded out the top five with 12.5 million and 10.6 million, respectively.

The 100 companies on BusinessWeek's list may not be big, but they're agile and fiercely competitive. Many have sniffed out niches no one else thought of. Some have only a little marketing experience. Quite a few are catering to aging baby boomers. And each year, they're creating 60% of the net new jobs. - Business Week.  Here's the scoop on these high-growth companies.

• Complete List of Top 100 w/Profile

Are you looking for a great new typeface/font for your marketing presentations or sales materials? Here are 9800 fonts free to download with a nice preview feature.

• Get Free Fonts | digg story

Google's 50 percent share of the market eclipsed that of No. 2 Yahoo and No. 3 Microsoft MSN, which accounted for 22 percent and 11 percent of the market, respectively, Nielsen/NetRatings said. Google's share grew 3 percent from the same month a year ago, while Yahoo was flat and MSN dipped 1 percent an Information Week article reports.

• Search Engine Market Share Report

Two lessons to learn…

1. First - learn how to get your site positioned within Google's search engine by optimizing your site.  (We can help.)
2. Second, learn how to conduct paid advertising campaigns with Google Adwords or use AdSense to pull revenue to your site (We can help.)

Make the most of this powerful trend that is driving the user and search experience millions of times each day.

Americans are leaving the nation's big cities in search of cheaper homes and open spaces farther out. Nearly every large metropolitan area had more people move out than move in from 2000 to 2004, with a few exceptions in the South and Southwest, according to a report being released Thursday by the Census Bureau says a USA Today article. - Here are the graphs/charts/statistics behind this trend.

• Full USA Today Article 

It's important to position your business strategy in front of trends - and this is an important one to consider when developing your marketing and sales strategy.

TradePub.com lets you browse through their extensive list of trade publications and technical documents by industry to find the titles that best match your skills and interests. Simply complete the application form and submit it. Publications are absolutely free to professionals who qualify.

Here are their publication categories to choose specific magazines from:

When it comes to at-work media use, Online Publishers Association found that the Web clearly dominates (with 54.6% reach, compared to television's 21.1%), and is the only medium that ranks among the top two at both work and home.

Web Users Exhibit Consistently Strong Buying Power - A final key finding of the research is that Web users tend to have greater buying power than television users. The TV dominant group had average annual retail spending of $21,401, while the Web dominant group spent $26,450 on average - or nearly 25% more. In another example, the TV group spent $2,626 on entertainment and recreation, while the Web group spent an average of $3,281 - or 25% more.

• read the June 6th News Release | digg story

Which Domains had the most visits in 2005 & 2006? Here is the complete list from the Washington Post with traffic counts for all the major destination websites. Very interesting profile of where folks are going on the web.

• Full Chart from Washington Post | digg story

'The amount of money spent on Internet advertising in the U.S. rose by 30 percent last year to a record $12.5 billion, according to a report released Thursday by advertising trade group the Interactive Advertising Bureau and independent auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers.' - From CNET News

• More from this CNET  Report on Online Advertising

The article states that Keyword search ads led the sector, representing 41 percent market share and $5.1 billion in revenue.  This should hit every business owner between the eyes and raise the question about what their own online advertising strategy is.  I've known businesses in the past few years to establish national prominence and a largely expanded sales presence from adapting to this new reality. 

If you have a business whose customers can come from more than just your nearby locale - then learning how to get connected to some of these online advertising tools and techniques is a great place to begin.

Question 1: Do you even know how your page ranks in the search engines?  What actually comes up when you google your company name or the product/service lines that you represent?  Try searching for your company or service the way a customer would - you will learn a lot about where you stand.

Question 2: Do you know how to purchase and benefit from even a basic Google Adwords advertisement?  Although fine-tuning a Google ad and its underlying keywords can take some time, you can still get familiar with the technology in less than an hour… Visit https://adwords.google.com to learn more. 

From the Wall Street Journal's Center for Entrepreneurship: 'When he persuaded a Wal-Mart buyer to give his unusual pen a test run some 18 months ago, Colin Roche thought the hard part was over. Selling to the world's largest retailer is, after all, the entrepreneurial Holy Grail: With 138 million weekly customers, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dwarfs other bricks-and-mortar competitors.'

• Read about how Colin has engaged the opportunity with WalMart

'He conceived of PenAgain in 1987 while sitting in high-school detention and dreamed up its design to relieve his writer's cramp. A prototype built in his Dad's garage became the catalyst that launched the business and drove it to nearly $2 million in sales last year.'

This is such an encouraging article - seeing that still today, a small team of entrepreneurs can engage a distribution opportunity like WalMart - capitalisim is alive and well!

From Business 2.0 - here is a very short slideshow sharing with you the top jobs and some very impressive statistics related to each one.

• Business 2.0 Top Ten Fastest Growing Jobs

From Business 2.0 - they say over half their readers dream of starting their own company.  They share the following five ideas for how to get started even though you are working a full-time job today.

• Complete Article from Business 2.0

1. Use Your Salary as Funding
2. Turn Common Complaints Into a Business Plan
3. Make Your Boss a Beta Tester
4. Take Advantage of Your Company's Reputation
5. Convert Your Employer Into a Business Partner

It's never easy to get started - but these are some great ideas that can give your startup a much greater chance of success. 

In a great article from Business 2.0, learn how to greatly increase the odds of success in launching your new business.  Broken down into four key phases, this article outlines what it takes to get started on the right foot.

• Complete article from Business 2.0

On a personal note - this is a great article and well worth reading if you are considering starting up a new business or venturing out on you own.

Great info from AllBusiness.com and Keith Rosen an Executive Sales Coach: Here is a short and sweet primer on how to make the most impact with the 20-40 seconds you get to communicate with someone via voicemail.

• Eight Powerful Voicemail Tips

Our good friend Skip Lindberg of Maple Creative tells it like it is.  Here is his 5-step program to track the effectiveness of your marketing.

• Skip's'Take 5' on Tracking Marketing Effectivness
• Maple Creative's website

Sometimes a simple tool or method, well used, is worth far more than a complicated process poorly implemented.

May 31st to June 1st at Stonewall Resort. Teaming to Win is a regional conference devoted to advocating and advancing teaming among businesses and organizations to win contracts, provide services, or develop products. Teaming to Win 2006 will be the seventeenth annual conference. Each year brings interaction with government agencies, innovative activities, new learning opportunities, and the ability to network with old and new friends.

• www.teamingtowin.org

From Forbes: 'Thinking about starting a business? You’re not alone. Every year, thousands of Americans catch the entrepreneurial spirit, launching small businesses to sell their products or services. Some businesses thrive; many fail.'  Here is a great one-page list for serious entrepreneurs to consider.

• View the complete Forbes Article & List 

More resources are online from Nolo including a great selection of Legal and Business Books, Forms and Software.

From ComScore Networks: In launching comScore World Metrix, the company announced that 694 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide from all locations in March 2006, representing 14 percent of the world’s total population within this age group.  This number marks the first worldwide universe estimate based on a consistent methodology across all countries.

• View the complete report
• USA Today Special Story

Top Global Properties
comScore also issued a sneak preview of the top 15 media properties worldwide, with MSN- Microsoft Sites topping the list with 538.6 million global users, followed by Google (495.8 million users), and Yahoo! (480.2 million users). Yahoo! Sites led all global properties in page views with 137.2 billion page views during March, followed by Google (108.7 billion page views), and MSN- Microsoft Sites (96.2 billion page views). comScore will officially begin releasing World Metrix statistics with the issuance of May data in June.