Five ways to look like you make a lot of money without spending a lot.

In today’s cluttered, hyper-competitive marketplace your business can’t afford to make a poor first impression. Every touch point that leads to your company needs to impress, motivate and inspire a prospective customer. You may have a great product or service, but to be taken seriously, clients need to believe that you’re on the same playing field as the bigger guys. Even if you’re a consultant that works from a home office, you’ll need to position your company as a polished brand that touts confidence, experience and quality. Fear not. Here are five simple tips for branding your business to create the illusion that it is a global corporation with an army at the ready — all without breaking the bank.

1. Website:
Your website is the center of your brand universe. Simplicity is the key to looking like a big fish. Less is more. A clean, easy-to-navigate two-page site with useful content will make your company look far more established than a cluttered 20-page site with long-winded fluff. Design your site with the needs of your user in mind, not your ego. Sites that try to be everything to everyone will often become nothing to anyone.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t know how to build a website. You can solicit bids from designers and programmers using sites such as Elance.com, GetACoder.com and Freelance.com. Other solutions include subscription-based companies such as Web.com. These service providers offer small businesses online tools, templates and hosting packages that can have your site up in a matter of hours without you needing any previous web experience.

Choosing the right URL is also a vital part of your brand positioning strategy. Your main URL should be no more than 10 characters in length. Long URLs are harder to remember, harder to read and are more likely to be spelled incorrectly. Avoid URLs that are phrases, begin with lackluster words or utilize dashes. There is a reason Apple.com isn’t WeLoveApple.com, or Apple-Computers.com. Finally, use a URL with a .com extension. While it’s important to purchase all of the other domain extensions to protect your name, major companies rarely use extensions such as .tv and .net.

2. Vanity Numbers:
How often have you seen a billboard or heard a radio spot that advertises an easily forgettable phone number? Phone numbers must be catchy, memorable and relate to your product or service in order to prove effective. Online services such as TollFreeNumbers.com sell custom vanity numbers for around $50. Purchasing a vanity number is a great way to increase sales call volume, build brand awareness and increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Case in point, one of my businesses, SizzleIt.com, witnessed a 30 percent increase in calls the month after we replaced our generic 800 number with 877 EZ SIZZLE. Our clients told us that the number was easier to share with others and reinforced the simplicity of our services.

3. Automated Phone Systems:
Combining a toll free number with automated phone systems and virtual assistants enables small businesses to look and sound like a cohesive Fortune 500 enterprises while operating in multiple locations anywhere in the world. These services utilize professionally recorded voice over talents to automatically route callers to the appropriate party and provide callers with brand messaging and information while they wait on hold. While big companies pay tens of thousands of dollars for their phone services, small business phone systems, such as those offered by OneBox.com and My1Voice.com, can cost as low as $50 per month. This gives small-business owners and employees the ability to receive calls in their home offices or on their mobile devices while appearing to be available in their office. Which brings me to‚

4. Virtual Offices:
Even though you might be answering a call on your mobile phone from your living room, it’s important that your customers believe they are calling a global headquarters located in a skyscraper overlooking Central Park. Virtual offices are an effective solution for businesses that conduct most of their day-to-day communications via phone calls and emails, and rarely need to host their clients on-location. For only a few hundred dollars per year, virtual offices offer small businesses high profile mailing addresses on brand name streets in major metropolitan areas. In addition, they include mail receiving and forwarding services, receptionists and options for on-location meeting space. Instead of paying exorbitant NYC rental fees, my first business saved over $100,000 by purchasing a Madison Avenue address for only $300. The address enhanced my company’s clout so much that we needed to increase our rates in order to keep the illusion believable. After all, Madison Avenue companies aren’t cheap hires.
5. The Business Card:
Now you have a slick website, a jingle-worthy toll free number and a captain-of-industry street address. It’s time to combine all of those elements into a single tool. The business card is a vital part of the first impression experience and an instant reflection of you and your company’s work. A cheap, uninspired business card may send the wrong message to a prospective customer. Spend time designing a card that will have people saying, “Wow, nice business card.” Be creative, yet tasteful. Avoid using white, standard size business cards. Choose a thicker card stock with a high quality finish. Make the card longer, a different shape or a bold color to stand out. These printing options will increase the price of your cards, but they will pay off ten-fold in the long run. Customers want to do business with companies that demonstrate their ability to provide high quality services, and a creative business card will send them that message.

Scott D. Gerber is Entrepreneur.com’s Young Entrepreneur columnist and CEO of Gerber Entertainment, a brand development and venture management company that specializes in the entertainment, Internet, media and marketing industries. For information on speaking engagements, media appearances or Gerber Entertainment’s portfolio of businesses visit www.GerberEntertainment.com.

Here’s a great story of unexpected success written by our friend Karen Axelton, writer for Small Biz Daily.

Ever since I moved to the Long Beach, California, area years ago, I’ve heard about the gondola rides in Naples – a waterfront part of Long Beach where homes are built on a network of canals like those in  the Italian scene above.  Earlier this year I got to witness gondola rides live when I visited a home in the area. But I had no idea the gondola company was run by an entrepreneur until I read an article about it in my Auto Club magazine, Westways.

Mike O’Toole started Gondola Getway in 1981 when he was still a student at USC. The business was a marketing project, but when he graduated in 1982, O’Toole bought an 18-foot replica gondola, put an electric motor on the back, and started doing cruises on the canals with just one boat.

As the business started to grow, he found a business partner, David Black, and added a second boat. But soon, the business required even more expansion and in 1984, O’Toole went to Venice, Italy, to observe how real gondolas were built. He came back and began building gondolas that would easily be steered by one gondolier with an oar.

Today, O’Toole has 10 gondolas and as many as 30 employees who take passengers on romantic cruises through the canals.

“I didn’t think I’d be doing this for the next 25 years,” O’Toole told Westways about the business he started as a student.

That got me thinking about how many successful entrepreneurs get started by accident. But was it really an accident? O’Toole grew up on the canals of Venice and learned to sail as a kid. He ended up creating a business that enables him to do what he loves.

And lots of other people love it too. When I watched gondolas going by, my first thought was how joyous everyone was. The gondola passengers and their gondoliers were beaming (no wonder, since O’Toole says an average of one marriage proposal a day takes place on the boats). And everyone in the homes up and down the streets overlooking the canals lit up, smiled and waved with excitement whenever a gondola went by.

Some people make fun of that saying “Do what you love, and the money will follow.” I’m not sure how much money Gondola Getaways makes, and it’s not the kind of business that can become the next Starbucks or McDonald’s. But it warms my heart to read about a business owner doing something that makes him happy – and makes everyone else happy, too.

You can find out more about O’Toole at the Gondola Getaway site.

SmallBizDaily is powered by four people with a passion for entrepreneurship: Rieva Lesonsky, Maria Anton, Maria Valdez Haubrich and Karen Axelton. We met at Entrepreneur Magazine nearly 25 years ago, when Rieva hired the rest of us as editors. We’ve been a great team ever since, so when Rieva decided it was time for her to stop talking about entrepreneurship and start living it, she naturally turned to us to be her business partners.

At SmallBizDaily, the writers combine their decades of experience reading and writing about entrepreneurship with their new experience as startup entrepreneurs to share their unique take on the world of small business.

Taking a personal inventory and assessing your current resources will save you time and money! If you’re going to go into business for yourself, one of the best things you can do is know what you’re getting into and whether you have access to the resources necessary for you to succeed.

Entrepreneurs always underestimate what they will need to start their businesses. Honestly, anyone can start a company. But only a small percentage of those who try manage to build successful firms. In one way or another, the reason for failure usually comes down to resources. Businesses that fail most often do so because they lack money, industry expertise, or a viable strategic plan. These are all inputs, or resources, whether they are intellectual capital (knowledge) or monetary capital.

Use this chart (to the left) to take a personal inventory of your resources as they apply to starting your company. If you do not yet have your business concept solidified, use the chart to identify how well equipped you are to be in business in general. (For example, under “knowledge” assume that you will need to know how to manage money, create financial statements, have some management or entrepreneurial experience, understand a particular industry, have a better-than-average skill that you will use, and so forth.)

As soon as you have nailed down your business idea, recreate this chart and do it again. You might even want to keep it around while you’re in the planning stages, updating it until you feel confident that you have the key resources that you will need to begin.

Feel free to add more resource categories and, if possible, in the description/specifics column, order according to importance, giving each item its own line. Then simply check off the appropriate boxes, identifying how accessible each resource is to you right now. It is important that this list reflect your present situation so that you don’t neglect something that you need to learn or obtain.

Study the completed chart carefully and update it regularly. You may want to recreate it on a piece of paper, draw it on an erasable board, or put it on a spread sheet so that you can more easily edit it. It can be of enormous help to you in starting your company the right way, the smart way.

Hi,

I have been in the corporate world for the past two years since graduation, but have a huge itch for entrepreneurship. Therein lies the problem, no idea where to go from there. Great resources on YSN, I just need to get the ball rolling! Any advice?

Recently, I and a very bright, very intelligent friend of mine mused over lunch as to what the key to success really entailed.  We spoke of tactics, strategies, birthrights and education.  He’s a Harvard grad, Wharton MBA and President of one of the most successful Hispanic ad agencies you could hire, I’m a college drop-out, former Presidential Appointee and CEO of one of the strongest business groups in the country. We have both, in our own way, succeeded well beyond most in our age groups, our industries and our communities.  Over steak frites and chicken and waffles, we hit a hilt and agreed, “The key to success is minimizing the probability of failure.”

The beauty of that phrase is in the fact that it’s a real statement.  It’s not designed to probe our inner sunshine or scare us out of darkness.  It is a real assessment as to what we need to do as individuals (and individuals as part of a team) to ensure the probability of success is the greatest it can be based on our contribution.  It also implies that success is a right to anyone who is willing to do the work and earn success.  It says, without artifice, that we all have the option to succeed, none of us are doomed or predestined to be failures.

There’s a distinct difference between being “someone who fails” and being a “failure”.  The former is descriptive of a moment or an event and therefore not subject to destination.  The latter is a state of mind, self-imposed, I might add, that portends to define a person and therefore their destiny.  The magnificent thing is – the “failure” can become “someone who fails”…and tries again -as many times as it takes – to become a success. (and vice versa)

I pity those who don’t know the pain of failure. The only way to know your greatest potential is to experience your failing point and make it your launching pad.  If you never try to walk, you’ll never fall.  But if you never try to walk, you’ll never run.  If you never run, you’ll never get very far and if you don’t go anywhere, the only thing you’ll see move is the world – right past you.  Those who are afraid to fail, are afraid to push the boundaries and go out on a limb, but the greatest view isn’t from the safety of the ground.

The most magnificent successes in the world: Edison and his light bulb, the Wright Brothers and their airplane, Hubert Booth and his vacuum cleaner, James Dyson and his better vacuum cleaner and of course, Al Gore and his internet; all had failed spectacularly before they succeeding historically.   If they defined themselves during their failing moments as “failures” rather than redefine those failing moments until they became successes, we’d live in a dark, untraveled, dirty, dirtier and disconnected world.  It is our responsibility, as citizens of a world, members of a community and definers of our own destiny to always try one more time than we fail – we will always continue to succeed.

That being said, the key to success is about minimizing the probability of failure, but how do you minimize the probability of failure? You research, you test, you collaborate, you do your homework and your due diligence, but most importantly, you ACT because if you don’t act, you haven’t tried and every time you don’t try, you don’t succeed and therefore, failure is not only probable – it is certain.

Article by Jane Pak, CEO of NAWBO-LA (National Association of Women Business Owners). Follow her on Twitter – @nawbola!