Who isn’t looking for ways to save time and money? Here are some tools that can help.

If you don’t know how to leverage Linkedin to your business advantage or which iPhone apps will save you the most money, do a google search (or talk to your friends). Here, we’ll be focusing on the more unusual small business resources: services you might not have thought about in the context of entrepreneurship, tools we didn’t know existed, and unlikely services that can save your precious time, money, and sanity.

Have your own tip? Share it in the comments and help us make this list even more useful.

Urban Dictionary (and wikipedia, google translate, or a dictionary). It’s not just a tool to figure out what that angry guy called you or to decipher your teenaged daughter’s texts. Got a cool, new product name? Name for your company? Slogan idea? Check here before getting 1000 signs printed. Maybe the unfortunately named Nigaz (a joint venture between Nigeria and Gazprom), Mitsubishi Pajero, or Traficante Mineral Water could have been avoided.

Your local hardware store. Especially when just starting out, many small business owners have a diy mentality. Plus, things break. Know what kind of air conditioner filter to get? Do you have a handle on the legal issues, cost savings, and mood effects of various light bulbs? Trying to decide whether it’s time to call in a professional? Drop by an independent hardware store, including retailer-owned cooperatives like Ace and True Value.

You’re likely to save time finding what you need and get good advice from a salesperson with years of experience (Ace beat Home Depot by a hefty margin in BusinessWeek’s customer service rankings). They can often recommend a great handyman — or woman, too.

Stephen Hoch, a Wharton School of Business professor, and William Dunkelberg, chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business, explain that our consumerist lifestyle of fast, frequent transactions is actually turning small retailers into great resources: it increases the value of personal transactions, so when we need advice before we buy or are making a crucial purchase, we seek out someone with experience. As a result, small retailers are repositioning themselves more as service providers, banking on their folksy charm and dealing in products that require a high degree of service or salesmanship. In other words, unless you know exactly what it is you need to buy, you’ll probably save time and money at the mom and pop store because you’ll leave with more than just the goods in your shopping bag.

Fonolo and Lucy Phone. No one likes muzak and overly-peppy, automated phone voices. These services will save you time and cell minutes, in addition to cutting down on the annoyance. Executives spend an average of 68 hours waiting on hold a year. That’s the equivalent of a much-needed long weekend. Even more depressing? Another study found that the average consumer — presumably one without an executive assistant — will wait on hold for a whopping 1.2 years of her life.

LucyPhone waits on hold for you. Type in your phone number on their website, and Lucy will call you, connecting you with the company. When you get put on hold, you just have to hit **. You can then hang up and Lucy will call you back when you’re taken off hold.

Fonolo saves you time in a different way: it lets you skip the phone menus when dialing large companies. For example, you can look up the airline company you’re trying to call and click the option on their visual phone tree for “speak with an agent.” Fonolo calls your phone and you’re connected directly to an agent instead of having to press 1 for English, 2 for more options, 0 for operator, then 1 for “I don’t know my frequent flyer number,” etc.

Stationery. Not that we’re recommending it, but write an apology note by hand and you can get away with murder (almost). Use letters proactively, not just when you’re on the defensive. Letters help you build relationships and show your clients, customers, vendors, and employees that you care. Handwritten letters have between a 96% to 99% open rate, compared to the typical 2% for direct mail. And nine in ten employers said a handwritten note improves a candidate’s chance of getting hired. An address scrawled in navy blue ink stands out amongst the junk mail. A handful of entrepreneurs have even built businesses around these data by hiring teachers and artists to take drafts of letters businesspeople submit and re-write them, using their stellar penmanship.

Moreover, sales professionals use hand-addressed envelopes to get past gatekeepers because they look personal. This trick works with the country’s strictest gatekeepers: White House mail room employees. The President receives 5,000 letters a day and reads 10 each night. His staffers tend to select the handwritten ones becuase they appear more thoughtful.

Note cards aren’t the only thing you should consider buying from the stationer. Consider buying heavier weight paper for things like resumes, business cards, and customer satisfaction surveys. New research shows that humans perceive heavier objects as being more important. People are more likely to respond to surveys if they’re on heavier paper. In another study, participants holding CVs on heavier clipboards rated candidates better than those holding lighter ones, even though the CVs were identical. Did you take paper weight, texture, color, and quality into consideration when printing your business cards or company’s brochures? Maybe it’s time for a makeover. If you’re looking for a stationer, Smythson and Crane are old standbys, while Etsy offers a wide variety of affordable options.

Google Voice (and new “call phones” feature). Yeah, you probably already know you can get cheap, skype-like long distance rates, transcribe your voicemails, and send your mother-in-law’s calls straight to voicemail. But have you thought about the features in the context of running your small business? Trying to get a job in New York City but have a 512 area code on your resume? Running multiple companies at once? Need a way to track how many customers are calling you because they saw your website? Sick of carrying around both a “work” phone and a “personal” phone? Take a closer look at Google Voice. Another alternative is Grasshopper (creator of that great entrepreneurship video). In addition to those of Google Voice, they provide more small business-friendly features like toll-free numbers, multiple extensions, human-transcribed voicemail, hold music, etc.

This is part one in a series. Stay tuned for more…

Note: these are ranked in no particular order. These are intended as inspiration — Acton doesn’t necessarily endorse any of these products or services.

Photos courtesy of Heather, Jovike, my name’s axe!, faungg, amymyou, and passive aggressive notes

Why just talk about running a business, using boring theories, when you can run one yourself?

Acton MBA students did just that during the Liberty Greetings simulation, where they ran a greeting card company for a day. Their goal was to turn the faltering company around and make it a success. Everyone had a role to play, and played it well. Watch the video to see how the class of 2011 put their business acumen, leadership abilities, sales techniques, teamwork — and even arts and crafts skills — to the test. (Video below)

Watch this great video to see hands-on learning in action.

Did you build a company on your first day of school? Acton students kicked off the school year with a business simulation. (Photos below)

Every year, after Pre-Mat and before the fall semester starts, Acton students participate in a Boot Camp. It’s a rigorous, one-week program where students meet their classmates and prepare for the first semester. It includes demonstrations of the case method, team-building exercises, quantitative sessions, and Life of Meaning discussions.

This year, before heading off to Lost Pines for team building and fun, the students participated in a fast-paced business simulation.

They became owners of a greeting card company, Liberty Greetings. They split into teams and tried to turn the floundering company into a profitable business. They were in charge of all aspects of the enterprise — research and development, administration, sales, and product production. They got their hands dirty and made actual greeting cards, interviewed prospective customers (Acton staff), and raced against the clock. Each business cycle was compressed into twenty minutes. Between each of the four cycles, the teams met and discussed strategy. As a result, they got to apply what they’d learned in Pre-Mat and became better acquainted with their classmates before the grueling 100-hour work weeks start.

While hurried, it looked like everyone had a good time. Check out the photos from the event and get to know the Acton MBA Class of 2011!

But wait – there’s more! We have some great video footage on the way, too. So check back!

Ever wonder how the people around you got their jobs? Ever look back and think about where you thought you’d end up? (Audio interviews below

Heroes’ stories are everywhere — in the news, the memories of your taxi driver, the pages of your favorite book. Everyone has a calling in life. People find fulfillment by pursing them and overcoming obstacles, with their integrity in tact. So while Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey’s stories may make it to the biography section of your local bookstore, your doorman’s story is no less empowering. Here are the stories of some heroes who may have slipped under your radar.

These interviews are from StoryCorps. If you haven’t heard about them already (they’re featured on NPR and they created the touching and popular Danny and Annie video), StoryCorps is a great organization. They’re one of the largest oral history projects, with over 30,000 recorded interviews. Their goal is to encourage people to record the stories of those who are important to them and to help people connect and talk about the questions that matter.

At under a minute each, the stories are like bite-sized pieces of inspiration. Click on the links below to listen.

Librarian

Sharon Holley, a retired librarian, got sick of all her friends borrowing her comic books and not returning them. She tells her husband how she prepared for her career at an early age.

Custodian

Being a janitor can have more meaning to someone than you’d think. Chloe Smith is a high school student. She asks Willie Jefferson about being the custodian at her Catholic school.

Doorman

Debra Goodman met Ed Trinka when he was on the  job. Now they’re friends. In this interview, he tells her about being the doorman at the Plaza Hotel since 1963. He really shines a light on the impact of customer service.

Barber

What started out as a necessity (his brother needed a haircut) turned into a 60-year long career. Lawrence Anthony and David Shirley talk about being barbers and how they got started with just 50 cents.

Taxi Driver

Known as the “human computer,” Oleg Roitman is a New York City cab driver. He tells his friend and fellow driver, Andrew Vollo, about his passengers and the services he provides.

Dance Host

Richard Craig gets weary tourists onto the dance floor. He describes his job as a cruise ship dance host. He talks about the impact the passengers have on him as well as the impact he hopes to leave.

Bounty Hunter

Rick Kincaid hunted criminals. His friend Danny Ray Terry asks him about his career, family, and what caused him to leave the business.

Navigating our own journeys requires guides — people to help us work through our setbacks. Their insights can help us realize our dreams and expand our visions. Have you stopped to listen?

Photo courtesy of Andres Castaneda.

“The Boot Camp gives kids a chance to brainstorm and hear from Sandefer, who also tested his entrepreneurial skills as a child and went on to become an extremely successful businessman who founded several companies, including his own energy company. He now finds joy in instilling business lessons in adults and children.”

“‘Can children come up with real businesses?” Sandefer posed during an interview last year. He then answered emphatically, ‘Yes, they can.’”

Keep reading to find out more….

Here’s what the front page looked like (bigger, pdf version here).

Stay tuned for more coverage from the Children’s Business Fair Boot Camp lunch. It was a lot of fun and we got some great pictures!

Thanks to West Austin News. (Subscribe here).

Author Q&A: Jonathan Haidt talks about elephants, business, and, of course, happiness.

Jonathan Haidt has a knack for taking complicated and esoteric material — religious history, science, philosophy, and the like — and making it interesting. To top things off, he can write about a saccharine subject for 300 pages without making it sound like a New Agey self-help book. In his non-fiction book, The Happiness Hypothesis, he draws on a variety of sources to offer practical advice on happiness and meaning.

The book reads like a conversation — he informs the reader and provokes discussion. Whether you agree with all of his premises or not, the Happiness Hypothesis (which was the Acton Book Club’s inaugural book) raises a ton of interesting questions, especially ones tying his conclusions to business. So we turned to Dr. Haidt with some of our questions and he graciously answered them via email. Here are some of the questions he answered from our Acton alumni:

Which lesson in the Happiness Hypothesis is the most difficult for you to apply in your life and why?

JH: It’s always hard for me to see things from my wife’s point of view when we first begin to ague. I fall into “I’m right and she’s wrong” thinking. But in part from studying moral psychology, I have gotten very good at apologizing. I still make the same old mistakes, but I’m much better at fixing them.

What are the downsides of happiness?

JH: I don’t think there are any downsides to happiness. There is a slight downside to losing variability, i.e., always being happy, rather than having fluctuations. The fluctuations can help both with personal growth and with creativity – you experience more of the range of human states. So there’s a slight downside to losing sadness and depression, but there’s no downside I know of to having a high average mood.

While reading your book, I found myself nodding my head and saying, “So true.” Yet after I finished, I realized that meant the same thing as, “Makes sense.” So I became curious about who was really driving my reaction. Do you have any comments or even cognitive tests you can suggest for readers whose riders readily embrace the arguments of your book, but fear maybe that they are doing so because it made their elephants happy?

JH: I think we are both the rider and the elephant. In my writing, I try to appeal to both. I try to cause intuitive flashes of recognition, after which I give reasons. Reasons don’t do much good if the intuitive ground has not been prepared. Of course, demagogues do this too, perhaps that’s your fear. But I’m not trying to manipulate you for any purpose, I’m trying to get you to see things in new ways. Good teaching, preaching, mothering, and writing must influence the elephant, or its effects will be few and short lived.

High-pressure [business] decisions are tricky because you’re not only dealing with your own Inner Lawyer, but also with the lawyers of everyone else who is involved. Say it’s a perfect world, where I’m able to see the flaws in my proposal and overcome my self-serving bias. Is there anything I could do to help the other people in a negotiation walk away feeling more satisfied and less resentful? Or is it every man for himself?

JH: It’s almost impossible to eradicate these biases. Many have tried. It’s almost impossible to teach critical thinking. Many have tried. Yet that doesn’t mean its “every man for himself.” Think about the way the Japanese do business: they build relationships and trust first and only much later begin to negotiate. Americans come barging in and want to negotiate on day one. If you cultivate relationships and emotions first, then negotiations are likely to go better for all.

At Acton, we learn to pursue our callings. But where do you draw the line between flow/satisfaction in your work and too much work? If an entrepreneur is working 100 hours a week doing something she loves, can that have a negative impact on her happiness? At what point is work too much, even if it’s something that uses your strengths?

JH: I think that for some people, at some times in their lives, the best thing they can do is work 100 hours a week, giving their all to achieving something, building something, creating something. I do not think life needs to be balanced at all times. I think that having a family is part of a happy life (although the evidence for that is mixed) so there are periods when one can’t work 100 hours perweek. In the long run, relationships are the most important thing for happiness, so if your calling is burning up your relationships, you shouldn’t do it for too long. But to really achieve something great, I think it is often wise and worthwhile to put everything else aside, perhaps even for a few years.

How could an enlightened business leader implement some of the wisdom in your book to make his/her customers and employees happier? In addition to taking things like commute times into account, how could someone create an office environment that is more conducive to happiness?

I have some advice posted here.

We’d like to thank Dr. Haidt for taking the time to answer our questions and adding to the discussion.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His research examines the emotional basis of morality and the ways that morality varies across cultures, including the cultures of liberals and conservatives. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then went to the University of Chicago for additional training in cultural psychology. He has been active in the positive psychology movement since 1999, and in 2001 he was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology. He has received four awards for his teaching, including the 2004 Outstanding Faculty Award conferred by the Governor of the State of Virginia, Mark Warner. He was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor at the Princeton University Center for Human Values in 2006-2007. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife Jayne.

Check out his TED profile for more resources.

Photo courtesy of Dom Dada.

We’re examining how different business strategies appeal to different people, using examples from the news.

At Acton, we classify entrepreneurs into three categories: Bootstrap Tortoises, Asset Foxes, and MBA Hares. These categories aren’t meant to rank the quality of entrepreneurs, but rather help people find business models that best fit their temperaments.

Animal analogies are all well and good but they don’t really paint the whole picture. So, since I’ve noticed a couple of stories in the news lately that illustrated these archetypes, I thought now would be a good time to discuss. Plus, we have a new quiz on the Acton School of Business website that can show you what type of entrepreneur you are.

Bootstrap Tortoises

Both Bootstrap Tortoises and Asset Foxes build their businesses step by step. Bootstrap Tortoises typically start with customers while Asset Foxes start with something tangible, like property. Bootstrap Tortoises build their companies one satisfied customer at a time, staging investments so that they risk as little as possible until demand is proven.

Travis Kevie, a rodeo cowboy and vagabond, isn’t who you’d normally think of at the mention of entrepreneurs. But the California man has proven himself to be a Bootstrap Tortoise. The Valencia Club was a landmark bar in Penryn, having been around since the 1930’s and the northern California city’s only watering hole. But early this summer, the bar closed its doors. Travis Kevie had been on the bar’s cleaning crew and decided to stay behind. Not only did the homeless man tidy up the place, but he also walked to the convenience store across the street, bought a six-pack of beer, and stuck an “open” sign in the bar’s window. With the property manager gone for Memorial Day weekend and lots of thirsty customers, Kevie’s bar became a reality. He started with one customer, who had seen the open sign from the road, and used the profits to buy more alcohol and serve more customers. Word spread fast, and soon he was serving about 30 patrons a day. He was so successful that the local newspaper did a story on the bar’s re-opening, not realizing it was a sham. A police detective saw the story in the paper and got suspicious. In the four days he ran the bar, prior to getting arrested, Kevie managed to make hundreds of dollars in cash and buy several bottles of liquor — all of which were confiscated at the scene. (CNN)

Asset Foxes

Asset Foxes prefer to acquire, improve, and trade one asset at a time. Maybe you remember hearing about Kyle MacDonald. In 2005, he posted a picture of a red paperclip on his blog and asked if anyone wanted to trade something bigger or better for it. After making 14 trades, he was the proud owner of a house in Saskatchewan. He’s an Asset Fox. So is seventeen-year-old Steven Ortiz. A friend gave him an old, junky cellphone. Instead of throwing it away, he posted an ad on Craigslist and traded that phone for a better phone, which he then traded for an i-Pod touch. A series of dirt bikes, a MacBook Pro, a 1987 Toyota 4Runner, a more valuable dirt bike, a streetbike, and a couple more cars later, Ortiz had the keys to a 2000 Porsche. It took him two years and several hours a day scouring Craigslist for good deals, but now he’s the only kid in his school with a high-end convertible. Ortiz explains that he uses his knack for fixing small electronics and eye for good deals to get people what they want. People are looking for a way to get rid of an item they don’t need in exchange for something they do, often getting a better deal than if they had just sold the item for cash. “A lot of people don’t have money right now, in this economy. So they think, `I really need a new phone, but I don’t have the money. Here I have this CD player lying around that I don’t use anymore, maybe I can trade,”‘ his father says. (Mercury News).

MBA Hares

MBA Hares write business plans and raise war chests of venture capital, believing that the sooner you launch and the faster you grow, the sooner you can have an IPO and make lots of money. The MBA Hare’s strategy is the one taught at most business schools. (At Acton, we tend to focus more on the other two types.)

Jive Software has been following the MBA hare archetype. The firm’s software gives large companies like Nike and Intel a way to collaborate with their own employees and with customers. Last week, headlines read, “Jive: Aiming for IPO, Palo Alto startup wins $30M from Kleiner, Sequoia.” Tony Zingale, Jive’s CEO and 30-year Silicon Valley veteran, said he’s never seen a marketplace move at the rate of the social media marketplace. With new backing from two top venture capital firms — bringing the total raised by Jive to $57.5 million — and explosive customer growth, Zingale thinks his company could be ready to go public as early as next year. The company currently has 3,000 customers, like Nike and Netflix, and about 15 million users. In the last year, its workforce has more than doubled to 275 employees. “Our goal is to grow as fast as we possibly can,” Zingale said. (Portfolio)

So, what type of entrepreneur are you? Do you think that some people are just better suited for using certain types of business models? When wouldn’t you go with the archetype that best fits you?

Photo courtesy of Edmund Yeo.

If you had to make a commercial to promote entrepreneurship, what would it be?

To highlight how small and medium enterprises (SME) drive the economy, the European Commission hosted a video contest. The winning films answered one of these questions: What is entrepreneurship all about? What could encourage people to become entrepreneurs? What could counteract old prejudices and offer new visions of entrepreneurship? The winners had some creative approaches. Here’s an assortment of the videos. What do you think? What would you have done?

A Greek girl shows the importance of a fresh perspective.

This man escapes an Office Space-like existence in a cubicle.

A boy nurtures his dream until it becomes a reality.

Entrepreneurship is about accepting the challenge (and getting the girl).

You can watch the rest of the videos on the European SME Week website.

Photo courtesy of jbeauchamp.

Doomsday scenarios, more spy stories, money, more money, and cool new products. It’s been an interesting week in the world of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurs hold the keys to the internet. Literally. Seven people were selected by the internet watchdog organization ICANN to be Trusted Community Representatives. They each have a smart card. In the case of a catastrophe, five of the seven would have to meet and use their cards to activate a master key to recreate the internet’s “yellow pages” database of web addresses. The seven are leading experts and innovators in internet security. The US’ Dan Kaminsky is behind start-up Recursion Ventures, where he’s Chief Scientist. Paul Kane of the UK is the chief executive of internet management company CommunityDNS. And Ondrej Sury is the head of R&D at CZ.NIC Labs in the Czech Republic. The others are Norm Ritchie of Canada, Jiankan Yao from China, Moussa Guebre of Burkina Faso, and Bevil Wooding from Trinidad and Tobago. (CBS news)

INC released its 30 under 30 list of America’s coolest young entrepreneurs. It includes Naveen Selvadurai, co-founder of Foursquare, Sarah Prevette of entrepreneur web tool Sprouter, and Tim O’Shaughnessy and Eddie Fredrick of LivingSocial. There are a bunch of great ideas, new products, and inspiring childhood stories. Check them out. (INC)

Pick up some networking tips from glamorous Russian spy Anna Chapman. In newly uncovered footage from last year’s Entrepreneur Week in New York, she explains how she used sequences of introductions to get closer to more and more important people. Hopefully you use introductions for business purposes and not state secrets. (Telegraph)

Maybe your customers don’t want to talk to you. Companies tend to think their customers value live service more than twice as much as they value self service. But new research from Matt Dixon and Lara Ponomareff shows that customers — regardless of age, issue type, or urgency — are indifferent and value the phone just as much as a self-service kiosk. What’s more, customers who try to self serve, fail, and are forced to pick up the phone are more likely to be disloyal. So when was the last time you waited to use an ATM even though there was no one in the bank teller line? (HBR)

An entrepreneur introduced tax cut legislation for technology start-up investors. They’d get a 25% federal tax credit for an equity investment in a qualifying business. The Innovation Technologies Investment Incentive Act was proposed by five members of Congress: Reps Chris Van Hollen, Jared Polis, Allyson Schwartz, and Betty McCollum. Rep Polis of Denver founded Proflowers.com and Bluemountain.com. (INC)

Could an MBA kill your chance to become a great tech entrepreneur? Katie Cowing of The Journey of Entrepreneurship has an interesting analysis of the educational backgrounds of technology leaders like Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page. She urges aspiring entrepreneurs to look at three factors when deciding if they should pursue an MBA: short term vs long term thinking, managing companies vs creating disruptive businesses, and analysis vs action. What do you think? (Business Insider)

Entrepreneurs in the education market may get a boost. The University of Pennsylvania wants to create one of the country’s only business incubators dedicated to education entrepreneurs — a “Sillicon Valley around education.” The Department of Education is also introducing a $650 million fund to spur innovation. While schools and institutions spend over $1 trillion on education annually, entrepreneurs face significant hurdles. Different local policies, frequent curricula changes, and cumbersome purchasing processes can make it hard for entrepreneurs to succeed. (USA Today)

The UK is backing a bold innovation universities project in India. Eight British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, will forge links during the design and creation of the new universities. The Indian government is also looking for mentors from leading universities in the US. The 14 innovation universities will be centers of excellence and are meant to fill a gap in research and tackle new problems significant to India, like urbanization and public health. (The Hindu and University World News)

Austin is known as an entrepreneurial hub. Michael Klug discusses what it takes for a place to attract and nurture entrepreneurs. He mentions a balance of support, culture, relevant resources, and reasonable costs. What would you add? (ABJ Entrepreneur)

Photo courtesy of Ed Yourdon.

Photo courtesy of miss_rogue.