Best way to succeed is to do things for the customer, not to the competition. Very few people buy a product in order to help you hurt the competition. To think otherwise is lunacy.

"(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face.

If you're an entrepreneur and you think that the president makes a difference to your business, you should stay at your current job.

Klout and various measurements of influence are fun. I love to see where I score on them, but there's a computer algorithm behind the calculation. If there's an algorithm, it can be gamed. Even if it's not gameable, you have to take a leap of faith that the number of followers, retweets, mentions, whatever really mean something.

Social media puts reciprocity on steroids because now you can reach more people in more ways to do more things for them faster and at lower expense. Positive word about your reciprocity can spread faster than ever.

Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.