The Vest Pocket Consultant:

If Warren Buffett has turned bearish on the economy, is it time for the rest of us to throw in the towel?

Last week, Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by the famed investor from Omaha, reported that 2008 was its worst year ever with its net plunging to $4.99 billion from $13.21 billion in 2007. It was only the second negative year suffered by the company since Buffett took over in 1965.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Buffett predicted that the economy “will be in shambles throughout 2009–and, for that matter, probably well beyond.” (To be fair, he also encouraged his shareholders to hang in, noting that “our country has faced far worse travails in the past.”)

Hardly a rosy forecast from the man who invested billions of dollars in Goldman Sachs and General Electric less than a year ago.

But if Buffett’s got the blues, why are America’s entrepreneurs turning bullish?

According to a newly released survey by American Express OPEN, two-thirds of the 600 small business owners polled said they are stressed out about the state of the economy this year, up from 55 percent in February 2008 but down from 71 percent in August. Fewer than half the business owners polled said they’re currently operating at lower profit margins, compared with 56 percent last summer.

“When things first started dropping off, I think there was a panicked reaction to this downturn after so many years of prosperity,” Alice Bredin, a small business advisor to American Express OPEN, told Crain’s New York Business. But now that small business owners have shifted to survival mode, they’re doing better financially than they were last fall.

Better, of course, is a relative term. More than a third of the business owners surveyed said it’s taking longer to collect money from customers, and 75 percent reported they are more risk averse now than they were before the economic crisis. And although the corporate layoffs sweeping the country have dramatically enlarged the available pool of job seekers, only 17 percent of the small business owners said they plan to do any hiring.

And that makes sense. Unlike the slow-moving mammoths of the corporate world, small businesses have always run lean and mean–and that’s why many of us will survive the economic ice age that lies ahead and prosper when things begin to thaw. To me, the survey’s most interesting finding was that, despite the tough times that lie ahead, 80 percent of small business owners said the rewards and opportunities of running their own business outweigh the challenges and risks.

That certainly corresponds with my own experience as an entrepreneur and that of the entrepreneurs whom Richard and I work with here at Axxess. In September, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the credit markets froze overnight, I felt like a deer in the headlights, paralyzed by flashbacks of the perfect storm that washed away the dotcom market in 2000 and 2001. Today, I’m floating peacefully in a sea of liquidity, shopping for historic West Village townhouses at deeply discounted prices. I’ve also come up with some of the best business ideas I’ve had in years. And while I feel terrible about the thousands of hard-working men and women who are losing their jobs in corporate America, I can’t help feeling optimistic about the many opportunities that lie ahead for me as an entrepreneur.

I don’t think I’m the only one. Over the past few weeks, we’ve started working with several new clients–a startup with an innovative health-care product for kids, a real estate investor with an eye for distressed properties in Queens and not one but two internet portals that want to use the web to bring order to their fragmented industries.

Investors are beginning to come out of the woodwork, too. Last week, I had lunch with three New York-area angels looking for early-stage companies to put money in. Next week, I’m having lunch with a major VC.

When you think about it, this sudden interest in entrepreneurial companies isn’t really that surprising. After all, with the stock market in the tank, the equity vanishing from people’s homes and six-figure corporate jobs hard to come by, there really aren’t too many other places to go.

Which is why the rest of America is now discovering what those of us who work for ourselves have known for years–that, no matter how smart Warren and those other guys may be, your best investment at the end of the day is you.

If the economy is going to hell in a handbasket, don’t tell that to Dr. Pooper Scooper. His business is doing just fine.

When I checked in with him recently to see how things were going with his dog poop scooping and landscaping business in northern New Jersey, I expected to hear some bad news. After all, with the economy in the tank and people losing their jobs, you’d think homeowners would want to save the extra $10 a week and scoop up the poop on their own.

But no. Not only are Rich Roy’s customers continuing to pay their bills; he’s doing so well that he’s taking his girlfriend, Lisa, on a week-long trip to Paris.

How does he do it? I’ll let the good doctor explain.

“I have a customer who’s a retired pilot who owns two rental apartments in Paris,” Rich told me. “I traded him half a year’s work for the apartment, which happens to be near the Louvre and The Opera. He didn’t pay me and I’m not paying him. Can you believe this?”

Actually, I can. With credit lines frozen and paying customers in short supply, barter is big in the small business world and, with few bailout dollars likely to land in the bank accounts of small business owners, likely to get a whole lot bigger. According to a recent article in Business Week, there are approximately 400 barter exchanges in the U.S. and Canada generating transactions worth $4 billion a year. Barter exchanges let members swap products and services with other members of the exchange without laying out cash.

And that doesn’t include all the informal bartering that’s going on.

“My chiropractor, I’ve been trading him for years,” Rich says. “He just bought a house when I started going to him, and I plow his driveway in return for free winter adjustments. My dentist is young and nutty, and he just bought the complex where his office is. I asked him if he wanted me to take care of the lawn. So every time I get a bill, I include it with my bill and he deducts. I trade my dental bills–my kids’, too–which were over $1,000 this summer. They even give me a professional discount. I now also cut his home and plow his partner’s house, too.”

But, wait, there’s more.

“I forgot to tell you that I also take care of my divorce lawyer’s property. I worked off about $10,000 in bills. I also take care of his house at times.”

Now, barter does have its limitations. Last I checked, Con Ed still wants to get paid by cash, check or credit card. Most landlords still want their rent in good, old-fashioned greenbacks, too. And employees generally want to get a check at the end of the week, not free web design, home improvement or catering services.

Could barter work for your company? It can’t hurt to give it a try. For me, I’m still a traditionalist when it comes to doing business. Because if you really want someone who works for you to drop everything and run to the rescue, there’s nothing like cold, hard cash.

With corporate America cutting 600,000 jobs in January, there isn’t much good news in the media these days.

But one story that’s been overlooked is that promising startups with breakthrough products and solid management teams are continuing to get funded–and funded at surprisingly high valuations.

The big news broke Friday when Twitter, the wildly popular micro-blogging site, announced on its official blog that it had just raised $35 million from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, giving the 3-year old company an eye-popping valuation of $250 million. Twitter, which has been used by everyone from President Obama to actor Stephen Fry, gained international recognition when the miraculous Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549 was first captured on camera by a Twitter user and spread around the globe in seconds.

According to the posting, Twitter wasn’t desperate for cash. The company still hasn’t burned through the money it raised in its Series B round when it received follow-on investments from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures.

According to Twitter, “Active users have increased 900 percent in a year, and even though our web traffic is amazing, we see twice that traffic to the APIs. Interacting with Twitter over SMS is also getting more popular every day.”

With another $35 million in the bank, the 29-employee company is planning to turn its phenomenal popularity into a real business.

“We are now positioned extremely well to support the accelerating growth of our service, further enable the robust ecosystem sprouting up around Twitter and, yes, to begin building revenue-generating products,” wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

That’s right. For all its millions of users, Twitter has yet to earn a dollar of revenue–much less a dime of profit. As many dotcom investors have learned the hard way, it’s one thing to launch a popular web app; it’s another to get users or advertisers to pay.

But the very fact that, in the worst times for the capital markets since The Great Depression, early-stage companies are still getting funded (and not just thrown under the bus for 10 cents on the dollar) is a very encouraging sign.

Because, while Twitter may be an outlier in its high valuation and the amount of capital it’s been able to raise, it’s not the only startup that’s succeeding in raising capital. Last week, I attended a lunch panel hosted by Lori Hoberman, co-chair of Fish & Richardson’s corporate and securities practice, and heard VC Steve Brotman of Greenhill SAVP complaining that valuations of the winners in his portfolio are getting pretty pricey. Steve’s firm has put money into Pontiflex (online lead generation marketplace) and FTrans (a web-based accounts receivable interchange) among others.

Here at Axxess, we’re seeing our startup clients raise capital, too, though I won’t name names until they start bragging about it on their blogs. Many of them are raising money from friends and family in the form of convertible debt, even if they’ve got to raise it $25,000 at a time.

The bottom line: The market for early-stage capital isn’t dead yet. And if you’re planning to sit out the recession until things get better, your business plan may very well get left in the dust.

Memo to Wall Street: The government’s giving you guys a bum deal. 

When President Obama announced last week that executive pay at banks and other companies receiving federal bailout money would be capped at $500,000 a year, there was plenty of cheering on Main Street. After all, why should Wall Street bankers be allowed to pay themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses in a year that Joe and Josie Sixpack lost half the money in their 401(k) plans?

Well, that’s the kind of naive Socialist thinking that threatens the very foundation of the U.S. financial system. The name of the game on Wall Street is pay for performance, and, if the United States is going to remain the world’s financial leader, we’ve got to be able to hire the best and brightest people to run our financial services companies. How can we possibly expect a Master of the Universe to work for a paycheck so paltry that he can barely afford to fuel his jet or climate-proof his art collection much less support his mistress in a decent Tribeca apartment?

There’s no reason why we should throw our best players under the bus just because Team America had one bad year. If it weren’t for the government’s stubborn insistence that banks use outdated mark-to- market accounting principles, those sub-prime mortgages would still be on the books at 100 cents on the dollar and everybody would be partying like it was 2007.

No, our bankers are a national treasure and our country needs to stand by them in good times and in bad. Sure, you guys may have wildly underestimated the risk of making loans to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back, packaging them into mortgage-backed securities and peddling them to investors all over the world, but we simply can’t afford to lose our top talent to better-paying organizations like foreign banks, hedge funds and Ponzi schemes.

In our country’s hour of economic need, I think it’s time that we let Wall Street go back to making money the old-fashioned way — by picking up the phone and dialing for dollars. If Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, wants to spend 14 hours a day on the phone convincing retirees and trust fund babies to put what remains of their savings into large cap stocks, I think he should be entitled to unlimited commissions. If Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, wants to go down to the local branch and open up new accounts, he deserves all the bonuses he can get. And, if Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, wants to spend three weeks in a limo helping a fledging tech company raise money to go public, I’d be the last to complain that his firm got 7 percent of the deal.

Let’s face it: Greed is good, and we’re going to need a whole lot more of it if we want to get our economy back on track. It would truly be tragic if the only people left to run our banks and financial services companies were the men and women who actually worked there.

Sometimes you’ve got to get out of town before you can see what’s going on in your own backyard.

Last week when I was in Paris settling my daughter, Caroline, into the school where she’ll be attending classes this semester, I didn’t have my usual stack of dead trees to rely on for my daily dose of bad news. Instead, I had a constant stream of email alerts from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal bombarding my BlackBerry 24 hours a day. Every time I checked my email, another Fortune 1000 company was announcing a mass layoff or a multiple store closing — Boeing, Pfizer, Home Depot and Starbucks, to name just a few.

Now, I’m not faulting Corporate America for slashing jobs and cutting overhead. When you’re a public company and your sales have collapsed and profits have plunged to record lows, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do in order to keep the wolves from the door. To quote that famous Wall Street expression, “It is what it is.”

I was also relieved to see Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package pass the House — even though the tax cuts probably won’t do much to boost consumer spending and the giant infrastructure projects may take years to create jobs.

So what’s a small business owner to do while waiting for the economy to turn around? Well, we could act like the French and take our protest to the streets. Last Thursday, the day before I flew home to New York, more than a million workers protested French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s labor policies in a one-day strike that shut down schools, buses, subways and museums. But that’s not the way we do things here in America. (Although it might be fun to see how our corporate clients would react if we small business owners got together and shut off our BlackBerries for 24 hours.)

Personally, I think our best bet is to do what we entrepreneurs always do in a crisis — take the lemons life hands us and turn them into lemonade.

For example,

1. Start interviewing job candidates.

While this may sound ridiculous at a time when everybody’s sales are in the tank, it actually makes sense when you think about it. Top talent is in huge supply, there’s no longer much competition from Corporate America for good employees, and great people are now available (full-time or freelance) at rock-bottom prices. Besides, it beats sitting around waiting for your customers to call.

2. Take your clients out for a beer (or two).

Splurging on T&E may seem like a frill at a time when most companies are cutting their budgets, but getting your customers to open up and talk to you about their business needs is more important than ever. After a couple of drinks at your local watering hole, you may find out that your customers need products or services that you never even thought of offering them — especially if their big corporate suppliers are no longer in business.

3. Roll up your sleeves and do some research.

Thanks to Obama’s new stimulus plan, the government is about to pour billions of dollars into “green” energy, health care and education. Even if your company is not involved in any of these areas now, it’s a good time to do some market research to figure out how you can tap these new markets by tweaking the products and services you already offer.

The bottom line is that every business has customers — even if those customers haven’t bought from you in a while. Just pick up the phone and ask them one simple question: “Is there anything that I can do for you today?”

The economy’s in the tank, business credit has dried up and just about every retailer in the world is slashing prices 50 percent or more. If there was ever a year to put your entrepreneurial dreams on hold, it’s 2009. Your spouse, your friends, your parents, everybody you know will certainly understand–and perhaps even applaud–your decision not to start a business until things get better.

Everybody, that is, except for you, the frustrated entrepreneur who’s been living a life of quiet desperation.

That’s why I wanted to share an excerpt from a new book, So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur? How to Decide If Starting a Business Really Is For You. The author, Jon Gillespie-Brown, a British technology entrepreneur and a mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs, has pledged to donate the proceeds from the sale of his book to the Grameen Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that seeks to help the world’s poorest people lift themselves out of poverty by giving them access to microloans and financial education.

Below is Gillespie-Brown’s list of the top 10 excuses for not becoming an entrepreneur:

1. I am afraid of being an entrepreneur, as it’s risky and I could fail. According to most statistics, most businesses fail financially after the first few years. The bottom line is that it’s OK to fail so long as you learn and improve each time. You will not be considered a failure if you did your best, gave it your all, and acted with honesty and integrity.

2. I don’t have a degree–I’m not clever enough to be an entrepreneur. There are many examples throughout history of super-successful people with little or no education. It’s more about hard work, not giving up, being dedicated, learning from your mistakes. If you need specialized knowledge, then you can get it or recruit a team member to do it for you.

3. I don’t have any money, so I can’t become an entrepreneur. Depending on your ambitions and the type of business you want to start, you don’t need lots of capital. To compensate for a low budget, you need to be creative, resourceful and make realistic plans. You will be amazed at what you can achieve with very little, an enterprising spirit and the help of others.

4. I want to be a millionaire, so I will become an entrepreneur. It’s fine to dream about a better life and want to improve your personal financial circumstances, but this should not be the focus of your startup efforts or your path as an entrepreneur. Rarely does anyone succeed by being self-serving or chasing money. In order to succeed, you need to add value to others, and money is a by-product of being great at doing that.

5. I don’t have a hot idea. Almost invariably, the initial idea an entrepreneur has is not the one that makes the money. The trick is to take any reasonably good idea in a growth market in which you have skills, experience and contacts and just get going. In the final analysis, it will be all about the execution and the team, rather than the idea.

6. My parents want me to become an astronaut (or whatever). The problem with parents could be that they are not in tune with you and what you want, or they are still more interested in their own fears and historical biases than what’s true in the world today. You need to consider your own goals, objectives and needs rather than those of your family before making a decision [to start your own business].

7. Why don’t I just get (stay in) a job like everyone else? Why become an entrepreneur? Many successful entrepreneurs have spent their early years “learning the ropes” as company employees before branching out on their own. It’s just not cut and dried, and luckily you can decide to do it now or get a job and do it later.

8. I have a family to feed, so I can’t become an entrepreneur. There is no doubt that having family responsibilities is a real challenge. Start small, start on evenings, weekends, prove it works without spending a lot of money and be cautious. Get your family to support you, get them involved and make it fun. Sharing those dreams is even better with someone you love.

9. I am not experienced in business. The key here is self-awareness. When you first start out, you should be more concerned with getting the business to a stage where you can get it funded or get some customers. Once you get some revenue in, you can iron out the wrinkles of your business.

10. I don’t have a partner or team to support me. If your venture is more ambitious, try and get a team together as soon as you can. If you have work colleagues, friends and others in your network, you can start to sound them out before you get going building a skeleton team and have them ready to jump on board when the time is right.

“Dreams only come true with action,” Gillespie- Brown writes. “The time will never be perfect. Your finances will never be what you want them to be. Your children will never be old enough. Whatever reasons you have been using not to get started or for not doing as well in business as you could must be confronted honestly.

“Fear is normal, but if you ever plan to own your own successful business, the time has never been better.”

Got it? No more excuses! The time to get started is now!

I seem to do my best work with a gun pointed to my head–and that’s a good thing.

My ability to meet deadlines–no matter how tired, sick or stressed-out I happen to be–helped me survive the shark-infested waters of the daily newspaper business. It was my ability to get back on my feet after collapsing in the Houston airport during NetCreations’ road show that helped me take my company public. And it was my decision to sell the company after we missed our earnings estimate in September 2000 that enabled us to survive the perfect storm that took many other dotcoms down to the bottom.

Tales of survival have always held a special fascination for me — maybe because I’m Jewish (the cossacks, the Holocaust), maybe because I’m a New Yorker (the cab that ran over my foot in 2006, the muggers who robbed me at gunpoint back in the 80s), maybe because I walked away from a near-fatal car accident banged and bruised but otherwise unhurt after falling asleep at the wheel as a young reporter in Miami.

That’s why I’ve been transfixed by the coverage of last week’s “miracle on the Hudson”–the heroic pilot, his courageous crew, the passengers who remained calm while their plane was sinking, the ferries that raced to the rescue–that saved the lives of all 155 people aboard US Airways Flight 1549 who otherwise would have drowned or died on impact when their plane suffered a double bird strike that disabled both engines on takeoff from LaGuardia.

In this post-heroic world of ours, leadership is in short supply. For better or for worse, no president, CEO or Federal Reserve chairman has the power or skill to bring our crippled economy to a safe landing without sustaining multiple casualities. The long, painful road to recovery will be a collective effort with many false starts. Millions more people will lose their jobs, and thousands of companies, large and small, will close their doors before it’s over.

If only there were a Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III to swoop in and save the day. I have no idea what President-elect Barack Obama will say in his inaugural address tomorrow, but “Brace for impact!” would be as good an opener as any.

Over the past four months, the government has doled out billions of dollars in aid to banks, insurance companies and automakers to get credit flowing again and save the economy from a crash landing. In the meantime, small business owners such as our clients at Axxess have demanded to know when their bailout is going to come.

Well, here’s the deal: You’re going to have to save yourself. And like Flight 1549, there’s no place to land except for the icy waters beneath you. You’re the captain, you’re at the controls, so what do you do now? How is your business going to survive? You’d better think fast and have a plan.

Because the only hero in that plane is you.

Until next time!

Rosalind

P.S. My new book, Beating the Bailout Blues: How to Stay Sane When the Market Is Driving You Crazy, is now available on Amazon. Click here to order your copy.

As joblessness mounts and the economy continues its downward slide, the pundits have already begun to question whether President-elect Obama’s $800 billion economic stimulus package has game.

The plan, which calls for tax cuts for consumers and small businesses in addition to more money for schools and highways, funding for “green” energy projects and more cash for health care and education, has been criticized by Obama’s fellow Democrats who want to throw more government dollars at the problem. Republicans, for their part, want bigger and broader tax cuts.

The reality, of course, is that nobody knows what to do to turn the economy around. From the Federal Reserve on down, we’re all basically winging it.

“We have very few good examples to guide us,” William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The New York Times last week. “I don’t know of any convincing evidence that what has been proposed is going to be enough.”

Now I’m not saying I’ve got the answer, either. But whatever the long-term solution turns out to be, I think it would be a big morale-booster for the country if Obama could put some points on the board early in the game.

Here are three easy wins our new president could score in his first 100 days in office:

1. Auction the naming rights to our national treasures–Stadiums do it, so why not Uncle Sam? Think about the billions of dollars the government could rake in by selling the naming rights to the Washington Monument, the Liberty Bell, Mount Rushmore and other major national treasures. And what if the corporate sponsor gets nailed for cooking the books or backdating options? Not a problem. The government would simply cancel the contract and put it out for bid again. No refunds allowed!

2. Outsource the Securities and Exchange Commission–The Bernie Madoff scandal revealed what many in the financial community have known for years: When you’re a member of the old boys’ club, regulators often look the other way. Rather than sit back and wait for another embarrassing financial scandal to tarnish the government’s reputation, let’s outsource the SEC to the guys who brought us derivatives, hedge funds and collateralized debt obligations in the first place. Wall Street firms would pay big money for the security of knowing they’ll no longer have to worry about getting indicted, and everybody can go back to making multimillion-dollar bonuses and splurging on paintings, yachts and houses in the Hamptons.

3. Tax Lotto–You can’t expect people to run to the post office to send their hard-earned money to the IRS when they can barely afford to pay their mortgages and credit card bills. That’s why I think the government should give taxpayers a little incentive. Tax Lotto, a federally sponsored lottery, would give taxpayers the chance to win millions of dollars–but only if they paid in full and filed their returns by April 15. The slogan: You’ve got to pay to play.

All kidding aside, I think we need to throw away yesterday’s playbook and do some out-of- the-box thinking if we’re going to turn the economy around. If beaten-down cities such as Pittsburgh can transform themselves from industrial ghost towns to thriving hubs of health care and technology, then surely we as a country can carve a niche for ourselves in the 21st century’s post-industrial economy.

While the federal government can pump trillions of dollars into the banking system and create millions of make-work jobs, our economy won’t bounce back until consumers and businesses once again believe that the future of our country is worth investing in.

Until next time.

Rosalind

P.S. – My new book, Beating the Bailout Blues: How to Stay Sane When the Market Is Driving You Crazy, is now available on Amazon. Click here to order your copy.

Memo to Oprah: This self-flagellation has got to stop.

When I heard the news that you’d hit 200 pounds (again!) and had shamefully confessed it on the cover of the January issue of your own magazine, I wanted to fly to Chicago and give you a hug.

Because you’re not the only woman entrepreneur who’s struggling with her weight. I’m right up there with you–at 5′6″, 195 pounds. That’s a BMI of 31.5–obesity is defined as 30 or higher.

Now I’m not making excuses for my weight. Though I walk several miles a day when I’m in New York and try to eat good carbs (veggies, not bagels) and healthy proteins (salmon, not burgers), the truth is that I’ve been known to grab a Milky Way bar on the way to a meeting if I haven’t had time for lunch and gulp down a can of Coke if I didn’t get much sleep the night before. And unlike you, my doctors told me several years ago that I don’t have a thyroid condition so I can’t use that as an excuse, either.

Oprah, you and I both know that if we ate less and exercised more, we’d both be healthier and trimmer. We might even be able to fit into one of those skin-tight midriff outfits that you modeled on the cover of your magazine back in 2005 when you slimmed down to an awesome 160. But we also know that our businesses often come first–and that, when a crisis hits, we’ve got to jump off that treadmill and put out that fire ASAP. And now that we’re smack in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, we’ve got to keep our eyes on the prize.

So here’s my advice, for what it’s worth: Stop beating yourself up about your weight (just ditch those purple pant suits and you’ll look fantastic!) and start paying attention to what’s happening at your magazine and your TV talk show. According to a July 2008 article in Folio, the bible of the publishing industry, O, The Oprah Magazine has seen a 10 percent drop in circulation over the past three years. Meanwhile, your magazine’s ad revenue increased slightly to $57 million during the first quarter of 2008 and ad pages remained flat at about 382. I don’t know how the numbers ended up for 2008, but I’m sure that 2009 will be even tougher.

But remember: You’re still the queen of TV ratings and takings. TV Guide recently reported that you pulled in $384 million from your talk show, making you television’s top-earning celebrity.

Give yourself a nice, big hug for that!

Oprah, as queen of the networks, you’ve got every right to believe that you should be able to wave your magic wand and banish those awful 40 pounds to a fat farm far, far away. But the reality is that weight is hard to lose, especially for busy women like us as we get older.

So while I commend your New Year’s resolution to find balance in your life and make your health your top priority, I also encourage you to make 2009 the year of self-acceptance–and to encourage your viewers and readers to accept their less-than-perfect bodies as well.

In fact, Oprah, I’ll make you a bet. If you and I can both slim down to 180 by Dec. 31, 2009, I’ll treat you to dinner at Per Se, Thomas Keller’s sinfully delicious restaurant in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. If we miss the mark, I’ll take you out for pizza at Patsy’s, a really great little pizzeria around the corner from my apartment in Greenwich Village.

Waddya say?

Rosalind

With 2009 just around the corner, it’s time to whip out our BlackBerries and make some New Year’s resolutions before another digitally enhanced year speeds by us.

Looking back on 2008, I realize that I actually checked off a lot of things on my to-do list–as an entrepreneur and as a writer. After pumping out the small business self-help book I promised myself to write when I first started Axxess six years ago–Getting Rich Without Going Broke: How to Use Luck, Logic and Leverage to Build Your Own Successful Business–I’m about to release a new book: Beating the Bailout Blues: How to Stay Sane When the Markets Are Driving You Crazy, through Amazon’s BookSurge self-publishing division.

On the real estate front, I’m back on the prowl to see if I can pick up another historic 19th century townhouse for the same low, low price that I paid for the ones I bought right after 9/11. After all, if you already own Boardwalk, it only makes sense to buy Park Place–especially if it’s 30 percent off!

Anyone up for a game of Monopoly?

However, there are some boxes on my to-do list that remain unchecked–and, in 2009, I resolve to start plowing through them.

Here are five resolutions for 2009 that I think will make my world a better place.

1. I will accept the reality that the economy is in for a bumpy ride and try to maintain my sanity and sense of humor along the way.

Thousands of wealthy individuals and institutions who trusted their investments to a money manager who delivered consistent year-in, year-out returns woke up to find themselves victims of the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Smell the coffee: There’s no tooth fairy, no Easter bunny and no (legal) way to guarantee that your investments will outperform the market every year. I resolve never to blindly trust a money manager, politician or any other leader who promises salvation through faith. (If that doesn’t work, I’ll join a cult.)

2. I’m not going to stop working, fighting or helping people no matter how tired or burned out I happen to be.

As my junior high school drama teacher used to say, the only reason for missing rehearsal is death–your death. I’m not going to start slacking off just because I’ve got a bad back and I’m six months away from turning 50. I’ll have plenty of time to relax when I’m dead.

3. Despite my crazy schedule and all the projects I’m taking on, I will never miss an opportunity to spend time with my family.

Whether it’s a dance recital, a parents’ weekend or even a chance to make dinner together, I will spend every minute I can with my two daughters before they grow up and leave me. And when they finally do flee the nest, I will let them decide for themselves whether New York City is still the most exciting place in the world to be. (I hope they’ll agree that the answer is yes.)

4. I will jump on the newest technology even if it means touching a screen or buying a Mac.

As an early adopter of computer technology, I tend to jump on trends early (I bought my first BlackBerry in February 2000) and use the machines until they die. Next year, I resolve to charge ahead and try out new devices even if it means spending countless frustrating hours on the phone with tech support trying to get the damn things to work.

5. I will stick to all my resolutions at least until Feb. 1!

After speaking at Entrepreneur Magazine’s Growth 2.0 Conference in Long Beach last Tuesday, I headed up to Los Angeles to catch up with some clients and friends.

On Wednesday night, I had dinner with an old friend of mine from the internet marketing business. Though his company made millions of dollars at the height of the dotcom boom, he turned down several lucrative offers to sell it–and ended up walking away with a fraction of the cash he could have gotten before the market collapsed.

Now don’t feel too sorry for my friend. He lives in a pricey beachfront community, he’s running another promising internet company, and he just got engaged to a smart and beautiful woman who works at a local internet startup.

But memories of the good old days still linge, and now my friend is aggressively pursuing the next billion-dollar idea that will put him back on top. He asked for my advice.

“You may have to wait a long time,” I told him. “I’ve learned the hard way that so much of success in business involves luck and timing. It’s not all about you and what you can do.”

Hardly reassuring words, I know. But the reality is that few of the people I knew in the internet business cashed out in a big way and far fewer went on to build another company that was as successful as their first one. And dotcom superstars such as Steve Case of AOL, Jerry Yang of Yahoo and Mark Cuban of Broadcast.com have all seen better days.

My point is this: While the purpose of every company is to make a profit, the goal of every entrepreneur has to be more than just making lots of money. Especially in an economy like this one–where startup companies are struggling for survival and an IPO or acquisition could be years or even decades away–it’s important to enjoy what you do at your business. Because you’re probably going to be doing it day in and day out for a long time to come.

That’s why I was so impressed when I heard Devon Rifkin, 33, speak last week at the conference. Rifkin is CEO and founder of The Great American Hanger Company, a Miami manufacturer, wholesaler and retailer of high-quality clothes hangers whose company rang up over $10 million in sales last year. Rifkin was honored as Entrepreneur Magazine’s 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year.

Here are some of Rifkin’s thoughts on life, business and entrepreneurship:

• Secret to success: “People commonly ask me why I work so hard. And the reason I give them is that it’s one of the only things I can control. There are very few things in business that you can control, so I try to master the things that I can control.”

• Advice for other entrepreneurs: “I would tell them not to focus on making money. If you believe in the idea, you need to focus on the equation and your business.”

• When he knew he’d made it: “I know this business has had a good run of success, but I’ve never felt like I’ve ‘made it’ because I feel like there are still a lot of things we have to improve and a lot of things we have to obtain that we haven’t obtained yet.”

Unfortunately, goals like these can’t always be measured in dollars. But when you’ve climbed the mountain of business achievement and reached the peak of personal satisfaction, I think you’ll know that you’ve arrived.

By the time you read this, I’ll be winging my way to Entrepreneur magazine’s Growth 2.0 Conference in Long Beach, Calif.

I’ve spoken at two of Entrepreneur’s conferences so far, and each time I’ve come back inspired and re-energized by the creativity, courage and can-do spirit of the hundreds of startups and small business owners who attend them. Entrepreneurs, as I know from experience, are survivors, the kind of people who thrive on taking the lemons that life doles out and turning them into multimillion-dollar chains of lemonade stands.

At this week’s conference, I’ll be talking about the usual topics of interest to startups trying to get their businesses off the ground:

• The two flavors of capital (debt and equity) and the pros and cons of each

• The business plan (your road map to raise the money you need to launch your business)

• What investors look for in a startup (and what turns them off to a deal)

• Why it’s tough to get a loan from a bank (especially now)

• Where to look for money (personal savings, home equity, credit cards, friends and family, angels, VCs)

• Closing the deal (valuation and term sheets)

I’ll also be hosting a seminar for existing small businesses looking to take their companies to the next level. I’ll be covering topics like what investors look for in a fast-growing company (and how you can make your business more investor-ready) and how to work with your bank to get loans, credit lines and equipment leases in today’s tough market.

[FYI, the Growth 2.0 Conference takes place tomorrow (Tuesday), so there's still time to sign up. Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, will be the keynoter. Just fill out the online registration form. There's no charge to attend.]

Last week, I sat down with two groups of clients–one was a group of startups, the other a group of small-business owners–and talked to them about raising capital, generating sales and the other issues they’re facing in today’s economy. To my surprise, the startups were positive, upbeat and eager to swap tips, advice and investor leads. The existing business owners were cautiously optimistic, taking steps to survive the storm while putting plans in place to develop new products and services to address market needs.

As all of us know, the entrepreneur’s journey is often a lonely one. Sometimes it feels like we’re an army of one fighting an uphill battle in the snow. This is why I’ve always believed that there’s strength in numbers. By banding together–networking, sharing leads, swapping war stories, lending each other a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on, I feel confident that we can survive whatever 2009 may bring.