Let's be honest. Most businesses fail.

Not necessarily Enron-type failure, but many businesses continue to make mistakes that others before them have already made. Here are 7 signs your company might be on the wrong path...

1. You have a "great idea" (but no engineers)

Everyone seems to have a "great idea" that they float around whenever starting a business comes up in conversation. A "great idea" without great execution is like a painter without paint. Just because you can imagine the Mona Lisa in your head, doesn't mean you can paint it.

Real Life Example: That annoying frat boy in college

2. Your company is a "cross between Facebook, YouTube and reddit"

Your great new "social networking" site has a grand total of 3 members. And that includes your Mom and Dad.

Real Life Example: That side project you're working on right now. Seriously, I'm not joining it. Don't ask.

3. You are losing money with every sale

Charging $15 for a product that costs you $20 is going to get you in a world of hurt real fast. If you're company has negative gross profit margins, you're likely on your way to see the judge (in bankruptcy court!)

Real Life Example: Pets.com had negative gross margins for every quarter of its operations. How much were they paying that sock puppet?

4. Your credit cards are maxed

You could run an insanely profitably business and still go bankrupt. Remember "Cash is King" and "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush".

If your business is out of money, it's likely out of business. Bills need to be paid to keep operating.

Real Life Example: Boo.com - Boo ran through 160 million before liquidation in less than two years of trying to be the "it" place to clothes shop online. Boo-hoo is right.

5. You can only make short term money

Want to make a fast buck? Go to Vegas. Want to build a successful business? Treat your customers like gold, not just a quick sale.

Real Life Example: Countrywide

6. Your "balance sheet" doesn't balance (without some document shredding at least!)

If your business has to "get creative" to balance your balance sheet, it just might be a sign something is wrong.

Real Life Example: Enron.

7. Your business is creepy

No one likes a snoop. If your business is creepy, it's probably not going to gain widespread adoption. Unless it's so useful no one minds that it's a little creepy (Gmail?).

Real Life Example: Pudding media. Pudding will insert ads into messages (voice and text) you leave or send to your friends. It targets these ads by listening in on your conversations.

Sources: CNET, news.com

Photo by soundfromwayout

When we think about the benefits offered by employers, insurance (health, vision, dental, life, and disability), retirement plans, and flexible spending accounts are probably the first things that come to mind. Those are great benefits that should be taken advantage of, but another that should not be overlooked is the availability of employee discounts.

Employee discounts offer a real possibility to save on products and services that we are already using. Signing up for new expenses just to get a good deal isn’t necessarily a good idea. Depending on your employer, employee discounts can range from non-existent to savings on a wide array of products and services. Many times, the best discounts are on the products produced by your own company.

The topic of employee discounts came up because I recently renewed my cell phone contract. By working with the sales rep for my company, I was able to get a 20% discount on my service as well as any accessories for my phone. While I was tempted to go with a more expensive plan, which would have ended up costing around what I pay now, I opted instead to keep my current plan level and truly benefit from the 20% discount. I have the most basic plan, so this discount is only saving me $8 a month, but that’s still worth the 5 minutes of my time to take advantage of it. Employees with more expensive plans could save as much as $68 a month for a family plan with lots of minutes.

Discounts aren’t limited to cell phones at my company. Others include everything from cars, movie tickets, restaurants, health clubs, personal loans, computers, dry cleaning, travel services and much, much more. There are well over 150 discounts available.

Granted, not every company is going to have such extensive discounts as mine, but many very well may. If an employee discount can save you some money, it’s surely worth a trip to your human resources department to see what they have to offer. Every dollar you save through your company’s employee discount program adds to the value of working for them.

Depending on where you are with your use of a credit card, making small improvements may be more achievable than trying to go from very bad habits right to very good habits, without some sort of outside help. For each case below, transitioning to the next step as an interim goal is a step in the right direction.

Missing or Late Payments

If you are missing payments or submitting them late, then the interest and fees you incur will likely accelerate your descent into debt.

Paying the Minimum

Paying the minimum will likely get rid of penalty fees, but your debt will still take a very long time to pay off due to the large amount of interest you are paying.

Paying Down

Paying more than the minimum, even if you can only do so by a few dollars at first, will greatly increase the speed with which your debt decreases.

Paying Off

Paying off your credit card debt each month means that you are finally free from interest charges.

Making a large transition, say from making only the minimum payment to paying off your card in full each month, can be a slow process. It takes time for your improving habits to make up for prior mistakes. To speed up the process, you could consider consolidating your debt via a peer-to-peer lending service. Such a loan could allow you to pay off your balance in full.

How you proceed after you pay off your credit card debt is up to you. You could stop using your cards altogether, start using them responsibly by paying off the balance each month, or fall back into your poor habits. Obviously the last option is only going to make matters worse. The first two are both viable and could be appropriate depending on your situation. I have and use a credit card for many purchases. I only allow myself to do so because I pay off my balance each month.

Whether you choose to make incremental improvements in your plan or speed things up by consolidating your debt, the goal of being debt-free is achievable and within your reach.

High school seniors have spent 12 years studying, learning, and working toward the day that they can get their diploma and get on with their lives. They deserve to be recognized for their hard work and determination…just not with embroidered oven mitts.

The gifts for graduates can often fall into the trap of tedium and practicality. No 18-year-old kid likes practicality! The industry of graduation gifts is sated with corny, impractical, and downright useless trinkets designed to say “I know you graduated” and also “I know little about your interests.” Graduation CDs, graduation books and graduation T-shirts are intriguing in theory, but they routinely fail to land smiles and purpose with their recipients.

The following ideas are surefire winners among the high school alumni crowd. Sure, they’re rather spendy, but with a Lending Club loan, there will be reasonable terms, manageable pay-offs and the added luxury of being the cool aunt who didn’t buy the oven mitts.

Give a grad a party

Celebrating their high school freedom is a lot more fun with 50 of their closest friends, an ice sculpture, and sundaes in a trough. Lending Club can make it happen by giving the party planning posse some extra girth in the budget and giving the graduate a proper send-off.

High school seniors are a special, text-messaging breed, so they will need a bash to match their hyperactive, hyper-social lifestyles. Pizza is never a bad decision, so making it a menu staple would be smart. Keep in mind, though, that these teenagers still eat like horses, so a skimpy supply of pepperoni and olive won’t be enough to feed a hungry group of bottomless pits demanding more garlic butter dipping sauce.

The perfect complement to pizza, at least in a nutritious-neutral grad’s mind, would be ice cream. Really, it matters little what form the ice cream arrives in: fudgsicles, cakes, sandwiches, banana splits, trailers. Might as well cover it all. Variety is the spice of life, and copious amounts of dairy and sugar are guaranteed to be a big hit.

Along with the food, parties need activities. Eighteen-year-olds are not at the point where they can sit around and have meaningful conversations with adults for three hours. Most adults aren’t even at that point. These kids will need distractions, and with Lending Club’s help, the possibilities are endless.

Rent a mechanical bull. Book a hip-hop artist. Buy everyone scooters. Center the activity on whatever the graduate likes best. You’ll make the man of the hour happy, and your recognition of their interests is bound to score major points.

Give a grad a PS3

The college-student-to-be cannot spend all his time studying, so giving the gift of virtual reality is a thoughtful gesture. Whereas most donors might stop with the game system itself, Lending Club lets generous friends and family go one step further by not only purchasing the console but also schilling for the games, controllers, peripherals, and stunted social skills.

The PS3 may be the most versatile video game system on the market with its games, movies, and storage capabilities. Your graduate can study to his tunes, take a break to zap some aliens, and take a longer break to finish watching My Date with the President’s Daughter on Blu-Ray. He’ll get less done, but he’ll have more fun doing it.

When it comes to games, you would be wise to purchase a variety: a sports game for his athletic interests, a shoot-em-up for his machismo, a strategy game for his mind, and a children’s game to put out when girls come over so they think he’s sensitive.

Give a grad a couch

If your graduate is as popular as she thinks she is, then she’ll need a place to put all those friends when they come over. Eighteen-year-old kids are not typically blessed with a great assortment of home furnishings, so being the first to cater to their home décor needs can get you atop their gift-giver list in a hurry.

Be careful, though. There are many mistakes that can be made when it comes to furniture, and they can mean the difference between getting thanked in a college acceptance speech and not getting invited to a graduation party ever again.

First off, no inflatable furniture. This stopped being cool when Goth spike belts gained traction. Second, free furniture from sides of roads, backs of trucks, and landfills is not okay; you want them to enjoy it, not avoid it.

Your best bet is to buy new, and with a Lending Club loan, the sky’s the limit. A cheap loveseat is nice and all, but a reclining sectional might get better reviews. Encase it in leather and you are practically a godparent.

Give a grad a car

The ultimate Lending Club use would be a gift that goes zero to sixty in 20 seconds and can comfortably seat five. High school graduates would flip out if the Lending Club gift funds went toward the purchase of some new wheels—specifically some new wheels that spin at stoplights. A car would be a big surprise for a high school graduate, and while it might not equate four years of high school skipping, partying, and disobeying, it will definitely be appreciated.

A car is a necessity for most post-high school careers, whether it is driven from frat house to campus or apartment to minimum wage job. Even those kids who choose a Hoity-toity Euro backpacking trip would have use for it when they get back. Lending Club is more than happy to help with the costs. With loans on a virtually innumerable scale, the Mercedes and the Astrovan are both fair game.

If putting yourself $30,000 in debt isn’t your idea of a just reward for a high school grad, then maybe taking out a Lending Club loan for the down payment might be easier. Getting a graduate started on the path to financial responsibility and established credit can be a gift more valuable than any other.

Besides, maybe someday, he could use Lending Club for his own graduate gifting.

Do you have trouble instilling in yourself a habit that you want to make natural? For example, do you ever want to begin saving money, or prevent yourself from buying a coffee on the way to work? It's often very hard to change yourself in a significant way because of inertia. You will likely do what you've always done, because that's the way you've always done it.

However, if you want to create a habit of saving your money rather than spending it, it can be done. You just have to be willing to make the change. As I wrote in a recent article, you have to be willing to actually want the change. It's easy to think to yourself, "I would like to save more," but not so easy to actually get up and start saving money.

Once you do start, it's very easy to give up after only a few days and go back to how you used to be. Think of people who are trying to begin a diet or exercise regimen -- they are so used to being sedentary that a new lifestyle change rarely sticks.

Steve Pavlina, however, wrote an excellent article on how to make a habit stick. The article is entitled "30 Days to Success". His plan is based on the idea of inertia.

"Let’s say you want to start a new habit like an exercise program or quit a bad habit
like sucking on cancer sticks. We all know that getting started and sticking with the
new habit for a few weeks is the hard part. Once you’ve overcome inertia, it’s much
easier to keep going."

So what's his plan? Make, force, do whatever it takes to get yourself to follow the habit for 30 days. Just 30 days. Don't think to yourself that you have to save your money forever -- just 30 days. By making the mental change to accept that the change is only temporary, you are more likely to be willing to follow through.

Once you are done with 30 days, you can reassess your situation with the confidence that you've already succeeded. Now, you can extend the trial period for longer, or decide to make it a serious habit.

So if you want to quit drinking coffee before work, simply promise yourself to save and invest that extra five bucks for only 30 days. Promise yourself now. You can meet any goal you put your mind to, and financial ones are important to every aspect of your life. All it takes is a willingness to change!