They’re two of the largest businesses on the net, each worth billions of dollars. They rank in the top 10 in traffic, have millions and millions of users, and are powerhouses in their markets.

I’m talking about eBay and Yahoo. You may have heard of them, once or twice.

At some point an entrepreneur came up with an idea and the startup process began. It happened for eBay, it happened for Yahoo, and it happens with every business.

We spend so much time and energy trying to make our businesses and ideas perfect. By doing so we lose focus on the problem we’re trying to solve and possibly interest in what we originally loved.

eBay and Yahoo were created from nothing and were far from what trends and standards would define as perfect, or bee-yute-eee-full. Here’s a look at their first versions.

They’re both gigantic portals now that millions of people make a part of their lives each day.

If your product or website somewhat resembles the first versions of those sites, don’t worry. Like I’ve said, something is always better than nothing and can always be improved.

Launch that project that’s been sitting on the backburner and let the public help you better it over time.

Starting a business isn’t always a joy ride. I know it hasn’t been for me. People will always disagree with you. You’ll inevitably have to work ridiculous hours with no immediate reward in sight. Things never go EXACTLY as planned…shit happens. So what can you do to keep your head up when you feel like throwing in the towel?

1. Take a chill pill. First and foremost, you’ve got to calm down. Try and rid yourself of that overwhelming feeling by clearing your mind. Breathe. Go for a walk, rest your eyes for ten minutes, or do something you enjoy that will take your mind off of the situation at hand so you may return to it with a different, more positive perspective.

2. Remind yourself. Read your mission statement. Read your end goal. Read the dreams you’ve written down in the past (you do have them written down don’t you?). Sometimes we lose sight of what we’re in this game for to begin with and we just need a simple reminder.

3. Re-focus your energy. After you’ve calmed down a bit, re-focus your energy on things you can accomplish right away. If you look at all the things you have to get done before the end of the day, or week, or month – you can get overloaded. Get a piece of paper out and write start a task list, but only write one task at a time. When you’ve completed it, come back, cross it out, and write another one. This way you wont be thinking about too much at once and you can get things accomplished. Once you do a few tasks you’ll be feeling better and like your old self again.

4. Might as well learn from it. Look at the bright side of things. Ask yourself what the challenge that you faced today taught you, despite how it stressed you out. Learn from it. Make a mental (or physical) note of what you did to overcome it so that you can use that method again in the future when you feel like giving up.

5. Follow their lead. If you can’t seem to snap out of it, it may be time to seek some third-party motivation. Check out www.score.org and try to get in touch with a mentor. It’s a free service and they can really offer some valuable information and point you in the right direction. Talk to someone who’s always supported you and be honest about your frustrated frame of mind. Chances are they’ll continue to support you as they always have and give you the self esteem and motivation to continue.

These are just some things that I do when I find myself down in the dumps and ready to quit. We all get brain cramps from time to time, and with all the stress that goes along with owning your own business, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the reason you started in the first place.

Almost every business uses it. Chances are you do as well. It’s a shame it’s not considered a vulgar word in the business world. “Let’s make our website like that company’s. Our logo should look like that one. It’d be cool if our product looked like theirs.”

When your product or website is like someone else’s you now not only have to compete with the company from which you were cloned, you also have to compete with the mind of pre-conditioned consumers.

How many times do you have to read a book or watch a movie to determine whether or not you like it? Once. That’s it.

They’ve heard your story before. In fact, it sounds a lot like… The first experience they had with a product, service, website, company, like yours, left them with a taste in their mouth. It was either great or terrible. Either or will never be forgotten, and anything in between wouldn’t be remembered anyways.

The odds are heavily stacked against you if after telling someone what you do, they say, “oh, like so and so, right?� That company you were just compared to occupies the vacancy in that person’s mind for a category. The amount of time and money needed to one up the company you’re like, to claim the spot in that person’s mind, isn’t worth the trouble.

What you need to do is create a new spot. Invent a reason for them to remember you, in a way that’s never been done before. Be nothing like your competitors. Do the complete opposite. Take your product and mix it with something completely random in the World. Another industry, object, colour, taste, function, benefit, size, etc…

Do what Alex Bogusky defined as creativity:

“…it’s just the putting together of two or more thoughts, ideas, or objects in a way that they haven’t been put together before�.

If you practice that in everything you do, you’ll never have to worry about being like…

If you’ve ever worked a 9-5, which I’m pretty sure we all have at one point or another (or we still do and are dying to get out of it), you know what a boss is like. Annoying, demanding, hardly flexible, basically just…bossy, right? We can’t WAIT to get rid of that!

But wait a tick…what about all the positive things a boss does for us? We’re usually so wrapped up in our own thought about how he’s taking away our freedom, commanding too much of our time, not letting us do “what we wantâ€? that we forget about the extremely positive influences a “goodâ€? boss has on us.

Seth Godin posted about bosses on his blog recently, and here’s a list of positive influences we get from bosses:

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Let’s start with an easier question: who the hell is Matt? Chances are if you own a television, computer, or a pair of eyes, you’ve seen Matt. He doesn’t co-host the Today show, isn’t an ex-star of Friends. No, he’s a common man that’s far from common.

Matt’s 29 years old, had a career many of us wished for when we were teens—playing video games—and was quite content with his life, until February of 2003. That’s when he decided to try something different. Extremely different.

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A business will always triumph over a business idea. That’s because ideas are worthless without execution.

No matter how half-assed a business may seem to you, it will always be better and more successful than your business ideas.

That dumpy pizzeria? Yup. They’re better than your idea to revolutionize social networking, and always will be, until your idea is executed. If you ever get around to it.

If you’d like, you can e-mail me all the excuses you have for why your business is still just an idea, and I can tell you a few different places you can shove put them.

I’m sorry if I sound a little nasty in this post. I’m just frustrated with what I see around me, and with myself, for talking plenty of talk about other businesses and how big ours will be, one day.

If you wanted it bad enough, you’d have it right now. Put that pointy finger away. There’s no better time than now to get started. Screw tomorrow. Today is the day.

Go it Alone, a book about outsourcing almost every single task for your company, reminded me how much time I waste each day on tedious little things that don’t result in much other than a migraine and the development of carpel tunnel.

Many tasks can be outsourced for both your business and life. But in most instances, you still need to have to some form of interaction with your outsourcee at least once a month to ensure that the task was done, and done correctly.

I suggest you try a little Ron Popeil magic, if applicable. “Set it and forget it�.

Here are some things off the top of my head that you can automate each day, week, month, or year so you don’t have to worry about worrying about them.

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Do you ever find that you’ll have a project due a week from now, and you won’t touch it until the day before its due? Or you’ll have a bill to pay or a call to make but you won’t do it until it’s near the deadline or someone has reminded you how important it is?

Many people would classify this as procrastination. Procrastination is such a negative word. It’s far from a motivational term and really can make the situation worse when brought into play.

But that’s not what it is, in most situations. There are times when we’ll avoid doing something simply “just cause”. That cause is usually our dislike of the task or something that’s not enjoyable to do.

The reason these tasks are put off until the last minute is ordinarily because there are no restraints. No specific limitations.

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Just a little personal story about customer service I thought I should share. Give credit where credit is due, right?

So I have this espresso machine that I purchased using wedding gift cards last year. It’s cost was $500 at the time, however about 3 months after I got it I happened by the store again and it was on sale for $399. I brought in my receipt and asked if they’d honor the new price and give me a refund for the difference. I was totally expecting to be told “hell noâ€? because the back of the receipt says this is only the policy for 10 days after the purchase. To my surprise, they honored it without question and gave me back a big fat Benjamin. Happy Customer.

This morning, well over a year after purchasing the espresso machine, it decides to to (pardon my French) tits up. The damn thing just wouldn’t power up. Totally lifeless. Knowing that it had been so long since the purchase I was certain I was screwed.

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Processes, the key to productivity and consistency in excellence. They’re all about recapping what you just did, step-by-step, and determining what worked and what didn’t.

This allows you to habitually succeed and not have to re-learn the process for a task. In the instances where you’re unable to develop a process, or at least break it down, that’s where your hunch will usually cover your ass.

Try to develop a process for almost everything you do. Writing business plans, paying bills, working out, generating ideas. You can still keep things fresh by being creative, but using a process or pattern that you can call on will allow you to be in “the zone� throughout the day and make sense of your actions.

You don’t want to create a process of using the same ideas over and over, just a method in which you can recreate the steps that allowed you to get to those ideas. Apply a process to the large and small things you do throughout the day and you’ll be richer, healthier, and smarter.*

* That guarantee is not valid in California, Idaho or Udaho.