Ever think a client is saying one thing ("Sure, I think it's a good idea, but I'll need to run it by the team") but thinking another?

Hint: They do it all the time. But by understanding a few simple facial cues, you'll be able to match people's words to their actions, and see who's telling the truth every time.

Check out this visual guide to what your client is really saying.

Every startup wants to be a predictable success, yet so few ever achieve this enviable position. In reality, getting there is not a random walk, and requires an understanding of the stages that every business must navigate and the organizational characteristics necessary at each stage.

Les McKeown, in his book “Predictable Success” outlines these stages and characteristics for any business. He points out, for example, that every business should anticipate the early struggle stage, a possible fun stage, and probably a turbulent whitewater phase, before they can hope for the predictable success stage.

Entrepreneurship is tough. And on top of that, people around you often tend to ask questions that can irritate the hell out of you (especially when you are new to this crazy world of entrepreneurship).

We have curated most frequently asked irritating questions that entrepreneurs often face and in no particular order, here goes the list:

#1 What do you do?

Okay. This is by far the most difficult question you have ever encountered. “What do you do?”

“I am doing a startup.” Bravo, if you are in Bangalore, but if you are in NCR, read the next question! :)

Behind all the dazzling mobile-ready electronics products on display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is a looming problem: how to make the networks that support all these wireless devices function robustly and efficiently.  

With less fanfare than you’d see in Vegas, potential solutions are arising in labs in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The grand challenge is to overhaul the Internet to better serve an expected flood of 15 billion network-connected devices by 2015—many of them mobile—up from five billion today, according to Intel estimates.

Tumblr beat out Facebook in a recent survey of what teenagers use online. Inspired by Branch co-founder Josh Miller's recent post about how his 15-year-old sister uses the Internet, Y Combinator partner Garry Tan surveyed a bunch of teenagers and young adults to find out which services they use regularly. With help from YC-backed Survata, Tan surveyed a total of 1,038 people from two different groups: people aged 13-18, and 19-25.

Business plans are dead — or are they? For many entrepreneurs, the business plan is an outmoded document that gets created mainly for the benefit of VCs and bank loan officers. Bootstrappers rarely think they need one to get by.

But the fact is that a business plan — even just a one-pager with a few financial projections — can be a valuable internal tool.  A roadmap for even the smallest or earliest-stage idea. It can foster alignment, set the tone for the business and even help you craft your brand messaging.

Welcome to the new Year! I hope you had a good holiday closeout to 2012, and are ready for a very unpredictable 2013.

We have a few important issues for you concerning the SBA Size Standard (eligibility) final rule, and new information on the effects of the budgetary crisis on the DoD (this is serious). Less serious seems to be our illustrious congress, some of whom are celebrating the recent news that in spite of their historically low approval ratings, they managed to rate higher than the Kardashians!

In spite of historically low approval ratings, we re-elected more than 90% of our incumbents, and continue to watch and clamor for more news about the Kardashians. That's strange because cockroaches had better approval ratings than either Congress or Kardashians, and I don't hear anyone clamoring for cockroaches! Nevertheless, we will try to make sense of the news in our world of SBIR.

A few our entrepreneurial heroes work on more that one company at a time. Steve Jobs (Pixar, Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square), and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock). And we regularly hear of entrepreneurs who are working at companies that acquired their first company who are now working on new companies while still at their acquirer.

It’s takes an extraordinary talented entrepreneur to be able to do this. So, should you try to emulate this? “Mostly” no.

If you are working on your first company or you don’t have a clear track record of success, put all of your energy into your first venture. Go all in, unambiguously. Your employees will expect, and respect this. Your customers will hope for this. Your investors will require this. And, the likelihood of your success will increase.

Every year, reports from the World Bank, the OECD and numerous private sector researchers tell us that nations are improving their regulatory environment in terms of reducing the complexity and cost of regulatory processes for starting a business. However, comprehensive reforms to stimulate startup creation are still relatively hard to find. Will the ever-intensifying global race to build strong startup ecosystems from the bottom-up change this?

That the White House focused on startup legislation in President Obama’s first term is significant. While challenges lie ahead in passing Startup Act 2.0, the legislative successes to date—including the JOBS Act—demonstrate an understanding about the need to look at economic growth through the lens of stimulating more potential high-growth startups. The World Bank’s 2013 Doing Business report has been tracking the progress of more than 180 economies over ten years. It found that countries determined to remove barriers to business creation tend to start with simplifying regulatory processes through changes in administrative procedures and only later move on to more challenging reforms to strengthen legal institutions relevant to business regulation (e.g. in areas such as obtaining credit for startups). These reforms usually require more political commitment since they demand amendments to key pieces of legislation, and therefore the involvement of more powerful branches of government.

Repeat after me… You’re going to have a written agreement with anyone who helps you on a project, friends included.

Even though they might not be happy about some of the terms.

Here’s why.  Anyone who helps you with your work is your subcontractor and adds to your legal responsibility and, therefore, potential liability.  Uncertainty in that relationship can lead to unclear deliverables, possible violations of your client contract, and a lost client or the end of a friendship. That’s why you need to have a written subcontractor agreement in place.  But there are some points that may be challenging:

Joining a startup is always risky, but some companies are better bets than others. If you pick well, you could be financially set for life. If we could have a pile of stock options in any company right now (besides Business Insider), here's who we'd pick.

LAS VEGAS – The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) is beginning to wind down, and while there haven't been any show-stopping announcements -- like a flying, electric car or even just a rebooted Microsoft Xbox -- there have been plenty of shiny gadgets to ogle. Each year, the advancements on display at CES change how we interact with technology.

These four developments were the talk of the show, and might point the way to the future:

Pity the humble infographic. Why? Because, like a Kardashian, it's ubiquitous and it inspires strong reactions--often negative.

SaveDelete.com, a blog with tech and computer marketing tips and news, published a roundup earlier this year of the "Top 13 Infographics that Mock Infographics." (Among them: the very meta data set "The Number of 'Infographics' I've Seen This Week" and "Infographs Are Ruining the Internet.")

I recently read an article titled AOL Email Address Brands You As Technologically Obsolete. The article said that having an outdated email address from a company like AOL brands a person as being someone who is not willing to move forward with technology. The article specifically discussed people looking for a job and how an employer might question a candidate’s suitability for the job simply because of the email address he or she uses.

The same can be said for insurance agents. What does your email address say about you?

I was intrigued by how many agents are using various “old” email addresses as their primary means of contact. I have a rather large database of insurance agent email addresses due to my weekly email newsletter (TechTips) that I send. So I did a simple search for some common email domains with the following results.

The following scene gets enacted in numerous workplaces every day.

Joe enters the cafeteria, and Sally, a senior executive, is standing right in front of him. Sally makes eye contact, smiles and asks Joe how he is doing. At this point, Joe might respond in one of three ways:

Joe says, “I am fine, how are you doing?” and not knowing what to say next, he starts fiddling with his phone.

It is hard to get a good read on a candidate’s degree of self-awareness and to get them to share their honest take on their weaknesses. It took me years to figure out how to get professionals to open up on this topic in a way that didn’t generate canned answers. These are the three questions that finally did the trick (at least most of the time).

1) Did “ACME” (insert most recent employer name) do performance reviews?

“YES.” That’s great. Not enough employers do them anymore and they are so important to helping staff realize their potential. What did your most recent performance review say were your greatest areas for growth?

Many entrepreneurs I know don’t realize that the language they learned in the corporate world, or even their recent MBA class, won’t get them ahead in the startup world today. Even if you have heard some of the new terms, but can’t explain how, when, and why they are relevant to your startup, you may be in jeopardy. As a reality check, try this quick test of your entrepreneur savvy.

See how many of the following “new” entrepreneur concepts you recognize, and can explain in terms of impact and value to your startup. See how many you have personally experienced already, or are currently mentioned in your business plan:

Every startup founder I know talks about the chaos of their business, which they usually attribute to that burst of growth that is required to get to positive cash flow. They envision a stable environment after that point, and may have convinced themselves that they will be safer and happier with a livable income, maintaining a loyal but flat customer base.

Sadly, this false perception often leads to the death of their business, or at least the end of their tenure as CEO. I “second the message” that chaos never subsides, from a couple of successful entrepreneurs, Clate Mask and Scott Martineau, in their book “Conquer the Chaos.” Your only choice is to live with it, and find a way to conquer it.

IT’S a baby boomer’s nightmare. One moment you’re 40-ish and moving up, the next you’re 50-plus and suddenly, shockingly, moving out — jobless in a tough economy.

Too young to retire, too old to start over. Or at least that’s the line. Comfortable jobs with comfortable salaries are scarce, after all. Almost overnight, skills honed over a lifetime seem tired, passé. Twenty- and thirty-somethings will gladly do the work you used to do, and probably for less money. Yes, businesses are hiring again, but not nearly fast enough. Many people are so disheartened that they’ve simply stopped looking for work.

I remember the exact moment when I became an entrepreneur.  I twelve years old and driving with my father from Rochester, New York (my hometown), to Toronto.  As we were entering the city, like in many large cities, one will see a lot of industry and large office buildings on the highway.

I thought to myself, “What are all of these businesses?  What do they do?  Who runs these companies.” Something then clicked for me.  These businesses were all started by one person, or a small group of people.  The ideas were curated on someone’s couch, in a bar, coffee shop, or while laying in bed counting sheep, as one wonders how they will bring their family the next meal.