Tips I wish I had when Starting my business

Running your own business is difficult.  One of the hardest things to do can be to get your name out there.  I run a small home daycare from my home and it is a huge balancing act.  I'm not just the educator and caregiver, but record keeper, advertising department, compliance officer, and the list goes on.  So, when I started out one of my biggest hurdles was finding potential clients.  Being new to the area, this left me without the normal word of mouth.  Sometimes you need tools to help you with your business.
I started with advertising simply: Flyers, business cards where-ever I could/got permission to put them, letters to business's to exchange referrals, signs on my cars, in front of my house, talked about it with anyone who would listen that I met, and very slowly I built a client list.  It took a while and a lot of hours out of my day for just researching locations to reach my demographic.  One thing I wish I would have invested in would have been someone to do all of that for me.  That was 5 years ago and since there are companies out there that you can outsource some of these tasks.  List source sites can take away the research on who to contact in your demographics.  This way you can look toward the best medium to contact those in your demographics with and the billion other jobs you juggle during your entrepreneurial endeavors.
These sites provide things such as telemarketing lists, email lists, mailing lists, and even potential sales leads depending on the needs of your business. I know I spent a lot of time building my own lists of contacts, potential clients, and referral resources.  Time is a commodity that you will constantly be in short supply of when you first get started.  So, putting a few moments into researching area's you can outsource some of these starter tasks can put time back into your day.  Don't be afraid to take a risk on yourself, but make sure that you plan and strategy before you take the jump.  No sense jumping into a dry river when all you had to do was look down first, better to look down and then follow the river bed until you find where the water has settled before you take the plunge!  So, what business are you starting?