Getting Feedback From Peers Looking for some support? Put in a little face time with someone who understands.

When entrepreneur Rajat Paharia needs advice, he leaves his Redwood City, California, office and walks across the street to find Sunil Singh, CEO of Informance, a company with about 100 employees that makes manufacturing business intelligence software for customers such as Glaxo- SmithKline, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever. Paharia--founder and CEO of Bunchball, a 2-year-old company that creates hosted online games that are licensed to customers including Facebook, NBC Sports and Warner Brothers--also lunches with Singh, 45, to talk business. "There's lots of whining and bitching," jokes Paharia, 37. "You need good, smart sounding boards outside [your company]."

Getting regular, one-on-one feedback from another entrepreneur in a similar industry or stage of growth can reap enormous rewards for your business, from gaining valuable contacts to having someone understand what you're going through. "People who haven't tried to build things under resource poverty don't have the foggiest notion what [the entrepreneur is] talking about," says Jerry White, director of the Carruth Institute for Entrepreneurship at Southern Methodist University. One-on-one peer mentoring "has exactly the same validation as any support group."