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It’s Your Biz: A Good Book for Startups
Oct 15th
That’s it! You’ve finally decided to start that business. Your friends and family are supportive and think that you can really set the world on fire with your Italian restaurant, cupcakes or hunting knives. You’re all fired up and ready to go.
But wait! Before you go headfirst into your new life and new venture, take a couple of hours and read through Susan Solovic’s new book It’s Your Biz. I received a Kindle review version of the book from the publisher a little while ago. I’m not going to be able to give you detailed descriptions of the book or the chapters because the Kindle version doesn’t lend itself easily to that.
You may have seen Susan Solovic (@SusanSolovic) on television because she makes appearances on ABC News, Fox Business News and MSNBC as a small business contributor. The last time I saw her on TV, she was sharing her experiences as a woman in business and what the future for women in business held.
You’ll get much of this same common-sense advice in It’s Your Biz. Solovic doesn’t hold back on telling it like it is. There are several pieces of advice that I’ve gleaned so far that will give you a flavor for what I mean:
- Write a business plan yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s on a paper bag, as long as it clearly communicates the who, what, where and when of your business.
- Build your business for the future. I heard Susan mention this bit of advice while we were on a radio show panel together. The next day I completely reworked my business plan to reflect this concept. Most of us build a business we can run today. We don’t plan or create the systems that will allow other people to do the things that we are doing ourselves today. It’s basically the same advice you’ll get in the books E-Myth and Built to Sell: Build a turnkey business machine – not just a job for yourself. Brilliant.
- Don’t be influenced by friends and family. At one extreme, friends and family will push you to start a business without realizing that you are the one taking the risk. They don’t want to squelch your dreams or to make you feel bad. And so you listen to their encouragement without doing the necessary research and fail. At the other extreme, friends and family may not support you at all. This is your business – make your own decision after you do the work and gather the evidence to support it.
These are just a few nuggets of advice from the first section of the book. There are many more where that came from.
Who should read this book?
If you’re just thinking about going into business for yourself, this is a great book to get into before you jump into the entrepreneurial pool.
If you know someone who is thinking about getting into business for themselves, this book makes a terrific gift. It will show your support and give you both the opportunity to go through the book together and discuss it.
Coaches and consultants who work with startups would also get some benefit from this book. I read a lot of books about startups. Sometimes they all seem to run together, but I always get something worthwhile out of each.
Overall, It’s Your Biz is a great book to read if you’re thinking about starting a business, or even if you already have a business and want to review all the basics to make sure that you’re on track. With the new year approaching, this is a great gift and business book to review and reference to grow your business.
It’s Your Biz: A Good Book for Startups
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Women Owned Businesses Have Come a Long Way But It’s Not Far Enough
Oct 12th
How do women-owned businesses differ from companies owned by men? Not as much as they used to, according to a recent study from the SBA’s Office of Advocacy. “Business ownership no longer can be analyzed simply on the basis of the owner’s gender; businesses owned by women and men more and more share the same general development patterns,” write the authors of “Developments in Women-owned Business, 1997-2007.”
Between 1997 and 2007, the report found, women’s share of total U.S. firms increased from 26 percent to almost 29 percent; during the same time frame, men’s share dropped from 55 percent to 51 percent. As of 2007, the top four revenue-generating industries were identical for businesses owned by women, men, and by women and men together; they were construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and retail trade.
But there is still one area in which women-owned businesses differ from those owned by men: Women-owned firms were less likely to have employees. In 2007, more than 88 percent were non-employer firms.
Employment is on everyone’s minds right now, and a separate report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, “Overcoming the Gender Gap: Women Entrepreneurs as Economic Drivers,” suggests that with the right kind of help, women-owned businesses could become drivers of employment and stimulate the economy.
The Kauffman report found some similar gaps between men- and women-owed companies. For starters, while startup companies, especially high-growth startups, are the biggest source of new U.S. jobs, only about 35 percent of startup business owners are women. In addition, their startups are less likely to grow than those owned by men: Just 36 percent of women-owned startups in the report had employees, compared to 44 percent of those owned by men.
Lesa Mitchell, Kauffman Foundation vice president and author of the report, says that while women are breaking through the glass ceiling, they seem to be encountering “glass walls” that keep their businesses from expanding. As a result, three years after startup, just 19.8 percent of women-owned businesses in the Kauffman report make over $100K annually, while 32.8 percent of men-owned companies do.
Of course, some women (and men) may prefer to keep their companies small. But for those who want to grow, what steps would help them? Mitchell says:
1.) Establishing support networks early in the startup process is one way to position your business for growth. Joining the board of a company in your industry is one way to do this.
2.) She also urges successful women entrepreneurs to become role models and mentors for younger ones.
3.) And she urges more networking and collaboration between startups and bigger, more successful firms.
Networking seems to be a common thread when it comes to helping women-owned businesses thrive. In Forbes’ latest list of the best cities for women in business, the cities that topped the list had several things in common: a supportive legal environment, government procurement goals for women- or minority-owned firms, resources like the SBA’s Women’s Business Centers, and the presence of women’s business organizations to provide networking and support.
Women are often called “naturals” at networking, and most women business owners I know are pretty good at it. But to power your business to the next phase, you need to take networking to the next level. Don’t just network within your comfort zone: Get out of it.
Depending on your business’s needs, that might mean hobnobbing with angel investors or even venture capitalists. It might mean getting comfortable at male-dominated industry events or conferences, or meeting key people at companies that are much bigger than yours. Whatever you’re hoping to achieve with your business, there is someone out there who can help you do it—but not if you don’t get out there and meet them.
Image from Christian Kieffer/Shutterstock
Women Owned Businesses Have Come a Long Way But It’s Not Far Enough
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
It’s Time to Purge the Word Entrepreneur
Aug 17th
It’s Time to Purge the Word Entrepreneur
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
There’s a long-standing debate in business circles about the difference between the use of the term entrepreneur vs. small business owner. The issue centers on the notion that if you’re an entrepreneur you care about high growth and if you’re a small business owner you’re somehow destined to struggle to make ends meet while working your fingers to the bone.
jeff_golden via Flickr
I think it’s one of the silliest distinctions we accept in business and I’ve actually stopped using the term entrepreneur because I think it confuses more than explains.
I suspect there will be those that challenge what I’m suggesting here and that’s okay.
I don’t have anything against people calling themselves that, but the word entrepreneur has become tainted with this view of a person with a big idea, prepared to take on massive risk in an all out effort to go big or go home. For me, it’s just become a silly notion.
You can view your business as an entrepreneurial high growth machine and still work your fingers to the bone with little to show for it and you can create a little lifestyle small business that pays your handsomely and affords you the time to take in the world. So, what’s the distinction now?
I believe there are really only two kinds of small businesses – healthy ones and unhealthy ones.
A healthy business is not just about high growth. It’s about the owner’s decision to commit to a pattern of leadership through constant innovation and a unique way of being and doing that fuels their definition of growth. This is what I call a fully alive business.
Businesses that are lifeless and unhealthy are those that are simply led with the intent of managing and controlling what already exists and that’s the view of the small business that many who strive to be called entrepreneurs want to avoid.
So, you see, the only real difference between one business and another may lie ultimately in how the owner views the business.
The key to creating a fully alive business comes from the audacity to put innovative pressure on the organization at all times. That’s the real job of business owner.(Okay they have a lot of other jobs too, but that’s the one with the big payoff.) The only question is whether or not they realize and accept that role.
Success through a model of massive growth requires the chaos and doubt that constant innovation creates just as surely as the choice to control growth in an effort to stay true to what you want out of life may suggest another very specific pattern of decision making through innovation.
Either way, the business becomes fully alive through a focus on innovation, not simply on hyper growth.
I guess I’m suggesting that to bring a business fully alive you must bring a little chaos or order will eventually take over and suck the life from the organization. That’s the view of a healthy business, that’s the view of healthy growth in any fashion and that’s what I mean when I talk about the potential of a fully alive small business.
So I wonder if by clinging to the notion of the word entrepreneur, rather than simply embracing the idea of a fully alive business in all shapes and sizes, we are limiting our view of the remarkable opportunity owning a small business really has to offer.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
It’s About the Problem
Jun 12th
Business comes from solving problems. Innovation comes from solving problems in style—meaning that companies like Apple, Google and 3M
- solve a problem that others have not, will not or cannot solve; or
- they solve it in a cutting-edge manner; or
- their solution is more cost effective and/or more fun.
There are a lot of ways to be innovative with your products. But ultimately, it’s not even about the product. It’s about the problem that the product solves.
Products Solve Problems
In “Small Business Lessons From the World’s 10 Most Innovative Companies” Anita Campbell refers to “Booz & Company’s latest annual study of global innovation” which evaluated “How the Top Innovators Keep Winning.” She highlighted quite a few findings from the report including the four things that all the innovators have in common, which, she notes, are “things a small business can easily do.” I agree. Among those four is the idea that you have to understand your customers.
Respectively, Apple, Google and 3M are the top three innovators in the study (Microsoft is number six) but they are not the only ones making waves. In her article, Anita refers to the top 10 companies and you. Anita says that “these companies innovate by finding unmet customer needs and creating products or services to fill them.” Think about it: In the beginning people didn’t think they needed the iPad—they didn’t even know what it was. But iPad purchasers knew that they wanted a more portable computing experience. Apple solved that problem in the form of an iPad.
Innovators solve relevant problems—and small businesses can too. Whether it’s a business that provides a service or a physical product, it is all about
- identifying the people that you serve (target audience) and the concern that they have (the problem), as well as
- creating the answer to their issue (the product) and
- packaging it in a way that they understand and cannot resist (the marketing).
But this is not the only kind of problem in business.
Experience Comes From Overcoming Problems
You didn’t know then what you know now. And as my father says, some of those lessons come from mentors, and others come from mistakes. In “On Experience, Reflection and Change in Business” John Mariotti highlights the pain and pleasure of acquiring experience. He says, “The worst thing about experience is that you have to live through things to get it and that can sometimes be painful.” On the other had, once you do get it, “no one can take it away from you.” But as John points out, you don’t always grow and change from your experiences.
The situations that make a difference in our businesses are the ones that we understand
- what happened,
- why it happened, and eventually,
- how to change it.
The problems that we learn from and overcome can qualify us to solve our clients’ problems, and that’s business.
Solving Problems Is an Art – and a Skill
In “What Salesmen Can Learn From Saleswomen and Vice Versa” Diane Helbig says, “Prospects aren’t looking for the next latest and greatest idea. They are looking for solutions to problems.”
Every problem has a solution—somewhere, in some form. Medical research is based on that idea—that we can find the answer (given the right environment, the right team, the right resources). According to Diane, your potential customers care about finding solutions to their problems. You are in business if you can solve the problem and communicate it.
Since her article focuses on what men and women can learn from each other in a sales setting, her advice plays to the strengths of each. Diane says that “men almost immediately formulate a solution to a problem when it is presented to them.” Get the answers to people as quickly as you can. She says “women listen intently and then present possible solutions.” Pay attention, because you can’t solve a problem that you don’t understand.
If you meditate on a problem and its solutions long enough, innovation just may show up when you least expect it.
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Better is Only Better if it’s Different
Mar 28th
Better is Only Better if it’s Different
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I believe that the most important marketing consideration is an effective marketing strategy.
asgw via Flickr
Now, I’m not talking about the empty academic exercise kind of strategy. I’m talking about the discovery and communication of a core point of differentiation that informs and drives every tactical aspect of marketing and, in many cases, the overall business strategy of the organization.
And guess what, being better than your competition isn’t a strategy, it’s an expectation. There’s nothing wrong with striving to be the best at what you do, it certainly will make for happy customers, but it won’t attract that kind of easy buzz that being different generates.
I’ve not done this scientifically, but over the years I’ve rarely encountered a firm that didn’t think their products or services were superior to those of the companies they directly competed with. In most cases, those same firms also believed that something along the lines of “we provide better service” was their core point of differentiation.
While it may indeed be true that your service is better, striving to communicate this belief as a central marketing message is what keeps firms stuck in the rut of commodity with every other firm that is saying the same thing.
Firms that build substantial marketing momentum through strategy don’t strive to do things better, they strive to do things that no one else in their market is doing or to do the same things that everyone else is doing in different ways.
- A remodeling contractor creates and promotes something they call the “One Week Bath” – an unheard of proposition
- A law firm provides the same legal services as their competitors, but packages them in fixed price bundles. – heresy with the bill by the minute set
- A screen printer crowdsources t-shirt designs and shares sales profits with the successful designers. – wow, incredible designs and rabid loyal community
Now, being different for different sake isn’t enough. You’ve also got to uncover a way of being different that solves a current frustration, eliminates a problem, enhances an experience or dramatically alters a well worn industry given.
The most powerful marketing strategies are therefore:
- Something that is both unique and beneficial
- Something you can actually pull off elegantly
- Something that your competition doesn’t or can’t do
Where to look for differentiation
Ways to differentiate lurk in every corner of a business and industry and your hunt for differentiating strategy start by answering the following questions:
- What could we do that no one in our industry is doing?
- What is the greatest frustration of our ideal customers?
- Are there innovations in other industries we could adopt?
- Are there unique ways to package, price or deliver our products and services?
- How could we create a totally unique customer experience?
Here’s the funny thing though. There’s a good chance you’re already doing something that is unique, but you just don’t know it. In working with small businesses over the years, I’ve uncovered stunning marketing strategies by simply going out and interviewing a handful of an organization’s loyal customers.
Customers often appreciate the little things you do differently: clean up the job site each day, explain accounting in plain English, return phone calls promptly or provide recommendations of other service providers.
The key is to find these differences and make them your core marketing strategy. Sometimes this takes guts – maybe nobody else in your industry is promoting those little things, maybe they don’t sound that sexy, but your best customers told you that they make a big difference to them and that should give you the confidence that it will make a big difference to others.
You don’t have to revolutionize a product or service category to be different in ways that matter to your customers. You just have to innovate in ways that make sense to them and make your brand easy to talk about. Sometimes simplifying what you do can be the greatest innovation of all.
Human strategy
Once you find your strategy of difference you must go to work on building it into everything you do.
Use your strategy of difference as a filter for every marketing decision.
Evolve your language internally and externally to communicate your core difference.
Bring every member of your staff into the discussion and help them link their function to the delivery of your strategy of difference.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Why It’s Time to Kick Your Green Initiatives Up a Notch
Mar 18th
Results of the second-annual Sustainability & Innovation Survey of global corporate leaders by MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group suggest that green practices are taking firm root in the business world. Nearly 60 percent of the 3,000 businesses surveyed said they are increasing their investment in sustainability.
Perhaps the most interesting revelation is why they’re doing it. About half of businesses surveyed said the biggest reason was brand reputation and conveying a green image to customers – not to save money (though that’s a common reason, too).
The results reconfirm what many businesses already know: Consumers have altered their buying habits and are paying closer attention to the sustainability messages of the businesses they patronize. It’s a trend unlikely to go away anytime soon, and businesses that don’t understand this risk getting left behind.
The survey results notes that small companies are lagging behind their larger competitors when it comes to sustainability: Only 9 percent of companies surveyed with fewer than 1,000 employees were classified as “embracers” of sustainable business practices, compared to 34 percent of companies with more than 10,000 employees.
So what’s a small business to do?
If you haven’t started looking seriously at how to improve your company’s environmental footprint, start now. You can start by evaluating your company’s energy use (even get an audit, if your facilities are large enough to warrant one). Also look at your company’s waste and figure out how you might recycle more and send less to the landfills. Basically, you have to get a full picture of where your businesses stands in terms of sustainability.
Once you’ve gathered the data, it’s about weaving together a viable sustainability plan that explains how you intend to reduce your environmental footprint, and then following and revising that plan as needed. Many companies now form employee green teams as an effective way to engage employees in the discussion and get their buy-in. Employees also may have ideas you didn’t think about.
And once you get the green actions underway, there’s fantastic opportunity to communicate these good deeds to your customers. But there’s also a great opportunity to mess up. Many companies don’t know how to effectively communicate their green message and whether to make it a core part of their marketing endeavors. Here are some ideas for improving your green marketing.
Why It’s Time to Kick Your Green Initiatives Up a Notch
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
It’s Not a Business It’s an Ecosystem
Feb 8th
It’s Not a Business It’s an Ecosystem
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
Credit: Audibon Wyoming
I’ve owned a small business for over 25 years and in that time I’ve changed, my business has certainly changed, tools and tactics have changed and, in typical small business fashion, I believe I’ve handily adapted to the ebb and flow and lived to go at it another day.
When you grind away, adding this and that, and taking advantage of each little shift in strategy as single events, it pretty much feels like gradual change, hardly noticeable at times.
However, as I step back and take in the entire journey that’s been the last few years I can see that the aggregate amount of change in the way I go to work has altered the very existence of what I’ve called my business.
Today I don’t go to work in a business so much as I cultivate an ecosystem.
Now, I don’t write that to sound like some grand or pompous bit of consultant jargon, I write it as a realization of what I think it takes to survive and grow in this day and age.
It is no longer enough to make a great product or service, promote it and read the P and L to see if you made any headway.
Several factors come in to play in this notion of building an ecosystem over building a business:
- Our markets have never had more access to real time information, yet never had less time or attention to consume our messages
- Social behavior has become a business expectation and means of communication rather than a business tactic
- Almost every service, solution, product or idea can be acquired for free, the market now only pays for an experience
Given those factors, I believe that even the simplest business ecosystem must include:
- A strategic emphasis on building a collaboration community around prospects, customers, suppliers, partners and competitors
- A commitment to the publishing of concepts, ideas and methodologies in every size, shape and format
- The packaging of content in both free and premium models that leverage a market’s desired consumption devices
- The development of products that support services and services that support products
- A leadership brand that can build and tell stories and a commitment to get in front of audiences
- The building of personalized hubs of communities in the social spaces where our markets hang out
- The construction of a formal network of partners that provide every product and service our markets need
- The Fusion of online and offline tactics as a way to create more convenient, yet highly personal engagement
And, hanging somewhere above the ecosystem, much like the atmosphere, is the overarching need for a simple, inspirational, purpose driven vision that drives the system and runs through every story, hire, decision, message and brand asset.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Look Up in the Sky: It’s a Super Angel
Dec 24th
Venture capital has gotten harder to obtain in the recession years (VCs, like everyone else, have gotten more conservative with their investments). That’s why today’s innovative startup entrepreneurs are seeking financing from a new type of source: the “super angel.”
Halfway between traditional angel investors and venture capitalists, super angels combine the traits of both in a way that makes them well-suited to help today’s innovative entrepreneurs. Knowledge@Wharton recently took a look at what’s going on in the super angel arena. Here’s what you need to know:
- Like angels, super angels are often former entrepreneurs. What’s different is that many of them came out of groundbreaking tech companies, such as Google and PayPal, giving them insider insights into what makes innovative business ideas succeed or fail.
- Unlike angels, who invest their own money, super angels pool their money with that of friends, family and wealthy private investors. This means they typically invest more than angels, but less than VCs. Most super angels manage funds of $10 million or less; their investments in individual companies range from tens of thousands of dollars to $1 million, but usually fall below $500,000.
- While VCs focus on companies at many stages of development, super angels generally concentrate on seed-stage businesses that can prove their viability in six months to a year. They are looking for innovative ideas and startups that can run lean and mean.
- Super angels invest in industries with low startup and operating costs, including: mobile and web-based software, social networking tools and platforms, and Web-based advertising and media.
- Super angels are highly active. One angel cited in the article invests in an average of four firms a month; another says funding 60 companies a year is not unusual.
Because of this high rate of activity, super angels are more likely to sell a business quickly—which has led some VC experts to criticize super angels for not giving entrepreneurial innovation time to mature. The evidence doesn’t support this claim, according to Knowledge@Wharton. Here’s why: because they invest less to begin with—super angels don’t have to look for a huge payoff the way VCs do. True, they may sell a company quickly to reap a profit—but they may also hang on for years until the company is ripe for exit. Super angels were among the first investors in Twitter and Facebook, and are still invested in both companies.
As institutional capital flows into more super angel funds, they could move beyond investing small amounts in startups and begin financing innovative firms in the growth stage. Still, given the entrepreneurial roots of today’s super angels, there’s slim chance they’ll ever lose their passion for the scrappy, innovative startup.
Editor’s Note: This article was previously published at OPENForum.com under the title: “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s a Super Angel.” It is republished here with permission.
Look Up in the Sky: It’s a Super Angel
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
It’s Time for Yahoo’s Annual Layoffs
Dec 14th
During the past two years, Yahoo has reserved one annual date for laying off hundreds to thousands of people. It’s about time for the struggling Internet company to cut back again, just in time for the holidays. The Wall St. Journal reports that Yahoo is planning on cutting 5% of its workforce, or 650 jobs:
The cuts will be targeted at Yahoo’s products group, which builds Web properties like the company’s popular news, sports and finance pages, as well as its widely used email service. The group, which recently had about 7,000 employees, is run by chief products officer Blake Irving, a former Microsoft Corp. executive who joined Yahoo in April.
Mr. Irving had previously asked unit heads to prepare operational plans that factored in work force cuts of up to 20%, one person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Irving said in a recent interview that he wants the products group to work more closely with regional teams, so they share common goals and responsibility for achieving operational and financial targets.
Yahoo’s turnaround effort has seen it strike a search pact with Microsoft, enabling the Internet giant to focus on its core website properties and its display-advertising business. But Yahoo has continued to struggle with soft ad sales, especially in North America, the company’s most important region. In October, Yahoo said third-quarter revenue rose 1.6%, with revenue from owned and operated display advertising jumping 17%, while search ad sales fell 7%. The company at the time said its third-quarter earnings more than doubled.
Incidentally, the rumored Yahoo-AOL merger is off, according to Search Engine Land:
The would be AOL-Yahoo merger is apparently off, according to Crain’s New York Business. The site is reporting that “AOL tried to either get enough backing to make a run at Yahoo, or get Yahoo interested in buying it . . . Yahoo didn’t bite, and AOL didn’t have its ducks lined up to be a buyer.”
Earth to Yahoo: What on earth is your strategy? The company has been through three CEOs, a few purchases–notably news site Associated Content–and lots of layoffs, but still doesn’t seem to have any clear direction. That’s dangerous in today’s hypercompetitive economy. Unless they get a turnaround specialist in ASAP, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this ship go under or get bought out in the next several years.
Yahoo needs to convince Wall Street and advertisers that it is more than simply an aggregator of content or gateway to other sites that users will spend more time on — and it needs to prove that soon.
View full post on Business Pundit
Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, It’s an Entrepreneur
Nov 25th
When it comes to the economy, it seems the news hasn’t changed for quite a while: Business spending is down, jobs are nowhere to be had and the housing market’s slump continues.
“Economic activity in the United States has continued to expand at a modest pace, although some areas, including housing, construction and the labor market, remain weak,” the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, Oct. 20.
This is a sobering reality check for millions of Americans who continue to hope the economy will soon turn around.
What’s to be done?
With Americans becoming increasingly concerned about the economy and the government stepping in with short-term solutions designed to stimulate the economy, the answer is clear: We must support and encourage entrepreneurship and new entrepreneurial initiatives.
Why? Because it’s entrepreneurs who will create the new jobs millions of Americans sorely need.
3 Things for Entrepreneurs to Keep in Mind
1. Don’t indulge in delusional thinking.
In this changing economy where unemployment is stuck at 9.6 percent, it’s a mistake to think that we’re going to return to the way things were anytime soon. And who would want to? Things weren’t all that economically great before the recession began.
Let’s face it folks, we’re not going to see real estate skyrocket any time soon or lost jobs come back overnight. What we are seeing and will continue to see are entrepreneurs stepping to the plate to create new jobs. This is what will save the U.S. economy. Not the government. Not big business. It will be the U.S. small business sector expanding and creating new jobs that will get us out of this recession.
2. Be realistic.
As an entrepreneur myself, I love the concept of dreaming big and going beyond where anyone has gone before. At present, however, if you’re thinking about starting up a business, it’s more important to focus on getting up and going now than it is to get qualified for the future.
For that reason, the one thing I caution my clients against is starting up a new business that is more than two degrees different from anything else they’ve done before in their life or career. That’s because if you extend beyond two degrees it is likely that you’ll end up feeling overwhelmed with all that you’ll need to learn and do just to get up-to-speed.
So, stick close to what you know. Capitalize on your existing skills and experience when starting up. This will not only help you get your business up and going very quickly, it will also save your time and money.
3. Expect more and less from your bank.
While the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act – signed into law by President Obama last month – offers a fresh source of financing for small businesses (including a $30 billion lending fund to be distributed by the Treasury Department to qualified small banks that promise to extend new loans to small business), it’s still extremely difficult for small businesses to get their hands on that cash.
Now, more than ever, you must make sure that when you go ask lenders for money that your business plan is a “cogent, practical document that lays out where the business has been from a historical perspective and where it’s going and why,” so says Christine Reilly, President of CIT Small Business Lending Corporation.
The days when a small business owner could walk into their hometown bank and borrow money to tide over their struggling business are long gone. Nowadays, banks are asking you to front them money by asking you put up your personal residence as collateral to secure your loan. Expect this and be prepared with a solid business plan.
While the news on the economy may sound bleak, most economists agree that the economy will turn around. What is needed the most is creation of new jobs. And that’s where entrepreneurship and new entrepreneurial initiatives come in. If you are an entrepreneur, your time has come to do your part in creating new jobs. Start by making sure you keep in mind the above three things and get things rolling in the U.S.
Editor’s Note: This article was previously published at OPENForum.com under the title: “Entrepreneurs to the Rescue.” It is republished here with permission.
Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, It’s an Entrepreneur
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
