Whether your company is relatively young or you’ve been in business for awhile, you and most other small businesses need to be operating from a common assumption. That is, that at some eventual point in time, in order to keep growing, you’ll need to access cash from an outside source. The time to figure out your approach for getting financing is now, long before you need it.
Start by interviewing a small cross-section of those sources, ...
As a small business owner, how many times have you hit the proverbial wall? Been running on empty? Been convinced that you will never come up with another idea or solve another problem?
We’ve all been there. Exhausted. Losing focus. Torn in too many directions. And against this backdrop, wrestling with challenges, big and small, everyday and longer-term.
Let’s face it: Being able to come up with some fresh insight, some new thinking, is the life blood ...
News on the economy is still decidedly mixed and continues to lean a little to the negative. Small business owners, too, report a mixed outlook on their economic futures, with some weighing in with (albeit) guarded optimism, others, not so much. Still others report a “wait and see” position, although patience is wearing thin on this front. Overall, we’d have to say that everyone, regardless of business size or sector, just wants to see some ...
Here we concentrate mostly on small business. And one of the cardinal rules of small business is that not everyone wants to—or should—grow into a big business. So while larger businesses certainly have a lot to teach, often small business owners are more apt to learn more directly from other small businesses similar to themselves. But sometimes, a big company is so iconic, so inspiring and so universal in what it teaches, we just have to ...
Usually a small business—or any business for that matter—wouldn’t react too well to a mob suddenly invading their place of business. But a “cash mob” – well, that’s a mob of a different color. And that color is green.
This is a trend sweeping the nation’s small businesses, thanks to one guy’s brainstorm in Cleveland. It’s exactly as the name says: a mob (a bunch of people) with cash in hand. Most importantly, once they reach ...
It was almost exactly two years ago when President Obama, in a speech in Buffalo, referred to small businesses as “…the backbone of America’s economy.” A lot of us, including the news media, have repeated similar thoughts on small business until we are absolutely certain that small businesses are single-handedly lifting us out of our economic doldrums. But then we read convincing evidence that makes a very different argument: that small business’s share of—and influence ...
We’re well into the second quarter of 2012 already—how’s your business going so far this year? Hopefully, your first quarter was a good one and business continues to grow.
Regardless of whether business is booming or your year started a bit slowly, cash flow can be an ongoing challenge for small businesses. Sometimes it takes awhile to turn receivables into actual cash. Depending on the type of business, expenses can be frontloaded for the year or ...
So are things getting better economically or not? There’s still conflicting information out there, depending on where you look. And even when the news is more or less optimistic, it is often tempered with a caveat or two—or offset with some less-optimistic information.
Some recent headlines bear this out. For example:
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reports that “Historically Low Business Confidence Begins to Edge Up, Ever So Slightly…”.
Last month, ...
Look! Over there—on the horizon! What is it, you say? Well, of course, it’s digital wallet, which could be THE NEXT BIG THING in payment technology. Generally, digital wallet is current industry-speak for mobile payments systems that would let customers pay with their smart phones (likely by just tapping) at the point of sale, eliminating the need to swipe a credit or debit card. Is this one step forward for paying customers… or one more thing ...
If the most recent employment statistics are any indication of what we have in store for 2012, the coming year may turn out to be a turning point in the economic recovery. Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor shows unemployment dropped to 8.6 percent in November, marking the lowest figure since March of 2009. While actual jobs gains were less impressive – a net 120,000 – the overall report was greeted with relief.
But ...
