"Small Business" Posts
Quit Your Day Job and Live Your Startup Dream Today!
By Sure, starting a business is certainly a risky move. To make matters dicier, leaving a stable job makes the decision that much more difficult. Having said that, with a burning passion and an entrepreneurial spirit, you can find the courage to take the chance.
Before you quit your day job, however, consider reviewing the following five steps in order to properly pursue your entrepreneurial dream.
Start a Side Hustle First
Actively pursuing your side hustle will better prepare yourself to fully commit to a startup venture. There is no doubt that having that entrepreneurial experience while still working a day …
The Risk Of Being Satisfied With The Status Quo
By Tom Ryan
After Prohibition ended, there were two prominent family breweries in St. Louis, the Busch family (that controlled Anheuser-Busch) and the Griesedieck family. The Griesediecks, at that time, operated two different breweries, Griesedieck Bros. Brewing Company and Falstaff Brewing Company. The two entities would later become one company under the Falstaff name. While unknown today, in the 1960’s, Falstaff outsold Budweiser by a 50% margin in St. Louis in a battle of the local beer brands and, at the height of its popularity, it was the third largest selling beer in the United States—a fact, that, most likely, surprises many of …
Wake Up & Smell The Coffee!
By Tom Ryan
Sometimes the difference between success or failure is simply having the wisdom to seek an outside opinion. The one thing that you can’t provide, yourself, is an objective point of view. No matter how smart you are, your viewpoint will always be subjective.
In business, not having this impartial, third-party perspective, on occasion, can lead to failure. Failure doesn’t have to mean closing your doors; failure could be missing an important business opportunity, or, perhaps, the opportunity of a lifetime.
Thirty years ago, if you asked a person what brand came to mind when you said the word ‘coffee,’ he …
What Is A Benefit Or ‘B’ Corporation?
By 
Previously, when a new business was formed, there were only two legal entity structures to pursue, either your organization was for profit or it was a nonprofit. That is no longer the case with the development of the Benefit or ‘B’ Corporation. In the simplest terms, a Benefit Corporation exists in the nebulous middle. This allows a corporation to be for profit as well as for the benefit of some worthy social or environmental commitment.
Per ‘The For-Benefit Enterprise’ article by Heerad Sabeti, Harvard Business Review (November 2011):
In the past several decades a steadily growing number …
Making Your Website Your Small Business Showroom
A showroom is a well understood concept for business owners who offer furniture and home décor as well as home construction/remodeling products and services. It just makes sense to offer a space to entice customers who want to experience your products and services, one-on-one.
When buying a faucet, for example, a customer may desire to touch the handles, see the faucet’s proportion in relation to a sink, perhaps fall in love with a carefully presented vignette and purchase the entire display—the matching towel racks, vanity, sink, mirror, light fixtures, etc. Customers often are unable to envision how a finished product …
It was the Best of Times and the Worse of Times: When is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
An educational infographic created by digital agency Linchpin presents when would be best time (as determined by the greatest amount of interaction, i.e. the number of ‘Likes,’ comments and shares obtained) to post on Facebook. Segmented by fifteen industries, their data revealed that the best time for the majority of businesses is over the weekend—Saturday and Sunday.
Gaining a Competitive Edge on Facebook
The only notable exceptions were companies in Clothing and Fashion (Thursdays are better) and General Retail (with interaction spiking on Mondays). Every other industry segment had engagement soar over the weekend.
This weekend prime time for Facebook …
Get A Piece Of The Government Business Pie
Previously, I wrote about various ways to leverage the US Small Business Administration and its many services and funding options. In this third and final article about the SBA, I want to focus on the programs that are in place for minorities.
On its Web site, the SBA states that, “The SBA is a strong advocate of minority and special audiences. Whether you’re looking for information on programs and services in support of women entrepreneurs, veteran’s business development, Native Americans, special minority programs including HUBZone, Small Disadvantaged Business Certification and 8(a) business development, you’ll find it here. Additionally, we’ve devoted …
Corporate Philanthropy
Include corporate philanthropy as part of your corporate strategy. Both the company and the community win.
It has been proven time and time again companies that practice Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) gain tremendously. Gain in the community, gain with employees, gain on the bottom line, and gain in their whole value proposition.
Businesses today operate in an interdependent environment with multiple stakeholders that include owners, customers, staff and the community, who all require that their needs and concerns be addressed. As such, the rules of engagement in business are changing and there is no doubt that CSR has a major …
Truth and Consequences
Certain business myths have a profound impact on the decisions business owners make every day, yet some of them are only partially true and others are not true at all. Why then are we so susceptible to them? This is primarily due to our propensity to generalize.
The only way to be successful in business is to be a low-cost leader. No. Conventional business wisdom has identified numerous approaches resulting in comparable levels of business success, however the most commonly recognized are (1) creating products with highly desirable features (that are reliable and user friendly), (2) targeting niche markets, (3) …
ESOPs: Not A Magic Bullet…
…but a viable retirement vehicle for business owners
According to a recent survey conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, workers’ confidence in their ability to live comfortably in retirement has hit a new low. Confidence about having enough money for a comfortable retirement this year hit its lowest level (13 percent) since 1993, continuing a two-year decline.
Retirees also posted a new low in confidence about having a financially secure retirement, with only 20 percent now saying they are very confident (down from 41 percent in 2007). For many business owners, the company is their source for funding retirement. …
