Great Ideas for your Small Business: Find Yourself an Angel If your company is too young, too risky, or too offbeat to qualify for traditional bank financing, you might want to look for an angel. An angel is a private investor, often a successful entrepreneur, who invests in small businesses close to home. Angels prefer … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Hire a Good Accountant No matter what stage of life your business is in, you’ll need an experienced accountant not just to prepare your taxes, but also to help you plan your long-term financial goals. A good small business accountant understands and keeps up with state and federal tax … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Take This Self-Help Quiz for Managers Self-help quizzes and do-it-yourself diagnostics are popular features in women’s magazines, but rarely appear in business books. Yet it’s worth taking a few minutes to think about how you are coping with the toughest job in America—running a small business. Being an entrepreneur … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Ask Your Employees to Evaluate You Good managers are trained to evaluate their employees carefully at least once a year. These formal, written evaluations are used for giving raises and promotions or documenting problems prior to termination. But great managers should be confident and open enough to reverse roles … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Move Your Business into a Main Street Revitalization Zone When paul curtain, owner of raymond’s Jewellers in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, needed a loan to remodel his store, he borrowed money, below prime rate, from a revolving fund set up especially for downtown merchants. “As a small retailer, … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Get Free Government Counseling After working in retail for twenty-two years, Barbara Galloway wanted to start her own business. One of her first stops was at the Jacksonville State University Small Business Development Center. Counselors there provided her with help in finding a good location, setting a budget, record … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Consider Joining the Family Business Joining the family business is no picnic. But with more people spurning the corporate world for entrepreneurship, taking over the family enterprise has become an attractive option for many. “I felt like there was a real need for me to get out of the … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Know the DOS and DON’TS of Buying a Franchise Franchising in the united states is a $1 trillion-a-year concept. Some 600,000 franchised small business owners provide jobs for more than 8 million American workers. There is virtually no product or service that can’t be bought through a franchised business. … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Create a “Roundtable”Editorial for a Trade Publication Veteran public relations counsel harriett Ruderman dreamed up this great idea for her clients: “You get companies together in a group to discuss a key issue in a specific industry,” she explained. Then you submit the story to a trade publication. Ruderman, … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Join a Business Owners’ Support Group – There’s Strength in Numbers Entrepreneurs have a very tough time admitting they need help. But the smartest entrepreneurs I know aren’t too proud to seek outside counsel and objective perspective. There are many groups set up to function as self-help or peer … Read more
