Great Ideas for your Small Business: Perform a Personnel Checkup Business owners used to getting routine dental and medical checkups would benefit similarly by giving their businesses a periodic personnel checkup. The reason: Every year, thousands of unhappily terminated employees sue their former employers. Their complaints, justified or not, cost small business owners mil-lions of … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Use the BATH System for Hiring Jay goltz has been an entrepreneur since he got out of school in the 1970s. He’s learned a lot about hiring and now has about 140 employees at his framing and home-and-garden stores in Chicago. He’s found through the years that hiring good … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Recruit Good Employees A small business can’t afford to make poor hiring choices. Yet small business owners too often hire the first person who drifts through the door, even for key jobs. Casting the widest net possible before hiring is one approach, but it often pays to bring in … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Know What Not to Ask Job Applicants When 100 small business owners were asked if they had ever asked a job applicant any of the following questions during an interview, all of them said “yes.” Have you ever filed a workers’ compensation claim? Do you have any physical problems … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Set Up a Cart in a Mall Veteran silversmith kent mCcustion used to travel to about fifty craft shows a year, often driving hundreds of miles to shows around Illinois. In 1997 he cut back to six or seven shows because of the Colorado Silversmith’s kiosk he opened in … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Turn Your Anger into Energy Carmen muñoz knows how tough it is to make it in a man’s world. She’s been in the automotive parts business for more than thirty-five years, starting out as the sole saleswoman for a small firm in the Detroit area. In 1984, when the … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Launch New Products with a Media Blitz Avi sivan, a former israeli commando and stuntman, gives new meaning to the expression “media blitz.” Through an aggressive and expensive combination of magazine advertising, infomercials, and direct mail, Sivan has created a marketing machine for his personal care products sold under … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Serve the Market’s High and Low Ends One of the most successful and creative entrepreneurs I know built an incredibly lucrative frozen-pizza manufacturing business by serving all ends of the pizza market with specific products. A former potato saleswoman, Kathy Taggares cashed-in her condo, jewelry, and insurance policies in … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Create a Fad People used to stand in front of dave kapell’s refrigerator for hours, even when they weren’t hungry. They were mesmerized by his collection of hand- made magnetized words—-an idea that evolved into a major 1990s fad: the Magnetic Poetry kit. Kapell, a songwriter and cab driver, … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Get Certified as a Minority Supplier Marguerite thompson browne, director of special projects for San Francisco–based Washington Sportswear Inc., was among the 4,000 people attending the National Minority Supplier Development Council’s (NMSDC) twenty-fifth annual conference in New York City. “This conference gives you access,” said Thompson Browne, whose sportswear … Read more
