Small Business Trends

Small Business Trends is Moving

2005-11-04T22:40:00.000-05:00

This weekend (November 5 - 6, 2006) this site will be moving to a new domain, a new look, and a new software package -- WordPress.

Over the weekend we will be moving to a new address: http://www.smallbiztrends.com. If you go there now you will simply see a page listing the site features. You will know when the move has occurred, when you can see the newly re-designed blog at that page.

Please update your bookmarks with the new URL: http://www.smallbiztrends.com.

Also, the new RSS feed will be: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SmallBusinessTrends (NOTE: the previously posted URL was incorrect! If you subscribed to a different URL, please use this one now).

Chances are that the site may be unavailable temporarily for a short while, as the move is taking place. I am sorry for any inconvenience.

See you over at the new site!

Holiday 2005 Online Sales To Increase

2005-11-04T09:45:00.000-05:00

The predictions for holiday 2005 sales are rolling in fast and furious for the United States market. Here is a rundown so far:

Forrester Research forecasts that U.S. holiday sales on the Web will top $18 Billion in 2005. That is an increase of 25% over last year, and another 2.5 million shoppers online. And 79% of retailers are offering free shipping! That's a pretty amazing percentage doing the free shipping.

Jupiter Research says that holiday sales online will reach $26 billion in the United States, an 18 percent increase over 2004. Jupiter also predicts that free shipping will be big this year.

Both reports indicate that what is driving more Web shopping is: (1) higher gasoline prices in the U.S., and (2) continuing broad adoption of the Web, i.e., more Americans are online and comfortable transacting business there.

For retailers that are primarily brick and mortar, doing more to push their online channels would be a good move. Also, retailers not offering free shipping will be at a competitive disadvantage -- so think about offering free shipping.

Small Business Trends Newsletter Now Online

2005-11-01T08:56:00.000-05:00

Those of you who read this site using RSS feeds and newsreaders may be unaware that we offer a free monthly newsletter, too.

Join the 2000+ readers who like to receive the monthly newsletter because it contains a digest of the most popular articles on this site (by page views). You will also find important announcements and a Letter to the Editor feature, and links to offsite content. It's a good way to be reminded to come over and catch up on what's happening.

The newsletter goes out via email roughly every 3 to 4 weeks. We know your time is valuable and we try not to bombard you. We never sell your email address to third parties.

Read the latest newsletter online here.

Or you can find out more about the newsletter and free downloads that we offer for subscribing, on the main Small Business newsletter directory page.

Using Email For Selling to Small Businesses

2005-10-30T19:03:00.000-05:00

Do you use email to make cold calls on small businesses? Or, more precisely, do you use email as the first point of contact to try to get an appointment by phone or in person with a small business owner?

Over at BNET I have two articles posted about using email as part of your sales outreach -- and I'm not talking about blasting out thousands of direct marketing messages (or spam as some might call it). Read:

Cold Calling Today

Making Email Contact with Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs

Free Book Giveaway - "Selling is Dead"

2005-10-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

Would you like to be entered in a drawing to win a copy of the new book, "Selling is Dead"?

The authors, Marc Miller and Jason Sinkovitz, were kind enough to donate three (3) copies of this hardback book published by Wiley & Sons.

To be entered in the drawing, all you need to do is take our quick 3-minute survey.

Your answers to the survey will help develop market intelligence about what it takes to sell to small businesses successfully today. All responses are 100% anonymous. Survey results will be shared on this site and to newsletter subscribers.

About the Book

You can read reviews of "Selling is Dead" over at Amazon.com. The book is getting good reviews, such as this one:

"Selling is Dead" is one of 10 best books on sales effectiveness published in the United States in the past 20 years. * * *

Of course selling isn't dead, literally. But it's changing in major ways, the authors say. Sales teams are underperforming because they are ineffective. The cost of sales people has risen much higher than their productivity. If selling isn't exactly dead, it's broken. The authors say the main reason is that sellers are generally unable to cope with the quickening pace of innovation."

Also, if you want to communicate directly with the authors -- and get further bites of insight -- go over to the book's blog, Selling is Dead. These days, even books have blogs.

Details, Details

No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Winners will be chosen by random drawing. The books will be mailed anywhere in the world. Survey and drawing ends November 12, 2005.

Go here to take the 3-minute survey.

American Express OPEN Adventures Wrap Up

2005-10-27T12:59:00.000-05:00

We have come to a close of the American Express OPEN "Adventures in Entrepreneurship" event.

This has been an extremely positive experience. I want to take a moment to thank the outstanding people involved: Rob May, Dane Carlson, Clay Shirky, Di-Ann Eisnor and Stacy Hoffman of Community Centric, and Thomas Harris and Lexi Reese of American Express OPEN. You can't help but learn from talented people like these, and walk away richer in experience.

American Express OPEN throughout this offline/online event has treated the bloggers with respect. They recognized that our time has value.

Not only have they compensated us for our time and effort, but they did several things to promote the bloggers and our blogs. American Express OPEN ranks number one bar none, in my book, and operates as a good corporate blogging citizen.

I hope we can look forward to future events and that they can involve a wider circle of bloggers.

Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs

2005-10-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

The Entrepreneurs section at About.com has named Small Business Trends to the Top 10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs. That's quite an honor -- many thanks to Scott Allen, the About.com Guide who developed the list.

I see a number of friends on the list, from whom I learn a great deal. If you frequent the small business blogs much at all, you probably recognize many of them, too. Here is the full list:

Small Business Trends - Anita Campbell looks at the latest trends affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs. A must-read for entrepreneurs.

Just for Small Business - Full of thought-provoking tips for small business owners from Denise O'Berry, I like this blog because the topics are often unexpected - not your usual small business fare.

WorkHappy.net - Carson McComas lives up to this blog's subtitle of "killer resources for entrepreneurs" by providing links and reviews of "killer" applications and other resources to help entrepreneurs work smarter, not harder.

Duct Tape Marketing - John Jantsch delivers 2-3 small business marketing tips weekly in easily digestible, actionable bite-size chunks.

Home Office Voice - Internet entrepreneur Martin Neumann shares his experience and tips for building a web-based business. His writing style is very informal and entertaining, but at the same time he provides some really solid advice.

Sacred Cow Dung - There are a number of really good blogs out there by venture capitalists about the VC market, entrepreneurship, and so on, but Christian Mayaud's blog is for me the one that most consistently provides content that is actionable, not just informative.

The Entrepreneurial Mind - Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship, looks at trends in small business and entrepreneurship and their impact on individual business owners.

Escape Velocity - Flemming Funch chronicles the ups and downs of life as an Internet entrepreneur.

BizzBangBuzz - Pittsburgh attorney Anthony Cerminaro delivers excellent commentary and some original posts on the challenges facing emerging growth companies, with particular emphasis on legal issues.

Business Opportunities Weblog - Dane Carlson mixes links and commentary on legitimate business opportunities with his thoughts and personal experiences regarding entrepreneurship.

Congratulations, one and all.

I also want to mention that Scott is the co-author of a new book on online networking, called The Virtual Handshake.

Adventures in Entrepreneurship: Tomorrow's Business

2005-10-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

running several businesses that are symbiotic and related in ways that I can see, but which must seem far-flung and unrelated to the casual observer;

bootstrapping small businesses, because today I think there is so much opportunity for small businesses versus larger ones that there is no need to get out and get venture capital or other seed money;

leveraging the Internet with information businesses, because those areas have growth potential and, besides, they are what I know -- and everyone should be in business with something they know.

Once again I will refer back to the words of Richard Branson for inspiration.

In his book, Losing My Virginity, (it's a business book, trust me), he writes about how his Virgin Companies seem to lack a cohesive connection to outsiders, but that there is a symbiotic relationship between many of them: "When Virgin Atlantic opens a flight to South Africa, I find that we can launch Virgin Radio and Virgin Cola there."

He describes his hodgepodge of 200 or 300 companies as a jigsaw, and says that he refuses to be held by conventional thinking about sticking to your knitting. Rather, he remains fluid in his thinking and does not rule out anything:

"The more diffuse the company becomes, the more frequently I am asked about my vision for Virgin. I tend either to avoid this question or to answer it at great length, safe in the knowledge that I will give a different version the next time I'm asked. My vision for Virgin has never been rigid and changes constantly, like the company itself."

I myself take this view. For instance, in addition to running this site and putting out information products (special reports, etc.) dealing with trends in the small business market, we also put out information products for motorcycle dealerships, and we publish an ad-supported, award-winning site for RFID technology. We also do consulting. We also write for other blog sites for compensation. And we consult with other small businesses to show them how to promote themselves online.

What's the connection? Everything relates to providing business information in some fashion and leverages the Internet. As long as these two criteria are present, I will consider any opportunity that presents itself.

I believe in bootstrapping small businesses whenever possible, because today the cost of starting many kinds of businesses is very low -- dirt cheap actually. That's especially true for information-based businesses. When I look at a business opportunity, I ask first whether it will throw off sufficient free cash flow fairly quickly, to pay a group of outside contractors whom I hire to provide specialized skills. Despite being a small business and a "virtual" company, I hire the best in order to leverage my reach. Plowing whatever money is earned back into the business is a key growth strategy for my businesses at this point, and I think should be for any small business in its early years.

Finally, there is always a business information component to what I do. I tend to be a bit of a wonk. That's my nature, and so I leverage it. I dig deep to find information niches that are not saturated, and fill the voids. For instance, with the RFID Weblog, we were one of the very first on the topic out there. By consistently working at it over a period of nearly two years, we have built up a loyal readership and have begun to be taken seriously by companies that would not have paid us any respect a year ago. This site you are on, Small Business Trends, was one of the early business blogs, and we have deliberately taken an approach of doing things that either the mainstream media publications or other business blogs are not doing. We try new things (PowerBlog Reviews, bringing in outside experts to comment on trends, this American Express OPEN event, and soon, a companion radio program.)

Having spent much of my career in the corporate world, I've come later than some to the entrepreneurial party. But that experience in the corporate world has been my secret sauce. It continues to supply the business grounding needed to have a clear sense of where I want to go in my businesses -- even if that means maintaining a unstructured "Richard Branson" view.

What do you think? What would you be doing? Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. (To comment, click on the small "comment" link at the bottom of this post -- it will bring up a small pop-up window where you can type in your comments.)

Read what the other two participating bloggers, Dane Carlson at Business Opportunities Weblog, and Rob May at BusinessPundit, have to say about this question.

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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The opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of American Express. If you post on the blogs, be aware that any personal information you post will be viewable by anybody reading the blogs.

The facilitator and bloggers for this event have been compensated for their time by OPEN from American Express.

Adventures in Entrepreneurship: Managing Change

2005-10-21T12:44:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: The following article is part of a series written in connection with the American Express OPEN "Adventures in Entrepreneurship" event, featuring Richard Branson. The event includes an online "panel discussion" around certain questions posed by Clay Shirky, our Facilitator.

I and two other blogger panelists have been asked to write about business topics posed by the Facilitator. The following is the third question.

Question: How do you manage change?

Response: One of the most important ways to manage change is simply to stay in tune with the world around you.

Why is it that as people age, we still listen to music that was popular in our younger days? I still prefer to listen to "The Who," the greatest rock band that ever existed in my opinion. They haven't put out any new material in years. But that doesn't stop me from buying the latest digitally remastered copy of "Who's Next", one of their best albums.

We become comfortable with what we know and what we liked when we were younger, that's true.

Along with being comfortable, I think we just stop investing the time and effort into keeping current in many avenues of our lives, and that includes our businesses. It takes extra time -- hard work even -- to stay on top on what's new and changing in the world around us. And failing to invest time in staying current is the crux of the matter.

We all get busy and focused on the day-to-day. There are fires to put out, payroll to meet, customers to satisfy. Many times we are so focused, we get tunnel vision.

Tunnel vision is not always bad, of course. Sometimes a good case of tunnel vision in a time of crisis is the only way our businesses have managed to survive. Our single-minded focus gets us through it.

But tunnel vision all the time is dangerous. Tunnel vision is when you are so focused on the here and now, that a new competitor comes out of left field and eats your lunch. Tunnel vision is when your products stop meeting customers' expectations, because your customers have grown but your company has stayed the same. Tunnel vision is when you wake up one day and suddenly realize something big has changed in the world (like the Internet), and your business is not ready for it.

The good news, however, is that managing change may actually be easier than most people think. Nearly 50% of managing change is just to make ourselves aware of it -- to stay on top of current events and culture. Most of us readily have the tools at hand. We simply need to set aside time to do it.

How should we stay current? One simple way to start is by reading, listening and watching what is happening around us in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, films, TV, radio and the Internet.

Earlier this year, I had the chance to meet and speak with small business expert Steven Little.

He advocates that every small business owner read 50 magazines a month (or Web sites, newspapers, radio shows, or other sources of information). Break it down and the number sounds do-able: it amounts to fewer than 2 a day. And, remember, they've repealed the law that says you have to read a magazine cover-to-cover. Skim parts of it and read one or two articles that catch your eye, that's all. This is a simple strategy we can all do, if we set a goal to do it.

Then, if you want to take it one step further, Little advocates learning how to listen to "weak signals," those faintest initial indications of change around us. He described the concept of listening to weak signals in a guest column here at Small Business Trends on this very point, Using "Weak Signals" To Identify Opportunities.

The bottom line is, that if you start with something you can control, i.e., devoting some small amount of time each day or week to staying current on what is happening around you, change will not seem so dramatic and difficult. You already will be in sync with change. You will have taken the first big step to dealing with change.

Read what the other two participating bloggers, Dane Carlson at Business Opportunities Weblog, and Rob May at BusinessPundit, have to say about this question.

What do you think? How do you manage change? Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. (To comment, click on the small "comment" link at the bottom of this post -- it will bring up a small pop-up window where you can type in your comments.)

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship: Transcript of the Event

2005-10-20T22:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote my account of the American Express OPEN Adventures in Entrepreneurship event in Miami, Florida. Anchorwoman Jane Pauley interviewed billionaire Sir Richard Branson before a live audience of 2000+ small business owners. I had the good fortune to be there, and I wanted to make sure you could read the transcript of that event.

Here is the link to the transcript of that event.

I took away some key learnings from Branson's talk, including these:

On Branson's style of management: "I make sure that I spend most of my time out and about and experiencing my businesses...."

On competition and striving to be the best: "Anyway, there were 12 other airlines and they were all much, much bigger than Virgin Atlantic and we were not out to topple them, we were out to survive. They toppled themselves and every single one of them disappeared. And I think the -- the thing to learn from that is the best -- you know, the best never -- never -- never disappear."

Branson's views about the Internet: "I think if companies are not embracing it they're making a big mistake."

On the advantages of choosing entrepreneurship very very young: "One of the advantages of leaving school at 15 or 16 is you don't have a steady relationship. You don't have a mortgage to pay. You've got nothing to lose."

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship: Small Business Essentials

2005-10-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines - It is impossible to overemphasize how much these giant search engines have changed the way we do business. Want to research a product or service, find outlets in your area carrying it, and do some comparison shopping? Go to the search engines. Need to find out the background of a prospective employee or a potential supplier or business partner? Check them out online. Want to conduct market research or get competitive intelligence? Dig in and start at the search engines.

It would be easy to focus solely on Google. After all, Google has by far the biggest share of business searchers, and its name has become synonymous with ferreting out information via the Internet. But I include the other top search engines, MSN and Yahoo, because they bring something to the table too. Perhaps most importantly, the competition among all three is part of the reason that Google and the rest keep getting better. Funny how competition works....

Amazon.com - You are probably thinking, 'why would an online bookstore be among the list of functions small business could not live without?' It's because Amazon.com is more than just a bookstore.

Once Amazon.com began to sell books, CDs and DVDs that the average Joe created, and became a distribution channel for the little guy, Amazon.com ceased to be a bookstore and became a marketplace. And once that happened, its value to small business skyrocketed.

Today, you can self-publish a book or produce films or music on your own inexpensively, and Amazon.com will sell them for you. With Amazon's nearly worldwide reach, you can be assured that the tiniest niche audience can find your product. It's turned the economics of marketing niche products on its head -- suddenly it is affordable to get to market. Moreover, this has led to a huge increase in the number and variety of voices that can now be "heard" all over the world. How empowering!

U.S. Government websites - The United States government websites used to be pretty bad, with few exceptions. They were boring, bureaucratic, and oriented to the agency, not to the citizenry. The past year and a half have seen significant improvements. I am amazed at the information available online at these sites, and even the transactions that can be carried out online. Never in recent history has our federal government been so helpful toward small business, and I only hope this is a trend that we see more of. (My apologies to my international readers. The same may be true for government websites of other countries -- I just do not happen to be familiar with them.)

Among the U.S. government sites essential to small business are (sorry -- I could not limit this category to just one):
Business.gov - This impressive website is the government's gateway to all sorts of advice on how to start, grow and run a business. 'Nuff said -- check it out.

IRS Small Business - I know what you're probably thinking... 'Get help from the IRS? Right!' But go over to this site and give it a chance. Trust me, you'll find a lot of helpful information, including online workshops for business owners. You can even apply online for employer identification numbers (EINs).

Small Business Administration (SBA) - The SBA is not just about loans. You'll find a tremendous amount of information on the topic of financing a business generally. You can also find research about small business at the Advocacy section.

Census.gov - many people email me and ask me how to research businesses of a certain type, etc. Whatever you do, when looking for market research always start at the U.S. Census site. It is a wealth of free data that you can slice and dice multiple ways, with various online search and reporting tools.
SCORE Biz Powerlinks - SCORE's (Service Corp of Retired Executives) website is impressive. While many of the resources are directed toward startups, you can find useful business information for established businesses, too. The Power Links section of the SCORE website is an exhaustive collection of links to helpful business websites.

CEO Express - The fifth information website was a tough call. I actually could have named a dozen or more sites I find valuable. But CEO Express aggregates hand-selected links to a wide array of business tools and information sites, on topics ranging from travel sites, to office tools and calculators, to international newspapers, to health information. Definitely worth bookmarking.

Read what the other two participating bloggers, Dane Carlson at Business Opportunities Weblog, and Rob May at BusinessPundit, have to say about this question.

What do you think? What online information sources are essential to small businesses? Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. (To comment, click on the small "comment" link at the bottom of this post -- it will bring up a small pop-up window where you can type in your comments.)

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship: Strategies for a Nimble Business

2005-10-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

1) Do what others are NOT doing -

not

2) Listen carefully and pay attention to detail -

3) Have courage ... and hedge your bets -

What do you think? What strategies can companies adopt to be nimble? Read what Rob the BusinessPundit, and Dane at the Business Opportunities Weblog, have written on this question. Then please come back and leave a comment below with your thoughts. (To comment, click on the small "comment" link at the bottom of this post -- it will bring up a small pop-up window where you can type in your comments.)

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship Part 2: The Event

2005-10-19T16:06:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: The following article is part of a series written in connection with the American Express OPEN "Adventures in Entrepreneurship" event.

If you are coming to this site for the first time, please read my previous articles in the following order and everything will make more sense: "What Would You Ask Richard Branson?", and "Adventures in Entrepreneurship Part 1: Meeting Richard Branson." (Remember, this is a "blog" and everything appears in reverse chronological order.)

After leaving the backstage area, Rob the BusinessPundit and I, went out into the lobby and networked. Those attending were 2,000+ American Express customers from the Miami area -- all would qualify as "small business owners" I believe. As part of the light repast being served was Branson wine. Yes, among the 300 companies that are part of the Virgin family of companies owned by Richard Branson, is a winery business.

Eventually 8:00 PM rolled around and we went into the beautiful deep-red, art deco style theater. We had good seats -- maybe 35 rows back.

First came a few announcements. The business owners attending had been given a chance to write out questions in the lobby before the event. So, those whose questions had been chosen were announced and they were requested to move to a special seating section which was lighted for cameras and with microphones already set up. (More on this part later.)

Then came a few opening remarks by American Express OPEN President Susan Sobbott. She explained why this conference was being put on (to thank customers for their business and to give them an opportunity to network with other business owners in their community).

Jane Pauley asked a series of questions, and Richard Branson answered them very naturally. His story is nothing less than inspiring: he quit school at 16 and started his first business (a magazine). From there he opened a music record store situated over a shoe store. After several decades of struggling (as he says, the name of game at first was just "survival"), eventually his businesses reached the point where they are today -- having made him a billionaire.

Now, I am not going to spend time trying to tell you everything that was said, from memory. The whole event was recorded and a transcript prepared. As soon as the transcript is available, I will provide a link to the transcript and point out a few highlights of key learning. That way you can read the discussion in their own words.

One thing I do want to mention is how much enthusiasm and energy was in that crowd. The session went longer than expected. Other than a handful of people (possibly parents leaving to go relieve babysitters at home) everyone seemed enthralled and stayed until the end.

In fact, there was so much energy that Richard Branson dispensed with the organized approach to reading questions from cards, and simply called on those in the audience to speak up with their questions. The business owners attending were not shy -- look, you can't be successful unless you know how to speak up, right?

At one point, a young man from the balcony shouted out his question drowning out everyone else, he was so excited to ask it. It turns out that he was 17 years old. He attended with his father, a small business owner. He asked Richard Branson for a job, and was extremely persistent, until Branson eventually said something like "we'd love to have you on board." Definitely the most unusual job interview I've ever witnessed.

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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Adventures in Entrepreneurship Part 1: Meeting Richard Branson

2005-10-19T07:02:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: This post is part of a series of articles written in connection with the American Express OPEN "Adventures in Entrepreneurship" event. Background about the event can be found here at "What Would You Ask Richard Branson?"

Last evening I met Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire entrepreneur, and renowned journalist Jane Pauley. I have to say, it was a memorable encounter just to see how poised and yet down-to-earth they were.

The evening started at 6:30 PM. I and my entourage were driven in a luxurious limo to the event -- OK, OK, so I exaggerate. Actually what happened was that another blogger (Rob the Businesspundit) and I and some people working for American Express walked several blocks from our hotel to the Jackie Gleason Theater, where the event was held. We entered through a side door for American Express employees and media. There we were given green colored wrist bands, which were our backstage passes.

In the theater lobby, over 2,000 attendees were networking. We made our way through them to a staging area where there were various people from American Express and members of the media.

After a while in walks Richard Branson, with Jane Pauley on one side and Susan Sobbott, the President of American Express OPEN, on the other. It was just like celebrities arriving on the red carpet on Oscar night, with camera flashes going off and shutters clicking. After posing for photographs, the three of them separated and began to answer questions from the media. At this point our little blogging group was standing off to the side letting the journalists do their work.

One particularly notable comment he made during the press interview when asked what advice he had for American entrepreneurs was: "The U.S. is the land of entrepreneurs. I can learn as much from U.S. entrepreneurs as they can learn from me."

Eventually someone prodded me to go up and ask Richard Branson a question. So I sidled my way up to the front with the press, and managed to squeeze in one question. Now, I know you are dying to know: given her one shot to ask Richard Branson a question, what profound entrepreneurship insight did she ask about? Well, the journalists ahead of me had asked some great questions, and as I did not want to repeat them I asked something a little unusual about current culture, since he seems to be such a clued-in guy. I simply asked him if he'd ever read blogs. With a kind of half-chuckle he laughed and said, "No, I don't believe I have."

By and by, Jane Pauley made her way around the room and graciously introduced herself to everyone. I said I was a blogger, and she smiled (she looks exactly the same in person as on camera) and said, "Oh, I don't think I've ever met a blogger before." Then Rob put out his hand and said, "I'm a blogger too."

One notable thing Jane Pauley said was something like "I don't think news has ever been so well covered. The Internet can be sloppy and messy and sometimes you can't tell lies from the truth but with so many people out there involved and discussing it -- the truth will be uncovered."

Our time backstage lasted 15 minutes. Richard Branson then left and made his way out into the crowd in the lobby, cameramen behind him, and talked with guests -- quite a genuine thing to do. Among the guests were a few contestants from his short-lived reality TV show, and so he wanted to greet them.

In part 2, I will tell you about the event itself, which is the real meat of this story.

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Follow the conversation at Technorati: OPEN Adventures

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What Would You Ask Richard Branson?

2005-10-18T09:33:00.000-05:00

This evening (Tuesday, October 18, 2005) I will be hearing Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Airlines, speak at the American Express Open "Adventures" Conference.

I've been hired to be part of an online blogging event about the Conference. The Conference kicks off this evening with a live, in-person event and then continues through the week as an online conference.

The live event: This evening Sir Richard Branson will be interviewed by Jane Pauley, here in Miami, Florida, where I am at the moment. I am hoping -- hoping -- to be able to ask a question of him. If you had the chance, what would you ask Richard Branson? Please leave a comment below if there is a question you would like to ask. With any luck, maybe I will get the chance to pose your question.

The online event: Following the live event, three veteran business bloggers (myself, Rob May of BusinessPundit, and Dave Carlson of the Business Opportunities weblog) will be writing about the live event and entrepreneurship topics. Clay Shirky, a professor and blogging pioneer, will be serving as the facilitator for the online event.

While the online conference is in progress, you'll see the following disclaimers at the bottom of relevant posts.

"The opinions expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of American Express. If you post on the blogs, be aware that any personal information you post will be viewable by anybody reading the blogs."

"The facilitator and bloggers for this event have been compensated for their
time by OPEN from American Express."

So keep in mind that despite being paid for our time to participate in this conference, American Express wants us to say what we really think. They just want you to realize it is us saying it, not them.

Tonight's event will not end until almost 10:00 PM Eastern U.S. time. So we may not be posting anything online until very late tonight or early tomorrow. But please come back during the week to all three blogs for lots of interesting discussion about Richard Branson and entrepreneurship.

Working On, Not In, The Business

2005-10-16T22:19:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: It's time again for another article by expert guest blogger, John Wyckoff. This month he looks at something every small business owner has heard, but rarely ever gets explained.

By John Wyckoff

How often have you heard a trainer or consultant say that as the owner of the business you should be working "on it" rather than "in it?" I've said it often myself. Fortunately, no one has ever asked me exactly what that meant. It appears to be a cliche or phrase that has become accepted although not clearly defined or understood.

So, what's the difference between working on or in your business? Employees work in the business. Most have specific duties or tasks to accomplish on a regular basis. Most know what's expected of them. The "boss" however, doesn't have such a clear path and few were trained to be bosses. Their tasks are self appointed and, based on my observations, quite varied from owner to owner. The result is that many work in the business sometimes and on it at other times. It appears to be a matter of priorities and fires.

All too often the boss spends much of his or her time fighting fires. Rather than an owner working on the business they have become crisis managers. Many sit in their offices and wait for someone to come through the door with a problem that needs attention or resolution -- now.

Most owners seem to be pretty good at handling crises problems. Some even call them "opportunities." The reality is that the owner has trained his employees to bring all problems that need immediate attention to them. This, of course, takes the responsibility away from the staff and puts it squarely on the owner's shoulders. I see extreme examples when a store is being remodeled or expanded. The owner then becomes the construction foreman, the architect, the designer and the one who knows where all the materials can be found.

Through it all, the store keeps on running. Sales continue to be made, orders for inventory are placed; each department does its tasks. The employees know what to do on a day-to-day basis. So far there seems to be no reason to change the situation. However, there is also no leverage, no long term planning, no continuing education and the owner is getting little input other than from staff members. And most of that is negative.

Okay, so what would change if the owner started working on the business? First, he or she would not be the first one in and the last one out. He wouldn't necessarily come to the store every day. She would be circulating in the community making contacts with other owners of small businesses getting ideas. He would seek out organizations made up of like-minded business people in his community. She would be joining associations like the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, and the Lion's Club. Once a member the owner would be attending regular meetings to become an integral part of the community.

The owner would be expanding his or her circle of associates and yes, even friends, outside the industry. He or she would be spending "think time," that quiet time spent thinking about the future and how to use all that knowledge bottled up inside but not exercised because of day-to-day pressures.

As I travel and talk to owners I often hear them complain that they don't get as much time to do the things they like anymore; that they are working longer hours than ever and they are beginning to suffer from burnout.

Well, Bunky, burnout is not uncommon. It's not something only a few suffer. If you've been in the business for a decade or more you've probably suffered some level of burnout, distress, angst that seems to be almost impossible to resolve. You've been spending the majority of your time solving other people's problems. You've come to accept it as just part of the business. It doesn't have to be that way.

Only you can change you. Your quality of life has to be a high priority. Some dealers have discovered that once they give their subordinates more latitude to make critical decisions those staff members rise to the occasion and become better managers themselves.

Will they make mistakes? Count on it. People don't learn by doing repetitive work. They learn by making judgment calls that are not always right. They learn by being given the authority and responsibility to do a better job. As an owner it is your responsibility to mentor and coach your managers and have them do the same for those who report to them.

There is an adage that says: "If it can be measured it can be managed. If it is measured it can be improved." Working on your business should mean that you have the tools to measure and manage and more importantly, your managers have the training to measure and manager those who report to them.

We are truly in the digital age. Computers, cameras, even phones have moved from analog to digital. Your business must do the same. You have the hardware. Now, as the owner must learn what those digital reports mean and what you need to do to implement and monitor them.

On the analog side you do need to hone your mentoring and coaching skills. Fact is your staff is closer to an extended family than a working team. Like it or not you are the Daddy or the Mommy as well as the Chief of Police and coach. However, you shouldn't be the sole fireman.

Like this article? Read more by John Wyckoff:

Harley, Short Sellers and Franchisees

A Dangerous Trend

And more at our Expert's Directory

Small Businesses Have More Technology Choices

2005-10-14T22:22:00.000-05:00

It is an excellent time to be a small business.

Despite all the challenges small businesses face, today we have more affordable resources, tools and support than ever.

Take technology, for example. The average small business is equipped with more technology than a large corporate office of two generations ago. Technology has had a huge impact on small businesses because it positions small businesses to deliver results that in many situations can rival those of large corporations (read "Technology Levels the Playing Field").

Small businesses wield significant buying power and collectively make an attractive market. Large tech companies know that, and market leaders put their R&D money where their mouths are. One example is HP, which this year has made a major initiative to introduce new products and services designed just for small businesses.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to talk by phone with Lisa Wolfe and Jack Van Horn, two executives with Hewlett Packard (HP). They were announcing a number of offerings and special programs to serve small businesses, under HP's Smart Office portfolio.

The new product offerings include a new backup and recovery software, called HP StorageWorks Data Protector Express. HP also offers a managed services contract for remote backup and security including anti-spyware and antivirus security protection called Smart Desktop Management Service. It is very attractively priced at about $19/month per PC client, and right now they are offering a 30-day free trial.

There is also a modular storage array solution meant for SMBs with the need to keep adding to data storage, such as law firms that experience rapid data growth. And they have partnered with Cisco to provide networking solutions and tools for SMBs, such as an online configurator for figuring networking needs.

More can be found at the HP website and in the press release.

Some bloggers do not like to be contacted with press releases nor do they have interest in following up on them. Time permitting, I usually jump at the chance to talk with vendors making big announcements about the small business market. Why? Because it is important to see not just how small businesses think, but also how vendors that vie for their dollars are thinking about small businesses.

I consider three questions when talking with vendors about their new offerings:

Does the vendor really understand the needs of the small business market?

Is the small business market an important part of their business strategy so that they will invest in product development for the SMB market?

Has the offering been intelligently designed from the ground up specifically with small businesses in mind (rather than something half-heartedly slapped together to respond to senior management's call "we need an SMB offering, people!")?

On all three questions I am impressed. HP's been putting a lot of effort into new product, including partnering with other companies like Cisco to bring critical components to their offering. While I have not used any of these particular offerings, at least from the descriptions it sounds as if HP has attempted to make the products (1) easy to implement and (2) affordable -- two keys for small businesses.

Lisa Wolfe, HP Worldwide SMB Business Protection Solutions Manager, pointed out that 9 out of 10 small businesses in the U.S. have an HP product. Small and midsize businesses generate USD$24 Billion, or one-third, of HP's annual revenue. I'd say HP recognizes how important small businesses are to its future.

Tags: Business; small business

TrendTracking: Library Resources, Small Biz RSS Feeds, More

2005-10-13T19:42:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the fifth edition of TrendTracking, a weekly place for small businesses to see and be seen.

James J. Hill Reference Library: I've been a big fan of the James J. Hill Library for some time. It is one of the largest business reference libraries in the United States, and they offer a unique Internet-only subscription. Now they've made it even better, adding a less-expensive membership category designed specifically for small businesses, called Standard Membership. Don't miss the 6-minute Flash video describing membership benefits -- you will be hooked once you watch it.

NEOBabble is a civic commentary blog by Chas Rich that resides at Cleveland.com, an Advance Internet site and the online home of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. We reviewed Chas's original blog, Sardonic Views, as part of the PowerBlog Review series (it was number 14). Chas writes one heck of a blog, and now it is even being recognized alongside the likes of the New York Times. His blog NEOBabble has been named a finalist in the national Online Journalism Awards. Congratulations to Chas and also to the Editor of Cleveland.com, Denise Polverine. This recognition of blogs alongside traditional media sites is a significant trend.

Emily Chang's eHub is a "constantly updated list of web applications, services, resources, blogs or sites with a focus on next generation web (web 2.0), social software, blogging, Ajax, Ruby on Rails, location mapping, open source, folksonomy, design and digital media sharing." OK, if you don't know what half of this stuff means, you are not alone. Some of these are ~~cutting~~ bleeding edge technologies. But if you want to learn about these things, Emily Chang's eHub is a great place to start.

Small Firm Business: Small law firms account for over 90% of law firms in the United States. Monica Bay, who is Editorial Director of Small Firm Business, announces at her blog, The Common Scold, an award for small law firms. Go here for the entry form for the 2005 Best Practices Awards. Deadline is October 28.

Spinfluencer: Eric Schwartzman, the Chairman of iPressroom, has started a podcast series, "On the Record...Online" which resides at his blog, Spinfluencer. His ~~first~~ 18th podcast is an interview of Ron Bloom, CEO of the Podshow.com. Ron Bloom's interview is very interesting because he explains why podcasts are so popular with listeners and how podcasting is evolving as a business. Bloom discusses that Internet audio advertising will be 3% - 4% of total advertising within the next 5 to 10 years.

AlanebyDay: This is a blog being used to chronicle the startup process in a new business. It describes itself this way: "Alane By Day is the real-time narrative of the step-by-step creation of Alane's architecture practice in just 82 days. We're using the blog format so everyone can see how it's done. If you're starting a business, this blog will help you; if you've already started a business, you can help this blog." As I write this it is Day 18.

Reflections of a Biz Driven Life: I have been wanting to call out Wilson Ng's site for some time now. Wilson is a successful CEO in the Phillipines who was named the 2004 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Wilson's blog is a wealth of business insights and motivational reflections. He tells me he now has a network of at least 7 sites. In the interests of space, I will simply mention his blog here and then write a separate post later pointing out in detail the great things he is doing.

NFIB: Hold the presses! Rex Hammock informs me this evening that the NFIB now offers RSS feeds. The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) is a member and advocacy organization for small business in the United States. The NFIB offers excellent research, surveys, tools and other important information for business owners and anyone who follows the small business market. You can subscribe to separate feeds for different kinds of information, so that you only need to receive in your newsreader the kind of information you want to see. Nice job, NFIB.

Banner Year for Web Growth

2005-10-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

Netcraft, reports that based on its October survey, 2005 is shaping up to be a record year in Internet growth: "In the October 2005 survey we received responses from 74,409,971 sites, an increase of 2.68 million sites from the September survey. The large gain makes 2005 the strongest year ever for Internet growth, as the web has added 17.5 million sites, easily surpassing the previous annual mark of 16 million during the height of the dot-com boom in 2000."

After an earlier survey from July, Netcraft noted that small businesses were driving much of the growth:

"Factors in the dramatic growth include:
Increasing use of the Internet by small businesses as web sites and online storefronts become more affordable.

The explosive growth of weblogs, a growing number of which are purchasing domains for branding purposes.

Speculation in the market for domain names, buoyed by rising resale prices and the ability to generate revenue via pay-per-click advertising on parked domains.

Strong sales of online advertising, especially keyword-based contextual ads that support business models for both domain parking and commercial weblogs.

Excel Now in Color

2005-10-11T22:27:00.000-05:00

In yesterday's post I reviewed the results of an AMI Partners study showing that over half of small businesses do not use any kind of accounting software. Instead, many just use Excel spreadsheets.

Well for all the small businesses still using Excel to manage their books, here is some good news: Microsoft is working on a new version. The new version of Excel will feature color:

"The team developing the next version of Microsoft Excel want you to know all about it. The Excel team has set up a blog to document some of the features that are going to be available in the next version of Excel, for now codenamed 'Excel 12'. One of the more promising features looks to be the introduction of 'colour scales' to shade particular cells according to their value. For instance, in the example shown, the higher numbered cells are shaded in green tones, mediate numbered cells in yellow, and lower numbered in red. Instead of analyzing the numbers to get an idea of what your spreadsheet is telling you, now you will only need to look at the colors it is showing you. This definitely makes extracting data and trends from a spreadsheet a lot easier."

Via Real Tech News.

With this new version of Excel, some small businesses may just decide not to move away from their spreadsheets for a while longer.

Over Half Do Not Have Accounting Software

2005-10-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

More than half of U.S. small businesses do not use accounting software.

AMI Partners, Inc., a research firm that specializes in global small business market research, notes this in a recently-published study, entitled "Small Business Accounting is Big...and Getting Bigger":

"U.S. small businesses (SBs; companies with 1 to 99 employees) spent approximately US$410 million on purchasing accounting software solutions in the last 12 months, and this figure is expected to cross the half-billion-dollar mark by 2008. The nearly 6% annual increase in accounting-software-related dollars augurs well for industry-leader Intuit (with their QuickBooks portfolio) and Microsoft, which recently jumped on the small business bandwagon with its release of Small Business Accounting 2006. More than ever before, SBs are searching for solutions that are easy to install, user-friendly and, most importantly, tailored specifically to their size. In addition, nearly three fourths of these businesses upgrade their accounting software package every one to two years, opening the door for consideration of new solutions."

One of the most interesting aspects of this study is that it covers very small businesses, down to one employee. Late last week I spoke by phone with Arjun Mehr, the analyst who authored the study. He explained that the sample might include sole proprietors, even, as long as they had an organizational structure such as a corporation or LLC.

He also confirmed one point that I suspected: that the half of small businesses with no accounting software fell primarily into the 1-4 employee category.

In this day and age, it would be hard for me to fathom that larger businesses of 5 employees and up could -- or would want to -- function without some kind of accounting package. (Of course, just when I think the entire world has to be computerized, I run into a small business still run completely on paper ledgers. Never say never.)

In any event, Arjun concludes that there is "tremendous untapped opportunity" in the market for small business accounting software. That's going to mean stiff competition among the two vendors, Microsoft and Intuit. Let's hope this translates into great deals for small businesses.

Tags: Business; small business

Welcome Back, Home Based Businesses

2005-10-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

Jim Blasingame, who runs a site called the Small Business Advocate, says October 10 to 14 is National Home-Based Business Week.

I was going to write about it, but what Jim has to say in his most recent newsletter is so good that I'm just going to quote it verbatim:

"Passing along Grand River Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, in the rainy, pre-dawn hours of June 4, 1896, neighbors would have witnessed a sight that at once would have seemed both normal and strange.

The strange part would be seeing one of the residents of this quiet neighborhood test-driving the gasoline-powered "quadracycle" he had built.

The normal part would be that this enterprise was taking place at the man's residence.

For literally thousands of years prior to the 20th century, regardless of the chosen profession, most humans earned their living under the same roof where they did their living. Eventually, as much as anyone in history, our home-based car builder from Detroit changed where America went to work.

To leverage their dream of serving the burgeoning consumer economy, entrepreneurs like Henry Ford had to leave the house and build factories, offices and stores. And of course, all this corporate growth required the employment of millions to staff these operations.

Ultimately, and for most of the 20th century, working away from the home or farm became the norm in America. Indeed, home-based businesses actually became so rare as to be considered an oddity. And based on many community zoning ordinances, sometimes even illegal.

As the century of the major corporation -- the 20th -- evolved into the century of the entrepreneur -- the 21st -- two things converged to make operating a business from home not only socially acceptable once again, but as it had been for thousands of years, professionally sensible and practical.

1. The official death of the job security illusion.

2. Technology.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, downsizing as a way of corporate life created professional and family emergencies for millions of American workers who were conditioned to rely on corporate employment. Whether as a complete alternative to seeking employment, or as a part-time income supplement, those who were laid-off, as well as those who feared such a prospect, started looking for ways to work from home.

And if being sacked was the stick that motivated these would-be entrepreneurs to strike out on their own, surely the carrot was technology.

Technology made it feasible again for millions of people to literally set up shop at home, as their forebears had done for millennia. Actually, the home-based business silver bullets were powerful personal technology hardware and software, both delivered in bite-size increments and pricing, and of course, the Internet.

Being a successful small business owner is very difficult. But doing all of this from home adds a degree of difficulty that deserves special recognition. As America celebrates Home-Based Business Week -- October 10-14 -- we recognize and honor the more than 20 million courageous entrepreneurs who work without a net, from home."

It is good to see home-based businesses resurging in the 21st Century. My hat is off to you, home-based business owner, no matter what part of the world you are in.

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur; startup

Most Bank Fraud Occurs Offline

2005-10-08T16:01:00.000-05:00

An article in today's Wall Street Journal (yes, there is now a weekend edition) suggests that most identity theft and banking crimes occur offline in the physical world, and not online. The article (subscribers only) notes:

"Worried that shadowy gangs of Russian hackers are breaking into computer networks, stealing your financial secrets? Don't lose too much sleep over it. * * *

Despite a series of alarming reports in recent months ... most bank-related crimes remain stubbornly low-tech."

The article goes on to cite a study by consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research pointing out just how few crimes are attributable to online activity. "Computer viruses or hackers accounted for only 2.2% of incidents," says the Wall Street Journal, citing the study.

This is an important point for small business owners to remember when it comes to online banking. Small business owners tend to cite security as a reason for not adopting online banking. A few weeks ago I wrote about this very issue, asking: "Are Small Businesses Avoiding or Embracing Online Banking?"

I'm surprised that banks don't do more to highlight the relative security of online banking. Simply saying that online banking is secure is not enough. Using the kinds of statistics quoted here would make a much more powerful point.

CNET Announces Blog 100 List

2005-10-07T12:05:00.000-05:00

CNET has published its first Blog 100 list:

"With more than 14 million blogs in existence and another 80,000 being created each day, how is a person supposed to find the ones worth reading?

That is the question CNET News.com is attempting to answer with our first Blog 100 list. This effort adds to features such as News.com Blogs, Extra, My News, TalkBack, Newsburst, and Blogma, in which News.com editors and reporters are helping find the best news and views on the Web for the convenience of our readers.

Blogs have become an important source of information, but the signal-to-noise ratio makes it hard to find the gems. In our pursuit, we spent weeks checking out technology-oriented blogs based on the recommendations from our reporters and readers."

I am honored to say that one of my other blogs, the RFID Weblog, made the list. Thank you, CNET!

Most people who read this blog are surprised to learn that I also write a blog about radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The subject matter is so "niche" that I usually don't think it is of interest to those who follow the small business market and so I rarely mention it here. Occasionally I will run a small button or banner over here for the RFID Weblog, but half the time I don't even have a link in my blogroll. Anyway, if you are interested in learning about new technologies like RFID, by all means please go have a look.

One final word: there are tons of great technology blogs out there -- obviously more than a Top 100 list can ever recognize. My advice to all bloggers is to "keep on bloggin'." Remember that most of the bloggers on such lists work at it several hours a day over a period of years. A few even do it full time. If you stick with your blogging, and engage with other bloggers, eventually you will be recognized for the great job you do.

More than just being a vanity list, what the Blog 100 does is to validate the importance of blogs generally as playing a legitimate role in the dissemination of news and views. And that is a good thing for everyone.

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes of 2005

2005-10-06T06:31:00.000-05:00

Jakob Nielsen has asked the question of his readers and they've responded with what they regard as being the most irksome aspects of web design. This is a fascinating insight into the world of websites from the perspective of the user.

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes:

Legibility Problems.
Non-Standard Links.
Flash
Content That's Not Written for the Web.
Bad Search.
Browser Incompatibility.
Cumbersome Forms.
No Contact Information or Other Company Info.
Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths.
Inadequate Photo Enlargement.

There's not much point me going into lengthy detail about each one of the ten problems as Jakob has already done the job here.

Instead we might as well talk about how small businesses sometimes get themselves into a bit of a web design muddle in the first place. There's a feeling amongst small business types that the actual term 'small business' is only a temporary one; we'll all be a big business some time in the future. We think one of the areas we can change this is in terms of the way we present ourselves through our websites - think big, act big, look big.

In fact, this can lead us down a very uncertain path of projecting what we'd like our businesses to be in ten years time. The next thing you know you're paying web designers a small fortune to produce you a fancy site with more va-va-voom than your average multinational.

If you were to develop a web presence along the lines of what mistakes to avoid, you'd be surprised as to how cheap it can be. There are far too many web designers out there obsessed with 'style' over content and usability.

There's also the added bonus that your average user might be happier with it aswell.

And that's what really counts, right?

TrendTracking: Acquisitions, Canadian Small Biz Sites, and More

2005-10-05T11:40:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Fourth edition of TrendTracking, a weekly place for small businesses to see and be seen.

WeblogsInc has been sold to AOL, reports PaidContent.org. And there you were, wondering 'what is the point of all those networks of niche blog sites that keep popping up?' The answer: why, to sell them to some big media company, of course. The purchase price has been estimated to be at least $20 Million (USD). Not bad for a two-year old startup earning $2 Million a year. Not all this amount would be paid out immediately. Like most acquisitions, part of the purchase price -- "earnouts" -- would be paid out over time depending on the business meeting certain goals.

CEO Express has been one of my favorite Web resources since 1999. The site has an outstanding, useful collection of links to resources that business executives and small business owners need in a flash. You can find industry research, online calculators, international newspapers, travel tools, writing style guides, essential software downloads -- and even small business resources.

Signs Never Sleep is the blog of the Lincoln Sign Company. This is such an interesting blog! You're probably thinking, "what could be so interesting about a sign company," but it really is. Through the blog you get to go behind the scenes of a brick-and-mortar business. My favorite posts are a series explaining how the company creates labels for a brand of salsa, noting: "I am going to be presenting a detailed number of posts in regards to the making of these labels, because I think Lincoln Sign Company can help many people in the specialty foods market and hopefully they will find this article and give us a call." There you have it -- authentic.

Canada Business is the primary business Web portal of the Canadian government. Because Canada is bilingual, there is a version of the site in English and one in Francais.

Another Canadian small business site that keeps surfacing in my research is Small Business BC. It is a non-profit organization and resource in the British Columbia province. This site is organized in a more user-friendly format than the federal government site. It offers a deep set of articles and informational resources open to anyone, whether you are in British Columbia or not. I have found it especially useful.

BandWeblogs is a directory of blogs by bands and other musical blogs. There are two trends here. The first is the increasingly narrow niches of websites, giving rise to the need for specialized directories to find them. And of course the other trend is that more bands are blogging these days, as a way to reach out to their fans. Franz Ferdinand is one such band, with a blog integrated neatly into its website (hat tip PSFK). I think we are seeing a whole new set of business opportunities develop before our eyes. New intermediaries are being created to help bands and musical artists market themselves online, using new Web tools, as more bands bypass the big record labels and take control of their own marketing.

The grandaddy of all these new intermediaries is iTunes, a site that I do not think even existed a few years ago. But there are lots of opportunities for smaller players, including independent music promotion sites, review sites like Blogcritics, as well as Web designers, consultants and marketing professionals who carve out a niche helping musical artists make their name online.

PubSub Gov describes itself as "a place to read about what is being said about the US federal government." The site offers news feeds that link to blog postings and media articles that talk about a particular government official or branch of the U.S. government, so that you can follow the buzz about them. For those who follow small business legislation, there is a feed that covers news and buzz about the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (news feed), as well as a feed for the House Committee on Small Business (news feed).

Visit Carnival of the Capitalists and Blawg Review

2005-10-04T19:44:00.000-05:00

Be sure to check out this week's editions of two excellent roundups of blog writings.

Carnival of the Capitalists: The 104th edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, a weekly roundup of business and economics posts, is now up over at Drakeview. John Dmohowski did a fantastic job, even creating a chart showing the growth in popularity of Carnival of the Capitalists in the two years since it was started. Weekly editions of Carnival now routinely feature 50 or more bloggers participating each week. Be sure to check out Yaro Starak's detail-packed entry, "How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit."

Blawg Review: This week's Blawg Review, a roundup of legal posts, is now available at Inter Alia. As you are reading all of this week's edition, don't miss the Patent Baristas' entry "Are Tax Breaks for Biotech Worth the Price?"

No Pension Reform for U.S. Small Employers

2005-10-03T13:07:00.000-05:00

Dawn Rivers Baker, Editor of the subscriber-only newsletter, The Microenterprise Journal, laments that small businesses can expect no pension relief from Congress anytime soon. The latest Senate pension bill leaves out any real reform for small businesses. She writes in the October 3, 2005 edition:

"The proposed legislation seeks to reform the pension system to provide for greater worker protections and more transparency in employer-sponsored pension plans. After the rather spectacular failures of several corporate pension plans in recent years as a result of bankruptcies and corporate accounting scandals, the need for the bill seemed pretty clear.

Since they were working on pension reform anyway, this might also have given lawmakers a golden opportunity to make the pension system more small business friendly, but that is a set of reforms that didn't happen.

In 2001, the National Small Business Association (NSBA) released an important study entitled The Internal Revenue Code: Unequal Treatment Between Large and Small Firms. Among its findings were several problems for small employers in the nondiscrimination rules governing several kinds of employee benefits plans, including retirement savings plans.

'Currently, the high and largely-fixed administrative costs for starting and running a 401(k) plan are unaffordable for our smallest businesses,' said NSBA President Tod McCracken in response to an emailed inquiry. 'As a consequence, more than two-thirds of individuals working for small businesses have no access to generous federal tax subsidies for retirement savings. SIMPLE plans are much cheaper to administer, but are less generous in the tax subsidy and require mandatory employer outlays.'

The biggest problem for small employers remains the costs of compliance. As with many other kinds of regulations, regulatory compliance costs for small businesses sponsoring pension plans are considerably higher, on a per-employee basis, than they are for larger firms, a finding that was confirmed last month by the SBA's Office of Advocacy. Advocacy found that the per-participant administrative costs of defined-contribution pension plans are 'as much as 14 times more for the smallest firms than for their largest counterparts.'"

The NSBA report cited above (download PDF report here) points out in detail how the cards are stacked against small business employers. The smaller the employer, the bigger a bite the pension costs can be.

It's too bad that Congress can't do the same thing for pensions that it did for health care. The new Health Savings Accounts and the changes in the tax laws that allow self-employed health insurance premiums to be 100% deductible, went a long way toward relieving the crushing burden of health insurance in the United States for small businesses and especially the smallest microbusinesses, i.e., the self-employed.

Tags: Business; small business; Congress

Trend of Anti-disintermediation, or Personalized Services?

2005-10-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

During the DotCom boom days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, many people thought that intermediaries would become victims to "disintermediation." We no longer would need distributors or independent agents. The Internet and sophisticated supply chain software would take their place. Or so the thinking went.

Well, time has shown that some -- some -- intermediaries are being taken out of the picture. Video rental stores are one victim. Between new Internet distribution models and cable TV providers offering video on demand, local video stores increasingly find themselves bypassed.

But the disintermediation picture is far more complex than some predicted five years ago:

Disintermediation has happened more slowly than predicted. It's not like a switch being turned on or off. These kinds of shifts in commerce take years and do not occur overnight.

Disintermediation has not happened uniformly or for every industry. Some industries have been hit hard. Others have not. In other cases the Internet has profoundly changed the way consumers interact with intermediaries, but not eliminated the need for them. The new car industry is an example. The Internet has become a place for consumers to educate themselves before walking into the dealership thus tipping the balance of power, and it has changed the way dealerships serve customers. It has not eliminated the need for car dealers.

In some industries one batch of intermediaries is being replaced by another crop of Internet-based intermediaries. That is partly what's to blame for the decline of local travel agents. Certainly, some consumers go directly to air carriers' websites, bypassing the middleman altogether. But you also have large Internet sites like Priceline and Travelocity that are themselves intermediaries, just of a new type.

Arguably another industry with a new crop of Internet intermediaries knocking on the door is the legal profession. Today if you want to file a trademark application or incorporate, you have choices ranging from LegalZoom, which helps you file basic paperwork, to Nolo, which provides forms for do-it-yourselfers. You can even go to government websites and download forms you need.

A recent BusinessWeek article by Joshua Hyatt even goes so far as to argue that we actually have more intermediaries today in the Internet age, in this humorous piece:

Auto Trainers & Advisors

Pile & Co.,

Hyatt makes a great point about intermediaries not having gone away in the space of a few years.

However, I would not call every example he lists a true "intermediary." Some are simply providing a personalized service, and play no role in the supply chain itself. They are not middlemen that you have to go through in order to acquire a product, such as a car dealer.

Rather than a trend away from disintermediation, I see instead a separate trend toward personalized services.

In today's world each of us is faced with a dizzying array of products and services that become more specialized each day. The sheer knowledge and time needed to deal with everything in our business and personal lives can be overwhelming.

Hence, enterprising entrepreneurs see the need for personalized services to help us deal with it all. And because it is easier and cheaper than ever to start a business -- especially a service business -- we can expect to see more such businesses crop up.

This trend toward personalized services is good news for some businesses and professions where disintermediation is chipping away. Instead of focusing on lower value-add transactions that can be replaced easily by technology, it can free them to focus on personalized service that technology cannot duplicate.

The accounting profession in the United States is doing just that. Most small businesses I know use QuickBooks or other accounting software. Yet, instead of QuickBooks disintermediating accountants, something different is happening. Businesses use QuickBooks to keep their own records, yet most still have an accountant for doing taxes, providing guidance on complex issues, and reconciling and auditing the books. The accountants have learned to work with the client's electronic accounting records; the technology has not disintermediated them. In fact some accounting firms now have side businesses consulting with clients to help them make better use of software packages like QuickBooks, Peachtree, Microsoft and so on.

There are lessons in this example for every business and profession, including the legal profession.

For basic transactions, people will go with the lowest price alternative, and that usually means a technology-based solution will win out. But for anything complex or confusing or unduly time-consuming, people are willing to pay for someone to talk to and help them individually. Only other people can do that.

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur; trends

TrendTracking: Government Websites, Blog Niche-ification, More

2005-09-29T22:14:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the third edition of TrendTracking, a weekly place for small businesses to see and be seen.

CRM Lowdown is a blog about customer relationship management topics. Some of the posts are about CRM software applications, but others are about the general attitude and mindset of managing customer relationships. Craig Cullen writes the CRM Lowdown blog.

This is a perfect example of the increasing niche-ification of blogs. Once it used to be enough to write about business on your general blog (2001 - 2002). Then you had to start a "business blog" (2003 - 2004). Today if you want to stand out, you have to start a blog on a specific business niche (2005 - 2006).

CRM Lowdown is also part of another growing trend, the blog network. Blog networks are individual blogs under common umbrella management. In this case the network is BizNicheMedia, which appears to have 15 sites about niche business topics.

Buzzoodle is an online tool that helps companies create and manage buzz and word of mouth marketing. If you've been hearing more about "word of mouth" marketing, there's a reason. Recently I heard an executive from American Greetings speak. When asked what had changed about marketing compared with 10 or 20 years ago, the first thing she said was "word of mouth is much more important today than it used to be."

Buzzoodle is the brainchild of Ron McDaniel, an entrepreneur I know here in Ohio. Ron also has a blog (but of course!) called Buzzoodle Buzz Marketing. Blogs are great for newly introduced products like Buzzoodle, because they help explain them and how to use them, in plain everyday language.

SearchSMB is a specialized IT search engine for small and midsize businesses. It offers resources about such information technology issues as "white papers on small biz security, disaster recovery, outsourcing and more."

Blogs: A Global Conversation is a master's thesis by James Torio, a graduate student in Advertising Design at Syracuse University, New York. You can download it in PDF format. Small Business Trends is mentioned in it. James also writes a blog, called EveryHuman.

StopFakes.gov/smallbusiness is a new website of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The site is designed for small businesses, to help them understand and protect their intellectual property rights.

As compared with the main website for the USPTO, this site does provide some additional information in an easier-to-understand format. Right now, however, the site is not as useful as it could be for small businesses -- just not enough of the right information. Let's hope the site is just a first start and that we can look forward to improvements.

Business.gov is the "Official Business Link to the U.S. Government." Color me impressed. If you were expecting a mere portal, with links to government programs, regulations and laws, and all very bureaucratic-like -- think again. Business.gov is a great example of how much some of the U.S. government's websites have improved over the past 12 - 18 months.

This site has a great collection of resources, tips and advice on running a business. The focus is implicitly on small business.

Everything is nicely organized and easy to scan quickly to find what you need. Even the design is impressive -- very 2005-ish, with the colored background and white centered content area.

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur; trends

Rise of the Entrepreneurial Class

2005-09-27T22:56:00.000-05:00

John Koten, Editor in Chief of Inc magazine, recently spoke about the "rise of the entrepreneurial class" at a talk I attended at the Cleveland City Club.

He called it one of two key factors in our economy today. A wide range of people today see themselves as entrepreneurs, he says -- everyone from Martha Stewart to Snoop Dog to college kids to retiring Baby Boomers. In his words, "entrepreneurship is a huge underexpressed force" today, even in large companies.

What's more, people have a desire to be creative in business. That's the other key factor in the economy, he says: the rise of the creative class. People today desire to express themselves, often through art. And artists realize that by integrating business principles with their art, that they can further their art.

He says these two factors are converging, and we are seeing a new mercantile class develop just as there was a new mercantile class in the 1800's underlying the industrial revolution. This phenomenon can be graphed out this way, with art and entrepreneurship being two sides of a triangle, and startups forming the foundation:

The talk was recorded and turned into a podcast. Listen to the podcast here (MP3 file, approximately 55 minutes -- he speaks about the rise of the entrepreneurial class about 23 minutes into the recording).

Are Small Businesses Avoiding or Embracing Online Banking?

2005-09-26T22:58:00.000-05:00

Entrepreneur magazine has an article by C. J. Prince about small businesses being slow to adopt online banking.

One of the main issues that holds back small businesses from adopting online banking is security. Small business owners fear for the security of their accounts when transactions occur online. (I happen to be quoted in the article on the reason that some small businesses do not adopt online banking.)

However, there is considerable nuance under the surface of the Entrepreneur article. I note that the article points to a January 2005 study by Edgar Dunn & Company. That study suggests that small businesses have become bullish on online banking. The Edgar Dunn survey reports that 58% of small businesses use Internet banking at least weekly -- a solid majority.

A different study cited in the article, this one conducted by Forrester Research in mid-2004, showed a much lower percentage -- 19% -- using online banking (download PowerPoint presentation here).

So why the discrepancy? Is there some explanation for this considerable difference in the two studies?

While I do not have access to the underlying survey data, one possible answer may be in the size of companies sampled. It is simpler for very small, no-employee businesses to do their banking online, compared with larger small businesses that may find the challenges associated with online banking to outweigh the benefits.

The Edgar Dunn survey sampled businesses with $50,000 up to $2 Million in revenue. Now, $50,000 in revenue means a very small business. Most likely a business with that level of revenue is a no-employee business -- in other words, a self-employed individual. The number of self-employed, no-employee businesses dominates in the U.S. -- there are some 17 million no-employee businesses according to the SBA, compared with 5.7 million with employees.

I would not be surprised to find that the majority of no-employee businesses use online banking, while the majority of businesses having employees do not. Their fundamental banking needs are just so different.

First let's examine the no-employee business. Often the self-employed person views his or her business banking as an extension of personal finances. This self-employed business owner places off-hour convenience at a premium, and online banking offers that. The bank account used may be limited to a plain vanilla business checking that is really just a step away from a personal checking account. Interfacing with a business accounting system is a pretty easy matter, too. The larger online banking sites typically enable easy one-step download to QuickBooks/Quicken, the accounting system most often used by no-employee businesses. So interfacing with other business systems is a no-brainer for the no-employee business owner.

It's only when you get to larger small businesses -- those with employees -- that the challenges start. By the time a business gets to say, 10 employees, banking needs have outgrown the plain vanilla checking account. The business may require online banking data to interface with other business software systems. There are payroll accounts and tax withholding issues. Cash management tools take on added importance. Suddenly, online banking becomes more complex, requiring more effort to implement it and more staff time to manage it. It's no wonder that small businesses at this level have less interest in online banking, despite the lure of automation. Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease, and I suspect that is how larger small businesses view online banking, rightly or wrongly.

I'm interested in reader views -- do you agree, or is there some other explanation?

UPDATE October 7, 2005: More discussion is over at the Small Business Trends Forum.

PowerBlog Reviews Grand Finale

2005-09-26T22:45:00.000-05:00

Welcome, to the final edition of the PowerBlog Review series of reviews of other business blogs.

We go out with a bang -- a Grand Finale, if you will. For our last finale, we have written about three blogs. I hope you enjoy them -- all 86 Reviews. Please scroll down to see the final three.

UPDATE: A reader emailed me wondering why I was shutting down this blog -- well, I am NOT shutting down this blog. Small Business Trends is thriving and will continue. Only the PowerBlog Reviews are being "retired." In fact, I am looking forward to bringing you additional features, including more guest bloggers and guest posts, and more trends features.

PowerBlog Review: Emerging Technology Trends

2005-09-25T22:25:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Welcome to the eighty-sixth and final in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews.

Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends blog has been one of my favorite blogs ever since I started blogging two years ago.

Roland Piquepaille is a computer consultant from Paris, France. Roland is one of those unique people you have to admire because of his dedication, his incredible range of interests, and the fact that he does it all writing in a second language (English).

For much of this PowerBlog Review I have to credit another outstanding site, Master New Media, run by Robin Good. Robin, who hails from Rome Italy, recently did an in-depth interview of Roland Piquepaille. Robin is in a class by himself when it comes to finding interesting subjects and conducting incisive interviews with surgical precision. There are few even in the mainstream media who can equal Robin's interviewing skills. Many thanks, Robin!

Roland's blog style is quite a thing of beauty, even though it goes against the advice of some blogging "experts" who suggest only short posts. All of Roland's posts are long by typical weblog standpoints (often around 500 words), and cover their subject in depth. Of course, this style of blogging takes considerable commitment. Roland says in the Master New Media interview that he spends the better part of a day per blog entry:

"Between reading the RSS aggregator news and the time I choose a story, it's probably three to four hours, and after that, let's say it's an additional one hour and a half to two hours or more to finally publish it. So overall, it's probably about six hours, yeah."

Recent topics show the range of interests, including such examples as "Self-repairing spacecrafts", "Why leaves change color", and "Algae to fuel our cars?" And because he tends to write about unusual topics, and not repeat what everyone else is blogging about, his blog is regularly linked to, including by the famous Slashdot site:

"Even for me, if a story is already covered by, I don't know, twenty magazines in the world, to me it is not a good enough subject. I want to have a subject which is not completely original but at least which is not covered broadly by the press. So, it is probably for this reason that in the last two years I have been Slashdotted between two and eight times per month (!!!), and yes, I do acknowledge that this is a good thing... though there are also lots of Slashdot haters which come after you after they discover you that way."

Roland is not content to just write a post and leave it at that. At the end of each post he lists links to related articles, which actually go to Del.icio.us bookmarks he has set up by individual topic. This is yet another way that Roland gives a very thorough treatment of his subject matter.

Recently Roland's blog became part of the ZDNet network of blogs, where it is now called "Emerging Technology Trends." This move in and of itself is part of a broader trend unfolding right now, where traditional media companies are now building channels of blogs. In some cases the blogs are new, and in other cases the blogs are existing sites -- like Roland's -- that are being "moved" over to the media site. In Roland's case, he posts a brief extract of the post on his original site, with a link to the full post on his ZDNet blog. In this way he avoids the problem of duplicate content (bad for search engines), but still serves his existing readers. Right now his blog gets 200,000 to 250,000 page views per month, so moving traffic over to ZDNet is significant.

Roland has demonstrated his leadership by stretching the boundaries of blogging for some time now, taking the medium to new levels. For more about Roland's blogging approach, please also read the Master New Media interview.

PowerBlog Review: Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

2005-09-25T20:31:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the eighty-fifth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews.

The Embrace Pet Insurance blog is the blog of -- you guessed it -- a pet insurance business.

Embrace Pet Insurance is a startup company with an intriguing history. First, it is one of those rare businesses actually supported by venture capital and angel investors. Second, it got its start in the Wharton Business School, where it won the Wharton Business Plan competition a few years ago.

The blog is written by Laura Bennett, the CEO of Embrace Pet Insurance, located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. Laura grew up in England and emigrated to Canada in her teens, and eventually went to work at a large life insurance company in Toronto. From there she and her husband ended up at the Wharton School and eventually in Cleveland. While at Wharton, Laura met her business partner, Alex Krooglik.

Although Embrace is not yet selling pet insurance policies (they are negotiating with an insurer to actually write the policies), Laura started the blog to provide education to pet lovers. She notes:

"We help pet lovers looking for pet health insurance to learn more about the products and companies currently selling policies. Pet insurance can be a complicated product, just like human health insurance, and we are helping people understand what questions they need to be asking themselves and the pet insurance companies, and showing them some of the options that are available. This information is not available anywhere else."

She does something very interesting for a pre-revenue company. She is using the blog to introduce the fledgling company to pet lovers, and develop prospects. As Laura notes, "Just because we can't sell any policies at the moment doesn't mean that people can't get to know us now."

The blog itself is a textbook study of how to blog to reach consumers in a niche business. Everything from the header image (a dog playing in the snow), to the writing style, to the images embedded here and there in posts -- it all is user friendly to consumers.

It also stays on topic quite well. Want information on keeping your home poison safe for pets? You will find it here. Want to know what questions you should ask when buying pet insurance? You will find it here. What you will not find, however, is a lot of off-topic posts. Virtually all posts adhere to pet-related topics -- and are quite informative at that.

You will also find a good blogroll of pet-related sites. There are eight pet blogs currently on the blogroll, and Laura says she is always looking for more ("...they must be out there."). The blogroll also lists a number of other pet-related, non-blog websites.

As for results from this blog, Laura sees them already:

"We are definitely getting stronger traffic numbers on both our blog and website and I am getting a number of inquiries every week from people asking about our policies -- too bad we can't sell them anything right now! In particular though, people are beginning to use the phone number posted on my blog. ...I am always open to chatting with people about pet insurance, entrepreneurship, women business owners, anything that's on anyone's minds. Those are generally very interesting phone calls and they get me in touch with people I would never have been able to connect with otherwise."

One of the things I find especially notable about the Embrace Pet Insurance blog is the way a pre-revenue startup is using a blog even during a stage when they are still developing the product. It goes to show that a company can never be too young to benefit from a blog.

PowerBlog Review: Warren Greshes Talking Success

2005-09-25T18:51:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Welcome to the eighty-fourth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer.

By Lynne Meyer

Warren Greshes multi-tasks as a professional speaker, author and talk show host who blogs from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA. He established his blog -- Warren Greshes Talking Success -- this past July with efficiency in mind. He says:

"I'd been sending out an email newsletter to thousands of subscribers every week for the past two and a half years. People are bombarded with emails, with more and more emails going into the spam folder. I want my information to be read. I felt a blog was the next step beyond email because it enables me to deliver information to my subscribers and listeners without having to email them."

Warren is part of that growing number of radio show hosts and professional speakers who also blog. In today's world, customers want it "their way." Offering his messages through multiple media is a way to touch as many people as possible, reaching them through whichever communication format they prefer: in-person, live radio, podcasts, emails, or the blog.

Warren's goal is to build his audience to the point where he can attract sponsors, increase his brand awareness and increase his speaking business. "I want to use it as part of a marketing mix to enable me to cross promote my radio show and upcoming book. I want to give my readers an abundance of valuable free information to help them be more successful in their lives, careers and businesses."

Warren successfully accomplishes these goals. In fact, I give his blog an enthusiastic two thumbs up for both style and substance.

Content wise, his postings are interesting and succinct. Even though he addresses many typical business concepts like customer service, attitude, preparation, motivation and persistence, he brings fresh insights to these topics with lots of practical tips and illustrative personal anecdotes to convey his insights. Two good examples are titled "Encourage Your Customers to Complain" and "What's the Best Return Policy?" He also covers topics like rebalancing your busy life.

Particularly fascinating to me is Warren's series of postings based on the teachings of former Chinese general Sun Tzu's 2,000-year-old "The Art of War" text and its relevance to today's business world.

In terms of appearance for readability -- something to which every blog should aspire -- Warren's blog is simply outstanding. That's because Warren's blog is very inviting to the eye. His postings occupy 2/3 of the page on the left side, and there's a continuous color bar on the right 1/3 of the page. Because there aren't a lot of individual ads or other graphics all over the page, the result is nice and clean. In addition, the line length and font style and size are comfortable for readability. He consistently numbers the specific points he wants to emphasize and puts them in boldface as well -- another plus for readability. I'm a fanatic about having adequate white space in anything written, and Warren gives readers generous white space with lots of paragraph breaks.

Another thing Warren does well is the user-friendly organization of his archives. The archives are listed on a separate page, in three separate lists -- by date, category and title.

One final point that Warren has done with his blog that every business blogger should do in order to attract and retain as wide a readership as possible: he has established a series of FAQs. These are posts that describe what the blog is about and how to use it -- something that those who are unfamiliar with blogs will find helpful and considerate. This is especially important for business blogs, whose readers may well be business owners who are unfamiliar with the unique features of blogs.

In summary, visit Warren Greshes Talking Success blog.

Outsourcing Companies Target Small Business

2005-09-22T07:32:00.000-05:00

We all outsource. Or subcontract if you prefer.

Guy Clapperton at Business Insight is quite right when he points out that most small businesses have been outsourcing things like accounting for many a moon.

On a personal level we all tend to outsource our plumbing, electricity or joinery needs once the toilet, the exploding socket or the new fitted wardrobe prove a project too far.

This is what you'd probably refer to as the outsourcing of expertise.

It's primary function is to do any given task far better than you could yourself. It may very well save you money in the long run, but that isn't its focus.

And we're all very aware of the outsourcing of call centers to Mumbai. It's not so much that these people don't know what they're doing rather than the corporations running them only glancing a cursory nod towards customer satisfaction for the sake of pinching a few pennies.

The Telegraph has an article discussing how small businesses are now the targets of firms which provide various backroom services such as payroll, human resources and communications.

However, the Federation of Small Businesses urges us to be careful:

"People should make sure they are getting the right service for the size of company they are. They should not have to shell out for blanket coverage. It's about striking a balance," said a [Federation of Small Businesses] spokesman.

I once worked at a place with only four employees that outsourced its ablution services. In other words, we had somebody come and collect the used hand towels and replace them with fresh ones. It would've been infinitely cheaper to buy new every week.

The company I'm currently associated with is often on the receiving end of much outsourcing. Yes, it's cheaper for the firms wishing to outsource as they don't have a dedicated workforce to pay on an ongoing basis. But, this is still an example of outsourcing of expertise. Subcontracting is also as old as the hills in the world of manufacturing.

It doesn't matter whether you outsource to your next building, next town, city, country or half way across the world - we all outsource if we don't have the in-house capabilty to deal with certain aspects of our business - whether it be a temporary peak in work we can't handle or certain things we don't have the expertise or inclination to do ourselves.

Visit Global PR Blog Week

2005-09-21T21:48:00.000-05:00

If you want to learn more about the current trends in blogs and related tools, I recommend you head on over to Global PR Blog Week.

Global PR Blog Week is an online event that will engage public relations, marketing and business professionals from around the globe in a discussion about how new communications technologies are changing public relations and business communication. It is an online event taking place this week.

I was on the organizing committee and helped review a number of the articles. This year, unlike last year, I was unable to contribute my own article, due to some unforeseen time commitments the past few weeks on some other projects.

However, I highly recommend visiting Global PR Blog Week -- there are a lot of great essays about blogging from world-class practitioners.

Business Owners: Recognize Changing Market Forces

2005-09-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

Last Friday I heard small business expert Steven Little speak. He was in town for an entrepreneur conference, "One Inc.Redible Day."

A key nugget heard in his talk:

Business owners need to recognize the forces of change around them, and adapt to changes in the marketplace. "Small businesses are lousy at external focus. We are good at internal focus," says Steve. "Big businesses are just the opposite."

Steven has long encouraged every business owner to read 50 magazines (or Web sites, blogs, newspapers, journals -- whatever) each month. He says he knows that's a lot to read. But it is so important to recognize when forces around your business are changing, that he says you need to find time for it. He wrote a guest column here on Small Business Trends about this very topic.

Steven Little graciously sat for a photo (above). That's him on the left, seated with Steve Rucinski, who writes the Small Business CEO blog and who live-blogged the event.

On Wal-Mart, Small Businesses and Business Ecosystems

2005-09-19T11:15:00.000-05:00

Today's Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece by Gwendolyn Bounds about entrepreneurs getting their products into Wal-Mart. The article follows two entrepreneurs who have a new writing instrument -- a pen with an unusual shape -- and how they've dreamed of getting it on the shelves of Wal-Mart for years.

The article superbly captures the emotions and dreams of entrepreneurs and small business owners when Wal-Mart's buyers order their products for the giant retailer's shelves:

"Getting into Wal-Mart is an entrepreneur's equivalent of making it to Broadway. Even a short run on the shelves there can help transform an invention from niche product to household name. And while Wal-Mart certainly isn't the only retail path to commercial success, nor the right outlet for every product, for mass-market merchandise at a certain price point no other bricks-and-mortar retailer reaches so many shoppers. Today the company has 5,300 outlets world-wide, and gets more than 138 million customers a week."

This article illustrates an important point that Wal-Mart bashers all too frequently forget: it's not always a case of Wal-Mart and small businesses competing.

It's true that small retailers may feel competition from Wal-Mart, especially if they try to sell solely based on price and try to compete head-to-head with Wal-Mart (or any big retailer). But for small manufacturers and small consumer goods companies, Wal-Mart is the customer they pray for and the one that can propel their company into big-time sales. Wal-Mart is the "elephant" they dream of bagging.

For small manufacturers and consumer goods companies, the relationship with Wal-Mart is more akin to a business ecosystem. Business ecosystems are a key trend impacting small businesses that I wrote about over at our sister site, TrendTracker. Small businesses are likely to be more innovative in coming up with new products, but it is the large corporations that hold access to the marketplace. And as every small businessperson knows, the most innovative new product is worthless unless it can get to market. And often the route to that market is through a large business like Wal-Mart.

The Wall Street Journal's story is available here -- now open access on Startup Journal. You can also download a podcast of an interview of the journalist, Gwendolyn Bounds, in which she summarizes some key learnings for entrepreneurs from the article. The podcast is open access. It is an MP3 file -- about 11 minutes long.

(And as an aside, don't you just love this new media era, in which the journalist also gets interviewed?)

Tags: Business; small business; sales; entrepreneur; retail

PowerBlog Review: Roberto's Nasdaq Trader

2005-09-18T22:31:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Welcome to the eighty-third in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. For a long time now we've wanted to review one of the stock trading blogs -- they are fast-moving, highly opinionated, and colorful. While we don't necessarily agree with all the viewpoints expressed in the following blog, and we by no means endorse any particular investment discussed in it, we respect it for being a powerful blog in many ways.

By Lynne Meyer

Roberto Pedone is an independent trader in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Through five to ten daily postings to his blog -- Roberto's Nasdaq Trader -- he provides an abundance of stock market investing information on numerous fronts.

"I started blogging last October to share my trading experiences with the public," he explains. "My main goal is to inform people about the stock market and trading. Readers can see what I do right and what I do wrong in trading. As traders, we learn more from our mistakes, and my blog is a good place to learn about how to trade the markets."

Day trading isn't for those who are faint of heart or risk adverse. It's an extremely complex and demanding profession.

To be successful, independent traders must stay on top of global economic trends and understand sophisticated research and analysis in many different arenas. Roberto scours an amazing number of news sources, sharing information with readers and also using it to illustrate and explain his own trading decisions.

Since trading is technical by nature, Roberto's devoted readers are those individuals who are really interested in this kind of in-depth Bulls and Bears information about economic developments, stocks and investing. He addresses a multitude of topics -- everything from the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, bonds and hedge funds, housing starts, and retail trends, to layoff announcements, Wall Street rumors, technology and domestic and international political situations and how they affect the markets.

Roberto really mixes it up in terms of the topics and length of his numerous daily postings. Some are just one sentence, in which he reports a buy or a sell he made or a quick tip or recommendation. Lengthier posts report on crude oil prices, targets on gold, a military build up in China, problems in the pharmaceutical industry, Japan's economic woes, and what some of the Big Boys in investing -- Warren Buffett and T. Boone Pickens -- are up to. His posts are really his running commentary on what he sees out in the market.

But wait -- there's more! Roberto provides links galore in his blog as an additional source of information. His posts are peppered with charts supporting his analyses. Posts regularly are infused with raw energy and enthusiasm, like this one from an August post entitled Crude Chart:

"Take a look at this chart and I want to highlight the huge monster spike in open interest in crude contracts. We will see some powerful moves in the crude markets in the coming weeks as the speculators are really getting active. MAN IT'S FUN!!"

Very few businesses that I know show as much energy and enthusiasm around their work in their blogs. Perhaps more of them should.

In summary, Roberto does an admirable job gathering, distilling and presenting large volumes of information around stock trading. Whether you are interested in the high-flying world of independent trading, or whether you simply want to become better informed about markets and stock prices, make Roberto's blog -- Nasdaq Trader -- your first stop.

Top Trends in Search Marketing

2005-09-15T21:01:00.000-05:00

What do you think are the top 3 trends in search marketing?

Marketing Sherpa says they are:

Search Engines as TV Networks Jockeying for Audience -- 127 Million Americans use search engines, yet most of the activity is concentrated in a few search engines. Marketing Sherpa likens this to the domination of 3 TV networks in the 1970's. One interesting factoid is that the Ask Jeeves search engine has tripled its market share since last year, although it is still a mere fraction of Google's share. I wonder how much of that might be related to its acquisition of Bloglines, the popular RSS search engine.

SEO Still a Tiny Portion of Total Search Marketing Spend -- Most companies are pouring money into paid search (pay per click). A far smaller percentage goes to optimizing web pages so that they show up better in the organic search results. The reason? Search optimization is considered too complex and so apparently executives find it easier to ignore SEO. Sounds to me like an opportunity for the SEO firms to improve their marketing messages.

Search Marketing - A New Application for Press Releases -- The very reason that press releases are "dead" when it comes to getting media attention, is why they are great for search marketing. Because press releases get indexed in major search engines, media isn't interested in simply regurgitating them and has dropped them like a stone. However, press releases show up promptly and prominently in the search engines and bring Web traffic, if not media eyeballs.

The executive summary of the Marketing Sherpa Trend report is open access and can be found here (PDF). Read the whole thing.

Five Trends That Will Change Your Business

2005-09-15T09:05:00.000-05:00

Warren Greshes has graciously invited me on his Talking Success radio show on Thursday, September 15, 2005. We'll be discussing the "Five Trends That Will Change Your Business." The show starts at 12:00 Noon, Eastern U.S. time.

Please join us! And if you can't join us, naturally the show will be available later as a podcast (Warren and Dean, his webmaster, are Web 2.0 kind of guys).

UPDATE: Join us! To listen live starting at around 12:15 PM, Eastern U.S. time (New York time) on September 15, click here. Please remember that the link only works once we are live. I look forward to having you join Warren and me.

(I've moved this post to the top of the site for easy access.)

TrendTracking: Small Business News Site & More

2005-09-14T02:43:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the second edition of TrendTracking, a weekly feature that we hope will become a popular place for small businesses to see and be seen.

Be Excellent, the blog of Six Disciplines Corporation, has a new format. Skip Reardon, the Marketing Director of Six Disciplines, writes the blog. Part of the blog's purpose is to be a companion to the Six Disciplines book and methodology.

But Skip has broadened the subject matter. He is writing about a variety of small business topics culled from different sources, not just about the book. I especially like his "Bottomline" summary paragraph at the end of each post, in which he emphasizes his point. He is planning to move to a more robust blogging software, because Blogger does not support categories, which are absolutely essential for a business blog.

News.smallbusiness.com (great domain name!) offers news aggregation channels just for small business news. News.smallbusiness.com pulls news stories and blog posts from many sources. It aggregates them into a single page, with six categories: economy, finance, management, marketing, policy and technology. Naturally there are RSS feeds for the main channel and for each category. The end result is a resource specifically designed around "small business" news, rather than the broader business news which would contain content not relevant to the small business market. News.smallbusiness.com is run by Hammock Publishing, whose CEO, Rex Hammock, happens to be a blogger, too.

Catapult is the entrepreneur's site of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This is a fun site with a fresh take on being an entrepreneur. At first glance it looks pretty standard. But when you delve into it, you realize someone there has a wickedly funny sense of humor. In fact, Rebecca Martin, a journalist with the site, tells me that treating business subjects with humor is one of their goals: "Aimed at under-35 entrepreneurial types, we like to keep things light-hearted and humorous." Read the Smart Fabrics article and tell me if you don't agree.

Selling is Dead -- did you know that? That's the name of a new book by two authors from here in Northeast Ohio, USA, where I live and work. They have a blog as an online companion for the book, also called Selling is Dead. One of the posts caught my eye with these statistics: "50% of sales people do not meet their quotas"; and "3 out of 4 product launches fails to meet expectations." Those are wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee numbers. I haven't read this book yet, but just judging from some of the posts, I will probably recommend it to several early-stage, entrepreneur friends and colleagues. Sales is invariably the weakest part of any technology startup.

Technorati Blog Finder: Ever since I wrote last week about the Small Business Blog Directory, readers have been sending me links to other directories. One of those is Technorati's Blog Finder. I certainly appreciate and thank Technorati for all the free services it provides (and I appreciate the thoughtful email I got from Technorati Feedback -- on a weekend, too!).

Unfortunately Blog Finder falls short. The main problem is that if a blogger designates a blog as having posts under a certain keyword, then the blog gets listed for that keyword. Sounds logical, right? Except: that leads to the questionable situation where a pop culture or politics blog may devote very few of its posts to "business" but still ends up being categorized under business blogs. For instance, one of the top blogs listed as a business blog in Technorati's Blog Finder has 1464 posts, of which a mere 23 posts over five years are categorized as "business." Yet, it is listed under "business," ahead of other blogs with far more business content. While Technorati's Blog Finder may be useful for some purposes, you will not get a good picture of the business blog landscape from it.

Google Blog Search: Speaking of blog search, just today Google introduced its own blog and RSS search engine. Search Engine Watch has a substantive post describing the features and how best to use it.

Pay Per Call Advertising is Growing

2005-09-12T12:46:00.000-05:00

A few months ago a colleague asked my opinion of "pay per call" advertising solutions for one of his clients. I dashed off a quick email answer without researching it, to the effect of "pay per call shows promise but it is still pretty much experimental."

Wrong!

Imagine my surprise when not long afterward, I got an email from the folks at Ingenio, a company that offers pay-per-call. They wanted to be a sponsor here at Small Business Trends. See the ad at the top of the left column?

While pay per call advertising is still relatively new, it is not experimental. It is very real, and it is taking place now. Ingenio has been offering a solution for nearly a year now.

Pay-per-call is an advertising service that connects online searchers with your business by phone. You place an Internet ad, and Internet surfers who respond to the ad call you on the phone. You pay for the ads similarly to pay-per-click advertising, except you pay per phone call, rather than per click-through. As with any advertising, it is still up to you to convert the lead into a sale.

The image above shows a pay-per-call ad from a search I just ran a few minutes ago for "Cleveland web designer." Similarly, I found listings for "Akron mortgage," "Columbus home builder," "Toledo florist," and "Cincinnati auto repair." You see a listing on the search page, with a telephone number underneath. When you click on the listing, rather than taking you to a website, it takes you instead to a second page with information about the business, its products and services, a telephone number, and business hours to call.

It seems like an excellent solution for small businesses, because more small businesses are prepared to deal with a phone call, than with an Internet lead.

Consider that fewer than 50% of small businesses have websites. With pay per call, you don't need a website, just someone manning the phone.

Only a portion of small businesses have processes in place to effectively receive Internet leads and act on them in a timely fashion. Often it can be hard to find an email address or a contact form on a website. And when contact is finally made, sometimes it can take days for a small business to respond to emails -- if they are ever answered. Yet, virtually all small businesses are set up to handle telephone inquiries promptly.

Pay-per-call can be locally-focused, and since the majority of small business is local in nature, it means that callers are going to be highly-targeted, well-qualified leads. I note that with the Ingenio system, you can even tell it what time of day for ads to run so that you are attracting calls during regular business hours.

With the growth of local search, and the rapid pace of technology adoption that we are seeing today, new solutions like pay-per-call advertising are taking hold much faster than they would have a few years ago. Pay-per-call looks like a promising entrant on the advertising lineup.

PowerBlog Review: Captain's Blog

2005-09-11T22:11:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Welcome to the eighty-second in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

Green is my new favorite color! And I owe it all to Shea Gunther's Captain's Blog at Skye Creative. Shea is the founder and ceo of Skye Creative, a full service eco-design and communications firm in Boulder, Colorado.

What the heck is eco-design? As explained on the Skye Creative web site, it's doing "graphic design that adheres to an environmental ethic that includes cutting down on waste and pollution." We're talking about using soy inks and environmentally sustainable paper products for their own work and their clients' communications needs, whenever possible. "But," the web site assures, "not at the sacrifice of first and foremost delivering cohesive design strategies that drive our clients' bottom line."

Shea says he started his "Captain's Blog" in June because "I wanted to convey both the human and professional sides of Skye Creative to our clients and prospective clients while being a resource for information on green design. I also have a lot of fun doing it."

I like the Captain's Blog because it has three blog attributes I value: good information, fresh insights, and humor.

Like all well-done blogs, the Sky Creative Captain's blog has interesting titles, lots of links, varying lengths and ease of navigation. In an unusual departure from other blogs, Shea arranges his blog postings by his day's thoughts, rather than by topic.

The reason this blog is different, however, is its substance -- green business. Doing well by doing good. The emphasis here is clearly on how businesses can help replenish rather than deplete the environment. I devoured the information Shea shares about green business. Did you know that there's now a new email list for green-business people (www.GreenBusiness.net)?

Even though he has only been blogging for a few months, Shea's green-business blog is already starting to bloom into opportunities to bring in "greenbacks."

"I met with a guy who contacted me about a possible strategic partnership with his firm. We sat down for lunch, and, after some small talk, he just said in a calm and level voice, 'Zombie dogs scare me, too'." Shea was puzzled by this remark at first. Then he recalled that, a few weeks before, he had made a post titled "Zombie dogs scare me," referring to a news story he had linked to in the post. "When he made that reference to what I said in one of my blog posts, I just started laughing. It was a great way to break the ice and we subsequently signed a partnership."

This blog is one of a growing number of company blogs that are seamlessly incorporated into the company's website. The blog pages look almost the same as other pages in the company's main website. For instance, the header and footer are the same. And the blog is part of the company's main domain.

Skye Creative clearly fits into a special niche -- eco-friendly design -- and Shea clearly states their mission across the board. In marketing parlance this is known as UPS -- unique positioning statement. If you enjoy the enviable advantage of a UPS for your services or products, your blog is one more valuable way you can position yourself.

While Shea says he hasn't yet received many postings or input from others about his blog, I predict it won't be long.

Go get yourself some green at Skye Creative's Captain's blog.

Capitals of Small Business

2005-09-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

Fortune Small Business offers up a list of towns and cities that are the capitals of certain industries in the United States, dominated by small businesses:

"Everyone knows which industry dominates ... Detroit and Houston. But how many could name the capital of socks? Or medical imaging technology? Or firearms? These are among dozens of hidden capitals of vital U.S. industries, each populated by and dependent upon dozens of small companies that both compete and collaborate.

This idea of industry capitals, or "clusters," as academics call them, might seem like a quaint tourist draw for small towns, an excuse, say, for Gilroy, Calif., to throw its annual garlic festival. But they serve an important function in the economy. Overlapping businesses in the same region gain a number of advantages, drawing in more suppliers and customers along with financial institutions that understand the industry. Meanwhile, the labor pool grows to include more workers with special skills and experience."

Despite the trend toward working virtually, there are benefits from businesses of the same type or in the same industry, working in proximity. The "capitals" of small business include:

Virtual Reality Software -- Central Florida

Light Aircraft -- Wichita, Kansas

Orthopedic Surgery -- Birmingham, Alabama

Weight-Loss Centers -- Durham, North Carolina

Firearms -- Sturgis, South Dakota

Cardiac Devices -- Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota

Medical Imaging Technology -- Central Massachusetts

Helicopters -- Phoenix

I am sure there are other capitals not covered here. Do you know any? (They don't have to be in the United States -- we'd like to hear about any capital of "small business" anywhere.)

Entrepreneurship is Not What Many Think

2005-09-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

Rob, the BusinessPundit, tells it like it is. His piece "Entrepreneurship: Don't Drink the Kool-Aid" is a realistic look at small business and entrepreneurship. He writes:

"I was having coffee with my friend Deborah last week (who has proven to be an endless source of inspiration for blogging ideas) and I told her that I had finally written off my old views of entreprenuership. You see, I was in b-school in 1998 and 1999, so I was indoctrinated with certain ideas that weren't necessarily true. For instance, I thought GE and Proctor and Gamble would soon be washed up has-beens. I thought everybody would soon do everything via the web. And when it came to entrepreneurship, I thought that you had an idea, or invented some new thing in your spare time, wrote a business plan, and VCs gave you money. I told Deborah that I didn't believe that anymore -- that so much 'conventional wisdom' about entrepreneurship was a lie. It just isn't what people think.

'So you're not drinking the kool-aid?' she asked. I just laughed. 'Not anymore.'"

Go read the whole thing, including his list of the seven "real" ways businesses get started.

UK to Go Bonkers for Business Blogs?

2005-09-06T04:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time coming, but this week sees a couple of interesting developments with regards to business blogging in the UK.

Today sees BBC Radio 4's Shop Talk dedicate a full half hour to business blogging and even dares to pick the brains of a couple of small business bloggers on the programme - Thomas Mahon of English Cut and Heather Platts of The Soap Blog. (Don't worry about missing the original broadcast as you can always listen to it again at a later date.)

Then, if you're so inclined, you can trot along to the Our Social World conference in Cambridge this coming Friday to gain a deeper insight of those new-fangled methods that enable you to communicate your business more effectively online.

Whilst business blogging has been embraced by some of the broadsheets, it hasn't received any real interest from the broadcast media and hasn't been the primary focus of a conference thus far.

Now I have a theory or three as to why we're dragging our feet over in the UK, but I'd be far more interested to hear your thoughts.

TrendTracking: Government RSS Feeds, Soap Blogs, More

2005-09-05T22:28:00.000-05:00

We start a new feature this week, called TrendTracking. It will take the place of the popular PowerBlog Reviews being phased out at the end of the month.

Once a week we will have a roundup of short comments on new, remarkable or interesting items in the small business market. Items might consist of new blogs or websites, upcoming events, under-reported news items, business books, or other items of interest to the small business market.

OK, here goes:

The U.S. Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao, was on Fox News earlier today and announced various assistance programs for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Among them: 10,000 temporary cleanup jobs, and disaster unemployment insurance, covering employees and self-employed individuals. So even if you run your own single-person business you may be eligible for these special unemployment benefits if you are from an affected area.

The Soap Blog is a blog of Eie Flud, a small company that makes and sells luxury handmade toiletries and natural botanical perfumes in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, U.K. In one recent post, Heather writes "From my dining room window I can see grazing, the very cows that within minutes provide the milk for these soaps - still warm and frothy and completely natural." Now that's something you don't read in a blog everyday -- go check out the Soap Blog.

Speaking of business blogs, Denise O'Berry has started the Small Business Blog Directory as a great way to find small business blogs. It is relatively new but already has 264 small business blogs listed as of this writing.

The U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy is now offering RSS feeds for news releases and announcements. Let's hope more government agencies and organizations serving small business start RSS feeds. Are you listening, NFIB?

Psychotherapist-entrepreneur George Anderson, whose Notes from the World of Anger Management blog we reviewed earlier this year, has made the cover of the Los Angeles Times magazine. Congrats, George! And read our PowerBlog Review to see some of the innovative ways George uses a blog for public education and advocacy.

Changes in Store for PowerBlog Reviews

2005-09-05T21:47:00.000-05:00

This autumn we will be "retiring" the PowerBlog Review series. The series will end on September 25, 2005.

Yesterday's PowerBlog Review marks 81 weeks for the series. That's over a year and a half of reviewing a notable and interesting blog each week.

The purpose of the PowerBlog Review series has to a certain extent been accomplished. When I started the series in early 2004, I felt there was a need for a voice to talk about how small businesses were finding value from blogs. Business blogging was a new and growing trend.

Since then, small businesses have taken to blogs like Seattle-ites to cafe mochas. Small businesses have used blogs in countless creative ways: to provide resources to customers and prospects; to bring traffic to their websites; to chronicle the growth of their startups; to sell online; to connect with other like-minded businesspeople.

It's been great having a front row seat. But our mission here at Small Business Trends is not to focus on blogging. Instead, we evaluate a much broader sweep of issues affecting the small business market. Now that small business blogging has matured to become an accepted online strategy, it is time for us to turn more of our attention to other trends.

In place of the PowerBlog Reviews we are launching a new weekly feature, called "TrendTracking." TrendTracking will highlight not only blogs, but also websites, new products and services, books, events, and other items of interest to the small business market. See our first edition of TrendTracking.

PowerBlog Review: DuctTape Marketing Blog Channel

2005-09-04T20:01:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: This is the eighty-first in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

Duct tape is terrific because it's readily available, and it works!

So does the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel. The blog channel is a group blog or blog network, that latest of blogging trends that we have talked about here before. It is the brainchild of John Jantsch, a business marketing coach, author and founder of Duct Tape Marketing in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.

We previously reviewed the Duct Tape Marketing blog when it was an individual effort of John Jantsch.

He developed his blog channel in June 2005 as an extension to his own initial Duct Tape Marketing blog. "I view the channel blog as an extension to our own blog in that it carries the same brand and still incorporates my blog as the jumping off point," John explains.

John explains that he initially started blogging because:

"I love to write and had been writing articles for publication for years. Blogging just sounded like a great extension of that. My goal is for this to be a place where small business owners come and find lots of valuable but simple tips."

The Duct Tape Marketing Channel says it is a network "featuring 9 of the best and brightest small business marketing minds." All nine are assigned to a specific area of content around small business marketing.

Networks of multiple blogs are becoming more popular because of the old adage "there is strength in numbers." It is easier to generate traffic where there are multiple writers, especially those with acknowledged expertise.

If you're at all familiar with the marketing blogs out there, you'll agree that John has, indeed, assembled an impressive group of bloggers for his Channel:

Zane Safrit -- Business Life

Georgia Patrick -- Customers Count

Dan Janal -- PR Leads

Troy White -- Word Wealth

Martin Jelsema -- Buzzworthy Branding

Jill Konrath -- Selling To Big Companies

Don The Idea Guy -- The Idea Department

Mark Beck -- Internet Marketing Unleashed

John has arranged things to make it extremely easy to check out what each person has to say about their topic. You arrive at an entry page that has each blogger's channel listed, along with name, topic, and even a photo of each individual blogger. "You can choose a blog from the list and start reading. Jump from channel partner to channel partner."

If you want the whole shebang, you can subscribe to the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel in one comprehensive RSS feed. Or, in common with a trend we have noticed recently toward specialized RSS feeds for specific portions of a blog, there are individual RSS feeds offered for each channel. That means you can subscribe with your favorite feedreader program to individual channels, rather the entire site, if certain topics interest you more than others.

There's good substance and style to the Duct Tape Marketing Blog Channel, and everything about it is convenient. The result is a wealth of great information for readers -- all within just a few keystrokes!

If you haven't already discovered the Duct Tape Marketing Channel blog, let your fingers take you there right now.

Business Leadership: Donating to Katrina Relief

2005-09-02T13:48:00.000-05:00

Americans are in need right now as a result of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina.

There are plenty of things businesses and business owners and managers can do to help. Here are a few:

Donate personally. The Instapundit blog has a huge list of links to charities. Take your pick. Or you can give to the Red Cross by clicking on the donation banner above in this post.

Ask employees to donate (also, they can consider skipping a 401K contribution or two).

Pledge to donate a percentage of revenues from sales of some or all products sold.

Add a line to your email signature suggesting that people donate with a link to a charity of your choice. It is a gentle reminder to everyone who gets your email.

The idea here is to leverage your position as a business leader, because you are in communication with many people. Sometimes this gentle reminder is all people need to write a check.

(This post was adapted from the new blog of Robert Levin, Editor of the New York Enterprise Report, a publication serving New York small and midsize businesses. Thanks for letting me know, Robert! Great idea.)

UPDATE: The Truth Laid Bear site is tracking individual contributions and also linking to blogs that are helping raise money. Go here for more information.

Technorati tags: Hurricane Katrina; flood aid; business

New Orleans Needs a Leader

2005-09-02T12:26:00.000-05:00

Where's Jack Welch when you need him?

I'm not one to rant and rave on a blog, but you can't help but remark on the lack of leadership in New Orleans up until today, because it has been painfully and horribly evident.

Like many Americans, I have been glued to cable new shows at every stolen opportunity, watching the plight of the victims of Hurricane Katrina along the United States' southern coast on the Gulf of Mexico.

News reports show the telling signs of leaderless police and demoralized emergency and medical workers, who are doing the best they can under awful conditions.

The victims of this horrible tragedy, who for the most part have had no communication whatsoever, and have seen no leaders visibile anywhere on the ground in the midst of this crisis, have reacted predictably. They have cried and begged for help. They are frantic, panicked, incredulous, desperate. They are taking matters into their own hands. And that's just the ones who are not looting.

Anyone with any kind of business experience immediately recognizes the problem with the relief efforts.

The problem is a total absence of leadership on the ground -- no communication, no direction, and no visible leadership.

In this case I do not fault the mayor or even the governor. No official at that level can be prepared for an event of this magnitude, with a major American city becoming uninhabitable literally overnight. They don't have the staff, the resources, or the experience to deal with a natural disaster like this.

FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), however, is a different matter altogether. It's their job to be prepared and to manage relief efforts in natural disasters like this. While I think it is important for everyone to reserve judgment until we get through the current crisis and all the facts come out, at the same time what we are seeing unfold hour by hour cannot help but raise questions.

Someone like a Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, or Rudy Giuliani, or another strong leader would be welcome in a situation like this. Someone to take charge immediately and in a visible way. That's simply been missing.

President Bush himself stated this morning that relief efforts have been unacceptable.

Since he made that criticism, things seem to be turning around dramatically and quickly.

The past few hours (it is currently 2:00 PM Eastern U.S. time on Friday) have seen a major influx of visible emergency personnel and supplies, at least judging from cable news reports. (And thank goodness for the television news channels and their dedicated reporters -- without them we would have no idea about the real situation on the ground in New Orleans.)

After this situation is stablized, let's hope President Bush has a serious chat with the FEMA Director about "pursuing other career opportunities."

More importantly, let us all hope and pray that the victims can be evacuated from New Orleans safely as soon as possible.

Trend: Starting Small Businesses Later in Life

2005-08-31T22:36:00.000-05:00

Last week I published an interview with business humorist Hesh Reinfeld. Hesh is an example of someone in the Baby Boomer generation (i.e., those over age 40) who decided to start a business after having a few decades of experience under his belt.

He is part of a growing trend of people in the United States starting businesses later in life or after retirement. And he's got lots of company.

Yahoo Small Business commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a survey to gauge entrepreneurial attitudes back in April 2005.

Of those surveyed, 56% said they wanted to own their own business later in life. That's more than four times as many who simply want to retire and not work at all! This chart of survey data tells the story:

Even more striking was the answer to the question "when are you too old to start your own business?" "It is never too late" was the response of 47% of the people.

This desire to continue working later in life seems at odds with another trend, that of people foregoing high-pressure corporate positions or jobs that bore them, for lifestyle reasons. People are saying they do not want to be part of the rat race.

But is it at odds?

Not really. What I believe is happening is that people are moving towards better integration between their work and the rest of their lives. They see owning their own business as offering flexibility. The choice is no longer either work at a demanding pace or not work at all. Instead, they can work at something they really enjoy at a pace that fits with the rest of their lives. When work and personal life are integrated better, with flexible work hours and conditions, they want to continue working.

The Latest Editions of Blawg Review and Carnival of the Capitalists

2005-08-29T15:25:00.000-05:00

If you are looking to explore some new blogs and see what your fellow citizens are saying in the blogs about business and legal topics, then I've got two suggestions for you:

Visit this week's edition of Carnival of the Capitalists over at Casey Software, where KC did a fine job as host. Carnival of the Capitalists (more info here) is a weekly roundup of economics and business blog posts from a variety of different blogs. Don't miss Kevin Brancato's post at Always Low Prices about how a small community actually wanted a Wal-Mart to move in, belying the negative press Wal-Mart seems to be getting these days. (And, by the way, Always Low Prices is a superb source of information about the impact of Wal-Mart on small businesses and local communities.)

And while you are at it, check out this week's edition of the Blawg Review over at My Shingle. The Blawg Review is a weekly roundup of legal blog posts, and many of them touch upon business issues in some way. Be sure to check out host Carolyn Elefant's post about the benefits of small law firms blogging, and also David Giacalone's post about Canadian lawyers, who as it turns out are just as worried about competition as their American counterparts.

Tags: Business; small business; blogs; blawg

Latest UK SME Statistics

2005-08-29T13:34:00.000-05:00

New figures released last week show the largest increase in the UK business population since records began in 1995. Approximately 260,000 more businesses were found to be in operation according to the DTI's Small Business Service.

The business population totalled 4.3 million last year, compared to around four million at the start of 2003.

The figures also show:

There were over half a million more businesses than in 1997.
The increase in the number of businesses is spread across the majority of industries.
The proportion of national employment generated by SMEs has increased from last year to its highest level in nine years.
At least 95 per cent of businesses in all industry sectors were SMEs.

The SBS also provides a full statistical breakdown of the Department of Trade and Industry report:

Almost all of these enterprises (99.3 per cent) were small (0 to 49 employees). Only 26,000 (0.6 per cent) were medium-sized (50 to 249 employees) and 6,000 (0.1 per cent) were large (250 or more employees).

At the start of 2004, UK enterprises employed an estimated 22.0 million people, and had an estimated combined annual turnover of £2,400 billion.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) together accounted for more than half of the employment (58.5 per cent) and turnover (51.3 per cent) in the UK.

Small enterprises alone (0 to 49 employees) accounted for 46.8 per cent of employment and 37.0 per cent of turnover.

You can find much more here.

PowerBlog Review: Revenue Roundtable

2005-08-28T22:30:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: This is the eightieth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

The Revenue Roundtable isn't a single entity. It's a team.

Jim Logan, Michael McLaughlin, Susan Getgood, Kevin Stirtz, Jill Konrath and Brian Carroll are based all over the United States -- Massachusetts, California, Chicago and Minnesota.

These six savvy business experts work in international management consulting, marketing, sales, product development, publishing and communications. They've each received awards and recognition in business and in blogging. Now, in addition to their own individual blogs, they've teamed up to establish a group effort -- The Revenue Roundtable blog.

According to Jim Logan, their goal is to provide information about sales, marketing and business development to help small-business owners grow profitably. "Stick with us," Jim says, "if you want specific advice on marketing strategy, lead generation, managing a complex sale and expanding your business with your existing customers. And that's just the start."

That's a lot to promise, but Revenue Roundtable has a lot to offer. Even though there are six of them contributing, this blog isn't all over the map. Instead they organize their postings around topics. Together, they write on a topic to provide in-depth information and views on that particular issue. For easy reader navigation, they also have all their entries organized by categories, and they indicate at the end of each posting the category in which that entry will be filed.

I especially like their sales tips of the day. Their June 13 sales tip posting, "Don't bring all your goodies to the table," is a great example of the kind of practical sales and business oriented advice the site offers:

Solve the company's most urgent problems,

Are the most differentiated from your competition,

Are in greatest demand, and

Create the best results the quickest.

Living up to its name as the "Revenue Roundtable" the largest number of posts are about sales and generating sales leads. That's what makes this blog so useful. For most small businesses, especially startups, generating sufficient sales is always one of the toughest challenges.

In addition to good solid advice to help companies build their businesses, the Revenue Roundtable offers a list of recommended business books. They even offer sales lessons from business books and movies, such as a sales lesson distilled from the film "Pulp Fiction."

The team blog or group blog approach adopted by the Revenue Roundtable is one of the latest trends in blogging. Sometimes these blogs are referred to as network blogs. They offer the advantages of multiple voices speaking on related topics. Yet they also offer variety that comes from each person approaching the subject matter from different perspectives and with different expertise.

Group blogs distribute the workload and keep from bogging you down as a solo blogger. Writing a blog involves a commitment of time and not everyone is prepared to do it daily or several times a week. A group blog takes some of the time pressure off.

If you want to see how group blogging is done well, visit the Revenue Roundtable.

Interview with Business Humorist Hesh Reinfeld

2005-08-26T00:13:00.000-05:00

Hesh Reinfeld is a business humorist. His humor columns are syndicated and published in a long list of publications. We've published one of his humor columns nearby.

Hesh is an example of the new breed of Baby Boomer entrepreneurs, who build new businesses after having held successful careers. Often this group draws upon their past experience and knowledge, and it's precisely because they have had those experiences that they feel qualified at this stage in their lives to strike out on their own.

Hesh's website gives this background about him:

My problem was that I was always the one cracking a joke and getting one of those looks from my boss. You know the one. It says, "Hesh this is serious stuff. You can't joke about it, even though we all know how boring the meeting really is."

Whether at a replacement window manufacturer or a biotech start-up, I found the same behavior. The only difference was that people used a slightly different vocabulary.

My column, with its skewed perspective on business, got its start with the readers of the Central New York Business Journal (Syracuse). And they liked it. Over time, additional publications and web sites continue to sign me on and carry my column. I even went international when the Bermudian Business started publishing my columns.

Recently we had the chance to interview Hesh to understand what it is like to be an entrepreneur making your living as a business humorist. Here is his story, in nine questions or less.

Q: What's a typical day like in the life of a business humorist?

A: The reality is that I spend most of my time making sales calls. I am on the phone or sending e-mails to editors trying to sell my columns. I spend about 80% of my time doing marketing and sales and 20% writing.

Q: Is there a particular way you get inspiration for your writing? Do you skim newspapers, or meditate, or???

A: I force myself to sit in front of my computer. I go through notes and ideas I have jotted down. I am trying to get my brain into a story telling mode.

Once I have a working theme, it becomes a jigsaw puzzle. I have to put all the pieces together and use only 700 words. I usually get 90% of the story done and then I get stuck on an ending. I find it most useful to just walk away from the story and go shopping, eat dinner, etc. Then an ending will come to me and I run upstairs to my computer to get the words out of me.

Q: Tell us about your own entrepreneurial journey. Did you have to deal with a lot of naysayers, who said you'd never be able to make money at what you do? If so, what was your response? Would you do it all over again? Do it sooner?

A: At first I just wanted to get published. Then a local editor told me I had some promise but the real issue was the ability to produce a column week after week. So I kept on writing. I did have one ex-editor tell me that my stuff was not that good. I just decided not to talk to him for a while.

I did not know what I was getting into. I think if I would have taken a totally rational approach, i.e. done some serious market research, I would have told myself that the barriers to entry were too high.

Would I do it over again? Yes, but I wish I had started 20 years ago. But then 20 years ago I did not have the experiences under my belt.

Q: In your nearby humor piece about the entrepreneur, you sound familiar with the buzzwords that venture capitalists use. Is that because you have had experience raising money or as a VC?

A: I have worked in many different businesses from selling technical training programs to engineers to putting together a real biotech deal. So I just know enough to use the right buzz words.

Q: What is your business model?

A: I focus, focus, focus. I produce content for publications (print, web, radio) that want to connect with business people. Although I write funny stuff (I hope) I am very serious about my business. I help publications differentiate themselves from their competitors by offering a 'dash' of humor.

Q: Where are your columns syndicated?

A: My columns are syndicated through B2B publications either weeklies or monthlies. Currently my column is available in Syracuse, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Southeastern Florida, St. Louis. Kentucky, New Hampshire. Internationally my column is read in Bermuda, Australia, and I even got into a paper in Taiwan.

Q: What is the typical profile of your reader (or whom do you typically write for as a target audience)?

A: My reader is usually a small business owner. The letters I get say that they have faced similar concerns. So even though I actually write fiction, my work touches real business people; perhaps even more than all the "how to" books and articles.

Q: How would you describe yourself?

A: I have a wife who is ready to retire, 3 children, who are just about grown, and a mom who unfortunately is living with alzheimers. I volunteer twice a week running discussion groups for men in senior citizen buildings. I discuss my business problems with them. They are my true mentors.

Q: Is there anything else I haven't asked that you would like readers to know?

A: For 25 years I sat through business meetings and would ask myself, "how come no one else is laughing?" Then I realized that most people were but were just afraid of being the first one to crack a smile.

The Entrepreneurial Addiction

2005-08-25T00:08:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: Not long ago I received a phone call from business humorist Hesh Reinfeld. He had been referred to me by author Barry Moltz. In addition to being an author and angel investor, Barry is a business networker extraordinaire. He knows the most interesting people -- people like Hesh Reinfeld.

Hesh and I spoke, and I found his humor to be intelligent, brilliantly incisive, and of course, funny. The following piece captures the essence of what it is like to be a serial entrepreneur.

Confessions of an Entrepreneur

By Hesh Reinfeld

I told my family that I finally accepted that my passion had become an obsession and you could even call it an addiction. They all laughed. What had taken me 25 years to recognize, they had known for years.

My wife detected my addiction as early as our honeymoon in Paris. All I wanted to do was spend time at the Bourse trading francs on the spot market. She kept on nudging me to see some old picture in the Louvre.

For my daughter it became clear when I demanded that her prom date be an officer in Junior Achievement. I thought it was a good way to ensure that she dated a young man with career aspirations. She saw it differently.

Her younger brother, the violin virtuoso, threw the matter of the addiction in my face when I told him I would not pay for his schooling at Julliard. The curriculum did not have a course in business development or even Accounting 101. How would my son know if his future agent wasn't cookin' the books?

It had been six months since I had read a business plan. And I missed it. I missed it real bad. I salivated when the Wall St. Journal driver came down my block... only to skip my house. My wife had a block on our cable TV- no more MSNBC and it was no better on the Internet, I couldn't access Bloomberg.

Last Tuesday a power stronger then me won out. I don't know how, but I ended up at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club. My eyes focused on the booths along the back wall. I immediately saw the signs. A shot of single-malt Scotch, half finished, was being used as a paperweight on a four-color business plan. The reader, a silver-haired executive with monogrammed reading glasses was analyzing spreadsheets as he simultaneously served volleys of staccato like questions at the young man across the table.

This young man was obviously new to the game. His dark blue suit looked like he had not worn it since his bar mitzvah, and the tie must have been knotted eight years ago and never unraveled. He had ordered the latest micro-brew, but had not taken even one sip.

I sat at the next booth and listened in. I promised myself not to say a word. All I wanted was to eavesdrop and savior the rhythms of the conversation. I smiled as I heard the two argue over, burn rates, traction projections, alpha / beta sites, and most stridently, about valuations.

A cell phone rang, and the single-malt Scotch stood and walked a few steps to take the call in private. I jumped up and got into micro-brew's face. I told him he was under-capitalized. He was giving away his intellectual property. His burn rate was twice as fast as this so-called 'angel' investor was revealing. Big Pharma would pay a much higher multiple for the company if he would listen to my suggestions.

He looked bewildered. I said it again, "Don't make the deal -- you'll lose your company to this chamber of commerce man of the year wanna-be in seven months."

The conversation on the cell phone ended and Mister single malt Scotch asked, "Do we have a deal? " Micro brew-looked at him, then me, and said... "No way!" He reached for his beer and slid into my booth.

I don't have to tell you what happened next. You all know it too well. We sat for three and a half hours, re-doing spreadsheets on his laptop, and playing out various pro-formas.

I finally stumbled home, embarrassed and yet delirious with joy over the deal I had structured. My wife could see me hiding the business plan under my coat. She demanded to see my cell phone. Quickly she went through the calls I had made in the last four hours. She knew the area codes, New York, Brussels, London, and my newest haunt, New Delhi. I had been lining up angel investors.

What could I say? I had already used up my inventory of 'I promise it will never happen again's.' She had been going to her own meetings and knew that she needed to go on with her life and not let my addiction manipulate her.

Had I called my sponsor? She had not seen his number in my cell phone's call list. "No," I whispered.

She made me return to Entrepreneurs Anonymous (EA). I had stopped going to my meetings. I had beaten it or so I thought. But the truth is, we never do. I was just like everyone else in EA. I matched the profile perfectly. 80% of members have a relapse within their first six months. I was now another data point confirming that statistic.

My next stop is the 28-day regimen at the Warren Buffett Center for Recovering Entrepreneurs at White Sulfur Springs. I wonder if they will give me my old room back. Wish me luck.

* * * * *

For more of Hesh Reinfeld's writings, visit his website, www.heshreinfeld.com. And for backstory, read our accompanying interview with Hesh Reinfeld.

Older Entrepreneurs a Growing Segment

2005-08-23T22:26:00.000-05:00

"Once dominated by young, highly-driven, technology-oriented entrepreneurs, startup activity is quickly being taken over by individuals who, while still driven and tech-savvy, happen to be in their 50s, 60s and 70s."

This quote is from an article in HispanicBusiness.com. The article, originally published in Franchising World, cites unpublished U.S. government figures which show the numbers of the self-employed over the age of 45 growing, with those 55 and older growing at the strongest pace:

"Unpublished government data obtained by Challenger researchers show that the number of Americans 55 and older categorized as self-employed in non-agricultural industries has increased 22 percent from 2,136,000 in May, 2000 to 2,598,000 as of May, 2005.

These senior entrepreneurs now represent nearly 27 percent of all self-employed workers, which is second only to 45- to 54-year-olds who make up more than 27 percent of the self-employed."

Of course, this comes as no surprise. Last year we noted the "Graying of Small Business" as one of the nine major trends in the small business market today.

It stands to reason that older individuals are starting their own businesses. People tend to retire earlier -- and, paradoxically, they continue to work after retirement.

Since many Americans these days are knowledge workers, starting their own businesses makes sense. They can sell their considerable expertise by becoming consultants, authors, speakers, or freelancers.

What Site Features Do You Want to See at Small Business Trends?

2005-08-22T16:12:00.000-05:00

This autumn I will be implementing a re-design of the Small Business Trends site.

The new design will include an updated look and make better use of space.

Also, the site platform will be transitioned from Blogger software to WordPress. I've used WordPress on other sites and I am impressed with its simplicity and power. I've enjoyed using Blogger, but the fact is that this site needs more powerful features than Blogger offers today -- features such as categories, integrated search, true trackbacks, and ability to generate individual RSS feeds by category, to name a few.

The new features will make it easier for visitors like you to navigate through the pages of this site and find what you are looking for, especially key features like our Expert interviews and guest columns.

Another key goal is to make this site more accessible and friendly to visitors outside North America.

Despite being based in the United States, we tend to get a significant percentage of traffic (approaching 35% this month) from outside the U.S. Most of the non-U.S. traffic comes from Canada, European Union, India, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Philippines and other English-speaking places in Southeast Asia.

Below is a global map showing the location of the last 500 visitors to this site. This map shows traffic as of early this morning. Although this map is constantly changing, it gives a reasonable representation of the typical traffic distribution.

Do you notice something? Except for a visitor from Hong Kong, there are zero visitors showing from China, a nation of 94 million Web users. Why? Largely it's because China blocks the blogspot domain. Moving off the Blogger platform and onto our own domain using WordPress will hopefully open this site to more Chinese visitors.

Do you notice something else? There are a mere handful of visitors from Mexico and South America. One of the new design features will be the instant ability to translate a particular post to a few key languages, including Spanish. In this way I hope we can provide more value to our southern neighbors.

What features would you like to see this site include? Please leave a comment below with your suggestions. I'm looking forward to your input.

PowerBlog Review: Facteon Factoring Blog

2005-08-21T21:59:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-ninth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

The Facteon Factoring blog is something of a rarity. It's one of the very few blogs on the narrow niche topic of small business factoring. As such it is a testament to the wide range of different businesses that have discovered blogs.

It's the blog of Facteon, Inc., a factoring company out of Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Factoring is the sale of accounts receivables as a source of financing. Businesses turn to factoring companies when they need cash to meet payroll or other operating expenses, and can't wait the sometimes lengthy periods for their customers to pay their invoices.

Tom Nort is the president of Facteon. The company has been in business for six years, along with many more years of industry experience behind them.

In the spring of 2005, blogging hit Tom's radar screen just as it is doing for an increasing number of small business owners. Tom says "Blog discussion is everywhere. I think I first considered doing a blog from a Wall Street Journal article."

He decided on a blog to fulfill the dual goals of (1) heightening Facteon's visibility online, and (2) providing a useful source of information about factoring and small business finance for prospects and existing clients.

He hired online marketing consultant Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing to help launch the blog and make sure it got off to a great start.

The blog is notable for being fully integrated into the Facteon corporate website. The blog is presented as another section of the website, using the same design, corporate colors and navigation. Tom explains, "This makes it convenient for online prospects and clients to switch back and forth from the web site to the blog."

This blog is dense with information and links to other web sites and articles. Factoring as a subject has attracted a fair number of spam sites, yet very few legitimate factoring information sites. Paul Chaney oversees the editorial calendar for the blog, and says "solid responsible content" is the only way to go, adding:

"It goes to the issue of credibility. While it would be easy to set up a series of spam blogs as a way to increase page rank, why resort to less than credible marketing ploys? Also, who would a customer rather do business with, a company that uses any means it can to drive traffic no matter how spurious, or a company that has integrity in its dealings?"

Paul and Tom turned to well-known veteran blogger and small business expert Anita Campbell (CEO of Small Business Trends), to provide daily content. In addition to her small-business knowledge and experience, Anita has a background in banking, so she's experienced in small business finance.

As I read a variety of postings, it occurred to me that this blog is truly a 360 view of small business finance. It addresses a tremendous range of topics that impact all aspects of small business financial management, including: finding cash for business growth; insights on the kinds of businesses that are good candidates for factoring; the impact of the new bankruptcy laws on small businesses; valuing a business; and best accounting software packages, to name a few.

The blog lists postings under three categories: Business Finance, Factoring and Factoring News. The interview with Q & A format is put to good use in several postings, along with dividing up important topics and presenting the information in a series.

In terms of presentation style, the entries vary in length from 2-12 paragraphs. Rather than relying on long paragraphs, information is presented in "chunks" for easier reading and understanding. There's also good use of breaking out information with numbers and bullets.

In my opinion, the Facteon factoring blog is a good example of why a small-business blog should exist -- to educate and inform readers, providing them with what they need to know.

Trends in Blogging

2005-08-18T22:55:00.000-05:00

Martin Lindeskog invited me to write a guest post over at the Egoist blog.

That gave me the opportunity to write about a non-business topic. I chose the blogosphere.

Check out Blogging Trends -- Good and Bad.

The Rising Tide of Customer Defection

2005-08-16T00:30:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: The following guest column comes to you courtesy of business author Laurence Haughton. He writes on a topic some think is a trend: customer disloyalty. Laurence examines it and explains what is behind it.

By Laurence Haughton

Right now somewhere between 32 and 94 per cent of all customers are thinking about ditching their current supplier for the competition.

About one-third of all insurance clients are looking around.
Over half of all cell phone customers are on the edge (the same is true in financial services).
Four of five apparel buyers are ready to switch.
And 94 out of every 100 diners who bought a burger last week may not come back this week.

And the stats are no better in professional services and B2B.

55 per cent of enterprise software buyers are real antsy
61 per cent of executives who outsourced something say, "Going forward, we'd love to find someone else to outsource with."

Some think this is a trend ... a sign of the times. "People aren't as loyal as they used to be," one businessman said. "And Wal-Mart has taught consumers all that matters is the lowest price."

There's certainly some truth in those observations. Competition is crazy, customers are fickle, and everybody is too busy to think about the long term value of a good relationship.

But in my research for my book "It's Not What You Say... It's What You Do: How Following Through at Every Level Can Make or Break Your Company" I uncovered a deeper reason, what I think is the root cause for the rising tide of customer defection (and potential defections) across all sectors.

A lot of customers just don't like their suppliers!

40% of Yellow's clients didn't like them

When Bill Zollars took charge at Yellow Trucking he asked the folks at headquarters, "What do our customers think of us?"

"They like us," Yellow's top managers assured him.

But Zollars wasn't so sure. He knew from his years at Kodak that head office executives can often be way off in their assessments of what customers are actually thinking. Zollars needed a fact-based, accurate benchmark of Yellow's customer sentiments so he could quickly make the right moves and radically improve Yellow's revenues.

Bill Zollars is one of the few big company CEOs who still thinks like an entrepreneur. So instead hiring an outside consultant firm to conduct a 12 month customer satisfaction survey, Zollars suggested his executive team roll up their sleeves and dig into several boxes of customer invoices.

"Find out," he told them,

1. "Did we pick everything up on-time?"

2. "Did we deliver everything on-time?"

3. "Did we keep everything in-tact (no scratches, dents or breakage)?" and

4. "Did we send the customer an accurate invoice?"

Zollars' thinking was simple. "Those are the four basic expectations a customer has when they hire a trucking company," he explained. "And if you fail to follow through on what customers expect they can't possibly like you."

Needless to say the results of this simple study were like a cold slap in the face. In 4 out of ten cases Yellow had failed to follow through on one or more of the fundamental things their customers expect.

"How can they say 'our customers like us,'" Zollars thought. "We let them down 40 per cent of the time."

Zollars knew what he had to do. He engaged executives and employees at every level, from headquarters to the loading docks and everywhere in-between, to implement an aggressive initiative to fix their follow through.

1. He made sure everyone was crystal clear about "just what was expected."

2. He took steps to make sure Yellow had the "right people" at every point of contact.

3. Zollars and his top managers got "enough buy-in" from everyone to overcome the law of inertia.

4. And Yellow reorganized their management to generate more "individual initiative" from every driver and at every depot.

Using those four building blocks Yellow soon reduced that 40 per cent of dropped balls and unforced errors to under 4 per cent. Revenues and profits shot up and Zollars set a new goal, to take the 96 per cent of customers who now "liked" Yellow to the point where they "liked Yellow a lot."

Is customer defection a trend?

Is customer defection a megatrend, caused by circumstances beyond any businessperson's control? Definitely not.

As Bill Zollars told the teams at Yellow, "...if you fail to follow through on what customers expect they can't possibly like you." And (as nobody should need to tell any businessperson) customers who don't like you are more likely to defect.

* * * * *

Prior to becoming a bestselling business writer, Laurence Haughton worked as a management strategist, researcher, and consultant -- advising clients in media, technology, distribution, and professional services. Find out more at www.laurencehaughton.com. Please be sure to read our accompanying review of Laurence's book. Also read Rob the BusinessPundit's review.

Review: It's Not What You Say...It's What You Do

2005-08-15T22:04:00.000-05:00

Laurence Haughton's latest book has a startlingly simple premise:

businesses are successful not because of what they say they are going to do (their strategy), but because of what they actually do (how well they execute)

The latest management fads (ahem, I mean, techniques) don't offer the secret to success. The latest business buzzwords du jour are no panacea.

In the end it all comes down to how well you execute whatever strategy you decide to go after.

The Introduction to Laurence's book sums it up. It describes research called The Evergreen Project that examined 160 companies to find out why some outperformed others consistently:
The final conclusion surprised everyone. "It matters little whether you centralize or decentralize... if you implement ERP software or a CRM system," wrote the experts in their final analysis, "it matters very much though that whatever you choose to implement you execute it flawlessly."

Conventional wisdom is wrong. Becoming a winner, a loser, a climber or tumbler in any industry is not the result of finding (or failing to find) the perfect strategy for your organization. What makes or breaks your company is your grasp over management's most basic mission -- to make sure everyone at every level is following through.
So you might say, if the Introduction offers the magic formula for business success, why read the book?

There's an excellent reason.

Executing well in business is a lot easier said than done. Trust me, I know.

The book outlines what business managers need to do if they and their teams are going to follow through and execute their strategy. The advice is detailed, solid from a management perspective, and well-organized.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book is its style. Laurence Haughton's writing keeps this book upbeat and interesting.

First, he tends to use real-life case studies to illustrate points. But these are not dry academic case studies -- they're colorful stories and vignettes. They involve companies and even people you may have read about in the news. They frequently include dialogue by the managers, as if they are characters in a screenplay. That's what makes the case studies so memorable.

Second, he writes in a staccato style, with short sentences and short paragraphs. A number of paragraphs consist of one or two sentences. This gives the writing a crisp cadence that makes the book easy to digest.

At a little over 200 pages the book can be read in a few evenings -- a virtue in our time-starved lives. Of course, you will want to refer back to the book at various points to put the lessons into place.

I recommend reading "It's Not What You Say... It's What You Do: How Following Through at Every Level Can Make or Break Your Company." Even though it is not self-styled for "small" businesses, the wisdom applies to any size business, large or small. Because after all, even small businesses need to execute well.

PowerBlog Review: The REALTYGram

2005-08-14T22:28:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-eighth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

Frances Flynn Thorsen will not be silenced. The marketing director and realtor for Realty World Benchmark Realty in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA started her blog -- The REALTYGram Blogger -- to voice her opinions when she experienced censorship through the existing local real estate venue.

"Late last year I was unceremoniously dropped from a list server sponsored by the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Association of Realtors. My posts and opinions often do not reflect the party line and political posture of the National Association of Realtors. I decided to look for another venue that was less restrictive, and a blog is the perfect vehicle for me."

Frances, who established her blog in January 2005, explains:

"My blog contains practical knowledge important in a real estate transaction, as well as an unfiltered look at legislative initiatives, with links to such things as forms, contracts, inspection issues and document viewers. I blog without the hyperbole that's attached to so many issues, such as the National Association of Realtors category, fair housing and predatory lending."

Lest you think she's a rebel without a cause, I assure you that her blog is very informative and educational, covering a tremendous range of topics. Content is king here, with postings about the secrets of real estate internet advertising, making sure a listing is legal, having a productive open house, and realtors' commissions and brokers' fees.

A blog provides a wonderful opportunity to raise questions about and scrutinize issues in your field. Frances is clearly not afraid of ruffling feathers by questioning some of the practices in her profession. She poses two questions we may have all wondered about: "Why is the realtor's portrait often larger and more prominent than the photo of the houses in the ad? Why is the text describing the real estate agent large and easy-to-read while information about the house requires a magnifying glass?"

To review a blog, it's important to look at a variety of postings from when the site first began. It was gratifying to see how this blog began to blossom a few months in when Frances started doing two things: 1) adding colorful photos and graphics to postings, and 2) writing more catchy titles. How's this for a catchy posting title: "Noisy Lovesick Frogs Disrupt Hawaiian Real Estate Market"? The graphics open up the blog, and the catchy post titles draw the reader in deeper.

Another thing she has done is set up a number of specific post categories, using words and phrases that consumers are likely to search by. For instance, there are categories for radon, commercial real estate, lead paint, home inspections and so on. This makes searching for information easy and older posts very accessible (and probably adds nicely to page views, also).

She also has assembled a targeted blogroll of real esate related blogs. She also links to other real estate websites regularly in postings -- all in all, she strives to make the blog a rich resource.

If, after reading The REALTYGram Blogger you have a hankering for more about the industry with "location, location, location" as its mantra, you're in luck. In her July 13, 2005 posting, Frances reports that both NBC and ABC are planning to release new television series about real estate agents. (Can "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire Realtor on a Desert Island Awaiting an Extreme Makeover" be far behind?)

Introducing the Small Business Trends Forums

2005-08-11T12:01:00.000-05:00

I'd like to introduce the Small Business Trends forums.

They're actually part of Small Business Ideas forum. It's a pretty friendly group over there -- warm and welcoming.

From time to time I will post a topic from Small Business Trends or elsewhere on the Web, for discussion at the forums.

Or feel free to start a new discussion thread over there yourself.

While you are over at the forums, download the free 60-page eBook "Small Business Search Marketing."

Small Business Optimism Up -- And Also Down

2005-08-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

Inc.com reports that optimism is up among U.S. small business owners.

On the same day the Los Angeles Times reports that confidence is down among U.S. small business owners.

So what's going on? Is one study right and the other wrong?

Welcome to the world of small business studies.

The Inc.com report covers the National Federal of Independent Business (NFIB) small business optimism survey. Generally the NFIB survey is highly regarded. The U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy even incorporates the NFIB optimism survey in its Quarterly Economic Trends report. That's one reason I place a great deal of confidence in the NFIB survey.

The Los Angeles Times cites a survey conducted by the Gallup organization on behalf of Wells Fargo. A big difference with the Gallup/Wells Fargo study, however, is that the full study is not made public. Typically most of us see only the press release and media articles written about the study. Without seeing the questions that were asked or more data it is hard to comment on the study.

When I started following these small business studies closely a few years ago, I immediately noticed the differences among studies. And it's not just differences between different studies. Even the NFIB survey moves up and down from month to month, as the chart shows.

The small business market is hotter than the Space Shuttle entering the Earth's atmosphere. Studies about small business are proliferating -- everybody's doing them. With that many studies, variances are to be expected.

However, even though the numbers may vary from survey to survey, or month to month, when you consider the big picture, often the differences between studies are not too significant. Bottom line: I wouldn't pay undue attention to differences between two surveys. Instead, look for trends over a longer period of time.

Tags: Business; small business

Visit Blawg Review and Carnival of the Capitalists

2005-08-08T15:28:00.000-05:00

Whoa! Cool! Small Business Trends has been included in a Blawg Review, the roundup of law blog posts (I guess that makes this site an honorary "blawg"). This week's Blawg Review is posted over at the Common Scold, where Monica Bay has used an innovative baseball theme. As you are reading all of this week's edition, don't miss the Illinois Trial Practice Weblog's funny entry "I Don't Speak Latin, and Neither Do You."

And, of course, be sure to check out this week's edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, the weekly roundup of business and economics posts, hosted over at View From a Height. Be sure to check out Evelyn Rodriguez's insightful observations in "Ideas Break in the Blogosphere."

Deciphering the High-Growth Startup Landscape in China

2005-08-08T13:16:00.000-05:00

If you want to find out what's happening with technology startups in China and the venture capital scene there, I've found a promising resource: China Venture News.

And the best part? The site delivers context and perspective, without inundating the reader with too much detail or fragmented news stories. In other words, you can see the big picture, not just a lot of detail that's impossible for the distant follower (like me) to assimilate.

For instance, a few of the themes I was able to pick up just by reading the first few weeks of posts include these:

China still is not as innovative a culture as it needs to be or some would like it to be, although it is improving steadily.

Venture capital money is flowing from the West (especially Silicon Valley) and although foreign investment is welcome, "China still struggles with a comprehensive legal and regulatory structure for the growth-oriented venture capital sector."

China's domestic venture capital industry is not very robust but is growing at a rapid pace.

Tags: start up; venture capital; entrepreneurship

PowerBlog Review: Denali Flavors

2005-08-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-seventh in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

Denali Flavors, "The Inside Scoop From One of America's Top Ice Cream Flavor Developers," is the blog of Denali Flavors, the Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA company that develops ice cream flavors and licenses them to dairies. Denali's claim to fame is the very popular Moosetracks ice cream.

John Nardini writes the Denali Flavors blog and its two associated blogs, Moosetopia and Team Moosetracks. John is executive vice president of marketing for the company.

John Nardini has fun with the blogs, and who can blame him? After all, the guy is in a business that's all about fun -- ice cream!

John started the blogs in March and April of this year, and he and five other Denali management members post several times a week among the blogs: "I started the blogs as a way to reach consumers, introduce them to Moose Tracks ice cream in a subtle way and drive them our main web site."

He explains the purpose of each of the three blogs this way:

Denali Flavors: Behind-the-scenes information from one of America's top ice cream flavor developers.

Moosetopia: Entertaining. The only blog written by a moose!

Team Moose Tracks: Information about the company's cycling team that raises money for a variety of local charities.

The three blogs offer a mix of content that make them interesting... and fun reads.

The Denali Flavors blog covers issues the company itself is dealing with, new product ideas, marketing ideas and small business issues. These postings include practical tips and references and links to other articles.

In an ongoing series titled "What Makes Denali Successful," owners Wally and June Blume have each employee do an individual posting in which they give their personal insight into what they think makes Denali successful.

Team Moosetracks showcases the company's dedication to raising money for charities and giving back to the community. Sponsoring an ongoing healthy activity that supports worthy causes can have good residual marketing benefits, too. Featuring them in your blog with lots of photos, as this blog does, is a good use of this communications venue to demonstrate corporate commitment to the community.

And then there is Moosetopia, a "character" blog. Denali's "Moose-cot" refers to Denali's moose company mascot. Moosetopia follows the travel adventures of the stuffed "Moose-cot." A photo accompanies his (the moose's -- yes, it's a blog by a moose) postings in which he explains where he is all over the country. There's even a Moose Page with Moose News and moose paraphernalia such as moose t-shirts, moose tattoos and the 2005 Moose-a Month calendar, all with the drawing of the Denali moose.

A key aspect of the Denali blogs are emails from customers. One satisfied customer wrote: "After exhaustive study and deep soul searching, I have come to the conclusion that the primary reason Saddam was such a dangerous bully is simply because he didn't have access to Denali ice cream. Luckily for America, your wonderful product is available to the vast majority of patriotic citizens, providing us our Daily Dose of Denali. As a good corporate citizen, you have the power to ensure world peace and eliminate strife among nations. Get your wonderful ice cream products quickly to all the trouble spots of the world!" Sharing these fun emails from real folks is a great product endorsement.

According to John, Denali's three blogs have "greatly helped us realize tremendous quantifiable results in terms of driving people to our main website. We've had an increase of 18 percent in web site visits, 10 percent more hits, and total time on the web site is up more than 26 percent. We've received most of our attention on Moosetopia.com, which attests to the validity of character blogs," he adds.

As of August 8, 2005 all three blogs will be consolidated under the main Denali Flavors blog.

I guarantee you'll enjoy reading the Denali blogs. Just make sure you have plenty of Moosetracks ice cream on hand when you do!

Small Business -- A Renewable Resource

2005-08-07T14:45:00.000-05:00

It's heartening to see what happens when an entrepreneurial environment takes hold. The result is a seemingly endless and renewable supply of small business starts.

Anyone with an old industrial mentality might think there is a finite amount of commerce to be done in any society -- that after a while, there just wouldn't be a need for any new businesses.

But in an entrepreneurial environment, that is not what happens.

Instead, small businesses beget other small businesses.

New businesses are created to take advantage of the money flowing in an upbeat economic environment. What's more, there seems to be no end to the creativity of entrepreneurs to think up new business concepts. Businesses are "created out of nothing" so to speak.

A case in point is Ireland.

Just last month I wrote about how the number of small businesses in Ireland doubled in the last ten years.

Now a Sunday Times article profiles lifestyle businesses that enterprising individuals are creating in Ireland. A lifestyle business is one where the owner creates it so that he or she can live a desired lifestyle -- perhaps only working a few days a week or working under certain favorable conditions.

Many of these lifestyle businesses are created "out of nothing." That is, they are businesses of a kind that didn't exist previously or were barely heard of, often arising out of the owner's own interests or hobbies.

What makes these businesses possible is (1) the general entrepreneurial attitude and ingenuity to create new businesses, and (2) the economic good times, which lead to consumers having more disposable income. The more disposable income, the more these new and innovative businesses thrive. What didn't seem like a need before becomes a need when people decide that the goods or services will enrich their lives and they have the disposable income to pay for them.

Catering to the New Side Business Market

2005-08-04T20:33:00.000-05:00

Signals vs. Noise has a thought-provoking article discussing the "side business" market. So just what is a "side business"? They describe it as the 1 to 10-person business:

"What's real are the millions of side-businesses out there. Independent freelancers, people who work for their employer during the day and then run their own side business at night, passionate hobbyists that generate some income (and even those that don't). It seems everyone has one these days. A little something here, a little something there. Something they love to do, or something they have to do, but the trend is clear: Many people are building their own side-businesses. And they need software (just not too much).

The big office suites aren't for them. The big project management apps aren't for them. The big heavy spreadsheets aren't for them. The bloated accounting and payroll apps aren't for them. What they crave are low/no-learning curve, simple focused tools that let them get their work done quickly and then get out of their way. And I believe they'll increasingly prefer that these apps will be hosted by someone else -- who has time for IT, or installs, or update patches, or....?"

The point of the article is: there's a neglected market of millions of tiny businesses out there thirsting for products designed specifically for them.

I love finding these kinds of on-the-ground descriptions of marketplace needs, because they are right on the money. And I happen to agree with this one, to the extent that there are millions of very small businesses that are underserved.

Rather than approaching them as smaller versions of corporate clients, these tiniest of businesses have buying behaviors that are more like consumers than businesses.

Read the whole article, because as of this writing there are over 60 comments. The comments demonstrate the challenges of cost effectively going after this market segment.

Tags: Business; small business; sales; trends

How to Build a Small Business That Lasts

2005-08-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

"There's more wasted activity in your organization than you imagine." These jarring words are part of the advice Gary Harpst received from another CEO that eventually prompted him to found Six Disciplines Corporation.

Six Disciplines is unlike anything I've seen for small businesses. It's a book. It's a methodology. It's technology. It's a coaching system. It's something you'll be hearing a lot more about.

A few weeks ago I drove the two hours from my office south of Cleveland, Ohio over to Findlay, Ohio to visit the headquarters of Six Disciplines. There I met with Gary Harpst, the founder and CEO, and Skip Reardon, the Marketing Director, along with others in the executive team.

Following that meeting, we were lucky to get some of Gary's time on a recorded Conversation (podcast), which is hosted over at SMBTrendWire. Gary, whose first company is now part of Microsoft, outlines how Six Disciplines can shape the way entrepreneurs manage their businesses.

So head on over and read more and listen to: "Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last."

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur

Visit Blog Roundups to Discover What People Really Think

2005-08-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is now posted over at Local Small Business Marketing. Carnival of the Capitalists is a weekly roundup of economics and business blog posts from a variety of different blogs -- by reading them you get a sense for what people really are thinking. Michael Cage did a fine hosting job and as usual there are numerous excellent posts. Be sure to catch John Dmohowski's post "Always Selling" on Drakeview, about how small business owners need to be good at selling.

And while you are at it, check out the Blawg Review, a weekly roundup of legal blog posts. Many of the posts address business issues, and even the business junkies among us can find good reading. This week's edition is hosted over at The Greatest American Lawyer. Be sure to check out Larry Bodine's post describing what corporate General Counsels expect from their outside law firms -- apparently it doesn't include padding the bills.

Tags: Business; small business; blogs; blawg

PowerBlog Review: AutoMuse

2005-07-31T21:32:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-sixth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

AutoMuse, a blog written by E. L. Eversman, covers its subject matter from a unique perspective. In fact, according to E.L., it's currently the only place of its kind on the Internet.

As you might guess from the title, AutoMuse is an automotive blog. E.L. is the chief counsel for Vehicle Information Services in Bath, Ohio, USA. And the blog is also a "blawg," covering legal topics as well.

E.L. calls it "just downright useful information" for consumers, attorneys, car people and anyone seeking specific information, including automotive-related legislation, the conflict between insurance companies and collision repairers, diminished value and a disinterested opinion of how cars hold up after use. Says E.L.:

"I always thought it was odd that there were lots of reviews about new cars, but no one ever bothered to provide information about whether it would be a great vehicle after 3 years and 25,000 miles. I try to accommodate that need as well as provide a wide range of auto-related information."

Since Vehicle Information Services pretty much owns this market segment, anything AutoMuse provides is new territory.

Despite this being a "blawg," AutoMuse covers a very wide range of topics that appeal to industry insiders, consumers, lawyers and others. The writing style is straight forward and there's everything from security breach notification laws and the design and handling of the Thunderbird Convertible, to the "Can-I-Sit-Behind-Myself Test."

On the topic "Security Breach Notification Laws Get Insurer Attention," E.L. reports that the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) notified its members about 19 newly enacted state security-breach notification laws, warning more states will likely follow suit. E.L. remarks that "given the amount and extent of personal information insurers collect in claims processing, I shudder to think what information identity thieves could get if they hacked into insurer files."

About the aforementioned seat test, E.L. reports, "I'm 6' tall, and in many cars, I can't comfortably sit behind myself. In the Mazda5, I didn't have a problem."

Blogging has proved to be a superior medium for raising awareness of and rallying support for a very important issue in the U.S.:

"Until I started blogging about problems between insurers and collision repairers over fixing vehicles, most people weren't aware that we don't have used motor vehicle safety standards. In other words, if your brand new car is involved in an accident two days after you buy it, it may not meet any of the crashworthiness or safety standards it had to meet upon leaving the factory after it's repaired and returned to you."

Even though E.L. had raised the issue in other ways, including being published in legal journals, quoted in trade publications, and as a frequent speaker, there was little response until the blog. "Since I began blogging about this, however, I've gained the support of automotive engineers, auto manufacturers, collision repairers and some attorneys to help me find a mechanism to ensure that used motor vehicles continue to meet a level of ongoing safety. I owe this all to the power of blogging."

You'll find a lot more at this informative blog, including roundups of automotive-related posts from around the blogosphere, known as the Carnival of the Cars. Finally, we'd like to point out that AutoMuse has achieved recognition, by being named in the recent Forbes Best of the Web blog awards in the category of Automobile blogs.

Head on over and check out this informative resource, AutoMuse.

Profile of Small Business Online Behavior

2005-07-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

Fortune magazine has created a profile of small business, based on its own Zogby/Fortune Small Business survey of 2000 entrepreneurs, as well as other published surveys.

So what does it show about small business and online behavior? An interesting picture emerges:

81% of all entrepreneurs plan to increase tech spending by 20% in the next two to three years

68% say they'll adopt new tech products in the coming year

36% plan to buy laptops in the next year

10% include blogs in their marketing plans

51% of all U.S. small firms lack a website

60% of all companies on the Internet use their site primarily to provide information about their business

10% of small firms with websites use the site primarily to sell goods and services over the Internet

26% of small firms use the company website both to provide information and to sell goods and services

One-third of all small firms have been affected adversely by a computer virus. Some 83% currently use antivirus software

Note: although the article doesn't specifically credit the Hewlett Packard/Harris study we reported on back in May 2005, some of the statistics are clearly from that survey.

Tags: Business; small business; ecommerce; entrepreneur

Forbes Magazine Best of the Web: Small Business Blogs

2005-07-28T22:12:00.000-05:00

Small Business Trends has been named as a Forbes Best of the Web in the category of Small Business Blogs.

I'm honored to be named, especially in the company of such other world-class blogs, including:

Duct Tape Marketing
All Business Blog Center
Church of the Customer
Fresh Inc
BusinessWorks
Entrepreneurial Mind
Small Business Brief

To all Forbes readers visiting for the first time, welcome! I invite you to please have a look around at our Experts directory, PowerBlog Reviews, TrendTracker, and our Newsletter. This site is a true labor of love.

Thank you, Forbes!

Barbers Reinventing Their Industry

2005-07-27T21:35:00.000-05:00

The venerable small business trade of the barbershop is changing. For 30 years barbershops were in a long decline in which the numbers of barbers in the United States kept going down. However, since 2001 the industry has been making a slow resurgence.

How have they managed to turn the industry decline around? By reinventing their service offering to appeal to what customers want today.

Barbershops are going upscale, offering a "corner barbershop feel with spa amenities," according to a recent article in BusinessWeek.

"The room where Crawford trims beards, shaves necklines and offers hair replacement has a babbling rock fountain and a view of a lush courtyard. Clients in the waiting room relax in overstuffed chairs to the tunes of Kenny G.

Upscale barbering is beginning to spread outside trendsetting areas such as New York and Los Angeles as more barbers try to win back customers lost over the last decade to the more stylish, male-friendly salons.

* * *

Since 2001, barbers have been making a slow resurgence, and the U.S. Department of Labor expects the number of barbers to grow 6 percent by 2012. That's lower than the average 28 percent expected for all personal care services, but it represents a turnaround in a trade that had been on a decades-long decline."

This is an admirable story about how to reinvigorate an aging industry when consumer tastes change. I wonder how many other small business industries could benefit from such forward-looking innovation.

Tags: Business; small business; retail; trends.

Jeff Nolan, Venture Capitalist, Talks With Us

2005-07-25T21:55:00.000-05:00

My interview of Jeffrey Nolan, a venture capitalist with SAP Ventures, is now up over at the RFID Weblog. He talks about which kinds of RFID businesses are getting venture funding today -- and which kinds are not.

Jeff is himself a blogger. Actually he is my favorite VC blogger because he is prolific and has a wide range of interests. His blog is Venture Chronicles by Jeff Nolan.

One interesting side note came up in the interview: he says he gets virtually all of his reading material these days from blogs. And all I have to say about that is, if you are an entrepreneur in a high-growth industry looking for venture funding some day, you definitely should be reading the VC blogs like Jeff's. And probably writing your own blog.

Tags: Business; entrepreneur; startup; venture capital; technology

PowerBlog Review: Landfair Furniture

2005-07-24T21:56:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: Welcome to the seventy-fifth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

The Landfair Furniture blog is written by Mike and Bev Landfair.

They are the owners of Landfair Furniture & Design Gallery and Furniture Annex in Portland, Oregon. In addition to their Landfair Furniture & Design Gallery store, they have an online shop, Landfair Furniture Annex. They're using their blog to drive traffic to the online site and boost awareness of their store.

Even though they just started their blog on March 15, 2005, they report that it has already reaped handsome rewards for them. Part of the reason is that, in addition to showcasing their own operation, the Landfairs are generous in helping promote others. They feature local designers, the furniture companies whose lines they carry and even a local home show sponsored by a local realtor.

For example, the Landfairs were so impressed by the values of one of the furniture companies whose products they sell that they included the company's values, mission and goals in one of their postings. What a terrific way to cement a relationship with a vendor!

They do a great job offering a platform to local designers, with Mike and Bev interviewing the designers and posing questions.

"Designers don't have time to market, and this is our way to help them market themselves. We announce each interview in advance and get the word out as widely as possible. Including these interviews has resulted in some clients for the designers. It's been a very effective way for us to demonstrate to designers that it makes sense for them to work with us, not only because of the quality furniture we have to offer, but the marketing support we give them."

The Landfairs use an innovative idea to bring people into their store. Bev signs off the blog with this offer:

"Mention this blog when you visit our store, and we'll have a token of appreciation for you."

Who knows? If someone is in the market for a new couch or needs a little design advice, this little gracious touch could be just the thing that brings them into the Landfair's store.

When the Landfairs included excerpts from an interview that appeared in someone else's blog, the interviewee -- Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing -- emailed the Landfairs. "She suggested we come up with ten tips for buying furniture to put in one of our postings. We followed her advice and also reported on the top ten decorating trends for 2005."

The Landfairs' blog also helped them get media coverage. "Because of our blog, we were interviewed in the Business Journal. They featured us in two articles, including a photo, about how we're using our blog to build our business."

So is the Landfairs' blog helping their business goals? Absolutely, says Mike. "In an economy that still seems a little slow, our traffic to our main store has increased, and sales are up a healthy percentage over last year."

Even if you're not in the market for a new couch or looking for decorating tips, visit the Landfair Furniture blog to see all the things the Landfairs are doing right with their business blog.

Small Businesses Bypassing Big Cities

2005-07-22T22:46:00.000-05:00

BusinessWeek.com points out the trend of entrepreneurs bypassing big cities in favor of small towns. The article highlights the fundamental shift our economy is undergoing, as small businesses and small locales take on greater importance:

"With the old-line manufacturing economy almost a thing of the past and service and information economies taking its place, the enticements that make a city attractive for entrepreneurs also are changing. The traditional menu of tax incentives, low office rents, and favorable regulatory environments remain in play. But more frequently, observers say, a host of variables that emphasize quality of life, population diversity, infrastructure, and a culture of creativity have become weightier matters to consider when choosing a city.

Indeed, in his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida argues that more than 30% of the American workforce -- some 38 million people -- now makes up what he calls the "creative class," in which he includes artists, scientists, architects, designers, musicians, and the like. That trend, in turn, has caused a fundamental shift in values, attitudes, and subsequently, the economy.

THINKING SMALL. From this creative class come some of the most innovative business ideas, and from those come employment -- roughly three-quarters of all new jobs are generated by small businesses, according to the Small Business Administration. The net result is that a number of unexpected cities are becoming fertile breeding grounds for entrepreneurship."

Hat tip to Dane Carlson at the Business Opportunities Weblog for the link.

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur; startup; trends

Illegal Immigrants are a Lucrative Customer Opportunity

2005-07-20T21:59:00.000-05:00

Throughout its history, the United States has been a welcoming place for immigrants. (Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore....)

But our porous borders have led to unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants over the past two decades. Estimates of illegal immigrants in the United States range from 10 million to 20 million people, depending on which source you use.

Despite all the outcry against illegal immigration, businesses have caught on to the potential and simply see dollar signs. An article in BusinessWeek describes how businesses in various industries are targeting the illegal immigrant market:

At the same time, though, the fast-growing undocumented population is coming to be seen as an untapped engine of growth. In the past several years, big U.S. consumer companies -- banks, insurers, mortgage lenders, credit-card outfits, phone carriers, and others -- have decided that a market of 11 million or so potential customers is simply too big to ignore.

And it's not just large businesses that are profiting by marketing to illegal immigrants. Small businesses -- ranging from insurance agents, to attorneys, to used car dealers, to check cashing outlets, all the way down to the corner convenience stores -- are profiting from this group.

For additional background, there is also an NPR radio segment on the same topic.

The upshot of the story is that no one seems to believe the government will crack down and deport illegal immigrants. One way or another, illegal immigrants will be assimilated into American society, even if it takes the capitalists among us to do it.

How do you feel about this trend? Should businesses sell their products and services to illegal immigrants?

UPDATE July 24: There is also a discussion going on over in the Small Business Trends forum.

Mobile Phones Transforming Small Businesses

2005-07-18T21:37:00.000-05:00

What is the most significant piece of technology to impact small businesses worldwide?

The computer? The fax machine? Desktop software?

Try the mobile phone.

Emeka at the Timbuktu Chronicles points to a Reuters article about small business people in Kenya whose sole piece of high technology is likely to be the mobile phone:

"The mobile phone has become the most essential work item for Theuri, a Kenyan plumber, electrician and small businessman who, like so many others in the East African nation, makes a living from various different jobs at the same time.

Thanks to an explosion of growth in the mobile phone industry in Kenya over the past five years, Theuri says his plumbing-electrical business has grown by about 50 percent.

He also operates a community payphone via the mobile network and further cashes in on the boom by charging batteries for a fee. "Mobile phones have helped me very much," Theuri said.

"Sometimes I receive as many as five calls a day for different jobs. Were it not for mobile phones, jobs would have been very minimal. With the phone, I am well known."

Theuri says his phone number goes around by word-of-mouth from satisfied customers.

He is among thousands of Kenyans, many of them poor, who have taken advantage of the phenomenal mobile expansion to ease the way small businesses operate.

Painters and masons now advertise their numbers on trees by the roadsides in Nairobi. In the past, they would have sat outside hardware shops looking for work from people who have just bought nails, cement and other building supplies."

See also my post of last month, "Cell Phones on Steroids -- The New Computers."

What technology do you think has impacted small businesses the most? Leave your comment below.

Tags: Business; small business; trends; Cell Phone

PowerBlog Review: Kiger's Notebook

2005-07-17T22:12:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-fourth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

With the avalanche of technology and growing acceptance of the Internet, newspapers launched web sites to keep up. Blogs are now one the newest web-based communications formats, and some savvy newspapers are embracing this new concept.

One such newspaper is the Post-Bulletin of Rochester, Minnesota. Using a blog -- Kiger's Notebook -- Business Editor/Assistant City Editor Jeff Kiger expands his connection with readers of his weekly print column.

Jeff is conscientious and prolific about his blog -- often making three to five posts a day, Monday through Friday. When asked to describe the purpose of the blog, he says:

"I provide breaking business news and include a variety of news items such as store openings and closings, business expansions, major hirings and layoffs, and stock news that can help readers in their business decisions, marketing plans and sales calls."

Yes, it's a lot of effort, but the blog has paid off already. It has generated lots of ideas for Jeff's column, as well as new sources:

"Since I launched the blog earlier this year, it has easily generated at least six items that can be used for my weekly print column. The
blog has connected me with more sources and deepened my link with my existing sources."

Businesses are always looking for new customers, and if you have a new product or service to publicize, you're competing with lots of other businesses for column inches in any newspaper. As a newspaper business columnist with an active blog, Jeff is in a unique position to help business owners on both fronts. Not only is he covering the business news, but the information and insights he provides have helped local businesses land new customers. For instance, Jeff included this happy reader's email in one of his postings:

"Both Terri and I enjoy your blog. She finds it helpful for keeping in touch with new businesses coming along. Your announcement of Coldwater Creek led her to contact them and get their lodging and meeting business."

Kiger's Notebook has great focus. As befits a local newspaper, the blog content is entirely about business issues affecting the great Rockester Minnesota area.

One of the most interesting aspects to this blog is the deliberate way Jeff uses it as a two-way communication vehicle. He reaches out to those in the local community for leads and interview sources. If you search under his category entitled "Tips for Getting in the Paper," you will see the way he requests reader help on stories he is putting together, as well as his open invitation to sit down for coffee with any reader.

The blog's tone is conversational, yet professional. Because it is conversational, Jeff can report on events as they unfold, even when he does not have all the facts and isn't sure it is a "story" quite yet. That is hard to pull off in a print newspaper. But in a blog it seems to fit somehow.

Businesses in Rochester, Minnesota, are fortunate to have Kiger's Notebook. As blogs and Web versions of print newspapers evolve closer and closer together, my bet is that many other savvy business newspaper reporters will launch their own blogs as "companions" to their regular columns or stories, and will use them as two-way communication vehicles.

The Advantages of Small Businesses

2005-07-16T18:24:00.000-05:00

Seth Godin says it is better to be small, as long as you think big.

In two posts Seth explains why small businesses are so popular. He also explains the advantages of being a small business and why small business owners make the choices they do. He writes:

"For the last six years, I've had exactly one employee. Me. This has changed my worklife in ways that I hadn't predicted. The biggest changes are:
1. the kind of project that's "interesting" is now very different. It doesn't have to be strategic or scalable or profitable enough to feed an entire division. It just has to be interesting or fun or good for my audience.

2. the idea of risk is different as well. I can write an ebook and launch it in some crazy way and see what happens. I can build a dot com enterprise with a questionable business model and just see what happens. Because my costs are a whisker compared to a large organization, there's just no comparison in the way I can approach something (compared to, say, a publisher).

Does this mean that little companies just do little things? Of course not."

Check out Small is the New Big and More on Small. They present a very interesting viewpoint about small businesses.

Tags: Business; small business; entrepreneur

The Trend of the Fluid Retiree

2005-07-15T19:56:00.000-05:00

We hear a lot in the United States about the aging Baby Boomer population (those born between 1945 and 1964). Last year the youngest Baby Boomers turned 40. This year the oldest Baby Boomers turn 60.

So what are those Baby Boomers doing in their later years? About 1 million of them have taken to living on the road in their recreational vehicles "RVs." (If you are from outside the U.S. and have no idea what an RV is, you can see some here and here.)

Not only are they living in their RVs at least part of the year, they are becoming a source of part-time and seasonal labor for businesses, especially small businesses. In the past seasonal businesses such as campgrounds, hotels and amusement parks hired teens and young people. But now they are increasingly looking to older, mobile workers who -- turtlelike -- bring their homes with them when they travel. Journalist Adam Geller explains in this Associated Press report:

"Most of the jobs on offer are from hotels, amusement parks and campgrounds. With the supply of seasonal workers limited in many rural areas, some employers have been pushing to draw RV-dwelling workers.

Last year, for example, Kampgrounds of America Inc. launched an incentive program designed to attract working campers, offering them free nights at member campgrounds as they motor between jobs, as well as discounts and sweepstakes drawings.

* * *

Managers at Adventureland, an amusement park outside Des Moines, Iowa, also have recruited RVers. Until five or six years ago, virtually all the park's seasonal staffing was done locally, and included mostly younger workers.

This year, about 400 of the 900 employees are RVers, most in their 60s, a boon for a park that was increasingly competing with retailers, casinos and other businesses for local employees. The older workers often arrive with an optimistic attitude and better work ethic than younger workers, said Steve Anderson, the park's personnel director."

I see this RV-ing senior workforce as part of a larger trend -- a trend in which we will see much more fluidness between retirement, working and entrepreneurship. I call it the trend of the "fluid retiree."

In the U.S., it used to be that someone reached the magic retirement age of 65 and stopped working. Period. Now many more people "retire" earlier, but their retirements are not traditional in the sense of not working. Retirees take jobs from time to time, and they even start and continue their own businesses during their "retirements." Their state of employment is based not on some grand career plan set in motion 30 years earlier, but rather on their needs and desires this year or this month. If they need the money or if they simply want more challenge and social interaction, they may take a job or start a business.

I would love to hear from others outside the U.S. Is this trend of the "fluid retiree" something that other countries are experiencing? If so, what is driving the trend?

Tags: Business; small business; demographics; retirement; trends

Trends Affecting Small Independent Retailers

2005-07-14T21:58:00.000-05:00

I finally had a chance to read a powerful white paper about trends among small retailers, called "Challenges of the Future: the Rebirth of Small Independent Retail in America." It is a very good roundup of the trends and pressures affecting small business retailers today.

Here is the background for how the white paper came to be written:

"This white paper originated from an observation and a supposition by Jim Baum, a highly active and successful Morris, Illinois small, independent retailer. His observation was that macro and micro trends affect the small independent entrepreneur differently than their large competitors. His supposition is if small independents could just step back, take a deep breath and think about what's really happening, what's changing and what's just over the horizon, they might act differently. They might change how they do things. They might experiment more to take advantage of new emerging opportunities. They might see solutions more clearly. They might find new ways to connect more closely to their marketplace."

The white paper identifies eight trends affecting small independent retailers today.

Personalization - "Knowledge of customers' birthdays, favorite colors, time of day they like to shop, and other information is not just pleasantry any more. It can be an essential driver of sales. So while big companies employ slogans like 'reach out and touch someone,' it is more likely the small independent retailer who can actually shake their hand."

Value equation - Customers are more becoming more demanding and expect more value. "And so, the traditional retail power structure has permanently shifted from sellers to buyers. Doing business as usual can mean doing no business at all. Buyers now hold the trump card."

Increased Competition - Competition is growing in strength and numbers. "Because of the presence of the Internet and the increasing clout of large national chains, small independents must not compete on price. To do so is a death wish. It is not sustainable. It is not winnable. And it will likely lead to ruin.

The real strengths of successful small independent retail revolve around specialization, differentiation and finding profitable, defendable and sustainable niches."

Changing Demographics - Three demographic trends are bringing profound change and opening up new opportunities to serve these demographics: (1) the aging American population, (2) the growing Hispanic population, and (3) Generation Y -- born between 1981 and 1995 -- which is the largest American consumer group in history.

Community Activism - "There is a growing national trend of community resistance to unrestrained retail development in order to protect local community personality, feel and values."

Health Care Costs - "The most important domestic problem in the U.S. is the healthcare insurance crisis. While this affects everyone, it hits the small business especially hard due to the runaway costs of providing benefits to employees. It creates a real competitive disadvantage."
Changing Consumer Attitudes and Behavior - "The traditional customer definitions and delineations have been blurred by the sheer volume of marketing activity across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. * * * Consumers want a transparent buying process devoid of hassles. A retail experience that fulfills these dual emotional needs will be highly valued."

Urban Sprawl and Real Estate Development - "A recent trend in new retail development is to create community spaces of mixed-use that exhibit a strong sense of place. Many of these developments called 'the new urbanism,' incorporate features more in keeping with feelings of towns and neighborhoods vs. traditional large retail centers."

Download the entire white paper on retail trends here (PDF).

Tags: Business; small business; sales; retail; trends

Small Businesses Resisting Open Source?

2005-07-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet wonders aloud why small businesses resist Linux.

"I do know that inertia keeps me from making more use of Linux than I do. Distribution channels for open source systems are thin, and the assumption is help will be hard to come by.

So I want to throw this open to our small business readers, especially those who continue to use Windows in their operations. Is it inertia, can that inertia be broken, or is there another reason we don't give Linux a chance?"

Well, I happen to agree with one of the comments to the above blog post, commenter number 76, Otto_Delete. He says "Most businesses can save a lot of time and money using Linux for their servers, but it isn't ready, IMO, for most desktops."

One thing I've learned from reader input here at Small Business Trends is that significant numbers of small businesses are using Linux at the server level -- and they may not even know it. Small businesses rely on their technical gurus to choose the right server technology. All that business executives care about in that situation is whether the servers work properly for a reasonable price.

On the desktop, however, it is a completely different matter. There the advantages of using a software platform in common with the rest of the business world win out. Small businesses don't want to have to train employees on new software. Most have neither the time nor the technical skill to install new desktop applications, figure out how to maintain them, train their employees how to use them, deal with all the extra integration to make multiple applications work together, and still run their businesses.

UPDATE JULY 13, 2005: A reader emails stating that FireFox is more-or-less taking over the world. Certainly many more people are using FireFox these days. But a browser is a limited application and doesn't need training to use it. It's not the same as Word, for instance, in a law firm, where it is crucial that employees be power users of Word in order to rapidly turn out lengthy legal documents, or Excel in an accounting or consulting firm, where the professionals create complex, multi-tab spreadsheets for clients.

Tags: Business; small business

Carnival of the Capitalists -- And Other Roundups

2005-07-11T21:30:00.000-05:00

Carnival of the Capitalists, that online roundup of business blog posts, is being hosted this week at Multiple Mentality. One of my favorite posts in this week's Carnival is Sexy Advertising: Paris Hilton and the 3 tests over at the Retail Store Blog.

Be sure to check out the Blawg Review, a roundup of legal blog postings (get it? law + blog = "blawg") which is now being hosted at Legal Commentary. Don't miss My Shingle's post on law firm billing practices, describing profit markups by law firms that hire contract attorneys.

And finally, visit the Carnival of Personal Finance, being hosted this week at Smart Money Daily. Two must-read personal finance articles are Moving to Your Dream Job and How I Got my Dream Job, both of which are really stories about enterprising entrepreneurs.

Tags: Business; small business; Capitalists; carnival.

PowerBlog Review: Joseph's Marketing Blog

2005-07-10T11:05:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-third in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Martin Lindeskog. Martin Lindeskog has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Southern New Hampshire University (2000). He graduated in May as an International Project Coordinator. Martin Lindeskog is seeking international job opportunities and is planning to start his own small business. He is a deputy member of the Swedish National Association of Purchasing and Logistics (Silf, Western Region).

By Martin Lindeskog

Joseph's Marketing Blog's tagline says "Rants of Marketing, Business, and Daily Life." Joseph DePalma started his blog in February by saying: "I'm probably going to turn this into somewhat of a business-experience blog." For being in his twenties, he has lots of business experience. I got curious about his different companies, so I sent him an e-mail and asked for an description of his ventures.

Here's some other information I can tell you: Vertora, Inc. is my main focus that everything sort of "falls back" to. It's a brand consultancy focusing on building amazing brand experiences (focusing on customer interaction, more so than graphic design and the like.)

AerialText, Inc. is a text message advertising firm that I'm currently selling. It's opt-in text message advertising. Currently there is no site for it because of this sale and how things are moving over.

Digital Charisma, is a web development firm I've had for years. it provides top notch web design and user experience - bottom line.

My favorite project, outside of brand experience consulting (which I absolutely love) is coming up. It's called OpenBeat - it's an internet radio center for independent music. Musicians will be able to sign up for a small annual fee, and we will promote their music on our 10 radio stations, give them a personalized artist website which we will also promote, and handle all payment processing for any CDs they wish to sell. It's a very exciting project, and we ran into some big delays with it, but it'll be going live in the next 2 months or so. Anyone will be able to go to the site and listen for free, and buy artist CDs right through our site. I can't wait till it's live. (E-mail, 07/09/05.)

From the About page: "In his spare time, Joseph writes this blog as a way to share his experience and knowledge." Joseph DePalma seems to be very good at managing his time, running all these different companies and at the same time being an active trader on the stock market. I bet he has read something by "productivity guru" David Allen. Joseph told me that he likes to read books. His favorite book is Good to Great by Jim Collins. I read Jim Collins's book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, in my Organizational Leadership course. Talking about leadership of an organization, I have to recommend the book, The Blackwell Handbook of Principles of Organizational Behavior, edited by Edwin A. Locke. I think that chapter 10 (Motivate Performance through Empowerment, pages 144-145) by Jay A. Conger, could be of special interest to Joseph DePalma and his readers. The author is listing Richard Branson of the Virgin Group, and Jack Welch of General Electric, as two positive examples on how empowerment works. See Joseph's reading list for books by Jack Welch and Richard Branson, and read his post, The Power of Empowerment.

The power of Joseph's Marketing Blog is the focus on how to build a better brand through customer experiences. I want to end this review with an excerpt from Joseph's post, Marketing is Life.

Marketing is not an afterthought. It should be integrated into the entire product or service right from the beginning. So many businesses focus on rushing to create a product or service, but never really think about the marketing behind it. (JosephDePalma.typepad.com, 05/16/05.)

When and Why Most SMBs Will Do Business in China

2005-07-08T20:37:00.000-05:00

A McKinsey Quarterly article suggests that small and midsize manufacturing companies in Europe and North America are passing up opportunities in China:

"For many small and midsize enterprises in Europe and North America, the prospect of doing business in China can be daunting. In fact, as a result of their reluctance, such companies seem increasingly vulnerable on several fronts: they are not only forfeiting opportunities to sell goods and services in China and to source low-cost products in its factories and workshops but also face new Chinese competition at home.

But rather than wait passively for the day when these competitors show up on their doorstep, they can pursue strategies that could help them overcome the barriers to entering China's domestic and export markets. To be sure, those barriers are considerable. Many small and midsize companies are hardly eager to deploy scarce management resources to identify qualified Chinese vendors or to research and understand the tastes of the country's consumers. Nor do they have the time and resources to recruit staff and manage operations there."

So what is the right way for SMBs to go about capturing the China opportunity? The article notes that some businesses attempt partnerships with local Chinese companies, but these rarely work out. Rather, the author suggests that small businesses band together and/or pool resources, possibly through trade associations, to take advantage of opportunities to reach China as a market and/or to source manufacturing there.

I found this an interesting article, but the part about pursuing market opportunities (i.e., finding customers) in China strikes me as unrealistic. Precious few small businesses would be in a position to chase customers in China, even by pooling resources. Most small businesses have a tough enough time increasing their footprint in their own local markets. To attempt to go after markets half way around the world, with deep cultural and language differences, is a challenge most small businesses simply cannot overcome.

Sourcing of manufacturing, however, is a different matter. Small manufacturing companies in the West today are faced with compelling circumstances that make it imperative they have competitive cost structures. These days, competitive cost structures are hard to achieve with high-paid Western labor. Outsourcing of manufacturing in China can make sense.

Tags: Business; small business; globalization; outsourcing

Business Failure Rates Highest in First Two Years

2005-07-07T22:12:00.000-05:00

New research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that most failures of American startups will occur in the first two years of their existence.

After that, the rate of business failure slows.

"The data show that, across sectors, 66 percent of new establishments were still in existence 2 years after their birth, and 44 percent were still in existence 4 years after. (See chart 1.) It is not surprising that most of the new establishments disappeared within the first 2 years after their birth, and then only a smaller percentage disappeared in the subsequent 2 years. These survival rates do not vary much by industry."

The following chart shows business survival rates by industry sector. Interestingly, the sector with the highest survival rates is education and health services. The sector with the lowest survival rates is the information industry. Of course, this study tracked new business startups from between March of 1998 and March of 2002 -- the height of the dot com boom.

Click to view larger image

Tags: Business; small business; startup.

Boom Times for Irish Small Businesses

2005-07-06T09:16:00.000-05:00

The Sunday Times has an interesting article noting that small businesses are booming in Ireland. The number of small businesses has doubled in the last 10 years, rising from 160,000 in 1995 to over 300,000 today.

The pattern of entrepreneurship in Ireland is similar to the pattern in other well-developed countries with vibrant economies, such as the United States. Some of the key characteristics of the SME (small and medium enterprise) sector in Ireland include:

The number of manufacturing businesses is low. Instead, the trend is to import and distribute goods that have been sourced in low cost economies.

Freed from capital intensive manufacturing, firms have more time and money for research into creating new and better products.

The business services sector is booming, in part because Ireland has become a prime location to outsource services to.

Construction is thriving, and craftspeople and tradespeople are finding opportunity.

And all the new-found wealth and prosperity in Ireland is creating an affluent consumer culture. It is sparking a chain reaction, leading to further new business opportunities. Consider the implications of this quote from the article:

"Delaney said changing lifestyles and increased wealth have created new business opportunities. 'People see ideas all around them and create a new market for something which was lying idle,' he said, adding that garden centres and DIY shops have mushroomed as more people socialise at home and use their garden as an extension of the living area. 'It's an area where there's a lot of innovation and product development,' said Delaney. 'In the past, we wouldn't have thought of having outside gas lights on a decking because nobody would have put decking down.'"

Read the whole article.

Tags: business; small business; entrepreneur

Cost of Starting Up is Lower than Ever

2005-07-05T00:42:00.000-05:00

Joe Kraus, founder and CEO of JotSpot, writes that it's a great time to be an entrepreneur because it's never been cheaper to launch a company.

He points out that Excite.com took $3 million to get launched, but that JotSpot took only $100,000. He attributes the cost differential to four factors:

Hardware is cheaper;

Infrastructure software is free;

Access to global labor markets means inexpensive access to talent;

Search engine marketing lets you affordably reach small markets.

While his thoughts primarily describe Web technology startups, it's not hard to see how his thoughts would apply to other kinds of businesses.

And what are the implications? He suggests we can expect more people to be entrepreneurs (since more people can raise $100,000 than $3 million). He also suggests we will see more companies "bootstrapping to profitability."

Be sure to check out the whole post, including the comments and and other posts linking to it.

Tags: business; small business; entrepreneur.

PowerBlog Review: Innovation.net

2005-07-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We are pleased to bring you the seventy-second in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

The Innovation.net blog's tagline says "it's all about collaborative innovation."

Innovation.net is the brainchild of Mike Docherty. He began blogging a little over a year ago in order to learn about blogging. He says, "I wanted to learn about blogging and had lots of ideas and observations on managing innovation from my 24 years in general management, marketing and new product development. I want to help my readers draw deeper insights and knowledge from what they see and experience related to innovation and entrepreneurship."

Mike is CEO of Venture2, Inc, a consulting and new ventures management company focused on launching breakthrough innovation in the consumer products industry. He blogs from Delray Beach, Florida, USA.

Mike's postings vary in length, which is a nice way to mix things up. For example, Mike's May 5, 2005, posting is only two short paragraphs. A posting that ran a couple of months prior ran 10 paragraphs.

Mike also mixes things up with a different technique. He intermingles artwork with his postings. Sometimes it's a photo, other times it's line art. And it always relates to the content of that particular posting.

Here's something I like very much about Mike's blog. He includes interviews.
One such interview was with the CEO of a company called Eureka Medical, about Eureka's business model and philosophies on medical innovation. The interview is excellent because it asks a question and allows the interviewee to delve into the answer in depth. Because the interview with the CEO covered a lot of territory, Mike wisely broke it up into a series of three interview postings. And he didn't run them as three consecutive postings, but instead over a period of three weeks. This technique can keep readers interested in coming back.

About 15 years ago, business books became red-hot "must reads," and the trend continues. Because we want to be successful in business, we scoop them up by the dozens. They typically have catchy titles (who can ever forget "Winning By Intimidation" and "Who Moved My Cheese"?) and concepts (Be a 60-second Manager!). I don't know about you, but I've bought some of these tomes, only to read them and think "Where's the beef?" It would be good to know which ones are truly worth reading because, let's face it, time is precious for us all.

Mike read one such book -- Blue Ocean Strategy -- and then reviewed it in a posting:

"I've read other reviews, and they seem generally very positive. Sorry, but I can't help but feel that this book's premise is a metaphor in search of an idea. Maybe I didn't get that 'I can change the world' feeling, however short-lived it may be, that I get from reading other innovation visionaries I respect and read. However, I wouldn't recommend this one."

Mike just saved his readers -- those lucky souls who hadn't yet shelled out 30 bucks to buy the book -- money and time.

One of the key characteristics about this blog is the way it gives an in-depth and high-level look at consumer product innovation. This is a blog intended for senior-level decisionmakers. This is not a "tips" kind of blog. Rather, it is a strategy blog.

Visit Innovation.net.

Issues Small Businesses Face in International Trade

2005-07-02T04:05:00.000-05:00

As more small businesses start to do business globally, what are the issues they face?

Dr. Jeffrey Cornwall of The Entrepreneurial Mind offers some interesting, real-life insights about the challenges small businesses today face when doing business globally. He summarizes points made by Ian Levitt, owner of an automotive parts distribution business called Qualcast, during the recent International Small Business Council convention chaired by Dr. Cornwall:

Credit risk. As he began to do business in China, he faced the need to finance large purchases by Chinese customers. He would have to carry their debt until the parts arrived and were weighed and checked. This could mean several weeks to months. Unfortunately, banks view lines of credit on such accounts receivable as too risky to finance even if only for a few weeks. He was able to speed the process along, but had to tie up all of his cash on a single order.

Currency issues. More of his European customers now do business in Euros rather than dollars. This opened him up to significant currency exchange risks. Even as a small business person, he was able to buy a large stake in Euros for twelve months to stabilize his exchange rate.

Credit card fraud. Sadly, credit card fraud is a major issue for international trade, and many clients insist on using credit cards for purchases. Ian said that he can no longer accept credit card orders from his international clients due to the high rate of fraud.

Japan Poised for Entrepreneurial Ventures to Break Out

2005-07-01T00:18:00.000-05:00

The latest edition of the Japan Entrepreneur report asserts that the time is ripe for Japan's entrepreneurial ventures to break out, due to conditions similar to post-World War II era in Japan, and the early 1980's in the United States:

"Social reform, technological innovation and strong needs for entrepreneurship converged, sparking an unprecedented venture boom.

These same three factors converged in the United States in the early 1980s. The U.S. had suffered from inflation for ten years, unemployment had topped ten percent and the nation needed new industries. Improved semiconductor technologies, the first personal computers and President Reagan's broad deregulation measures combined to create a powerful wave of innovation. That wave launched a host of world-leading IT players: Microsoft, Apple Computer and Cisco Systems, to name just a few.

Today's Japan resembles the U.S. of the early 1980s. The nation needs entrepreneurship as IT players like Sony and Fujitsu fail to generate earnings, creating pressure to restructure. Problems erupt from industry giants like Seibu Railways and Daiei. Add in Commercial Code revisions and deregulation and you have a potent mix transforming the economy.

From a technology standpoint, too, Japan is witnessing a dramatic transformation. The IT industry's center of gravity is shifting from general-purpose computers to a new breed of digital consumer devices: computers that don't look like computers.

Ten years ago big players dominated Japan's promising new technologies, but today these giants are hard-pressed to survive. Ventures enjoy unprecedented opportunity as these entrenched interests lose their grip. Once again, three crucial factors--social reform, technological innovation and the need for entrepreneurship--are aligned."

A Dangerous Trend

2005-06-30T17:38:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: It's time again for another article by expert guest blogger, John Wyckoff. This month he looks at the trend of people trying dangerous stunts, fueled by reality TV.

By John Wyckoff

Reality shows are anything but. However, they are responsible for creating a new and dangerous trend.

There are more "reality" shows on network TV than just about any other form of entertainment. Why? They cost considerably less to produce than other shows. Reality shows have no high-paid actors and plenty of people willing to make fools of themselves in front of a camera.

One of the worst, in my opinion is "Fear Factor" in which otherwise ordinary people do disgusting and/or very dangerous things. Of course, they have safety harnesses and other inhibitors to prevent themselves from becoming gory spectacles that will be picked up by the six-o'clock news.

So, why do I say it's creating a dangerous new trend? Ordinary people often believe they too can do similar stupid or dangerous things and get away with them. The difference is the lack of any form of safety equipment along with a lack of any training or understanding of what can go wrong.

As an example of this trend in the powersports industry, I've watched an "Extreme" TV show where very well trained professional motorcycle stunt riders not only ran up a steep bank but also did a complete double summersault while still astride the motorcycle. I've also seen motocross events where riders seemed to defy gravity and their bikes appeared to be unbreakable. How do they that do it? Training, practice, special equipment. Add to that these riders are very unusual people with very unusual talents.

We've all seen ads for automobiles that depict a car sliding sideways or careening around curves at rocket-like speeds. Usually there is a banner at the bottom of the screen admonishing the viewer not to attempt such feats and stating the ad was done on a closed course with a professional driver.

Unfortunately, most men in their "macho" phase of life think they have the following talents: 1. They are great lovers. 2. They are great drivers. 3. They are fearless. 4. They are immune from physical damage.

In fact they are wrong on all four counts. Let's not go into the first three. I'll leave that up to you, the reader. As for the fourth, they have the highest rates of physical damage of any age group except for the very elderly.

Here's where many go wrong. They see these feats of daring and believe they can do that, too. After all, the guy on TV is no better, stronger or smarter than themselves. It seems many high profile, professional athletes have a tendency to believe their own PR. Since they are in great physical shape, have the flexibility, stamina and agility then it's only reasonable they too can do these stunts and more. When they fail it becomes the fodder of the sports channels as well as the late night TV shows.

What about those who don't get the press exposure? They just get the hospital bills. Sometimes their families get to pay the post-mortem expenses along with the hospital bills. I know of no insurance policies that cover acts of wanton stupidity.

It's true that young men (and sometimes young women) are often more willing to take risks than those more mature. I was when I was younger and I'll bet you were, too. The difference between now and then was the degree of risk and the amount of knowledge needed to evaluate the possibility of failure.

Binge drinking is not something mature people do, it's something those who are barely old enough (sometimes not old enough) to drink alcohol, do. The TV news seems to revel when they can find high school or college kids out of control while drinking to excess and then driving off.

While talking to a law enforcement officer about the problem, he commented that these thrill seekers and dare devils don't seem to have any common sense. My comment to him was that I don't know why they call it common sense when it's so uncommon.

Will this new trend continue and grow? I believe it will. It gives validity to the extreme. It offers excitement, danger and admiration of peers. These reality shows make it look easy. We don't think it could really cause harm because if it did -- "Wouldn't they be forced to take it off the air?" Heh.

OK, now for a reality check. Anything that requires exceptional skill is often made to look exceptionally easy. A tightrope walker makes what he does look easy. The same holds true the trapeze artist. Ice skaters make what they do look almost natural. None of these are things the "average" person can accomplish with any degree of proficiency. All have steep learning curves. All require the training and guidance of experts.

In the powersports industry, ordinary people trying extraordinary and dangerous stunts can lead to lawsuits, serious injuries and death. Along with these extreme trends, dealers and manufacturers are taking more precautions than ever to warn individuals against their own lack of common sense. Much of the OEM's precautions are in the form of elaborate warning labels in very conspicuous places. For dealers, we will soon reach a time when emphasizing safe riding will become as important as explaining product features and benefits.

Like this article? Read more by John Wyckoff:

Harley, Short Sellers and Franchisees

BMW's Ad: No Respect

And be sure to check out John's website, MYOB-2 for special reports and other resources.