Small Biz Scene
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On Vacation, Owners Think About Work
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFor corporate desk jockeys, summer means vacation and a chance to forget work. For small-business owners, even time away from the office doesn't mean time off. Turns out that even when they are out of the office, most small-business owners never stop thinking about their companies.
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Seven Places to Look for Wasted Time and Money
Continue reading… 0 CommentsSmall companies can't afford not to run a tight ship. Even small costs or time drains can make the difference between staying afloat and sinking. So Ron Wince, CEO of Guidon Performance Solutions, tells small-business owners to take some advice from Caddyshack and "Be the ball." In this case, he's talking about how small-business owners need to put themselves in the place of their customers to figure out where they are wasting time and money.
At Guidon, Wince often counsels companies on how to become leaner. But small companies don't usually have the resources to hire outside consultants and may not have the business background to undertake a major overhaul. That doesn't mean they still can't take a few simple steps that could add up to dramatic savings.
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A Tip of the Hat to Entrepreneurs
Continue reading… 0 CommentsSmall companies can pat themselves on the back. That's because entrepreneurship is the reason for American's economic growth, says Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity, a new book comparing different forms of capitalism. The book's authors, William Baumol, Robert Litan, and Carl Schramm, say that capitalism is not a monolith. Actually, the authors identify four types and, as you can probably guess from the title, they believe that some do a much better job than others of helping countries grow.
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Get Ready for Emergencies
Continue reading… 0 CommentsLook out for Andrea. That's the message as hurricane season officially kicks off Friday. Still, more than half of small-business owners aren't worried about Andrea, or Barry or Chantal for that matter, the names of the first few storms this season, and 71 percent don't have any kind of plan, according to a TNS NFO study for Office Depot.
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Sarbanes-Oxley Rules May Be Eased for Small Companies
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe Securities and Exchange Commission took a step Wednesday toward easing Sarbanes-Oxley accounting requirements for small public companies. While the little guys have been complaining about the rules since 2002, when they were put in place after Enron's collapse, legislators have not heeded their calls until now.
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Setting Up Your Mobile Website
Continue reading… 0 CommentsYou finally got around to putting together a website. But no, you can't rest now. With a growing number of people connecting to the Internet via BlackBerrys, cellphones, and other mobile devices, small-business owners now have to make sure that they set up a mobile website, too, says Jeff Grosman, senior vice president of marketing at Network Solutions, a Web hosting and design company that recently expanded its offerings to mobile sites. By next year, 1.3 billion people around the world will have Internet-enabled mobile devices, according to research firm IDC.
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Fighting Big Government for Small Business
Continue reading… 0 CommentsLast week, the National Small Business Association picked Scott Hauge as its 2007 Small Business Advocate of the Year. Hauge took over as owner of San Francisco-based Cal Insurance & Associates from his dad and transformed it into a shop focusing on small- and medium-size businesses. That led him to get more heavily involved in lobbying for small business in 1984, founding Small Business California, an advocacy group. I talked to him about how small business fits into the big picture.
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Pinkberry's Success Story
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFailing at one business venture is enough to ruin most people, but not Shelly Hwang. The 33-year-old Southern California entrepreneur ran two unsuccessful franchises before hitting the jackpot with the wildly popular frozen yogurt shop Pinkberry. But before the shop even opened its doors more than two years ago, it seemed doomed. Despite threats coming from all directions, Hwang and her business partner, Young Lee, have managed to expand Pinkberry to more than a dozen locations in California and New York and develop a cult following along the way.
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Ruling on Patents Roils Companies
Continue reading… 0 CommentsGetting a patent got a little harder this week with the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions. The case, in which KSR International challenged a Teleflex patent over an adjustable gas pedal, is likely to have the most impact on fields like biotechnology and software, where small firms play an important role.
In a unanimous ruling Monday, the court took its biggest dive into patent law for decades, broadening the standards for rejecting a patent. It showed the court's belief that too many of the patents that have been issued don't pass the key test of not being "obvious."
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Lessons From the Contracting Wars
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFaye Coleman is in the enviable position of telling the government what to do. As founder of Bethesda, Md.-based Westover Consultants, she helps a range of agencies design outreach programs or create online tracking tools. On Monday, I wrote about how some small businesses are yelling at the top of their lungs but have yet to get noticed by the government. For six years, federal agencies have failed to meet a goal to dole out 23 percent of their contracting budgets to small companies, costing small businesses $4.5 billion last year alone, according to testimony this week at a House Small Business Committee hearing. But after decades of working with the government, Coleman's consulting firm is one business that has learned how to get its voice heard within the marble walls.
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Trying to Enter the World of Federal Contracts
Continue reading… 0 CommentsMelinda Emerson's car has logged a lot of miles. She has spent more than five years making the trip from her home in Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in hopes that her multimedia company, Quintessence, would win a federal contract. Despite spending tens of thousands of dollars on filling out paperwork, attending conferences, and networking with other businesses that have federal contracts, Emerson's company has yet to win a single one.
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The Katrina Controversy
Continue reading… 0 CommentsIt has been 18 months since Hurricane Katrina whipped through the Gulf Coast. Many small businesses have cleaned up the debris but haven't been able to wash away their woes. Chief among their complaints is the black box process involved in getting government contracts to help repair the area and their bottom line. So last week Washington, D.C., trooped down to New Orleans, where federal agencies and small businesses brought out their boxing gloves.
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Quitting as a Business Strategy
Continue reading… 0 CommentsPersistence doesn't always pay off. It's a concept that upbeat small-business owners, who regard quitting as failure, still haven't mastered, says author and blogger Seth Godin. In his latest book, The Dip, he sets out to get people thinking about the idea of quitting as a strategy.
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The Hispanic Market Isn't Only for Big Business
Continue reading… 0 CommentsMy thoughts have been traveling south of the border (I'm bound for Argentina on vacation), and I'm not the only one. With 47 million Hispanics in the United States, many companies are anxious to court that growing market. By 2020, the number of Hispanics will reach 60 million, or 18 percent of the population, according to census estimates. And they've got money to spend.
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Nimble Small Businesses Can Dodge Trouble
Continue reading… 0 CommentsThe storm clouds are gathering. Gas prices are rising, home sales are slowing, and consumers don't see good times ahead. The Conference Board said this week that its expectations index, measuring outlook over the next six months, slipped to 86.9 this month from 93.8. But ever-cheery small businesses are seeing the sunlight between the clouds.
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An Unlikely Entrepreneurial Inspiration
Continue reading… 0 CommentsToilet paper seems like an odd inspiration for a company, but it's what started Tamara Monosoff on the path to becoming an entrepreneurial mom. Since then she's been busy teaching other moms about the path from idea to product. In May, Monosoff comes out with her second book about insights she's gleaned from other successful moms who have started their own companies. It's a business book at heart, says Monosoff, but she also wanted to inspire other moms to take the leap from babies to balance sheets.
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Rating the Best Workplace Democracies
Continue reading… 0 CommentsDemocracy and business seem to operate in completely separate worlds. But that belief is a problem for the corporate world, says Traci Fenton, founder of WorldBlu. Her company studies democracy in the workplace and came up with a list of the most democratic businesses. Dominating the list were smaller companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. The smaller companies moved faster in returning the employee surveys, which measured how their workplaces fared in 10 categories, says Fenton, who started WorldBlu in 2003.
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Getting Small Firms to Think Green
Continue reading… 0 CommentsWith big fish like Al Gore and General Electric tackling climate change, it seems there isn't much room in the debate for minnows. "Small business has never had a seat at the table, so they always get screwed," says Byron Kennard, founder of the Center for Small Business and the Environment. However, not only do small businesses consume about half the nation's commercial energy output, but they are also on the front lines of helping address the problem. In 2004, more than $1 billion of venture capital went to start-ups researching clean technology. So any new policies coming from climate-change politics will have a big impact on smaller companies. Still, none of the more than 50 climate-change bills making their way through Congress even address small businesses, Kennard says.
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Tips From Loews on Customer Service
Continue reading… 0 CommentsIn his new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough, Jonathan Tisch shares what he's learned about getting customers to come back to a business. As CEO of Loews Hotels, he's had plenty of experience in dealing with finicky customers. But Tisch also relates examples from companies such as Best Buy, a children's hospital, and even a museum. He says that for small companies competing with retail giants, serving the customer is vital.
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Small Business Tops Poll on Trust
Continue reading… 0 CommentsFrom corporate scandals to executive pay packages, big business hasn't exactly been basking in a golden glow. But it's just the opposite for small businesses, according to a Harris Interactive Poll of 1,013 U.S. adults. In the survey, which measures how much confidence people have in different institutions, small business topped the list. With 54 percent saying that small business inspired a great deal of trust, it was also the only institution this year that won majority approval. Meanwhile, only 17 percent and 16 percent, respectively, cited confidence in Wall Street and major companies. Congress came in last, behind law firms and the press, with 10 percent.
Renuka Rayasam covers small business, biotechnology, and other business news for U.S. News. Her stories have included a piece on the latest trends in corporate dining, as well as regular small-business profiles. She has written for the Austin-American Statesman, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bloomberg News, and tech magazine Ziff Davis Smart Business. She has a bachelor of arts in political economy and German from the University of California – Berkeley and a master of international affairs from Columbia University.