Having access to a great tool like Google Trends means that it is easy to keep an eye on how important brands and
How the SBA, SBDC, & SCORE can help your small business
The SBA (Small Business Administration) is a United States government department tasked with supporting and nurturing entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses.
What can it actually do for you?
We were curious about this so we asked our community for their stories about how the SBA - including the SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) who are also funded/supported by them - had impacted their ventures. Not including their websites that offer a huge online repository of information, articles and business resources (we'll list a bunch of important online resources for you to explore at the end of the article).
The over-arching impression I got from the responses was that most people are not aware of just how much support there is made available to them by the SBA, SBDC and SCORE. It's not only about getting loans, trust me.
Here are a few of their stories...
Eastern Foundry
Geoff Orazem, the co-founder of Eastern Foundry, a startup incubator for government contractors, told us that the SBA was a huge help when it came to marketing.
Initially Geoff felt like they didn't really have a handle on how to market and promote their new business.
He reached out to Nirav Rajapara and Charles Motte at the Howard University SBDC (which is an SBA program) that provides counseling services to prospective business owners.
Ultimately, the results of their efforts proved to be a great success, as Geoff explains...
ColdAvenger
Phil Stempin, the CMO of ColdAvenger, is a big fan of the SBA because it has helped them with early phase growth that was being stifled by their own limited resources.
Was it worth it flying all the way to Germany? You bet.
Here's something else Phil told us that might be of interest to any small company looking to expand their horizons overseas.
Someone Special Books
Heather McCarthy owns Someone Special Books a small business that makes use of SCORE's consulting services. She relates how starting a business with no experience was extremely challenging.
As time went on, Heather and Kate started to pick up important business skills and begun to make real headway.
She goes on to praise the flexibility and diversity of options open to entrepreneurs making use of SCORE - everything from webinars, to meetups, and face-to-face consultations are available for free.
And, it's great to hear that things are going well for Heather and Kate...
Important resources
Each of the organizations have their own local, regional and national services on offer, so it's worth checking out what may (or may not) be available for you to make use of in your area.
SBA
SBDC
SCORE
Have you made use of the SBA, SBDC, or SCORE? What was your experience? Do you have any tips or advice for how to get the most out of a relationship with these organizations? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Small retail businesses and eCommerce sites need to consistently choose the best products to sell in order to maximize their profits.
But trying to find this information is not always easy, and there are plenty of "silver bullet" sites (and con men) that will try to make a profit by advising you to stock products that give them commission.
It's far better to be able to do your own research into which products offer the best value for money for your own customers and clients. After all, you know your business best.
Here are some great ideas that incorporate free stuff (products and services) in order to generate trust, improve revenue and grow your business.
Most consumers like getting free stuff (especially online consumers), so giving away a valuable free offering can help to drive traffic, generate buzz, earn trust, and make money.
This article will give you five great ideas for free product and service offerings that you can integrate into an existing organization or use to help grow a startup.
Fiverr is an online marketplace offering a huge range of services (from the sublime to the ridiculous) that startups can utilize, for only five dollars.
If you're wondering what service could possibly offer any value for only $5, then you are in exactly the same boat I was.
Most of the services (called gigs) that are available on fiverr are probably not even worth the five bucks they charge. But, if you are willing to dig a bit deeper, there are a few gems that can save you a lot of time and money.
Isn't it frustrating that some people just seem to have that entrepreneurial knack - business opportunities just seem to go their way again and again?
Having a home business, or work from home job, means that your PC will need to be packed with functionality to help facilitate day-to-day tasks.
There's nothing worse than finding out your business website has been hacked and is being used to send out bulk emails, spam visitors, or spread malicious software.
If it hasn't happened to you, don't fall into the trap of thinking that this scenario is something that happens to other people. Spam hacks are absolutely rampant.
Fortunately, the business model of spammers requires them, more often than not, to automate their hacks to seek out vulnerable Web servers and sites, because they have to do things on a huge scale to turn a profit.
Among their top 3 challenges, according to most business leaders, is the ability to keep pace with new technology - like the cloud.
Being able to understand what new technology offers and how to use it to increase productivity and maintain competitiveness is not easy, because technology moves moves faster than our ability to keep up.
Small businesses, in this regard, have a distinct advantage over larger ones, and we might well be entering an age where small companies start out-competing big ones because of technology.
Recently I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting between my startup and one of the largest logistics companies in the country - so that we could pitch our new service.
The size of this client would almost be sufficient to reach sustainability and profitability in one go. Obviously landing a whale in your first pitch as a new startup is the ultimate dream come true, but it can be hard to turn it into reality.
The meeting went ok, but there were some hard lessons learned about how to pitch big corporate clients that my partners and I took away from the experience.
Think of the Internet economy as a farmer’s field full of little green plants. Each plant represents a business, and the stuff that makes them grow is traffic (just like rain makes real plants grow).
Now, imagine that in between the rain clouds and our fledgling plants, there is a huge funnel that collects the rain and pours it over the field. Let’s call this funnel Google.
Google’s job is to make sure that all the sprouts get a fair share of water (provided they are of good quality), and that any weeds that are harmful to the ecosystem aren’t watered. All day long Google funnels rain onto various different plants in order to help them grow.
Selling online is getting easier and easier every day, from a technical point of view, because the technology to handle online transactions (like online
Find a great work from home job (with good pay) and benefit from a better quality of life with the freedom of flexible hours and the ability to work