Business Blogs: Trends, tips, and real-life anecdotes from industry experts.

It’s no secret that running a business in this economy is a challenge. But with the right smarts, you can get through the storm.
To survive you’ll have to make the most of your time (which you likely have more of as a result of less customer activity) and take into account the impact of your [...]

If you’ve been following StartupNation for years, not just months or weeks, you know that we were one of the pioneers that popularized the “Elevator Pitch”, your chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to pitch your dream investor in a blazing 60 seconds. It was always one of the most popular segments in our nationally syndicated radio show and [...]

As 2009 gets under way it’s painfully obvious that the economy is still struggling.  Sales are continuing their downward trend, unemployment is rising, and many Americans are still having trouble paying their mortgage.  After struggling through 2008, the average consumer is facing the New Year at a financial rock bottom.  The best indicator of this [...]

In several of the interviews that I’ve done, one of the frequent topics that comes up as an aside, is Money now vs. Money later. Many business owners are torn between the product or service offering money quickly and the development or infrastructure efforts that take short-term money but offer long-term reward.
This creates an immediate feeling [...]

On a recent appearance on The Big Idea with Donny, I was one of three people on a panel. It was our role to help people fed into the show via satellite and phone.
It’s a huge challenge to be in the hot seat and be ready to fire away with valuable advice. But it’s thrilling, [...]

As if we didn’t know it, the New York Times wrote today,
“Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.”
Yep, tough times. We all are well aware of the fact that everyone’s getting more conservative including customers, vendors [...]

I made a public promise on this week’s telechat with Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. The promise was to use the techniques that Dan recommends at a very high-powered sales presentation that I was to give yesterday to a big potential partner.
Well, I did [...]

More from Suzy Batiz, StartupNation community success story. She made over $1 million in first year revenue for her Poo-Pourri product line.  Read what Suzy shares below in Part 4 of her advice to fellow entrepreneurs who want to break a new product onto the market. In Suzy’s words:
How can you grow without an influx [...]

As I indicated in Part 1 of this series of blog entries, Suzy Batiz, founder of Poo-Pourri, shared her advice, further proving what a true shining star she is, right here, living and working among us in the StartupNation community. What a role model!
Below Suzy provides more of her advice.
In Suzy Batiz’s Words:
COVER YOUR BASES/PROTECT YOURSELF
Only once [...]

One of the most popular questions we get at StartupNation is about start up business financing: how to raise money to start a small business. We even have an entertaining and instructive exercise on StartupNation Radio called the elevator pitch where an entrepreneur pretends she is in an elevator for a 60 second ride with [...]