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

We have all heard the horror stories of big business pitted against small business.  The classic David and Goliath tale played out from Wall Street to Main Street with all kinds of financial causalities in their wake.  While the tales may differ, the moral is the same.  The big fish will always try to eat [...]

The recent CIT Group news hit the franchise community late last week. One of the larger small business lenders announced, CIT Group announced it needed additional money from the government to stay affloat. The government denied their request but CIT was able to cut a deal with its creditors giving them a little more time [...]

Given the global recession, real estate presents new challenges and opportunities for business owners. Businesses especially are affected by the pressures of reduced demand and tighter lending criteria. The fact is, you’re challenged to do more with less.
I just moderated an expert panel on video as part of the Wells Fargo Webcast Series on this very topic [...]

When you consider your business model (which includes your marketing efforts), you generally concentrate on these core components:

Why will people pay you? (money, votes, donations)
What does it cost you to sell your item…margins?
What protects you from competition, price-feature battles?
How will you turn an agnostic audience into loyal customers?

Early on when transactions had no costs, doing [...]

Recently, I was contacted by a PR firm (Attention) and asked if I would profile Blake Mycoskie on my blog(s). I’m ashamed to say how long it’s taken me to turn this piece around, however seeing the latest ATT commercial featuring Blake after a long day of meetings (at my day job) shamed me into finishing. My [...]

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 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 [...]