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

It’s Sunday, September 6, and Linda and I are in Philadelphia. We stand in a pouring deluge – the brunt of tropical storm Hanna is upon us – as we wait to enter Independence Hall, located in the city’s Historic District. Drenched despite our umbrellas, 30 of us enter the annex of the building. We [...]

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 [...]

I’ve been appearing here and there on The Big Idea with Donny recently. Thought you might get a kick out of how the show comes together and the role of so-called experts (yours truly included) who are invited on the show.
Below are the emailed questions I received from the producers in advance of my most [...]

The numbers are gloomy. Statistics show that of one hundred new business startups, eighty will be out of business within five years. Too often, the causes of these failures are recurring inefficiencies and their offspring: fire-killing and distraction. Most business owners wake up in the morning with only a vague sense of their ultimate, primary [...]

Time and money wasted is time and money gone forever. And a waste of time and money means some other positive thing that could have happened, didn’t.
Apply a “Good Enough” rule to the Working Procedures in your workplace. Working Procedures are instructions that describe how the individual systems of the company or the job are [...]

Your employees are not mind readers or fortune tellers, and your business is not a free-form venue for experimentation, or a place where individual preference based on mood, time of the day, or random circumstance can rule the day. Your purpose and methodology must be clear, concise, consistent, and understood by everyone involved. Aim for [...]

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 [...]

So you’ve got some ideas, a decent prototype, and a couple customers to boot…now what?  Sadly, many would-be entrepreneurs fail at running a business before they even start.  The complexity of a business plan, lack of funding, and an army of competitors all create a standstill that causes those flames of business freedom to flicker.  [...]

Whether you’ve established a small business, are in the midst of launching one, or simply considering it for the future, it’s certain you want at least one thing out of this investment: success.
Starting and running a small business isn’t a cakewalk. It’s hard to believe, but over 50 percent of small businesses fail in their [...]

Here’s more from Suzy Batiz, our latest source of inspiration in the StartupNation community. She’s made over $1 million in first year revenue for her Poo-Pourri product line. Want your own success story featured here someday? Then read what Suzy shares below in Part 3 of her advice to fellow entrepreneurs.
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In Suzy’s words:
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How do you [...]