We are still in midst of a recession and nerves are high when it comes to employment and the state of the small business owner.  There are many issues being worked out in our government that will try to stimulate the United States economy and get America out of this recession.  And despite party politics and the Republican/Democratic divide, it is important for all of America to get together to spark our financial system.

About a month ago, I blogged about a recent financial reform bill that passed, which set new restrictions on banks, inhibiting them from making faulty investments. Some people said that this bill would affect small businesses by lowering the amount of loans available, making it harder to grow business.  However, there is some new legislation that is recently up for debate in Washington, which hopes to help small businesses, giving them tools to grow and thrive in these trying times.

The Small Business Jobs and Credit Act is a piece of legislation that Obama is trying to pass.  This act would provide tax cuts and incentive for small businesses.  It would increase the amount of loans available for entrepreneurs and promote investment spending by removing capital gain taxes on certain kinds of investments.  It is currently being disputed in Congress by the two parties.  Obama is urging Congress to pass this act, and put political gains aside.

Like most things in life, there are two sides to this debate.  But as a business owner and entrepreneur it is important to know what is going on in Washington when it can directly affect your business.  Staying informed can be a powerful tool.  Read more about the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act by clicking here.

I am addicted to technology.  For example, a large majority of my day is spent sitting in front of a computer.  And for the remaining parts of the day, I have my mobile phone close by.  If I happen to forget my phone at home, I can’t help but feel like a piece of me is missing.  What if there is an emergency and I need to contact someone?  What if I miss an important call from a client? What if I need to find a good happy hour and I don’t have my iPhone app to help me?  Sometimes I have to remind myself that cell phones and the World Wide Web are relatively new technologies, and people got along just fine for thousands of years with out them.  However, it is 2010 and I am more than thankful for Wi-Fi, apps, and email, allowing me to be productive no matter where I may be.  But, could the ability to be so connected actually infringe on productivity?  Is there a diminishing return when it comes to the technology we use?  A recent article by Matt Richtel, called, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime,” explores this concept.

Have you even stood in line at a coffee shop, while an executive in front of you was too busy emailing back a client on his Blackberry to order his mocha latte?  Or what about the student on the bus playing a game on the iPhone?  It seems like there is a pressure on our society to be connected at all times and use as many minutes of the day to be more knowledgeable than ever before, Richtel’s article offers a different perspective.

According to the article, giving up down time to use technology can actually inhibit your ability to learn, remember and become more innovative.  According to scientists, humans need time away from noise or stimulation of technology to rest and reset, creating a person who is better able to intake all the media when they do use it.

So what does this mean for running your business?  Don’t stress about turning your phone to silent and having a nice, mobile-phone-free dinner with your family, and leave your iPhone at home when you hit the street for a run.  Despite your anxieties you will find that your time away from your technology, actually allows you to become more productive and better business owner.

Monday is notorious for being a day that many people often dread.  Monday marks the end of the weekend and the start of five more days of work.  Sometimes it is hard to wake up to the sound of the alarm after two days of silencing it.  So, on this Monday, I thought I would share a website that provides me with much inspiration, even on a dreaded Monday.

TED is a non profit organization that is solely devoted to spreading great ideas all over the world.  This organization, which formed 25 years ago, began as a single annual conference that meshed people from three very different arenas: technology, entertainment and design (hints the name TED).   However, the organization began to grow, and now TED has a much larger reach.

www.ted.com features lectures, talks, seminars and other presentations on anything that the organization deems worthy of spreading throughout the world, in effort to create positive influence.  Whether is it a middle-aged scholar talking about sustainable energy or a charismatic 9-year-old divulging the importance of self esteem, these video presentations will leave you feeling empowered, excited, humbled, learned and inspired.

The idea of an organization that provides inspirational thoughts from all areas of society, to everyone in the world – and for free! –  is motivating.  And it is perfect for any overworked individual on a somber Monday afternoon, when the coffee is wearing off and you are starting to crash.

Specifically, I would like to share one of my favorite lectures from Ted.com.  This lecture is delivered by Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch. Pausch was dying from cancer when he gave this speech about achieving your childhood dreams.  This lecture refreshes my spirit and reminds me that anything is possible with hard work, which is a quality that all entrepreneurs can appreciate.  Enjoy!

Click here to see the lecture.

On July 8^th thousands of Americans tuned into ESPN to find out the fate of one of the NBA’s biggest stars.   After weeks of deliberation, LeBron James finally decided that he would leave his hometown team, the Cavaliers, and join the Miami Heat.  This free agency was one of the most publicized in the history of the NBA, attracting interest from not only sports fans, but also the general American population.  From teenagers to grandparents, businessmen to students, people in all different demographics had seen some form of media discussing the LeBron James deal.  So what does this have to do with running a small business, you may ask?

The Miami Heat’s acquisition of James was extremely calculated and is a perfect example of strategic business planning. The Miami Heat Corporation created a plan, dating years prior, in order to get to this point.  An article in Sunday’s Miami Herald titled, “Small Business Can Learn from Miami Heat’s Slam-dunk Strategy,” addresses the nature of this business deal and how all small business owners can learn from the Heat’s strategy.

This article talks about the nature of business strategy and how goal-oriented financial planning can take years to pay off.  A small business owner needs to think 3, 5 and even 10 years down the road.  The Miami Heat had been clearing salary space on the roster for years prior to this decision, in order to have enough funds to obtain James in the future.  This article also addresses the importance of networking and creating relationships in the business realm. The Miami Heat capitalized on James’ friendship with other players on the Heat, and that helped influence his decision.  Networking and building business from great relationships is a key element into creating a successful business.  That is not to say you should form false relationships only made to benefit your business.  It means you should put effort into creating meaningful symbiotic business contacts that will be beneficial to both parties.  And once James decision was made, the Heat put all their resources into marketing and promotion.  How else would they have gained the interest of hundreds of thousands Americans?  People are not going to know how great your services are unless you tell them.  You can create and execute great strategy, but you have to get the word out.

Click here to read to full Miami Herald article and learn more about how your business can learn from this strategy.

Starting off with a new business is always an idea that requires courage and the right mindset. Courage may be well understood since you are going to put a lot of time, money, and effort on stake to get your business going. However, the right mindset is something that is required before, during, and after you have actually delved into building your start-up. For building your start-up a success and to have a right mindset it must be very clear to you what exactly you want from your new business. This lets you access your business with the right set of yardsticks that are important to you and keeps you motivated.

Knowing what you want to achieve with your business can be briefly referred to as, knowing your goals. These goals might be anything from wanting just a financial freedom, freedom from your monotonous job, some extra income, leveraging a great business idea, to forming a successful enterprise in future. Keep the goals from your business in your mind at all times- as it will help you keep things in perspective. Knowing what you want from your new venture will help you in many ways, such as:

Alignment with your strengths and weaknesses:
If you know what you desire, it will be easier to see what part of your desirables can be achieved with your level of related and required strengths. This will make you understand what portion of the work may require some extra skills. You may then choose to learn these skills or can hire other people to do it for you. This will also give you early view of the kinds of job roles that your business might need to hire people for, in future.

Assessment of people and markets that might benefit you:

The number and kinds of people, markets, or organizations you would need to interact with, also depends upon what kind of success you aim, given your business idea around your services and/or products. For example, a business idea involving providing services to some organizations will require research on how much they will afford for your services, what kind of people you will need to interact with and what are the right entry points to interact with those organizations.

Tracking your success:
Quite simple to understand; if you do not know where you want to go, no map can help you. For being able to how successful you are, you must know what the success meant to you when you started off. If you have met your initial goals, you are successful and it might just be time when you should splurge on expanding your business and feel good about it. If you have not, it would be the time when you should look back and assess what went wrong to rectify it without any wait.

In addition to the above mentioned benefits of knowing what you want to gain from your business, following points may help you get clarity on how you can set your goals:

1. What motivates to start a new venture? It might be extra money, financial security, prestige, or ambitions.
2. What level of risk can you afford at the present situation?
3. How will this decision of starting a business affect your current lifestyle and dependents?
4. What timeframes do you see for the successful realization of your objectives?
5. What are your fallback plans if your business does not become successful?

For giving shape to your business idea successfully, it is vital to understand what you expect in return for your efforts, time and money. It is a key point that any entrepreneur must keep in mind at all the stages while conceptualizing, planning, or implementing the business idea. After all, your goals form the basis for what you call your success or failure.

Since the advent of the telegraph in the early 19^th century, business and technology have been striving to bring everything closer together.

5 Tips for Avoiding Bad Business Advice Online

I’ve been looking into articles and blogs recently which feature advice for SMB’s who want to stand out in the crowd. There’s no shortage of free advice on the web, and I’ve been indulging. 

On a particular blog I read (How Your Small Business can Easily Stand Out) the author posed to the readers what he considers the biggest challenge for small businesses.

“How do I distinguish myself from my competitors”?

This is a good question, as SMB’s are frequently looking for the most attractive selling point for their product. The author, Dov Gordon, says that the answer is simple, and that there is “no shortage of people toiling to make it complicated”.

Ironically, after analyzing his line of reasoning, I conclude that he himself is complicating the issue.

I am going to quickly spell out his argument and show you its inconsistencies.

Premise 1: For your businesses to stand out, dedicate yourself to your customers.

Premise 2: A business that dedicates itself to its customers cares more about helping them than about making money.

Premise 3: A business that cares more will understand more.

Premise 4: A business that understands the customer’s world will think up ideas that will impact their world.

Premise 5: (missing)

—————————————————-

Conclusion: Your business stands out

This argument is fundamentally flawed for the following reason.

• The argument is invalid because Gordon fails to provide Premise 5, which links the rest of the argument to the conclusion.  His argument is missing this vital link.

Premise 5 should read: Thinking up ideas that impacts the customer’s world makes for your business to stand out.

At first you might think I’m being too harsh and nitpicky, but consider that perhaps the reason Gordon omitted Premise 5 is that it contradicts the first premise of his argument! Not only is this argument bad, but it’s confusing.

Like I said before, there’s no shortage of free advice on the web, but be careful, there is a lot of bad advice out there!

Here are some personal tips to help you make the most of the multitude of free business advice online.

TIP #1 – Good Advice for Someone Else Might be Bad for You

Every business has varied needs and capacities, and strategies that work great for one business won’t necessarily work great for yours.

TIP #2 – Always Consider the Source

This practice can save you from the snake oil salesmen’s wiles and save you time too. Always consider the website or company the author of an article is affiliated with. If the author links to a shady-looking site, they could be trying to scam you. Scammers will say anything they can to get you where they want!

TIP #3 – Don’t Believe Everything You Read

I’m sure many of us heard this adage as children, but it is good advice.  Never take anything you read (especially on the internet!) at face value. If an individual makes a claim without providing a source, be sure to do some research to make sure it isn’t unfounded information. Be wary, and be inquisitive.

TIP #4 – Good Advice is Free of Contradictions

If something labeled as “advice” is wrought with contradictions and you unknowingly accept it, you’re setting yourself up to be a confused individual. Good advice never contradicts itself. Keep an eye out.

TIP #5 – Good Advice Often Keeps Good Company

Once you’ve found a community, site, or blog that features good business advice, stick around. Intelligent people tend to draw close to like-minded individuals, so it’s likely there is more good advice to be found there, with less of the bad stuff.

Those are all the tips I’ve got for now, and I hope you can put them to good use. And remember, don’t believe everything you read!

According to the most recent AP-GfK poll, 78% of Americans report being happy.

Not to be cynical, but I find this statistic surprising. In the capitalist system we’re in, I wouldn’t think Americans are so overwhelmingly happy in light of our economic downturn.

I often talk with university students who dread the prospect of graduating because they have heard how bleak the unemployment rate is. I see reports on the news about the soaring job losses. Thinking about it sometimes bums me out too. Regardless, most are happy anyway.

Being the happy campers we are, 56% of Americans report approving Barack Obama’s handling of his job as president. And good news for all of us, now small business owners might have more to be happy for.

President Barack Obama recently called on Congress to utilize the repaid $30 billion of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds (Wall Street bailout money) into a new program to help banks provide small businesses with the finances they need.

While this new plan has potential to help small businesses, it will be up to the banks to follow through and lend. While Obama is optimistic about this fiscal handling, not everybody is.

In a recent CNNmoney piece, Steve Gordon, a small manufacturer from Florida, grilled Obama during a town hall meeting by saying,

“I appreciate the pledge of $30 billion to small businesses. But lending it to the banks to lend to us is not the answer,” Gordon told the president. “You lent directly to the automakers, you lent directly to the banks — why can’t the government make [loans] available directly to us?”

Gordon makes a great point, and expresses what the majority of small business owners feel. They don’t matter like the big boys that Congress helps out directly. While this program has the potential to help the growth of small businesses, I would like to see a more heartfelt effort from the President and Congress. After all, in 2008 there were 29.6 million small businesses in the USA, according to the Office of Advocacy. That’s huge.

With just over half of the U.S. population working for small businesses, I wonder what effect this policy will have on Obama’s rating in the polls.

With the current data showing that the majority of us have remained happy individuals, even amongst recession and imperfect legislation, I would venture to guess that we will remain so.

 I know I will, but only if my bank approves my next SMB loan.

When it’s good, it can be really good.

The most rewarding customer interaction I’ve had was a week ago. I’ve been reaching out to new Simplifythis users personally (either by phone or through sincere e-mails). Usually I don’t receive a response, but one customer was thoughtful enough to give feedback.

The Simplifythis user told me about a usability issue he had with the software, specifically regarding dates on invoices. I told our developer, Sanjay. Within a couple minutes I was able to get back to the user and tell him we were going to be releasing a new version in the coming weeks, with that issue fixed.

And when it’s bad…

I just had a funny experience where I was the customer for an SAP training center. After months of calling and e-mailing with no response, I found I was mysteriously placed in an online training class. No credit card, no name, no information shared. How could this be?

I figured they’d catch their error and someone would finally get in touch with me. They did, and it wasn’t pretty:

…Our coordinator tried reaching you hell out of times on Mon and Tues and finally gave up as it just goes to your voice massage…

My eyes immediately went to the “hell.” I’m more thickheaded than most, so I didn’t take it personally and sent an e-mail with an explanation of what had happened. I wonder if he/she was frustrated, as this sentence alone has improper grammar and a spelling mistake. If the company had poised itself as a training facility with a certain candor to its messages, I wouldn’t have been so surprised.

The lesson I learned is that your reaction determines where a conversation or transaction is headed. Because I’ve been on both sides of the customer service “counter,” I kept my cool.  Unfortunately, this customer service rep didn’t.

 What’s your favorite customer-centric story with a positive outcome (i.e. you helped the customer successfully, or learned something from the experience)? Let us know!

$150.

That’s about how much my little sister collected in two hours from the neighborhood for her school band’s fundraiser. But this isn’t anything new. School fundraisers are about as American as apple pie…the very apple pies that schools sell at their fundraisers! In my band nerd days I sold such questionable items as:

• Engraved pens
• Cookie jars that doubled as piggy banks
• Wrapping paper
• Lollipops.

But my sister’s band sold something completely different. To find out what it was, tune in next time to our 41-part series on “1,438 Ways to Sell.”

(Just kidding)

My sister’s band sold: nothing. They went door-to-door with a manilla envelope asking for money to support the band that would march at a football game the neighbors may never even see. They didn’t provide a service, a good, or anything else business class says is necessary for a transaction to occur. And yet, a group of four high schoolers earned almost $75 an hour (in a recession!).

How? They made the neighbors feel good. Who wouldn’t feel nice giving five bucks to a sweet, adorable band nerd? Most of our businesses offer services and goods – a lot more than nothing. And it could be even more if we made our customers feel good.

So, how do you make your customers feel good?