Handle Your Business

Its taken a long time, but the small business economy is finally shaking off the Great Recession and showing solid gains. A couple of data points:

- The overall job market is picking up with Marchs job report showing a gain of 216,000 jobs, and more importantly a gain of 230,000 private sector jobs. Great quote from an AP story on the numbers:

“We are clearly seeing a breakout in the labor market,” said Paul Zemsky, the head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. “The jobless recovery is ending and we are moving into a job expansion stage of the economy.”

- As reported by Business Week, data from the Intuit Small Business Employment Index as well as from Paychex and ADP all show small business hiring growth in March.

This doesnt mean the small business economy has fully recovered. For example, Marchs Discover Small Business Watch sentiment index showed a decline.

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So, waddyathink? How much schooling does it take to be an entrepreneur?

Answer: zilch.

There are very successful entrepreneurs who can’t even read, let alone dissect the tax code. We all know a great little hot dog stand that has the tastiest dogs this side of anywhere, or the seamstress who just knows how long a pants leg should be. These businesspeople, and thousands like them, don’t necessarily have any formal education at all.

Truthfully, there is no way that entrepreneurship can be “taught”, and not only have I attended such classes, but I have “taught” them. We can teach about bookkeeping, or about all the options for advertising, or about how to write a press release, or even how to write a business plan. But we can’t teach how to be an entrepreneur.

It is almost like there is an entrepreneur gene that lurks in some people. Some people just “get it”, and some don’t. That is true no matter what size the business is, large or small. Read full post…

Dear Rich,

Im looking to get people to join our LinkedIn group for our membership organization. Is there a way I can just add them to make it easier for them to join?

Lonely in Lewiston

Dear Lonely,

Thankfully theres not a way to just add people to you group; that would be akin to an opt-out newsletterin other words, spamming. However, there are certainly techniques you can use to grow the number of people in your LinkedIn group.

Assuming that your the group manager, youre able to send out invitations to your contacts on LinkedIn, and even those contact who arent on LinkedIn. People who accept your invitation are automatically added to the group; no muss, no fuss.

You can also empower group members to invite people to join, which can quickly add people to your group.

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It is with a heavy heart that I watch the disaster in Japan reveal the devastation that has occurred. Who knows how many small businesses have come to an end as a result? While many of us will never experience a disaster such as that, there are many more potential disasters waiting in the wings for small businesses like ours. And any one of them can put you out of business.

About ninety percent of the small businesses in the US have less than ten employees. And plenty of those only have one or two. So the loss of a single person in your business can tip it right over the edge.

Ive heard of three disasters in the last month that could have put companies out of business but didnt because of action that was taken quickly to move the company forward. Two of those are solopreneurs with outsourced support staff that could have lost their entire business.

Late last year, Michelle MacPhearson had a medical emergency that put her out of commission.

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We are often asked about starting a “Christian business”. (If you are of another religion, just substitute that religion into the quotes. The article that follows applies to you, too.)

A “Christian business” could be something like a religious book store. That is a relatively easy business to set up, with a strong retail business model. A tougher issue are those entrepreneurs who want to exemplify Christian ethics within a business. (or Moslem ethics, or Buddhist ethics, or Jewish ethics, etc.) Many of these people have become disillusioned with working in corporate America, and for good reason: America is pure capitalism, and while that economic model is essentially a good one, it sometimes forces other approaches off the playing field. Those managers who are more in tune with keeping good employees compete daily with managers who are more in tune with a strong bottom line.

The past couple of years have stretched this concept to the limit. Read full post…

Two years ago I “attended” the first Social Media Success Summit, a virtual event with “experts” from around the world on social media marketing. To be honest, I didn’t have high expectations; I was already being inundated with invitations for real world and virtual social media marketing events, and most were pretty weak on any compelling content. However, my friend Denise Wakeman

was involved, and she said it was worth my time. She had never led me astray before, so took a chance.

It was well worth it. Besides Denise, there was a host of great presenters who went well past how to setup a Facebook page.

This year marks the 3rd annual Social Media Success Summit, put on by the same people who put on the Facebook Success Summit and the recent Blogging Success Summit, where I had an opportunity to present. In short:

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