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Will Healthcare Reform Happen Next Year?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 12, 2008 CommentThe Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has released the results of a survey showing that making healthcare more affordable is a major concern of small-business owners and a primary issue facing their business.
According to the survey of 400 small businesses that pay for at least some of their employees' health benefits, 42 percent said making healthcare more affordable should be a top priority for the incoming administration.
Healthcare reform has broad popular support and was one of President-elect Obama's major campaign issues. Business groups and small business associations like the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and others are also strong proponents of healthcare reform.
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4 Tips for Starting Your Consulting Business
Tweet Share on Facebook December 10, 2008 Comment (7)Thinking of starting as a consultant? Even in these tough times? Maybe you've always wanted to. Maybe some things just went wrong for you, so you have no choice; you have to.
I can help. I did consulting for Business International in the 1970s, for Creative Strategies in the 1980s, for McKinsey Management Consulting for one brief period, and for myself and my family, on my own, through most of the 1980s and early 1990s. Eventually, that became Palo Alto Software, but it was consulting first. And I learned a few things that might help you if that's where you're heading. Here's my list:
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The Sky Is Not Falling: Your Job Is Probably Safe
Tweet Share on Facebook December 9, 2008 Comment (1)Hey, have you heard? The sky is falling.
We of the media have a responsibility to let you, the general public, know that the economy is a train wreck.
But when you are constantly bombarded with television, radio, and Internet news and information sources, all reporting the same dire story over and over and over again . . . after a while, if you're not in a complete panic, then you're wondering if maybe you ought to be.
So, let's take a few minutes to get a collective grip, shall we?
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A Growing Small-Business Trend: Personal Service Businesses
Tweet Share on Facebook December 5, 2008 Comment (2)One of the small-business trends I find really interesting is the growth of small personal services companies. These are firms that have created niche businesses by providing life support services to increasingly harried, time-constrained consumers. Basically, these folks are paid to do things we used to do on our own, or did without.
In our community, there are many small personal service businesses. We have the traditional services like gardening, house cleaning, pool cleaning, shopping services, nannies, etc.
We also have career coaches, college admission counselors, retirement counselors, massage therapists, dog walkers, and others who help us with various life tasks. And we have a surprising number of kid-oriented small businesses that teach sports, music, arts, theater, and academics.
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Innovative Ways to Share Testimonials for Your Business
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 2008 Comment (2)Last week, we discussed ideas to capture testimonials. Once you have testimonials, they do you no good if you don't share them.
Let's brainstorm some innovative ways to share them. Huge online retailers have raised sharing customer comments to a high art, with reviews, tagging, customer lists, and so on. Your small business can't generate the huge user base, but you can make up for that by actively sharing the customer testimonials you collect.
On your website, match up testimonials with the products or services they relate to. Have a physical store? Post testimonials right with the product displays.
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3 Dangerous Myths About Sales Forecasting
Tweet Share on Facebook December 3, 2008 Comment (8)Sales forecasting: It's hard enough to get it right without all the ways we get it wrong. It was on my mind over the long holiday weekend, and in this case, it wasn't a particularly cheery back-of-the-mind thought. My company's recent sales reflect the economic downturn.
Not cheery, perhaps, but now more than ever, managing your sales forecast is really important and very much misunderstood. Most people fear forecasting. They think some expert should do it. Visions of econometric models and weighted moving averages dance, devilishly, in their heads.
So why do people hate forecasting? It's mostly because of myths and misunderstandings. Such as, among others, these three:
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Would Microbusiness Owners Please Stand Up?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2008 Comment (3)When you run a business, you need to have an idea of what to expect—from your customers, from the marketplace, from yourself.
That's why I make such a big deal about the difference between microbusinesses and everybody else.
Most people define a microbusiness as a firm with fewer than five employees. Another commonly accepted definition includes firms with fewer than 10 employees.
It doesn't matter, really, because that's just an attempt to put numbers on the stuff that makes a microbusiness what it is.
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Testimonials Key for Small Businesses Looking to Capture Word of Mouth
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (7)You already know that the most effective advertising for your business is one person telling another. That kind of natural word-of-mouth referral carries more weight than all the advertising you can buy. Testimonials are how you capture and share that enthusiasm.
When a customer, employee, vendor or anyone else starts telling you how great your business, service, or product is, ask them immediately to share it. Get creative about the format.
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10 Overused Business Phrases More Depressing Than a Depression
Tweet Share on Facebook November 26, 2008 Comment (2)Talk about overload: Suddenly everybody's spewing small-business survival tips for the greater depression. It makes me long for those good old days of, say, last year, when every other E-mail promised me the Zen of something or other, like the Zen of online backup. Or, better yet, the way back time when all software was user friendly.
So, here's my list of 10 overused and worn-out come-on lines for small business in times of economic crisis.
Let's start this top 10 with four glaringly obvious lies that are starting to smell like two-week-old socks caught in the gymnasium bleachers:
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Want Job Creation? Look to Microbusinesses, not just Detroit
Tweet Share on Facebook November 25, 2008 Comment (6)According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, microbusiness employers created a slight share of total new jobs and cut about the same share of total jobs lost as firms with more than 1,000 employees during the first quarter of this year. In other words, these two firm size classes had approximately the same impact on the labor market for the quarter.
Stop and think about that for a minute.
Job creation is one of the holy grails of the economy. That's a big piece of the reason why your government is spending tens of billions of dollars in bailouts of private-sector companies these days. They believe that creating and retaining jobs is one of the most important side effects of economic growth.
