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Is a Small-Business Recession on the Way?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 30, 2008 Comment (3)Last month, I speculated that pessimism among small-business owners in surveys about the economy might be driven more by perception than reality. Well, the latest Discover Small Business Watch survey released today (but not yet online) does not get us much closer to figuring out the true cause of the bad feelings, but it does show that the pessimism is only deepening.
The economy is getting worse, according to 79 percent of small-business owners polled in the survey. That's up from 71 percent last month and reverses a previous decline. Even more worrisome is that while the number of businesses experiencing cash-flow problems had also fallen in May, it has increased now, from 39 percent to 42 percent.
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Making Graphic Designers Come to You
Tweet Share on Facebook June 27, 2008 Comment (4)Need graphic design for your website or a new logo for your company? Maybe your business has other artistic needs, but you don't want to shell out the money to contract an artist. A new website, crowdSPRING, may be your answer. It applies the Web 2.0 treatment to commercial graphic design.
As the buyer of art, you create a profile on the website about the kind of project you want and how much you're willing to pay. Then artists, who also have profiles on the site, will submit their best cracks at your project (actual work, not proposals), and you can choose the one you like and "award" the designer the money you said you'd pay. Payment is held in escrow by crowdSPRING until the deal is done. Here's how the site describes the process:
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Best of the Small-Biz Blogosphere, June 27
Tweet Share on Facebook June 27, 2008 Comment (2)Aside from a few odd choices (What Women Want), Businesspundit has a good list of the 50 Best Business Movies Ever. Perhaps it was too recent to be up for consideration, but I would add to this list the summer's best movie so far, Iron Man—a brilliant portrayal of one entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial spirit.
Young Go Getter has a Q&A with Jake Nickell, the founder of one of the more successful online start-ups in recent memory, Threadless.com.
The Wall Street Journal's Independent Street has a guide for how a business owner should shop for health insurance.
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More Regulation, Fewer Entrepreneurs
Tweet Share on Facebook June 26, 2008 CommentHow much does politics really matter to entrepreneurs? What policies create conditions for them to succeed—and which cause them to fail or not even try? A recent study by Silvia Ardagna of Harvard University and Annamaria Lusardi of Dartmouth College goes through the data and suggests that a high level of regulations matters a whole lot—in a bad way.
Ardagna and Lusardi looked at a massive survey (the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) from 2001 and 2002 that measured entrepreneurial activity among 150,000 individuals in 37 countries, ranging from the United States to France to India. What makes the study especially interesting is that it distinguishes between people who start their own businesses because they want to (opportunity entrepreneurs) and people who have to work for themselves because they have no other prospects (necessity entrepreneurs).
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Why Wal-Mart Can Be Good for Small Business
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2008 Comment (10)The Washington Post yesterday reported on how the conventional wisdom that Wal-Mart is the bane of small mom-and-pop businesses is being shattered in the wake of a new Wal-Mart opening in Landover Hills, Md., a close-in Washington suburb in Prince George's County, Md.
The article cites research showing that in urban areas Wal-Mart has not driven out small competing businesses, as it often has in rural and more distant suburban areas. It seems that Wal-Mart can drive up the amount of customer traffic in an area, which can actually benefit neighboring businesses, even if they are in direct competition with Wal-Mart.
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Only Fools Rush Into Business Partnerships
Tweet Share on Facebook June 23, 2008 Comment (2)Jeff Cornwall, who directs the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, published a column yesterday on how entrepreneurs should go about picking a business partner. That's a subject I've written about here, and also I recently talked with Nigel Nicholson on the issue of family business partnerships and how they can break down if families aren't careful. Cornwall adds some insight into this matter, especially on questions that potential business partners should ask each other:
• Do you share the same vision for the business? Do you share the same aspirations for the business in terms of its size?
• Are you all going to make the same level of commitment of time to the business? What are your work habits and work ethic? How much time off do you plan to take each day, each week, each year?
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Best of the Smallbiz Blogosphere: June 20, 2008
Tweet Share on Facebook June 20, 2008 CommentRecent blog posts that are worth a read:
The 25 Best Apps for entrepreneurs to grow their business.
Business Pundit has more on how entrepreneurs are working to solve energy problems.
Duct Tape Marketing on how to use Amazon.com to publicize your stuff.
Business Opportunities on how the high price of oil is actually a good thing for entrepreneurs.
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Why Climate Change Legislation Matters for Small Business
Tweet Share on Facebook June 19, 2008 Comment (2)So cap-and-trade legislation has died in the Senate. But it's going to be resurrected when a new administration moves into the White House. In the meantime, this is an issue of critical importance to small business and entrepreneurs.
1. There's no consensus on exactly how much a cap on emissions would cost the economy. But one thing is for sure: The bigger a firm is, the less that cost is going to hurt. Tim Carney—the best writer out there chronicling the ways that big business uses government regulation to encumber competitors—has written extensively about how Enron supported climate change legislation because its executives knew it would hurt smaller competitors' bottom lines much more than Enron's.
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Lowering Health Costs for the Self-Employed
Tweet Share on Facebook June 19, 2008 Comment (7)Looks as if I might have spoken too soon about the bipartisan possibilities of allowing health insurance to be purchased across state lines. While Barack Obama does approvingly write in The Audacity of Hope of letting consumers buy health insurance beyond just what's offered in their states, his plan would do this with strings attached.
Obama would allow the national sale of only private insurance plans that go through his "National Health Insurance Exchange." That means that the insurance plans would have to accept federal government controls on what to cover and how much to charge.
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Hacking Through Legal Red Tape Might Require Help
Tweet Share on Facebook June 17, 2008 CommentI've blogged about licensing laws that can pose significant barriers to entrepreneurship. But licensing laws are just one example of the jungles of legal red tape that entrepreneurs have to bushwhack through in order to get their businesses going. A lack of knowledge about these laws might be enough to deter many potential entrepreneurs. How many have been deterred—and the resulting cost to our economy—is hard to say.
I just found out that the Institute for Justice, which I mentioned as an organization that has successfully defended entrepreneurs against anticompetitive licensing laws, has resources that go beyond litigation to help with red tape. In the Chicago metro area, the Institute for Justice has set up the IJ Clinic, which assists clients—many of whom are low-income, inner-city small businesses—with figuring out "the legal intricacies" that come with being an entrepreneur.
