My friend Deborah Brody wrote a terrific post about business planning. It's not a sexy topic--but can anyone say they don't need a Plan B for when things go wrong? Most businesses, if they plan at all, focus on the "how are we going to handle the whole...
This "SmartPulse" poll of SmartBrief on Entrepreneurs readers caught my eye the other day. That's because a whopping 69 percent of respondents said they "never" or rarely work on social media for their business. We talk about social media a lot. And because we see the...
People seem to envy those of us who don't work out of corporate offices because we get to set our hours and select our work settings. But what often gets lost is that we, too, have to have a routine. Otherwise, how would we ever get anything done? My latest post for...
For the second year in a row, I’m taking a page from Chris Brogan. He annually identifies “three words that will be my guiding pillars for what I will focus on in the coming year." My three words for 2011: velcro, abandon, and crayons. I’m going to use them, hopefully...
Are you celebrating failure? While business successes are great, we tend to learn far more from our failures. The stuff that goes wrong and makes for business case studies and lessons learned, and adjustments, innovation, and change. Ralph Heath's Celebrating Failure...
At Friday's GrowSmartBiz* conference, SBA Deputy Administrator Marie Johns talked about her agency's "3Cs" and highlighted new legislative help for small business owners. Talking about the 3Cs, Johns said that the Small Business Administration focuses on: Contracting...
Can you keep a secret, or are you indiscriminately telling all? Whether you're a full-time workshifter or you just take the occasional business call while watching your son's t-ball game or standing in line waiting for a latte, you need to be mindful of not sharing...
Anyone who has built a successful business knows that entrepreneurship involves more than just identifying a sellable product or hanging out a consulting shingle. It takes a business mind, long hours, lots of sweat equity—and a healthy dose of financial risk...
There's a new study out that suggests that fewer Americans are turning to entrepreneurship in 2010 than did in 2009. According to an article in Entrepreneur's Daily Dose blog, the study by outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas* found that "just 3.7...
There was a sound bite on the evening news recently about how a lot of fishermen on the Gulf Coast will be sorry to see BP pull out as they have grown used to the big pay days. (Now, whether this is true is for a different post--and one I’m not going to touch.) It...