Resources
Small Business and Startups: Prepare For the Worst
Mike | May 13th, 2013Disaster strikes. Extreme weather events, fires, data storage failures, illness or even the death of a key team member can occur at any time and when something happens, will your small business be prepared? According to ReadWrite, 74% of small businesses do not have a disaster plan and 84% don’t even carry insurance against natural [...]
Small Business and Startups: 5 Threats to Your Online Security
Mike | January 7th, 2013How often do we read about online security breaches, loss of data, or massive credit card theft? While these events typically involve larger companies or even governments, all businesses are vulnerable to fraud, theft, or other forms of malice or just plain mischief. Most small businesses assume that it is only larger companies are at [...]
Small business: The Affordable Care Act, Part II
Mike | December 3rd, 2012Earlier this year, I wrote a post about ways that Obamacare might help small businesses. At the time, the Supreme Court had just released it’s decision upholding most of the Affordable Care Act’s provisions and the dust was still settling on what it would all mean. Last month, President Obama won re-election, effectively removing the threat that [...]
Small Business and Startups: End-of-Year Mishegoss, 2012 Version
Mike | November 5th, 2012Around this time last year I defined for you the Yiddish word ‘mishegoss,’ which many of you were familiar with in spite of never having heard the term before. Yiddish is just that way – it taps into certain archetypes in our consciousness and, as a result, a phrase that we might never have heard before [...]
Small Business and Startups: Slice & Dice Your Customer Service Data
Mike | October 29th, 2012After every quarter I delve into our customer service data to have a look at a few things: first (and foremost) are we effectively meeting out goal of providing world-class customer service to our community? Next, what is the demand on our system and do we have capacity available to meet it? Third, have we [...]
Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement
Mike | September 10th, 2012Last week, Ross was contacted by an old friend, Ron May, who publishes an industry newsletter in Chicago and writes extensively about technology, startups, and small business in our region. Ron gets in touch periodically for updates on crowdSPRING so this was no great surprise. Ron’s email asked, “What the heck is going on with crowdSPRING? [...]
Dear Applicant, Part 2: The Thirds
Mike | July 23rd, 2012I wrote a post last year on how job applicants can improve their chances with a prospective employer, and today I wanted to explore this in a different way. In spite of the dismal state of the U.S. economy and the job market (particularly for younger people) there are many, many companies that are hiring [...]
Small business and the Affordable Care Act: 5 Reasons Why Obamacare May Help
Mike | July 2nd, 2012Last week the Supreme Court handed down its much anticipated decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (dba Obamacare). If you are a small business owner or manager, it really doesn’t matter whether you are in the 50% of Americans who were thrilled about this decision or the 50% who were [...]
