Start ups
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 [...]
10 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn From High School Seniors
Mike | April 22nd, 2013I have written before about things entrepreneurs can learn from people who come from various walks of life. From athletes we can learn the value focus and training, from comics we learn about of risk-taking, from chefs we learn how to stay creativity under great stress, and from musicians we learn the importance of working [...]
Small Business and Startups: Cultivate Trust and Nurture Loyalty
Mike | April 15th, 2013Trust is a key for driver for your customers. Do they trust you to produce a great product? Do they trust you to deliver a reliable service? Do they trust you with their money and their time? Establishing trust with your customers takes time and consistency, but it also takes data and transparency. Companies rely [...]
Lean Business: Pivot Point
Mike | April 8th, 2013In 2010 the co-Founders of Burbn, a check-in app for mobile phones built on HTML5, raised $500,00o in seed funding for a service that was designed for quick mobile sharing between users. The co-Founders had labored for over a year on their app but it was not gaining traction and they were unhappy with its functionality and [...]
Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business
Mike | March 11th, 2013Many smaller companies that provide creative services struggle every day to manage their capacity and their overhead. Because, as in many other industries, business is cyclical, these smaller agencies, design shops, and marketing firms tend to exist on boom/bust cycles throughout the year. In the creative industries this is an everyday fact of business: overhead [...]
Small business Congress-watch: Two Reasons to Call Your Representative!
Mike | January 14th, 2013On occasion we take a look at recent legislation coming out of our Federal government in Washington. While the news is often discouraging and the activities of our politicians typically frustrating, there are those times when truly great ideas are put forth and, every so often, these idea become actual laws. Hard to believe, but it is [...]
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 and Startups: Dear Santa
Mike | December 17th, 2012Perhaps I am a couple of weeks late with this post, but it just occurred to me that there are some things I would like for Christmas this year and perhaps Santa can find a little spare room on the sleigh. No I am not asking for a new camera or some other gadget-of-the-moment. I have been [...]
Small Business Spotlight of the Week: miiCard
Amanda | December 12th, 2012Let’s talk about passwords for a second. Or rather, how outdated and insecure passwords are nowadays. With sites like Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Yahoo! all experiencing major password breaches– and learning that most frequently used password is actually “password”– it’s clear the current system of rote memorization and hacking is not working. But, what’s a better [...]
