Mobile Marketing for your Small Business
Filed Under: Videos of Interest
Tags: Entrepreneurs, Marketing, Videos of Interest
I just joined the iPhone cult and spent 4 hours last night downloading apps! Which got me thinking about how small businesses are using this mobile marketing tool. I found an interesting video from Fox News that discusses some of the ways small businesses can use this new technology to their advantage. I am wondering have any of you created an iphone app? How was your experience creating it? Is it helping business? Let us know in the comments, we would love to hear from you.
Your Story: Heidi Lowe Gallery
Filed Under: Your Story
Tags: Craft Your Story, Entrepreneur
Your name: Heidi Lowe
Name of your business: Heidi Lowe Gallery
Your background: Started my own jewelry business at the age of 13, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jewelry and Metalsmithing at Maine College of Art, then received a Master of Fine Arts in Metals at State University of New York, New Paltz, interned at Leo Koenig Gallery in NYC
Your chief characteristic: busy, creative, and determined
Your regular reads: The Week, New York Times Magazine, Design Sponge, Art and Business Books
Clients, Customers, Constituents: Conscientious buyers, people who support local and handmade art
How long have you been in business? 4 years
Where do you do business? Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
Your concrete inspiration: Making the world more beautiful
Your big dreams: To make a living doing what I love
Your first success: At 13 years old I started my first jewelry business, a month later the stores reordered
The status of your business: Better every year
The future of your business: To fully support me and many other artist’s creative endeavors
Your greatest challenge in business: Pricing
Business pet peeve: People who drop the ball
Your favorite entrepreneurs, pioneers, mavericks, artists, and heros from real life and history: My mom, Charles Flynne, Peter Korn
The greatest rewards of your entrepreneurship: Getting to see my ideas and visions realized
Your idea of happiness in business: All the parts working together
Your present state of mind: Contemplation and Growth
Your business advise: Be happy where you are, it is constantly changing
Your favorite motto: “Each of us must be the change we want to see in the world.” Mahatma Ghandi
Your favorite business book: The Alchemist
Your one sentence business story: I have created a well-rounded life – making, teaching, and showing art which all come together to form a “career.”
Top Ten Homepreneur Trends for 2010
Filed Under: Top Ten Lists, Trend Report
Tags: Entrepreneur, Top Ten List, Trend Report
I found a very interesting article on the Top Ten Homepreneur Trends for 2010 from smallbiztrends.com. Check it out.
More than half of all U.S. businesses are home-based. These firms are often dismissed as hobbies or part-time ventures with limited economic impact.
But our research shows otherwise. We estimate that about 6.6 million home-based enterprises provide at least half of their owners’ household income and together employ more than one in 10 private-sector workers.
The rise of the homepreneur is a long-term trend that will continue to accelerate over the next decade. Fueled by technology and enabled by low costs, businesses of all kinds are finding there is no place like home.
With a troubled but recovering economy as the back drop, here is our list of the Top 10 Homepreneur Trends for 2010.
Economic Trends
1. The Job-Challenged Economy: Despite clear signs of economic recovery, job growth and traditional employment options will be limited in 2010. Employers will continue to be concerned about the economy, focused on costs and timid about hiring. Because of high unemployment and the lack of jobs, many will turn to self-employment and home-based businesses in 2010.
2. Bootstrapping: Bootstrapping was one of the most popular business terms in 2009, and 2010 will see continued small business focus on cost containment and cash flow. The obvious cost advantages of being home-based is leading to more small businesses – including employer businesses and high-tech start-ups – choosing to be home-based.
3. The Home-Based Artisan: Most think of home businesses as knowledge, commercial or office businesses. But a new do-it-yourself movement of crafters, digital tinkerers, green advocates and other “Makers” are using their garages, basements and backyards as their factories. These new artisans are combining digital technology and tools with traditional methods to create innovative products, processes and business models.
Read the full post HERE.
Small Business Tax Breaks
Small business tax breaks may expire soon. As the year 2009 comes to an end, Americans who run small businesses are scratching their heads. While the federal government seems hell-bent on nationalizing health care – at a great cost, but little benefit, to currently successful businesses – it is ignoring the elephant in the room: THE TAX LAW.
On December 31, 2009, less than two weeks from this posting, NUMEROUS tax breaks for small businesses will automatically expire as we ring in the new year. INCREASED TAXES will result automatically. In other words, instead of raising taxes by NEW TAX LAWS, the taxes that small businesses pay will go up next year dramatically due to the expiration of tax incentives many small businesses have depended upon for years. These incentives were carefully crafted – by a prior and much wiser congress — to stimulate economic growth and incentivize entrepreneurs to invest in technology and new equipment, while at the same time, providing the maximum gross tax revenue for government.
During tough times businesses fall into two categories, those that make it and those that don’t. Those that don’t make it fall either quickly or slowly. Both are painful, for everybody involved: the owners, the employees, the vendors, the lenders, the chauffeur, the gardeners and the cook. Failure trickles down just as prosperity does, contributing to the downward spiral.
The ones that make it fall into three categories: Those who have saved and have adequate resources to make it through, those who make strategic improvements quick enough on every level that turn out to be correct, and those who can take advantage of an unusual uptrend in the storm that drowns out the others. For example, if you’re in the business of installing or producing solar and/or wind energy systems right now, you’re not concerned about the current recession.
At Harvard Business Services, we reacted early to reduce costs across the board. When the State of Delaware DOUBLED many of its filing fees, we were forced to raise our prices to customers.
Survival in 2009 is one thing. Survival next year is another. Those of us who think we KNOW how to adapt to what’s coming in the way of new and increased costs of doing business are just BS-ing. We’re scratching our heads. Sure, we’ll have to increase prices; sure, we’ll have to trim the staff by another 15%; sure we’ll grow at the same time… requiring more people. Sure. Hmmmmmm. Scratch-scratch.
Three End of the Year Tips for Entrepreneurs
Filed Under: Articles of Interest
Tags: Articles of Interest, Entrepreneurs
Fast Company has a short and sweet post with three excellent end of the year tips for entrepreneurs. Below is an excerpt:
As we close another year and look forward to what 2010 has in store, I’d like to share three year end tips to help start the New Year with success.
Tip #1 – Assess every expense. Have you called all of your vendors and asked for a discount, better terms, or better pricing? Have you called the competition of your vendors to get new quotes to compare to what you are paying now? Now is the time to switch vendors and lower your monthly expenses. It does take time to call everyone and make the changes, but your bottom line will appreciate it in 2010.
Tip #2 – End of the year Blow Out Sale. Put together a special promotion around “the end of the year “or “beginning of the year.” Consumers anticipate getting great deals at the end of the year and look for the opportunity to spend money when they feel it’s worth it. If you provide enough value in your offer people will buy. I even heard of a retail store that had a huge inventory of a specific product that wasn’t selling. Although they wanted to lower the price to clear it out for something new, they found their pricing was already too low and any discount would result in a loss or just break even. Instead, they decided to raise the price of the product by 30% and provide a 25% discount. The product sold out in just 5 days.
Read the full post HERE.
