As Mother’s Day passed this last weekend, I wanted to take a moment and give credit to the ladies who not only raise families – but create enterprises too. It can’t be easy juggling kids, a family, a household and a startup – so here’s a heartfelt kudos to the top mommy entrepreneurs who made the list this year, an annual list compiled by our friends at StartUp Nation.
The Top 10 List of Mom-as-Entrepreneurs
The WSJ recently had a guest writer pen an article which we think is so simple, yet so brilliant it makes me ashamed I hadn’t thought of it. You can read it here, but the upshot of it says –
If you really want to know what hidden opportunities to sell a potential customer are, their job ads will give you insights that can’t be found anywhere else. Elements such as – Continue reading
My good readers, I’ll leave this one up to you to decide if this is a genuine reach-out to the small business owners of America, or just a PR attempt as they continue to, well, do whatever Goldman Sachs does. Which traditionally, has had very little to do with small business.
Check out their website for small business owners.
Great PR, or a great appreciation of small business owners?
I would like to ask the questions though – did Goldman ever have to ask the small business administration for a loan or worry about making payroll? Hmmmm. No disrespect to a great financial institution, but this one I’m not so sure I get.
Interesting though!
The latest resource for small business owners that want to get a leg up on social media is here.. it’s called UpHype, and they’re a marketplace for those who offer small businesses their marketing services. Because most of the services are bundled as $8, $16 or $24, it’s very affordable for even the smallest business.
After having spent a couple of hundred dollars buying various services, the most popular service packs seem to be – Continue reading
It happens more and more each day. Whether it’s a restaurant on yelp or a pediatrician on DoctorBase – customers are beginning to leave online reviews about local small businesses. While this can be irksome or an ego boost to an owner, let’s think about the social implications of this – Continue reading
In a deal highlighted by the Wall Street Journal today, a small sports equipment manufacturer in Pennsylvania has signed the first endorsement deal with Michael Vick since the controversial sports superstar was released from prison.
Is this the face of your small business?
Which begs the question – was this a brilliant move by a small business taking a big chance with a small marketing budget, or a flash-in-the-pan PR move that will eventually dilute their brand?
The initial evidence – a 1000% jump in online sales – would indicate that the move has paid off. But the owner does state there’s a chance that large sporting goods chains may refuse to resell their merchandise on store shelves in fear of a public backlash.
What would you do?
Is this a sign of things to come?
The buzz in Palo Alto is that Facebook is already testing their payments system that will compete with Paypal. While Paypal today dominates the small business market for payments made electronically, Facebook hopes to overtake the industry by allowing payments from its users to merchants – and from merchants to users!
Other than cheaper rates (which won’t affect small business owners greatly) Facebook is perfectly poised to dominate this market, and here’s why –
Your most loyal customers are starting to let their friends know they are at your business
Recently I started getting asked by more small business owners – “What’s a check-in?”
Companies like Foursquare and Gowalla have made the concept of smart phone users “checking in” to let their friends & family know they are in a certain location has been growing rapidly. So rapidly in fact, that Foursquare recently turned down a reported $100M offer from a major Internet giant. So what gives, and how does this affect small business owners?
I’ll get straight to the point – it’s Google. Or Yahoo. Or Bing.
There are a variety of companies like Hoovers or D&B who have been selling leads for decades, and even folks like SalesGenie and JigSaw let small business owners “cherry pick” lists to buy at small volumes. But do they work?
Maybe it’s time to take a step back and define what “does it work” means. Continue reading
A business litigation and IP firm based in downtown San Francisco, the ARI Law Group firm was using a dedicated in-building receptionist and a punch-key PBX system to communicate with clients. In a recent call with an attorney directory service, the rep from the directory informed one of the principals that they routinely received 3 to 5 calls per week from their sponsored listing, something the law firm was unaware of. This prompted a further investigation into the “client experience” as they phoned into the firm.
It appeared that after hours – before 9:00am and post 5:30pm – the receptionist would be absent and calls would go to voicemail after an average of 8 rings (approximately 32 seconds). As the firm had international clients, it was safe to assume that a number of calls throughout the early morning and night went to voicemail, where many callers simply hung up.
While recognizing the need to move to a more sophisticated business phone system, ARI Law faced a number of challenges often seen in professional services firms that occupy office space in a large commercial building downtown.
1) They required the use of their existing punch-key PBX phone system as it was the standard system within the entire building. It had outdated features and was old, but it was fixed throughout.
2) Desiring to answer each client call with the human touch, they required a tie-in service that would allow an answering service that was intimate with their business to be able to offer live call reception 24/7/365.
3) Because the nature of their business was law and that client calls had to have the utmost security, they wanted a system based on a wired business telephone system and not on VoIP.
With the Halloo system the ARI Law firm set up a unique local number for each of the several area codes within the Bay Area and Silicon Valley that they serviced. They then routed these numbers to their traditional office line, while being able to automatically toggle to voicemail after hours.
They were also able to offer their clients the convenience of a single local number so that parties could join a conference call (often used in professional services) by pushing a number on their phone while calling into the normal office line.
Ali Aalaei, principal of ARI Law PC said, “Halloo provides our clients in the Bay Area and in Asia an incredibly accessible way to communicate with our team here in San Francisco and Orange County.”
