staying alive for small biz 101: a gorilla in your future?

This, from an article forwarded by a colleague. The short of it: don’t wait til the month before you consider buying a “going out of business” banner for your front window!  For businesses,  their owners, their employees, and for all the families touched by this climate – the best thing we can do is try [...]

microlending for small businesses?

Micro-lending is something we’ve all heard about in stories about developing countries. The concept is a good one: you loan 50 or 75 dollars to a woman with a sewing machine in Quito, a similar amount to a farmer in the hills overlooking Karachi, or a leather worker in a Lagos slum — and the [...]

a handful of tips for keeping business healthy – in the current climate

There’s a blog I’ve been following, called Bizick.com — written by Scott Berkun — and an article seemed thoroughly appropriate as Main Street entrepreneurs contemplate the eternal stay-or-sell decision.  
Basic, sound advice :  looking at your immediately local customer base, polling them to find out what *they* need, knowing your financials, making efforts to lock [...]

reading for those of us shell-shocked by bad economic news

A friend of mine is a psychologist – his specialty is with something called “Critical Incident Intervention,”  … helping people in organizations deal with dramatic and emotionally difficult events:  mass layoffs, the sudden death of a colleague, and tragically, things like school shootings and employee rampages.  
So … we were talking yesterday about how the [...]

It may not be Business As Usual … for a while

For a very long time one of my consulting specialties had to do with helping companies plan for turbulent times.  We *used* to think we knew what turbulence was…  While the specific methods could get us bogged down in really silly-sounding ‘consultant speak,’ one of the most important things we argued was that the future [...]