“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression,” said Inc. president Bob LaPointe. “The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs.”

VerticalResponse is a leading provider of self-service email marketing, online surveys and direct mail, and an essential part of more than 85,000 small businesses’ marketing strategies worldwide.  In the past year, VerticalResponse joined the Google Apps Marketplace enabling Google Apps users to easily build new mailing lists and access email marketing tools to help grow their businesses; VerticalResponse also released a major product upgrade to its email marketing platform including integrations with popular social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. In addition, the company won The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Blue Ribbon Small Business Award and CEO Janine Popick was recognized as San Francisco’s Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

“I’m so proud to have VerticalResponse included on this prestigious list for 5 years running. Being able to maintain growth in this economy is challenging, but with our team’s hard work and passion for helping small businesses grow, it’s paying off,” said Janine Popick, CEO of VerticalResponse. “We’ve also got more than 85,000 customers of every type to thank for supporting us and helping us achieve our goals.”

The 2010 Inc. 5000, unveiled today on Inc.com, serves as a unique illustration of the profound changes taking place in the U.S. economy. The Government Services sector showed the biggest gain in terms of the number of companies on the list, up 33 percent from last year to 335 companies. Government Services was also the second-fastest-growing sector in terms of median revenue growth, posting a 202 percent gain over the 2006-2009 measuring period. More than half of these companies are based in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The fastest-growing sector by median revenue growth was Real Estate, now just a tiny group of 38 young, small companies, which showed 231 percent median growth over the period. (There were 121 Real Estate firms on the inaugural Inc. 5000 in 2007.) Business Products & Services is the top industry by number of companies on the list (640) and total revenue ($80.7 billion), while Health is the biggest by total employment (287,726  jobs).

Despite the fact that most of this year’s measuring period of 2006-2009 took place during the latest recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $321.6 billion, up more than 50 percent from last year. The effects of the recession are seen, however, in the median three-year growth rate, which dropped to 96 percent from last year’s 126 percent. This year’s Inc. 5000 employ a record 1.4 million people, up from one million on last year’s list. With unemployment remaining stubbornly high, policymakers and business leaders will do well to look to the Inc. 5000 companies for fresh ideas on achieving growth and creating jobs.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000, including company profiles and an interactive database that can be sorted by industry, region, and other criteria, can be found on www.inc.com/5000.

The Hottest Regions for Fast-Growing Companies

Once again, California tops the Inc. 5000 with the most companies of any state with 684. The Golden State is followed by Texas (404), New York (353), Virginia (293), and Florida (262). All 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, are represented on this year’s list.

New York boasts 410 Inc. 5000 companies, making it the top metro area, followed by Washington, D.C. (363), Los Angeles (262), Chicago (203), and Boston (189).

Methodology

The 2010 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2006 to 2009. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by June 30, 2006. Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2009. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2006 is $80,000; the minimum for 2009 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. The top 10 percent of companies on the list constitute the Inc. 500, now in its 29th year.

I’m from Eastern Europe and banks over here don’t make any efforts to help small businesses. High taxes, obscure policies and bad services happen not because there isn’t enough competition but because there isn’t a culture of small business banking. It took almost one month to have one of my cards re-issued, and they were expecting to go pick up the card from the same location where it was issued 2 years ago (which was way far from my current location).

The thing is that while we had some big crashes in the financial industry Worldwideand the credit went down, the basic banking operations still exists; unless we stop using money, all businesses need a way to cash in money from the customers. So it seems that no matter how hard things are, banks here

So I decided to have a look and see how things are looking.

In a total contrast, each time I look at the financial institutions in U.S. I’m amazed at the efforts they are putting into marketing their services. For example, to grow the sales force, North American Bancard created a site for the North American Bancard Agents and created the North American Bancard Linkedin company profile. So they are using social networking!

Also, they do provide much more services that a regular bank here (solutions for Credit, Debit, EBT, Check Conversion and Guarantee, Gift & Loyalty Cards and much more).

They seem to have a quite aggressive plan to grow their customer base, which is currently around 100000 businesses (it’s amazing what competition and a strong culture of supporting small businesses can do) . And are there any jobs? Sure, look at the North American Bancard Jobs.

“At the onset of the economic recession, small businesses across the country were among the most heavily impacted by the downturn. However, the results of our survey suggest that we’re starting to see a leveling-off effect,” said Robert M. Kottler, Executive Vice President of Small Business Banking at Capital One. “Financial conditions for many small businesses have remained relatively constant over the past year. The lack of further deterioration and a growing access to capital are reasons to be cautiously optimistic as we look ahead.”

Asked about access to capital, more than two-thirds (78 percent) of those surveyed believed they had access to the credit and financing they need. Nevertheless, most of the small businesses surveyed said they have no plans to make major investments in their companies in the next six months. Most remained cautious about the prospect of hiring new employees, with only 28 percent reporting any plans to hire and expand their workforce and 46 percent saying they don’t plan to make any additional investments or expenditures — including spending on marketing, IT and new hires — over the next six months.

Although many small business owners across the country have seen improvements, they continue to face a variety of challenges. The ability to acquire new customers is the biggest challenge facing small businesses over the next 6 months according to 58 percent of survey respondents. Additionally, nearly 37 percent of respondents feel the ability to maintain existing customers will be the biggest challenge, while 25 percent believe identifying new revenue streams will be their greatest obstacle to overcome in the months ahead.

The Obama Administration’s efforts to increase lending are drawing even more attention to the need for small business recovery. And while there are regional differences of opinion and variances in survey results, small businesses everywhere appear to be cautiously optimistic about the economy and the state of the small business sector.

Survey Methodology

The findings reported in this release are from a telephone survey conducted by the opinion research firm, Braun Research of Princeton NJ. Braun Research interviewed a nationally-representative sample of 1,611 for-profit small businesses in the U.S., weighted to Dunn and Bradstreet counts of all businesses nationwide by employee size and geography. Samples were also taken in New York, New Jersey, Louisiana and Texas. Small businesses are defined as those with less than $10 million in annual revenue. The interviews were conducted between December 28, 2009 and January 13, 2010. All interviews were conducted by telephone at their places of business. One respondent per business was contacted. The margin of error is ± 4.38 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Interviews were monitored at random. Sampling for this study was conducted using a national sample of businesses drawn from InfoUSA. All interviews were conducted using a computer assisted telephone interviewing system. Statistical weights were designed from the United States Department of Commerce to ensure proper inclusion of all SIC codes.

About Capital One

Capital One Financial Corporation (www.capitalone.com) is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A. and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., had $115.8 billion in deposits and $212.0 billion in total managed assets outstanding as of December 31, 2009. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients. Capital One, N.A. has approximately 1,000 branch locations primarily in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. A Fortune 500 company, Capital One trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “COF” and is included in the S&P 100 index.

Capital One Small Business offers a range of products and services to meet small business needs, including small business credit cards, business money markets and payroll services on a national basis, in addition to loans and lines of credit; business checking, money market and savings accounts; and payroll and merchant services offered in our branches. Capital One has a team of bankers committed to deepening our relationships with small business owners and helping them achieve their financial goals.

SOURCE: Capital One Bank

Gig Harbor, WA (PRWEB) March 11, 2010 — Artbeads.com, a Gig Harbor, Wash., online retailer of beads and jewelry supplies, is proud to celebrate its tenth anniversary and tenth consecutive year of record sales.  Like many small businesses, Artbeads.com began as a part-time venture operating out of the garage. Two years off the ground, Devin and Cynthia Kimura found themselves struggling to balance one full-time job to pay the bills and a quickly growing web business, while raising two young children ages two and four.

“Cynthia, like most moms, was burning the candle at both ends, making sure that orders were filled and in the mail while at the same time taking care of family,” says Artbeads.com CEO & Strategist, Devin Kimura. “But we liked beads. I worked with glass, Cynthia began to develop an interest in making jewelry, and there was space in our garage for something new.” Launching a new online retail business in December of 1999 at the peak of the dot-com boom gave the Kimuras motivation to chase their dream of building a world-class bead and jewelry supply company.

As their business started, however, the Kimuras would soon find themselves in the midst of the dot-com crash and a major economic downturn, much like the situation many small businesses are facing today. Aware of the risks associated with debt-leveraging a business, Devin and Cynthia “bootstrapped” growth, reinvesting every penny of profit back into the company and tightly managing expenses. “The lessons we learned by bootstrapping in the early days have continued to serve us well especially now in this latest economic downturn,” says Devin. Artbeads.com came up with creative ways to reduce costs without layoffs and focused on launching low-cost marketing programs to grow free organic search engine traffic and generate word-of-mouth advertising through social media. They also became more aggressive with their pricing and promotional strategy, using email marketing as the primary channel to reach value-seeking customers. Devin credits these and many other efforts along with the entrepreneurial spirit of the Artbeads’ employees for leading Artbeads.com to their tenth straight year of record sales and solid growth in profits.

“2009 was a fantastic year for us,” says Artbeads.com President and Chief Creativity Officer, Cynthia Kimura. “We’ve been able to expand our efforts to educate and inspire jewelry makers and crafters with our Learning Center, which has grown to include over 600 inspirational jewelry and craft ideas along with numerous how-to-make-jewelry videos that are all freely available to the public. We’ve also made great strides to support the beading community while encouraging others to share ideas and discuss projects and events.” In 2009, Artbeads.com sponsored numerous beading events; supported jewelry-making instructors, bead societies and bloggers; launched a forum on their “Blog for Beaders”; and drove significant growth in its social-media sites such as Facebook, which now supports over 20,000 fans.

As Artbeads.com enters their tenth year, the Kimuras are proud to have built one of the largest online bead and jewelry supply companies in the United States that has served hundreds of thousands of customers from all corners of the world. Their dream that began in a garage now operates out of a 24,000 square-foot warehouse and provides jobs for over 140 employees in the Pacific Northwest while supporting countless artisans and craftsmen from around the globe who contribute to the more than 25,000 products carried on the Artbeads.com website, ranging from beads, findings, and tools to unique hand-painted pendants.

About Artbeads.com
Artbeads.com is a leading provider of beads and jewelry supplies for jewelry designers and the beading community. Artbeads.com caters to the quality-conscious designer with products like Swarovski crystal beads and the finest sterling silver beads, but also works vigorously to provide an exceptional customer experience while maintaining competitive prices. Thanks to Artbeads’ buying power, those looking for wholesale beads are attracted by wholesale pricing discounts, no minimum order requirements and fast, free shipping anywhere in the United States. With a vast Learning Center, Artbeads.com is also a popular destination for beginners looking for jewelry designs and tips on how to make jewelry.

The program, which will be administered by the HOPE Center located in Harlem, will help future entrepreneurs navigate through the often time confusing steps that lead to creating a new business. The funds will help HOPE bolster the already existing Entrepreneurship Program and focus on creating a small business technical support aspect to their curriculum. Operation HOPE has been active in the New York area for the last two years operating a full service center at 2511 Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem.

“We are excited to join forces with the EDA in helping advance American small business and recover from this economic slowdown with sound fundamentals,” said Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant. “America is at its best when we invest in human capital and embrace innovation and change.”

The U.S. Economic Development Administration recognized the value of HOPE in 1999, providing $200,000 to help fund the flagship Inner City Cyber Café, in Los Angeles. In 2002, the agency provided funding to support HOPE’s Small Business Initiative.

The EDA’s investment priorities are designed to establish a foundation for sustainable job growth and the building of durable regional economies throughout the United States. This foundation builds upon two key economic drivers - innovation and regional collaboration. Innovation is the key to global competitiveness, new and better jobs, a resilient economy, and the attainment of national economic goals. Regional collaboration is essential for economic recovery because regions are the centers of competition in the new global economy and those that work together to leverage resources and use strengths to overcome weaknesses will fare better than those that do not. EDA encourages its partners around the country to develop initiatives that advance new ideas and creative approaches to address rapidly evolving economic conditions.

“Operation HOPE is a strong partner in the effort to rebuild economically distressed communities around the country to foster growth and job creation. The U.S. Economic Development Administration looks forward to collaborating with the organization to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in New York City,” said John Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development who heads EDA.

The HOPE Center, New York has served over 30,000 individuals in the Harlem and surrounding areas since opening its doors in October, 2007. To date, the Center has educated and counseled over 2500 adults in financial literacy, provided small business technical assistance counseling to 308 small businesses and helped individuals obtain over 11 million dollars in mortgage and business loans.

About Economic Development Administration (EDA)

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) marks 45 years of public service, leading the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing American regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. EDA is an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce that partners with distressed communities throughout the United States to foster job creation, regional collaboration and innovation.

About Operation HOPE, Inc. (HOPE)

Operation HOPE is America’s leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization. With more than 400 private sector partners, 1500 nonprofit organizations and schools, and 100 government partners in 69 major U.S. cities as well as South Africa, HOPE has raised more than $500 million in its pursuit of educating, assisting and inspiring the next generation of global stakeholders. Through international initiatives and its three principal programs, Banking on Our Future (teaching school children about money), HOPE Coalition America (Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline, 1-888-388-HOPE, financial emergency preparedness and disaster relief), and Walk-In HOPE Centers (loans, bill pay, computer literacy, understanding banking principles), Operation HOPE has delivered services to more than one million low-wealth individuals and assumed the responsibility of piloting the Silver Rights Movement towards making free enterprise and capitalism relevant to all underserved communities. To learn more about HOPE, visit www.operationhope.org, or read our blog at www.operationhope.org/blog.

Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/operation-hope-receives-500k-commitment-from-us-department-of-commerce,1195109.shtml#ixzz0hhutNZtA

With much of our knowledge about US entrepreneurship coming from the movie industry, great entrepreneurship stories escape the public, although they represent the real American dream. Unlike other books I’ve read lately, many following the getting rich quick book pattern I was happy to see that Sam’s Wyly book doesn’t follow a script. Each chapter starts and ends on it’s own, without having the same structure with the others, while the book itself it’s not what you could call motivational, nor “selling” ways to turn $1,000 into millions. The truth and wisdom you could find reading the chapters are not replicable, you can’t build your business the same. But they might make you smarter and give you some insights of the hard work that an entrepreneur needs to put in order to achieve his goals.

Did you know that Sam Wyly was amongst the first to fight IBM during their supremacy years in the ‘60 when a computer was costing around $ 3 million? Did you know that Sam Wyly fought the big AT&T monopoly when you couldn’t even buy a different headset and lost 100 million to it? Did you know that he owned the Bonanza food chain and grow it from 20 restaurants to more than 600? Did you know that Sam started a company called Sterling Software with an initial investment of 2 million to sell it later for… 8 billions! Just before the dot com crash.

In the early 1970s, in the midst of the Nixon wage and price controls, Wyly built University Computing into a goliath that split into four separate companies, including Datran, which would later challenge the AT&T data transmission monopoly. During the gas crisis of the late 1970s, Sam’s oil-refining and silver mining company Earth Resources actually took advantage of the call to de-lead gasoline by selling the refinement run-off for jet fuel. During the recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sam built arts & crafts retailer Michaels from six stores to over 900. In the current economic downturn, Sam’s latest ventures are all proving successful. From Green Mountain Energy, the nation’s leading provider of cleaner energy, to investment funds Ranger Capital and Maverick Capital, Sam’s still on the leading edge of the market.

As Sam Wyly says, he was born in one of the poorest small towns in US. His first business, University Computing was started with $1,000 and an idea. He is amongst the 600 most rich people now, but he keeps on saying: “In football, just like in business and just like in life, the best teacher of all is failure.” “No matter who you are or what you’ve achieved in the past, you have to work hard every time in order to win. ”

I’m not sure how much you know about how the Internet appeared, but I now know that by fighting AT&T and creating the first data transmission service for computers, Sam Wyly set the first stone of what we call today Internet, even before the army launched the project that will later become the internet. And not sure how the world would be today without entrepreneurs fighting big corporations like IBM and finding better ways of solving people pains – the quite essence of what we call today entrepreneurship.

Consider it a history book about the last century economics, consider it a business book, it definitively worth reading. Thanks Sam Wyly for sharing a true and genuine entrepreneurship story: 1,000 Dollars and an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire

NEW YORK, New York, June 2009 – “There’s no time like the present” may be a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason. As decades-old corporate warhorses continue to go belly-up, even the most tried and true “safe” career paths—say, the Bear Stearns trainee program or climbing the General Motors management ladder—are no longer guaranteed. The landscape is now perfect for young, resilient workers to quit waiting around for an economic recovery and recruiters to come knocking and instead direct their ambitions into their own ventures.

In Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur’s Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own
(AMACOM; May 1, 2009; $21.95 Hardcover), Robert Tuchman shows young professionals how to start and succeed in their own business, giving examples of many entrepreneurs under the age of 35, from mortgage giants to PR moguls, who thrived in the face of adversity. There is no better time to take a chance than when you’re youthful, bold and have very little to lose—and he knows from experience.

“A seismic shift is happening in the economy, with the tone moving toward an entrepreneurial world,” says Tuchman, who started his own company in the economic downturn in the mid-1990’s. “New forms of life are springing up, making possible ventures that seemed impossible just a short time ago.”

When Tuchman graduated from college in 1993, he entered the stockbroker trainee program at Lehman Brothers but quickly realized his professional path in the rat race would leave him unfulfilled. Armed with one phone, a fax machine and his tiny, one-bedroom apartment, at the age of 25 he funneled his passion for sports and business into his own company, Tuchman Sports Enterprises (TSE). Within two years, TSE was named to the annual Inc. 500 list of America’s fastest growing privately held companies and as one of the top 100 promotion agencies by Promo Magazine.  TSE, which was started with no money and no investors, sold for millions of dollars to Premiere Global Sports in 2006. Last year, TSE (now known as Premiere Corporate Events) earned more than $70 million dollars in sales.

“I can’t tell you how many people warned me against veering off the safe route at Lehman,” says Tuchman. “But I knew I had the drive and resiliency to make something else happen for myself instead of spending years being apathetic in my job, never knowing if I’d make it to the top. And given what ended up happening to Lehman and other corporations, playing it “safe” might have left me unemployed, broke, and in a career that I hated.”

In Young Guns, Tuchman shares practical strategies for not only getting a business only up and running but also ensuring its staying power:

“This is the moment to turn your passion into something tangible,” says Tuchman. “You’re in control of setting the rules for your life’s agenda. If you feel the drive in your gut, got for it now.”

About the Author:

Robert Tuchman is the Founder of TSE Sports & Entertainment, a company he started out of his one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan at the age of 25. TSE has gone on to appear on Inc. 500’s list of America’s Fastest Growing Privately Owned Companies. Tuchman now serves as President of Premiere Corporate Events, a division of Premiere Global Sports. A frequent guest on “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” he has also appeared on CNN, the “CBS Morning News,” BET, and has been the subject of features in USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur. He lives in New York City.

Tuchman’s Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

The Small Business Administration’s latest statistics show that a new startup has about a 50 per cent chance of surviving for five years or more. Robert Tuchman’s advises entrepreneurs to start doing the following early on to ensure a company’s longevity:

1.      Do business from home. Save money on renting office space by doing business out of your own living space. Install a separate phone line or purchase a cell phone for business use only. Print your own letterhead and business cards. Your clients will never suspect that “Suite 12-B” is really “Apartment 12-B.”

2.      Try to fund it yourself, or mostly yourself. It pays to go after the least amount of funding that is necessary. When you’re starting out, it feels good to say that some venture-capital firm invested millions of dollars in your idea. But a few years down the road, when you’re doing well, it will not feel so great to know that you own only 25 percent of your company.

3.      Put a positive spin on things. Does the timing of your entrepreneurial project coincide with you having been recently laid off? Don’t include that in your pitch to customers or investors. Nobody wants to think they’re doing business with someone who’s only there because they have to be.

4.      Build a culture of action and enthusiasm. During your first year, you will face a lot of questions about your experience. The best—and probably only—way to overcome them is to impress clients with your vigor and dynamism. If you want to be perceived as youthful, forward-thinking, and results-oriented, be proactive! Reward your people for taking the initiative. You’ll have a huge competitive advantage over established companies. Many clients will pay, and even take a bit of a risk, to get young, energetic minds on their side.

5.      Stay balanced. During the first year, and all the years thereafter, you will have to find a way to achieve balance. Basically, this means avoiding the temptation to work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, without a break. Find an outlet—a hobby, an amateur sport, or an exercise activity—that gets your mind off work and relieves stress. It’s essential to maintaining perspective and the energy you need to keep your business thriving.

From the NEWS.com.au site:

“MIKE Jarocki is 19. Last month, he made $25,000 from the business he started less than a year ago. Alana Maybus started an online gift store when she was 10 “just for something to do”. She now has customers across Australia. And 16-year-old Mathew Carpenter might be studying for the HSC, but that hasn’t stopped him from starting his own consumer electronics business.
They are among a driven group of young Australians setting up their own businesses before they hit the big 2-0.”

Crisis or no crisis, young entrepreneurs find their way to deal with tough business environments and are the best candidates for creating the tomorrows big empires and fortunes. If they manage to be successful now, there is a big chance that they will follow a path of explosive development as things will get better.

Here is the rest of the story.

The direction and what you will end up doing it’s not really important after all. Most importantly is how fast it’s going one way or another. Most people start a business to fulfill a very personal desire. So how fast is good, is very fast good or bad?

It can either grow too fast either too slow and neither are good. Let’s see why.

Going too slow
Usually bootstrapped companies have the tendency to grow slower. Lack of investment money means you can’t go out and rent a huge office space and hire the second day. Hardware, know-how and man power might be missing. Marketing budget is scarce so you can’t get a lot of customers. Or simply you can’t expand production.
Besides the obvious risks like your competition going faster and killing your market, the most dangerous risk (mostly because it’s hidden) is … loosing interest. If for you, the entrepreneur, it takes too long to meet your targets (whatever they are) you will miss the essential force to make things happen and eventually your interest will fade away. If you plan to have 20 employees in the next 2 years (because this makes everything worthwhile for you) and you only have 2, that means a painfully death of your business. Painfully not because it’s not profitable or anything, but because it doesn’t serve your desires.

Going too fast
Going too fast usually happens when you find a good niche, a big customer or a growing market. Going fast will get your desires fulfilled soon, so what’s wrong with that? It can be bad in  more ways. First if you get what you want too fast, you might lose interest after. Maybe if you get that million dollars in the bank you won’t feel the desire to keep running your business, right?
On another layer, going fast can be a sign of un-natural growth. Usually is related to getting a big customer that brings you good growing business. The bad things happen when you need to expand so quickly that you need to get expensive finance, hire not so efficient people, or simply spend too much as you feel money are coming your way fast, and then, for a reason or another that big customer goes away. Or simply the market is shrinking. Guess what, now you have way too many employees, too much office space or too much production. This spells disaster.

To make things even worse, there is no saying when you go too fast or too slow. Usually you realise this when something goes wrong. So how fast is your business growing?

The thing that comes to my mind right now is the classic barbecue that you are supposed to have with your customer in order to get the contract signed (saw this in some US movies). Why is important to have a personal bond with your customer?

Getting friendly with the customer should have some advantages:

• It’s getting you more sales. If the customer will consider you as his friend, chances are that the next time he will need something he will look no further than you. Friendship is a special breed of customer loyalty.
• The customer friend can spread the word about you and get you more customers. Word of the mouth is probably one of most powerful marketing tools a small business can use. It comes for free
• Problems with quality, delivery or anything else? Well, the friend customer can close an eye on it, and you can get things settled over beer.

Getting friendly with the customer should have some disadvantages:

• Margins can be low. Well, if the customer is your friend, you won’t charge him too much right? This also happens with older customers as well – as your business grows the older customers don’t bring the best business because the newer ones are able to pay more.
• Sometimes you are forced to provide more than the regular service. Because they are your friends, the customers will feel entitled to ask a little bit more.
• It’s never good to make business with your friends. Words of wisdom say that if you make business with your friends either your friendship or your business will eventually suffer.

But in the end is it a good idea to get friendlier with your customers? I think it depends. If you’re running a small bank it doesn’t work. But if you have a small grocery store, or a hair styling business it seems like the right thing to do. It anyway depends on yourself and the way you make friends and not really a business decision. You can however make a business decision from the way you talk, deal and behave with the customer – that should be a good enough framework.

If you know the feeling, together with U-Printing, we have 500 free 4×6 postcards to giveaway to Small Business Entrepreneur readers that posts a comment on what would  they use the postcards for if they won. The winners can choose any of our stocks, including the eco-friendly 13pt recycled cover stock, 14pt gloss cover or 14pt matte cover. U-Printing can only ship for free to winners in the United States and Canada, winners in another location would just have to pay shipping.

For over 25 years, U-Printing has been a trusted leader in online printing, featuring its signature easy-to-use website and the famous Free Project Review, a complimentary proofing service which requires no upfront payment.

U-Printing offers convenient marketing support services such as design, lists, and direct mailing to help grow small and medium-size businesses nationwide.

Besides Postcards Printing, U-Printing is also offering:

• Business Cards
• Brochures
• Catalogs
• Postcards
• Label & Stickers
• Posters (Bulk, Offset)
• Posters (1-50 Prints)
• U-Page: Custom Size

The winners will be picked on October 31st 2008!

• Q: What is the minimum amount it would take to make you feel OK about your entrepreneurship?

=>A: Control a million, have a million, earn a million, pacify a million.

• Q: What is the most difficult challenge that you face in reaching it?

=>A: Balance.

Now, to really understand what they meant, head to Shane and Peter’s answer.

The bad news is that if you have an established b2evolution blog it’s quite hard to switch. The good news is that I managed to do about 90% of the migration. Basically right now, the only non-migrated elements are the pictures that I used in the posts and the linkblog (which makes it an “almost” complete migration).

First of all, when I decided that I really have to change the blog platform, I found quite some resources on the procedures – unfortunately all proved wrong or incomplete (this includes non-compatible migration scripts, no documentation available). So here are the steps to migrate from b2evolution (latest versions) to Wordpress (including content migration, URL rewrite to keep the results in Google and related stuff)

NOTE: I’M USING MY BLOG URL AS EXAMPLE, YOU SHOULD CHAGE WWW.ENERGYBYTE.COM TO WHATEVER YOUR DOMAIN IS

1. Backup everything (files and database) and make a fresh Wordpress install. I used a new folder for the wordpress but kept the same database for the ease of the migration. The old installation folder was www.energybyte.com/blogs/ the new one is www.energybyte.com/blog (notice the s missing).

2. The second thing you will have to do once you have the Wordpress running is to migrate the old content to the new platform. I’ve tried every script out there that pretended to make the job, but the only working solution was to convert the old blog content to “Movable type” and then import it into wordpress. The complete procedures on How to Import b2evolution Posts to Wordpress – worked great.

3. Once you have the content migrated, the next step is very important. I’m talking about ensuring that the old links (permalinks) from Google or whatever are still working so people could still find your pages. And also, being able to keep your page rank. So, lets see about the migrating the b2evolution permalinks to Wordpress permalinks using URL rewrite:

- first of all, you have to check if your server supports URL Rewrite (if you are on shared hosting, you should ask your hosting company if Apache Server with mod_rewrite is enabled)

- second, log in to your Wordpress admin account, go to Options and the Permalinks tab, and pick “Custom, specify below” and put /%postname% in the text field near. This will make your new wordpress links look like “http://www.energybyte.com/blog/hello-world”, where hello-world is the name of the post. Probably, to make the change take effect, you will have to create a new file in notepad, call it .htaccess and copy paste there the code that is generated by wordpress at the end of the Permalinks page, usually something like this:
# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]


# END WordPress

Upload the .htaccess file in the root folder of the Wordpress install.

- redirecting the posts: b2evolution usually makes the URLs something like that: www.energybyte.com/blogs/index.php?title=hello_world&more=1&c=1&tb… and your new blog will make the URL look like http://www.energybyte.com/blog/hello-world. So you will need a Rewrite rule and condition to strip the “title” from the initial URL, change folders and put the title after the /. You will want to do this with a 301 redirect (which tells search engines that the page has moved permanently and doesn’t lose your ranking). Create a new .htaccess file edit it with the code below (you should change “blog” to whatever your new wordpress folder name is) and save it in the root folder of the b2evolution blog.


Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} title=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/%1? [r=301,nc]

- redirecting the post (second part). Now, the ugly part from the migration using Movable types is that b2evolution sometimes makes the permalinks different from what you would expect, and the new Wordpress database will have the wrong permalinks in it (which means people will not find your posts) . Basically what you need to do is to update the “post_name” field in the wp_posts table with the records from the post_urltitle field from the evo_categories table. You can do a script, or even manually if there aren’t too many posts.

- redirecting the archives. You will need to migrate an URL like this “www.energybyte.com/blogs/index.php?m=200704” to something like “http://www.energybyte.com/blog/2007/04″. This means stripping whatever is after m=, take the first 4 numbers, add a / then put the next 2 number. This is done by adding a code similar to this one at the .htaccess file saved in the b2evolution root folder:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} m=([0-9]{4})([0-9]{2})
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/%1/%2? [r=301,nc]

- You will also need to redirect the category pages from let’s say “www.energybyte.com/blogs/index.php?cat=38” to “www.energybyte/blog/category/Doing-business”. The bad part here is that the old blog uses number (cat=38) and the new ones the category names. So you will have to manually match the IDs with the category names by looking at the b2evolution database eco_categories table. At this time you will notice that here the categories come from the posts and from the blogroll as well. I’ve decided to sacrifice the blogroll and deleted it from the b2evolution administration, which left me with the clear post categories in the database. Now, I didn’t have so many categories, so instead of doing a php script to replace the ID with the category name and then make a redirect, I choosed to make the redirects manually in the .htaccess file. For the category 38 I’ve added to the file (and for the rest of the entries in the databse as well):

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cat=38
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/category/Doing-business [r=301,nc]

which means I’ve redirected cat 38 to Doing-business – as they showed in the database.

- the last redirect you do, is to redirect www.energybyte.com/blogs/index.php or www.energybyte.com/blogs/ to www.energybyte.com/blog This means 2 more lines in the .htaccess file:

redirect 301 /blogs/index.php http://www.energybyte.com/blog/index.php
redirect 301 /blogs/ http://www.energybyte.com/blog/index.php

Note: by cutting index.php from the above redirects, I’ve copied the “media” folder from b2evolution to the root of the Wordpress – and got the pictures to show in the new blog

Right now, we are more or less migrated. You need to pick a new wordpress template, then don’t forget to add the affiliate links from the old one and the Google analytics or whatever you use for tracking. The only thing that is lost (besides the linkblog that I deliberately killed) are the pictures you embedded in the posts. Actually the pictures are not lost, but they are pointing to the old location that is now URL redirected. If you have only few pictures, probably you could re-upload them to the new blog, if there are many, probably you will have to make a script to replace the picture links in the database to the new location.

- Test, test, test. Make searches on Google that will return results from your blog and see if they work. Then, test, test, test!

PS (1): if these steps do not work, use the BACKUPS!!

PS (2): thank you to my friend Beje for helping me out with the URL rewrites and many other advices lately

Of course, at some level, being environmental friendly also means cutting costs. Turn off PCs at night, shut down the air conditioning. It’s green and it’s good for the small business costs. But what about small businesses that are involved in real production, taking raw materials and making the end-user product? Do small businesses afford to have the latest production technologies available? Do they afford to make a proper waste disposal?

Investing in new technologies, processes and know how id very costly for any small business. It cuts through the profits; Fredric Paul says “Going Green Is Big Business – Not Small Business” and points out an excellent resource: GreenBiz – Daily News and Resources on Green Business, Sustainable Practices, Environmental Innovation.

GreenBiz has been founded by Joel Makower, writer, speaker, and strategist on corporate environmental practices, clean technology, and green marketing.

I would say that GreenBiz has it all: News, Resources and Hot Topics. Besides the Small Business Green, there are a lot of topics of interest – I didn’t even know we can save the Planet so many ways:

• Computers
• Corporate
• Green Buildings
• Green Marketing
• Renewable Energy
• so many other

Let a little green in your life!

Statistics (amongst other things) help me see what people are looking for on my blog, and then there is Mybloglog – see the blue recent readers rectangle on the right column – that show me what fellow bloggers are visiting my site, and give me a chance to get in contact with them.

But no, that’s not the kind of statistic I like most. There is something even more advanced – easy to spot on the web tracking service (I’m using the free version of Statcounter) and that is visits coming from e-mails. If somebody comes to my site following a link he received in his e-mail, this means that somebody else liked (or hated) my blog so much that he spent the time to share his thoughts and send an e-mail about it. Are you following me? There is somebody in this world that copy-pasted the link and send it by e-mail!

I think there is only one more statistic that could sometimes be better than e-mail linking, and that would be trackbacks from fellow bloggers…Got some of those as well

If you are just starting up, I know for sure that you have a lot of information to read about how to run a business, so here is the chance to streamline the learning process for the site creation: the Bootstrap Design blog – written by Shawn.

Also, if you want to hear some entrepreneurship tales, head for Tales of seven bootstrappers from 2006

First, I have to say that the Euroblog 2006 summary seems to be correct and I only hope to see a more advanced understanding of the statistics (and being just a summary really explains why you can’t find all data in the summary).

You can find the summary documentation here

First thing I’ve noticed in the summary, is that 587 PR professionals from 33 European countries have answered the survey. This is a nice number for any online survey but it would have been more interesting to know:

• The estimate number of PR Professionals in Europe, to have an idea what the 587 number really means
• The distribution amongst European Countries – I can’t really say if this study can be applied to Romania as I don’t know if Romanians PR professionals have answered it

The second big thing, is that the survey was conducted online. Which really means that the 2/3 of the respondents are familiar with weblogs result might be a little over-evaluated because the respondents were already familiar with Internet. It’s like asking an Internet user is he visits Web pages…

42% of the respondents without a weblog are planning to implement a weblog within a year. That’s interesting, it seems that blogs are becoming more and more an information source for professionals. However because the entry barriers in creating a blog are really low it’s becoming more and more difficult to find Professional blogs with reliable information.

71% of the survey respondents are under 40 years old. I wonder how the 29% over 40 think about blogs. It would be nice to correlate this information with the other numbers in the survey, like how many PR professionals over 40 are planning to implement a blog…

As most of the statistics on Web usage and related are coming from USA, it’s really interesting to see this kind of surveys in Europe as well – and I really appreciate the pro bono work of the researchers. It will probably be very nice to attend the “Public Relations and Social Software: Meeting the Challenges of Weblogs, Podcasts, Wikis and RSS” symposium, that will take place in Stuttgart, Germany, March 16th to 18th, 2006. I’m really looking forward to seeing more researches like this one.

Well, first, most of the blogs about monetizing your on line work are probably true. But they don’t really say that you should put a lot of work into it and then some more work. It’s like with the very reach people. They will always say how they added so many millions, but they will never say how they did the first million.

While I’ve covered the most obvious technical aspects of blogging here

now I should probably enphasize the most important aspect: blog content. Because without the right content, you won’t get a high Google ranking, people won’t read your blog and you won’t be able to monetize it. I can’t really say what you should write in your blog, but first you have to have enough content to make a difference. You can’t really expect to many thing to happen with only 3 posts. And then, your content should matter; you should discuss about subjects that are interesting, and you really have to know what are you talking about. The content doesn’t really need to be scientific, all is necessary is to be genuine and to describe a thing that might happen to others.

And then, there are categories (subjects). You will probably want to write on a number of subjects. Have too many and you will never have enough time to focus on them in a way that it matters. Have too few and you won’t address enough readers categories. It’s not only the number of visitors that matters but also their quality; having some clear and distinctive categories will appeal a certain public – get selective.

If you are at the beginning and think that monetizing your blog will bring sufficient money in the house right from the start, well, you are wrong. Especially if you are working in a big corporation (and start blogging as a side thing) you might have a wrong idea on how things go with blogging just because you are in a big corporation. Don’t mix thing up, the fact that at your job once you publish a white paper 10 000 people will read it in the first week won’t apply to you. You will hardly have 50 readers per day at start. And don’t invest to much money in blogging, it will take a while until you’ll recover your investment. Don’t be confused by the fact that at your corporate office you just have to ask for a new printer and it will be there. No, you will have to work your butt to have the first money in. Invest wisely.

By the way, you should let people know about your blog, and here I’m not talking about SEO or something related. Just tell them of they are your friends – you will be amazed how many of your friends and relatives will read your blog just out of curiosity. Are you using e-mails to communicate? I bet you do, add the blog address on the signature. Forums, on line communities? Why hide the blog?

Huh, It’s a long blog, hold on a minute to read what I’ve wrote already.

Ok, I’m back, I’m not sure if I’ve already told you. Did I told you about the content? Write some more content. You might not have too many things to write about in the beginning, but this can be changed. You have to learn about the subjects you want to write about and be up to date. Be good at what you are writing.

So what I’m trying to say here? Blogging takes time and dedication.

I’ve tried to understand this thing and it seems that 51% of SMBs do not respond to customer e-mails. It’s like you opened a store, but nobody is in to sell your stuff. So, if you are an e-commerce software provider, make sure that the shoppers can get in contact with the merchant and the merchant is advised to keep a close eye to the messages from the site. This actually also relates to my previous post about customer thrust. It’s not a simple matter of displaying an e-mail address on your site, but also about having a real business address, a phone number that gets answered.
No need to say, if the customer can’t contact you, or has the feeling that you are a “PO Box” company, chances that he will buy from you are slightly lower. If you are a small company, maybe its good to also display the owner or manager name. I really enjoy to see who is behind an on line store.

To understand SPAM and how this hurts your business, let me talk a little about what spammers really want. First, its an advanced technique of social engineering that is designed to make money in 2 basic ways:

• Selling legal products or services
• Selling illegal products and being the cover up for a more dangerous activity like drugs, porn or violence

While some include in the motives range advertising concepts and ideologies, I don’t think that terrorist formations or other groups will use spam as a weapon in their fight.

Even from this point its obvious how spam can hurt your business. Due to the ever changing spamming techniques and to a not so clear legislation on this subject, more and more legal commercial e-mails are considered as spam and can compromise the chances of developing new businesses in places were e-mail is widely used as a communication method. I believe that something like 90% of my e-mails never get to be read as they are either stopped by a spam killing machine or software or because the receiver ignores the message due to the amount of spam he receives. Its really hard to say what is a real business e-mail or not, and in my opinion the situation is much worse in the last 2 years with the raise of poor countries as workforce suppliers in IT. Furthermore, just a few weeks ago, I’ve heard some comments from a colleague that “Your e-mail looks like spam – nobody will read it” which actually means that is harder and harder to notice real business from cybercrime as spammers develop techniques to make their messages look real around the clock.

Understanding the sources that spammer use to gather their e-mail addresses is probably the first step to do in order to avoid the implications of the cybercrime on your business. But let’s talk about this a little later.

Surf safe!

Be involved and get a free license

Are you a “cdorob’s on entrepreneurship” fan and have a PHP enabled server? If you know a little bit about coding and you would like to help, here is the chance to get involved in the creation of a software product: we will select 50 applicants from the volunteer grrop and will offer 50 NRG Poll licenses to the people that would like to participate in the beta testing of the product. All you have to do is to send me an e-mail at contact(at)energybyte.com with your name and a small description on your coding skills and we will invite you to join the Beta team and will give you a free NRG Poll license that you could use for your PHP enabled blog or site (note: only the approved 50 applicants will be entitled to the free license). As a beta tester you will also have the chance to give usage feedback and propose product features.

What is NRG Poll?

NRG Poll is a very easy to use poll aplication that can be deployed on any PHP enabled blog or site; it will give fellow bloggers the chance to make their sites interactive and find out readers opinion on their subjects. The NRG Poll allows the creation of an “unlimited” numbers of polls with a customized layout.

We keep it simple!

• You have a RSS enabled blog. Ok, blogs are easier to read with a RSS reader, and this means more people will enjoy your writings. This is good.
• Google AdSense. Targeted ads, helps you paying the hosting bills, maybe some more. This is good as well.

To increase Google AdSense revenues you need more visitors, which in theory makes RSS feeds even better. As they bring more visitors. But this is wrong. Goodle AdSense doesn’t display in your RSS (yet).

PS: I especially enjoyed this blog about “helping bloggers earn money”