crowdSPRING is a marketplace for creative services. A customer puts out a project and sets the job price. Designers can choose to create a proposed solution, and the customer picks the winner. It has attracted controversy, with professional designers saying that spec work hurts their industry. That is, a designer has to create a fully…
Bob Jacoby is a business startup investor in Texas. He offers some advice to entrepreneurs: Make your idea work on the small scale first, then you can grow from there. [Subscribers, you may need to click through to the site to see the video.] Interviewed by Becky McCray at NASVF – the National Association of…
Three studies in a row hit me with the reality that social media is far from mainstream. Most small businesses are not using social media. Small businesses are using websites and email marketing more than social media, but most aren’t even using those tools. (Citibank survey) Most tourism pros are not using it either. Considering…
If you already have a business or already have an idea for your next business, you might think you don’t care about other small business ideas. I can think of four reasons that you ought to be looking for new business ideas. Improvement. Every business, every day, can stand to improve. Be on the look…
Are you the kind of person who has lots of small business ideas? How do you corral your thinking so you can focus on one opportunity at a time? Should you? What direction should you go? Yes, build one business at a time. Create the systems that enable you to delegate most of it. Then…
Bringing together small business, small towns, social media, free, tourism, memorable experiences, failure, and rural advantages, my interview on User Friendly Thinking Radio covered it all.UFT Radio is sponsored by web content management software company, Bizzuka. When you listen, you’ll hear marketing director Paul Chaney do the introduction and CEO John Munsell step up for…
Our friend Shashi Bellamkonda is back with another guest post. This time it’s a discussion question. What to do when someone calls you a Guru or Expert? When someone calls you a guru or an expert, it usually means that you are a good learner and have developed some useful knowledge that can be imparted…
“Memorable experiences are the ultimate scarce commodity.” That’s what I scribbled while driving, listening to Chris Anderson’s Free. The marginal cost of digital distribution is falling toward to cheap to measure, so it makes sense to offer many digital products for free. For example, the Audible copy of Free I was listening came with no…
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