Vendors/suppliers
I was shopping at my local fishmonger the other day and my jaw dropped when I saw the price of Rockfish went up nearly $2 a pound.
I didn’t say anything but one of the owners caught my shocked facial expression and rushed over to say two words, “gas prices.”
We both shook our heads in quiet understanding. But I still went on to protest a bit about the size of the jump in fish prices.
It was easy for me to see the prices for all the items at the fish shop. There are only about 20 to 25 products sold at the small bare-bones store, and prices are written on a blackboard.
I realized at that moment I was being a bit unfair. When I walk into a giant supermarket or department store it’s harder to figure out right away whether price tags have been jacked up. And there’s probably no one in power to complain to even if I did notice.
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I’m feeling pretty lonely.
Lately I’ve noticed my emails are going unanswered for longer and longer periods of time.
I check my email every few seconds, and I can’t imagine not getting back to people in a flash.
But maybe I’ve bought into this crazy way of life.
Maybe I should take a page from the owner of a tea lounge in San Francisco who has taken a machete to email.
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I got a call last week from a source at the national Better Business Bureau and she wanted to get the word out about how some small firms are getting scammed by Internet loan companies.
With banks tightening credit, small business owners are scrambling to find other sources for loans to build their business or just to keep their heads above water.
The Internet, as usual, is where a lot of you have turned.
Even the Wall Street Journal did a story last week on how entrepreneurs are turning to online networks to get loans. I don’t blame you all. You have to find other sources, and it makes sense to turn to the Web.
But that doesn’t mean you throw all your common sense out of the window and turn into a cyber-space cadet.
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When someone doesn’t pay you what you’re owed for the products you make or the service you provide don’t threaten them with bodily harm.
I love that piece of advice from the National Federation of Independent Business.
I know deadbeats can make you want to hit someone, but cooler heads must prevail or you could end up in jail. It’s harder to collect when you’re in the slammer.
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| Everlast |
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Turns out, the Small Business Administration’s training budget went mainly to an inexperienced ex-Bush appointee.
The SBA has a budget of about $1.5 million to help provide advice to small business owners, particularly minority owned, who don’t quite understand the insanely difficult process of getting government contracts.
The SBA uses that money to essentially hire businesses that have an expertise in teaching entrepreneurs how to compete for government contracts to provide training to disadvantaged businesses on how to navigate the system.
But, for some reason, Vernon B. Parker, a retired administration official that Bush appointed, got most of the money, $1.2 million to be exact, even though he supposedly had no experience providing such training.
What the heck happened?
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I love that scene from Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life” where a bunch of guys are tied to crucifixes, and suddenly Eric Idle launches into the song, “Always look on the bright side of life.”
Here’s one of my favorite parts of the song:
If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...
Who’s singing in today’s economy?
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Just because companies shell out millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl doesn’t mean you have to buy the products or services they hawk.
A Pepsi, okay.
But business owners should be doing their due diligence when it comes to deciding whether to plop down their hard-earned cash on something that’s going to cost more than a can of soda.
Take the Salesgenie.com ads. I’m sure many small business owners out there had never heard of the sales lead Internet company until the firm’s slick ads appeared during the battle between the Giants and Patriots.
The ads probably got a lot of people surfing over to their site. How could they resist a cartoon panda with a bad Asian accent?
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Many moons ago when I was working for a daily newspaper there was a columnist there who would always write his best columns after a three or four martini lunch.
Many of us in the newsroom would say, after reading a particularly witty column, “He must have really tied one on at lunch.”
And, at a fashion publication I wrote for, one of the big time editors there would keep a bottle of whisky in his top drawer, “just in case.”
I never found out what he meant by just in case. I figured there were probably a lot of just in cases in his day.
Alas, behavior like that is a thing of the past with only about 7 percent of American workers saying they drink during the workday, according to a University of Buffalo study.
But should entrepreneurs abstain? Can't they do what ever they want? They are their own bosses after all.
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| BusinessWire |
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It took the federal government almost seven years to finally submit a proposed rule that would help women-owned small businesses get a level playing field when it came to the federal contracting procurement process.
Some argue -- most notably the sponsor of the original bill in 2000 -- the new rule doesn’t go far enough to help women business owners.
Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman House Committee on Small Business, sponsored the “Equity in Contracting for Women Act of 2000” that created the Women’s Procurement Program as a way to give women some needed traction when it came to competing for government jobs.
But the program never passed go, mainly because the federal government spent years reviewing and assessing how the plan would be implemented.
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I hate New Year’s resolutions. I admit it.
So many go unfulfilled and then you feel even worse about not meeting a certain goal.
But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking a step back and reevaluating how you run your business.
If you don’t, it could be another ho hum year.
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| Bob Fila / KRT file |
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