SBA

The Dribbling Metaphor for Business Planning

January 25, 2013

Think of basketball or soccer. In both of these popular sports, dribbling is what the players do to move the ball in the right direction. It’s not the point of the game, it doesn’t score baskets or goals, but it’s an important skill, right? I think of dribbling as a great analogy for business planning. [...]

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Free Online Video Business Planning Tutorial

October 12, 2012

My apologies if you’ve seen this elsewhere. It is available on the SBA community site, where it was posted about a year ago. I developed it originally as a donation to the SBA effort, because I believe what the SBA to help real-world entrepreneurs get started and run businesses is valuable. I cooperate with the [...]

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3 Essential Truths About Startups and Investment

May 11, 2012

Today I’m answering, with this post, a lot of similar questions I get often in email, where somebody is asking me how to get connected to or hooked up with or recommended properly for angel investment. Here are some unpleasant and unpopular facts about startups and investment. Only friends and family believe in you and [...]

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Is Entrepreneurship Contagious?

September 13, 2011

Is entrepreneurship contagious? Think about it, and consider this: Obesity is contagious, so is quitting smoking, and so is divorce. Why not entrepreneurship? Think of how people infect (or so it seems) each other with ideas, fashion, eating habits, and customs. Doing something, even something hard, is easier to do when it feels like a [...]

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5 Good Posts for Friday July 1

July 1, 2011

I need your help: Can you suggest a way to give a theme and a title to a series of Friday posts listing good posts and recommended links I’ve seen from the last week? My title here is too dull. I’m not nearly good enough at titles. I don’t want to do this every Friday, [...]

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The Brand New SBA iPhone App is Released

May 25, 2011

I try not to talk about my company or its products too often on this blog, not because I’m not proud of both, but because a little bit of that goes a very long way. Still, today, I’m proud to post here about the release of the Small Business Administration (SBA) new SBA iPhone app, [...]

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Who Speaks for Small Business?

February 1, 2011

As a small business owner who was once a journalist, when I read Taking Mom And Pop To The Cleaners on the Huffington Post, I think I know how that happens, why it’s bad, and why it’s also unlikely to change. (Aside: I’m happy to see Huffington Post and reporters Zach Carter and Ryan Griffin [...]

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Disney Entrepreneurship Center: Good Idea Well Implemented

December 6, 2010

Here’s an idea that makes so much sense that it’s surprising it isn’t done everywhere: combine Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), SCORE, chambers of commerce, and related organizations under one roof. That’s what the Disney Entrepreneur Center does in Orlando, FL. I wonder if it’s just coincidence that Entrepreneur Magazine included Orlando in its most [...]

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5 Points On Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship

July 23, 2010

Go ahead, you can ask: what do I know about this? I’m an old white guy, so take what I have to say here with some healthy skepticism. But I like to think my eyes were opened up to gender inequality by my pre-hippie question-authority mother back in the early 1960s, and kept open by [...]

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Federally Funded Small Business Financial Port in a Storm

June 10, 2009

Bridge financing? A few thousand dollars just to tide us over? I’ve been there, and, in fact, I’ve been there to the tune of $65,000 in credit card debt, which is definitely not the best way to do it. So I’m noticing today that the US Small Business Administration (SBA) is making good on a promise [...]

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