Carnival of Small Business Issues

Carnival of Small Business Issues - Edition 2

Welcome to the second edition of the Carnival of Small Business Issues. Thank you for the submissions. We have over nine great thoughts that you can either choose to agree on or agree to disagree.

I did receive some submissions after the Sunday deadline. They will be included in next week’s carnival. Here is the link to the submission page.

You support and link to the carnival is greatly appreciated. Additionally, if you are interested in hosting the Carnival of Small Business Issues for future editions, do write to me: consulting at iqi-sm.com.

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Operations

• MoKa House, a media company, was born of a merger between two independent freelance writers – Moniqua Lane and Kathryn Vercillo. Moniqua, a licensed attorney, spends bulk of her time writing about legal, financial and real estate topics. Kathryn, who spoke her first words when she was a mere four months old, has a passionate love affair with language. She’s gained quite a reputation as “The Bay Area’s Most Kissed Music Journalist”. Kathryn’s Small Business Tip of the Week, Take a look at your activities to see if you are making good use of your time explorers the idea of hiring a professional to certain projects.

• Skip Reardon (SR) is the Director of Branding and Marketing for Six Disciplines. Of the millions of smaller businesses in the US, there is a group that is lead by a mature, passionate CEO, president or founder. Six Disciplines is for such leaders Read More about what Six Disciplines is.In his post Barriers to Lasting Excellence SR looks at six fundamental barriers to lasting business excellence. “The barriers that keep us from achieving the kind of business excellence that lasts are deeply rooted and won’t be removed by “quick fixes””. SR also reviews Six Key Advantages of Small Business.

• Chris Pangburn at the AeroDesigns Small Business Blog says Small Business Shouldn’t Be Afraid To Say No. “In the first few years of trading, most small business owners chase or say yes to any business they can find … rather than putting your business under greater strain and accepting work [from demanding] customers, you should consider saying no…”

• Ashton Udall is a partner with Global Sourcing Specialties, a product development and sourcing firm. Ashton uses his blog, Product Global, as a place to write about teamwork issues, ideas and industry news. Sourcing: Patience, Persistence and Politeness is about having three important qualities when sourcing from a foreign land. While you are out visiting Ashton’s blog, you may also want to check out his Interview with Barbara Carey – a woman who has successfully taken a number of products to the market.

• “Do business need managers? Or first-time supervisors? Or should organizations simply go Greek and give every citizen-employee a voice and a vetoing vote? The corporation as pure democracy. This was the theme of a Wall Street journal article, Managing: Can a company be run as a democracy?” Jack Yoest at Reasoned Audacity presents an interesting analysis on this Wall Street Journal article titled Is the Manager Obsolete? Or when does consensus stop? “… and even if the building is not burning, too much ‘consensus building’ is exhausting for the manager and paralyzing the organization …” Well said Jack. I have a question on those lines – “what if the captain is not up to the mark? Is this captain answerable to anyone? - especially in small businesses?
  

Marketing

• Brandon Peele’s mission is to liberate himself from the trapping of ego-identification and have fun; serve and create as must as possible. He is also after Truth. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised to see the “OM” symbol on his blog, Brandon. It is not often one sees this symbol in a business blog. Marketing: The Authenticity Fallacy is a letter to the editor of Fast Company in response to a wholly inadequate discussion of authenticity and customer relationships.

Finance

• Did you ever wonder if there were any cons of fuel conservation? Wenchypoo at Wisdom From Wenchypoo’s Mental Wastebasket provides us with a compelling argument on The Dark Side of Fuel Efficiency (). “… it is our own government that can hurt us the most while we try to do good!” Scary thought!

• Entrepreneurs and small business owners typically bankroll their businesses using their personal finances. At times, unfortunately, they go deep into debt and their credit scores get messed up. Steve Faber at Debt Free warns us to be careful about Some Bad Credit Loan Scams and How to Avoid Them. “Scam artists know that many [small] business owners will go to great lengths to try and save their businesses. They prey on this.”

Miscellaneous

• David at The Alexander Report lists Apparel Buying Agents. The post includes names, address, contacts and a brief review of each agency’s line of work. Pretty useful stuff if you are in that industry.

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