Courtesy of BellyLogan LaHive demonstrates. Ever want to toss five dozen eggs at your favorite food truck? Hear the owner of a bagel shop croon a song he wrote just for you? Or punch a beloved comics store proprietor in the gut? These are some of the quirkier “rewards” devised by Belly, a start-up that [...]

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week. The Big Story: A Surplus of Yawns President Obama’s budget, which includes $24 billion in cuts, sets off an election year fight. Here’s a good summary. The Calafia Beach Pundit says that fiscal austerity might not be so bad after all (Paul Krugman disagrees). [...]

A couple of days after the kitchen fire, dealing with insurance investigators and expeditors, I got an e-mail from an old buddy. He said his father-in-law wanted to speak with me. I called him. “I ate at your restaurant once,” he said. “I loved everything about it and I want to see it succeed. I [...]

Few people have the perspective that business brokers do on just how close some small businesses can come to closing their doors. Transferring business ownership is a delicate process at best, whether the business is sold to a third party or handed off to the next generation. Success can easily be derailed by any number [...]

 

Paul Downs Thanks to everyone who read and/or commented on my last post. As usual, commenters zeroed in on my mistakes and taught me a lesson — in this case, about the suboptimal way I’m handling the money that the company owes me. And I’ve drawn some conclusions and made some decisions about what to [...]

 

Gretchen Ertl for The New York TimesMike Woronka: “So many people said you can’t sell ambulance services.” We’ve just published a case study that looks at Mike Woronka’s attempt to revamp the sales efforts of Action Ambulance, which provides ambulance and transportation services to hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities and special-education programs in school systems. [...]

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Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJessica Johnson During the most recent meeting of our business group, we discussed the power of huddles — short, daily meetings that help keep everyone in the loop. Most of that conversation focused on preventing and resolving problems. But one group member, Jessica Johnson, who owns Johnson Security Bureau, pointed out [...]

The Small Business Administration has been pretty low key about its proposed budget for 2013, which was released Monday. Unlike previous years, there was no conference call scheduled with the administrator and not even a press release to list the highlights. And this might explain why, at least in part: while President Obama is promoting [...]

 

Courtesy of Southfork Kitchen.Southfork’s kitchen fire. The smoldering inside the kitchen wall started at 6 p.m. on June 1. At noon on Monday, I was still awaiting the papers to sign in order to receive the third and final check from an insurance company. Between then and now, there have been meetings, pleadings, e-mails, reconstruction, [...]

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners this week. The Big Story: Feeling Better Two surveys released last week say that small-business owners are feeling better than they’ve felt in more than three years and most have a positive outlook for growth and hiring. The skeptical speculator says the global economy gives no [...]

I have just come back from the annual picture-frame trade show — yes, there is one! (in fact, there used to be three) — in Las Vegas. Like many small industries, picture framing has been in a slump. During tough economic times, people somehow manage to survive without getting things framed. Go figure. But this [...]

Over the past quarter century the idea of green business has expanded from a fringe group of hippie capitalists trying to increase environmental consciousness to mainstream corporations trying to establish a global standard for sustainable business. Today, most major companies have social responsibility departments, and moving to greener practices is a priority. Frankly, it’s one [...]

As a business owner, I find the ability to call the shots and set the direction both intoxicating and, occasionally, angst-provoking. My two- to three-page list of tasks morphs weekly as things get crossed off and new projects are added — but there are some tasks that just seem to stick around. They represent decisions [...]

 

Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlexandra Mayzler. Alexandra Mayzler’s delegation skills have vastly improved since we first met. But at the last meeting of our business group, she said she’s still too involved with the day-to-day minutiae of running her business, Thinking Caps Tutoring. “I want to move away from all hands on deck to each [...]