Excerpted from Entrepreneurship: A Real-World Approach, 2nd Ed, now available Most businesspeople can tell you the goal of a for-profit corporation is, well, profit. But many entrepreneurs have other goals as well, such as improving society, reducing poverty, or protecting the environment. While the term “social entrepreneurship” has become widely used recently, entrepreneurs have been driven …
Small Business Take Your Parents to Work Day
You’ve probably heard of “Take Your Daughters and Sons to Work Day” — a day when kids get a chance to see what their parents do all day. Well, there’s a new twist on the concept — one a number of small businesses are embracing to help the parents of their employees finally figure out what it …
8 Things Scarier than Zombies for Small Business
Embezzlement. Losing your biggest customer. Unending debt. For a small business owner, lots of things are scarier than zombies (reappearing October 23 when AMC’s popular series The Walking Dead resumes) or goblins knocking on your door on Halloween. If you’re checking under your bed–or desk–for monsters, here are fearsome things that might threaten your small …
It’s the Holidays: Do You Know Where Your Cash Is?
If you run a small business, the holidays seem like they’re already here. Yes, I know, it’s not even Halloween, but studies show that about 40% of shoppers begin their holiday shopping before jack-o-lanterns are even lit. For small businesses, the greatest holiday challenge may not be getting shoppers in their door, or finding enough …
Get a Piece of the Halloween (Pumpkin) Pie
According the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend a record $8.4 billion this Halloween. The following numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau will help you decide on a product, a target market, a marketing campaign, and more to help your small business get a piece of the Halloween action. Target market 41.2 million The estimated …
6 Steps to Small Business Health
Do you offer paid sick leave in your small business? If not, you may soon. Throughout the country, there’s a national movement to insure that employees receive at least a few paid sick days every year. This week, President Barack Obama devoted his weekly address to the subject of paid sick leave, pointing out that …
Social Media: Tool or Trap?
Have you embraced social media in your entrepreneurship classes? Does it differ from traditional marketing so greatly that it requires specialized classes? American check their phones a total of 8 billion times a day, and 80 percent of those smartphone users spend their time using just five apps—Facebook is number one. The argument that “social …
Are you Brad or Angelina in your Small Business?
Oh dear, it’s the end of a beautiful partnership: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have filed for divorce. If “Brangelina” can break up, what hope is there for you if you have a partner in your small business? While the two stars may go through a nasty divorce, you definitely want to avoid a gruesome …
Want a Perfect Small Business? Think Again.
When Apple released the new operating system for its iPhone earlier this month, some things went wrong. For a few hours, thousands of the first people who downloaded iOS10 had their iPhones “bricked”—or rendered useless. Apple’s stock price dropped. Whoops. Seems like a big mistake, right? Sure, but Apple did something right, something small business …
