This contest is short and sweet. Tell me how your business truly helped someone without expecting anything in return. Post your answer here. I’ll pick the best response on July 30. The winner gets highlighted on my site and my feed for the month of August 2010. They’ll get a guest blog account. And…I’m throwing in a free press release about what you did. Tell me how you made the world a better place for someone, and I’ll make it a better place for you.
Category Archives: General Business
Grow Your Business With These Free Services Part 1
Small business owners should be taking advantage of all the free services offered to help them grow their business without impacting their expenditures. I use many of these free services myself at www.johnlizotte.com, and I’m always surprised at how many business owners aren’t aware of just how much they can accomplish for their business, absolutely free! Useful free services that you can use include things like email, expense tracking, invoicing, mobile contact management, and more. I’ve decided to do a series of articles detailing some of these services and how they can help you grow your business without costing you a cent!
One thing most of us hate to do is accounting. No offense to all of the accountants out there. Part One of this series is featuring free online accounting from Outright.com. I use this service myself to track my writing income and expenses, and I love it. You can see my online business profile there at: http://entrepreneurs.outright.com/john-lizotte. I’d recommend it to any small business owner who isn’t comfortable managing their own numbers. Outright has plenty of great features, and I’ll talk about a few of them here, but I strongly encourage you to check it out for yourself.
Read more... (1005 words, 1 image, estimated 4:01 mins reading time)New First Mortgage Loan Poolers Will Jump-Start Secondary Market For SBA 504 Loans, Make Credit More Available
SBA NEWS RELEASE
Press Office
***************
New First Mortgage Loan Poolers Will Jump-Start Secondary Market For SBA 504 Loans, Make Credit More Available
***************
Release Date: June 24, 2010
Contact: David J. Hall (202) 205-6697
Release Number: 10-37
Internet Address: http://www.sba.gov/news
***************
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration today announced the first nine loan pool originators authorized by the agency to assemble and sell pools of 504 program first mortgage loans, a major step to jump-starting a secondary market that should make fixed asset financing more widely available for small businesses.
The new program was approved under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Prior to the recent disruption in the credit market, a private secondary market for these loans existed, but has not revived as the economy has started to rebound. SBA expects this new program to breathe new life into that secondary market and improve access to credit for small businesses by providing a resource that can help boost liquidity to small business lenders.
Read more... (548 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)Have We Given Up Our Freedom?
When asked, most freelance professionals and other small business owners will say that flexibility and the freedom to set their own hours was a very big part of their decision to become self-employed. They got tired of working long hours; missing out on quality time with their spouses and family; or doing the things they are passionate about.
Reading my previous post, 1000 Marbles, made me wonder. Have we become “The Man”? Have we become exactly what we tried to escape?
I bet most of us have let our business become the largest focus in our life. We work long hours to make the sales, order the supplies, networking, or working late at night on administrative back-office tasks so it won’t take away from the time we could be out “working”. I know I’m guilty of this, myself.
What happened to those dreams we had of flexibility? Time with our family? Going fishing on a nice day?
Just something to think about. A “doink moment”, as I call them. And if you haven’t done so already, go read 1000 Marbles. It’s worth it.