America’s SBDC Blog

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America’s #SBDC Congressional Showcase

January 20, 2016

12 Days to the Showcase!

America’s Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are excited to announce the America’s SBDC Client Showcase & Reception is back again this year! The following SBDC clients will be joining us on Capitol Hill on February 1st:

• Bear Creek Smokehouse – North TX
Client-Showcase-2015• Elevate Systems – South-West TX
• Green Technologies – FL
• Helios Remote Sensing – NY
• House of Design – ID
• KuKuRuZa Popcorn – WA
• Luke’s Toy Factory – CT
• McClintock Distilling – MD
• The Eats Place – DC
• Zeigler Bros – PA

To prepare for our big day, we will be doing a 12-day countdown to the showcase reception. Each day we will share a story about one of the clients attending the reception, who they are and how they worked with their local SBDC.  (more…)

Preparing to Buy a Business: Part 2 of 2

January 13, 2016

In our previous installment, we touched on the benefits of buying an existing business, determining client readiness to buy, and organization. With such a small percentage of business searchers completing the purchase, it’s important to get clear on criteria and what is going to be the best fit for your client’s lifestyle and abilities.

Choosing the Right Type of Business

Many times, buyers will spend too much time looking for what they think is the “perfect” business, and end the search prematurely after realizing it doesn’t exist. Helping your client establish the right type of business to target will not only get them closer to a purchase, but it will open up options that fit within their ideal without having to hit every checkbox. (more…)

New Year, New Beginnings and New Businesses

January 11, 2016
By Nancy Jeng

Google-New-Years-2016-blogEach new year brings the dream of new beginnings and, for many, that includes the dream of starting a new business. In fact, Google Trends data shows us that interest in “starting a business” peaks every January. To support the millions of businesses that are created each year, we’re sharing some of the ways you can use the web (and Google) to launch your new business:

Use Google Trends to size up your market opportunity. Before you launch a business, you want to make sure there is a viable market for your product or service. You can use Google Trends to help gauge your market potential. For example, if you’re looking to open a pet store, see when searches for ‘pet supplies’ peak or which geographic regions clocks in the most searches for pet supplies.

Find a domain, create a site and get custom email. Picking out the right domain name is often the starting point to building a successful online presence. With new domain endings like .pizza and .photography, there are now more options to choose that fit your new business. Google Domains helps you get started with registering a domain, building a site with trusted partners and setting up custom email.  (more…)

Preparing to Buy a Business: Part 1 of 2

January 6, 2016

Business ownership is a multi-part path of challenges and seeking the right support at appropriate times. But what about the complexity of the business buying process? Knowing if your clients are prepared to take on the task of running a business is one part of the equation, but there are many nuances of the business acquisition process that, if adequately prepared for, may help your clients set realistic expectations for what’s ahead.

These steps will detail questions to ask, and client characteristics to be aware of, as you help facilitate the preparation to buy a business.

Why Buy an Existing Business?

Buying an established business is a paved path to entrepreneurship, which provides a track record and a set of operations to follow or improve. With so many for sale in the market at any given time, finding one that meets the buyer’s professional goals should be within reach.

Namely, buying a business versus starting one will allow for further refinement and evolution of the operation. Here is a quick recap to show the benefits and characteristics that accompany the purchase of an existing business.  (more…)

Dashboards to Stay on Top of Your Business

January 4, 2016

If you’re running a business online, chances are you’re using a lot of different vendors to handle your email marketing, payments, web hosting, etc. When you’re using so many vendors, checking up on the health of your business can become a huge burden on your time because you have to log in to a lot of different sites to get the reports you need.

Luckily, there are companies that provide great online dashboards that bring together the data from many of the most commonly used vendors. Here is my review of two of these services: Cyfe and Leftronic.

Probably the biggest deciding factor when choosing a dashboard is whether it offers an integration with the services you need to monitor. The number of integrations are increasing all the time, but to give you an example of what’s possible, here are some of the things I monitor using Cyfe’s dashboards:

• Google Analytics to see how many visitors my site has and how many conversions I got
• SEOMoz to see how my site’s SEO is doing
• Twitter to see how many followers I have and who’s engaging with my tweets
• YouTube to see how many people are watching the videos I’ve posted
• Bit.ly to see how actively people are sharing links I’ve posted on social media
• AdWords to see how much I’m spending on search ads
• Google Webmaster Tools to get notifications about issues with my site

Here are some highlights of these services.  (more…)