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 The face of small business is evolving. Physicality is no longer a factor; open a laptop or answer the phone from your dining room table and you are working. No matter the size or location today’s entrepreneurs pay bills, support families, out source and hire. For many a loan well under $10,000 mark could take them to the next level of their growth and income; which in turn means an increase in their overall fiscal contributions.
In spite of this even established small businesses find that banks have no interest in helping them; they don’t meet the business loan criteria. I was therefore pleased to read With Squeeze on Credit, Microlending Blossoms by Kristina Shevory. In third world countries microlending was starting in an effort to alleviate poverty. This same foundation can work well in North America but it can also provide for those businesses with good credit.
In Shevory’s article William Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business and chairman of Liberty Bell Bank said, “We’re not in the business of funding great ideas.” No banks cannot hand out funds indiscriminately on that premise alone but a single great idea has given the world some phenomenal businesses.
Microlending will never have a direct affect on the world wide recession or it’s recovery. What it can do though is help small business take its rightful place in the global economic picture.
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Continuing from yesterday's post on how today's businesses communicate
With his poor communication skills and inablity to show a shred of genuiness in his word choices, it is no surprise that Tony Hayward is out and Robert Dudley is in. Will Dudley insist on being the spokesperson for BP's oil spill public relations nightmare or have the sense to be the Chief Executive who knows how to delegate specific jobs to the right people?
Inept communication is proving to be the undoing of many companies who believe that the public will follow them no matter what they say or do. Facebook's Mark Zuckerbery and Apple's Steve Jobs should realize that statements grounded in arrogance and with a 'We are always right' undertone do not make for happy customers. Perhap they should err on the side of more carefully crafted verbage or to use some truly well written words, the current public relations path that they are taking could lead to the winter of their discontent.
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 SHARING ...............
Books
For an entrepreneur the summer reading pile contains more than just fiction, here are two business beach books that were recommended to me. I haven't read either one yet and would like to hear what you think of them.
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
The Little Big Things:163 Ways To Pursue Excellence by Thomas J. Peters
Blogs
I hope to find time this summer to also read one of his books but in the meantime his blog is always interesting - Daniel Pink
Entrepreneur.com
Articles
Why does an office have to be well, an office? Peter Coish's Cloud Free Agent Expresso Bar & Ad Agency is part of an exciting non-traditional movement. This man is working on a cloud by Hollie Shaw.
Before you write the next great self-help book check out Self-publishing: Doing it yourself & Doing it better by Mark Medley
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 Business relationships, whether or not the word 'business' is in front it is still a relationship that you have entered into with your customers/clients. So often though how we communicate and interact with them is less than forthright, we distance ourselves in the name of professionalism.
"Companies are talking 'professionalese' to keep customers and colleagues at a distance, when what people crave is openness and honesty, argues Daniel H Pink.
Pink went on to say in his Sunday Telegraph column
We speak human at home and “professionalese” at work. And that might be hurting our businesses more than we realize."
The premise of his article can be applied to the entrepreneur as well as corporations
Ironically one of the reasons many entrepreneurs left the corporate world was so they could conduct business on a more human, one on one level. Yet as their businesses grow they often handle clients in ways that mirror the very companies that they left.
When I develop a clients' marketing plan I always build in a customer service and appreciation component; all the clever advertising in the world means nothing if your company doesn't have a strong customer relations reputation.
Summer is actually a good time to conduct an in depth review of your customer service from every perspective -
Initial contact with your company
Quality of ongoing service
Follow-up after service/product have been provided
How you handle company errors & unexpected problems (As illustrated in Pink's article)
It is in the observation of your day to day business routine and detailed analysis that you will find any problems. And while you may not want to take up Pink's challenge of speaking to clients as though they were family; your business's communication from official statements, emails to sales calls could probably do with some humanizing.
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 FaceBook – for your business yes or no?
As an entrepreneur can you afford to overlook the world’s most visited site? On the surface the obvious answer would be ‘no’. The average Facebook user spends 14 minutes on the site each day. Number of users has now hit 500 million. Those users share everything; filling in some unnameable void. And all that sharing allows Facebook to keep up its steadily escalating ad revenue. Knowing everything about you from your Victoria’s Secret panties purchase, to the Michael Bublé concert that you went to and how many Mai Tai you drank on your Maui vacation. This collected data provides them with a knowledge base that is ripe for targeted ads.
Facebook says that it is about connectedness and openness; so they enhance the experience with the 'like' feature & Open Graph. For big business all this serves as a beneficial appendage to existing ad campaigns. New business is buoyed by a first wave rush of fans or people who ‘like this’. Partially due to all that enthusiastic initial PR work that tends to go with starting a business.
For those in between corporate and new by all means set up a Facebook business page. Plug in the feed from your blog & twitter page; that way the messages efficiently overlap one into another. Answer comments, post announcement and specials. Bottom line though is keep the page low maintenance.
While there are IT and social media visionaries who are shaping our business world I am still not convinced that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg falls into that category or if he is a merely a brilliant opportunist. As one recent article noted when Facebook apologizes it is more about how their actions are interpreted than the action itself.
Right now Facebook is a playground, making the rules up as they go along, so take your business in there, have some fun but keep a close eye on your rate of return for time invested.
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