Posts by Edwin Bevens
Midweek Reading: Burt’s Bees, Shopping Malls, and Good Jobs
Another week is flying by, while we’re all still coming off the high of Independence Day and World Cup Championships. Here are some of the things you should be reading this week as a small business owner: Burt Shavitz, the one-of-a-kind entrepreneur who founded Burt’s Bees, passed away this weekend at the age of 80.…
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How to Be a Resilient Entrepreneur
Being an entrepreneur isn’t all sunshine and roses. Every business has its ups and downs, and every entrepreneur will have to overcome obstacles and work through adversity. “Business” skills are important, but being an idea machine, financial wizard, and marketing genius will only get you so far. When you hit that tough time, you need…
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Best of Business Mentoring: Supporting New Entrepreneurs with Jim Flannery
This month, we’re looking at the best Business Mentoring programs of the year, starting with February’s conversation between Fran Tarkenton and Jim Flannery, the Project Director of the Four Athens incubator in Athens, Georgia. Jim provides information, guidance, and assistance on business strategy, business plans, financial planning, and identifying sources of funding for new entrepreneurs.…
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Midweek Reading Round-Up
Now that we’ve hit the middle of the week, let’s take a look at some news, opinions, and other small business writing across the web. Here are 10 of the top articles from this week that you should be reading: With Independence Day coming up Saturday, Geoff Loftus writes for Forbes about leadership lessons from…
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How to Prioritize Your Target Market
The total number of people who your business can help might be quite large, but not all potential customers are created equal. You can break your target market down into several groups, to help you better see where you’re putting your valuable time and money. Supporters Your supporters will come with their own range. There are…
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Business Mentoring Preview: Creating a Successful Kickstarter Campaign
Early on in the startup stage, Jonathan Pascual knew that he would be short of funds to open the door for Taproom Coffee. To help get things started, he turned to a Kickstarter campaign. Researching similar businesses that also used Kickstarter, he set up a campaign to raise $15,000. He studied businesses who had conducted…
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Public Relations for Small Business
To build a successful business, you have to have customers. To have customers, people have to know about you. To know about you, they have to hear about you—somehow. So one of the perennial struggles for a small business is to figure out how to accomplish that. How do you get your name out there?…
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Business Mentoring Preview: Making a Profit Takes Time
Businesses almost never make a profit right away. It takes time. Jonathan Pascual just celebrated the 1 year anniversary of opening his business, Taproom Coffee, but after one year he had not yet made a profit. However, because he had done research on the company’s financials before he ever got started, they are at a…
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Business Mentoring Preview: Value the Customer and Your Community
Getting a start in the coffee industry as an employee for a larger company helped Jonathan Pascual learn the mind of the customer, and better appreciate the importance of understanding every aspect of the customer experience. It gave him an opportunity to think about ways to elevate that experience and impact people’s lives in just…
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Who Becomes an Entrepreneur?
What is an entrepreneur? If you ask someone to picture an entrepreneur and describe their background, there’s a good chance you’ll hear a variation on one of two responses—and very probably both offered at once. First up is the tech wizard, majoring in computer science, who may graduate or might just drop out after getting…
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