I just got back from lovely Madison Wisconsin for some training on the Fintel set of Financial Analysis and benchmarking tools and I had plenty of time to reflect on what is probably one of the biggest issues many businesses face on a regular basis – having enough cash on hand to keep moving. 

Photo by Moriza

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Photo by pasotraspaso

Ralph Waldo Emerson is credited with the oft-quoted remark in favor of innovation: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”  100 years ago, before the inundation of the information age, this was probably a pretty good recipe for success. An innovative solution or product that solved a customer’s problem would sell itself – of course back then they had problems with distribution and manufacturing, but the world was clearly a different place.

These days your better mousetrap will go undiscovered and unpurchased unless you have a viable strategy for marketing it.  3M did a study a while ago that the average consumer is bombarded with over 3000 advertising images…per day!

The world has indeed changed. Read More…

Networking is a tough thing to do – or at least it’s tough to do well.  If you were to look at the whole thing objectively, the primary reason to network is to benefit yourself or your business.  After all you want to grow your business, that’s the point.

However, the catch-22 is that if you approach networking with a me first attitude, you will fail (and a lot of people won’t like you very much in the process).

In fact, networking as a small business owner has several things about it that make it very difficult:

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