CBI Open House – What a Success!

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What a great day it was at the CBI on Thursday September 12th starting in the early morning when our clients and friends started bringing in their materials and setting up their marketing areas throughout the building.  There was a lot of activity and a lot of friends sharing ideas and networking. Continue reading

Striking e-Commerce Gold

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I visited Arkansas over the holiday weekend recently and picked up some interesting information from small business owners there.  As we all know, new businesses face daunting odds:  only half of all businesses launched annually will survive five years, and only one-third will survive past 10 years, according to the SBA. Arkansas has more than 241,000 small businesses, some quite successful.  Business owners everywhere who succeed do more than build it and hope buyers will come.  They stick to a written business plan vetted by a professional. They spend judiciously and reinvest in their business, and many effectively use the power of social media. Continue reading

The Power of Accountability

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Personally as the entrepreneur in residence and business coach at the CBI, and our volunteer CBI business mentors, our job is to help business owners develop bigger better businesses.  If you are actively trying to build your company, then you could benefit by looking for an advisor/coach/mentor to help you.

What can an advisor/coach/mentor help you do? Continue reading

Focus on the Benefits

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You’ve heard it before I’m sure: focus on the benefits to your clients, not the features.  When you are writing copy, talking about what you do, or in a sales presentation, it’s the benefits and results of the service or product you provide that people are interested in, rather than its features or how it works.  A lot of people struggle to get this right. Continue reading

The Ladder of Funding Options

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Funding can help you do things in your business that would otherwise be impossible with your current budget.  If you need expensive equipment or workers, you may need outside funding instead of bootstrapping your business on your own.  Continue reading

5 Tips for Tackling Big Projects Productively

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Do you want to be highly productive when approaching a big project? Here are five insights from a Harvard expert to help you start and finish with ease.

For most people, the best part of taking on a big project is the end. It feels great to look back and see all you accomplished. But the beginning has a different emotional impact, and many feel overwhelmed or intimidated. They don’t know where to start. Others procrastinate until deadlines become imminent. Continue reading

Is it Time?

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Tyson Hartnett wrote the following blog.  He is a 20-something CEO who started his own business, Basketball Training Club, in May of 2013.  He did a great job on his blog and I wanted to share his words with you.

That Moment When You NEED To Start Your Own Business

“Dude, the margarita mix is only half full!”

“What?”

“You didn’t fill the margarita mix!  What the ^&*% have you been doing all day??” Continue reading

Don’t Miss These…

STEM

Labville is a STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – group for all ages.  The goal is to highlight a topic each month and introduce it to the public at a level we can all understand.  August will be 3D Scanning that can lead directly to 3D printing or other means to create the model outside of the computer.  Continue reading

Are You Reaching Your Customers Online?

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Baby Boomers and seniors are spending more time online than they are watching television according to a report by Ipsos and Google.

Average seniors and Boomers (those age 45 and older) spend 19 hours a week online compared to only 16 hours of television watching.  Their online time far outpaces time spent listening to the radio or reading newspapers and magazines. Continue reading

Labville

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Labville is a makerspace devoted to the practice of leveraging technology and techniques to build things both real and virtual with a sense of community, collaboration, inventiveness, humor and wonder.

Join the community here and mark your calendar for the 2nd Wednesday of every month from 5:30-7:00PM for a Labville Makerspace project or a guest presenter hosted at the CBI!