Cumberland Business Incubator receives $50,000 prize to create Tinker Space
The Cumberland Business Incubator, located on Roane State Community College’s Cumberland County campus, has received a $50,000 prize to create a space where entrepreneurs can turn their ideas into working prototypes.
The incubator was one of 50 organizations nationwide to receive a prize through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Growth Accelerator Fund competition. Continue reading
You are in a group called “big, small business” if you employ at least five people (other than yourself), do over $500,000 per year in annual sales, and have been in business for at least two years. That’s the smallest of the “big, small businesses”. The “large, small businesses” employ 15 or more people (all the way to 500), with annual sales between $2 million and $25 million. That’s a huge range, but according to the Small Business Administration anything under 500 employees is a small business. Continue reading
Do you have good ideas that would take your business to the next level but don’t know where to find help to implement them? How can you minimize the risks and increase the probability of success in your business? Do you have dreams of starting your own business but don’t know where to begin? Continue reading
Have you purchased something recently at a retail store or coffee shop or paid for a service where your credit or debit card was swiped through a small white attachment to a cell phone or iPad? That small white square was probably the Square. Yes, that is the actual name of the device and card processing service.
I avoided the Highway 127 Sale (the longest stretch of garage sales anywhere!), but I would bet there were a number of vendors with the Square attached to their phones to process payments. Even once-a-year vendors at craft shows and garage sales are using the Square for their credit and debit card customers. My massage therapist in Illinois was one of the first service providers I knew that adopted the Square in her business. Continue reading
I enjoy meeting with clients that come in with invention ideas. I get to put on my engineering hat and talk about engineering and design and manufacturing as well as all the typical business aspects. I met with a group last week that brought in their product idea. In this first meeting they were eager and excited to tell me about what they were going to build and what great ideas they had for packages and versions and the future of the product. There is a battery required to power their product. Within the same conversation they shared their ideas of how to build a better battery. They were full of ideas! Continue reading
Consumers like to buy locally made things. The July 21-July 27, 2014 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek contains an interesting article about a potential new local trend. The owners of Absolut vodka, the French group Pernod Ricard, are looking to profit from those buyers who will pay a premium for small-batch locally made vodka. They are franchising. Pernod supplies the distilling equipment and the vodka recipe, but the production, sales and marketing and some profits are the entrepreneur’s. Continue reading
The millennial generation is the largest population group in the United States. In the last U.S. Census, 18 to 32-year-olds outnumbered even the baby boomers. As their buying power increases, entrepreneurs looking to market to them must understand how they expect to be treated – as individuals. Continue reading
Charlie Brock wrote an article for the Tennessean recently about pitching your startup business to investors. There is good information in his article for anyone who has the opportunity to pitch their business, whether to investors or others. My summary of Charlie’s article follows. Continue reading
I find business owners have a hard time keeping the gross profit margins on their product or service in mind when establishing pricing. To be able to maintain your gross profit margin, you need to know what your costs are. Continue reading
“If you sold your business today what would it be worth?“.
Chances are the number you have in your head and the number a buyer is willing to pay for your business are not the same. The means to bringing those two numbers closer together isn’t magic…it’s in long-term planning. Continue reading