Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends

This past Monday was the New York Times Small Business Summit. American Express OPEN was the founding sponsor, and they invited me to participate in something called the OPEN Advice Cafe.

The OPEN Advice Cafe consisted of an area in a meeting room where business owners could come in throughout the day and grab a cup of coffee, check their email at public terminals, have their story filmed for the OPEN Forum, and also meet with me for advice.

I talked with numerous business owners one-on-one, and also hosted 3 round-table discussions (one of them is pictured). I thought you might be interested in what was top of mind for other business owners, based on the topics we discussed in the round-table discussions (I am sharing only public discussion topics, not anything conveyed confidentially):

Online Marketing, Partnering and Hiring Among the Key Issues

Partnering – Interest in partnering with other businesses to share leads and referrals was big. Typically it is a good option for consumer-based services such a home remodeling, interior design, electrical, landscaping — as well as for some professional services, such as business plan consultants teaming up with CPAs and attorneys. An IT consultant who services Mac products pointed out that he got business from being listed in Apple’s website for Mac certified consultants, and by getting referrals from the local Apple store. read more

Just a quick note to say that I’ll be at the upcoming New York Times Small Business Summit on November 17, 2008 .

The agenda looks great. The day features two keynotes: Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stoneyfield Farm, and Liz Lange, Founder of Liz Lange Maternity. Then there are breakout sessions covering: strategies for growth in a tough economy, empowering your team, and the new marketing landscape. You can wander through the vendor fair and check out offerings to help you run your business. There will be speed networking, too, which is always fun and worthwhile. And a cocktail reception for more relaxed networking caps the day.

I hope you will stop in and say “hi” — I’ll be in the American Express OPEN Advice Center. I’ll be there to answer your questions. Anything you want to know about, anything you think I might be able to help with, I will be happy to try to assist you.

I understand they are setting me up with a plasma screen hooked to my laptop, so that we can talk about social media sites, for instance. Be happy to show you some of the neat little tricks I’ve learned about how to use social media sites for low-cost marketing without having social media take over your life.

When: November 17, 2008 from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM

Where: Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers, 811 7th Avenue (at the corner of 53rd Street), New York, NY 10019

Find out more: Visit the New York Times Small Business Summit website.

Hope to see you there!

You know what they say about seeing things from a glass half full versus a glass half empty perspective.

Words and numbers are funny things. You can take the same numbers and combine them with certain words and it will make them sound like the end of the world is nigh. Or you can make those same numbers sound like good news.

Take for instance, this quote from MediaPost that I read this week:

“The growth in online shopping hasn’t just slowed, ‘it’s fallen off a cliff,’ says Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore ….”

Whaaaat!!!

When I first read that I was seriously alarmed. read more

How do you talk to your employees honestly about company finances and plans?

It’s hard to be a business owner with people counting on you when you have worries of your own and aren’t sure what is appropriate to share. As an employee, it is also hard to be in the dark when it comes to your employer’s plans and wonder if layoffs are looming or your job is changing.

Good communication, while sounding like motherhood and apple pie, is the key. Here are 5 tips for how to communicate with your employees when your business is going through difficult times:

Tip #1: Don’t treat your employees like mushrooms, by keeping them in the dark — talk to them.

In the absence of information, employees will make up their own. I guarantee it.

In small businesses, especially, employees are much closer to what’s going on in the business. They will know if sales are slowing because they are dealing with orders each day. There are fewer departments and layers of management to obscure the company’s real condition. They also read the same newspapers, watch the same TV news, perhaps follow the same industry trade publications as you, the owner, do. So don’t think no news will be interpreted as good news.

It’s a fine line to know when is the right time to discuss the company’s finances with employees. You don’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily but you also don’t want them jumping to the wrong conclusions because they aren’t getting information from you.

If you are tracking your numbers closely and regularly, you will know when you’re trending downward and have to take action. Especially in startups, read more

There’s so much bad news out there about the economy that I had to stop my regularly scheduled programming (the article I had scheduled to write) to talk about something more important.

That “something” is a crucial element of entrepreneurial success: maintaining a positive state of mind. And protecting that positive state of mind from influences that make you uncertain and less confident.

You see I live and run my business in the battleground swing state of Ohio. With the election going on, the drumbeat of negative doom-and-gloom has reached unbearable proportions.

Let me give you one example: we are bombarded with political ads on TV night and day. I am not exaggerating with the word “bombarded.” Anyone from Ohio or another battleground swing state knows what I mean.

Most of the ads emphasize the economy. They talk about how bad things are. We hear an Obama ad, then a McCain ad, then an ad by a group supporting Obama, then one supporting McCain’s platform, and so on — all back to back. Nearly every single commercial break. read more

Throughout this entire credit crisis, I’ve had the bizarre feeling of being caught in a Star Trek episode. Like the episode of Star Trek where they’re exploring the Delta Triangle (the deep space equivalent of the Bermuda triangle). Captain Kirk and crew happen upon an alternate universe containing a vast graveyard of space vessels and inhabited by the descendants of people from the original vessels. The starship Enterprise is caught there until they manage to generate enough power to pull the ship out of the alternate dimension back to the normal universe.

Just like Captain Kirk and crew, I feel like there are alternate universes out there as they relate to the current global credit crisis.

You have Wall Street, which has gone through some manic trading in the past weeks. Through a series of events that the average American hardly understands, the investment banking industry more-or-less disappeared from the American landscape overnight. Central Banks and government authorities around the world are meeting and working together in unprecedented levels. And we’ve seen the government intervene into the U.S. banking system in ways not seen in the better part of a century. With each passing day we look for signs that the world credit crisis is calming, but it’s been a wild ride.

read more

In recent weeks as the financial crisis hit world credit markets and Wall Street, another dramatic scene was playing out — this one in Silicon Valley.

Techcrunch, VentureBeat and others have been reporting on the lowering of VC confidence, layoffs by startups, and “batten-down-the-hatches” warnings by investors and VCs.

One Techcrunch report predicts the end of Web 2.0. Others are not quite sure it’s the end of Web 2.0. Still, everyone seems to agree that change is in the air for Silicon Valley.

Kara Swisher at Boomtown makes this prediction about Web 2.0 startups:

” … most will likely fizzle away quietly, with no exits in sight as the economy weakens and puts a vise grip on companies that cannot survive the very tough financial road ahead.

That means the popular Web 2.0 maxim of ‘growth before profits’ is in for a very bumpy ride.”

She also goes on to report layoff rumors at Internet giants like Yahoo and eBay, not to mention various unnamed startups. read more

For many small businesses — mine included — the effects of the credit crisis playing out around us day by day, hour by hour, have not changed what we do. Many of us have felt no impact — at least not so far.

Oh, sure, we might have started to feel a little pressure with the stock market results. The stock market is one of the most visible symbols, because we see every 3-digit drop plastered across TV screens with red arrows and screaming headlines. And we start to see the impact in our IRA and SEP portfolios, as they experience sharp drops as the market drops. It’s hard not to be affected just a little by the fear driving the stock market.

However, most of us will do what we always have done: ride it out.

We go about our businesses everyday, for the most part oblivious to high finance. Wall Street seems far removed from the reality of our daily business activities. What happens on Wall Street, we feel, stays on Wall Street.

In a way it is surreal. For some of us, our reality and the condition of the economy are two different things. It feels like some weird other dimension out of a Star Trek episode. As one business owner confessed to me the other day, “I know the economy is bad. You’re confronted with it every time you turn on the news or pick up the paper. But honestly I haven’t felt it in my business.”

Maybe you’ve started to feel the effects of the credit crisis … or maybe you haven’t. Either way, I expect that you’ll do what small business owners always do during challenging economic times — ride it out. Our blood, sweat, treasure and tears are tied up in our businesses. We have employees and their families relying on our businesses for their livelihoods. We’ll put our heads down, dig in, watch our bottom lines, get more aggressive at sales and marketing, and do what we need to do to get through it. We will do it because we don’t have any other choice BUT to ride it out.