Wouldn’t it be great if people flocked to hear the story of your business the way they flock to a blockbuster movie?

You probably don’t have many resources to back your ideas. You don’t have a multi million dollar ad budget or a team of professional spinners. Your ideas need to stand on their own merits.

Your story will help you make your ideas stick. By “stick,” we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact — they change your audience’s opinions or behavior.

You can work with the same 3 elements that make great movies so powerful, and create a “sticky” story. Here’s how:

1. A strong introduction that capture attention; usually a question to be answered, something to be found or a task to be achieved.
2. A climax where the main character reaches a crossroads (physically or mentally) and has to choose a direction and what to do.
3. A conclusion that ties the beginning question to the end result for viewers.

1. A Strong Introduction

Start your story by telling prospects what drove you to take the worrying and often terrifying step of starting your own business. What was missing for you in your corporate job? Was there an event that made you decide to go out on your own? read more

My dad runs an independent construction management company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Michigan is having a very tough time of it these days, but his company is doing well. He has been working on branching his company into different areas.

Normally he does a lot of work for Coca-Cola, but as they have also been hit hard, he’s decided to take some of his experience there and apply it elsewhere. Coca-Cola originally hired him to build security and cash rooms in various plants in the regional Midwest, but along the way he picked up some contacts in the security field. Now he’s teaming up with a local security camera business for a series of projects, so two local businesses are profiting.

Also, he has hired someone, and rented space in a building in Louisville, KY to expand his central locations. As a result of smart business planning a few years back, he has built steady work in multiple states around the Midwest, so all of his clientele aren’t located in one area. read more

I don’t know too many small business owners hanging around looking for bailouts. The bailout of choice for the small business owner is innovation and determination.

It’s funny how every politician in the last cycle, Democrat and Republican alike, talked about Main Street, but I don’t think they really know where that is – ‘cuz it’s in Flo’s Diner in a back alley in Harlem and it’s in a Facebook Group for wedding photographers and it’s here – this is the new main street.

And if that’s so, and I believe it is, then it’s going to take new thinking to make real impact. There are some great opportunities for small business in the current bill and you should get with your accountant right now to talk about taking advantage of accelerated depreciation of equipment and the ability to carry back net operating losses as far back as five years.

And, while I don’t expect any economic stimulus package to properly acknowledge the role of small business as the economic engine that drives our economy, as long as the current administration is making noise about small business, let’s try to get a couple important things fixed.

1) Really fund the SBDCs and SCORE and every other group providing education, support and training for small business. read more

I am the founder and owner of a technical startup in New York City. Despite the grim news, I firmly believe that small business will lead us out of the hard times.

While small businesses may not have the same resources that a larger organization has, we have have one key asset that will prove move valuable than anything else: the ability to be be nimble. I believe this makes us well positioned to weather the downturn and in fact emerge stronger.

Another advantage we have under the circumstances is that technical startups typically rely on sales of equity as opposed to operating with significant debt. As the credit markets also tighten, this levels the playing field somewhat. Larger organizations can be hard to compete with when they are spending freely, but as they cut back on that spending and have less debt financing available to them, it really enables us to compete with “the big boys” easier. read more

Will banks that received TARP bailout funds be forced to lend money to small, struggling businesses? Will the Small Business Administration ride to the rescue and help out small companies with dwindling cash reserves? Are venture capitalists actually venturing any capital these days?

For a better understanding of the state of finance for small businesses, we spoke with Wharton management professor Gary Dushnitsky, who studies entrepreneurship.

“Large companies have large cash reserves,” he says. “And small businesses have small cash reserves, which means less breathing space.” Dushnitsky says that even small companies with viable business models are more sensitive to what is happening in the credit markets. “You have more slack as a large business. Big companies have the ability to withstand a bump in the road, but small companies do not.“ read more

We are big fans of “growing” loyalty among Ideal Clients over pretty much any other business building tactic. It’s the lowest cost sales activity you will ever engage in, since you are already doing business with them, you already know what they want and need, and you can easily find out if they are being wooed by someone else. How easy is that?

And yet… we have hundreds of examples of business owners who not only don’t take advantage of this fantastic opportunity, they positively destroy it. See if you recognize yourself in these stories:

A client who spends $100 a month in your hair salon calls to make an appointment only to find her favorite stylist has left. Did you keep a database of all the clients who came to the salon and allowed you to contact them, tell them the news and offer them an incentive to remain a loyal client? If not, you lose $1200 a year. read more

Do you ever find yourself feeling like you’re business isn’t moving anywhere? You love what you are doing. You are passionate about your products / services. And you know that you have all that it takes to be a huge success. Yet, here you are frustrated because nothing seems to be happening and you’re not making any money.Your bills continue to flow in and pile up, and you know you will have a major problem unless something happens really soon.

One of the most important things we learn about is to be clear on your “why.”  Your ‘why’ is your purpose for all that you are doing. It is the profound difference you are making in your life, your family’s life, or someone else’s life. When you think about it, you feel a glow and warmth, a surge of energy unlike anything else.Your “why” is what your whole journey is all about.And, it is the single most important thing to stay connected to when you have a period that isn’t quite as productive as you want it to be. read more

Got optimism?

If you feel like the average US small business, you are more optimistic now than in November. The City Business Journals Network conducted a survey, reported here in the San Francisco Business Times, [full survey results here] that interviewed American small businesses and found they were more optimistic in January than in November, but still very concerned about the economy and feeling very cautious about expanding their business anytime soon.

Challenge = Opportunity

Even economic storm clouds have a silver lining, and despite what appear to be some of the USA’s worst economic conditions in a generation, there remain many ways for small businesses to capitalize on the opportunities and the advantages that small businesses have over larger, less innovative, and less flexible operations. Here are a few reasons you should be optimistic about your small business future, and use that optimism to seize the new opportunities that great challenges always bring.

First, let’s take a look at what the survey found small business owners are planning to do as the immediate economic crisis stabilizes:

39% Buy down credit lines
37% Look for new products and services read more