"The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible."Ray Bradbury
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Small Business Network Security 101 Introduction With broadband usage quickly becoming a standard in the business world and network security hazards on the rise, small businesses without a dedicated IT team are faced with the great challenge of protecting their networks from threats. ...
Small Business Phone Systems A Brief Explanation How a business presents itself to its customers has to be the single most important factor in its potential success. In days gone by usually your first contact with new customers would have been through your storefront or through word of mouth, passed on ...
What Every Small Business Owner Should Know About Creating Ongoing Customer Relationships If you were a customer on the telephone calling your place of business with a question or complaint and were ready to make big purchase, which of the following phrases by your employee would make you feel welcome and want to complete your ...
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Are you an entrepreneur or small business owner? Are you supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses? According to this research from the Office of Advocacy, Small Business, there are some good reasons to patronize small businesses, and there may be more opportunity to in the coming years. Small business owners are likely to be environmentally friendly, highly innovative, creative and well-educated and they create the majority of new jobs in the US each year. NB: For research purposes, The Office of Advocacy, Small Business Administration (SBA), defines a small business as having fewer than 500 employees. Statistics are from their website: http://www.sba.gov/advo . 1. More people in the US are becoming self-employed as contractors, freelancers or owners of microbusinesses, though conventional jobs still prevail. Typically 7% in the US are self-employed. Ed Potter, President of the Employment Policy Foundation, predicts this could grow to as much as 10% in the next several years. This seemingly small percentage (10%) equates to millions of workers in a labor force of 146 million. [Source: Dallas Morning News, “Self-employed, freelance workers on the rise in new job market”] 2. Small businesses are environmentally friendly. They are usually an active part of their community and also provide innovation. Economic research indicates small businesses innovate at twice the rate of large businesses, which often results in environmentally friendly products and technologies. (Source: Advocacy) 3. Small businesses are often clean businesses. 53% of the 22.9 million small businesses in the U.S. are home-based, and sales and service-oriented, which means they have very little potential for harming the environment. 4. Individuals with more education are more likely to become entrepreneurs, and they are also more likely to open a business employing more people. 5. Small firms represent 99.7% of all employer firms, and employ half of all private sector employees. They employ 39% of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers and computer workers). 6. Small businesses generate 60-80% of net new jobs annually. 7. Small businesses create more than 50% of nonfarm, private gross domestic product (GDP). 8. There is a strong correlation between national economic growth and the level of national entrepreneurial activity in prior years, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). 9. Two-thirds of college students intend to be entrepreneurs at some point in their careers. 10. Small businesses produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
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