You could call Frederick Hutson an overachiever. After graduating from high school, Huston served honorably as a F-16 Avionics Electrician in the U.S. Air Force for almost three years. When he was just 19 years old, he launched a window tinting business , and two years after that, a cell phone store, according to ABC News. Both times, he turned a profit. But after his early achievements, Huston's pathway...
Xero raised $150 million last year largely from U.S. investors to increase its presence in the U.S. market. Now the cloud accounting firm says it’s seen a 200 percent increase in customers here since 2013. The actual number of customers is still pretty small — just 18,000 in North America. That’s compared to much bigger numbers ... The post Xero Sees 200 Percent Increase in U.S....
Legal issues topped the small business news this week. We’ve collected the stories you need to see on these subjects and more. Let the Small Business Trends editorial team bring you the news you need for running your small business. Here’s our roundup. Legal Wranglings Judge Rules Company Can’t Collect Against Couple for Bad Online ... The post In The News: Judge Rules On Reviews...
Dave Millican built his first pro wrestling championship belt out of cardboard when he was 13....
In case you needed another reason to love Costco, here's something to consider: The bulk retailer ranks better than the world's most profitable tech companies when it comes to how satisfied workers are with benefits and pay. A survey released Friday from the jobs site Glassdoor ranks Costco second to Google when it comes to companies with the best compensation and benefits for workers. That puts it...
For small business owners, if your website is not mobile-friendly, you're like Justin Bieber or Chris Brown trying to be seen as sympathetic: yes, you are dead in the water. Recent studies show more rely on their smart phones for not only researching products and services, but buying. According to Telmetrics, 46% of consumers use their devices as their sole research tool. Imagine if you own a water...
By Morgan Housel Bad news, investors. Some of you must fail. Not probably, or unfortunately, but must. Professional, amateur. Hedge fund manager, day trader, indexer, 401(k) saver. Some of you must fail. It's a necessity of how markets work. According to Dalbar and other research groups, the average U.S. stock investor has underperformed the market by between three and seven percentage points per...
Some people face a fairly common dilemma when coming across a homeless person they'd like to help: Will my spare change be used for food or water, or on stuff that won't benefit (and maybe even worsen) their situation? A new smart phone app is eliminating the need to fret. Carebacks -- available now on Android and mobile web formats, and soon for iPhone users -- lets its users give digitally to those...
There is a real trend developing right now of corporations becoming crucibles of innovation and entrepreneurship in a systematic way. In this post, I will discuss four specific sub-categories of this trend that we're seeing, and for all practical purposes, participating in. Intrapreneurship Incubation Corporations have come to realize that there are numerous great ideas buried inside their ranks, and...
There can be no definitive manual on setting up and running a small business. It's one of those things that you inevitably only learn through your own experience. The successes and failures of others, however, can provide extremely valuable information to guide you on your path. So from my own experience and from the common stories I hear from being involved with over 4000 small business clients, I...
Charity is for patsies. If you really care about making the world a better place, buy a trendy bag. That was the logic Lauren Bush Lauren articulated in a 2013 interview about FEED, a for-profit entity she founded that creates simple, eco-friendly tote bags whose price covers the cost of donating school meals to children in Rwanda via the UN World Food Program. ...
In this article I will explain why your mediation settlement agreement, or any other contract for that matter, does not have as much legal force as an arbitration decision. First I will give a short explanation of what "arbitration" is and then I will explain why an "arbitration award" has greater legal force than a signed settlement agreement - which might result from a mediation - or any other contract....
In 2009, Renee Trautwein received the phone call that every mother fears. Her daughter, Sarah, had been killed. When the Trautwein family initially found out about Sarah's death, they were immediately told that she had fallen asleep at the wheel while driving home early in the morning. However, when General Motors' airbag malfunctions were linked to a number of deaths, Renee started to question why...
Eight years ago, aspiring senator Harold Ford called investment firm president Mellody Hobson up to ask for help getting press coverage for the upcoming election. For someone as accomplished as Hobson, this was no problem. She set up a lunch with the editorial board of a major New York media company, which was a huge opportunity for Ford, but things didn't go quite as she was expecting. When she and...
I love anyone who encourages you to take control of your life, follow your dreams, buck convention, do what you love, etc. But is anyone else kinda tired of hearing that encouragement only from single thirty-somethings who left their lucrative corporate life to run a lucrative digital business and trot the globe? Yeah, that's inspiring -- of course. Yes, a lot of the people in this creative space...
Earlier this month it was announced that the unemployment rate had dropped to 6.3 percent, the lowest since 2008. While that looks like very good news at first blush, another figure that was also released paints a very different picture: April marked a three-decade low in workforce participation among working-age adults holding or seeking jobs. That statistic, known as Labor Force Participation, sank...
It was a Friday night at Al Mar shortly before the dinner rush when I got to catch up with Giles Copp at the bar. We had originally planned to meet at reBar until we learned that the establishment had suddenly closed earlier that day. Giles and I had had much contact back and forth via email and we've met once before, but for the first time we finally had a chance to chat in a more relaxing environment....
No matter how many apps and tools you have to help you run your business, the key to a successful business is making sure that you have enough internet for your needs. The last thing you need is to be in the middle of a video conference, or just trying to upload a send a large file to a client, and discover that your current speeds aren’t enough to handle the task. On the other hand, if all...
Making sure the people who get your marketing emails have explicitly asked to receive them is best practice anyway. But a new anti-spam law going into effect in Canada over the next few months makes it even more of a necessity. And, yes, it could impact small businesses in the U.S. too — if you ... The post New Canadian Anti-Spam Law Requires Permission from Email Recipients appeared first on...
Letting the cat out of the bag is rarely good, but in business it can be especially bad. Maybe an idea that’s not yet fully formed gets squashed. Maybe it’s a change in staffing that could create problems. Maybe it’s a new product you don’t want your competition to see. Whatever the secret – it’s ... The post Darn It – Who Let Tom Out Of The Bag! appeared...