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201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business

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201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business

Bloomberg Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

You can copy the big guys and benefit your small company. Try adapting advisory boards, corporate retreats, ace accounting, and relentless delegation to your budding business, and see how it grows.

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Editorial Rating

5

Qualities

  • For Beginners

Recommendation

Jane Applegate’s book is an idea journal for the budding entrepreneur. No one business can use all these ideas, every business owner will be able to use a few of the ideas Applegate mentions. Some of her great ideas are specific to a single type of business. Other ideas sound fine, but deal with areas that are difficult for an entrepreneur to control. The book’s big drawback is that it lacks an over-reaching strategy. It is a set of disconnected ideas, which makes it more useful as a brainstorming tool than as anything you would use as the basis of a business. It doesn’t tell you how to create a marketing plan, but it gives you marketing ideas you can incorporate into the plan you develop. getAbstract recommends this book to owners of relatively new, small businesses who are hungry for a few ideas to move it further along. [Note: many of the ideas are specific to the United States.]

Summary

Management Ideas

No matter what size your company is, you can always use a few fresh management ideas. These ideas will help you face the big and small challenges of every day business:

  • Get a quick "yes" or "no." Don’t waste time in discussion and negotiation when people are afraid to say "no." It might be hard to hear it, but it is better to know early and move on. To help people say "no," set a deadline. Explain that their business is important you, but that you believe getting a "no" is as important as a "yes." Once you try it, you will never have to wait in limbo for an answer again.
  • Always tell the truth. As obvious as this seems, it is critical to business success. Be truthful in your relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and vendors. Employees will rally around you when times are tough. Customers appreciate a company that admits mistakes and works hard to resolve problems. If you make suppliers and vendors aware of the market fluctuations of your business, they are able to serve you better.
  • Have your own informal advisory board. For very little cost, you can create an advisory board of industry leaders, deep thinkers, experts...

About the Author

Jane Applegate is the author of Succeeding in Small Business and Jane Applegate’s Strategies for Small Business Success. Her syndicated business column reaches ten million readers a week. Her multimedia communications company, The Applegate Group, covers small business issues for major news organizations and creates events for corporate clients.

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