USA Today:
Here are some ways to grow, prudently:
Get bigger clients: One of the best ways to grow your business is to work with people and companies with more resources than those you work with now.
For instance, I know a real estate agent in Los Angeles who used to sell homes, but he didn’t start [...]

MyFox Austin:
Small business bookkeeping software is a powerful tool. Are you moving up from a manual system or maybe you’re ready to begin doing the bookkeeping yourself rather than having it done outside. Maybe you’re setting up a bookkeeping business yourself. In any of these cases, the software you choose can help your business grow. [...]

QSR magazine:
* Check that existing business continuity contingency plans address long-term absenteeism rates. In particular, check to see if core business activities can be sustained over several weeks with only a minimal workforce available.
* Identify your company’s essential functions, which might include accounting, payroll, and information technology, and the individuals who perform them. The absence [...]

The New York Times:
Seeking to ease the credit freeze for small businesses, the Obama administration will inject $15 billion into the industry, buying up securities that are linked to small-business loans.
In announcing the latest cylinder of his government’s economic recovery effort, President Obama said the infusion was needed because “small business owners are really struggling” [...]

Milwaukee Small Business Times:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Feb. 16, 2009. It is massive, not only in dollar amount ($787 billion), but also in length (781 pages, single-spaced).
The legislation represents about $1 billion of tax and appropriation benefits per page.
Here are 10 of the surprising, [...]

U.S. News & World Report:
1. Take a chance. The riskiest decision you make can be the most rewarding and gratifying.
2. There’s no crystal ball. Take big leaps to learn about yourself as an entrepreneur and a decision-maker.
3. Once you make a decision, be confident with it and move forward. Don’t look back.
4. Stop worrying. You [...]

PRWeb:
In an unusual twist to the usual Valentine’s Day Gift ideas, this online marketing training firm is giving away a completely free online package including 10 videos. The training shows small business owners easy to implement strategies for increasing and automating lead generation, and boosting sales conversion, all with web-based techniques.
http://www.TakeYourBusinessOnline.com.au co-founder and online [...]

By LeaRae Keyes - Nurse Entrepreneur Network:
It may seem counter intuitive to start a business during a recession. However, there are a number of reasons why this could be a great time for you to launch your nurse entrepreneur start up business.
Many hospitals in my part of the country, the Midwest, are laying off [...]

Forbes:
How gloomy are entrepreneurs?
Check out the latest results of a survey of 805 small-business owners by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group. In the last 420 months that the NFIB has taken that monthly pulse of small-business owners–on everything from profits and inventories to hiring and capital spending–last December marked [...]

Murfreesboro Post:
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Mid-South Healthcare Network (VISN 9) and the University of Tennessee Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), along with the Tennessee Small Business Development Center are sponsoring “Doing Business with the Veterans Administration and other Federal Agencies.”
The seminar is scheduled for Jan. 22 from 9 a.m. – noon at [...]

About.com:
* Take Time: The day you receive your pink slip is often not the day to start a new business. The emotional toil of being new to the unemployment scene is not a time for big decision-making. Being let go often invokes feelings of resentment and anger. Take a few weeks to adjust to your [...]

GreatPossibilities.com:
What is a brand? Can you define it?
A brand is a name of a product or business that seeks to differentiate itself from its competitors based upon its uniqueness. It often is associated with a logo, tagline, color and graphic elements, but it is much more than that.
It is the customer experience associated with the [...]

NYT:
It may be viewed as an example of turning lemons into lemonade, but some small-business owners (and employees) make a compelling argument that the current recession is proving something they have known for a while: a business can get too big.
Writing on his blog, Jarkko Laine, a software developer, lays out several advantages of staying [...]

AlwaysOn:
1. If you are doing a startup, you won’t even know you are in a downturn. I sure didn’t. I was so focused on my own day-to-day problems (averting starvation as a single mom) that I didn’t even notice the interest rates of 12-16% around me. No one was going to lend me money anyway, [...]

Suburban Life Publications:
Start out right for your business in 2009 with SCORE: Counselors to America’s Small Business.” SCORE provides a resource page called “Small Business Smart Start Tools”. This content area offers valuable resources for assessing your business, organizing your workplace and planning for success.
Browsers will find the following tips and tools:
* Quick-Start Business Plan: [...]

guampdn.com:
* Headsets. Every businessperson who spends time on a phone needs at least two headsets — one for the office and one for their mobile phone. For the office, Plantronics has a nifty new set — the Calisto — that is a wireless Bluetooth headset enabling you to move around freely, switching back and forth [...]

MSNBC:
Instead of giving Christmas gifts to his family last year, John McWhorter donated money to budding entrepreneurs. His gift, administered through kiva.org, provided microloans to eight impoverished families worldwide, enabling them to start their own businesses.
The amount he gave? $200.
“I figured that was what I’d spend on my family to buy them stuff [...]

WomenEntrepreneur.com:
1. Remind important people you’re here for them. In the past two months, we’ve watched high-profile, century-old firms declare bankruptcy, get taken over by the government or vanish into the ether. In this business atmosphere, clients and employees want to know your business is stable. So if you’ve given corporate gifts before, give them this [...]

BusinessWeek:
Any entrepreneur who’s been through a business turnaround might have some empathy for the folks at the Small Business Administration. During the past eight years, the SBA has been, generally speaking, underfunded, underutilized, and underloved. But it wouldn’t be all that complicated to transform the agency into a powerful advocate for small businesses. Here’s what [...]

E-Commerce Times:
As technology has advanced, the federal courts have routinely been tasked with interpreting what types of inventions are eligible for patent protection under the Patent Act. For example, in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that human-made microorganisms were eligible for patent protection.
As the Information Age blossomed in the 1990s, the federal courts had to [...]