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SBA.gov is a tremendous resource for information and statistics.   You can find a report for your home state here.  Very helpful if you have a product/service targeting small businesses and you’re trying to identify market size.

The report highlights some really interesting statistics about the state of North Carolina:

• North Carolina had 173,409 small employers in 2006, representing 98.1% of the state’s employers and 48.6% of its private sector employment.

• The health care and social assistance industry was the state’s largest small business employer in 2006; manufacturing was the largest overall employer (Table 1).

• Small businesses created 54.8% of the state’s net new jobs from 2004 to 2005 (Table 2).

• North Carolina’s real gross state product increased by 2.2% in 2007. By comparison, growth in the Southeast region was 1.5% and the United States, 2.0%. (Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis)

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I have some friends that refuse to eat at “chain” restaurants, or what they deem as chains, because they aren’t “local” or they aren’t a small business type restaurant.  However, I think this is a flawed view of a lot of eating establishments.  I am a huge advocate of small businesses and want to support them in every way possible.  So here’s my argument.

Let’s take Subway, which is what would be considered a chain according to my friend’s logic.   This information is from Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise Profiles (good resource by the way):

First, yes in 2005, if you found that one little franchise in the right hand column under Company Owned, you did indeed dine at a corporate owned restaurant.   But the other 18,678 stores are owned/operated by individuals or individuals who have formed companies to run multiple franchises.  It very well could be Bob next door or Mary down the street.  By you dining at one of those stores, you are contributing to the revenue for an individual who decided to take the franchise route instead of building a business from scratch.  Most franchise owners want their own business, but also want the structure, marketing and support that a franchise provides.   Ask yourself, by not dining at your local Subway, Firehouse Subs, Jimmy Johns, etc, are you really helping local owners or hurting them?

Second, take a look at the history for Subway:

In 1965, 17-year-old Fred DeLuca and family friend Peter Buck opened Pete’s Super Submarines in Bridgeport, Connecticut. With a loan from Buck for only $1,000, DeLuca hoped the tiny sandwich shop would earn enough to put him through college. After struggling through the first few years, the founders changed the company’s name to Subway and began franchising in 1974.

DeLuca and Buck were regular people that started a small local business, and it got big, really big.  So yes, when I eat at Subway, I know my money will get filtered to a larger company through franchise fees and what not, but it was started by an entrepreneur and franchises are still run by individual entrepreneurs.

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When you read about entrepreneurship people say the best way to get started is when you’re trying to find a solution to something and you say “I wish someone would…”.  I present the Dog-o-Matic.   Naysayers probably told the entrepreneur this was crazy, but he found a solution and ran with it.

Read the aricle before you freak out about cruelty to animals or even the idea of putting your dog through a car wash.

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When I first saw this article I was wowed by the the following stat on small businesses (<100 employees):

While celebrities and the under 25-year-old population are flocking to Twitter, small business owners are just realizing the full potential of blogging. Use of blogs for specific business purposes more than doubled in the last 12 months, and 40% of small business owners now use this medium in their business.

But you have to keep reading to see that “use” means readership.  I’d like to see the correlation to the 41% that actually have a web page.

I’m always skeptical of surveys when the sample size is 1210 and there were 27.2 million small businesses in the US in 2007 (Census data).  However, think about some of the businesses you see every day in Raleigh-Durham, I can think of about 10 in less than 60 seconds that I know don’t have websites.   What do you think the barriers are to getting businesses online?  Is it cost?  Technology?

I’m an internet junkie, if I can’t find your business online, then odds are that I won’t buy your products or services.   If you’re a small business, or you know someone that is in dire need of a web presence, please contact me, I’d like to help.

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Couldn’t pass this one up.

Flat Is The New Up: Introducing Hockey Stick 2.0

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Just in case other people (without a dedicated real estate agent) are trying to find open houses in the Raleigh-Durham area, here are some sites with listings.  It’s kind of annoying to go to each broker to find Open Houses, but it looks like someone tried to pull them all together before (theopenlook.com).  I’m assuming the site didn’t generate the revenue expected…bummer.

• Trulia - this is by no means a complete listing, you still have to go to the broker’s website to confirm ALL open houses.
• Zillow - same as Trulia.
• HPW - broker website, not my favorite but it works if they have a listing you’re interested in.
• FMRealty.com - broker website (Fonville Morisey).  One of the better search sites.  I’m not advocating using their services, I just like their site for ease of use and quick load times.  HPW is much slower and kind of tedious.
• pruysu - click on “Print this week’s Open Houses”, wish they made that more link friendly and easier to find on the page.

That should get you started.

Just a disclaimer, I’m not recommending the services of any of the brokers themselves.  You’ll need to find that out for yourself.   FM has been very responsive when scheduling an online showing through their online tools, that I find very cool. So yeah, there’s a little bias.

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I have a quirky interest in looking at resumes and profiles if nothing more to see what people are doing, where they’re going and get ideas for my own.  If you’re in job hunt mode, consider these helpful resources or new approaches to “branding” yourself.

• Give your resume a face-lift - quality article comparing a before and after resume face-lift.  Note the simplicity, use of white space and ability to quickly find information.   What makes this post valuable is the link to a download-able template.   Read the article though, it might give you some ideas.
• LinkedIn - I guess this one is getting old, but if you haven’t built your profile, seriously start working on it.   And, if you are a recent graduate, take advantage of the free premium account.  (The free account upgrade takes a couple of days - be patient)
• VisualCV - I admit I’m still working on this one, but it looks damn cool once you’re finished.  If anything, it makes you think through the process of getting stuff down and it saves it in a prettier format than a boring Word doc.

I’m not a pro at resume writing, but if you just want somebody to read over it and give you some ideas, feel free to contact me. Or if the abundance of technology is a little overwhelming, I can help there too.

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Interesting post from the Small Business Search Marketing blog.  Yahoo seems to use a different approach than say Google or MSN in its search rankings:

This is a new site, with few links, no authority links, and very little traffic. In two months, the site has less than 100 visits. So why does it rank in the Top 10 for a competitive term like [cityname real estate]?

The site, for what it’s worth, doesn’t show up in the Top 50 on Google for the same [cityname real estate] query. And on MSN, another algo which we all believe to rely heavily on keywords-in-domain-names, the site currently ranks #13.

This is key information for small businesses setting out to choose a domain name for a blog or website. Consider purchasing your company name as well as a keyword URL for optimal exposure to search engines.

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I just added a Contact form to the site using Secure and accessible PHP contact form v.2.0WP.  It was easy to install and configure following the instructions here. Feel free to contact me.

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Google has a Trends option that produces some interesting statistics about what blogs you’re reading.  It’s very helpful in cleaning up subscriptions that are not posting frequently enough for your taste and also gives you sorted access to articles you have starred.   Be sure to check out Most Obscure under Subscription Trends.  To see the results, click Trends in the upper left of your Google Reader.

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