US Small Business News Round-up – 17/11/2008

Here is this week’s news round-up for home business, micro business, sole-traders, freelancers, self-employed and any one who is interested in small business news from the United States:

• Hub energy initiative aims to help small businesses: Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino offered more details today of a previously announced energy initiative that aims to help the city’s small businesses deal with rising energy costs. The initiative is called Boston Buying Power, and it seeks to…
• ‘Business’09 – Win £10,000′ Competition And Unleash It! Challenge Goes Live: Today Winweb launches it’s long anticipated ‘Business’09 – Win £10,000‘ campaign for small business and pre-entrepreneurs. The launch coincides with Global Entrepreneurship Week and Enterprise Week 2008. The finalists and winners will be announced during the same events next year.
• Changes may make SBA lending profitable again: The U.S. Small Business Administration hopes to encourage lenders to resume making 7(a) business loans by letting them charge higher interest rates to borrowers.
• Boring Machine’s Chacon gets SBA award: The U.S. Small Business Administration named Boring Machine Corp. owner Tom Chacon Minnesota Minority Small Business Person of the Year, the agency announced Thursday.
• Madigan sues YP.com over phone charges: A Las Vegas company bilked small businesses in Illinois and nationwide by adding unauthorized charges to phone bills, alleges a lawsuit Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed.
• Unpaid Businesses Become Creative: To get what’s owed them, small businesses resort to barter, payment plans and requiring customers to pay up front.
• Using Small Business Credit Cards To Make Ends Meet – A Growing Reality: It’s reasonable to argue that small business owners are feeling the effects of the global credit crunch most of all. Small businesses use credit for capital purchases, operations, and payroll, so when
• Juggling employees, downturn, holidays: Managing employees during a bad economy is difficult, and managing them through the holidays can also be a challenge. Small business owners may find that doing both is particularly rough this holiday season.
• Businesses list energy costs as top concern: The majority of small businesses operators in Boston say their biggest concern is the financial impact of rising energy costs and they are looking to work with the city to adopt sustainable energy practices, according to a report released by the Boston Redevelopment Authority Wednesday.
• And Now for the Mergers: The current economic environment may allow only the financially fittest among small businesses to survive, just as there has been a consolidation recently among big financial firms.
• State’s entrepreneurs generate up to $23B in revenue:Entrepreneurs have generated as much as $23 billion in revenue in Tennessee, according to new research by the University of Tennessee.

As always this list is not exhaustive, but I hope it will give you a little overview. — ST.

2 Responses to “ US Small Business News Round-up – 17/11/2008 ”

1. Robert Moore
   
   Said on November 17th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

   The discipline of a downturn can actually have a favourable effect on businesses. Since the downturn has taken hold we refocused and cut costs and this has actually increased profitability. Before we tended to coast along….

2. Kyle Howard
   
   Said on November 24th, 2008 at 1:11 am

   The lead concern of businesses is rising energy costs, and newest projections are a slight trend downwards in costs. Looks like a bit a good news in the seas of uncertainty.

   Cheers!

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