Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Between their Instagram posts, YouTube videos, blogging and photography, Jess and Jorge are hustling hard from inside their roughly 80-square-foot van.  For example, the picture below is from the blog of the #VanLife Hearnes family  and shows them having fun while touring Utah with their dogs.

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Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 30, 2018

Famed personal fiance guru Suze Orman, for example, doesn't like it.    For example, according to the Mr Money Mustache (one of leading FIRE movement blogs) article What Everyone Gets Wrong About Fire , Financial Independence does  not  mean the end of your working career. I hate it. I hate it.

Retirement 110

Retirement Interviewing Forms AT&T 110

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 13, 2017

Medical equipment sharing platforms such as Cohealo have emerged across the Atlantic and as the UK healthcare system starts to collaborate more closely, we think 2017 will see the first opportunities for some NHS Trusts to share resources, including staff, equipment and estates in a more dynamic way - a trend we will be exploring in future blogs!

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2017 Equipment 2016 Medical 175

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 29, 2018

  Key quote from AND CO's blog post: Fiverr is building the leading global freelance ecosystem—a mission that extends beyond simply allowing freelancers to source and secure their next Gig or get the services they need to grow their business. This goal of this is, of course, to attract more freelancers to their platform. 

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Payroll Goals Management 155

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 11, 2016

For example, we took a look at just news from the past week on coworking space openings in the U.S. We're not going to try to this for the entire world (our coworking forecast is global) because it would be way too much work for blog post. This is a good example of the growing number of suburban spaces. and Canada.

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Google AT&T 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 15, 2015

" My favorite example from the article is Bitty Foods , which makes cricket-based flour and cookies. For example, Pepsi is using 3D printers to improve the potato chip. He says 91 percent of Walmart shoppers said in a 2014 survey that they would consider buying affordable organic food."

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Yahoo 2014 Google Health 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 8, 2015

The New York Times Bits blog article From the Start, Sensors Rule at CES  reports: It was clear from the beginning that the show would focus heavily on connected devices such as wearables and Bluetooth-enabled toothbrushes with 3-D motion sensors. There was even a smart baby bottle  on display. The

Yahoo 100

Yahoo 100

Small Business Labs

MAY 19, 2014

Key quote from a Green Labs blog post : We provide startup marijuana companies with a collaborative work environment, access to necessary business resources and a forum for ongoing, industry-specific conversation. and hope to create a centralized space for marijuana professionals to speak and collaborate.

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Collaborate Environment Management 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 14, 2014

Generally anything under 400 square feet is considered a micro-apartment and some cities - San Francisco, for example - allow new apartments to be as small as 220 square feet. So why are people moving to tiny houses and apartments?

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Small Business Labs

MAY 15, 2013

  But as the chart below (from a NY Times Economix blog post ) shows, this shifted in 2009 and temps now work, on average, 30 minutes more per week than regular employees. Prior to the Great Recession temporary workers worked, on average, fewer hours per week than regular employees. 

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Temping 2009 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 26, 2012

One of the great things about blogging is you hear from lots of interesting people.  For example, the folks over at The Boys Initiative commented on our post The End of Boys.  They have a fascinating blog - Attention Must Be Paid - that covers the wide variety of issues boys are facing.

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

  According to their blog post Talent in the Biotech Gig Economy , only 25 of the roughly 150 people working at Nimbus are traditional employees.    But as the Nimbus example shows, a growing number of companies are using gig workers to increase their agility and flexibility and access hard to find and/or hire talent. 

Collaborate 100

Collaborate Skills AT&T UPS 100

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 13, 2015

"  I found the blog post on Case's site explaining why they were joining WeWork to be quite interesting. Wearable computing is an example of this trend. WeWork announced last week they had acquired Case, Inc. which is a "a building information and technology consultancy." 

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Google Facebook Goals 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Office Nomads, a coworking facility in Seattle, discusses the same topic in their blog post Negotiating Your Coworking Membership With Your Boss.  For example, the Costs and Benefits of Telecommuting are nicely described by the smart folks over at the Telework Research Network. So let's see here.  

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Telecommuting Negotiating Interviewing Networking 100

Small Business Labs

MARCH 24, 2015

The chart below, which shows a decline in employer-provided and on-the-job training in recent decades, has been making the rounds in the economic blogs.   This is another example of risk being shifted from institutions to individuals.      This data is collected only occasionally by the U.S. .

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Training 2008 2015 2020 100

Small Business Labs

MARCH 7, 2016

They have an interesting blog post on one of their top "experts" and why he does on-demand customer service work. Mark is a prime example of the new knowledge worker, choosing when, where and what he works on. Directly has a number of customers, including Pinterest, Lyft, Airbnb and others so their approach seems to work.

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Customer Service Skills UPS 100

Small Business Labs

APRIL 1, 2011

I'm a bit behind on my reading (we've been swamped this quarter) and just got caught up on the  Enterprise Council on Small Business (ECSB) blog. The blog post I found most interesting shows that Facebook is the preferred social media network small businesses want their suppliers to use to communicate with them. 

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Facebook Social Media Suppliers Networking 100

Small Business Labs

AUGUST 27, 2013

.   The growth of food trucks is my favorite examples of an industry being impacted by people wanting to share experiences. There's a great quote  from a post on the Foodess Files blog  on this topic: It’s hard to find a cluster of people standing beside a food truck in Los Angeles, who are NOT on their phones.

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Social Media Filing Phones 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 24, 2017

Sam Altman, president of the well known tech accelerator Y-Combinato r, has a blog post with a series of quotes from Y-Combinator backed company founders who might not have been able to start their firms without Obamacare. .  But it's not just freelancers and independent workers who are benefiting.

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2014 2013 2016 Medical 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 10, 2012

 A recent  New York Times blog post covers the topic and talks about Google and Apple working on wearable computing devices that communicate via cell phones.  Workout related heart rate monitors, for example, have been around since the 1980s. One of my favorite industrial examples is SenseAware from FedEx.

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Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

    Examples of gaming elements being used outside of traditional games include leader boards, badges, progress bars and virtual prizes.    LinkedIn, for example, provides a progress bar that indicates how much of your LinkedIn profile you've filled out.    Mine's at 85%. 

Social Media 100

Social Media Forms UPS 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 10, 2011

  A good example is KnowledgeWorks , a non-profit group focused on education.    They even have a blog on the Future of Education.  .  Seeing different forecast perspectives helps us understand the future of small business.  " Sounds like a huge improvement over today's educational system. 

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2020 Learning 100

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

Moritz gave a slew of examples of people who made small fortunes selling sleds on Amazon, becoming makeup spokeswomen on YouTube, becoming best-selling authors via Kindle, or earning huge real estate commissions through Trulia. Regular readers of this blog are familiar with these themes, but Moritz presents them with flair.

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Google Facebook AT&T Skills 100

Small Business Labs

APRIL 17, 2013

  A good example of an unrelated spurious correlation is skirt length theory.   An example of a spurious correlation caused by a third variable is the fact that ice cream sales and accidental drownings are highly correlated - they tend to both move up and down in a consistent pattern. 

AT&T 100

AT&T Skills Learning UPS 100

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

.  Their CEO, Rand Fishkin, covers the ups and downs of the process is an outstanding blog post:  Misadventures in VC Funding: The $24 Million Moz Almost Raised.   The press (and blogs like this one) tend to focus on success and don't mention the failures.  The post is excellent on a number of levels. 

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UPS Finance 100

Small Business Labs

NOVEMBER 2, 2011

Regular readers know that one of my favorite resources is Nielsenwire , a blog from the famous market research firm.    But this term is an yet another example of the She-conomy and the growing role women are playing in the global economy.    . 

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Networking AT&T 100

Small Business Labs

OCTOBER 17, 2011

  According to their blog , at bioCurious you can: "Make genetically-engineered bacteria, sequence DNA, find the tools to get your bio-project growing, or make friends with amateurs and experts in the community."   bioCurious is an example of this trend. 

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Equipment Networking AT&T 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 30, 2015

For example, we changed our surveys to ask about "other sources of income" instead of "other jobs" about 3 years ago.  We first wrote about this almost a decade ago (and we were by no means the first) and some of our first blog posts  --way back in 2007 -- are on these topics.

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2007 Interviewing AT&T 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 22, 2010

Small Business Blogs Entrepreneur Magazine Blog Entrepreneurship & Education at the Kauffman Foundation Fresh Inc.   A good idea for any business, Hartman uses the example of Skillet (see their Airstream mobile restaurant on the right), who got the idea for their popular "bacon jam" from a customer.

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Social Media 2010 Retirement 2020 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 26, 2010

Small Business Blogs Entrepreneur Magazine Blog Entrepreneurship & Education at the Kauffman Foundation Fresh Inc.   An example is Seedspace , part of Georgia Tech's Advanced Technology Development Center.    An example is Parisoma. 

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2010 Retirement 2020 2005 100

Small Business Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

 The Marginal Revolution blog , for example, argues against some of the article but states "We are in basic agreement about the laws of future employment."  Law #3: Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job. There appears to be broad agreement with these 3 laws.

2020 100

2020 UPS 100

Small Business Labs

JUNE 18, 2010

Small Business Blogs Entrepreneur Magazine Blog Entrepreneurship & Education at the Kauffman Foundation Fresh Inc.   Tim has multiple blogs, a consulting practice and a software company.    While Tim may not be the typical baby boomer, he is a great example of our generation's approach to retirement. 

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Retirement 2010 2020 2005 100

Small Business Labs

JANUARY 7, 2013

Twitter is an important resource for information discovery and, of course, we read of a wide variety of blogs.   Two examples of the 8-10 groups we regularly follow are: Gen Y Lounge :  a group with 139 members dedicated to all things Gen Y. We're also active on other social media platforms.

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Social Media Twitter International Environment 100

Small Business Labs

MARCH 29, 2011

  The analyst firm In-Stat, for example, expects the mobile payments space to grow 10x over the next 5 years.    Details are a bit sketchy - no mention of fees, for example - but this move makes it clear Visa is serious about the P2P payments space.  

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Credit Card Equipment Facebook Google 100

Small Business Labs

MAY 1, 2012

  Becky is the author of Small Biz Survival , a well known blog on rural and small town business and Barry is an author, speaker and consultant on small business issues. The authors are two highly respected small business experts, Becky McCrae and Barry Moltz.

Social Media 100

Social Media Environment Management UPS 100

Small Business Labs

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

This is a great example of leveraging existing skills, capabilities and business infrastructure to enter an adjacent market.  This expansion operates on floor space that had been idle after a previous downsizing in 2008, more fully using our building space.   Vidler's 5 & 10 Inc. Regular emails to growing customer base.

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Social Media 2009 Equipment 2010 100

Small Business Labs

JULY 30, 2010

Small Business Blogs Entrepreneur Magazine Blog Entrepreneurship & Education at the Kauffman Foundation Fresh Inc. Hackerspaces  are an example.  The DIY BIO blog  recently did a survey looking at the demand for a coworking biology lab. 

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2010 Retirement 2020 2005 100