Brewing the American Dream

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Brewing the American Dream
Ask That Job Candidate if He or She Ran a Lemonade Stand
Businesses Face High Rates of Infant Mortality
The Mobile Trend: 10 Things to Know

Posted: 14 May 2012 11:30 AM PDT

Every big business started as a small business. Jim Koch, founder of The Boston Beer Company, like any entrepreneur, knows the struggles of being a small business owner. One of the biggest challenges is securing capital in a tight credit market.

beer brewing

Recently, Koch, one of America’s best known entrepreneurs, announced Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream, a program whose mission is to partner with low and moderate income entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry and provide the tools they need to help them grow and succeed. In creating this program, Boston Beer formed a partnership with ACCION USA, the country’s leading not-for-profit micro-lending organization.

Boston Beer has invested a $250,000 commitment to establish the Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream Micro-Loan Fund with ACCION, which provides capital and other types of assistance to lower and moderate income micro-entrepreneurs whose businesses might not otherwise be approved for a bank loan.

Koch also is supporting small businesses by developing a series of business education and financial literacy seminars designed to meet the educational needs of food and beverage entrepreneurs and offering advice and expertise of Samuel Adams employees through regular events geared towards micro-entrepreneurs. Koch explains:

“When I started Samuel Adams back in 1984, the odds were stacked against me, and so as the company grew and became more successful we naturally identified with other ‘little guys’ who benefited from a leg up to help achieve their dreams. Over the years we’ve found ways to help aspiring home brewers, microbreweries, screenwriters, fiction writers, and sportscasters. With our partnership with ACCION USA we are now able to focus on small business owners in our own industry and give them the support they need to thrive.”

America benefits when successful business owners created or sponsored many programs that help others achieve their dreams. Small business owners — particularly those in the food and beverage industry like Shaun Clancy at Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant and Barry O’Donovan, owner of Kilkenny House in Cranford, NJ — know what being a successful small business owner is all about. They understand what it is work hard, count their pennies, and provide a product/service that customers want and will keep coming back to get.

Government officials aren’t able to do that. Entrepreneurs can. I applaud people like Jim Koch for mentoring others and showing them the way.

Brewing Photo via Shutterstock

From Small Business Trends

Brewing the American Dream

Ask That Job Candidate if He or She Ran a Lemonade Stand

Posted: 14 May 2012 09:18 AM PDT

Around this time each year, career-minded college students are busy sewing-up internships for the summer months. A new study by Millennial Branding illustrates that entrepreneurial experience is in demand by nearly 1 out of three employers.

The study, conducted with Experience Inc., compiled information from 225 companies about their hiring practices.

You might assume that experience would rank at the top of employer wish lists. But for entry-level positions that students and recent grads apply for, employers say they place a high degree of importance on so-called ‘soft skills.’ Effective communication, a positive attitude and teamwork skills ranked as important or very important to employers.

Even more interesting: 29% said entrepreneurship experience is either important or very important in the hiring process.

Dan Schawbel, Managing Director of Millennial Branding LLC, says he’s not surprised at all that employers are looking at entrepreneurship experience when hiring for entry-level positions:

“Companies need innovators in order to stay relevant. Employers, especially the ones I’ve spoken to, value entrepreneurship experience over internship experience because you learn a lot more about business. A lot of internships are unpaid and you do clerical work … whereas entrepreneurs get their hands in sales, marketing, product development, etc. Student entrepreneurs are seen as leaders, innovators and have a good sense of personal accountability.”

Consider what it means to be a young entrepreneur. Whether it’s a lemonade stand, paper route, lawn care services, house painting, bake sales — all teach hard business skills like marketing, sales, pricing, managing a P&L, accounting, production and customer service.

hiring skills in demand

But perhaps the most important things entrepreneurs learn are the skills that employers value so highly according to the study (see excerpt of accompanying infographic above):

Communication skills - Communication is a must if you want to sell your products or services. Successful entrepreneurs quickly figure out what words and body language help close sales, and what doesn’t work.
Positive attitude - You have to have a positive, can-do attitude in order to get a new venture off the ground. People who constantly look at all the downsides and can never see the upside, will talk themselves out of starting a business.
Adaptable to change - Running a business requires frequent adjustment. You start your lemonade stand and it rains all week. So you grab your pitcher and go door to door, because you know people won’t be walking along the sidewalk. Entrepreneurs simply adjust.
Teamwork - Being an entrepreneur requires working with others to get things done.
Goals oriented - Entrepreneurship is all about setting goals. “I’m going to get my lemonade stand started this week. I’m going to make X in sales this month.” Entrepreneurs intuitively work toward a series of goals.

So what’s the conclusion? If you’re in hiring mode, you might just ask the next job candidate whether he or she “ran a lemonade stand.” It could signify that the candidate has the kind of skills you value in the workplace.

From Small Business Trends

Ask That Job Candidate if He or She Ran a Lemonade Stand

Businesses Face High Rates of Infant Mortality

Posted: 14 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

If you want to explain the pattern of business failure, think of the analogy of infant mortality. The odds that a business will die are highest in its infancy and drop over time.

In fact, by the time that companies enter their teenage years, the odds that they will go under have flattened out. A twelve year old business and a seventeen year old business face roughly the same odds of being shuttered in the following year.

In the figure below, I use Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on the survival of the 1994 cohort of new businesses to illustrate this point. The figure shows the percentage of businesses alive in a given year that failed during the subsequent year. For example, 20.2 percent of the businesses founded in 1994 died between 1994 and 1995. However, only 4.3 of the businesses founded in 1994 and still in operation in 2010 died between 2010 and 2011.

The figure indicates that the new business failure rate for companies started in 1994 steadily declines until 2006 and then flattens out. While the odds of going under never disappear, they pretty much hold steady at 5 percent once the businesses reach age 12.

Source: Created from Bureau of Labor Statistics data

From Small Business Trends

Businesses Face High Rates of Infant Mortality

The Mobile Trend: 10 Things to Know

Posted: 14 May 2012 02:30 AM PDT

The trend toward mobile, including use of check-in sites, is increasing. Your customers and competitors increasingly are taking advantage of the mobile revolution. What about your business — are you ahead of this curve, keeping up, or totally unaware? This roundup looks at 10 mobile trends and resources, to help you run and grow your business:

Mobile Use May Bring Downsides

Facebook used more via mobile devices than via Web. A recent comScore report indicates Americans spend more hours on Facebook’s mobile site and apps than on the the classic Web interface. As the report points out, for advertisers that’s a problem, because the mobile feed doesn’t display nearly as many ads as the regular website. And the mobile interface may not display other things. Do you know what else of your Facebook presence may not be displayed to followers – have you checked lately? TechCrunch

Steps for Small Businesses

Optimize your site for mobile users. Is your site optimized for mobile visitors? Features such as pulldown boxes and collapsible links make a site much more mobile friendly. MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

Securing mobile devices is a critical step. Protecting the data on mobile devices must be an important priority for businesses as these tools are used more and more. So what steps can be taken to make sure your mobile devices never become a liability? Small Business Trends

Check-in Expands

New Yelp check-in app means mobile feedback. A new app called Check-In Comments lets users leave instant reviews or tips as soon as a friend checks in at a restaurant or other establishment. The new Yelp app shows one way mobile check-in will transform customer feedback. WebProNews

Check-ins at Foursquare and location services rise. According to a Pew Research Center study, one in 10 adults now checks in with Foursquare, Gowalla and other geosocial services. Does your business have a physical location? If so, are you taking location-based services into account in your marketing? Marketing Land

The state of location-based services. With the emerging importance of mobile and its location-based capabilities, it’s important to look at how far leading services have actually progressed. The marketing implications of these services are clear. Computerworld

More Apps Emerge

Workers getting mobile too. Customers aren’t the only ones moving around and interacting by mobile device more often these days. Having an increasingly mobile work force has its advantages as well. To that end, apps that enable them are part of the future. Smallbiz Technology

Check out these 65 mobile apps for your business. Mobile tools abound and, what’s more, many have been developed for use in a lot of business management areas. If you want to see how many ways mobile technology can improve productivity, consider how you might use some of these. Small Business Trends

More Trends to Watch

Mobile as competitive advantage. According to one study, 85% of small businesses are using smartphones to improve productivity. Business 2 Community

Mobile payments could be a game-changer. And not just for consumers. As options for mobile payments expand, more and more small businesses have signed on. The capability allows businesses to take advantage of a clear market trend. WSJ

From Small Business Trends

The Mobile Trend: 10 Things to Know