One in four business owners won’t have to make any extra effort to spend time with their Valentine today. They’re in business with the one they love. According to a Manta survey of more than 1,100 business owners, 28 percent of small and medium sized business partners are also romantic partners. More than half of those recommend the arrangement and some even tell Manta it has improved their relationship (though not necessarily their sex life).

Data from Manta's Love, Sex & Marriage in Business survey

Sounds nice, but the online legal services company Rocket Lawyer offers lovers a dose of reality for Valentine’s Day. If you’re mixing romance and business, Rocket Lawyer founder and attorney Charley Moore says you need to think about pre-nups, post-nups, and corporate governance. He points to some high profile business-couple disasters such as Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy, whose prenup gives Hoppy no rights to any of the $39 million made in the sale of her Skinnygirl Cocktail line—a business he played a part in, and billionaire hotelier

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When you ask a small business advisor what you need to do to create value, the three most often-cited strategies are….grow, grow and grow some more.  Typically, advisors are only referring to your top-line sales because where the top-line goes, your cash flow follows!  While this advice might prove true, it certainly is not the rule.  Let me provide a new phrase for you to consider – Don’t Grow Broke!

What does this mean?  In a nutshell, not all growth is good and many companies take a good thing (responsible growth) to the extreme and create massive havoc pursuing even more growth and sometimes kill their business.  We have all heard the stories about the restaurant owner that had a phenomenally successful location that was throwing off a ton of cash flow.  The owner was happy, not too over-worked and was making a very good living for herself and her family.  She was lured to expand rapidly  to other locations to take advantage of her company’s success and “not let the best locations

Read More »from Shaking the Bode Tree: Growing Broke

According to a Career Builder Survey, 40% of employers reported that a bad hiring decision can cost companies $25,000 and, 25% of those polled said the cost can be as high as $50,000! More than 68% of employers surveyed stated that they had made a bad hiring decision in the prior year. Poor hiring decisions can affect productivity, morale and work quality.

“It can be hard to predict how a new hire will fit with the organization or perform in their new role. Even though mistakes happen that are beyond the hiring manager’s control, the more thoroughly the candidates are vetted, the less likely they will be a poor match,” said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. “It’s important that candidates meet as many people in the department as possible – especially if they will work closely together. Also, if candidates say they are proficient in a skill critical to the job, they should provide ample evidence that their experience meets the organization’s

Read More »from What is that bad hire costing your organization?

Just one year after her position was elevated to the Cabinet level, Small Business Administrator Karen Mills will step down, President Obama announced yesterday.

In a statement, the President said:

"Over the last four years, Karen has made it easier for small businesses to interact with the federal government by reducing paperwork and cutting through red tape. She has played a leading role in my Administration’s efforts to support start-ups and entrepreneurs. And she was instrumental in the passage of the Small Business Jobs Act. Because of Karen’s hard work and dedication, our small businesses are better positioned to create jobs and our entire economy is stronger."

Mills joined the SBA job from a career in venture capital, where she had been known for supporting women entrepreneurs as managing director of Solera Capital. Most recently, she was president of MMP Group, a private equity firm.

Politico observed that Mills's departure hints at a trend:

"Mills's announcement marks yet

Read More »from SBA’s Karen Mills to Step Down

The cloud, the cloud! By now most entrepreneurs have heard that the cloud can help their small business operate with the computing sophistication and efficiencies of a big business. But many still aren’t sure just how.

One great example can be seen in a new service launched today by the Silicon Valley startup Pertino. Pertino’s founders—a team of networking and security innovators with top management experience at Packeteer, Apple, Blue Coat, and HP’s Mercury Interactive—say they aim to bring enterprise-class computing networks to even the tiniest operations.

With their service, they say, an Internet connection is all a small business needs to build a global network for its employees. No purchase of servers, no hiring of IT professionals, no adding IP addresses. Says marketing VP Todd Krautkremer, “You can create a business-class network without knowing a single word of mumbo jumbo, and you pay $10 a month per user.”

Pertino’s founders say that, as the workforce becomes increasingly

Read More »from How your startup can get enterprise-class networking cheap

Although a huge winter storm is dumping snow in the NorthEast of the US as I write this, technically we are headed toward Spring and a time for renewal. And renewal also means the workplace. We did our best to cover the theme this week on Yahoo! Small Business Advisor with articles covering office design tips, creating a great small business workspace, retaining good employees as your business grows, and the hidden qualities of great bosses (which can help you renew your management practices.) We also took a very optimistic look at the future for small businesses in Chris Myers' post on the future Fortune 5 Million.

Renewal

If you haven't taken the plunge yet, hopefully some of these articles give you the impetus to start your own business — and if you do, we have tools to help. Besides our domain name, web hosting and ecommerce products, we also have just added an innovative marketing dashboard that you can try for free even if you don't use our other products.

Some other great small

Read More »from Renewal – new office, new management style. Small Business Reading for February 8th, 2013

I once worked for a small nonprofit that generously provided employees with free K-cup coffee. One day a junior staffer noticed that a video camera had been installed in the break room ceiling, its eye pointed at the coffeemaker.

Emails started flying. Why was management spying on staff? Were conversations being recorded? Were lunch hours and coffee breaks being monitored?

I went to the HR director to find out. She informed me that unusually large quantities of milk had been disappearing from the fridge. She was determined to find out who was taking all that milk and to penalize them. Installing a security camera, with no explanation, was her best solution.

Never mind the cost-benefit analysis that would inevitably prove lost pints of milk to be far cheaper than installing a camera and paying someone to watch hours of video to catch the culprit. The cost of creeping out employees was immeasurable. At that organization, such a move was par for the course. Smart people who were fed up

Read More »from How not to lose talent as your startup matures

Pets can be part of a productive workspace. Photo: turnstone

Think that a better-designed workspace, or even a more wellness-oriented culture, could help your small business be more productive and get to the next level? Kevin Kuske would bet on it.

He’s Chief Anthropologist and General Manager for the office furniture company turnstone, which caters to entrepreneurs and businesses with fewer than 100 employees. In his studies of great small businesses—the kinds of startups that brilliant people grovel to work for—he’s seen how attention to office design and culture can support success.

In these workplaces, Kuske says, “there’s freedom and the boundaries between work and home are blurred; you see dogs and skateboards and teapots, which creates a very strong culture of personality that is the sum of all the people who work there.” That's also a great recruiting tool, he says.

In fast-moving small businesses, Kuske says the team members are working so hard that social bonds are important. An element of play in a workspace can help to establish

Read More »from How to create a great small business workspace