Blog Posts by Owen Linderholm

The final part of this first week of our Smart and Simple Startup Series is a resource list. If you missed the first parts, here is the introduction and here is the worksheet to help you with understanding the goals, values and ideas for your business. The following articles all have information about planning and thinking about your startup business. Read them for more background or for additional information to help you flesh out your ideas. We also recommend the books in the book section.

Books

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

Articles

Some of the best stories from the past week on Advisor - in no particular order.

Networking is Dangerous: Never go alone. [Great article from TJ MCCue about how to really focus and succeed when networking to build your business relationships.

Tax day advice; and 6 tips for next year. [At this point it is last minute for your taxes - but just in case - here is some last minute advice and some for next year...]

Private companies' health heading into sequestration. [really worth reading this and especially the full report linked to in the article.]

Small business rising. [a nice infographic about the strains small business is under]

11 Common mistakes small businesses make. [great straightforward advice about what NOT to do.]

Ten things really amazing employees do. [These traits should help you value the great employees you already have and help you look for the great employees of the future when you hire.]

7 Brand Storytelling lessons you can learn from Ron Howard. [Don't let the

There is an accepted belief in politics and generally in the economy that small business is the engine of the American economy. But recently there has been a backlash with people trying to make a case that larger corporations are really the economic engine – creating more jobs and driving larger revenues. And sometimes it seems like government agrees – for all the rhetoric from both parties, very little is actually done to make things better for small businesses specifically. So who is right?

This infographic from OnDeck Capital has some of the answers. But it also highlights how much small businesses are in fact in danger from big business moving in and homogenizing local markets throughout the US. Here at Yahoo! Small Business Advisor we are obviously small business partisans – but every big business was a small business first. And the new legal and political rules categorically do favor larger businesses which can afford to support SuperPACs and lobbyists to drive regulation that

Growing WisdomSome of the best stories from the past week on Advisor - in no particular order.

Baby Boomers' say they are more entreprenurial than their offspring. [There is evidence to support this and also evidence against it. Certainly more older people are starting more businesses and are they tend to be more successful at it than younger people - but more younger people are also starting more businesses.]

Shaking the Bode Tree: The Value of Knowledge. [Another great post from Chris Myers of Bode Tree discussing how much better it is to make decisions from a position of knowledge than pretending not to hear bad news.]

How funding mompreneurs is good for Kimberley-Clark. [Taking word-of-mouth to a whole new level and enabling some entrepreneurial activity at the same time.]

Three ways personal financial advisors mislead you. [Ramit Sethi has some counterintuitive financial advice that is also useful for helping you set priorities.]

Global Trading Tips: The Fivefold Path To Quality Control.

We are changing up the format of this post this week. In the past the top section covered a relatively small number of pieces of content from on Advisor itself, followed by a slightly larger number from outside Advisor. But as we add more content partners and writers we are posting and hosting a significantly larger amount of content that is directly useful to small business owners. So we are changing the ratio and will be pointing you to some of the content on the site that you might have missed as well as the very best from elsewhere.

Business blooming

We have been adding new content partners and writers quickly recently here at Yahoo Small Business Advisor. As a result our old format where we highlighted a few of our own articles and more good articles from around the web is preventing us from showcasing some of the great content that we have here. As a result we are switching that ratio around and highlighting more of our own content and slightly less from elsewhere. So here are some of the best

Love and Growth

The big news for small business would seem to be the proposed increase in the minimum wage - at least that's what politicians would like us all to think. The reality is that while this is an issue it still isn't the key issue. Much bigger issues for the typical small business are the burden of complying with regulations and the problem that has been the real key for the past three years or so - getting more customers. And for any individual small business the big problem is the current problem - whatever that might be. But it IS time to think about the possibility of growth, so Chris Myers' advice about growing carefully and not growing broke is timely. And Patricia Lotich wrote about what a bad hire can cost you - so if you are lucky enough to be growing fast enough to be doing some hiring, remember to make the hiring decision carefully.

It's also a good time to think about making use of cloud technology even if you are a small business. There are starting to be some real benefits

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

With the start of a new year many business owners get a boost of renewal and new energy. The trick is to sustain that energy for as long as possible. Some of our articles this week should help you do that. Our Startup Diaries series is written by real small business owners working away on starting and sustaining their new businesses. J. P.Sawyer talks about the lessons he learned in getting going. Chris Myers of Bode Tree also wrote about his three startup lessons. We looked at why you should get an insurance re-evaluation at the start of every year and how to boostrap your dream business in ten steps. And if you haven't taken the entreprenurial leap yet, here is how to handle job burnout.

newenergy

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