Here is an article we just wrote for small business marketing and information:
Small Business is not the same as a Start Up Technology business
I was reading a not so great article today in the Seattle PI, Seattle’s second best paper, don’t get me started on the lack of quality of it’s journalists. I would write their editor in large, but why waste my time. I just choose not to buy the paper. Gosh, they erk me, I have been known to mention their biased towards their friends business before to friends, Seattle is a very small town you know, everyone seems to know everyone.
But, I do congratulate them for their blogs and forward thinking, not their journalists quality of writing. The article today in the business section, down right makes me think that they along with most corporate types, simply don’t understand small business. They think a small business is the same as Start Up, why do we care? We actually care about helping small businesses with their marketing, and helping them to make more money. We do this through our barter and trade exchange network of ITEX, which has 22,000 small business customers. This woman writes an article titled “What you need to know to start a small business”. She has investment banking background, not any small business experience. She wrongfuly talks about selling your company down the road, looking beyond your product, and not being in love with it. She does not understand small business, but rather does know the Seattle Technology start up scene. These types of businesses, not a get rich quick scheme, but the greedy high tech entrepreneur types (oh–I am just teasing, I use to be one of them), that want to grow big or have a make a quick buck by selling their hot start up.
Small business people do make more money than the average salaried corporate types, and usually they have 3 times the Networth. Wow, I did learn something from her article, yippee. She has good points, but misses the boat completely on small business, which is NOT THE SAME AS STARTUP HIGH-TECH. Folks we are biased, we actually make money via Bartering and the ITEX Trade Exchange Barter network, and actually helping small businesses have success.
Do follow her advice if you are looking to start an Internet Company. But if you are a small business owner or want to start a small business, read other sources for more credible business sources. If you are one of the 23 million entrepreneurs, that have a solution to a problem and want to start your own business, go to your local SCORE office at the local SBA.gov branch. There are amazing resources there that would help any small business. Who is a typical small business person, and how do they get to be worth millions? First thing, go read “the millionaire next door”, than read “Small Giants”, they will give you the profiles of the best small business people and businesses. Recently, I started to write about small business marketing, bartering and ITEX barter Trade exchange, why? To help by sharing my Internet Marketing 2.0, SEO, and blogging experiences and strategies for small business marketing people.
So who comprises of the average small business, and what types of business is an average small business? Folks, I don’t mean to be hard on this Seattle journalist, I think most of us Entrepreneurs do want our high-tech or not, small businesses to be a huge business. We all need to focus on growing a profitable business small or large. Too often greed misguides us all to want to be a billionaire, but a true entrepreneur never looses sight of the problem they are trying to solve. The problem we are trying to solve is to help 22,000 small business make more money with Barter. Even though there was no professional barter network thousands of years ago, people have been trading for goods and services for centuries. Now with the ITEX Barter dollars they can do it with ease, with a large selection of choices, and with ease of a process that works for thousands.
In this series of small business blogs, we will try to uncover what it takes to succeed. And who the average small business person is, and what does he/she do, and how do they make money and be a success. Most importantly, we will share with you the best strategies for small business marketing. We all know that our local Restaurants, dry cleaners, specialty retailers are a small business. But what about the local accountant, attorney, the real estate agent, and the website developer, they too are small businesses too right? Our friend’s at ITEX barter Trade exchange have 22,000 small businesses as members, and they know a thing or two about small business marketing and success, and their people will share with us proven strategies for small business success. 
In fact, the main charter of the ITEX barter network is to help small businesses succeed, via small business marketing and developing small business networking opportunities. So we will try to profile a few successful small businesses that do that. We will discuss the most important issues facing a small business, barter or not. We will look at marketing, accounting, sales, operations, and Human Resources and Legal Issues.
Do you run a small business? We want to hear from you. For our purposes, we want to call a small business a business with less than 200 people, maybe a retaurant that has 50 people or less, not a chain. Any business with revenues of less than $10M, usually 1-7 people, independantly owned and operated by one or two people.
So as we start the new year, do come back and visit this blog back again, we will be discussing “how to start a small business”, and hopefully doing it in a series of blogs. First thing first, call your State Incorporation or small business office and get their incorporation and small business guide. This is usually the best place to start, along with visiting your local SBA branch or sba.gov website. We of course promote Bartering through our cashless trade exchange network @ ITEX, Bon Voyage!
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