Top 5 Piedmont Triad Resources for Small Business Owners

When it comes to owning your own business, finding resources that actually help you succeed without requiring a huge investment of time or money are rare.

This list is meant to inspire business owners to think outside of the box when it comes to what may not be traditional resources to most.

Help to a small business owner comes in many forms.

1) Ed Mckay’s Book Store – Learning about your industry and where you can grow your business is crucial to making the changes you need to survive. Ed McKay’s is one of my favorite places to invest in books for my business library. I can stay in my budget and come out with an amazing selection of books that keep me up to date, inspired and focused on success.

2) Habitat Restore – Whether you are building your home office or furnishing one off site, Piedmont Triad area Habitat Restore Store outlets are a great place to shop for chairs, desks and any thing else you may need to make your space work ready. Not only do you save money – you also support a great cause!

3) Public Library – The public library is an amazing community resource. You can take computer classes, access their premium business databases, receive planning consultations as well as receive direction in career development. It is as simple as contacting your local business librarian.

4) Board of Advisers – Having a trusted Board of Advisers that you can turn to as you make decisions for your small business will help you grow and learn faster that going it alone. It’s recommended to include people that are outside your area of expertise so that you can learn from their unique perspective and see the bigger picture of where your business can grow. Inc.com has an amazing article on How to Assemble a Board of Advisers.

5) Attend Local Social Events – Professional Networking and Educational Groups that offer FREE memberships such as Linking Greensboro and Linking Winston Salem are great examples. They offer social events that share the best and brightest from in and around the Triad on a regular basis. Not only to you get to network with other area professionals and small business owners – for the price of lunch, you get to learn from Triad’s brightest leaders who speak on a wide range of topics. They also offer networking online via Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin Groups – so even if you can’t make their events, you can still connect and benefit both personally and professionally!

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As a small business owner, what have been your top 5 resources to grow your company?

What resources have you discovered that are free or have little to no cost to you and your company?

Social Media, Parenting and (Lack of) Common Sense

I was running around Facebook, as I frequently do throughout the day, when I came across a business page running a contest. Nothing odd there, right? Lots of businesses run contests and incentives to increase their traffic and number of “likes”.

Except this one was different. This Facebook page was for a medical practice that caters to pediatrics.Social Media and Parenting

“So what?” you may say.

Here’s what.

This is the post from the page:

Support your child and their school today by entering them into our  ______ CONTEST! To enter, simply post your child’s name, along with the name of their school. The school with the most entries will win $1,000 for their school! The runner up will win $500 for their school!

Did you catch that? The page was asking for not only the names of the kids but where they went to school.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the parents were doing it! There were entries upon entries upon entries of parents who not only gave up their kids names, but they also where the kids went to school.  The only thing they didn’t do is offer up their kids schedules.

There they were… parents who wouldn’t dream of leaving their child alone or drive around the block without a 5 point harness system were offering their kids safety up all for the chance of winning $1,000 for their schools. Yes it was a nice gesture to give some school $1,000 but seriously? Could we not figure out some other way to collect information than pimping our kids and the names of their schools out?

I don’t fault the parents entirely. A serious finger wagging and “shame on you” goes to the business owner for not thinking this one through. As a marketing professional and consultant I truly hope there wasn’t a self proclaimed “guru” at the helm of this brilliant plan because if so, I would not hesitate to hunt them down and read the riot act.

It honestly all boils down to this…

Think twice and then once again before you offer up your information.  Don’t get me wrong.. I have slipped a couple of times myself. Just last week I tweeted a photo that included my address and didn’t even notice it until a kind, fellow tweeter pointed it out to me. I immediately removed it but who knows how far it traveled in those 3 minutes. My husband checked into our kids school on Foursquare… once. After I pointed out to him that the entire world (okay.. 58 followers isn’t the entire world but still) knew where our kids went to school, it wasn’t long before he quit checking in to anywhere.

Social Media is fun and at this point, it’s a way of life for most.  But we have to remember that we’re getting these services for free because these sites know one thing.  They know that we’re going to offer up a wealth of information and that they in turn, can mine and store that info until they need it a later time.  It’s one thing to “like”  the Crest page because you love whitening strips but quite another to “like” your kids doctors office and give 800 Million users the intimate details such as their names and where they go to school.

The bigger lesson here is to watch what you post, watch where you check in and if your kids are using social media watch what they’re doing every step of the way.

What “travesties” have you seen along the way in social media? Have you done something that you immediately knew you shouldn’t have?

 

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