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The cost of health care is on the rise and fewer micro-businesses owners are offering coverage to their employees. A survey of nearly 4,000 micro-businesses found that 18.6% of the respondents said their health care plans are covering full-time employees this year. That number is down from 46.2% in 2005. A micro-business has 10 or fewer em Read More

To err is human. But to persevere is a feat that often separates the successful from the mediocre. In business—as in sports, politics, and the arts—many of the greatest and most influential leaders share a history of failure. Automaker Henry Ford and animator Walt Disney both stumbled badly with early business ventures. Early in his career wit Read More

The turbulent economy is exposing yet another type of credit where bankers let their guard down: small-business loans. Missed payments and losses on small-business loans are surging at banks throughout the country that were so eager to pad their profits that they essentially threw typical underwriting methods out the window. Some lenders doled Read More

In the last 30 days, lenders have sent several hundred thousand letters advising borrowers that their home equity lines of credit are frozen. Small-business owners who use home equity lines to bridge cash-flow gaps throughout the year are also being stricken by these curbs. Read More

We've all seen the usual success story: a 20-something programmer gets an idea, launches a website, and within months he's already got huge traffic, multi-million dollar exit options and an interview with Wired. All the traffic graphs go straight up without faltering even for a day. These types of stories have created an atmosphere in which no Read More

Picking a partner to go into business with is an interesting challenge, especially when you are just starting out. If you think finding the right life partner and getting married is stressful, think about this: in all likelihood you will be spending nearly double the number of waking hours working with a business partner than you will with your sp Read More

From article: Despite the broader economic rumblings, it' s never been cheaper to start a company and there's still a ton of venture money out there. In fact, Ressi told me that there is so much money out there for startups that VCs are now offering to partially buy out founders' personal stakes to get deals. In effect, they are paying off the fou Read More

Start-ups go out of business all the time, often before they even have a chance to even really start up at all. The main culprit in the savage slaughter of these young establishments is the same perpetrator behind the bulk of our fiscal difficulties: Debt. Read More

While every business has a bank, few have a banker. That's because bankers are too often seen as obstacles standing between an entrepreneur and the bank's vault. However, small businesses are not doing business with a building — the bank — they are working with people — the bankers. So forging a relationship is crucial. Read More

The proven way to handle late payments is to avoid them. This begins by developing a comprehensive credit policy and then implementing it from the start. Read More