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This pioneering Babson study examines whether writing a business plan before launching a new venture affects the company's subsequent performance. Interestingly, the analysis revealed that there was no difference between the performance of new businesses launched with or without written business plans. Unless a would-be entrepreneur needs to rais Read More

logs and blog comments are great for a small business owner because they allow you to socialize with others within your niche, which can indirectly promote your business. This is true for both your own blog and comments on others, but one thing you have to be careful of is a commenter who is out to make you look bad. Read More

The Golden Palace Casino paid South Carolina resident Amber Rainey $4,000 to advertise on her pregnant belly. The SnoreStop Company gave Andrew Fischer of Omaha, Neb. over $37,000 for one month of advertising space on his forehead. While there are plenty of people willing to rent their body parts in exchange for lucrative advertising dollars, ther Read More

Tom Szaky has often been told that he is crazy. At age 19, he dropped out of Princeton to start TerraCycle, a business revolving around selling an all-organic liquid plant food made from worm feces—and no, that's not a typo. When he first started out, he had a hard time raising capital and people often laughed him right out of the office. But thi Read More

While most people try to get rid of their beer belly, Brooks Lambert is trying to sell you one. For as long as he can remember, Lambert wanted to be an inventor. As a child, his father would always ask him what he wanted to invent and his reply was “cool stuff.” He did just that when he created his quirky product, the Beerbelly through his busines Read More

More than a million low-wage workers will get a pay raise this week. The federal government's minimum wage is set to jump by 70 cents to $6.55 an hour on Thursday. The hike is the second of three annual increases in the minimum wage that were ordered by Congress last year, following a decade with no increase. Read More

Steve MacGill, CEO of Peersight Online, shares how you can tell if You Really Believe in the Future of Your Business. Read More

Cajole your boss into giving you a raise, win someone round to your point of view, or persuade your partner it's their turn to put out the trash - getting people to do what you want can be very handy. Persuasion is a key element of all human interaction, from politics to marketing to everyday dealings with friends, family and colleagues. Read More

New research by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that nearly six in ten businesses shut down within the first four years of operation. To avoid becoming a statistic yourself, here are the top reasons so many new ventures fail. Read More

Fifty-nine percent of recently surveyed companies executed a major market-segmentation initiative in the previous two years. Yet only 14% derived real value from the exercise. What's wrong with market segmentation? Read More