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Labor of love Everyone who has ever started a business has a story, myself included. Maybe corporate life was becoming too much of a grind, there was an unexpected lay off, or that Next Big Idea just wouldn’t go away from our brains. Whatever the motivation, the end result is to be a small business owner. It is a core part of our identities, and we want more than anything is for it to be successful. The alternative? Not much. This is our lifeblood and doing something differen

This week, Small Business Saturday will be held, once again, the day after Black Friday. I originally wrote about Small Business Saturday in December 2010, the year American Express launched the “movement” as they call it, in support of shopping independent businesses as capitalism companion to the holiday shopping frenzy. Without question, Small Business Saturday has become wildly successful over the last three years, with over 3 million Facebook likes and more than 400 orga

Fast-forward to September 2012: Consumers still love saving money (DUH) and deals are here to stay, but in different incarnations. Groupon has become to online deals what Kleenex is to tissues, but there are major shifts in the landscape. 1) Groupon went from a rock star to has-been: As the deals market became more crowded with me-toos, combined with the “thrill is gone” from consumers. the daily deal concept itself became stale. Groupon tanked after its initial IPO at $20 a

When I heard about Small Business Saturday, held this past weekend, I thought – great – a sanctioned opportunity to acknowledge small businesses and support the local economy around the busiest shopping season of the year. I was so taken with the idea, being a sole proprietor and all, I wanted to find out more. Was it government-sanctioned day? A media-created event wedged in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday? With a little research, I found out that it’s neither: America