What do the words "small business" conjure up in the visual part of your brain?
Do you picture a thriving specialty machine shop, with it's 2nd-generation owner walking through his shop, stopping occasionally to talk with one of his 50 employees?
Or is it a 4-employee hardware store, that's trying like heck to compete with the likes of Lowe's or Sears?
My visual of a "small business" used to be something that I would read about in one of Becky McCray's posts about small town/rural small businesses. Like this one.
It's different now, though. Can you guess why?
In a word, technology. Technology has helped make small businesses, seem larger than life. Today, a small business could mean a one-person home-based, online business. One that is creating as much revenue, (or more) than that little hardware store down the street. Both are equally important, though.
Another word that seems to be increasingly important to the world of small business is this one; policy.
As you'll see in this increasingly popular mashup of small business news and small business trends that are becoming quite popular over at the Small Business Trends website.
Policy and technology are trying to mix it up a bit.
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