A Business Round-Table – Will it Provide Help That You Need As a Small Business Owner?

Have you heard that the more you give the more you receive? Who better to provide answers to small business owners questions than other business owners who experience the same challenges? Owning a business doesn’t have to be lonely. Consider starting or joining a business roundtable.

A well run roundtable is a great forum for sharing ideas and challenges. What exactly is a business roundtable? It’s a gathering of small business owners where issues pertinent to each person in the group are discussed, ideas are generated and problems may even be solved.

Starting a business roundtable in your area is not at all difficult and as the facilitator, you can either choose the topic to be discussed each time you meet or ask a few people to be ready to present an issue that they are currently having for your topic. Having some of your attendees present an issue will ensure that your discussions are exactly what your attendee’s are experiencing TODAY! But, don’t make the meeting all about just one attendee, you should be able to address the current concerns of three or four people at each meeting and as a group, come up with solutions that are valuable to everyone present.

Many small business owners work crazy hours and often don’t know where to turn for help and advice when they have an issue. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had a local business roundtable to visit when they are looking for an outside opinion? You’ll find that lots of people will come even if they don’t have a particular issue because of the learning they experience hearing what others need help with.

Times are tough. You can’t afford to pay for advice each time you would like some. Why not put together your own business roundtable. Who better to offer advice than someone experiencing similar issues? Are you looking for a venue to share your experiences and learn from others? Consider setting up a business roundtable in a location convenient to you.

To read more about the details of how to set up your own roundtable, see the link below.

So, a solid business plan has been developed.  A service or product that is sure to be a success is almost ready to be unleashed to the populace.  The startup capital is in the bank.  Now, how does a business owner effectively market to the masses?  Forget the masses!  More importantly, how does the business owner market directly to the target audience without wasting limited funds on the masses?

The answer is right under your nose, or more accurately, within this computer.  Traditional marketing, just as newspapers, and periodicals, are downsizing due to the power, versatility, and accessibility of the internet.  Even though the internet has been in existence since 1969, but not as we know it now, it is still in its infancy.  

Marketing and multimedia companies were slow to recognize the power and commerce potential of the internet.  In the past 7 years however, there has been an explosion of company presences on the internet.  These companies and new companies everyday are positioning themselves to reap the monetary rewards of e-commerce and advertising.

As of Dec 31, 2000, there were 360,985,492 internet users according to InternetWorldStats.com.   In 2005, the internet’s one billionth user went online.  It took 31 years since the creation of the internet to reach just over a third of a billion users and only 8 years to reach over one and a half billion.  Clearly the internet usage is growing exponentially meaning more and more potential customers are reachable.

With this internet growth spanning the entire globe, now a company as small as one person can market and conduct business 23,000 miles away, where as in the past, a range of 50 miles could only be realistic.  A multimedia marketing company or website consultant can give the power and presence to an individual to compete with the largest of companies.

Perhaps one of the best methods of marketing services or products are videos.  The advantage of videos are that they draw consumers into an interactive experience that had been missing from print advertisements.  This is much more likely to attract customers as well as convey more information than a static advertisement ever could.  Society is now an interactive computer savvy one.  It is time every business realizes that and take advantage of the potential.