Michael Bowers's Blog (109)

Get settled in for a warm winter's nap this three day weekend and check out these posts to help you dream of business success.  Thank you veterans, active duty, and reserve troops for all that you do.

Who Are You Talking To? at …

It's been a tough week on the east coast of the US.  In honor of those families impacted, I plan to get in some family time myself, and hit the donate button on the American Red Cross…

This is Columbus Marathon  weekend. Even though I am not running this year it is near and dear to my heart.  Treat yourself to some time…

Check out these articles after you're done raking the leaves this weekend.  What are you planning to do to winterize your small business?…

A three day weekend is always reason to celebrate, especially when I can get a college football fix.  In the meantime, here's some reading to do during the pre-game show to help build your business!

Marketing Is Not Sales at…

School has started this week and things are getting hectic.  Take some time out of your day with a jumbo coffee and check out these articles to build your business.

Increase Your Prospecting Success Through Relationships at…

Here are some great posts I found this week that you might like. Great sources of information to help you build your business.

What Are The Real Sources Of Business Financing at Ideas To Deals this week's…

I saw an interesting post recently on Small Business Trends by Scott Shane about sources of small business financing. If you have read Ideas To Deals much or heard me speak on business financing these findings won't…

Driving eyeballs to your website...Is is black magic or strategy?  Check out the video from Google I posted to my blog Ideas To Deals that give you some good tips to make your site more attractive to the search engines.

A new program, sponsored exclusively by Chase and LivingSocial, is giving entrepreneurs a chance to compete for $250,000 in small business grants. The competition requires them to convince a panel of peers and small-business mentors that they deserve the funding by answering a series of questions that identify their motives and outline their plans.



Because the program is intended to help small firms with immediate growth potential get their hands on the capital and marketing…

I'm a big social media guy. I love Twitter. I read blogs more than I read books, watch YouTube more than live news and I like to think I have a pretty good blog at Ideas To Deals. Having said all of that it gets real noisy on the internet. Tough to figure out what is good and worth your time to follow and what is crap. Sure you can follow the big names but sometimes it…

It’s time to inspire your passion…The Ohio Growth Summit is coming May 24.

I’m all about small business. I’ve been the Director of the Ohio Small Business Development Center in central Ohio for 10 years and it was always my dream to launch a business conference that would really make a difference for those that are working everyday to make things happen in their business. A conference that would combine national speakers with…

Columbus State Community College, Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD) and TechColumbus, have announced details for the January 11th 1492 Demo Day.  The event will celebrate completion of the program by the five participating startups selected last October for the 1492 business accelerator.  

Business, academic, civic and community leaders along with investors are invited to…

I found this post on the American Express Open Forum the other day I think it is right on about so many parts of small business ownership/operation that I had to share a link to it here. 

Busting the 10 Biggest Small Business Myths by …

You launched your business. You have built out the product, you are getting favorable reaction from your early market entry, you even got some early financing. Things are going great. This entrepreneurship thing is a piece of cake, right?

WARNING ~ Celebrate early success but don't take your foot off the gas. 

There is a life cycle to business growth and even if things are working at the beginning there are a lot of different issues you will have to deal with…

Do you have a blog for your small business? You should consider it. Blogging  enables you to build credibility, expertise and thought leadership in and around your business. It is also a great way to showcase information about your product or service in a way that provides you flexibility to add information on-line without having to make changes to your primary website. Given all of these advantages the biggest challenges in blogging typically revolve around generating ideas to write about…

I talk to people everyday that want to start a business. Most of them have interesting ideas but things start to go down hill from there. Many people get bogged down in complicated business processes, creative legal structures and the need for large amounts of financing. Due to this they may never get started. To these people I recommend you step back and take a deep breath. Don't make starting a business any more difficult than it needs to be. Simplify, especially in the early stages of the…

I just finished a meeting with one of my favorite small business clients and came to some realizations about business planning. In our case we are working on developing and implementing new business and revenue strategies in an already successful business. Through our discussions we have looked at the current operations to establish a baseline then have worked to develop new strategies from there. We are being careful to maintain the integrity of the mission that the business owner developed…

By Heather Whaling

Whether you are an individual wanting to share gardening, parenting or cooking experiences — or you work for a company interested in sharing expertise, best practices, case studies or data — launching and sustaining a blog is hard work.

I recently delivered a “blogging bootcamp”-style presentation. The audience included people new to blogging, as well as those who felt stuck in the stop/restart…