Author Archive

• Is Candor the Best Approach?
  tamelarich, January 27th, 2010 at 1:33 am, Comments: 0

  A woman I know owns a food preparation business in NC. The kind of place that does all the shopping, cutting and cooking so that customers simply come to her kitchen to assemble meals, which they then reheat at home.
  In November she sent an email to her list laying her cards on the table: business [...]

• Wind it Down?
  tamelarich, January 13th, 2010 at 12:02 am, Comments: 0

  One of the reasons I didn't shut down my unprofitable business sooner was that I had no idea how to do it.
  Don't laugh. No one goes to business school to learn how to wind a business down and every red-blooded entrepreneur wants to focus on growth, not failure.
  Here's what Rick Mitchell, bankruptcy attorney (and Chapter [...]

• Serenity Prayer for Floundering Businesses
  tamelarich, December 23rd, 2009 at 1:03 am, Comments: 0

  The Kauffman Foundation just published a study of 549 company founders of successful businesses in high-growth industries.  My favorite finding: "40 percent cited lessons learned from failures as extremely important – the second-highest “extremely important” rating."
  I didn't believe it, either
  In my experience, the key to learning from failure is to first accept it. When my [...]

• Union for the Self-Employed
  tamelarich, December 9th, 2009 at 12:46 am, Comments: 0

  If you are self-employed (regardless of whether you have employees), you might find a friend in the Freelancers Union (FU). The word "union" is like red meat to American capitalists, but stay with me here. Recall other meanings of the word, for example, as it's used for "student union."  Can you breathe now?  OK, I'll [...]

• Facing Friends & Family
  tamelarich, November 25th, 2009 at 1:48 am, Comments: 0

  Last week I sat down over a cuppa with a longtime friend who had loaned my now-failed industrial cleaning business money -- a loan I personally guaranteed.  I hadn't seen "Ron" in nearly two years but we'd stayed in touch via email and the occasional phone call.
  The last email he'd sent explained why he should [...]

• Creditor Communications Judo
  tamelarich, November 11th, 2009 at 1:41 am, Comments: 0

  If you can't pay your bills, you can't pay your bills. That doesn't stop creditors from calling to inquire, cajole, threaten and humiliate you. In today's economy everyone's feeling the pinch and none of us is our best self under siege -- not you, not your creditors.
  When I finally faced that my business was beyond [...]

• While Nero Fiddles in Washington
  tamelarich, October 28th, 2009 at 1:09 am, Comments: 0

  When politicians pay homage to all the "right" constituencies on the campaign trail, small biz is in line right behind motherhood and apple pie.
  Then they're elected.
  Last October I actually took the time to write to my representative suggesting Congress should focus its attention on programs for banks whose business models hadn't been sidetracked by exotic [...]

• Don’t Write “The Note”
  tamelarich, October 14th, 2009 at 1:53 am, Comments: 0

  Two years ago I succumbed to macroeconomic forces and closed my industrial cleaning business. My customer base was caving in all around me, going bankrupt, offshoring and closing for good.
  In 2008 the Alliance for American Manufacturing reported that in the prior six years 91,400 jobs were lost in South Carolina and 211,600 in North Carolina, [...]