Today in Global Small Business: A Virtual Tour of the International Space Station

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Take a virtual tour of the international space station right now.
• 3 ways to guide a company through global expansion.
• How a focus on family for one CEO blossomed into a global enterprise.
• Entrepreneur brothers find e-commerce success.
• The explosive growth of cross-border e-commerce.
• Learn how Beddys grew its bed business globally and increased sales 700% from year one to year two (WEGGinar™ free of charge but you must register to attend; I'll be fielding the questions).

Chicago: The Most Beautiful Great City

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

6 Commandments for Building a Global Business

Wake Up World: Going Global Has Come Into Vogue

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There is a new breed of small business that is both borderless and able to meet specific cultural needs, one that is cheaper to run but stays open longer.  No surprises there.  But here's the twist.

In developed economies, more and more employees are taking up remote employment, linked to their employers by video conference. If you count yourself among that group, however, chances are you work for a small business. More than 60% of telecommuters work for companies that employ less than 100 people.

It's a trend that is working itself around the globe.

Read more ... 

Sparking Exports in the West Midlands

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As the article says below, "it has never been easier or a more important time to export."  And small businesses in the West Midlands (England) can play a vital role in sparking the new Midlands Engine by getting involved in exporting.  How?

"There are a huge number of businesses here that have exportable products. What we [the International Trade Minister's team] need to do is to really excite them about the opportunities that are out there.  We need to break down the myths people have created about why they shouldn't export."

Read more ...

Female Entrepreneurs with Global Ambition

MySmallBusiness spoke to five top female entrepreneurs from New York, the Bay Area in San Francisco, and London, along with female entrepreneurs from Sydney and Melbourne, about how they had global ambition, built their business, and the impact of location on their venture.

Read more ...

Today in Global Small Business: The Global Business Case for Learning a Language

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• The founder and CEO of e-commerce China-based company JD.com says that the Chinese demand for imports is growing. 
• The rules for running a strong business and creating value haven't changed much.
• Building the global business case for language learning.
• As movies and video games go global, jobs open up for humanities grads.
• Learn how Beddys grew its bed business globally and increased sales 700% from year one to year two (WEGGinar™ on 8/2 free of charge but you must register to attend; I'll be fielding the questions).
• Hear the winning global business pitch at the 2017 Metro Chicago Export Challenge 7/25.

The Bee Will Come

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"When the flower blossoms, the bee will come."  -- Srikumar Rao

Bite the Bullet and Go Global

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Dr. Jana Matthews says, "Exporting is a business risk – but then so is starting a company."

The problem is, all too often, fear. Behavioural economists tell us that the fear of loss is twice as strong as the joy of gain. It's no wonder that entrepreneurs fear expanding into a foreign country where people speak a different language, operate under a different set of rules, and where there's no certainty they'll get paid – even if they can find customers who want their products.

Read more ...

The Young Entrepreneur Council Talks About Going Global

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Before deciding to enter a new market, organizations have to identify what that market is, based on the services they provide and their target audience. That’s why 13 members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) weighed in to address the following question.

“How can you best identify where you should be specifically expanding internationally based on your business model?"

Read more ...

Bringing Global Women Business Leaders Together

Dubai Discounts Freight Rates for SMEs

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The agency of Dubai Economy mandated to develop the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, Dubai SME, has signed an agreement with DHL to launch the ‘Global Expansion Initiative for Small and Medium Enterprises’ program.

As per the new initiative, DHL will offer discounted freight charges and also provide access to workshops and training programmes on international expansion to Dubai SME members and companies rated under the SME RATE Framework.

This initiative instrumental to achieving the goals of the UAE Vision 2021 goal to building a diversified and sustainable economy, and aligns with the Dubai Plan 2021 goal of increasing the share of SMEs in the emirate’s GDP.

Read more ...

Today in Global Small Business: Turning Waste Bananas Into a Global Venture

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Learn how Beddys grew its bed business globally and increased sales 700% from year one to year two (WEGGinar™ free of charge but you must register to attend; I'll be fielding the questions).
• What do Martha Stewart and CEO and Chairman of UPS David Abney have in common?  Global, of course.
• Turning waste bananas into flour, skincare and cosmetics -- and into a global venture.
• Global Payments versus Square; and the winner is ...
• India supports women-owned businesses.
• Importing products?  Make sure its profitable.

The Real You

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.   All rights reserved.

"Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind.  The real you is loving, joyful, and free.  The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun." -- Don Miguel Ruiz

25 Ways to Get Noticed with your Small Business

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Gabrielle Pickard-White writes a good article for Small Business Trends on 25 types of marketing strategies for small businesses -- from creating a website, to writing a blog, to hosting a webinar -- and most of these can be taken global.  Read more ...

U.S. Puts the Brakes on Entrepreneurship From Other Countries

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Shameful.  The Trump administration has put the brakes on a program to encourage entrepreneurs from other countries to start and grow businesses here. It's now on hold and the delay could be damaging and possibly permanent.

The discouraging signal  to entrepreneurs may well crush their interest in America and send them to India, Ireland and other countries eager to reach the innovation big leagues.

If we care about creating jobs, we must let foreign-born founders work their magic in America.  Immigrants such as Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame; Sergey Brin of Google, Aart De Geus of Synopsys, Jerry Yang of Yahoo, Lyndon Rive of SolarCity, Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai of Marvell and Patrick Lo of NetGear, all have created great enduring enterprises.

Here's a perfect ending to the article below:

A global economy has built America’s success over the past 50 years. If “America first” translates to isolationism — discouraging even legal immigration of the best and brightest — it will not make us “great” again.

Read more here.

The Online Shopping Experience Just Got Easier for SMEs

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The Atlanta, Georgia-based Elavon has teamed up with a leading shopping cart software provider 3dcart to offer an online storefront to businesses that seek to reinvent or create an online shopping experience.

“We [Elavon] partnered with leading shopping cart software provider, 3dcart, to deliver a cost-effective way to help SMBs get a dynamic, customer-friendly website up and running quickly so that they capture more online revenue,” head of Global Product and Innovation at Elavon Wally Mlynarski told the Small Business Trends. 

Learn more here.

How to Make Sales in Foreign Markets

Today in Global Small Business: The Great Borderbuster Newsletter

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• See how first daughter Ivanka Trump moved up to the front row of global diplomacy recently.
• How to be knowledgeable and creative when financing export sales (WEGGinar™on 7/12 - no charge).
• How do you ensure that your business doesn’t fall victim to WannaCry?
• How Bitcoin can help expand your business globally.
• How to sell a product you import at a profit.
• Join the Borderbuster monthly newsletter and receive stimulating and original ideas on how to go global (free of charge).

Some Sort of Character

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"Now, personally, I like a car with some sort of character." -- Richard Hammond

Find Wi-Fi

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Facebook's 'Find Wi-Fi’ goes global and will allow billions of users to locate their nearest Facebook hotspot. And it will help especially small businesses in attracting more visitors to their venues.  It’s a simple Internet access extension of Facebook’s booming social media advertising business.

The service – including the value proposition for small businesses in particular – should be very attractive in emerging markets such as Asia and Latin America, where wireless data is often scarce or expensive or both.

Learn more here.

How to Go From a Fledgling Business to a Scaled-Up Business

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What scaling up means to one business owner can mean quite something else to another.  For example, are you looking to get a larger global footprint? Do you measure the size of your business by staff levels or turnover?

For that reason, UK-based Real Business has broken down a new Scale-up Hub into four pillars of content: technology, recruitment, exporting and funding.

Here's a sampling of their exporting pillar:

Exporting: Another way to expand your business is to go global, and these days it’s easier than ever before. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges. We will show you how to make the most of exporting opportunities while mitigating risks.

Scale-up Hub is a section of Real Business that provides essential advice on taking your business to the next level and is produced in association with webexpenses.com and webonboarding.com.

Learn more here.

The Age of Intelligence

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“By 2020, most human beings will have access to the internet. When you have everyone harnessed with this information, the world gets more inter-connected. It gets stronger. There’s more knowledge sharing. There’s more freedom and there’s more openness.”  That my reader, is according to Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company).

He goes on to say, “We’re entering what I call the age of abundance.  And during the age of abundance, we’re going to see a new age … the age of intelligence.

A report released by McKinsey Global Institute, highlighted the global growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.  Companies are in for a big change.

Read more ...

USA: Global Domination

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Here's to USA -- for its entrepreneurship, innovation, freedom, independence, and gateway to the world (e.g., global domination).

According to Wikipedia, the 4th of July “is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago on July 4, 1776.”

Happy 4th of July to the United States of America!

Today in Global Small Business: 14 Fintech Startups to Watch

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What's affecting me, my clients, my colleagues and other global small business owners:

• Nav, a new platform that bridges the gap between small businesses and financial institutions.
• How to finance export sales (WEGGinar™on 7/12 - no charge).
• Making Malta global development issues relevant to local business owners.
• Samsonite strengthens it digital capabilities to go global.
• Global cross-border e-commerce will generate more than $1 trillion in sales for retailers by 2121, according to BI Intelligence; find out what can get in the way.
• Fintech:  14 Boston startups to track.

Be Happy For This Moment

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"Be happy for this moment.  This moment is your life."  -- Omar Khayyam