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Small Biz Survival
  • customer service | entrepreneurship

    A customer service story

    September 12, 2012August 27, 2014

    By Jon Swanson “Are you Martha or Molly?” I figured it was a simple question. He acted like he owned the place. “I’m George,” he said. The sign says Martha and Molly’s,but the customer service was George’s. It was a clothes and shoes shop in northwest Ohio, on a road where most of the cars…

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  • customer service | entrepreneurship | mistakes

    Make it easy for customers to complain

    August 27, 2012August 27, 2014

    It shouldn’t be hard work for your customers to complain. They are helping you to improve, so make it easy for them to get a message to you. Contributor Jon Swanson.  Contributor Jon Swanson worked hard to complain constructively to two companies. He heard back from one, but not the other. He finally wrote about…

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  • marketing | social media

    What to do when a blog post is suddenly popular

    May 2, 2012August 27, 2014

    By Jon Swanson I write blog posts five days a week. A post that I wrote three years ago, and reposted a year ago started getting a lot of traffic about three months ago. In fact, about three times as much traffic in the last three months as in the nine months before that. It’s…

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  • entrepreneurship

    Review: The official guide to QuickBooks 2012

    January 23, 2012August 27, 2014

    I’m not a QuickBooks user. I don’t run a small business. But I’m a family member, the family member that understands computers. I’ve spent time with parents and in-laws trying to troubleshoot and explain and update and install. Recently, a family client wanted to update the QuickBooks version used to run a family business. Since…

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  • marketing | rural | social media

    Two discussion questions for you

    December 8, 2011August 27, 2014

    By Jon Swanson “What key personal and business lessons have you learned about social media in 2011?” Social Media Breakfasts are held in manydifferent cities. What if we held one in thecomment box below? Photo by Rick Mahn. That’s how Kevin Mullett started the most recent meeting of the Social Media Breakfast-Fort Wayne. There were…

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  • entrepreneurship | ideas | rural

    From scrap metal to skilled crafts

    November 23, 2011August 27, 2014

    Zach Pontz is a writer. He takes words and builds stuff, like paragraphs and articles. Andrew David Watson is a film director. Carving stories from fragments of images.”Skip” Brack runs some stores. What they have in common is that Zach told Andrew about Skip, and now we can watch a powerful story about a guy…

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  • customer service

    How a small business can be huge

    November 16, 2011August 27, 2014

    By Jon Swanson On Wednesday night we picked up supper. On Wednesday night we got a call from the dishwasher installer. The carryout was cold. The dishwasher was a week late. I went to the website for the local restaurant (a four location local group). I went to the website for the national appliance chain.I…

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  • rural | tourism

    Banding together

    October 12, 2011August 27, 2014

    By Jon Swanson Leon was the high school band director in a small town in Iowa. He started working on his Master’s degree. He figured out some research topic that sounded good, that was like all the rest of the Master’s research projects around. His adviser said, “Forget that. Everyone is doing those kinds of…

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