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Your business has been steadily growing. New opportunities keep rolling in. It’s time to go to the next level. With the right strategy you can make your small business a big business.

1.   The Small Business Administration (SBA) website advises that small business owners forecast growth. “Maintaining your momentum means looking forward even as you focus on the present. Forecasting and planning are critical to your continued success,” the site says. (You can also check out the site for financing options to help generate growth.) In an online interview, Shirlene Head, founder of creative brand marketing and events company Heads Up Marketing told us, “I’ve found the best way to broaden my brand… is that I’m always researching, networking and pitching out of my box.”

2.    Look into market segmentation. This “simply means picking a sub-set of the entire marketplace that you can organize your sales efforts around. Out of all the people in the world, who will you try to sell to?,” business consultant James Clear, founder of Passive Panda, writes on the American Express Small Business forum. “Most big businesses are good at carving out their corner of the market. Then they do whatever they can to own that space,” he says.

3.    Partner with others. Clear admits that small businesses are at a disadvantage when it comes to vendor relationships. But, just like the big guys, you can “leverage partnerships” for maximum effect, perhaps finding your spot along the supply chain.

4. “If your business model is easily replicated,” according to the SBA, franchising your business is a good growth option. Or, go shopping. “Perhaps the primary way that most big businesses grow is through acquisitions,” says Clear on the Amex forum. “First, acquisitions are tough. You can easily break the bank with one bad purchase. That said, acquisitions can be a massive source of profit and a means to growth if you make a few key moves.”

5.    Take the lead. “Become a leader in the industry,” writes Clear. “Big businesses often make their name by leading an industry. They make moves when other businesses sit by the wayside.”

6.    Make a to-do list to ensure that tasks both big and small get done. This is critical for a busy small business owner who doesn’t have a staff to delegate to. “Take a page from big business and develop process lists or checklists for specific tasks and jobs. Give yourself a guide to success and a reminder to do the essentials each day. I know that branding is just as important for small businesses as it is for big names,” writes Annie Mueller on the Amex forum.

7.    Stay tech competitive. That means using social media and online resources to all of their advantages.  “Not only use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, but blogs and networking organizations are very resourceful for gathering leads and getting insight on ways to brand and get leads,” said Head in an online interview with us.

8. Always be on call.  “Promoting your brand is a 24/7 job –all the time and everywhere,” Head told Madame Noire.

By J. Smith

It’s a free-fall: First, the Supreme Court lifted the longstanding restrictions that prohibited corporations from unlimited political spending; opening the flood gates for the rich to shovel money into the hands of candidates who will look out for their interests in the future. No better examples of this legal corruption shine as brightly as the recent leak of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s submissive phone call with a man he thought was one of the billionaire Koch brothers. Now, corporations not only have unlimited monetary power to control the political conversation, but they control who wins and who loses as the economy – the one big corporations ruined – slowly bounces back.

“On Friday the federal government released the latest chapter of a year-old economic mystery: If you’re a corporation, the economy is great. If you’re a worker, the economy is still pretty horrible,” Slate Magazine reports.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, corporate profits neared an all-time high in the last three months of 2010, with companies posting annualized earnings of $1.68 trillion, Slate reports. After tax, that number is reduced to $1.25 trillion, similar to the Gross Domestic Product of India. This sounds like great news for a country with unemployment rates at 8.9 percent – unless that country is one that still honors the historically unsuccessful “trickle-down effect.”  

Slate, and the rest of us, wants to understand how the corporate economy can be so profitable while the jobs economy remains so weak.

Read more: Record Corporate Profits: Why Aren’t They Good For The U.S. Economy?

Bob Herbert of The New York Times reviewed a new book which stresses that the growing divide between the rich and the poor is attributable to Washington politics over the past three decades. The authors of the book emphasize that there has been an organized political warfare to protect the interests of corporations and the wealthy, which has largely caused problems for the middle and lower classes. In sum, those with the most organized interests who monitored what government was doing on their behalf and brought pressure on politicians to protect those interests won over the majority. Thus, the hyper concentration of wealth, power and income is in the hands of those with political clout, which has drastically eroded economic opportunities for the middle class and working classes.

The book “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class” by political scientists and authors Jacob Hacker (Yale) and Paul Pierson (University of California), traces the current economic struggles of the middle class since the 1970s and concludes it is the result of government initiatives that were prompted by corporate constituents that changed the distribution of wealth and economic opportunities in America. The book describes the changes that were made to redistribute wealth and income as an “organizational revolution” waged by big business and politicians of both parties with common interests.

The authors observe that these changes were made regardless of which political party held office. “Over the last generation,” the authors write, “more and more of the rewards of growth have gone to the rich and superrich. The rest of America, from the poor through the upper middle class, has fallen further and further behind.”

The authors cite hardships come from a long series of policy changes in government that unilaterally favor the rich. These changes run the gamut from tax laws to deregulation to corporate governance and safety net issues. Government actions allowed the very wealthy to amass an increasing share of the nation’s economic benefits.

The authors acknowledge that advancements in technology and the global economy have also affected our national economy over this same period. However, Professor Hacker said, “Much more important are the ways in which government has shaped the economy over this period through deregulation, through changes in industrial relations policies affecting labor unions, through corporate governance policies that have allowed C.E.O.’s to basically set their own pay, and so on.” Accordingly, the authors trace the decline of the middle class as an effective strategy over the last three decades when big business mobilized to become much more active in Washington.

The authors say the economic outcome is easy to understand when politics is viewed as “organized combat” with corporate giants cultivating politicians in both parties to achieve shared political goals at a time when organized labor, which had previously been the most effective force fighting on behalf of the middle class and other working Americans, was losing power.

Recently, David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for The New York Times, wrote that the incomes of the very highest earners in the United States, a small group of individuals hauling in more than $50 million annually (sometimes much more), increased fivefold from 2008 to 2009, even as the nation was being rocked by the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Professors Hacker and Pierson note in their book that investors and executives at the nation’s 38 largest companies earned a stunning total of $140 billion — a record. The investment firm Goldman Sachs paid bonuses to its employees that averaged nearly $600,000 per person, its best year since it was founded in 1869. The authors have made it obvious that not everyone in America is not participating in the recession.

Candi Sparks is the author of the “Can I Have Some Money?” books series.

(Atlanta Journal Constitution) – Suddenly, business executives — like their allies in the Republican Party — are getting a little nervous about candidates favored by the tea party. With a couple of exceptions, the GOP has generally welcomed the enthusiasm generated by the tea party, even if several tea party-backed candidates endorse positions that are not in keeping with Republican orthodoxy.

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By R. Asmerom and De’Juan Galloway of The Atlanta Post

It’s no secret: the black hair care industry is big business. Very big business. According to marketing research company Mintel, sales of black hair care products in 2008 exceeded $165 million. Although a third of those sales went to corporate conglomerates like L’Oreal and Alberto Culver, who own many ethnic product lines from Soft-Sheen Carson to Mizani, there are still many independent African-American players in the hair product game.

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(Guardian) —  One beneficial aspect of getting older is that while everything else in life becomes progressively more complicated – family, work, etc – personal grooming gets simpler. No more afro to cope with. No elaborate combs or gels. No plaits; no corn rows like Stevie Wonder. Just a trip to the barber in the High Street every few weeks.

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