SBE Council Webcast on Economy Now Available

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE) held an open line Q&A webcast session last week called, Growth without Barriers, What's Next for Business? Navigating the Economic Turmoil. SBE Council President & CEO Karen Kerrigan and Grow Fast Grow Right Founder Andrew Sherman hosted the webcast and took live questions during the event.

Many of the questions were very timely and indicate the growing concern of small business operators with respect to the state of the economy. Some of the questions included:

• What do recent market events and government efforts to prevent market failure mean for small business capital formation?
• We're noticing it is taking longer to collect receivables across the board, and its hurting our cash flow. I'm worried that some of these companies aren't going to make it through, or this may become bad debt. How should we be handling the situation with these companies? Should we keep relentless pressure on to make sure we get paid at the possible expense of harming the relationship, or try to be understanding and take the chance that they may not be around?
• If a bank is willing to give me money now, even though I may not need it now, should we go forward if we think we're going to need it in 6 months - what about a year? How about with equipment financing from leasing companies?
• I'm beginning to see revenue softening in our business and we're taking steps to open up new product and service lines which we hope will be more lucrative in a downturn. But in our existing markets, we're seeing lower revenue. Should we be lowering our costs by undercutting our margins and hope to make it up in a quantity for the sake of maintaining revenue levels? Or, should we keep our existing prices in place and hope our new lines of business start generating revenue to compensate?
• As a small business owner, I am always looking for opportunities to reduce overhead costs. Lately, I have been hearing a great deal about "cloud computing" and "free" enterprise applications. Is there any reason not to do this? It seems almost too good to be true.

Overall, the hour long question and answer session was eye opening. Many entrepreneurs seem to be sharing the same concerns in a very difficult market.

You can view the webcast in its entirety at http://www.growfastgrowright.com/events/081022/

Related topic:

Guiding Your Business through Hard Times