There was an article in Sunday NYTimes – Economy to Entrepreneurs: Turn Back (link) discussing how small business owners and entrepreneurs seek refuge in corporate life at the harsh economic times. Given the high fuel cost and tight budgets it is no wonder the profits are shrinking. For small businesses, that operate on much thinner margins now the suffering could be fatal.
However, once the economy will hit the bottom and start getting back up, there will be plenty of opportunity to shine. Seeing successful startups emerging here and there, recently converted corporate types with get back into their entrepreneural mood. Sure, many will decide to remain attached to the safety net and many who did not venture into entrepreneurship before will decide to do so. That’s a whole new market opening.
For years there have been coaches and consultants who suggested how you should run your business. It was, however, a pretty daunting task, since any entrepreneur (especially a newcomer to the scene) is mostly a one man show. Accounting, operation management, general management, sales – everything falls on a single pair of shoulders. That is exactly where the new opportunities arise.
Advising new businesses on tools, techniques and methods, assisting in research and helping with promotion have been around for a while. With internet, web sites, blogs, social networks, various advertising models and ways to reach and serve the customer the ways to do business have changed dramatically. Whoever will catch this ball at the earliest and will run with it will probably reap the biggest reward.
To read the first part of the article – 
The long delay in posting was caused, as some of you might have guessed, by the fact that we got ourselves a busy client (at least for now). We’ll see how it all go, but so far I was faced with an interesting dilemma. Or, rather, was sort of presented with the task to solve.