Tell Your Brands Story Online: Brooklyn Textile Company Succeeds In Story Telling, Not Selling

(Join the 3rd Wix Small Business Breakfast (April 2nd, 2014) as we eat and learn how small businesses can get more customers and develop deeper relationships through social media, blogs, web sites and more!)

Below is the video of last months 2nd)  Wix Small Business Breakfast, sponsored by Infusionsoft.

Paper No. 9‘s, Stephanie Benedetto shares how she’s leverage online marketing to BOOST her brand! Sit back and listen.

See the video below or here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqlSXAY4heU

Video: Plan for Success; Focus On Culture: @Concur Exec Advises Small Businesses

Elena Donio, head of Concur small business division speaks with Ramon Ray about Concur and Tripit (travel expense and travel management) and what it takes to have a successful business.

Two things that every successful business owner must incorporate are: plan for success and focus on corporate culture.

Check out the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK0ddbNxCr0 or below.

Our Top Story This Week: A New SBA Administrator is Approved

It’s time again for the Small Business Trends news roundup. Our editorial team keeps you up to date with the news and information most critical for running your small business.

SBA

U.S. Senate appoints new SBA administrator. Appointed by the President in January, Maria Contreras-Sweet has finally been approved by the Senate. She brings with her experience from the banking sector where she helped found the ProAmérica Bank in Los Angeles with family and friends.

SBA backed loans are now online. A tech company called Better Finance is responsible. The company has launched a site called Smartbiz. With backing from Sacramento’s Golden Pacific Bank and the U.S. Small Business Administration, businesses need wait only days instead of months for approval.

SBA shares winners for Small Business Person of the Year. There are winners from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. A national winner will be chosen in mid-May during what is anticipated to be National Small Business Week. Stand by. Announcements for the event have not yet been made.

Online Photo and Video

Instagram hits 200 million users. Actually, there have been a lot of milestones for the photo sharing community over the last six months. Take the launch of Instagram’s first advertising effort, and the site’s growing importance to retailers, for example.

Vimeo has these Instagram and Vine alternatives. Video is a powerful online marketing and communications tool. Instagram and Vine certainly seem to be leading the pack. But, hold on. There do seem to be some other options you might consider.

You must see this. The video not only went viral in an incredibly short period of time, it also put a small fashion brand on the map. And it did all this without breaking the bank. Let’s see what small businesses can learn about creating similarly compelling content.

Social Media and Messaging

Twitter is playing favorites. Or that’s one way of looking at the new feature called “Fave People.” Much like Twitter’s list feature, it’s a way of cutting down on some of the noise. It’s only available in Twitter’s alpha app for now. So it remains to be seen whether it will be popular enough with testers to be rolled out to everyone.

Do you know how to Tango? In a world full of messaging apps, Tango is the latest to make big  news. What it adds to the mix is video, voice messaging and a dash of social engagement. The Tango community is growing fast. Is this a place your business should have a presence?

Marketing

See how this Wichita dealership turned things around. A union demonstration is probably not on most small business owners’ lists of things they want to see outside their door. But this local business decided to do the best they could with the hand they were dealt. The result was a priceless piece of marketing.

The Hipster Tax Crisis boost your business. Well, maybe the crisis itself won’t. (There really isn’t one.) But certainly the very clever online video campaign H&R Block has created to update its image will inspire you, no matter what your marketing budget.

Operations

J & J Staffing shares secrets of success. The key is to really work hard for the people who walk into your door, says Sean E. Malady, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. When you succeed, the marketing takes care of itself.

Small online publishers should be watching the competition. Business Insider and BuzzFeed are forces to be reckoned with, certainly. But are they really the models that smaller publisher’s should emulate? Maybe not, insists one writer.

Honesty is important in business. If you don’t believe that, just look at how bad things can get otherwise. It’s not just a question of maintaining a good reputation. Being less than honest can commit you to a set of fictional expectations for your business that are hard to maintain. It will lead to unfulfilled expectations and loss of productivity, too.

Dell acquires StatSoft. The acquisition of the analytics company seems to keep Dell on course to becoming more than a hardware brand. Dell offers software and services, too. But where is the company’s dedication to its small business customers?

Opinion

Does the Post Office belong in the banking business? Small Business Trends Founder and Publisher Anita Campbell looks at some of the viewpoints on an issue that is still just speculation. But one of the concerns is certainly whether it would involve the organization spreading itself too thin.

Tech

Android Wear will soon power smartwatches and other wearable devices. But it also provides a new potential tool for entrepreneurs improving on their productivity. And it will open a whole new world of opportunities for small developers creating apps for the devices powered by Google’s new operating system.

Reading Photo via Shutterstock

Research: Malicious Apps Can Crash Android Phones, Cause Data Loss

What if someone deleted all the data on your smartphone?

If you have an Android phone, that may be more of a reality than just a rhetorical question.

In fact, recent research suggests there may be some serious vulnerabilities in the Android operating system. Tests of these vulnerabilities revealed phones with Android operating systems could be put into an endless loop of system crashes. Researchers speculate it could also culminate in all the data on your phone being erased.

According to researchers, attacks can be launched from seemingly innocent apps on the Google Play Store. It is not clear whether any current attacks of this kind are underway, however. Hackers could simply use a hidden file triggered after a certain amount of time or as soon as the smartphone is powered on. The file could cause a denial-of-service (DOS) attack  which would make the operating system permanently unavailable.

On TrendMicro’s Security Intelligence Blog, mobile threat analyst Veo Zhang explains:

“We believe that this vulnerability may be used by cybercriminals to do some substantial damage on Android smartphones and tablets. The device is stuck in an endless reboot loop, or a bootloop. This can render the device unusable, which some may consider “bricking” it.”

If this happens on your smartphone and these hidden files are launched, one of two scenarios can happen, based on the research conducted:

• You’ll be forced to constantly relaunch the same app. And that app is likely corrupted so the hidden file will open after a certain amount of time and force it to restart.
• The corrupted app you’ve launched will trigger a never-ending cycle of full system restarts. If this happens, the only recourse is to perform a factory reset of the device, Zhang explains. A lot of times, that means all data will be lost.

Devices running Androids 2.3, 4.2.2, and 4.3 are known to be vulnerable to the attack, ArsTechnica reports.

But what’s worse, Bouncer, the cloud-based scanner Google uses to detect suspicious apps in the Google Play store is also vulnerable to the attack. Researcher and hacker Ibrahim Balic reports on his blog he was also able to create a denial of service on Google Play. He said he did this simply by uploading an app with the appropriate trigger file to the site.

Phone Crashed Photo via Shutterstock

Freaky Accidents

When it comes to accidents, American workers have a sense of invincibility. But accidents happen all the time, and no one can predict when or whom they’ll strike.

Whether it’s the NASCAR driver who broke his foot playing Frisbee or the pitcher who missed a game because he strained his wrist playing Guitar Hero, accidents can be just as financially disabling as physically disabling.

Luckily, employers can help protect their workers’ financial security by offering group or individual disability insurance and it doesn’t have to cost their companies a dime. Not only are employers protecting their employees’ financial health but they are also protecting their business interests by earning the trust of their workers.

You may not be able to plan for accidents, but you can protect yourself in case they happen.

Image: via Aflac

Businesses still don\'t value CISOs, survey finds

March 28, 2014

The continuing rift between IT security professionals and 'the business' has been highlighted by a new study that shows many organisations still attach little value to cyber security - even though they know the threat is growing.

The Turnkey Consulting survey finds that one in six IT security pros believe their organisation sees security merely as “an unnecessary expense only undertaken to keep auditors happy”. And only about one-third (37.5 per cent) of organisations view IT security as “an essential business practice that can deliver ROI” - down from 43.9 per cent the year before.

This is despite the fact that over two-thirds of enterprises (71.8 per cent) recognise that the IT security risks they face from external sources have increased.

Richard Hunt, managing director of Turnkey Consulting, said: “It is concerning to see that IT security is still not perceived to be an integral part of the business.”

But CISO representatives say they are “not surprised” by the findings.

Tim Holman, president of the ISSA UK user group, told SCMagazineUK.com via email: “It's not surprising to hear any IT professional think this way, where there is often a lack of top-down cyber security support in the organisations they represent. What's more alarming is that given the increased reality of external threats, business owners and boards are still reluctant to take cyber security seriously, and often see it as a grudge purchase.”

Holman insisted: “Good CISOs aren't cheap, but worth every penny in articulating cyber security risks at a board level. The techies at the coalface are rarely seen as influential, but that doesn't mean businesses should ignore them, as they perform a valuable and obvious front-line defence against cyber attacks.”

But he qualified this, saying that while “businesses need to start listening to the professionals they employ, professionals also need to start talking to the businesses, and in language they understand”.

Amar Singh, chair of the Security Advisory Group of industry body ISACA UK and interim CISO, agreed that security professionals need to work harder to get their message across.

He told SCMagazineUK.com: “Part of the problem with IT and ‘the business' has always been the inability of the IT professional to properly relate to and explain the business imperative. The more you call it ‘IT security' the less the business imperative - ‘IT security' remains an IT problem.”

Richard Hunt at Turnkey focused on how CISOs can change the perception of security

“It is important that change management activities are undertaken to ensure employees throughout the organisation understand their individual responsibilities when it comes to IT security,” he told SCMagazineUK.com.

 “An element of basic awareness training should be undertaken in any company which should be followed up with regular reminders. The form these reminders take will vary, as a newsletter will be well-read in one company where an intranet site is more effective in another.”

The survey, ‘A Risk Perspective on 2014', also found that 38.2 per cent of the organisations responding had experienced a fraud incident, up from 31.3 per cent the previous year. Likewise, 30 per cent had experienced a data loss that affected business operations, up from 17.1 per cent.

The researchers questioned 55 IT professionals, all SAP software users involved in security and controls activities.

Stealthy Crigent malware infects Word and Excel files

March 28, 2014

A new malware family that could "creep under the radar" of many system administrators has been found infecting Microsoft Word and Excel files.

The ‘Crigent/Power Worm' virus, revealed by Trend Micro in a 27 March blog, uses several new techniques to conceal itself - including working solely through the Windows PowerShell scripting tool rather than creating or including executable code.

Blog author Alvin John Nieto, a threat response engineer with TrendLabs, said this means: “IT administrators that are normally on the lookout for malicious binaries may overlook this, as malware using this technique is not particularly common.”

Security expert Kevin O'Reilly, senior consultant at UK-based Context Information Security, confirmed that Crigent “may well fly under the radar of a lot of system admins who are used to watching out for executable malware”.

TrendLabs says Crigent hides in infected Word or Excel documents which can be dropped by other malware, or users may unknowingly download it via malicious links or websites.

Crigent then sends information about the user's server - including IT address, location and user account privilege level - and waits for commands from the attacker running it.

Asked about Crigent's purpose, the company told SCMagazineUK.com via email: “Cyber criminals often use gathered user information as a way of doing analytics that could aid current or future attacks. In this particular case, it should be noted that the malware takes note of the MS Office applications and versionsâ€"which is crucial information for the routines to be successful or to push through.”

TrendLabs first saw the malware on 8 March and is still analysing which countries it is targeting. Asked about its source, the company said: “We're not able to make a formal attribution.”

Crigent works by downloading two components which it immediately disguises by changing their name and hiding where they were sourced (the Tor network and Polipo personal web cache/proxy) in DNS records. The malware masquerades as legitimate files hosted in the well-known Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive cloud sites.

Nieto explained: ““To someone examining the network traffic without looking at the actual files, all that would have been apparent was a pair of DNS queries to Google's public DNS servers, and a file downloaded from two well-known cloud services. Neither would be found particularly suspicious.”

And he warned: “Aside from compromising the security of the infected system, Crigent also infects documents - which may contain critical information - and may render them useless due to their new ‘format'. Enterprises and individual users may lose crucial data.”

In his analysis of the malware, Kevin O'Reilly told SCMagazineUK.com via email that Crigent “breathes new life” into Microsoft Office macro viruses which have become “something of a rarity”. He explained: “Crigent makes use of PowerShell as well as an interesting trick with DNS records to bring this threat right up to the present day.”

O'Reilly also confirmed that the Windows-based malware family doesn't currently threaten users who may be running run MS Office on Android devices - or the just-announced iPad version. He said: “Its dependence on PowerShell limits it to modern Windows systems, a saving grace for newer versions of Office on mobile platforms.”

“This will come as little consolation to the majority who use Office on Windows and potentially face data loss with the malware's crude attempts to convert documents to older formats to enable its spread, deleting the original documents in its wake.”

And TrendLabs global threats communication manager, Christopher Budd, told SCMagazineUK.com that the problem is exclusive to Windows systems.

“Crigent only targets Windows-based versions of Word and Excel, given that Powershell is exclusive to Windows. But this doesn't mean that newer versions of MS Office are truly ‘safe' from threats. Cyber-criminals are constantly creating/refining malware to include new targetsâ€"which could very well be the newer versions of MS Office.”

To protect themselves from Crigent, Nieto advises: “There are several ways to detect its presence within a network. For starters, the presence of Polipo and Tor within an internal network should be suspicious.” He said network administrators should also consider blocking Tor traffic to deter Crigent and other threats.

Nieto added: “It's worth noting that the file extensions that Crigent uses to save infected files as - .DOC and .XLS - are no longer the default file types. The versions of Office from Office 2007 onward use, by default, the .DOCX and .XLSX file extensions. The presence of large numbers of new files using older formats may be a possible sign of the presence of Crigent.”

Media industry targeted by state-sponsored cyber attacks

March 28, 2014

New research from Google reveals that 21 of the world's top 25 news organisations have been targeted by state-sponsored hacking attacks.

Google engineers Shane Huntley and Morgan Marquis-Boire presented their findings at the Black Hat hackers conference in Singapore today, and told press reporters that while internet users face phishing and spear phishing attacks to steal data on a regular basis, journalists are “massively over represented” as far as targets go.

“If you're a journalist or a journalistic organisation we will see state-sponsored targeting and we see it happening regardless of region, we see it from all over the world both from where the targets are and where the targets are from," Huntley told Reuters on Friday.

Their report followed shortly after independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani revealed on Twitter that nine of the top 25 news websites use Google for hosted email services, with this data reportedly coming from the Amazon-owned web information firm, Alexa. Google engineers refused to comment on how the search giant is able to monitor these attacks, which is perhaps unsurprisingly given the sensitivity around privacy after the details on NSA and GCHQ surveillance.

This research follows a spate of attacks against media outlets in the last year, with the pro-government Syrian Electronic Army bringing down The New York Times, The Financial Times, ITV, Sky and more recently - via social engineering - Forbes.

The researchers note spear phishing as one of the primary tools for compromising journalists and media organisations, as well as troublesome websites. As one example, Huntley said that Chinese hackers recently gained network access to a major Western news organisation - which he declined to name - via a fake questionnaire emailed out to staff, while he noted smaller hacks against journalists in Ethiopia and Morocco.

Marquis-Boire suggests that most news organisations are unaware of the threats. "A lot of news organisations are just waking up to this," he said, before adding: "We're seeing a definite upswing of individual journalists who recognise this is important."

Jason Steer, director of security strategy at FireEye, told SCMagazineUK.com that he was surprised - given his own experience with clients - that the figure was as low as 21 organisations, adding that attackers are “impacting every market vertical we can think of”.

“The only shock is that the security industry has overstated its capability in keeping businesses safe,” said Steer, who said that media is “critical to understanding what dissidents are saying.”

Adrian Culley, technical consultant at Damballa, meanwhile, said that while this news is worrisome, the media companies themselves are starting to up their game around cyber security.

“It interesting this has been announced by Google the same week as Facebook have announced they have developed an in-house tool for Botnet/Advanced Threat detection,” Culley said in an email to SCMagazineUK.com.

“Clearly predictive analysis of data on the scale available to these companies is helping greatly to identify these attacks, whether state sponsored or criminal. Data only has three possible states: static, volatile or in motion. Appropriate analysis of all three will often reveal attacks as even the most skilled threat operators have to be somewhere in the data,” he added.

“Intelligence Agencies and the Media have long had a mutual fascination, and journalists are just as susceptible to phishing attacks as the rest of us.” On the latter point, Steer added that journalists should regularly patch, use the latest anti-virus solutions and use solutions - like Wepawet and VirusTotal - for tracking emails with suspect attachments.

8 Tech Tools That Help You Tame Tasks and Recapture Time

As a small business owner, there is no end to the list of ‘things’ that you need to do on any given day. Add in the fact that there is this thing called ‘life’ that we also need to deal with, and the list gets even longer. If you are looking for a way to easily manage your daily tasks by using a task management app, here are eight tech tools that help you tame tasks and recapture time.

My clients are continually coming to me for advice on ways they can become more organized and productive in their small businesses and what tech tools they should consider using. With so many apps on the market that help with task / list management, I went on a search for those that I thought were simple to implement and use. I chose apps that I felt that an individual with little tech ‘comfort’ and ability could use, because a technology solution is only a solution if it works for you and is EASY! Here is my list of  apps that will help you with managing our daily tasks.

If you are using any of the tools above, please share with us how it is saving you time and helping you to manage your tasks. Did I miss a great task management tool? Well, let me know what it is and why it’s a great tool to consider!

By better managing your daily tasks, you will quickly find that what was once a bit of a chore is now a much easier process that gives you back wasted time in each day to spend on growing your business or having fun in that thing called ‘life’!

Tal Tsfany of Base CRM: CRM in the Post PC Era Is More Important Than Ever

Customer relationship management (CRM) software has been around for almost 30 years, almost mirroring the rise of the PC. But now as we are firmly entrenched in the Post PC era, how has CRM changed, and more importantly, what impact will it have on companies needing to build relationships with the modern day consumer?

Tsal Tsafany, Chief Customer Officer for Base CRM, shares his thoughts on the importance of having a modern CRM strategy and approach to match the new technology environment we are living in today. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To hear the full conversation you can click on the audio player below.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can you tell us a little bit about your personal background and about Base CRM?

Tal Tsfany: I’ve been in IT all my life. I’m an Industrial Engineer by profession and I’ve been involved in enterprise software, specifically CRM, for almost 20 years now.

Back in 2009, we started Base CRM. Uzi Shmilovici, the CEO, started it and I was involved and it grew from a small company with a big vision to a medium company with a big vision.

We are now almost 100 people. We’ve finalized our B rounds with over $15,000,000 in investment and we have 2 main offices, one in Poland, where we have our R&D and product team, and we have our headquarters in Chicago. But it’s soon going to be moved to the Bay Area where we’re going to ramp up sales, marketing and other parts of the organization.

We are now the number one CRM app in all app stores, growing very fast, exponentially and doing pretty well - very happy to serve many customers, small to big. That’s where we are today.

Small Business Trends: What’s the biggest difference in importance for CRM from a post P.C. perspective?

Tal Tsfany: Let’s break down the concept of what post PC means. If you look at how people use computers today and interact with devices, they’re looking for three main things:

• Ubiquity: They want to have the data on their fingertips everywhere, wherever they are, in the right size - in the right context.
• Intelligence: We’re generating tons of data, to date. In order to make sense of the data, we need to have a very intelligent engine that brings us the right data, and more than that, even, maybe suggest what we need to do with that data.
• A natural interface: We don’t have patience anymore for training sessions and going to a three day training workshop to learn how to work with this system or that system. We see beautiful, amazing, intuitive consumer apps and we want that experience in our enterprise or work context.

There’s a big story of Avon just shutting down an SAP implementation that cost them $125,000,000.00 because when they got it to the user, the user just said:

“Sorry, not going to use it. It’s too complicated for me.”

So, they shut it down. And, I think that gap of usability - the usability gap is just expanding right now.

So, from an enterprise perspective, I think that the natural interface is the third pillar that, in my mind, is what constructs what post P.C. is. So, ubiquity, intelligence and a natural interface.

Small Business Trends: Are we seeing much more success in post PC era with CRM? Are we at least on the right track?

Tal Tsfany: Well, first we have to decide how we measure success. For me, it’s all about productivity and user adoption. I can tell you that we started an organization called Base Success with the objective of seeing 100% adoption. And, we have 100% success, meaning I never received love letters from CRM users in all of my previous implementations and right now I get love letters of people telling us that geo-location on their iPad or their iPhone changed the way they sell or made them much more productive, because they can see their pipeline on a map and they can plan their day and things like that.

Again, we can argue about the success of CRM so far, but our goal is to get to a place where every implementation, 100% of the implementations are successful in the sense that they are being implemented, used on a daily basis by 100% of the users, generating 10 times more data and making the managers make better decisions. So yes, definitely I think the fact that you’re bringing fresh data to the users and to the managers is on the right track.

We see the amounts of data being generated by an average user on our platform. I can tell you I never saw anything like that. People are just on the application all day long. They start with their PC in the morning. They go out in the evening. They’re working on their tablets. It’s just a whole different ball game.

Small Business Trends: Are the sales people that you focus in on - are their interactions with their customers and prospects more efficient and more effective?

Tal Tsfany: Yes, we have a vision in that area which is called zero input. And, that vision is a day where you won’t have to document anything that you’re doing. You just have to focus on doing what it is that you’re trying to do.

Today we can tell you that you should be talking to this customer because we know that customers in this stage usually stay active if they’re in that stage no more than eight days. And you didn’t talk to that person for 10 days, so maybe it’s time to call them, etc.

I think we’re going to see a revolution when it comes to the interaction channels and technologies as part of the sales productivity aspect of CRM.

Small Business Trends: So, what kind of atmosphere do we need for that to happen?

Tal Tsfany: I think, philosophically, we have to go back to the core, the fundamental problem with CRMs, and that is the gap between effort and the value that a specific individual user is getting out of the system. If you focus on closing that gap or maybe trying to get the value to be higher than the effort, then you’ll be heading in the right direction.

That’s the first principal that we try to follow in everything that we do. Everything that we do, every feature, every function needs to serve the value and reduce the effort. It’s amazing to me that small, medium businesses are more nimble and are already doctors of this and this is why they’re enjoying a full, mobile, everywhere CRM. Because they only have, like, five people in their sales team or their customer service team.

When it comes to the hundreds of people, the complexity of the processes is really a challenge. I think to your question, what those organizations will have to understand is that they need to take their system to the next level. Hide the complexity behind the curtain. Try to do everything automatically and focus on creating a phenomenal user experience that is contextual with a natural interface across all devices and platforms. Easier said than done, but you know. We love big challenges and I think that’s how platforms should be constructed.

Small Business Trends: So you think that smaller, more agile businesses are in a better position to be able to take advantage more quickly than the more mature, larger organizations?

Tal Tsfany: I think fundamentally, yes. But, the nice thing is that we’re seeing early adopters in the enterprise space already making big moves on this. The way they think about it is they try to separate the IT aspect from the sales or service aspect. Meaning the V.P. of sales, for instance, will initiate a process that says, ‘I want every sales rep in my organization to use this CRM every day, not because they have to, but because it will help them sell more.’ Where can I find a system that will just increase the productivity?

From a technological perspective, the integration aspect of it needs to be almost like a plug-and-play.

Small Business Trends: Where can people learn more about what you guys are doing?

Tal Tsfany: Our domain is GetBase.com and just look for us - Base CRM. We have a lot of information.

This interview on CRM in the post PC era is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above. 

Office Supplies Approved, Now Sit On It

I draw a lot of people sitting in chairs in meetings talking - a lot.

In fact, I do it so much that I can go into “cartoon autopilot” and zone out while I’m doing the ink. As a result, I sometimes miss a line or two.

Usually, it’s the little line behind a character that represents the chair. I leave that out a lot.

So one day, while putting it back in using Photoshop, I pondered what would happen if no one in the scene had a chair. What would happen?

This cartoon wasn’t far behind - and for once, I didn’t have to feel bad about forgetting to draw a chair.

You Can Soon Apply For An SBA Backed Loan Online

Small businesses unable to obtain a loan through conventional means may try SBA backed financing. But even this option can take months. San Francisco-based Better Finance is launching Smartbiz, and hopes to whittle that wait time down considerably. The company says Smartbiz is the first online fully-automated SBA loan program.

Better Finance has partnered up with Sacramento’s Golden Pacific Bank and the U.S. Small Business Administration to launch the new venture. Beyond being automated and online, the program will answer applications on SBA-backed loans within 5-7 days.  That’s compared to the 60 to 90 days an application process can typically take. And the company says applying in the first place should only take about 20 minutes.

The new online  program will let you apply for SBA backed loans of between $5,000 and $150,000. You also have longer to pay the loan off and the monthly payments are low. If you have a few good months of revenue, Smartbiz will not penalize you if you are able to pay the debt off early. In a prepared statement accompanying the announcement, SBA San Francisco District Director Mark Quinn explained:

“Because bank funding typically takes so long or is unavailable for loans under $150,000, most small business owners turn to alternative, more expensive lending sources like merchant cash advances or credit cards to fill the gap…SmartBiz offers affordable monthly payments and fills a significant void in the marketplace, offering an enormous opportunity to better serve small-business owners with easy online access to a low interest rate SBA loan.”

SmartBiz says they have already provided SBA loans to some small businesses. One of them is Wild Birds Unlimited in Fort Collins, Colo. Also in a release accompanying the announcement, Wild Birds owner Lauren DeRosa said:

“SmartBiz helped my business obtain a loan for capital improvements in my store and for cash flow assistance…The process was fast and easy to understand - all I did was fill out the information on their website, and if I did have any problems downloading information or answering questions throughout the loan application process, I called their helpline and received excellent customer service.”

Image: Smartbiz