University of La Verne SBDC Small Biz Blog

JigsawTek www.JigsawTek.com   Richard Hanson is the owner of JigsawTek in La Verne, California. JigsawTek is an IT management and services company for small businesses with a background in IT services for corporate players like Northrop Grumman. Richard’s background was software development working on projects between New York and Orange County California. In 2013, JigsawTek Needed to change it’s focus towards managed services targeting small businesses. “We recognized we needed to do a business plan and started putting it together. There were certain areas that we just didn't know how to deal with,” Richard explained.  At a business planning seminar, Richard was informed by the speaker that SBDC’s have mentors and you really should pick up a mentor to help “define and move forward with your business..The University of La Verne has an SBDC right on campus. You should talk to them and get a mentor and that's when we met Malcolm Geffen.” JigsawTek’s chief challenge was that Richa

By Sophia Nyborg-Andersen Why Email Marketing? Email marketing has been around for many years and while it seems so outdated, in reality, it is a successful method for business. When digital marketing comes to mind we tend to think of social media, but with algorithms and mixed up timelines, your post promoting your business may not be seen by your most probable consumer. When you have someone’s email or in this case an email list, you as a business owner can come directly in contact with potential buyers. When sending out emails you can engage with your subscribers by viewing what they are clicking on, what calls to action they make, and with a click of a button, you can reach innumerable subscribers. Utilizing an email marketing platform enables you to track your engagement, open rates, and track the progress of your campaigns. Another great reason is to measure your return on investment (ROI) because, as a business owner, your time and money is valuable and it is important to know

by Joshua Botello So you are looking to start your own business but aren't sure how big the market is, then look no further. There is a deceptively easy way to validate that business concept.  The Total Addressable Market or TAM is a helpful figure to evaluate your business idea. TAM is actually really easy to calculate: Total Addressable Market Value in $ = # of Customers x Price of your Product.  Like said, it's really easy to calculate but there are different ways to approach it. There are two main ways to arrive at this number: Top-down or bottom-up approach .  Top-down Approach Let's start with the top-down approach. Many businesses opt for this approach because it's really easy. In certain cases, this calculation does work and is used for business plans. Let’s show you an example. Say you want to start up your own specialty soap e-commerce business. This chart came from one of our research tools that the University of La Verne SBDC uses called IBISWorld . We mai