University of La Verne SBDC Small Biz Blog

JC Winsem, Inc. www.jcwinsem.com Jennifer Campbell is the Founder and owner of JC Winsem Inc., an online clothing store targeting girls and women 8-45 years old. “It is a modest company with a positive message. We want every woman to feel beautiful and good about who they are. We also incorporate eco-friendly and wrinkle free fabric items. We care about our environment and want to do our part,” Jennifer recounted.  Campbell had the idea and realized there weren’t any mainstream competitors in the market who target a positive message for females. Creating a positive impact in her community is a cornerstone of her business.  With no business experience and through a post on social media, Jennifer discovered a resource that was available for those who wanted to start a small business. Jennifer recalled how she came to the University of La Verne, “I lived in the area and realized there was a small business office that I saw passing by.”  Jennifer entered the office and imm...

by Joshua Botello Every business owner should build their business credit. Why? It gives the businesses access to loans and other capital instruments to keep their businesses financially afloat. Many new business owners have no idea how to build credit with their business and oftentimes business owners have personal credit issues themselves. While business credit is different from personal credit, many principles will be the same in building your business credit. In this article, you’ll discover the 5 simple and practical steps to building your business credit. Separate From Your Business I f you are just starting out, you want to make sure you are set up for success to build your business credit. How you do this is by separating you as an individual from the business. Why? You don’t want your business tied to your personal credit and how successful the business is should be based on the money the business makes, not your choices personally. You can easily set up a LLC or set up a corp...

By Joshua Botello Transcript: In this video, I’ll show how to keep your business running using Factoring.  I'm Josh from the University of La Verne Small Business Development Center. Here at the SBDC, we provide small business owners with free one on one consulting and business tip videos just like this one. So if you are new here, consider subscribing to our channel. Introduction If you are a business owner who extends terms for your customers to pay later, then you may have run into times where you run low on money to keep the business going. If you need cash quickly to run the business but are still waiting on your customers to pay their invoices, then a factor may be the one to help you out. In this video, I’ll explain what a factor is, how factoring works and the benefits of using a Factor. What is a Factor? So what is a factor? A factor is an intermediary lender who provides your business with working capital in order to keep it running.  The factor provides a short-term...

by Joshua Botello Picking a professional service provider like a lawyer, accountant, marketer, or IT service is such a confusing task. I mean they're all good, right? Not so fast! Picking the right professional for your business is similar to picking a partner for your business. Since you are going to be spending a lot of money on these services you want to make the right decision the first time. Your search may sound daunting but if you break it into these four steps, the process couldn't be easier. So let’s take a look at the 4 simple steps to pick your professional service provider. Start Your Search The first step to picking the right service provider is starting your search. Don’t know anybody? Check with friends and family first. These are the people who are closest to you and whose opinion you will trust most. Check with those who are business owners themselves, as those will be the ones who have similar needs to your own.  The next place to search is your local Chamber...

by Joshua Botello This article was originally published on LinkedIn here . If you are looking to start a business blog and platforms like WordPress.org look too complicated to start up, the built-in article tool for LinkedIn may be what you need. Not only is it easy to get started but you can reach your audience where they already are. Here is a quick guide to getting started with blogging on LinkedIn.  First things first The first thing is you will need to create your LinkedIn profile, but since you are reading this, you are already on LinkedIn. However, if you really need to know how to get started, here’s a quick refresher. Go to LinkedIn.com and click sign up. Enter your email. You are ideally going to use a business email or personal email if you don’t have a company one. Fill out all the information about you. This will be professionally useful when you start writing and this will establish your credibility when you publish articles. Once you have your profile c...

Mighty River Wellness   www.mightyriverwellness.com   Mighty River Wellness is a fertility acupuncture, and integrative health practice in Los Angeles, CA. Beck Hoehn LAc initially came to the University of La Verne SBDC for assistance in applying for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. "When the world shut down all the issues and nightmares I stressed out about as weaknesses in our business all became true in a matter of moments. It was glaringly obvious in the middle of a pandemic that I needed to recession-proof my business. I had NO IDEA how to do any of that. My friend recommended I seek guidance from the SBDC,” Hoehn said.     During the first few months, Beck began working with Jeffrey Wolf and junior consultant Annie. They both provided her with foundational business, growth strategies, and "how to survive" basics. That knowledge inspired her to move forward and develop a strategy to increase business.  Worki...

by Joshua Botello For most business owners live streaming seems like an impossibility because of the tech and quality needed to pull it off. However, basic live streaming is as simple as having an account on social media and clicking a few buttons. So in this video, I'll show you how to live stream on any budget and stay to the end for tips on getting the best quality for your live content. Let's begin our journey with live streaming from your phone. It’s the easiest to do and most people have phones and apps to live stream from anywhere. The biggest caveats will be the location you're streaming from, your service provider, and your signal strength. But with that said, Let’s get streaming Facebook (iPhone/Android) On Facebook, log into your account and in the post section, tap "live" and the live stream settings will come up. You can set who your audience is like friends only, public or private; then add a description, and when you're ready tap “Start Live Vi...

by Joshua Botello Digital marketing has been alluring for small business owners to leverage the technology that larger corporations have been using for the last few years. Many small business owners looking to jump into the foray without quite knowing what digital marketing is. Small business owners may not understand marketing as a whole, so if they want to migrate or expand into digital marketing it tends to become a technological mess. It usually means cleaning the slate and rebuilding effective marketing starting from scratch. In this article, we’ll cover the 4 Aspects of a digital marketing strategy to build digital dominance. What is Digital Marketing? Digital marketing is essentially traditional marketing in a digital space. With digital marketing, the idea is to leverage online platforms and properties like websites, blogs, social media, video, live streams, webinars, and email marketing. Many of the fundamental marketing principles such as goals, target markets, marketing chan...

by Joshua Botello At first glance, Twitter may seem like a neverending wall of noise, but if you are serious about using Twitter as a marketing channel, then you need to know how to properly set up your account. So let’s get into a step-by-step guide for starting your business on Twitter. And stay till the end for pro tips to leverage Twitter for your business Set up  First, head to twitter.com and click sign up to get your account started. Type in your Twitter username called a handle then your email and your own birthdate even for business. Now that your account is created you need to build out your brand on Twitter.  To do this, you need to add a bio that explains your business, A profile picture, this can be a logo or other brand image, and finally a header photo of your location or other scenic picture. How To Use Twitter Now that you have all that done let me show you how Twitter works. Posts on Twitter are called tweets and have a limit of 280 characters. These can be t...