All entries by this author

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-15

Jul 15th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: News

I wish I was shorting some banks now #
@jabancroft No, but Intel is a little big for me #
Sorry about all of the tweets. I forgot that the twitter plugin was activated while moving old posts around #
@dswiese thanks. I’m still struggling to make the site pretty and to move the archives over [...]



Send me your feed

Jul 15th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Articles

If you have a small business in the Portland area and you have a blog or any other type of syndicated content, send me your feed.  I already have a ton of small business feeds but I don’t have anywhere near all of them.  Please email me your feed at info@portlandsmallbusiness.com



Small Business Links

Jul 14th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: News

Sharing some interesting posts for other Portland area bloggers.

SW Wash. & Portland Marketing Podcast Blog Archive Creating a Sales Prospecting Plan

Michael Thompson interviews Jeff Schneider from Sandler Training and gives “us a boat load of practical tips covering goal setting, networking, strategic partnerships, referrals and lots more.”

What’s Wrong With This Promotion? [...]



We’re still remodeling

Jul 14th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Articles

Thanks for stopping by.  We are still in the midst of remodeling and aren’t quite ready for prime time.  All of the sites functionality should work (email us if it doesn’t) but we still need to clean up the look and feel of the site.  Feel free to sniff around and comment on anything.  The [...]



New Site

Jul 9th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Articles

Welcome to the third version of PortlandSmallBusiness.com. The new site is not yet perfect but we are working on it. We’ve moved from a drupal based site to a wordpress based one. Drupal is more powerful and adaptable but really more than we needed.
The change came about as a result of the [...]



Networking sites for small businesses and owners

Jun 23rd, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Articles

There are too many networking sites out there to belong to them all. I’ve recently pared down the sites I use to LinkedIn, Upcoming and Twitter. I use LinkedIn much as everyone else; as an online resume and rolodex. Upcoming and Twitter I use primarily for this site.
I quit BizNik, Plaxo, [...]



Open Sourcery

Jun 9th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Businesses

I recently had the opportunity to ask Brian Jamison of OpenSourcery a few questions about his business and how it got its start.
When did you start your business?
OpenSourcery began in early 2004. CEO Brian Jamison saw the opportunity to invest in technology that could help small businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofits take advantage of [...]



Small business Bankruptcies on the rise

May 7th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Articles

April was a bad month for businesses in the US.
More businesses filed for bankruptcy in April, 2008, than in any month since new bankruptcy laws took effect in 2005, according to a company that tracks federal court filings.

Of course this doesn’t include businesses that shut their doors and didn’t file for bankruptcy. I’m starting [...]



Paying rent to yourself in a home office

Mar 25th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Accounting

At the PDXwi event last week, I was asked a very interesting question: Should a home based single-member LLC pay rent to the owner of the home–the same person– in order to avoid any “piercing of the veil” problems.
I found an answer to this problem in IRS publication 587. Single member LLCs are disregarded entities [...]



Maternitique

Mar 24th, 2008 | By Kevin Spence | Category: Featured Businesses

Less than a year into owning and operating two small businesses, Tara M. Bloom already has plenty to say about the life of the entrepreneur. Calling it “big advice for the little guy,” she chronicles her start-up path in her blog, “Ditch the Dusty Widget (http://www.dustywidget.blogspot.com).” Interweaving marketing expertise (she was employed in marketing and [...]