Tag: Small Business

Free The Data, Start a Business, Save Main Street…and Change the World!

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GmercyTavern
Gramercy Tavern in New York City

How a fictional “Token Act” might change the game in small business across our economy.

If Walmart can leverage data tokens to lure Amazon’s best customers away, what else is possible in a world of enabled by my fictional Token Act?

Well, Walmart vs. Amazon is all about big business – a platform giant (Amazon) disrupting an OldBigCo (Walmart and its kin). Over the past two decades, Amazon bumped Walmart out of the race to a trillion-dollar market cap, and the OldCo from Bentonville had to reset and play the role of the upstart. The Token Act levels the playing field, forcing both to win where it really matters: In service to the customer.

But while BigCos are sexy and well known, it’s the small and medium-sized business ecosystem that determines whether or not we have an economy of mass flourishing.  So let’s explore the Token Act from the point of view of a small business startup, in this case, a new neighborhood restaurant. I briefly touched upon this idea in my set up post, Don’t Break Up The Tech Oligarchs. Force Them To Share Instead.  (If you haven’t already, you might want to read that post before this one, as I lay out the framework in which this scenario would play out.) What I envision below assumes the Token Act has passed, and we’re at least a year or two into its adoption by most major data players. Here we go…

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Small is the New Big

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Small business has always been big. Just not especially visible. Soon it will be.

Nearly all of what happens in business is too small and ordinary for Wall Street to care much about. Same goes for investors, business reporters and politicians. Even economists don’t pay much attention. What they see are the waves and weather on the surface of the world’s economic ocean, when what matters most is the mass of water below.

To dive below the surface, here’s a brief story.

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Can Xero Rewire The Global Economy?

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Keri Gohman, Xero’s new President, Americas

Some people have a clear thread that ties their career together. They spend decades — in different positions, in different companies — dedicated to one cause, trying to fix a single, complex problem.

Keri Gohman is one of those people. Her calling is to empower small businesses — a sector that employs over 56 million Americans — by simplifying their financial life.

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This FreshBooks Feature Will Cut Your Invoicing Time In Half

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks


Creating custom invoices in FreshBooks can be time-consuming, especially if you sell a wide range of products or services. Fortunately they have a built-in solution that can dramatically reduce the time you spend on future invoices with just a little up-front effort: presets for tasks and items.

Tasks and items (billed hourly and at a fixed price, respectively) are how FreshBooks categorizes line items on its invoices. Adding these manually every time is both time-consuming and irritating, but with presets you can bypass the hassle and get to the good part — getting paid.

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Set It and Forget It: FreshBook’s Recurring Invoices Take the Hassle Out of Getting Paid

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Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks


If you use FreshBooks, you now have a way of cutting out one of the most repetitive tasks associated with getting paid — sending out invoices for recurring work.

That’s right, all you need to do is create one recurring invoice and FreshBooks will send it out as many times and as often as you choose. Here’s how it works:

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