Small Business Resources
Whether you are already well into the process or are just beginning to consider the possibilities of starting your own business, the Library has a number of resources that can help you along the way.
Books to check out:
BoomerPreneurs: How Baby Boomers Can Start Their Own Business, Make Money and Enjoy Life by M.B. Izard.
Izard provides you with a road map to the entrepreneurial future you want. It is a reader-friendly guide for Baby Boomers looking for life on their own terms after years in corporate America or for a way to make money and enjoy their retirement years.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Best Practices for Small Business by Gina Abudi and Brandon Toropov.
Using real-world examples and stories from everyday life, this guide explains how small businesses can make money, keep it, and use it to make more through time-honored, proven practices.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting Your Own Business by Ed Paulson.
This guide provides an introduction to planning a business, business structures, marketing, finance, expansion and related matters.
The Encyclopedia of Small Business Forms and Agreements: A Complete Kit of Ready-to-Use Business Checklists, Worksheets, Forms, Contracts, and Human Resource Documents with Companion CD-ROM by Martha Maeda.
This encyclopedia provides small business owners with ready-to-use checklists, worksheets, forms, contracts and human resource documents. It includes more than 250 documents for hiring, firing, intellectual property, Internet, technology, legal, merger, acquisition, money, fundraising, sales, marketing and starting a business.
The Everything Start Your Own Business Book: A Step-by-Step Guide to Starting, Managing and Building a Profitable Business by Judith B. Harrington.
This resource contains information on using the latest online marketing tools, starting a green business and making any business "greener," avoiding regulatory pitfalls as you start and grow your company and taking advantage of competitive concepts such as leased employees.
It's Your Biz: The Complete Guide to Becoming Your Own Boss by Susan Wilson Solovic, with Ellen R. Kadin.
This book presents tips and advice for creating a new business, utilizing the author's experience in creating her own successful business to guide readers in planning, funding, promotion, pricing and self-evaluation.
Legal Forms for Starting & Running a Small Business by Fred S. Steingold.
This collection of essential legal and business documents helps you create contracts to buy, sell, rent, or store goods; hire employees and consultants; protect your trade secrets; create noncompete agreements; prepare an LLC operating agreement; borrow and lend money; buy a business; lease commercial space; buy real estate; and much more.
Small Business for Dummies by Eric Tyson and Jim Schell.
This practical, no-nonsense guide gives you expert advice on everything from generating ideas and locating start-up money to hiring the right people, balancing the books and planning for growth.
The Small Business Start-Up Kit by Peri H. Pakroo.
User friendly and loaded with tips, this book explains, in plain English, how to choose from among the basic types of business organizations; write an effective business plan; file the right forms in the right place; be prepared for, and file, the required taxes; and acquire good bookkeeping and accounting habits. It also includes all the forms and instructions readers need.
The Women's Small Business Start-Up Kit: A Step-by-Step Legal Guide by Peri Pakroo.
Written by the author of the bestselling “The Small Business Start-Up Kit,” this book offers the same practical and concrete information of the parent book while giving attention to the issues and concerns commonly reported by women entrepreneurs of every kind. It covers choosing and developing the right business; drafting an effective business plan; government programs that give contract and loan-preferences to women-owned businesses; understanding and choosing a legal structure; and much more.
Doing a subject search for the term "Small Business" in COOLcat (the Library's catalog) will retrieve more books on small business topics.
Reference books to use in the Library:
"Small Business Sourcebook"
Available at the Library Center and the Library Station.
"Business Plans Handbook: A Compilation of Actual Business Plans Developed by Small Businesses Throughout North America"
Available the Library Center and electronically through the Gale Virtual Reference Library* accessible at any Springfield-Greene County Library branch or from outside the Library with a valid library card.
Databases (accessible at any Springfield-Greene County Library branch or from outside the Library with a valid library card):
Business Decision*
Combines extensive consumer household, market segmentation and demographic data with GIS mapping technology.
Reference USA Businesses*
Find address, phone, size, contact person, sales, competitors, number of employees, etc. for millions of businesses in the U.S. and Canada.
Local organizations:
Funded in part by the Small Business Administration, the Springfield chapter of SCORE provides business counselors to existing and potential small business owners. SCORE counselors are current and former business owners and managers who volunteer their time and expertise.
Contact information:
Address: 830 E. Primrose, Suite 101
Phone: 417-890-8501, extension 218
E-mail: springfieldscore@sbcglobal.net
Website: http://springfieldmo.score.org/
The Small Business Technology and Development Center at Missouri State University provides business counseling and training to small businesses in the area to promote and support business development.
Contact information:
Address: On the MSU campus in Glass Hall (west entrance) - Room 113
Phone: 417-836-5685
E-mail: sbtdc@missouristate.edu
Website: http://www.sbtdc.missouristate.edu/
The Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce has an extensive list of Small Business Resources on their website, including a Starting a Business guide [pdf].
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