Small Business Toolbox

A library of business management info


MyWay from MyBusiness Magazine
  • MyWay: First, I'd Like to Thank All the Little People
    04/02/2008
    Harvey King demonstrates how not to write your next business award acceptance speech
  • Family-Business Owners, I Salute You
    02/11/2008
    Many MyBusiness readers work in family businesses. That means you work with parents, siblings, spouses, children, cousins, uncles, nieces, nephews and other assorted relatives. And for that, I salute you.
  • Business Lessons I've Learned From Dogs
    11/30/2007
    For most of my 50-plus years, I've lived with dogs. They've played different roles in my life: friend, therapist, surrogate sibling (at times, I think my parent's favorite child was the dog), surrogate child (at times, my children have thought our favorite child was the dog), worker and, more times than I've realized, teacher.
  • MyWay: Why I Don't Envy Big Corporate CEOs
    09/26/2007
    Whenever things get crazy around my company, and I feel overwhelmed with more decisions than I can handle, I always stop and remember how lucky I am to be running a small business and not some giant, publicly traded global corporation.
  • Perhaps You Haven't Noticed: Whiteboards are Hip
    07/25/2007
    NFIB's Legal Foundation has changed its name to the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.
  • You've Exceeded Your Limit
    05/30/2007
    I've given up on reading e-mails all the way to the third sentence. If you can't tell me everything you want to say in the first 140 characters, then forget it. Indeed, I just stopped reading this column, as it's now already 100 characters over my limit. Apparently, 140 characters is the cut-off length for some text-messaging services (or, as my tech friends call it, SMS, for “short messaging service”), and so, if you're like me and your employees and children have discovered how to “text you,” you begin to understand the critical nature of boiling down everything you could possibly have to say on one topic into 140 or fewer characters (including spaces).
  • MyWay: The Benefits of Being Obscure
    04/02/2007
    I have a friend who is a very public figure. In his field, he is the product, so being well-known is almost a full-time job for him. He works hard at it.
  • MyWay: Say What You Mean
    02/04/2007
    I have a friend who writes for TV and film. He stays very busy and has a good career, but he's never had a big hit. Recently, his agent called to praise something my friend had written: "This could be the next 'Titanic,' " the agent exclaimed.


    When he called me to report his agent's excitement, I jokingly asked, "Are you sure he was talking about the movie and not the ship?"

  • MyWay: The One That Got Away
    11/21/2006
    This is a fish story, and, like all fish stories, it must begin: I swear this is true.
  • MyWay
    09/20/2006
    How to be popular without having any friends
  • MyWay: Happy Days Are Here Again
    07/25/2006
    Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School discovered that the older we get, the happier we get. They also found that everyone assumed the opposite was true: Even the older people in the test believed younger people were happier. The researchers aren't quite sure why older people are happier, but some of the theories revolve around the notion that older people have wisdom from experience that helps them (or, in my case, "us") balance the ups and downs of life.
  • MyWay: The Harvey King Show
    05/25/2006
    The small office has been a staple setting of television situation comedies for as long as there has been TV. My all-time personal favorite small-office sitcom has to be "The Dick Van Dyke Show." When I was a kid, my dream job was to one day hang around an office joking with Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers.
  • Xbox 360 Is the New Foosball Table
    03/31/2006
    Many years ago, back before all of the dotcom zillionaires became bartenders, I wrote a column in this very space about Foosball tables. At the time, it seemed every story about start-up technology companies included a mention of how their Foosball table served as the focal point of corporate communion-and a handy stress reliever after working 20-hour days and sleeping under one's desk.
  • Harvey King’s Irrefutable Laws of Business Travel
    01/24/2006
    About twice a week, I join millions of other American vagabonds wandering through a confusing maze called “business travel.”
  • Martha Stewart Is Not That Bad, and That's a Good Thing
    11/21/2005
    "I’ve decided I don't think Martha Stewart is that bad." I recently overheard that random observation in a conversation between two men in business suits waiting for a light to change at a crosswalk in midtown Manhattan.
  • The Accidental Role Model
    09/27/2005
    Recently, I was talking with a successful young entrepreneur in town whose business is similar to mine. “What gave you the confidence to dive into this?” I asked. “Well, I figured if you could do it, then I could too,” he replied.
  • Two Decades of Small-Business Lessons
    07/26/2005
    This month marks my 20th anniversary of running small businesses. I wish I could say I've learned all there is to know about small-business ownership from the past two decades.
  • There’s No Such Thing As a Free Lunch (And other bits of useless advice)
    06/01/2005
    You’ll thank me one day for this column. Actually, you probably won’t. But saying things like, “You’ll thank me one day,” has become so much of a tried and true way for me and other small-business people to talk that, well, when I can’t think of how to say something in a business meeting, I usually resort to picking some low-hanging fruit. Unfortunately, the older I get, the more I realize that just because something is tried doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be true, and low-hanging fruit can be rotten to the core.
  • Preparing Your Product For the Cable Shopping Network
    04/01/2005
    I’m not a big fan of reality TV. Donald Trump is my idea of a fingernail scratching across a chalkboard. And frankly, anyone who has really had to say or hear those two words finds nothing entertaining about the phrase, “You’re fired.”
  • How to Plan for Thinking About Maybe Getting Organized
    02/01/2005
    Like losing a few pounds and getting in physical shape, becoming organized is something I’m perpetually in the midst of planning.
  • Longing for the Good Old Days of Small Business
    11/23/2004
    Perhaps because I recently turned 50, I have all of a sudden been swept up in a fit of nostalgia for what it was like when I ran a small business back in the good old days.



  • How Small Business is Like Big Business, Except Different
    10/01/2004
    Along my rather circuitous route to small-business ownership, I’ve had the opportunity to work in and for both large and small businesses. While commercial endeavors of all sizes serve together to power the free-enterprise system, I have observed a few subtle differences between the big and small companies I’ve been around.
  • 'Pimp' My Business Ride
    08/01/2004
    I’ve never really been into cars. For me, they were merely a means to get one from Point A to Point B. Perhaps it was a certain frugality (okay, a blatant cheapness) that influenced my decision to downplay the whole status-symbol, self-identifying, aesthetics-appreciation aspects of personal transportation.
  • All I Really Need to Know I Learned From a 7-year-old
    05/28/2004
    I was digging through my desk drawer the other day when I came upon a folder in which I placed some notes I wrote to my children when they were younger to give to them some appropriate day in the future.
  • Let's Turn the Tax Code Into a Reality TV Show
    04/01/2004
    When I told my accountant I was writing a column about taxes, he demanded that I first warn readers that I know absolutely nothing about taxes.
  • Dear Harvey, Don't Panic!
    01/29/2004
    A letter to myself in the future.
  • Is Passion Out of Style?
    11/26/2003
    Like the latest designer colors, business buzzwords come in and out of fashion.
  • Think HappyThoughts
    10/17/2003
    Now, let's all say it together: The economy is improving.
  • Survivor on Main Street
    10/17/2003
    Programming Pitch for Your Summer Television Line-up
  • Why I Love My Lawyer
    09/29/2003
    I love my lawyer. Not love in a romantic way or even a friendship way. No, my love for my lawyer can only be explained as being the opposite of what I mean when I say with regularity: "I hate lawyers."
  • The Harvey King Weblog
    08/04/2003
    I just got an e-mail from my editor at MyBusiness, who seemed a little ticked with me for being a week late with the column I do for them. Which reminded me, I'd been so tied up doing this blog that I had forgotten to write that column.
  • Scared of the FEARS Virus?
    06/03/2003
    Have you recently had episodes of sweaty, clammy hands? Lethargy? Indecisiveness? Compulsions to watch cable news non-stop? You could be suffering from FEARS: Frequent Extreme Anxiety Related Syndrome.
  • On a Roll!
    04/15/2003
    Why small business is like duct tape.
  • Friend or Faux?
    02/27/2003
    Why big businesses want to look like you.
  • Gadgets I Want
    01/21/2003
    The wish-list of a beta geek.
  • Scary Times Aren't Always Haunted
    11/11/2002
    When you run a small business, every day is like Halloween.
  • El Niño Economics
    09/18/2002
    Mark Twain could have been referring to the economy when he observed, "Everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
  • Everything I Know About Business, I Learned From My Children
    07/11/2002
    My daughter and son, 14 and 11, have grown up in a small business family. They've had ringside seats for both the joy of business victory and the agony of its defeat.
  • Riding to Victory on a Horse with the Right Name
    05/14/2002
    I know who I'll be rooting for when Sports Illustrated is choosing its 2002 Sportsperson of the Year next December.
  • Leading the War Against Fear
    04/01/2002
    In these troubling times there are two books to which I turn for words of guidance and inspiration.
  • Spending That $300 Tax Refund
    04/01/2002
    You must immediately inform your customers it's their patriotic duty to spend more money with your small business.
  • You've Got Questions, I've Got Answers
    04/01/2002
    Recently, a small business Web site released its list of "Most asked questions from small business owners." Since they didn't provide the answers, I'll give you mine. Here are the top five questions small business owners ask:
  • How Do I Love My Customers? Let Me Count the Ways
    03/28/2002
    Within minutes, a rather dysfunctional group therapy session broke out as audience members began sharing customer and client war stories.
  • Gone Fishin'
    03/25/2002
    I believe fishing is the perfect recreational sport for someone who runs a business.