Are you a veteran transitioning from active service and want to become an entrepreneur? Or perhaps you’ve been out of the service for some time and want to start a new small business or expand an existing one?

At the end of May, the SBA launched a new program with the call to arms above, known as the SBA Veteran Pledge Initiative.  The pledge itself has been made by top national regional and community lenders to collectively increase their lending activity to veterans by five percent per year for the next five years

The SBA's veteran-based programs are intended to provide tools to help veterans start businesses, facilitate the local economy where they will operate in addition to creating jobs for veterans and their communities.

Those interested in the program are encouraged to call one of SBA's 68 local district offices, or one of its 15 Veterans Business Outreach Centers nationwide.

Related articles

• SBA Has a New Initiative to Help Veterans Access Capital and Become Entrepreneurs or Expand Existing Businesses (bizsugar.com)
• SBA starting new lending program for veterans (miamiherald.com)

As contractors, we are rarely far away from the next bid or contract proposal.  Intuit's business blog has some fine advice for tackling those occasionally intimidating endeavors.  One of our favorite tips:

Sell steak, not sizzle. Your bid or proposal will gain a big advantage if you use more words to describe your company’s fit, experience, and ability to complete the project than to reiterate your reputation or marketing spiel.

Avoid boilerplate sales talk and generalizations, which suggest that you have nothing substantive to say. Instead, fill your bid or proposal with language describing your consistency, strong performance, and high quality. Provide supporting facts that are likely to weigh favorably with evaluators.

Black Enterprise has highlighted a series of events put on by the SBA this summer, two of which are networking events happening here in DC.  The events are set up for "matchmaking":

Matchmaking allows small businesses the opportunity to have face-to-face meetings with prime contractors and federal agencies to learn about specific contracting and subcontracting opportunities. In addition to matchmaking, the day will include speed mentoring, panels on access to capital, government contracting, exporting, supply chain, use of social media, and other current topics.

The local events will take place at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. on June 20 and 21 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.  Head to Black Enterprise to read more.

Many federal agencies are still struggling with National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) directive that mandates that all agencies must have plans to manage all electronic records by December 31, 2013.  What does this mean?  Inside Counsel has put some thought into that question.

...both [public and private sector organizations] are aligned in their goal to proactively manage information more effectively. Not surprisingly, both are seeking better technology approaches such as data archiving and cloud computing to help them address new and often more stringent record keeping requirements. Given the dramatic growth of worldwide data, organizations must turn to these kinds of technology solutions to automate retention policies that were once manual.

Read the rest of the article to hear more about this process, but we'd also like to highlight their recommendation to attend the E-Discovery and Government Education (EDGE Summit) to be held in Washington, D.C. on June 11.  Could be a great chance to rub shoulders with big thinkers and decision makers in the period running up to this requirement.

Related articles

• Debating the Utility of the Cloud in Records Management Solutions (agimssinc.wordpress.com)
• Record Management and You (agimssinc.wordpress.com)
• Debate: Records Management in the Cloud (agimssinc.wordpress.com)

Over at Small Biz Trends, Megan Totka reflects on the utility of what she refers to as "big data."  Totka describes big data like so:

The term “big data” covers a lot of ground. Data is collected from every action that’s performed on an Internet-connected network—sending an email or tweet, posting to Facebook or a blog, commenting or rating, updating a profile, shopping online, using a cell phone or tablet, even swiping a credit card at a physical store. Every action generates a digital footprint that’s stored somewhere in the ether.

She identifies social media, CRM & customer service data as the easiest ways to get started with this information.  These are certainly important first steps.  The best conversation might come from her concluding question:  "How can your small business take advantage of big data?"  Click through to her article and maybe we'll see some answers in the comments.