Networking to save your company

Bill Price is the owner of an engineering consulting firm in Jacksonville, Florida, and he's in a difficult spot, having to consider laying off five of his six employees, The Palm Beach Post reports.

Small businesses across the country are suffering during the recession, and even if the American Jobs Act is passed, many small firms will have tough decisions to make.

Price visited the Business Matchmaker Conference & Expo at the Hilton Palm Beach Airport in Florida. The event is a small business coalition effort to increase economic development, the news source states. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to interact with other business owners and share their marketing and financial management strategies and.

Price's hope was to find ways for his company to stabilize its funds so he could keep his employees, and at the very least learn of alternatives to laying them off.

Johnny Clavijo, owner of an engineering construction agency, also attended the event and brought back business ideas to his company.

"They talked about how the marketplace is evolving and how we have to learn how to reinvent ourselves and how we do business," he said.