Category: Advice
Is Your Small Business Prepared for Disaster? How to Make Sure You’re Ready for Anything
Small business owners can control what they sell, whom they hire, and how they do business. Having the power to make decisions is one of the reasons many business owners like running the show, rather than working for someone else. All that still doesn’t give owners power over outside events. Natural disasters, financial crises, and…
Underdog’s Brewhouse Making a Case for Better Beer
To celebrate our recent Canadian expansion, we held contests in Toronto and Vancouver to give small businesses the opportunity to win $5,000 (CAD) by answering one simple question, Why Do You Love Being a Small Business Owner? Underdog’s Brewhouse, based in Oshawa, Ontario, is our Toronto-area small business winner. We’re checking in 60 days after…
3 Small Business Payroll Mistakes to Avoid
Handling payroll can be one of the most stress-inducing responsibilities of a small business owner. However, neglecting payroll–or doing a poor job of it–can bring your business down, and fast. Here are some of the most common payroll mistakes, and how you can overcome them. Mistake #1: Doing Payroll on the Fly As a small…
The Art and Science of Building a Successful Business: An Interview with Paul Butler
Building a successful business is the goal of every entrepreneur. Paul Butler, one of the authors of the book Think to Win: Unleashing the Power of Strategic Thinking, recently suggested that business success is really a combination of art, science, and the ability to think strategically. He and his co-authors, John Manfredi and Peter Klein,…
Are You Familiar with the Mandela Effect? It Can Hurt Your Business
How often have you followed up with an employee about an assignment or project only to find out that he or she completed it differently from the way you’d expected? You were sure you had explained the task just so, and your employee seemed to understand. However, somewhere between your explanation and the completed task,…
Driverless Cars: A New Opportunity for Small Business
Driverless cars seem like the kind of sophisticated, auto-pilot technology that sci-fi readers have been dreaming about for decades. But this is no futuristic novel anymore; this is reality now. And some small businesses are finding ways to make the technology work for them. Big Developments for Driverless Cars This summer’s big news on driverless…
Independent Contractors or Employees? When Contractors Make Sense for Your Small Business
Are Uber’s drivers contractors or employees? The question has been in the news in California, where a judge is willing to hear a class action suit that asks if the cabbies are truly employees but treated as contractors. This matters because companies—both large and small—seek out contractors in order to access a level of expertise…
Back To School? Small Companies Can Support Student-Employees
Word that Starbucks was offering its employees the opportunity to earn a degree at no cost spread like wildfire when its partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) was announced in early 2015. Starbucks employees can now take courses toward a degree online through ASU. As a small business, should you follow suit and help your…
7 Steps for Creating a Strong Company Culture at Your Business
When employees come in for their first day of training at Amazon, they are given laminated cards printed with 14 principles to help guide their work. This fact was recently detailed in a New York Times piece about Amazon’s “bruising workplace” ethos, bringing to the forefront a conversation about the value of company culture of…
What To Do Before Closing Your Seasonal Business for the Year
For small businesses that rely on a summer crowd for the majority of their annual profits, the end of the season can induce some anxiety. That’s it? small business owners might be thinking to themselves as they rehash the summer crowds or review their books. But even without patrons clamoring in from the boardwalk for…
Soccer and Business: How Your Small Business Can Play Profitably with Major League Soccer
It’s been twenty years since Major League Soccer came to the United States to play. But it wasn’t until recently that Americans joined up with the world’s fans in adoring the sport—and funneling their money into soccer-related expenditures. Can small business turn this fervor into profits? Why Small Business Should Love Soccer There are a…
Small Business Health Insurance Tax Guide: Subsidies vs. Credits vs. Deductions
Health insurance spend can be a sizable portion of many small businesses expenditures. Many businesses want to provide this employee benefit and view it as a means of attracting and keeping employees. At the same time, decreasing spend in this area and freeing up cash flow for other businesses expenses gives your small business more…
Budgeting and Forecasting – What’s the Difference?
When you plan for the future of your small business, you assign yourself two important tasks: budgeting your dollars and forecasting how your business will behave in the year ahead. Preparing a complicated annual budget seems challenging until you realize that forecasting is even more complicated, because you have to account for the unknown. Both…
Back-to-School Shopping: Should Your Small Business Get Involved?
The back-to-school season is a big one: according to the National Retail Federation, it will reach around $68 billion this year. Even if you don’t sell pencils, it’s tempting to want to grab a piece of the pie. But is it worth your small business marketing dollars to try to win some of these back-to-school…
Protect Your Business Against Identity Theft
Identity theft is a hot topic and a big concern for many people these days. It seems like we regularly hear about personal data being stolen from one company or another. Have you ever considered the likelihood that your business might be vulnerable to the same type of identity theft? A business’ credit profile is…