When asked if they have any advantages as a small business, many owners respond negatively. The fact is, small-business owners, especially those in rural areas and small towns, have many advantages they can use to enhance the success of their store. Knowing the audience is a huge advantage. Yet they often do not make full…
“Everything gigantic in American [retail] is about to get smaller or die.” That’s the dramatic claim by contrarian economist James Kunstler,writing about the big retail sector in Business Insider. He says big retail is on the brink of scale implosion. Kunstler points to the same trends that are affecting small towns: online shopping, global delivery,…
Do you own a small business and find you have no free time? Have you recently found yourself too busy to have lunch with a friend? Does your family start dinner without you? While these are not perfect predictors (life happens), being “too busy” may be a symptom that your business time management needs some…
There’s always plenty of holiday advice for retailers, including our 5 Retail Holiday Tips for 2014. We even talked about how service businesses can make themselves into holiday gifts. But what about the rest of us? Consultants, writers, manufacturers, engineers, farmers, and more all have businesses, but we aren’t necessarily retailers. What can non-retail…
With all the flood of tips for retailers to get ready for the holidays, what about other businesses? How can service-based businesses get ready for the holiday season? Next week, we’ll talk about other ways to be productive during the holidays, but this week, let’s focus on making more sales. Make your services into…
In any retail business, the last quarter of the year may beat the entire rest of the year for sales. That’s enough reason to to pay extra attention to getting ready to make the most of it. Here are five of my ideas on how to get more people through your doors in the…
Guest Post by SeaTurtle Sports Co-founder Allen Bell and Allison Goldman, Director of SeaTurtle Sports Allen and Jeanne Bell launched SeaTurtle Sports in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2003 to design and manufacture premium beach and backyard games. As its founders, we observed a lack of new ideas in the category and what we felt was an unhealthy…
Rural business owners commonly use part of their home in their business. This can include using an extra bedroom as a home office, an specific area of one room for product crafting such as sewing, an exterior building like a shed or garage for production or research, or a specific section of your lot or…
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