So, you have decided officially to become a “business.” Now, what? Well, in order to know how well your business is doing, you will have to keep track of income and expenses: just guessing is not enough. Unless you have specifically chosen otherwise on your tax return, you’ll be reporting on a cash basis. This…
With 89,567* online tools for connecting, sharing, networking, etc., how do you ever prioritize and keep online socializing from taking over your work?[*I made up that number, of course] Our Friend Glenda Watson Hyatt set me to work on this topic, and explained what she meant via email: My quandry is: I have all these…
Every small service business gets them: people fishing for free help, or asking twenty questions so they can go off and do it on their own. If you don’t have an established way to help them easily and convert them into paying clients, you are missing out on business and going crazy, I’ll bet. Cody…
Sole proprietorship is the simplest form of business, but it also has some disadvantages. So for this installment of the Small Biz 100, I’ll talk about some of the situations where you don’t want to be a sole proprietorship and what types of business you might want to form. Important: I am not an attorney,…
Recently Becky asked me to help with some information about US Small Business Administration (SBA) programs. Here are a few basics everyone needs to know; first, SBA does not do direct lending except for disaster assistance. They also do not have grant funding. What do they do? They offer a guarantee to a lender that…
Getting past the point of being a one-person, do-it-all, no-rest-for-the-weary business means helping customers to work with your employees or subcontractors, as well as you. But if every client thinks you need to do every thing, how do you keep them from freaking out when you delegate their work? This problem is common in reputation…
Not every small business can afford to hire someone to create or maintain a website. So let’s go over some relatively easy do-it-yourself ways to build your site, kind of two by two. It just so happens that these are all free, or nearly so. 2 Free Website Builders High up on the cool factor…
All small businesses run into decision points. These are the things that can keep you up at night! Twitter friend Shama Hyder Kabani, of After the Launch, (2013 update: Shama’s firm is now called Marketing Zen) has come to one of these, and “tweeted”: After The Launch has hit a MAJOR decision point: To work IN the…
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