Want to have a successful small business? Then build your network. Comments like this are not uncommon. Good networking is one factor in building a successful, sustainable small-business. Both anecdotal information and research supports such claims. We have written about it previously in this blog when discussing “Networking for Business Success.” Most articles, like this […]
Time to Hire?
Help? I am swamped. So get an ad in the paper and get some employees, right? Sorry, this isn’t the time. When you are overwhelmed is not the time you want to hire someone for several reasons. First and foremost, you will rush the process. Steps will be skipped such as reference checking. Second, you […]
Small-business Data Gathering: Use It for Growth
Read anything offering marketing tips and you will be encouraged to learn who your customers are. You want to understand the demographic make-up as well as their likes and dislikes and, of course, what they buy. Yet, so often that is the end of the effort. Getting the data can be done with registration information, […]
A Second Look at Competition – Rural Cafes
Late last year, I did a blog post looking at how clustering of competitors may have positive results (https://smallbizsurvival.com/2016/11/competition-and-clustering.html). Recently I was asked about this idea in terms of small rural town cafes. If any of you have lived in the Great Plains region of the country, you know the towns and the cafes I […]