The old-school way to start a business was to create a business plan, get funding, and open a business on Main Street. This generally cost thousands, and success wasn’t guaranteed. It was risky and time-intensive. You could literally lose everything. However, times have changed. Now, with very little investment, anyone can open an online business. Success is not guaranteed, … [Read more...]
Go Lean and Organize Your Small Business without Spending Big
Sponsored by Visa Business How much time do you and your employees spend wasting time each day? How much money does that wasted time and the wasted resources that go into all of that wasted time cost your small business each day? To organize your small business without spending big, you should go lean. What Does It Mean to Go Lean? In manufacturing, a lean operations … [Read more...]
How to Make Your Business a Wi-Fi Hotspot
If you own a business, like a café, a restaurant, a salon, a spa, or any place that people frequent, you can draw in more customers and retain the ones you already have by making free Wi-Fi available for your guests. Just think; if you run a café and offer wireless Internet access to customers, they would more likely stay longer. When they do, they would order more items and … [Read more...]
5 Questions to Ask to Learn if Being an Entrepreneur Is Right for You
The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in today’s business community. I am living proof. Having established a business consulting firm 14 years ago, the reason we have survived is because we embrace this joie de vivre. If you are tired of working for someone else, or you are looking for a different strategy to balance work and home life, becoming an entrepreneur and … [Read more...]
Pitfalls to Avoid When Starting a Business
You’re not alone in your challenging struggle to grow your business. Many others have been through this path. Every business has its own set of unique challenges. Nothing grows from nothing so don't forget that tenacity is what even businesses like Google and Apple depend on. For a better chance at success, please don’t ignore the following common pitfalls. They aren’t cast … [Read more...]
How to Build a Powerful Team for Maximum Small Business Success
Sponsored by VISA Business: Is your team achieving gold medal success? You can’t beat the competition if you don’t have a strong team working to achieve a common goal. And you can’t take first place in a competitive marketplace if you’re not effectively executing strategies and tactics on a daily basis that will make it feasible for your team and your company to reach the … [Read more...]
4 Ways Digital Tools Can Improve Your Small Business
Sponsored by VISA Business: Making your small business more digital can extend to a variety of areas of your business and increase your overall business success. From daily tasks to strategic planning, there is a free or affordable online and/or mobile tool to help you do it. Following are four ways you can integrate digital tools into your processes to improve your small … [Read more...]
How Small Businesses Fail
I recently had a conversation with a colleague about the way we disadvantage ourselves in business. Now I know this is a touchy subject but hear me out, I have something to say about this. As a minority business owner it’s really easy for me to assign blame and scream that it’s not fair but there’s no education in that. While I am not going to pretend that everything if … [Read more...]
The Secrets of Success
Running a small business can be the greatest thing you experience as an entrepreneur, to make sure that your business is successful concentrate on strategy. The best thing about strategy is that it creates a roadmap of actionable steps for building your empire, here’s how you start. Be Willful I’m a mom first so let me apologize that most of my advice will inevitably find its … [Read more...]
Small Business Lessons from Black Friday
For years now Black Friday has been the best sales day of the year for a lot of small businesses. This Thanksgiving however, what I noticed were not the great deals or the savvy shoppers. I noticed the grumpiness and discontent of the people that had to work, the increased security in the malls and the general cynicism of the average shopper. So what can small business learn … [Read more...]