Small business owners shouldn't have to do their taxes on their own. Tax solutions provide a do-it-yourself way to easily prepare and file taxes — without all the guesswork. If you don't have an accountant, or tax services are way out of your budget, there are several tax apps, software and other tools specifically created with small business tax needs in mind. Here are 10 tax solutions to get you started.

complete article

Gaining customers. Producing a quality product. Finding new markets. These are the things that small business owners focus on when starting their latest venture. But while entrepreneurs are busy planning for the future, many fail to prepare for the worst.

Businesses large and small are loaded with risk. Liability is—or should be—a chief concern. Too many entrepreneurs, however, overlook the need to plan for and manage risk when launching their businesses.

complete article

1. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
2. Commit yourself.
3. Really understand your clients/customers/target audience.
4. Get connected.
5. Prioritize.
6. Team up.
7. Find your balance.
8. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
9. Make it fun! Starting

complete article

Owning your own company can be a dream from making your own hours and choosing your own staff, to even doing something you love. However, owning a small business can also be really exhausting, difficult, and time consuming. If you are still looking into self-employment, doing your research first will help. However, if you already own a small business, your next task might be determining how you can save time and money on that business. There are many easy ways for small business owners to save time, including choosing the appropriate staff, picking deadlines, and using programs that are designed to help business owners save time, like Zirtual assistant. Many of the tools that save time also save money, and Zirtual’s assistants are a great example of this. Read on to learn five ways you can save money for your small business, and hopefully, save some time too.

complete article

Small business owners know that rapidly changing technologies offer great potential for profit. But with countless technology offerings and few clear ways to weed out gems from the fads, it is easy to get overwhelmed.

complete article

Keeping the books is one of the more challenging aspects of running a company. It is also one of the most important. Accounting errors can be damaging even fatal to businesses, but mistakes are surprisingly common. Here is how to avoid five of the most common accounting mistakes that plague small businesses.

complete article

The Small Business Administration or SBA is celebrating its 50th Anniversary!

Consumer education is something many small software companies tend to overlook. While the benefits of consumer education may not always be obvious, the fact of the matter is that educated customers are good customers, and happier customers. A customer who does not understand an applications capabilities or features is more likely to experience frustration with it, making them less satisfied with your product and also potentially draining your support time.

Consumer Education

Smartphones have become vital for on-the-go entrepreneurs. Apps aimed at small business owners allow them to pay bills, update websites, market their companies, reach out to customers and keep in touch with employees from anywhere. Some owners say their smartphones makes it easier for them to build a side business while keeping a full-time job or step away from the company when needed.

complete article

Firing an employee is often a manager's most dreaded task.

It is not only uncomfortable, but if not handled right it could lead to more than just hard feelings if an employee decides to take legal action.

Having a solid termination policy in place and following a few careful steps could help stave off potential problems.

complete article

Unlike the CEOs of major public companies, whose personal financial situation has little effect on their companies borrowing, if you are a small business owner, your personal credit is a major factor influencing your companys access to capital. The power of personal credit scores to predict small business loan repayment, the legal structure of many small businesses, and small business owners’ use of personal guarantees and personal borrowing to finance business operations, all link small business owners personal credit to their companies’ access to capital.

Many, if not most, lenders will look at your personal credit score if you are a small business owner seeking a loan for your company. A 2006 report written for the U.S. Small Business Administration found that 71 percent of banks used small business owner credit scores when underwriting small business loans.

complete article

Facebook is on a mission to get Americas 25 million small businesses -- from plumbers to pizza parlors to boutiques -- to actively invest in Facebook ads. Modeling its efforts on how it is already courting big brands -- the Cokes, GEs, and Toyotas of the world -- Facebook aims to teach small businesses how to promote their products and services on its platform.

However, this plan could backfire if Facebook does not do one thing first: Teach small businesses how to define and develop their brand. This is true for small businesses as well as for large businesses, and it presents both an opportunity and a risk for Facebook.

complete article

If you are launching a new business, you may want to consider forming a separate entity such as a corporation or LLC, to protect your personal financial life.

The legal form of your business brings different tax implications. When forming an LLC, you receive the benefits of creating a separate entity and thus protecting your personal assets.

When it comes to taxes, however, the IRS has no tax return for an LLC per se. You may treat the LLC as a C or S corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship and file accordingly. Your state taxing agency may have a special set of LLC tax forms for your entity to file.

complete article

What is a small business?

It is getting harder and harder to tell. Last week, the SBA adjusted its size standards that determine if a company is a small business. The definition varies by industry and is derived by annual revenue or by number of employees.

complete article

Under the new guidelines, for instance, a travel agency with annual revenues of $20.5 million qualifies as a small business, and so does a family clothing store that brings in $38.5 million a year. In some industries, a business is still considered small if it employs as many as 1,500 people. Companies classified as small businesses can compete for government contracts, and can access SBA loans, which are often cheaper than private alternatives.

complete article

Life Is Good CEO Bert Jacobs reveals the most effective interview questions he uses to select ideal candidates for his company.

complete article

Need a reason to start your own business? Here are 20 of them.

complete article

Sadly, the resume is often full of fluff that really does not tell you very much. Do you really care where the candidate went to school, or how many years he or she spent at the last job? Do those qualities really help you predict this candidate's potential to succeed at your company? Or do they only tell you whether or not this person was capable of warming a seat in relatively inoffensive fashion for the past 5 years?

complete article

Small business owners can get pretty personal. At least, they are influenced by personal relationships more than anything else, according to a new report by the National Association of Women Business Owners ( and credit card company Ink from Chase.

In fact, at 89 percent, a vast majority of small business owners said that their personal relationships have an impact on the way they run their business, and 67 percent said their peers influence them. Fifty-three percent reported that other small business owners influence them as well.

So what influences small business owners the least? Surprisingly, mentorship — only 51 percent of business owners admitted to being influenced by mentors in their field.

complete article

Running your own business is no easy task, and your to-do-list is guaranteed to never end. This said, you should not use this as an excuse to take short cuts when it comes to having online visibility. Beginning with your website, its vital to position yourself online with a strong, professional destination that gives customers the impression you mean business and the motivation to want to engage more with your business. With this in mind, consider these five reasons why having a strong website is important.

complete article

For many Americans, starting a small business is an exciting experience, and potentially financially rewarding. However, when opening a new company, owners are understandably so focused on getting off the ground that they often overlook some basic considerations that can have a major impact on the company's value down the road. Below are the five most common mistakes that small business owners make, as seen by individuals who value or appraise businesses.


1) Short-term is short-sighted

Although it can be tempting to make decisions that will save money in the short term, it is important for business owners to consider the long-term growth of their companies. Rather than saving a few dollars today, owners need to think about how to sustain growth and drive value tomorrow.

complete article

There is nothing wrong with having high hopes for your small business. Fulfilling a dream usually is what brings us to starting a business, and we get to decide how far and wide that dream will go.

Dreaming big is not for every small business, but it is something that many small businesses aim to grow.

With your head in the clouds…

complete article

While children are making their holiday wish-list, families are preparing to go out of town and big businesses are expecting long lines of shoppers, there is one group of people who will be working extra hard this holiday season: Small business owners.

complete article

With the introduction of Apple Pay, many small-business owners are weighing whether they should take the necessary steps to accept the new form of payment.

So far, most of the merchants that have signed up to accept Apple Pay are large ones, like Macys, McDonalds, Subway and Whole Foods. To use Apple Pay, businesses must have an N.F.C. reader, which is also called a contactless reader and refers to near field communications. Right now, less than 10 percent of American retailers do, according to Mark Hung, an analyst with Gartner, an information technology research firm.

complete article

A website is now a mandatory component of a business regardless of its size. But the road to every business’ online journey is rife with costly traps that have long-lasting effects. This can be very detrimental to small businesses with limited budget for a website build.

Here are common mistakes that small businesses often make when going online:

complete article

When one component goes out on an older PC, there’s a good chance more failures are coming soon. Newer software and peripherals also may not work with older hardware. If you just want to boost performance or storage capacity, adding RAM or a new hard drive will do the trick. However, if something serious like the processor, or the motherboard itself dies, it makes more sense to look at a whole new computer rather than hobbling along with expensive repairs.

Eventually a time will come that you need to get rid of old smartphone, computers, or other technology your company no longer needs.

complete article

Small businesses may not be the prime target for a hack on the scale of the recent attack on Sony Pictures, but that does not mean it can’t happen. A data breach can happen to any-sized company, and for the small ones it can be catastrophic.

complete article

A community of small business owners was polled to find out what they thought the top industries would be for next year. Technology, at 42%, is predicted to be the most successful industry in 2015, followed by health care 28%, retail 14%, and finance 14%.

complete article

What do you want to achieve in 2015 for your small business? The beginning of January is the time for New Year's resolutions, so here are my top 10 resolutions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

complete article

From the ever-changing technology sphere to ideas about the economy and business growth, here are 50 big ideas, predictions and trends to look out for in the small business world in 2015.

complete aricle

4 Pillars of Outstanding Customer Service
1. The Perfect Product
2. Caring Delivery
3. Timeliness
4. Build an Effective Problem-resolution Process

complete article

There are a lot of articles out there telling you to go forth and start a business! But the truth is, not everyone should start a business. If more of the 80 percent of small businesses that fail had but hesitated and considered why they were getting into business, we would probably have fewer businesses and more successes in those that did exist.

complete article

Online marketing is an industry that is constantly changing. The search engines are constantly rolling out updates and data refreshes, pay per click advertising platforms are always revealing new features and social media marketing is always evolving.

complete article

When a good business plan pays off at home, it’s natural to want to take the show on the road. Introducing your small business to an international market has the potential to pay off in a big way, especially when it opens the door for your company to expand and grow like never before, not to mention the opportunity for higher sales in a new market.

Of course, new territory means new challenges. Most people do their homework before they visit a country, so you can imagine how much research is involved when deciding to take a company global. Are you prepared?

complete article

I found that persuasion plays a critical role in personal relationships and business relationships. Whenever two or more people get together to complete a task, whether it be a social actively like picking a restaurant or being part of team, there is always the possibility of an argument instead of agreement, which is where the power of persuasion comes in. With persuasion, there are no winners or losers. Persuasion is the art of convincing others to do what you want them to do because they want to, not because they are forced to. And it can be tapped using these simple techniques.

complete article

Are franchises small, independent businesses or should they be considered part of a much larger company?

The question is at the heart of two upcoming legal cases. The outcomes could affect profits and change how franchisees hire, fire, manage and pay workers.

complete article

Small-business owners in the US are feeling pretty positive, as 72% polled in January 2015 by the National Small Business Association - NSBA said they were somewhat or very confident in the financial future of their companies. They intended to turn to advertising and marketing 51%, digital and ecommerce expansion 34% and strategic alliances 31% the most to fuel growth over the coming year.

complete article

Having a clear vision of your expected customer base will increase your business chances of success. Clearly defining your target audience — whether it is senior citizens, busy moms or millennials in California — can help answer a lot of questions and overcome obstacles that may be plaguing you as you kick-start your online store. Some of the business questions you will be addressing include:

complete article

Conflict is when two or more individuals have opinions, morals or perspectives that do not concur. By being ready for conflict and seeing it as a positive movement toward reaching goals, conflict can be seen as progress or change for the better. The most difficult situation with conflict is the emotions that get in the way. By getting past the emotions of the conflict, real progress can be made and conflict resolution can begin. There are five steps for conflict resolution: collecting data, identifying the issue, approaching the other person, defining the problem together and brainstorming possible solutions.

complete article

From Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley, mind-numbing startup jargon is stopping for no one. It winds up in TED Talks, pitch meetings and every tech journalist’s inbox in between.

complete article

What do you want to achieve in 2015 for your small business? The beginning of January is the time for New Year's resolutions, so here are my top 10 resolutions for small business owners and entrepreneurs.

complete article

Loyal customers are precious. Identifying the details and creating a system to make sure they are taken care of is key.

complete article

All major wireless operators available in the U.S. offer some international roam, but the volume varies by network. To get an understanding of how your network will fare abroad, or to understand which carrier to choose if you are a regular traveler, you should first understand the two basic major technologies that wireless operators use.

How to Travel With Your Cell Phone Without Breaking the Bank

Innovation is usually used to describe ways of adding value to things that already exist. Invention is the creation of something that never existed before. And then there is creativity.

complete article

Starting a small business is tough, but growing one — or just keeping it afloat — is even harder.

Even though more than 500,000 small businesses are created each year in the U.S., only half of them survive past their fifth year, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

complete article

Shark Tank star Robert Herjavec stunned viewers in May by making a handshake deal to invest $5 million in Zero Pollution Motors, maker of a $10,000 plastic minicar that runs on compressed air. The deal would have doubled the previous record for the largest Shark Tank investment ever, but ultimately fell apart during the due diligence process. Still, a handful of entrepreneurs have successfully attracted million-dollar investments from the Sharks. Here are the five largest deals made on Shark Tank in which money actually wound up exchanging hands.

complete article

Imagine this:  You have found the perfect business idea, one that seems to add up from every angle and could not be better for you and your future plans.  The only problem is that you do not have the capital to open the doors.  Well, unfortunately this is a rather significant problem for a small business startup ... particularly in todays lending environment.

complete article

Who wants to be a millionaire? A popular game show has asked its audience that question for years. Truthfully, the vast majority of the population would jump at the opportunity to join the elite ranks of the millionaires in this country.

complete article

Can you operate your own small business inside your IRA? From 1974 to 2013 that question was in a gray area--the answer was a definite maybe. But the multiple shades of gray have recently turned to black and white.

complete article

You run your own business. How do you describe yourself to others when talking about what you do? Are you a small business owner? An entrepreneur? Or something else? And more importantly, is there really a difference between these terms?

complete article