Running a small business may not seem too challenging from a distance. After all, it is a small business, so how much operational and management work could there be? But since I started my own agency, I’ve realized that running a small business or firm is not as easy as it looks.

The good news is that there are plenty of best practices small businesses can follow to save time and manage their tasks more efficiently with the help of automation.

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One of the main conclusions Brian Tracy has come to from his years of study is that self-confidence is key to what you can accomplish.

If you have a good amount of self-confidence you will be more likely to try more things. If you are constantly trying more things, that means you're likelier to accomplish more things, since success is often just a measurement of odds.

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Effective Aug. 19, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is raising its monetary-based small business size standards for inflation by an average of 8.4%, an adjustment that the administration expects will allow 90,000 additional companies to participate in its loan and contracting programs. The SBA said that this increase could result in $750 million more total contracts awarded to small businesses and as much as $65 million more in small business loans.

In order to be considered a small business under current SBA guidelines, most general, heavy and civil construction companies cannot have more than $36.5 million of average annual sales receipts.

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High-profile entrepreneurs like Stitch Fixs Katrina Lake and The Riveter's Amy Stern Nelson are using Stories to answer questions about everything from managing cash flow to storing breast milk during business trips.

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The climb to the top can be tough going for anyone. But as women, there are particular hurdles that can make the journey upward toward positions of power and influence -- in myriad spheres -- especially challenging.

Here, in 50 inspiring quotes, businesswomen, role models, activists, entertainers, authors and politicians share their thoughts on leadership and success -- and what exactly those words mean to them.

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The entrepreneurs on Inc.s second annual Female Founders 100 list have transformed every major industry in America. Meet the boundless dreamers making the biggest difference in 2019.

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The World Economic Forum recently uncovered something that would not have registered on the radar screen of most HR leaders even ten years ago.

One of the top 10 job skills required for workers to thrive--a skill projected to trend in the year 2022--is emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) has embedded itself in the business lexicon as a force to be reckoned with; it is by far one of the most desired qualities for personal and professional development.

Managers are hiring workers with more right-brained skills like EQ because they know these people contribute to the workplace on a relational and interpersonal level that is unmatched.

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Learn how the easy availability of big data can help SMBs compete with big businesses.

- Data is now easier to collect and cheaper to host, making it accessible to nearly every business.
- The availability of data helps small businesses compete against big corporations, but they may still struggle to use that data in practical ways.
- Three ways small businesses can use big data to grow include checking on credit data about your business, monitoring supply chain data, and keeping an eye on artificial intelligence and automation innovations.

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Small business owners have plenty of changes to deal with as 2020 begins — higher labor costs for many companies and some owners will discover that they have to comply with new laws that aren’t on the books in their own states.

As of Jan. 1, there are higher minimum wages in a quarter of the states and new federal overtime rules. The IRS has new W-4 forms owners will need to get used to. Plastic bags are on their way out at stores and other businesses in a growing number of places around the country. And California has new laws on freelancers and consumer privacy that can affect out-of-state companies.

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The start of a new year provides the perfect opportunity for business owners to set new goals and find unique ways to improve their operations. There are plenty of different options for your 2020 resolutions, from shoring up your finances to organizing your online presence. Here are some suggestions and tips from members of the online small business community.

Grow Your Savings with Money New Mindset
If one of your resolutions for 2020 is to save more money for your business, you may need to shift your mindset. So how can you look at things a bit differently in the new year? Jamie T. Wiseman of Miss Millennia Magazine explores a handful of mindset shifts in this post.

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A lot of small businesses appear to be doing just that though. In fact, the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that tax compliance costs are 67 percent higher for small businesses than larger ones.  They add up to $18-$19 billion per year across the U.S small business environment.

With the complexity of filing taxes quickly each year, many small business owners miss deductions that can help lower their tax burden.

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Small businesses drive the economy and create the lions share of jobs in the private sector economy. However, right now they are struggling mightily. Although it is recommended that companies have at least six months’ worth of revenue in the bank to weather economic disruptions such as the coronavirus, the reality is that most small companies don’t have enough cash to operate more than a couple of weeks.

For the service industry: restaurants, nail salons, haircutters, landscapers, athletic trainers, and others, the loss of weekly revenue is devastating for the owners and staff of small businesses. Most service workers live paycheck to paycheck and cannot go very long without being paid. We have already seen an enormous spike in unemployment claims, ending an era when the economy has basically been at full employment.

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Every day brings a tidal wave of choices, from hiring to product features to marketing plans. As the founder and CEO of JotForm, I know that decision-making is one of the toughest parts of my job. Technology and markets evolve at lightning speed, and there’s endless data to weigh with every choice.

On the bright side, learning to make smart decisions can help you work more productively, manage stress, dodge burnout and feel more satisfied in your business and your life.

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As an entrepreneur, you've likely had to embrace change lately so you not only continue to succeed, but you also find ways to dominate during unprecedented times. One of the best ways to gain a competitive edge is to stay on top of trends so you can create new opportunities and stay ahead of your competitors.

With that in mind, here are five trends all small business owners should embrace in 2020 and beyond.

1. Employee health and wellness must become a priority.
2. AI will continue to change the business world.
3. Mobile marketing will be used more creatively.
4. Younger consumers will declare World War Z.
5. It is time to go cashless.

The law of the jungle states, in evolutionary terms, that only the fittest survive. Before you can effectively brand an organization, you need to understand its clients/customers/donors/community and its competitors. In the marketing world, this is called a landscape analysis.

Often, companies — especially startups and nonprofits — will say they do not have competitors. Let me get this out right away: Everyone has competitors. Even nonprofits. If you think you do not have competitors, that means you don’t understand what a competitor is. A competitor is any person or organization taking business away from you.

Search engine optimization is an effective tool to build awareness and increase sales. If you’re thinking about using search engine optimization (SEO) to grow your business, then the latest offering from Web.com will excite you.
The Company recently announced the launch of an innovative SEO marketing solution, Simple SEO, to help businesses improve their search engine rankings.

It goes without saying that people search online before buying any product or availing any service. According to the search engine giant, Google, 83% of shoppers used online search before visiting a physical store.

So, being found on search results when potential customers type relevant phrases can improve awareness for your business, increasing sales eventually. And implementing the right search engine optimization techniques can boost the visibility for your business on search results.

The pandemic is revealing to small businesses just how versatile they are. So: A home-decor company, a skirt designer, and a business that makes boots for horses all realize they can craft face masks. A manufacturer of pet supplements and a hot sauce company join myriad craft distilleries in production of hand sanitizers.

The task of disinfecting workplaces tainted by or vulnerable to coronavirus also has attracted a variety of unexpected entrants. At AK Wet Works, the partners set out at once to reengineer their dustless blasters to produce a cold vapor fog that can sterilize 20,000 square feet an hour. In 100 hours, they produced a working model and began converting all 10 of their machines.

Seeking validation for their plan, the founders reached out to FQE, a local chemical company with an EPA-approved coronavirus disinfectant, to create a blend for them. Thinking their idea might have legs outside the Houston-area market, they next approached MMLJ, the original blaster manufacturer, which agreed to mass-produce the modified parts and market them to its large client base. MMLJ is paying a royalty to AK Wet Works, Bland says.

Seventeen-year-old Avi Schiffmann is an entrepreneur. But he is a different kind of entrepreneur. He’s not in it for the profits, fame and continued growth opportunities. At least, not right now.

Schiffmann, a high school teenager who lives in Washington State, has attracted worldwide attention through his amazing Survival Rate Calculator website, which tracks critical information related to the coronavirus outbreak. Since launching the site during the early stages of the pandemic, Schiffmann's web crawlers have been configured to pull in, parse and process real time data from the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and other governmental websites and convert that data to show infections, deaths, recoveries and rates of change for all countries around the world. The site breaks down infections on user-friendly maps, provides health information and also attempts to calculate a survival rate of someone who contracts COVID-19, based on user-submitted health data of age, gender and other health factors.

Is the site popular? You bet. According to a profile of Schiffmann on Business Insider, the site attracts about 30 million visitors a day and 700 million total so far.

The opportunities to answer questions for potential publication can come from various sources. Help a Reporter, known as HARO, matches journalists with sources for their stories. Quora allows users to answer any question posed by their community. And professional membership organizations offer business leaders the opportunity to share their insights in industry publications.

The opportunities to add your own insights are out there. But why would you, as a business owner, devote your time to answering these questions? What are the benefits?

Here are five ways that answering questions online can help promote your business.

Connections
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Brand
Website traffic
PR opportunities

A small, overlooked federal agency is shouldering a massive relief effort for the nation's small businesses and their workers left reeling by the novel coronavirus. The U.S. Small Business Administration has committed to auditing every sizable emergency loan it approves, yet nearly two months since the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program was launched, the agency has yet to make public the recipients of taxpayer aid.

You might have missed it amid all the goings-on since then, but in August 2019, a new law was passed that gives small businesses (and individuals/married couples) a new and simplified way to go through bankruptcy without needing to sell off their assets.

In other words, you can keep operating your business while going through and emerging from bankruptcy. And you can do it faster and cheaper than before.

The Small Business Reorganization Act added a new section to Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Subchapter V lets entities with debts below a threshold amount go through a streamlined court process, establishing and approving new repayment plans that creditors are required to accept (creditors get input, too, but this is limited and more streamlined as well). You don't have to sell off your assets as in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and you can keep operating without needing to meet the strict Chapter 13 requirements or suffering the prohibitive expense of a standard Chapter 11 process.

Your business might be in dire straits, but weathering this rough patch might mean a return to profitability.

Remote work was already on the rise before Covid-19 forced many employees to transition to working from home. Today, as many organizations continue to operate remotely due to the pandemic, how can business leaders address the array of security challenges their companies face?

Network security should be top of mind for businesses of all sizes across a variety of industries. While the list of companies experiencing major security breaches in recent years includes some well-known enterprises, addressing security threats is an especially hefty challenge for small businesses—particularly if those businesses lack the resources to implement strong controls and educate staff.

1. A question that delves into past experiences within working cultures and extrapolates where future environments may/may not align. For example: Creating the right culture is important for our company. Can you share details on a time you were in a toxic work environment, and how did management handle the situation? Describe when you were in a wonderful work environment and what management did correctly.

2. Deciphering how the candidates prefer to be managed as a key to ensuring management-style alignment. For example: Taking guidance from leaders is a critical part of any working arrangement. Describe how you like to be managed and how would you describe the ideal leader for your personality style?

3. Understanding motivations and expectations for long-term engagement. For example: We believe in long-term retention, and so we are cautious on the type of candidate we onboard. If you were going to commit to helping build this company long-term, what would it take for you to be happy and motivated?

4. Perspectives on their self-awareness of personal growth objectives and needs. For example: We all have challenges we are working to overcome. If you had to assess your challenges, where would be areas that you would focus to develop and look for support to improve?


5. Communication competence and tolerance for different interaction styles. For example: We all have different communication and coordination styles. What is the method you most effectively consolidate new information to inform your work, and what is your preferred communication style to align with your leadership and stakeholders?

1. Be clear in your direction.
2. Know who your customer is.
3. Focus on the channels that matter.
4. Only talk about what matters.
5. Remember what makes you special.
6. Find your niche.
7. Learn something new.
8. Plan well to save time.
9. Engage with your customers more.

For small businesses,traditional marketing can be expensive and difficult to maintain. Inbound marketing can level the playing field and give even the smallest business a chance to stand out and grow.

Why use inbound marketing?

1. It is cost effective
2. It helps build customers trust.
3. It increases brand awareness and boosts your online presence.
4. It can improve your marketing decision making
5. You can craft customer-focused content.
6. Inbound marketing provides two-way communication.
7. It helps bring in organic traffic to your website

Pivoting has become one of those hot topics in mainstream business media. When an economic crisis arises, countless think pieces are written about how to pivot your business to respond to the external environment. But pivoting is a huge gamble, requiring deep resources and the ability to fail with minimal consequences (hence why the term is often associated with venture-backed startups). And, one must ask oneself if there’s even a solid reason to pivot.

As a small business owner, while you might feel pressure to look anywhere and everywhere to increase your top line, resist the urge to pivot. Instead, focus on your mission.  

Define your mission
In the college admissions space, disruption is something we are used to. While high-profile recruiting scandals and a renewed focus on racial inequities have dominated headlines recently, a larger cultural shift was quietly occurring.

A business owner who spent nearly $46 million over the years on Facebook ads said he got booted from the platform without warning.

Jordan Nabigon, the CEO of the Ottawa, Ontario, content-curation site Shared, said Facebook deleted his companys main Facebook page without warning in October, and without providing an explanation. He shared a Medium post detailing his experience, which has received more than 400 claps from readers.

Nabigon spent $45,870,181 on Facebook advertising between 2006 and 2020 for Shared and his other company Freebies, according to expense reports reviewed by Business Insider. Shared employees three people full-time and 12 contract writers, Nabigon said.

Facebook increased its use of artificial intelligence to oversee advertising and other content during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Nabigon is among hundreds of business owners who said they suffered from Facebook's crackdown on ad policies.

With content marketing, small businesses use content in various formats to build stronger relationships with their customers, capture attention, improve engagement, and improve brand recognition. For small businesses, content marketing is a particularly cost effective marketing alternative that does not require a sizeable budget to run. In addition, content marketing delivers some of the highest overall Return on Investment (ROI) for every marketing dollar spent. And it is an integral part of a solid marketing strategy. This is because it helps to increase leads, generate more leads, get higher SEO rankings, and drive more traffic to your site.

The Small Business Administration has extended deferment periods for all of l its disaster loans made either in 2020 or 2021, the agency announced on Monday.

The extended deferment includes the SBAs Economic Injury Disaster Loan – or EIDL – program, which many businesses that did not qualify for Paycheck Protection Program loans or other funding used to bridge the losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.

All SBA disaster loans made in 2020 will have the first payment due date extended from 12-months to 24-months from the date of the note, the agency said. Disaster loans made in 2021 will have a first payment due date extended from 12-months to 18-months from the date of the note.

With the tax filing deadline approaching, make sure your company is getting all the assistance available from government programs. For instance, that means checking that you've fully utilized the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), the refundable tax credit designed to make it easier for businesses to keep employees on the payroll.

The credit is getting extended as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion relief package just signed by President Biden. Originally scheduled to end on June 30, ERC will continue through year end, giving business owners access to as much as $33,000 per employee in incentives.

How the credit works, depending on the time frame
First half of 2021:

Eligible employers can claim a refundable credit against the employer share of Social Security tax equal to 70 percent of a full-time employee's qualified wages paid--including certain health plan expenses--from January 1 through June 30, 2021. The maximum ERC amount available is $7,000 per employee per quarter or $14,000 for eligible wages paid in the first half of 2021.

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Visiting the lovely state of Colorado soon? I mean, really soon? Then don't forget to plan a visit with the...

I've been rereading Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This quote really struck me:

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it’s going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt." ~ Pirsig, Robert M. (2009-04-10). Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (p. 140).

Made me think of all the zealotry accusations levied at Extreme Programming practitioners about 10 years back... still seen in reaction to some of the more ardent claims of the primacy of TDD even today.

No conclusions, just suspect I will see the next fanatic a little differently next time I encounter one.

In 9 days, on the 15th of July, Audible will release the first of the SANDMAN audio adaptations. These are, well, full cast audiobooks of the first three SANDMAN graphic novels: Dirk Maggs gave me the role of the narrator, and I gave him the original scripts, so often what I'm saying as narrator is what I asked the artists to draw, over thirty years ago.

These are very straightforward adaptations. For the upcoming Netflix TV series, we're starting from now, and doing it as if it was being written, for the first time, in 2020. The audio adaptations are much closer to the original graphic novels, each episode being a comic in the original. Eleven hours of drama. The cast is amazing. The production and the music are glorious. I'm not sure about the narrator, but everything else is sparkling and exciting. I hope you all enjoy it...

For people who need it in a more tangible form, it will also be for sale as CDs.

Click on this, and you will hear James McAvoy as Morpheus...

I'm starting to hear that the money that came in from the Heritage Auction is going out to people and doing what I hoped it would do, which is make life easier for artists and writers.

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(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 25, 2024 ) The global phenolic antioxidant market is poised to experience robust growth, projected to reach $2.78 billion by 2030. Phenolic antioxidants, which inhibit free radicals, are essential in industries like plastics, rubber, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. The synthetic...

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(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 26, 2024 ) The industrial cybersecurity market was USD 84.54 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach up to USD 135.11 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 9.8 %. Rising government and private investments to create safe and secure industrial environment, deployment of AI/Gen...

(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 26, 2024 ) The global Photoacoustic Imaging Market, projecting growth from USD 80 million in 2024 to USD 105 million by 2029, with a CAGR of 5.5%. Key drivers include rising investments in imaging systems and strategic partnerships. Challenges include high system costs and...

(EMAILWIRE.COM, October 27, 2024 ) Near Field Communication (NFC) India Market overview NFC technology is integrated with IoT devices for seamless interactions. Mobile payments are advancing with NFC for convenience. Security enhancements are prioritized for trust in NFC solutions. Near Field...

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