That is the crux of the problem facing Americas small businesses and consumers: they may not think they’ll be targets of hackers looking for big scores… but all of them probably will be. It is just too easy and too lucrative for hackers to gather and utilize people’s personal information for anyone to be safe – including small enterprises with databases that seem at first blush to be of limited utility.

Reality check: hackers will always go after the weakest link. If they determine that the big guys have toughened up, they’re just going to go after easier targets, like small businesses.

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Small towns and cities seem to be gaining popularity as locations for startups, but a metropolis like New York or Los Angeles is still great place to own a small business. With a large population as your potential customer base, there are plenty of opportunities to make your entrepreneurial dreams come true. Here are seven small business ideas for big cities.

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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.

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Drawing from that experience, he has learned a number of lessons about how to and how not to convey a the backstory behind any given company, and he shared several tips this week with entrepreneurs, filmmakers and music producers, and one journalist at a small gathering in Austin during South by Southwest.

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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.

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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

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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.

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Owners now say the administrative burdens of tax season pose a bigger burden than their actual tax bill.

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But Pubsoft Director of Marketing Heather Wied says small businesses should not spread themselves thin trying to master every social network under the sun. Pubsoft, which helps businesses publish online content, integrates social networking to help customers spread the word about their businesses.

The best social network for you is dependent on your target market, says Wied.

To maximize your time on social media – without losing your mind – check out Wieds three best tips:

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Years of experience helping small businesses develop and market engaging brands have taught me some valuable lessons about which strategies are most successful.

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Most of us are not that talented. We could use a little white space in our lives that we can fill with new ideas.

Lets talk about the 15 ways you could carve out more time to think, ideas suggested to me by some of the most successful entrepreneurs I know.

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But there are some smart things that small business owners should consider doing now. Here’s my top 3 tips:

1.  Access Capital Now
2.  Engage Rather Than Employ
3.  Have a Lean Start-Up

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The latest neuroscience suggests you can literally edit your memory. Here is what this big breakthrough means for you.

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The House voted Thursday to make permanent a tax break allowing small businesses to write off up to $500,000 in new equipment purchases.

While the move adds to momentum for congressional efforts to extend a range of now-temporary tax breaks, it also sharpens a conflict between the House and Senate over whether to extend the breaks permanently or temporarily.

Thursdays vote was 272-144, with several dozen Democrats joining Republicans to support the measure.

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All else being equal, would-be entrepreneurs should consider moving to Idaho, Texas, Utah, or Virginia, and fleeing California, Illinois, and Rhode Island. The first four states received A+ grades for small-business friendliness in a study published this week by local services startup Thumbtack and the Kauffman Foundation. The last three states got Fs.

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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.

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Have you ever used a technique for years, only to find out that it blows people away? For SEO purposes I use a very quick and simple system to find the right keywords, that factors in how popular a keyword is with the level of competition. It only takes a few minutes and helps you tap into the gold that lies buried  in the rubble that Google give you.

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• Embrace Perspective: No matter how much you love your company, there will be days when balancing the books creates anxiety. Remind yourself what fueled you to launch your business.

• Find Balance: Sometimes it might seem impossible to relax, but devoting even 60 minutes weekly to non-business related activities will help you recharge.

• Become Resourceful: Find ways to save money, time and energy. Try multitasking, such as purchasing business supplies while waiting for a prescription to be filled or patronizing retailers with special early shopping hours for business owners. Consider streamlining home expenses by eliminating cable or cooking more at home.

• Make Changes: Stay motivated by experimenting with new methods and tools. Attending trainings or online webinars about your industry can help re-ignite your creativity and even lead to business growth.

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1. Manage your energy, not your time.
If you take a moment to think about it, you will probably realize that you are better at doing certain tasks at certain times. For example, my creative energy is highest in the morning, so that is when I do my writing each day.

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Here are some tips to discuss with your tax pro to improve your tax situation and hopefully keep working capital in your bank account rather than in Uncle Sams pocket:

Start a retirement plan. If you are finally a few bucks ahead and don’t have a retirement fund, now is the time to start one. Here is the bonus: it is deductible!

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Whether your business is just getting off the ground or you are a well-established small and growing company, managing employee performance is a key ingredient to a productive and happy workforce.

Managing Employee Performance
And yet without a formal human resources department, many small business owners lack a formalized way to manage employee performance. The good news is there are simple practices a small business owner can start to successfully manage employee performance.

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Have a killer business idea? A killer business plan can help you turn it into a successful business. Creating a well-crafted business plan is no easy task, however. You will need to not only flesh out your idea, but also have a deep understanding of the different aspects of running a business — before you even start one. Figuring out how to do this correctly is hard enough, but there are several tools available to make this arduous task a little bit easier for would-be entrepreneurs.

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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?

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Perhaps you have a Facebook page to keep up with your college friends, cousins and golf buddies. But do you need Facebook for your small business?

Well, here is a fact to help you decide: 20 percent of all time spent on mobile devices – smartphones and tablets – is spent on Facebook, according to market research firm comScore.

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Small-business owners often are so busy working that they do not take time to plan for their retirements.

But that is clearly a mistake, financial advisers say.

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Pope Francis has approval ratings any leader could envy: 88 percent of American Catholics think he's doing a good job, and nearly three quarters of Americans in general view him with favor. What is he doing right?

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The cloud can save you time and money, but it also has the potential to change the way you do business.

The percentage of U.S. small businesses using cloud computing is expected to more than double during the next six years, from 37 percent to nearly 80 percent, according to a study from consulting firm Emergent Research and financial software company Intuit.

While use of the cloud today is generally associated with the ability to reduce costs and improve efficiency, widespread adoption of this technology is projected to have a transformative effect on small businesses, but also on large companies and government organizations.

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We usually learn more from our work for smaller clients and that’s counterintuitive, is not it? When I was very young, I thought that knowledge and business experience flowed downhill from the lofty heights of executive boardrooms to home offices. I have since learned that just as often, the knowledge flow is uphill from the small to the huge. I should have known that, anyway.

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Track Influencers

A key principle to inbound marketing is to leverage industry influencers to help promote your content. This can be done a number of ways, but ultimately requires a holistic approach to network and relationship development. One of the highly useful features of Google+ lies in its audience management capabilities. Specifically, the ability to bucket users into group segments, otherwise known as circles. This is valuable to businesses because it means they can track the activity of industry influencers, who can have an impact on their reach, Marc explained.

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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.

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Many small businesses will turn to local developers when it comes to building their first business website, while others will rely on agencies, or even step up and take on the challenge themselves. Today, we want to help those who're brave enough to be building their own website.

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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…

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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.

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Every small business should have a basic knowledge of search engine optimization. In fact, you should almost be exhausted by the term  SEO at this point, as you have been undoubtedly told time and time again just how important it is. But unlike many trending industry buzzwords, SEO is here to stay. Why? In our web-facing world, the (already) dominant search engines are becoming the cornerstone of the internet. Standard procedure for individuals looking for information is to search first.

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Although major companies like Staples and Home Depot have dominated news headlines lately, they are not the only companies at risk for cyber crime and hacking. Small businesses are far more susceptible to hackers than their larger counterparts, according to information from the National Cyber Security Alliance

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Small businesses are driving the U.S. job recovery, according to a recent blog post by Maria Contreras-Sweet, the administrator of the Small Business Administration. In her post she points out that about 7 million of the 10.9 million jobs added since the Great Recession were created by startups and small enterprises.

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To ensure success in the new year, most small businesses don't realize that the process begins long before January 1. Instead, a lot of work goes into setting your business up for a running start when the clock strikes 12. Do not wait; start now with this list of 10 New Year Tips For Your Small Business.

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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%.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The transfer of ownership interests in a small business should take into account all of the considerations that make each business, and especially a family-owned business, unique. The vehicle for accomplishing the transfer is usually called a buy-sell agreement. Its name barely begins to describe the buy-sell agreements various purposes. With professional advice, the agreement can be tailored to meet the objectives of each small business, whether the business is in the form of a close corporation, partnership, limited liability company, or some other structure.

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As a small-business owner, you are always on the lookout for ways to boost cash flow. Although increasing sales is one way to make that happen, cutting costs can be a faster way to increase cash. Here are seven of the most effective ways to reduce expenses without compromising quality.

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Online electronics store Adafruit began accepting bitcoin as a payment method in November 2013. Just over a week later, sales surged.

The DIY electronics merchant raked in tens of thousands of dollars that month alone, boosted by the annual shopping surge known as Bitcoin Black Friday. While sales have been up and down since, site founder Limor Fried says that, as a small business owner, she loves the cryptocurrency despite its potential pitfalls.

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Between working all the time and being high energy in all circumstances, establishing a small business is more exhausting than ever. Here is how one entrepreneur does it.

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Whether you decide to outsource your tax tasks or perform them in-house it is important to arm yourself with the relevant knowledge to make sure your business not only complies but also saves time and money wherever possible. Here are a few resources to get you started:

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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?

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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.

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How you act defines you as a leader. That is why there are so few real leaders nowadays.

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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.

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