small business

Business growth and profitability. Most entrepreneurs would consider these to be the Holy Grail of business ownership. So it’s not too surprising that many participants in the financial workshops I lead are surprised when I tell them that instant profits and rapid business growth aren’t always a cause for celebration.

“How can this be?” you might be wondering. The best way to explain it is to tell the story of the Wonder Widget Company. Haven’t heard of them? Well, this is a fictitious company I made up to help me explain business financial concepts in an easy-to-understand way.

With April 15 just around the corner, millions of Americans are rushing to complete their tax returns. But mistakes are easy to make. Ted Shalek, CFO of Smart Online, developers of OneBiz® suite of web based small business applications, offers a few tips on how to successfully tackle taxes:

If you think about it, your company’s website is an extension of your business. What message is it conveying to the visitors? Is it easy to navigate through? How are people accessing your website? It is important as a business owner to answer all of these questions and have a clear idea of how your website will interact with your clients.

Over the past month or so, there has been a noticeable shift in the dialog coming out of Washington, D.C. with regard to economic priorities. Health care reform has for the most part been put on the back burner, replaced by an emphasis on job creation.
As part of this emphasis, the federal government has proposed and launched several initiatives to help increase access to capital for small businesses. One of these would transfer $30 billion to a new Small Business Lending Fund that could be accessed by community banks.

Are you trying to market to the entire world and finding it hard to get clients? Build your business, make more money and love your work by using this list of questions to identify and find your ideal clients.

Your target audience consists of the people and businesses that are most likely to need and want what you have to sell. Before you create a marketing plan for your business, it is critical that you define your target audience and create an ideal client profile so you can attract this audience with your marketing. Once you have identified your target audience and ideal clients you will find it so much easier to design your marketing plan around their identity and their needs.

One cannot undermine the increasing importance of Facebook Fan Pages in the present times. What started as a casual social networking tool has evolved and transformed itself to a powerful marketing platform for businesses. Facebook Fan Pages are not only source of tremendous web traffic but also a great medium to share information and expose your content.

However, in order to leverage the maximum potential of Fan Pages, businesses need to make them more engaging and encourage more and more visitors to participate in the same. And doing this requires thorough diligence and dedication. Here are some tips:

Let’s face it, the economy may be getting better, but many people are still suffering from things such as unemployment, foreclosures and everything in between. With all these factors many families are crunching their finances and changing their spending habits. As a business owner it is a good idea to realize how your consumers are spending their money differently, and determine how you can get through these hard times successfully.

Over the past couple of years, the term “credit crunch” has taken its place in the popular vernacular alongside other now-common phrases like “mortgage meltdown” and “bank bailout.”

But is the supposed credit crunch that we keep hearing so much about (go ahead and Google it—I did and got more than 12 million results!) real? While most of the media would have us believe it is, from my perspective, I’m not so sure.

There’s no question that the financial crisis and ensuing credit crunch have made it more difficult than ever to secure small business financing and raise capital. This is especially true for fast-growth companies, which tend to consume more resources in order to feed their growth. If they aren’t careful, they can literally grow themselves right out of business.

The past couple of years have been an especially challenging time for most business owners as they’ve struggled to maintain sales and profitability in the face of one of the worst economic downturns in our nation’s history. As a result, many owners and entrepreneurs have been only too glad to say goodbye to 2009 and welcome in a new year.