All Entries in the "Troubleshooter" Category
8 Keys to Re-energizing Your Business
It’s a tough world out there. Customers are demanding more. Competition is keen – sometimes from unexpected places. Your business must work harder and smarter to improve profits. And on top of it all, there always seem to be new taxes and regulations to deal with. Sometimes however (not that this includes you, of course), [...]
5 Ways Mistakes Can Make a Business Better
With little cash, and even less wine industry experience, Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey launched Barefoot Wine in – where else – their laundry room. They built the brand and later sold it to wine giant E&J Gallo. Now the business owner duo share what they learned along the way with other business owners. One [...]
10 Things Wrong With Your Website
In this age of social media and digital everything, you can’t afford to be a website weakling. If your competition has a killer online presence, and you don’t, you lose. Today’s consumers look online more than ever before. Even business owners who think they don’t really need a “best in class” website are missing more [...]
13 Business Resolutions for 2013
Here they are, along with some of our best tips and strategies to help you pull each one off: Resolution #1: Fix my website! Here are 10 things that are probably wrong with your site, and how to fix them: 10 Things Wrong With Your Website Resolution#2: Improve our customer service! Here’s how: 8 Ways to [...]
6 Customer Feedback Essentials for Small Business
Small business owners hear it all the time: To find out how your business is doing, including what people like or don’t like and what you need to adjust, ask customers for feedback. But your quest for feedback can either produce a magic elixir or simply be an annoyance to customers and prospects, depending on [...]
What Every Business Should Know About Pricing
For many small businesses, survival depends increasingly on finding the ever-elusive “right price” for whatever goods or services are being sold. But there’s no magic formula. No matter what you’re selling, the “right” price to ask is never clearly defined. For one thing, costs differ from business to business. Online businesses, for example, don’t have [...]
5 Worst Ways Business Owners Waste Time
Most of us believe that cell phones, email and other tech devices help business productivity. But tech devices and some common business practices can actually be big time wasters. For example, are you and your employees constantly checking email or web sites? Do you have an open door policy, a schedule full of meetings, and [...]
Five Website Landing Page Mistakes and Fixes
If you have a website and expect it to help, not hinder your business, you’ll want to avoid the major mistakes that many small businesses make. Focus on your “landing pages” in particular. A landing page, quite literally, is the page on your site where the incoming visitor “lands” as determined by the link they [...]
4 New Small Business Tax Surprises
Here are two words small business owners seldom like to see together: “taxes” and “surprise!” Trying to cope with overwhelming complex tax laws is hard enough without the occasional grenade the IRS tosses across the moat. But BizBest figures you’d rather know now, before getting a notice in the mail. Here, then, are tips on [...]
How to Defuse Workplace Conflicts
Workplace conflicts can sap energy from any small business. Whether it involves employees, vendors or contractors, getting such issues resolved is critical to smooth sailing. Business managers overall spend an estimated 40 percent of their time dealing with conflicts both big and small. That’s just normal, since disagreements, disputes and honest differences exist everywhere. For [...]
