Business Guides

Your mind is likely more on the holiday season in December than preparing your 2017 tax return during the last month of the year, but the final weeks of 2017 mark your last chance to make some strategic business decisions that could better manage your tax liability.

While whipping up product batches brings you joy, you need only so much sugar scrub and lip balm lining the shelves of your linen cabinet, so you give it away like any devoted crafter would do.

Is it time to turn your hobby into a business? Are you at the point where you feel that life is too short to invest 40-plus hours a week into something that feels thankless? Maybe it’s a good idea to stop shelving your dream because the longer an aspiring entrepreneur ignores the longing for freedom, the less likely the dream becomes.

Many micro business owners choose to slow their business activity down during the summer months. For crafters who busy themselves with summer fairs and farmer’s markets, the weekends stay hopping, but those lazy-day summer temptations can still set in during the week. If you're building a lifestyle business, or simply striving to bring extra income into the household, a lengthy seasonal break probably fits right into your plan. For business owners who wish to expand, it's just not realistic.

Every business is unique and what you do with your money is obviously a personal decision.  The following information represents a top-level review of some of the options you might consider.

The decision to grow a business can be complicated and often very personal.  All large businesses started small at some point, but it’s not always clear that expansion is desirable or even possible.  Sometimes it can be outright disastrous if the strategy is flawed or not aggressively executed and managed.Some small business owners want to keep their business that way ––– small.  If you’ve thought about expansion but have been reluctant to take the plunge, it’s useful to step back and objectively analyze what it takes to make it happen.  If your existing resources have limited further organic growth, there are a few options that can be considered: buying another complementary company, merging or forming a strategic alliance with another company, or developing new products or services.

Without customers, you have no business.  A statement of the obvious to be sure, but how often have you interacted with a company that disappointed you in some way?  Sometimes it’s just the small things that turn you away from ever doing business with them again.

Subscription-based businesses like Birchbox, Dollar Shave Club, StitchFix and HelloFresh, have all proven that there’s consumer demand for having products delivered directly to their doorsteps each week or month. Although a recurring stream of prepaid orders can reduce some of the uncertainty that comes with running a small business, there may be more complexity to running a subscription-based business than meets the eye. Here’s a look at the pros and cons that subscription models entail, to help you consider if it’s the right approach for your business.

This article lays out the basics of wholesale pricing your products. Wholesale pricing is essential when working with retailers and it is also essential to the success of your business.

We want to express the importance of knowing, celebrating and embracing the region in which you live. It is beneficial to both yourself and your business, or hobby, to truly know your region. It can help you get a grasp of who you are and what your customers may expect from you. It can also help target different demographics that you may, or may not, typically hit.

The amount of time you have in a day may be finite—but the potential you can get out of it is limitless. Here are some simple yet highly impactful ways to get more out of every workday.

Having a content strategy is an important aspect to ensure that your business appears in search results when prospects and customers are looking for the items you sell. But keeping up with the ever-changing rules of search engine optimization and content marketing can be a daunting task, particularly when you’re a small business owner wearing many hats. Here are a few simple ways you can tweak your content strategy in 2015 for less waste, and more impact.