Do you have a great idea for a new product? Good for you, but taking a product from the mind to the marketplace isn’t easy, and it’s fraught with peril. There are numerous scammers out there waiting to play on your inexperience and enthusiasm. You may have seen infomercials on TV. These companies often cost a significant amount of money and they leave you with nothing in return.
Your small business is growing, and you are in an enviable position; you need to add an employee or two. Hiring a new employee is tough, and hiring the right employee is even tougher. The impact of an employee on your bottom line is exponentially greater on your small business or startup than on a large corporation. That potential employee’s passion and commitment to your company are key. You want someone who cares about helping your company, and sees its success as part of his or hers. Weed out the wrong ones and hire the right one by creating interview questions that focus on values, not just skills and responsibilities. Skills can be taught, but you can’t change someone’s values
Backlinking is a smart, economical and relatively easy way to build traffic to your website and enhance your page rank with the various search engines. What is a backlink? Just as it’s name suggests, a backlink is any hyperlinked text or phrase placed on a website linking to your home page or any page on your site. The strategy is simple. In theory, the more backlinks you have — the higher your search engine rank — making it easier for customers to find you.
Fifty-two percent of small businesses in the U.S. are home-based. However, the home office deduction is rarely used by these entrepreneurs. I’ve personally recommended business owners shy away from it because the experts say it’s a red flag for an audit and who wants to be audited? Here’s the issue.
It’s cold and flu season — one of the worst on record. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) anticipates the flu will cost businesses more than $10 billion in direct costs this year, and when you consider the costs of lost productivity, that number number soars even higher. If you want to protect your small business from the affects of the cold and flu, encourage your employees to stay home when they’re sick.