Small Business

Everything you need to know about setting up, managing and growing small businesses. Veterans, as well as newbies share their stories and valuable lessons.

the ceo magazine, small business,

What You Should Know Before Embarking on a Career in Franchising

Phil Fankhauser, CEO, Epcon When people think of franchising opportunities, they often think of fast food restaurants, hotel chains and fitness centers. When I tell people that I offer a franchise for home building communities – they do a double take. About two decades ago, my cofounder and I decided that the business model we created for

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the ceo magazine, small business,

Five common mistakes of entrepreneurs and how to avoid them

Jenny Q. Ta, CEO, Sqeeqee Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons: poor planning, lack of cash flow, not understanding the market, treating customers poorly and much more.   As a successful entrepreneur, author and CEO of Sqeeqee, the first-of-its-kind social networthing® site, I have found that these are the five common mistakes that entrepreneurs make:   Underestimating how

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success

Success Revisited

About eleven years ago I wrote some tips for a business publication to share some of my thoughts about what I had learned in my first fifteen years in business.  If you do the math then you will know that the business is now over 25 years old. As I was going through some old

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It’s a Year!

Year-end is just around the corner for those of us that close out the year on September 30th. That means it’s time to assess our accomplishments and reward employees for their work. Assessing the business for me is not just about growing the top line, although that is critically important. But there are other measures

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Work_Life_Balance

Achieve Work/Life Balance by “Planning Yourself First”

Many financial planners suggest that you should adopt savings habits by “paying yourself first”. This means that you should save first, and spend afterwards. Well what if you applied this basic concept to a more valuable commodity in your life than money, time? What if you “planned yourself first” and knew when your rests and

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the ceo magazine, sales management,

Dedicate 20 Percent of Your Time to Less Stress and Higher Prices

If you are a small business owner, independent contractor, or have any career in which you predominantly work for yourself, you’ve probably experienced a time when you’ve been without clients or otherwise out of work. This is always incredibly stressful; even if you’ve got money in the bank, at some point you can’t help but

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What Summer?

All of the local news channels in our area are in the “back- to-school” programming mode. There are features about how to get the most from the last few weeks of summer, trying to get kids back on a regular schedule and planning for back-to-school shopping. With all of the attention, I had to stop

What Summer? Read More »