SBA blog

When I was a Girl Scout, selling cookies meant dragging a wagon full of boxes door to door in my North Carolina neighborhood. I didn't have online tools or a marketing plan or even a real strategy.

Have you noticed how sometimes people don’t want to plan because they don’t want to put future numbers on record? I call this the “crystal ball and chain” problem.

Today there are 1.2 billion websites -- or one website for every seven people in the world! That’s a lot of competition. If you want to get traffic to your website, you’re going to have to take the right steps.

Occasionally, franchise owners run into problems running their businesses. If you decide to become a franchise owner, who should you communicate with to get an issue you’re experiencing resolved?

Did you know more than 52% of all small businesses in the U.S. are home based? According to the Small Business Administration, there are more than 28 million small businesses in the United States, making up 99.7 percent of all U.S. businesses.

Advertising and marketing is regulated by federal law, and if you’re not on top of the regulations that apply to you, your ads could end up costing you more in fines than they bring in business.

For small business owners, it can be difficult to find good job candidates. Small businesses often times have to compete in the job market with large employers offering an attractive menu of fringe benefits.

Who doesn’t love the freshness of vine-ripened tomatoes, just-picked cucumbers or corn bursting with summer sweetness? This time of year, there’s likely a bounty at your local farmer’s market.

What’s an encore entrepreneur? It might look a lot like you. These are people who might be starting a business for the first time as they near retirement age.

Most business owners have a general idea of the executive summary that comes with the traditional business plan. However, in the real world, summaries come up much more often than just in the business plan.