Getting a business started and off the ground can be hard, and every business owner wants all the help they can get. If you're a minority business owner, there's targeted aid and opportunities available to you. To take advantage of them, however, you'll need a Minority Business Enterprise Certification (or MBE Certification).

As a small business, it can be hard to set aside the budget necessary to do the marketing campaigns you want to do, especially with newer mediums like digital, it can be all too easy to feel overwhelmed. When you consider the fact that the U.S. SBA holds that a small business with revenue under $5 million (the average annual revenue of a small business with a website) should be spending about 8% of that revenue on marketing (roughly $400 thousand annually), it may surprise you than 83% of businesses with 50 people or less (i.e., truly small businesses, or about 90% of them) spend a mere $1,000 on marketing per month — this amount is only appropriate for businesses with revenue limited to $150 thousand annually, and digital is only a small portion of that budget.

In an industry where sales can make or break your business, it's important that you (or your sales team) have good sales habits. However, there's more to it than just having good habits, it's about breaking bad sales habits, too. In this post we’re going to discuss how to break bad sales habits so you can improve your bottom line.

Regardless of the kind of exit you're considering for your business, it's going to take time to complete and will have an array of effects on you, your employees, your family, your finances, and more. In today's post, we'll elaborate on why you need a business transition plan.

It's hard to start a business, and even harder to admit when your business is struggling. The admission is only the first step to determining what's right for your struggling business. Do you fight onward and find out how to improve your struggling business? Or is it that your business will only continue to struggle, draining your energy and your wallet? There's no way to address this directly without looking at all the specifics of your business and industry.

In today's article we'll talk about some of the questions you should ask yourself to help figure out what's right for your struggling business.

When it comes to honoring and promoting small and local businesses, almost everyone thinks of Small Business Saturday. To be fair, it is timed at the height of the retail shopping season, but this isn't the only time of year that focuses on small businesses. In fact, Small Business Week was earlier this month.

Laura Whipple and Austin Whipple started Pinball Publishing in 2002. Looking for new products and to expand the business, Pinball Publishing introduced Scout Books in 2009.

Inspired by his experience in theater design and his love for bicycling, Curtis Williams founded North St. Bags in 2009. North St. Bags designs and produces a remarkable line of all-weather bike commuter bags. His bags are well-received in the marketplace, but when he came to the PCC SBDC in March 2013 he was struggling to earn sufficient profits to sustain the business.

Press release originally posted on SBA Portland District Office website.