With all the buzz around digital marketing and e-commerce, it might be tempting to think that brick and mortar stores are going the way of the dinosaur. But you’d actually be wrong. As a matter of fact, 94 percent of all retail sales in America are still generated by brick and mortar stores.

But before opening a brick and mortar store, you need to have all of your bases covered as a small business owner. There are a lot of moving parts to getting your physical storefront up and running, and with that comes a lot of opportunities for things to go sideways.

Digital marketing can be a dizzying arena when it comes to the amount of tools, systems and platforms available to businesses. The moment you think you’ve seen one platform that can literally “do it all,” two or three others spring up with more functionality or the same feature set at a cheaper price.

Keeping up with the latest in digital marketing tools might seem like an impossible task, especially for small businesses. How exactly is one to supposed to find the best digital marketing platforms for small businesses?

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).

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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.

There’s something special about the later years in life, including the freedom to do different things like travel, explore, and even start a business.

Those individuals who endeavor to create their own business at this stage in life are often referred to as  “encore entrepreneurs”. Individuals who start business after 50 accounted for nearly one-quarter of new businesses started last year. People in this age range actually start businesses at a higher rate than those in their 20s. If you consider full-time independent workers, baby boomers and seniors combined are actually the largest segment at 37 percent according to the MBO independent workforce study.

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.