Unfortunately, living and working with difficult people is unavoidable. While they're a little easier to manage in our personal lives, at work, it can become a struggle to balance professionalism and quality work with putting up with distractions and setbacks. Today's post discusses nine best practices for working with difficult people so you can keep your sanity while accomplishing your goals and completing projects on time.

Your food business is your baby, which makes it hard to let go of any aspect of your business. But just like hiring the right staff to do the work you can't, at some point your business needs to hire the right contractors to help you with work neither you nor your staff can handle so you can focus on helping your business grow. The benefits of outsourcing for small business owners is undeniable, and in this post, we'll discuss why outsourcing your food business tasks is so important.

National Mom and Pop Business Owner's Day is on March 29th. In honor of day, today's post will tell you how "mom and pop" shops can out compete the big brands.

Community Connectivity — Citizens

No matter how altruistic or charitable a big brand may be, they can never really participate in community the way that a small business can. After all, big brands aren't tied to any one location, and the people in charge of them, even on a local level, need to concern themselves with multiple, regional locations and issues. Local businesses not only depend on the community to thrive, but they're capable of giving back in many more personal and meaningful ways. Every action that a local business takes within the community not only garners brand trust and a positive brand image, it also builds community pride.

Becoming an entrepreneur and opening your first business is thrilling and rewarding, but it's not without its risks. After all, so many that are inspired by the American dream and the glowing success of startups, fail and close their doors for good. Today's post will discuss the five most common small business pitfalls as well as how you can avoid them and come that much closer to lasting success.

The PCC CLIMB Center is a proud sponsor of Portland Radio Project's Biz503 show - the new Portland-centric startup and small business talk show on PRP.fm. 

The PCC CLIMB Center is a proud sponsor of Portland Radio Project's Biz503 show - the new Portland-centric startup and small business talk show on PRP.fm.

There’s no expiration date on following one’s passions.

The PCC CLIMB Center is a proud sponsor of Portland Radio Project's Biz503 show - the new Portland-centric startup and small business talk show on PRP.fm. 

As a food entrepreneur (even an aspiring one) you already know that you belong to a creative group that's always looking for new flavors to love, restaurants ready with a fresh take on favorites, and the best sources to provide only the best ingredients. Foodies are resourceful and innovative, and food entrepreneurs have a can-do attitude and a devotion to sharing delectable experiences, great and small, that are practically contagious. Unfortunately, being good with food and having the bold desire to bring your food to the marketplace isn't enough to translate into a successful business.

Fortunately, PCC Small Business Development Center offers a 14-week intensive program to help you do just that—Getting Your Recipe to Market. In today's post, we'll explore an important part of how to grow your food business, which you'll learn about as a part of the course's market readiness training: horizontal and vertical growth strategies. Both are valuable methods for growing a business through the development of brands, products, production and distribution channels, and business partnerships, but we generally recommend one over the other when first starting your business.

As a business owner, you’re constantly monitoring different metrics and figures to see how your operations are performing, and what you can improve upon.

But did you know there is one number that virtually every business should know if they want to be successful? No matter what kind of products or services you provide, cost of goods sold (“COGS” for short) is the one number that you need to pay attention to. Your COGS basically tells you how much you are spending to produce each unit of whatever it is you sell.

Aside from offering quality products and services, your business undoubtedly relies heavily on customer service. Ensuring customer satisfaction through the sales process is one thing, but as you already know, customer service can't end there. You need to ensure that all the communication channels provide stellar customer service. Email may not seem like the “go-to” customer service option, especially in the face of Live Chat assistance options. However, it remains a primary form of customer service communication — in point of fact, 72% of adults prefer to interact with brands and retailers through email.

In today's post, we'll be discussing five ways you can improve customer service with better emails.