Business Management News

When you are operating a business there is nothing as bad as a missed opportunity. Any unexpected event whether manmade or natural can greatly disrupt your business. To avoid such problems it’s very important to create a business continuity plan. A good business continuity plan will help you reduce the loss and downtime in case there is a disruption. It will also help boost your employee and customer confidence and ensure that your business is back on track. Read through to learn some of the tips that can help you.

When the frustration of the daily grind or the thoughts that “I could do this and be my own boss” start to cross your mind, then it is time to sit down and plan how to get from the “here” of a job to the “there” of starting your own business.

Somewhere between that “ah-ha” moment of a great business idea and cashing your first paycheck should be a lot of research to determine what the market is like for your idea. Many entrepreneurs are very good at coming up with services or products that sound like they fill a need, but fall short in how to enter the market. Often they will blindly jump into the business arena, only to find that they either failed to do any market research or grossly misunderstood the market.

Q: I've been a licensed professional counselor and marriage and family therapist for 21 years, and I've been in solo private practice since 1999 and have always rented office space. My wife and I are in the beginning stages of looking into arranging for me to work out of our home. Could you please provide us with any ideas or issues we need to be paying attention to in this endeavor?

Career setbacks and restarts can be particularly challenging for the self-employed. Rather than just focusing on updating one’s resume and strategizing on whom to send it to, the self-employed often have to reinvent their brand, find a new way of doing business and uncover a fresh customer base. This can be a gut-wrenching process requiring a lot of introspection, faith, courage, and above all, confidence. Learn from the stories of three NASE Members who weren't afraid to reboot their businesses.

In the age of big-box home improvement stores, many people have started handling fix-it projects themselves. The worst that can usually happen is a plumbing repair springs a leak. Do-it-yourself lawyering, however, is another story.

For all micro-businesses, customer service and marketing no longer need to exist in separate silos: Given the high costs of finding new customers and consumers’ widespread use of digital media to both communicate with companies and spread tales of glee and woe, it’s time to make customer service a successful marketing strategy