Small Business Minute By Greg Weatherdon

In this episode, we explore when you should lead from the front or step back and lead from the back to keep your team motivated.

Finding a trustworthy supplier can be challenging. Following these 8 steps can help reduce the risk and increase your success.

I actually starting this piece 3 or 4 years ago, pre-Covid days. And as often happens when trying to be creative, you can be hit with a case of writer’s block that can leave any number of incomplete topics to collect dust. In my case, I can have upwards of a dozen or so pieces just sitting on the sidelines at any point in time. So was the case with this piece. The reason I mention pre-Covid days is because many businesses are still facing challenges as they recover, however my original observation about customer experience were prior to Covid and yet still exist today. Putting lipstick on a pig The phrase to put "lipstick on a pig" means making superficial or cosmetic changes to a product in a futile effort to disguise its fundamental failings. {Wikipedia} Many businesses, both small and large, condone this kind of behaviour. On a recent road trip south, we stayed in a number of hotels. Like many, when heading to a specific destination we tend to stay in mid range establishments that we book at some point

Don't confuse innovation with invention. Simply put innovation is improving something whereas invention is something new. Innovation should improve customer experience.

So what is a small business owner to do? Well, you have two choices, play defense, and batten down the hatches or go on the offense and grab market share.

My guest today is Dennis Geelen and is here to talk about his new book The Accidental Solopreneur and how it can help any consultant achieve greater success

There are many fairy tales when it comes to entrepreneurship. Knowing the difference between reality and fantasy, will save you grief!

A big client can kill your business! That's why the 15% rule is so important.

The reality of being a small business owner is that you are going to have difficult clients.

Shut up is my best tip to increase your sales. Learn more about this and an additional 4 tips in this episode.

Inflation is like rust. It can destroy your profitability. In a high inflation era, you must monitor your costs and adjust your pricing.

We are all guilty of letting things slip occasionally, but it’s what you do about it that counts. When was the last time you took a fresh look at your office, retail space or warehouse? Is it looking a little tattered or cluttered with stuff?

Let’s be honest. There’s lots of things that people have a passion for that could never support their dream lifestyle.

I’m always surprised at how many small business owners don’t prepare for their business’s year-end. Sadly, it’s more of a case that “they don’t know what they don’t know!” But spending some time on this annual event can potentially save you a lot of money. As to why so many entrepreneurs are oblivious to the importance of preparing for year-end has a couple of parents. To begin, most of the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the business owner. For some unknown reason, far too many owners don’t take the time to understand the financials of their business. Being an entrepreneur requires you to have an understanding of all aspects of your business if you hope to succeed. So many owners can recite chapter and verse on the merits of social media or other online promotions but can’t read an income statement. This makes absolutely no sense to me. The root cause for this appears to be that many owners are afraid or don’t want to look foolish by asking questions of their accountants, yet in the ne

One of the biggest challenges of a service business is managing your inventory. Now you might wonder what inventory, besides a few stationary supplies you may have, that need to be managed? Well, unlike a manufacturing, retail or a distribution business, where you have physical inventory that needs to be stored, sold and then replenished, service businesses on the other hand have a single and very unique inventory -TIME! Time- It’s how you get paid! Because as a service business, your product is the knowledge that you and your staff carry around in your head. Putting this knowledge or expertise to work is how you generate your revenue and that’s usually in the form of hours worked. It can be argued that service technicians like appliance or auto repair have inventory, but for the most part you hire them for their knowledge and they in turn they charge you for the time it takes to fix the problem. Therefore, the parts although important, are secondary to diagnostic skills the technician possess, because wi

With the vaccine rollouts well under way in many countries, the talk has turned to the reopening of the economies. One of the biggest issues facing many entrepreneurs, is the return to the workplace. At the start of the pandemic, millions of office workers were sent home to work remotely. Once the initial technical issues were resolved, everybody seemed to profess that they are never going back to the office and their future was a zero commute remote work environment. So confident that this new structure would be the new forever normal, many moved out of the big cities to rural or small communities, never expecting to commute again. Unfortunately, this might be a decision that they come to regret. Understandably, no one knew if or when a vaccine would be developed. However, in less than two years many countries are experiencing high vaccination rates and are slowly reopening much of their economies as life returns to some form of normalcy. So, what’s next? Well for starters, offices will begin to reopen

There are lots of reasons start-ups fail, but one that I see far too often is the lack of industry experience. Industry experience can be summed up as having substantive knowledge working in the area of the planned start-up.