Blood pressures are rising at many small businesses now that tax season is underway.

Although many owners hire accountants and attorneys to complete their income tax returns, taxes are a hassle. In a survey released last year by the advocacy group National Small Business Association, nearly 60 percent of the owners surveyed said the administrative burdens were the biggest problems posed by federal taxes. And 85 percent of the more than 675 owners said they relied on a professional to prepare their returns.

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Apps consume the majority of mobile media time, but local business apps struggle to compete for attention. Columnist Wesley Young looks at how SMBs can instead use space on the most popular apps to get in front of customers.

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1. Have a point of view and unique product offering

Commodity businesses such as books and electronics were the first to see e-commerce really squeeze out mom and pop stores. The product offering is uniform and easily comparable.

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Small businesses are a crucial part of Orlandos economy, but there's no denying that there are challenges in operating one, especially in the first few years.

In fact, there are more than 28 million small businesses in the United States. According to data from the Small Business Administration, in 2013 about 630,000 small businesses launched, and of those, close to 80 percent still had their doors open in 2014.

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As someone that has worked for small technology-based businesses for years, I have come to learn some of the best habits of small business geniuses. While most business owners are unique and every business is different, there is one very important trait that is shared by the most successful ones: they track everything.

Tracking is one of the key pillars of a successful business. Without tracking, the business owner simply cannot know what works and what does not. It is also difficult to see where the inefficiencies are and how they can be improved upon.

The best way to become a data genius is to get into the habit of tracking everything when it comes to your business, and that includes the website, customers, and employees.

Since my experience mainly covers online and web businesses, most of the tips in this article will be relevant to those types of businesses. However, they can be modified and applied to just about any business.

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Running a business is like running a marathon. You have the law, the government, and the competition all eagerly expecting you to make a mistake. Unlike in the marathon, any mistake you make cannot be forgiven. That being said, many of the mistakes businesses make are usually due to negligence and ignorance. Notwithstanding the intent behind these mistakes, you can be made to pay a huge price for committing them.

However, nothing can hurt your business as much as running afoul of the law in the process of running your business. Small business owners can pay the hardest for legal mistakes.

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Global mobile traffic now represents roughly 60 percent of internet traffic, making mobile apps a must-have for businesses. But consumers today increasingly expect an Amazon-like experience online. Small businesses do not just need to build a mobile app, they need to build a great one.

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Is your business protected from a data breach? The largest data theft in history:

1.2 billion internet user names and passwords compromised
420,000 websites impacted
Well-known national brands and small companies affected.
Here are ten things you can do to protect your business.

1. Secure sensitive customer, employee or patient data.

Store paper files and removable storage devices (such as thumb drives and CDs) containing sensitive information in a locked drawer, cabinet, safe or other secure container when not in use.
Restrict access to sensitive data to those who have a need to know. Give employees access to only the information they need to do their jobs - whether it's online or in paper form.

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More and more hiring managers no longer view longevity on a résumé as a positive attribute. Some believe it indicates the employee lacks diverse work experience; others that the employee is complacent, or is afraid of change. This could very well be the case, but to me (and I may be coming from an old school of thought), stability on a résumé is something that hiring managers should still value. It can demonstrate loyalty, dependability, expertise and commitment.

More specifically, here is how I evaluate longevity in a potential employee, in an attempt to see if it should be embraced, rather than dismissed.

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To understand the truth, we must first understand the lies that make it difficult to grasp.

1. Success means the same thing to everyone.

It does not.

Some people value success in pure cash. Some people value it in the freedom that cash buys. Some people see success in how many lives they impact for the better. And some people judge success by how well they perform any given task at any given moment.

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Elon uses the Richard Feynman technique from what I have read about his approach, mixed with first principles.

... which is, basically, in simple terms: do not try to remember, but try to understand; when you understand, you will remember automatically.

Sounds simple? But yet, so many people do not do it like that. They try to cram loads of info and facts into their brains, especially students, with the result of forgetting a lot of it.

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Entrepreneurship is experiencing a romantic renaissance of sorts, a startup spring if you will. Everyone wants to hang a shingle on the back of their budding unicorn. It is culture and it is growth and it is hustle. Starting a business today seems to look really good on a t-shirt.

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Getting there starts with breaking down profit into its components and using six tools to move those pieces in the right direction.

Profit is revenue minus costs. But to boost profit, it helps to break it down further into gross profit -- price times quantity minus variable costs (e.g., costs that increase with each unit of product you sell) -- minus fixed costs (e.g., salaries, benefits, rent, and utilities).

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Your small business is up and running, and you have a product or service that you are excited about. How do you boost your chances of building a venture that will last for the long term? A government statistic shows roughly 40% of Australian businesses fail within the first four years.

Three Key Success Metrics Every Small Business Owner Should Focus On

#neverforget - September 11th

The big question therefore is: are you prepared for a cyber attack? Small business credit provider Headway Capital, has compiled data to help you check yourself.

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Did you know that nearly 96 percent of your first-time visitors are not ready to purchase from your website right away? That means in most cases, in order to make a sale, you need to encourage your visitors to return more often to your site.

Retargeting is the best way to target your first-time visitors on different marketing channels and encourage them to return to your site. Since retargeting helps you to target your existing prospects, it will likely boost more engagement than untargeted ads, making your entire campaign cheaper and cost-effective.

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New Years resolutions: We love to make them. And, statistics show, we almost never keep them. (Eighty percent of people who make New Year's resolutions abandon them by the second week of February.)

Of course you could try using silence to accomplish a goal. Or you could try to sneak up on big goals. Those strategies help, but they are far from foolproof.

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Numbers do not lie, and the statistics are in -- there is a gender gap in salaries. There are varying statistics with different percentages, but the discrepancy is out there. Data from PayScale shows the difference in parity between controlled and uncontrolled pay gaps. The World Economic Forum shows gender gaps is a problem on a global level. But, how do employers structure and communicate salaries without any inequality?

After leading a small business human resources and operations department for 13 years, I know the answer is simple: Keep your policy simple and communicate it well.

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Like many entrepreneurs, in the beginning of my own business I did not really plan for growth. Instead, I responded to opportunities as they came. In fact, I first went in to business by literally bumping into an opportunity. One day, while walking my dog, I met a man who needed a business plan. He was my first client.

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Sixty-nine percent of small business owners have zero to little confidence they will be able to retire comfortably, Paychex found in a survey.

Thirty percent said they were somewhat confident, 21% said they were not at all confident, and 18% fall between somewhat confident and not at all confidentȒadding up to a total of 69%. Only 20% said they were very confident they will have enough money to retire comfortably.

Asked what could help improve their situation, 68% said being able to save more. Other ways they would like to receive financial help were assistance in converting a portfolio balance into monthly income, cited by 10%; guidance on investments and the appropriate savings rate, also cited by 10%; and retirement tools to cover a wide range of expenses, including health care, cited by 8%. Fifteen percent said that nothing would help them feel more confident about retirement.

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A majority of small business owners, 63.8 percent, believe that President Trump's policies have helped their business, according to a survey from the Job Creators Network.

More business owners—57.5 percent—believe Republicans do a better job of managing economic issues than do Democrats (14 percent). The survey finds the support is likely due to Trump's ability to roll back regulations and red tape on businesses.

A majority of businesses also support the tax reform package that was signed into law and believe media coverage of the proposal was biased.

Sixty-eight percent of small businesses view the legislation favorably or somewhat favorably. Fifty-eight percent said the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will benefit their business.

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Why does qualifying for a small business loan have to be such a mystery?

According to a CB Insights study, cash flow issues are the second most common reason startups fail, accounting for 29% of failures. In many cases, access to capital would make a big difference. Yet the loan application process is notoriously opaque for small business owners. Research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows the average small business owner spent 26 hours searching and applying for credit, contacted three financial institutions and submitted three credit applications. Despite this time-consuming work, only half of small-business applicants end up being approved for the loan amount they applied for.

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I spend a lot of time asking employees about how leaders can be more effective communicators. Just yesterday, in fact, I moderated a focus group with employees at a fast-growing consumer products company.

The people in the group provided the same feedback I hear time and time again: Leaders are pretty good at sharing information, but they are lousy listeners.

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U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry today announced that the Department of Energy will award 219 grants totaling $34 million to 183 small businesses in 41 states.  Funded through DOE’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, todays selections are for Phase I research and development.  

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Optimism appears to be rising among small business owners (SBOs): 53% of the SBOs who participated in TD Banks 2018 Small Business Survey said they expect their revenues will grow in 2018. That is an improvement over the 46% of respondents who said the same in 2017.

In addition, the number of small businesses -- defined for purposes of the survey as those with $5 million or less in annual revenues -- that plan to hire this year more than doubled. In 2017, only 9% of respondents said they expected to add staff. This year, 22% said they intend to.

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Delissa Reynolds, an actress, ran a popular local bar for years, until the neighborhood changed.

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How to Get Traffic to Your Website

In building this strategy, it can help to get input from the experts who have been there before. Here are some tips and tricks ranging from content creation to SEO to social media from digital marketing experts around the web.

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Here are seven reasons why your business is not generating sales:

1. You are marketing, not selling.

Reaching out to a networking contact is a sales call when that contact has expressed a need and interest for what you are selling, and you actually discuss your offer, your pricing, next steps and or other ways to move forward. If your networking meeting is to introduce what you offer or to reconnect in general, that is a marketing call. Many small business owners are busy on social media, tweaking their website, writing blogs, and catching up over coffee – all of which is great for marketing and may lead to sales eventually -- but these activities are not directly generating sales.

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Entrepreneurs start their own businesses or side hustles--which you can do in just a few hours--for a variety of reasons. Some want to be their own boss. Others want to make their living by doing something they love. Others seek the opportunity to make a bigger difference in the lives of others.

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Your role as CEO, president or founder is critical to your small and growing company — you need to focus on products, customers and strategies. One of the last things you want to do is babysit your bookkeeper. Yet I can think of dozens of horror stories born of a lack of accounting oversight in the early stages of startup growth.

What should you track? Here are seven items I have found are key to request from your bookkeeper and how to review them. Asking for these items is good accounting hygiene: It informs your bookkeeper that you are inspecting their work and allows you to quickly identify and minimize potential problems. And, in my experience, it should not take you more than an hour a month.

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Many of us are wondering, for example, how the U.S. economy will impact business. Will hiring finally ease up? How will younger generations change our workforce?

Without a crystal ball, it's tough to answer every question. But, given trends we saw this year, it is possible to make a few educated predictions about what small businesses should prepare for as 2019 approaches. Here are my top four predictions:

2019 is the beginning of the Gen Z takeover.

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Being a leader can be a difficult, and sometimes thankless, job. You work long hours, make tough decisions, and try your best to make your employees and your customers happy. But things don't always work out the way you hope.

Every leader can use a bit of inspiration and humor every once in a while. Adding some fun to your day can make it all come together and, at the same time, perhaps even put a smile on your face.

The next time you feel down, here are 17 funny leadership quotes to perk you up.

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Step 1: Set meaningful goals.
People do nott achieve goals unless the goals are meaningful to them. Sure, every seller has a quota for this year, but so what? If you want to maximize your motivation to achieve the goals, you must know why achieving it is important to you. To do that, go beyond your one-year quota-focused goal.

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How did life lead you to entrepreneurship?

I have been in the technology industry for 25 years. I am a business-facing technologist, which basically means I have a background in finance and business. However, I stumbled into being a software engineer early on in my career. This resulted in a passion for data and solution creativity.After hitting the 20-year mark of working for enterprise-size organizations, I decided I needed a change. I experienced some life-threatening health challenges--all while taking care of my two sons with their own unique needs. A culmination of it all really made me stop and reflect on what I really wanted to do on a daily basis and the people I do it with.

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Very few entrepreneurs have an accounting or finance background. Here are four tips to ensure your small business is achieving profitable growth.

Most small business owners start their own business because they have a passion for something, a new idea, want to be their own boss or are seeking more financial stability and/or earning potential. However, very few entrepreneurs have an accounting or finance background.

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About one third of small business owners still do not have a website. Some might not want to invest in the cost. Others might think they can get by with just a Facebook page or Google My Business Profile. And a few may even feel like a website is not relevant for their business if they do not sell anything online.

But a website can benefit nearly any small business. Even if you do not sell products or services online, it can help to direct people to your location, get your business in front of more potential customers through search and provide some credibility for your brand.

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Running a small business may not seem too challenging from a distance. After all, it is a small business, so how much operational and management work could there be? But since I started my own agency, I’ve realized that running a small business or firm is not as easy as it looks.

The good news is that there are plenty of best practices small businesses can follow to save time and manage their tasks more efficiently with the help of automation.

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Effective Aug. 19, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is raising its monetary-based small business size standards for inflation by an average of 8.4%, an adjustment that the administration expects will allow 90,000 additional companies to participate in its loan and contracting programs. The SBA said that this increase could result in $750 million more total contracts awarded to small businesses and as much as $65 million more in small business loans.

In order to be considered a small business under current SBA guidelines, most general, heavy and civil construction companies cannot have more than $36.5 million of average annual sales receipts.

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One thing brands should never do.

But it leads to something no brand should ever do: You should never assume that your customers feel the same way about your brand that you do. Your brand is how other people feel about your company, not how you feel about it.

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The daughter of two entrepreneurs who immigrated to the U.S. during the Iranian Revolution, Falon Fatemi became known as Google's youngest-ever hire at the age of 19. After leaving Google, she founded her own AI company, Node — and secured famed investor Mark Cuban as a backer. Node aims to use deep learning to analyze relationships between people and companies, then pinpoint how clients can leverage those relationships into sales, marketing and recruiting opportunities. In this episode of How Success Happens, Fatemi spoke with Entrepreneur about landing a job in big tech, AI and data policies and how to give a top-quality pitch.

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How do you hire, onboard, and retain a great team?

You start by viewing your company through the EQ lens to discover your organizational obstacles―the elephants standing in the way of your company's success.

Attend this webinar, How to Attract, Hire, and Retain Unicorn-Level Talent, as headhunter and executive coach Caroline Stokes delivers a blend of recruiting and emotional intelligence strategies essential to helping you identify and tackle your elephants and acquire and retain key hires―those unicorns―that will help your company stand out, stay resilient, and drive growth.

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If you have a small business, it is essential to keep up with the latest trends in technology, marketing, customer service and other areas that affect your business. Each business is unique, so every trend doesn't necessarily impact you equally. However, all major trends do influence your customers' expectations, so it is good to be up to date.

Here are some of the most significant trends I'm currently seeing that will impact small businesses in 2020 and beyond.

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Small businesses are often on the cutting edge because they have to be. With smaller foundations and limited budgets, small-business owners have to think on their feet every day, developing strategies that boost productivity and the bottom line. Because a small business can not afford to embrace strategies that do not provide quick, measurable results, the trends that spring up among them are likely to make a positive difference in any company.

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According to a new survey, the results of which were first published by Inc. on Tuesday, odds are good that you identify more with option A, even if option B is your reality. In a poll of 620 U.S. small-business owners, conducted by online lender and small-business cash-flow platform Kabbage, 60 percent of respondents believed their revenue growth underperformed that of their peers.

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The law of the jungle states, in evolutionary terms, that only the fittest survive. Before you can effectively brand an organization, you need to understand its clients/customers/donors/community and its competitors. In the marketing world, this is called a landscape analysis.

Often, companies — especially startups and nonprofits — will say they do not have competitors. Let me get this out right away: Everyone has competitors. Even nonprofits. If you think you do not have competitors, that means you don’t understand what a competitor is. A competitor is any person or organization taking business away from you.

As the Covid-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the retail industry, some are asking a curious question, namely: will companies boost their spending on branding in the aftermath the crisis?

What I find strange about this question is the assumption that branding is something you turn on and off, like a light switch; that it is somehow a conscious decision or undertaking that brands embark on as necessary or when it best serves them. I suspect this is because we’ve long confused the concepts of branding and advertising. They are not the same.

Advertising is what a brand says about itself to consumers. Advertising is a conscious effort on the part of a brand to promote itself, its products and its services. Advertising can be bought and sold. Advertising is transactional.

Branding, on the other hand, is a very different thing. Branding is what others think and say about you. And it’s informed by a wide range of inputs, far beyond what a brand says about itself. More critical is what a brand actually does or doesn’t do. Branding reflects the sum total of every organisational action, set against the backdrop of culture, all of which reveals the true character of a company. Branding cannot be bought or sold. Branding is transformational.

Verizon Business today released findings from a recent survey, Small Business Response to COVID-19 to better understand the impact small business owners and decision makers feel COVID-19 has had on their businesses. The survey, conducted by Morning Consult, focused on 500 small and medium businesses that are currently open or plan to reopen. One of the survey’s key results is that small businesses have renewed confidence, with 68% believing they can recoup COVID-19 related losses.

Key Survey Findings:

As businesses grapple with the economic impact of COVID-19, these responses highlight the assistance small businesses feel they need, the communities they feel most supported by, and the changes they have made to adjust to the new normal.

1. A Renewed Confidence
The small businesses that have weathered this pandemic to date express an overall optimism and the financial wherewithal to eventually reopen.

68% of small businesses believe they can recoup COVID-19 related losses
46% (nearly half) of small businesses that remain open say their businesses will be able to stay open for more than six months if the pandemic continues in the same way
48% of small businesses say it’s unlikely they will need to resume operations with a smaller staff
While 78% of small businesses indicate declining sales, less than a quarter (24%) say that they have missed or withheld any payments of bills (rent, utilities, etc.).

1. Develop a professional mobile-friendly business website.

Your website must be professional and should provide a rich experience and the feel of your brand to users. Here are a few tips to make your website professional and SEO-friendly:

• Use your business logo and branding on your website.

• Make sure your website is mobile-friendly (more than half of local searches are mobile searches)

• Your website should load in less than three seconds.

• Use a clean, minimal design, and avoid fancy styles.

• Your website must be well structured and easy to use.

Many business owners waste too much money creating a professional small business website. But there is no need to waste too much money on a business website. You can create a professional website for less than $500. So do not waste more money on website design, but invest that extra money in SEO.

2. Identify profitable keywords.

The success of an SEO campaign depends on the targeted keywords. Thats why you need to choose the right and profitable keywords for your small business. All keywords are not equal; some keywords could have high search volume but not profitability, while some could be profitable but have small volumes.

Also, focus on long-tail keywords because they are easy to rank and more profitable than short keywords. The profitability of a keyword depends on the nature of the keyword. For that, you need to understand the intent behind that keyword — why a user is searching that.

For example, when a person searches ice cream on Google, they want to know about ice cream, which means it has informational intent. But when a person searches for best choco-milk ice cream near me, the person wants to eat ice cream. This will be a profitable keyword for you to target.

3. Create a separate page for each product.

I found that many small businesses list all their products on one page like the homepage, but this is not a good practice. If you want to get more profit from your local SEO efforts, then you should create specific pages for each product. That way you can rank higher for each product page for multiple keywords.

For example, if you have a clothing store website, then you need to create separate pages for each product, such as one page for jeans and another for shirts. Also, you can create further subpages, such as jeans> men jeans> blue jeans. This can boost your rankings and revenue and reduce your efforts.

4. Use schema.

Structured data is helping Google better understand webpages. That’s why it can help you rank higher and get the advantage of other SERP features like featured snippets, knowledge graphs, etc. Product schema, local business, FAQ and others are must-use schema types for every business.

How people usually do elevator pitches
Among those who put thought into their elevator pitches, there tends to be two basic formulas:

Formula A: Introduce oneself and the name of the company, then describe the product or service in the context of the customer or industry’s pain point. Then, at the end, make the ask.

Formula B: Identify the pain point before introducing oneself and the name of the company. Then describe the product or service, followed by the ask.

While I am adamant that the only hard and fast rule of communication is that there are no hard and fast rules, I favor Formula B. People are most likely to embrace a solution when it is provided within the context of a problem they care about solving. By starting with a pain point, the entrepreneur is speaking to what an uninformed audience cares about right away thus making sure that the first thing their audience hears has intrinsic value to them. This helps the audience become immediately invested in solving the problem, which helps the entrepreneur to build some momentum.