Quarterly workshop which is the first step in the Next Level Northwest business accelerator program.
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Seasonal marketing is intuitive and fun, and when you do it right, customers will happily flock in to make purchases. Fall is an especially great season for marketing because of its inherent frivolity (for non-students, at least). The season is replete with the return of fall sports, festive colors, harvest-themed goods, and creative decor and costumes. Here are some fall marketing ideas geared toward ramping up your revenue this season:
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Too many business owners fail to recognize that a company's success is built on its employee training programs. High-quality training programs don’t just prepare workers to do their jobs well; they reduce stress, inspire company loyalty and trust, and motivate employees to put their best work forward. Without good training, your small business will experience uncertainty and lower productivity. Here’s how to run effective training programs for your small business:
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A succession plan is essentially an “exit plan” for your business that you can implement when you retire, or in the event that you die or become disabled or divorced. In short, it’s a roadmap for what will happen to your business when you are no longer able to run it. Although you may not relish dwelling on that thought, succession planning is important for the overall security of your life’s work. There are four main succession options for entrepreneurs to choose from:
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As a well-informed entrepreneur, you know that detailed and organized record keeping is part of the business of owning a business. You need to do this for multiple reasons: financial planning, legal compliance, tax preparation, and understanding how well your business is doing overall. But which documents do you need to keep, and how should you store them? Here are some things to know about keeping detailed business records.
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Summer is a notoriously slow time for business: customers and employees alike go on vacation, and it can be too hot for the remaining consumers to venture out for long—or find motivation to do much of anything, including making purchases. However, you can still make lemonade (literally and figuratively) by implementing some creative marketing strategies. Here are some summer marketing tips to heat up your sales this season.
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Most Americans don’t receive adequate personal finance education, causing many to make costly financial mistakes. When entrepreneurs lack financial literacy with regard to business, the mistakes can be all the more costly. Fortunately, you can invest in the current and future stability of your company by investing in essential financial coaching through the Next Level Northwest Business Accelerator program. Our coaches can help you to:
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As a savvy entrepreneur, you know that saving money on operating costs, wherever ethically possible, is part of maximizing profits. However, in a period of record-breaking inflation, expensive supply-chain difficulties, and an imminent recession, it’s more essential than ever to keep your business as lean as possible. Fortunately, you can accomplish this—and do your part for the environment—by turning a scrutinizing eye to energy efficiency. Here are some money-saving tips for making your business more energy efficient:
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There’s no denying that these are tough times for businesses and customers alike. Inflation, product shortages, and other supply chain problems are forcing small businesses to be more nimble and flexible than ever. Fortunately, there are several ways to tackle what you can control. Here are 6 ways small businesses can prepare and adjust for supply chain disruptions.
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If you are or have ever been a working parent, you know how hard it is to juggle childcare responsibilities with a career. As Father’s Day approaches, evaluate ways you can support your employees who are parents; you may be able to offer them some resources that you wish you’d had yourself. Doing so can be a smart choice for your business as well. It can give you a recruiting edge in the tight labor market and enhance employee satisfaction and loyalty, which can reduce costly turnover. Here are some ways you can support workers who are parents.
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Depending on where you live, summer may already have arrived, and with it, endless distractions. Between kids getting out of school, vacation plans, and the new hires you’re onboarding for summer work, distractions are unfolding everywhere you turn. Add to that the warm summer breeze calling you out to happy hours, parks, and lawn chairs, and it’s really challenging to focus on your business. Don’t worry—here are some tips for staying focused on your business during the warm months.
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It’s not rocket science: ultimately, no entrepreneur can have a successful business—especially in a capitalist society—without a firm grasp on money management. Achieving this entails more than simply hiring a bookkeeper or CPA; you have to know it yourself. But if you didn’t major in finance, some of the complexities of financial strategy can feel, well, complicated. Here are some financial education resources for improving your financial literacy and, consequently, the outlook for your business.
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The American economy is currently experiencing an inflation rate that hasn’t been so high since the 1970s and early 1980s. Media attention is often focused on ultimate consumer dismay and hardship, but small businesses truly feel the strain of this as well. Here are five ways you can help your small business weather the storm of inflation regardless of its causes.
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Everyone loves productivity hacks that make their lives a little easier and a little less frantic. For entrepreneurs, however, staying optimally productive is a way of life: your time is precious, and you can’t afford to waste a moment. Here are some key productivity tips for small business owners.
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Even a small company can make a big impact with a nonprofit partnership. As an entrepreneur who is also a customer, you’ve likely already seen a few of these in action—and even been favorably impressed. Here are some examples of nonprofit partnerships and what they can offer for all involved.
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Congratulations: your small company is thriving. You have a healthy base of regular customers eager for additional products, services, or business hours. As a result, you have stable, predictable profits—and your market is growing, which means there’s opportunity to tap into new revenue streams. In fact, demand is so hot that you’re struggling to keep up with it. If this is the case, it might be time to expand your business. Here’s how to get going on growing.
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It’s a new year, and pandemic or not, trying new things and looking for ways to grow is an excellent way to shake off the winter “blahs.” The same is true for your business: it’s a good time to think about trending small business ideas as your company begins its new trip around the sun. Here are some of the small business trends—pandemic-inspired and otherwise—that will continue throughout 2022.
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It seems everyone these days is hiring, and small business owners have the added difficulty of competing with large ones for workers in a tight labor market. As of spring 2021, 91% of such entrepreneurs said there were few to no qualified applicants for their vacant positions. To find staffing solutions, it helps to understand the reasons for the labor shortage and stand out as the small business who can address related pain points.
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As a topic, concern for health and safety in the workplace hasn’t left the limelight since the pandemic began, and isn’t likely to do so anytime soon. While some small business owners may (understandably) lament the complexity of adaptations needed in business operations today, savvy entrepreneurs will see good workplace health as an opportunity for good business health. Here’s how implementing safety and wellness policies now can make for a better work culture in the future.
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Business development (BD) refers to all of the efforts (processes, strategies, tasks, personnel) whose purpose is to identify and expand new business opportunities with relation to other companies. Some organizations hire BD directors and managers to oversee this complex aspect of entrepreneurial growth, but you can also seek the help of an external consultant for help with a business development strategy. Because this can involve so many factors, it helps to break the concept down into a few main avenues that drive a company’s growth.
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Each New Year people form resolutions in hopes of making the coming year better than the last. Among the most notorious list-toppers in this regard are better diet and exercise habits. Although these are hardly original aspirations, no one can thrive without good health, and most people are all too aware of where improvements are needed.
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Simply put, employee retention is the ability to attract and keep workers employed at a business. It’s the opposite of employee turnover, which occurs when workers either voluntarily leave a company (voluntary turnover) or are terminated (involuntary turnover).
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Although many entrepreneurs focus on the difficulty of competing with larger companies for well-qualified employees, they may also have some advantages—even and especially in difficult post-pandemic times. After a long period of layoffs as well as safety and equity concerns, many candidates are looking for more than a paycheck in a prospective employer. Here are some tips for hiring employees for your small business.
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In order to thrive in a competitive market, every company—from startups to corporations—needs to identify and hone its competencies. These are essentially what give entrepreneurs a competitive advantage, or edge on their competition. Here’s an overview of business competencies, which are also known as business core competencies, and their importance.
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Methods for measuring success in business vary by business size, ownership type, industry, and other factors. Whereas large corporations have plenty of well-documented Forbes List role models to take notes from, small business success stories are unlikely to be featured in mainstream magazines or blogs. If you own a startup or small company, you’ll need to be resourceful in finding business success measures. Here’s how to see how far you’ve come.
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There are a number of excellent strategies you can use to grow your business. These may include offering online shopping, making acquisitions, or starting a non-sales-focused social media campaign. But how do you know what will work, or how to do it right? If you’re a new business owner or new to growth strategies, you may want to consider hiring a business coach to help you get and stay on track to grow your business.
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If you’ve watched the comedy TV series Silicon Valley, you probably have a vivid, if dramatized, mental image of what a business incubator is. Many people confuse business accelerators with incubators and similar programs. However, an incubator is a one-to-five-year program with minimal mentorship that can be entered early or late in a businesses life. A business accelerator, on the other hand, has the potential to offer more benefits and is designed only for the early stage of a small business.
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If you’re in the process of starting a business, you know you have a long list of legal boxes to check. One of the first is deciding what type of business ownership, also known as business structure, you want to establish. Here are the seven primary business ownership types.
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