​If you’re a small business owner without the resources to hire a large full-time team, you can still meet your business needs through freelancing or turning to independent business professionals. This can be an economical way to accomplish your goals without having to cover the cost of full-time employees. 

​Does your town host a Wine Walk, Holiday Stroll, First Friday, or other downtown event where they close off streets and encourage people to get out and support business? If so, you may know that those events often bring the crowds but also bring “tire kickers,” people who are just out for a stroll, not really interested in what you sell. They’re just going into each business, poking around, and usually leaving empty handed.
 
The hard part of that is that you likely brought in full staff to ensure you had enough coverage only to deal with a lot of “lookers.”
 
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are a few suggestions on how to transform your looky-loos into looky heres.

​It’s not uncommon to hear old timers (of any age) complain that young people don’t have it as hard as they did. It’s a common lament that younger generations are not as battle worn as the Silent Generation.
 
Whether that is true or not remains to be seen.
 
But the one thing that is true is that people will not do business with you if you make it hard to do business. There’s just too much competition and not enough interest.
 
To attract sales and become interested in your business, you want people to know, like, and trust you. Once they are interested, your work isn’t complete. You want to make it easy on them to do business.
 
If you’re doing the following things in business, you may be missing sales because you are making it too hard.

Mother’s Day is an ideal way to honor the women in your life who have helped you become the person you are today. In recent years, it has surpassed the celebration of one’s own mother and encompassed grandmothers, women we think of as second mothers, mother-in-laws, fur moms, best friends, and even female mentors. Mother’s Day is also a great way to honor women in our world who have made a difference.

Broadening the definition of mother also allows for a more inclusive celebration on a day that can, for some, be a sad occasion. While everyone may not have a mother living or a good relationship with one who is, everyone has a special woman in their lives who they can celebrate.

​Mother’s Day can now be transformed into a time to honor those women who have nurtured us and helped us grow, whether they gave birth to us or not. Keep that in mind in your marketing

​If you’re a small business, you probably bootstrapped your website content, picking it up here and there, copying what you like from other sites (hopefully not word for word), and adding as you go. That’s the way most small businesspeople do it unless you’re lucky enough to know someone who offered their writing services or have it in your budget to have it written for you.
 
But do you ever wonder if you have the type of content that will transform the casual web visitor into someone who buys?
 
Here are the components you need on your website to ensure more sales conversions.

All in, there are 257 national holidays in April alone. If you’re like me, you may find them hard to keep up with, but they can be a great source of engagement for your business. You just have to know how to use them for maximum return and get a little creative. Here are 20 ideas to assist you.

​We all have the same 24 hours in a day. While we may have different responsibilities, the most productive people learn to use their time in valuable ways no matter how little of it there is. They quickly grasp the best way to use “stolen minutes” in between projects or appointments. Some even keep a non-critical to-do list of all the things they want to do when they have those unexpected moments. That way they can make the most of them when they appear.
 
But if you want to take your day back and get some of those mission critical things done that you never seem to have time for, you may need to be honest with yourself. Instead of waiting for an opening in your day, create one by taking back your night.
 
After all, how much is binge watching TV really helping your business?
 
We get it. You need that down time after a busy day. You don’t want to think. You’re burned out. TV is easy. You’re spending time with family. Whatever your excuse is as to why you’re losing hours in your night staring at a screen, you could be moving your business or yourself forward. If you need to unwind that way, give yourself an hour, not three. Here’s what you could be doing instead with just 1-2 hours each night.