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Have you considered moving your business online, but are not really sure what that will entail? You're not alone. Businesses large and small have expanded their reach by adding an online presence to their brick-and-mortar environment.

The internet offers a great opportunity for all small businesses, and along with that power comes unique challenges. Sure, every business owner faces issues daily, however, online entrepreneurs have some especially challenging ...

As a small business owner, you know how important it is to have enough funds on hand to keep your business running. These available funds are known as working capital, and they are needed to run a healthy business.

Inadequate working capital levels are cited by the SBA Small Business Administration as one of the top reasons for small business failure. As such, learning about and securing proper levels for your company is crucial.

What is Working Capital?

Simply put, working capital is the dif...

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Whether you have a great new startup idea or a long-running business, you’ve probably come to one inevitable fork in the road: financing.

It’s the extra capital you need to take your company to the next level, be it for funding resources, creating a new marketing budget, or securing a deal with an overseas manufacturer. Entrepreneurs in Connecticut know full well the challenges faced as its highly-competitive markets cater to some of the wealthiest in...

Listening is often more effective than talking for establishing rapport with employees. A good manager must also be a good listener. When an employer listens to employees and demonstrates that they have heard and understood an employee's concerns, the employee feels more at ease and less anxious about the interview.

Developing good listening skills can be a major challenge, but there are some guidelines you can follow to hone your skills and learn to really hear what your staff are saying.

The...

Bill C-45 has passed the Senate. Once enacted, the Cannabis Act will make it legal to smoke pot in Canada, and to grow a limited quantity of personal marijuana (up to 4 plants) on your property.

And while pot growers, distributors and smokers are very happy about the legalization of marijuana, condo boards and landlords across the country are scrambling to deal with issues which will impact all residents in every multi-unit dwelling in Canada.

Potential risks and grounds for complaints

In mos...

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Franchisees often look to their franchisor as a "parent figure" - a pillar of strength to lean upon and a chief source of advice, knowledge and creative inspiration. If you as a franchisor fail to live up to this larger-than-life image and do not provide sufficient advice and direction to your franchisees, they will feel they are being shortchanged on the basic services that they are paying for.

As a franchisor, you can offer needed guidance to your franchisees thr...

In a previous post, we discussed how developing a good questioning strategy can help franchise support representatives to solve franchisees' business problems. This article covers the next step - implementing a solution.

1. Determine the implementation timeframe.

Often franchisees will have predetermined expectations about how, and when, their support representative will help them implement a solution to a problem. These expectations are sometimes not realistic. It is therefore important to cl...

The end of a lawsuit – or any crisis for that matter – can necessitate the question of how best to move on. How to rebuild or manage your reputation going forward after a public embarrassment can be a significant challenge, and not just for major public figures or the heads of large companies. While celebrities or other wealthy individuals can build teams of professionals to help them navigate the obstacles of managing their image, the rest of us often need to find our own way – perhaps with the...

As a franchisee support representative, one of your most important problem-solving tools is a well developed questioning strategy. You can use thoughtful, well-crafted questions to define a franchisee's problem and to determine the franchisee's needs. But a good questioning strategy has a far broader purpose: it will help you gather useful information about the wider forces surrounding the problem.

Your questions should be crafted to help you to find out:

1. the magnitude of the problem;
2. the d...

Whether you are a Franchise Support Representative dealing with franchisees, or a teacher helping a student work through the reasons why he/she has trouble with math, the steps to effective problem solving are essentially the same:

1. Gather information and define the problem.
2. Determine the probable causes of the problem, after considering all possibilities.
3. Develop alternative solutions, then choose the “best” fit.
4. Outline an action plan for implementing the solution.
5. Follow up during the i...