With more and more people working from home, Jeff Zbar spotted a potential new trend: the portable office. A Florida writer who loves travel, Zbar says every entrepreneur should find time to set off on the open road with family in tow.But must ...

Say "company retreat" at the office, and suddenly employees cringe imagining stuffy conference rooms and mind-numbing lectures. That's not a retreat; that's a meeting--and it's neither inspirational nor effective. If you want a new way to motivate a ...

I love hearing inspirational stories of business owners who are successfully running and growing their companies. I also enjoy learning how e-mail marketing helps them succeed. This month, I'm shining the spotlight on three very different businesses ...

It's been almost 30 years since a famous frog lamented how hard it was to be green. But these days, Kermit would be singing a different tune, as just about every product imaginable has some sort of eco-friendly equivalent. Now, thanks to Discovery ...

Charting A Path From Inmate To Entrepreneur Q: Steve - Mercy Corps has a pilot program where we teach women prisoners how to start and run their own small business. It's important because many of these women have a hard time getting jobs ...

If you're still talking about how to market in the Information Age, catch yourself--that was so five years ago. We're now in a booming Recommendation Age.Getting hundreds of search engine results from one keyword loses more of its novelty and ...

If your business experiences gradual growth, at some point that expansion alone will make it worth your while to create a business plan that explores the opportunities that the growth might provide. For example, a production-based business might be ...

Expansion: Nice And Easy, That's The Way To Do It Q: Steve — Several times I have read your advice to create additional profit centers if I want to grow my business. My question is — how do I know what additional ...

Prepared by the Center for Women's Business ResearchOnline With the ExpertsMarch is National Women's History Month but we continue to celebrate it all year. This year’s national theme, "Women Inspiring Hope and Possibility," honors the hope and ...

Finding Your Leg Up With a Niche Product by Sara Blakely Attention-grabbing tactics for niche products include providing snappy names and packaging, placing cold calls, and ...

Even seasoned business leaders struggle to put strategy into action, focusing on the "what" at the expense of the "how." Because smaller businesses have more visibility into the interdependencies, conflicts, resources, and deliverables that often ...

Before you decide whether to lease office space or to work from home, you have to determine exactly what your facility needs will be. In some cases, your facility needs will be such that you'll have to lease office space. In other cases, your ...

If you decide that you want to lease office space and you've found a location, the next step is to negotiate a lease agreement for that location. A lease agreement is a contract between you and the owner of the property. Since it's a legal ...

Many companies have already gotten on the remote working bandwagon. They understand its benefits in the areas of recruiting, job satisfaction and cost reduction. However, it's not something to implement without proper planning. This is the third in ...

Relocating employees Q: I own a small café/bakery business with about twenty employees. We are in a growing phase and I want to send two of my employees to a city about 500 miles north of here to open up one of our stores ...