Starting a business can hold within it excitement and possibilities. Often when an entrepreneur first formulates a business idea there’s usually a sense of passion and the belief that the business will grow linearly. The truth is that rarely, if ever, does a business look the same way at its start than what it matures […]
Feeling Scared of Ecommerce? Turn Your Brick and Mortar Store into a Shopping Experience and Succeed.
It feels scary out there. Especially if you run a Brick and Mortar retail Store. For the last half of 2013 and beginning of 2014, retail sales in the U.S. declined or remained stagnant at best. Nordstrom, traditionally more profitable than many other retail chains, saw their stores reporting flat or slightly down results. At the […]
Attention Entrepreneurs! You are not crazy!
Entrepreneur? Being harangued for being out of sync when it comes to your business and your ideas? Told that you can’t approach your business that way and that such behavior will lead to crashing your business? That your world view makes no sense? It’s a common malady for entrepreneurs. At some point any entrepreneur begins […]
Do you have the right banking relationship?
There is always a cycle that occurs in the banking world that may be affecting some small business owners. First, let me take you down memory lane. Many business owners remember the small and regional banks when they first appeared or we first used them. They promise and delivered exceptional customer service. I am talking […]
Bay Area Mastermind’s 3 Tips for Entrepreneurs with Short Attention Spans
In a recent interview with renown psychiatrist Dr. Edward M. Hallowell, he described how many entrepreneurs have some form of short attention deficits. At first hearing this comment many people would find this alarming. However, Dr. Hallowell made it clear that this was not entirely a bad thing as it allowed these creative and innovated […]
Bay Area Mastermind mid-year economic review
By Robert Estupinian As we begin the second half of the year we wanted to take a moment and provide our readers with a view of the economy and our forecasts going forward.There is a lot of economic data being spewed out these days in the media. It is not uncommon for the same data […]
Why a Marketing Strategy Works for One Business and Not Another
With all the new technological advances in customer acquisition it is easy for any business owner to jump from one marketing tacit to another in hopes of finding the silver bullet. You know the silver bullet, it is the elusive magical tacit that will produce all the business leads easily and effortlessly. Every business owner […]
3 Things You Can Do When You Are Mentally Stalled Out
Every business owner has faced the same frustrating situation, feeling stuck. I’m talking about not seeing how to get through a tough business problem. No matter how much you keep working at it the problem will not go away. For some business owners getting stuck is frightening. Let’s take a look at what can be […]
5 IRS Audit Red Flags Business Owners Need to Know For 2012
Like most governmental agencies the IRS is looking for money and it appears that the amount of audits will be up again this year. As you can imagine the service uses computer algorithms to search returns for items that may be out of the ordinary. In this post we will examine some of the most […]
Social Media for Small Businesses: 6 Effective Strategies
By Robert Estupinian Social Media has quickly become a very opportunistic way to market a business. Facebook has exploded into the second most popular website in the world with over 750 million users and half of them log on to the site every single day. Twitter is also in the top 15 on most days […]