When you’re a small business owner, you get used to people giving you advice. Sometimes you seek out their insights while other times they share whether you want them to or not. While the advice is almost always well intended, it’s not always good. In fact, sometimes it’s downright awful.

Here are some tips that well-meaning people give to small business owners that definitely should not be followed.

Now is the perfect time to evaluate your financial position and come up with innovative ways to add revenue streams and generate cash. Here are five ways you might consider to improve your cash inflow:

1. Evaluate your current company assets

Take a look at your assets, both fixed and human. Could you make slight pivots to create a new form of income?

Dan Murray, CEO of Opportunity International Canada wrote a blog post this week about the impact of the current global crisis on developing economies, Here’s a quick summary of the importance of OI’s Micro Finance programmes:

The essence of microfinance is financial inclusion.

Families trapped in ultra-poverty are marginalized at the fringes of society. Often illiterate and without equity, they are excluded from access to basic financial services that most take for granted — savings, mortgages, business loans, and insurance. Without such access, there is little opportunity to improve the quality of life or change the trajectory for the next generation.

When you’re an entrepreneur, your to-do list is often long and constantly growing longer. There are an overwhelming number of things you need to do, and it can feel like they’re all urgent. In such cases, it’s easy to push important tasks to the side and focus on less-vital activities, but that often means you miss deadlines, make mistakes or always feel as though you’re trying to catch up.

Here are some ways for you to determine the most productive order to complete your tasks.

1. Know all of your tasks

Most family business owners have a similar goal in mind – to grow the business and pass it on to the next generation of their family.

While keeping the business in the family and getting to work with your parents, siblings, or children who share common goals can be a fun and rewarding experience, running and growing a family-owned business isn’t without its challenges. Conflicting views on business and family matters such as succession of power, rivalry, favoritism, and disposition of assets often lead to tensions and even legal disputes.

So if you want your business to thrive while keeping family control over multiple generations, it pays to plan ahead and be prepared to navigate these complexities. Below we’ve listed some ways to avoid the most common pitfalls when managing and scaling a family-owned business. Financial Planning for Your Family Business

The COVID-19 pandemic has caught most of us off guard. Who would’ve thought that the world would spend the year battling a virus?

This unprecedented global crisis is a reminder that these business threats are very real and acts as a wake-up call for business leaders. Even if the scenario may seem far-fetched, it pays to prepare for the worst. When a pandemic hits, businesses play a crucial role in protecting the health of their employees and limiting the adverse impact on the community and the wider domestic economy.

In this guide, we will help you prepare for future outbreaks and similar events, as well as offer tips for managing your business during a pandemic. Develop a Business Continuity and Crisis Plan

It’s very rare these days that people just happen to find your business and become a client or customer with no work on your part. Your business has to grab people’s attention, turn curious visitors into leads and then convert those leads into sales.

This means that the more solid leads you have, the greater your chances of making a sale. Solid leads are those contacts who are engaged in your business, fit your buyer persona and are at least somewhat motivated to make a purchase.

Here are four great ways to develop more solid leads for your business this year.

Referrals are the easiest way to generate new business, and building strong networks is a great way to generate referrals. Networking and referrals are cost-effective ways to grow your business, as the return on investment can be huge. Think about the types of networking you can undertake and encourage your team to do the same.

Five ways to maximise referrals from your networks:

We’re pleased to announce our Slip Stream initiative. We’ve partnered with Opportunity International to support micro finance loans to small businesses in Honduras. We donate the first month’s accounting fees of all new clients to OI’s Honduras project.

I’d like to introduce you to Maria – a recipient of OI’s micro finance programme. We’re proud to be able to support people like Maria make a better life for themselves, their families and their communities. Watch part of Maria’s story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXcOKDCLHeo

It’s natural for small business owners to think that they won’t be victims of cyber attacks. Most of the news surrounding hacking and data breaches involves large corporations, but that is because that’s where a high number of victims are affected. Hackers may find they have an easier time going after small businesses and start-ups that aren’t prepared for a security breach. So while they might get less information from a small business, thieves will have an easier time accessing that information.

If your company keeps any time sensitive information on a computer network—whether that is personal information, credit card info, or other vital data—you need to ensure your cybersecurity is top-notch, so you, your business and your clients are fully protected.

We have recently finished our four-part webinar series titled “Business Unusual.” While the content is timeless, it has been geared towards helping businesses navigate the current COVID-19 crisis. You can watch the sessions for free here:

Networking can be a key way to keep your business growing.

Regardless of your industry or business size, it is hard to ignore the benefits of forming professional networks for potential partnerships, expanding your client base, and scaling up. However, while we are all constantly reminded about the importance of networking, reaching out to grow your network isn’t the same now thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social restrictions to prevent spreading the coronavirus do not allow traditional networking approaches such as in-person conference events or face-to-face business meetings over coffee or dinner. However, this doesn’t mean that you should put all your networking efforts on hold, because no one can really tell when this global crisis will end.

As you well know, the COVID-19 pandemic is not just a public health issue, it’s also caused lockdowns and resulting financial worries on a global scale.

Small businesses are not strangers to the impacts of the pandemic. According to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), as of March 30th, 92% of small businesses reported that they had already suffered negative effects due to COVID-19. Almost all business sectors have been experiencing declining profits, liquidity that is drying out, and even bankruptcy.

Have you ever set a New Year’s resolution and then reset the same one again the following year? It’s widely recognised that approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail. How can we increase our chances of successfully achieving our goals? Accountability.

The most foolproof way of ensuring you complete the actions you’ve committed to is to give someone nagging rights to follow you up. This may be your personal trainer at the gym who makes sure you show up at 6am, or it could be your accountant who checks in on you every 90 days to make sure you’re on track to completing your actions and achieving your business goals.

More and more people are leaving their office jobs and setting up an online business these days. Running an online business offers a way for you to work from home and be your own boss. It may sound like an overwhelming process, but many entrepreneurs find it fulfilling.

Here are some tips to increase the chances your small online business will be a success, and you’ll be happy with your decision.

1. Decide what your online business will be

IMPORTANT: This post is specific to Canada. If you are not a Canada business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you. This post is specific to Canada. If you are not a Canada business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.

We have compiled some online resources that outline how small business owners can access government services and support during this challenging time.

We know small business owners are at varying points on the technology spectrum. Some have embraced technology to operationalize a majority of their operations while others have continued to manage with minimal technology intervention for a variety of reasons.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is altering the business landscape and is accelerating how businesses leverage technology to provide services and or products to clients.

Shopify Chief Executive Officer Tobi Lutke recently shared in a Fortune interview that “the number of small stores using Shopify’s ecommerce platform rose by 62%” from mid March to April 2020. The shift to use ecommerce has not only affected large retailers but also smaller ones like community grocery stores, specialty stores and farms that have all gone online as consumers have shifted buying patterns to accessing stores virtually versus in person.

The pains caused by a recession can be excruciating, which is why most of us dread the thought of it.

A recession can mean massive layoffs, jobs becoming harder to find, and wages frozen, which means consumers hunker down and spend less– often worsening the economic slowdown unknowingly.

For most businesses, especially small businesses, recessions can be brutal. Just take for example, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) that struck the world in 2008. Between December 2008 and December 2010, approximately 1.8 million small businesses shut down. When Investopedia looked into the impact of the financial crisis on small businesses after a decade, they found out that business creation has not yet returned to pre-crisis levels.

Being a better leader and building a strong workplace culture is crucial to having a better business.

Have you ever considered whether your workplace is toxic? With the average person spending more than 40,000 hours of their life at work, a workplace should be an enjoyable place to be.

We all have bad days, but if the following bells ring… your workplace may be toxic.

1. A lack of trust between owners and the team.
Is there a sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’? Everyone should feel part of the team.

For many business owners, determining the success of a business comes down to how much profit the company makes. Of course, finances are an important measure of an company’s overall success. If you don’t bring in more than you spend you won’t be in business for long. Profit, however, isn’t the only important benchmark by which to measure your business.

There are other important factors business owners can and should evaluate to determine how well their company is doing now and to predict its future success. Measure customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction tells you a lot about how much repeat business you can expect. If customers are satisfied with the products and services they receive from you, they’re likely to come back and refer you to their friends.