Author Archives: Gary Barzel

One of the most costly and time-consuming expenses a business has to deal with is employee turnover. When the business is small and the departing employee was filling a vital role, then the loss is felt even more. The direct and indirect drain on resources that goes along with losing those key employees can seriously […]

Recent research indicates that the road ahead may still be a bit bumpy for America’s smallest businesses. Most economic indicators suggest that the economy continues to slog on with a recovery that has been both slow and uneven. This comes at a time when the stock market has been under-performing, the presidential campaign has been […]

Ever since social networks became popular several years ago, small businesses have been told to spend their limited time and money there in order to remain competitive and relevant. Yet, while the number of active social networks have multiplied, the real ROI of spending that time and money maintaining a presence on these platforms remains […]

Now that the new year is upon us, it’s a good time to reflect on the way we work (and live) and resolve to uproot the negative habits that may be preventing us from maximizing our potential. Some of these bad behaviors are keeping us from being productive; others cause us to work harder than […]

While social media may currently be driving only a small percentage of online retail sales, all indications suggest that these channels will continue to expand in the future. In fact, social-driven retail sales and referral traffic are rising at a faster pace than all other forms of eCommerce. According to the Business Insider Internet Retailer’s […]

With the end of the holiday season just around the corner, one emerging retail trend has been impossible to miss: the explosive growth of mobile-based commerce (or mCommerce) among consumers. According to the Adobe Digital Index, online sales for Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday (November 26th-30th) totaled $11 billion this year. This represents a significant […]

This holiday season has seen the rise of on-demand courier services, and it promises to spice things up for small, local businesses looking to make fast, cheap deliveries of their products to customers. The concept of on-demand delivery is certainly not new (think: failed dot com company, Kozmo.com, which promised to deliver a variety of […]

As you go through the process of growing your small business, there will come a point where you will have to decide whether or not to take on additional full time or part time employees. On one hand, the added human input can help you scale up your operations. But on the other hand, taking […]

With the evolution and proliferation of ecommerce and chip enabled credit cards, credit card fraud has been going through a metamorphosis over the past couple of years. As the tides change, smaller businesses in particular need to be paying attention and taking action. Without the proper precautions, small businesses are prime targets for fraudsters and […]

Are you are Instagram? Pinterest? Snapchat? How about Meerket, Periscope, or Blab.im… It seems that with every new social media platform that comes out, there is the ever increasing expectation that small business owners should maintain a presence there. Sometimes, business owners will have a compelling reason for setting up an account and giving it […]