The commercial cleaning industry is a tough business to get started in. There’s a lot of competition for very few clients, and the work is incredibly hard & unglamorous. But if you stick with it for a long time, you’ll find that it can be a very rewarding career.
Although most of our business now comes from word-of-mouth, it wasn’t always this easy for us to attract new customers. Early on, we had a lot of trouble getting our proposals accepted.
We’d spend a fortune on advertising… just for the opportunity to bid against 20 other companies.
And bidding often meant taking 2 hours out of my day to drive over to the prospect’s site, talk to them and look over their office.…
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It seems like every week, I hear about another start-up with a bribery-based business model. Some genius decided that they can pay people to visit their web site, and that this would somehow evolve into loyalty. But sure enough, a few months later, they all vanish just as quickly as they appeared.
“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.” – Oscar Wilde
Sometimes Internet marketers seem to do everything right tactically… but they can’t seem to get the sales they’re after. Whenever I see this, especially with extremely hard-working entrepreneurs, the problem is usually one of those “big picture” strategic issues that can be easily missed when you’re caught up in the work.
As the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day approaches, consumers and businesses everywhere are thinking about ways to reduce energy consumption and lower their energy bills. Affordable alternative energy sources are years away and utility-driven conservation measures like the Smart Grid won’t help SMBs in the short term, if at all.
In this age of social media marketing, it’s easy to forget that one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to get your small business in front of people is to give them a gift. According to an Advertising Specialties Impressions study, 84% of promotional products recipients remember the advertiser on the 
Let’s talk about strategy for a second.
Judging by the tone of most marketing blogs, you would guess that all business was either conducted on Google or Facebook. But it’s easy to forget that many of the tried-and-true methods of the past are still just as valid today.
Businesses today need to look beyond geographical borders in order to expand. There is a whole world of consumers, customers and clients out there waiting to buy your service or product. Opportunities aplenty await the astute businessman willing to take the risk and go global.
There is no escaping the wrath of the IRS when it comes to unpaid taxes. There are several differences between running a small business versus a large corporation, but at the end of the day, payroll taxes are something that all business owners must pay close attention to in order to avoid problems with the IRS.
