Wendy

Some business partnerships are easy to predict. A wedding planner works with a florist. A Realtor partners with a mortgage lender. A gym connects with a nutritionist. Those relationships make sense, but they’re also the relationships everyone else in the industry has already considered…even your competitors. Sometimes the most interesting opportunities come from businesses that appear to have very little in common. Their products (or services) may be different, but their customers share a need, an interest, or a problem. That overlap creates room for a partnership that gets people talking and gives both businesses access to a new

Crypto and Your Small Business: What’s Actually Worth Knowing? Suppose a customer asks to pay for a $200 order with cryptocurrency. Can you accept it? How would you know you’ve been paid? And would $200 still be $200 by the time the money reaches your business account? You don’t need to know how to buy Bitcoin to ask those questions. They’re the same questions you probably asked when you first signed on with Stripe or any of those new payment methods: What does it cost, when do I get paid, and what happens if something goes wrong? But if

Every business has that one employee—the person who knows how to fix the ancient printer, knows which vendor will answer after 5 p.m. and how to get them to do so, knows where the old customer files live, and understands the nuances and preferences of your most loyal customers, including what not to do when they’re upset. That employee can work through any role because they’ve been around long enough to know where all the bodies are buried. Figuratively, we hope. They’re invaluable and you lean on them without thinking. They’re an integral part of your business and you

You drop everything and respond immediately because that’s what a responsible business owner does. You’re accessible, attentive and on top of things. You’re also halfway through six different tasks and making meaningful progress on none of them. For many small business owners, responsiveness has become intertwined with good service. We assume the faster we answer, the more professional we appear. We’re on top of it and it makes everyone else feel great. Yet constant availability carries a cost. Every interruption pulls your attention away from work that requires thought, creativity or careful decision-making. With constant interruption, you can never

By now you’ve probably heard the old joke “Where’s the best place to bury a body?” The answer: on the third page of Google results. While that joke stood firm for many years, witty marketers later challenged that the answer has evolved to below the scroll on the first page as most searchers aren’t even making it past the first finger flick. But now there’s a new question worth asking: Can AI find us? Consumers are increasingly turning to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI assistants for recommendations. Instead of searching “best accountant near me” and scrolling through

Ask yourself a simple question—what’s holding your potential customers back from buying from you? You might think cost. Perhaps it’s ease of purchase (online ordering), location, or not knowing about you. But there could be something much easier to fix than cutting your prices, moving, or rebranding/launching a huge marketing campaign. While all these things are important—pricing, location, and top-of-mind recognition—there is something else you could be doing to get more people in your business. You could be setting expectations. What does that mean? There is likely a need for what you sell or do. Or you wouldn’t have gone into