Ask SmallBizClub

Am I on the right track with my elevator speech?

Aug 19, 2014 By Bill Wortman

You are correct that you need to make it clear exactly how you help your clients and/or exactly what your mission is. Also, if you can leave people wanting to learn more, that is a plus.
“Solutions” is vague business jargon in our opinion so you may want to consider how to focus more effectively on the benefit that is derived from your services or on how it helps clients rather than on the mechanism.

What is the fastest way to get my credit cleaned up?

Aug 12, 2014 By Bill Wortman

Credit laws provide for fixing errors on credit reports and The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) also establishes various timeframes under which both negative and positive entries on a consumer credit report must be removed or “cycled-off” the report.

I have a storefront selling both retail and private label herbal supplements. I am considering direct sales, where do I start?

Aug 7, 2014 By Will Adams

Network marketing, or MLM, is now a large and mature industry with numerous offerings. Though consumer products (household items, skin care, etc.) are marketed differently than business products, certain basic marketing techniques or principles apply to essentially all MLMs.

Where can I buy the lowest price international domain names that have country extensions?

Aug 4, 2014 By Ed Fox

You can view international domain pricing through well-known and reputed domain service companies such as GoDaddy, Network Solutions and 101 Domain, each of which we have provided a link for below with pricing information.

I am an attorney and have a security concern about using the office suite’s copying machines. Do copy machines retain any sort of history of the images they copy?

Jul 29, 2014 By Ed Fox

Digital copiers manufactured since 2002 typically have a hard drive or drives that store data about the documents copied, printed, scanned, faxed or emailed on or through the machine. If you don’t take steps to protect that data, it can be stolen from the hard drive, either by remote access or by extracting the data once the drive has been removed.

My partners and I are opening up a retail location, should we keep the existing name of our online store?

Jul 16, 2014 By Bill Wortman

Business owners have flexibility in naming their businesses subject to any registered or common law trademark restrictions and any state business entity or state/local trade name registration restrictions.

Where can we get started if we wanted to buy or create an Employee Handbook?

Jul 8, 2014 By Bill Wortman

From a general business perspective, the number of employees, type and number of employee fringe benefit programs, and other factors influence the need for an employee manual.

When is the best time to sell a business?

Jun 30, 2014 By Bill Wortman

You are correct that there are several important considerations when deciding to sell a business – personal retirement plans, personal income requirements, alternative investment opportunities, sales/profit trends, potential competition, real estate value trends, etc.

I’m establishing an LLC in just my name, would it be a good strategy to put all our personal bank accounts and investments in my wife’s name?

Jun 17, 2014 By Bill Wortman

Personal trusts and other measures can be used to provide additional layers of personal asset protection; however, measures to hide assets from creditors and other parties, for example, can be ineffective due to the courts’ right to reverse transactions under certain circumstances.

Is there such a thing as a paperless office?

Jun 9, 2014 By Ed Fox

While the prospect of a paperless office may be an efficiency goal, it is often difficult to achieve in practice due to legal, tax, cost, and other business implications. Also, a bookkeeper’s job, by its very nature involves considerable paperwork and the processing of that paperwork – customer invoices, vendor/supplier bills, payroll and vendor checks, financial reports, etc.

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