Craft of Business

This is the final installment in a series about the steps small business owners need to take before hiring their first employee. If you’ve already taken a hard look at your business and determined the right time to hire your first employee as well as figured the value your time, you’ve done the heavy lifting. "For a sole proprietor or someone who has a boutique, there's really not a lot more...

Twitter or Facebook? LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google+, or even MySpace? The options can be overwhelming (don't click here unless you want your head to spin), especially if you don't even recognize a few of the above names, let alone understand what function they serve. So, which one should you choose? "Fish where the fish are," Ben Lloyd, the president of Amplify more...

If you think conducting a survey means canvassing your neighborhood with a clipboard and tallying results, you’ve got it wrong. Surveys are an effective, affordable and underutilized business tool that small business owners and community organizations can use to obtain information and evaluate what’s most important to their customers and neighbors. All well-planned projects require the input of more...

A small business owner recently asked Neighborhood Notes, “What do I need to do to hire my first employee?” We began to answer that question by talking to several small business owners who have already hired their first, and in some cases second, third and more, employee. Simply enough, we asked: “How do you know when it’s time to hire your first employee?” The responses were more...

It's frequently estimated that the cost of recruiting, hiring and training a new employee can cost a business $4,000 (or more), which is often anywhere from 25 percent to 200 percent of annual compensation for that new worker. As industrious and multi-talented as you may be, if your goal is to grow your business, and have a life outside of it, the reality is that you can't do it all. At some point you need more...

What will happen to your business when you retire? Do you plan to sell it? Hand it down to your kids? Or will you simply have a sale and close up shop? Your business can have a life beyond you, the sole proprietor, but it takes planning. And this planning will not only benefit you 20 years down the line, it will also help you create stability, make decisions, and even expand your business in the present. According more...

Networking doesn't have to feel like a sale. Or an awkwardly ostentatious forum for egotistical schmoozing and one-upmanship. Networking should feel more like socializing—finding common interests and then sharing ideas and solutions to problems—especially in Portland's diverse but cooperative small business culture. So-called networking "events" shouldn't even necessarily be formal more...

Small businesses dominate the Portland marketplace, comprising 95% of all firms and employing 254,000 people, according to the Portland Development Commission. Yet, the PDC also points out that even though “our local economy is populated by thousands of small business enterprises, many... struggle for viability and survival while providing hundreds of thousands of jobs with billions of dollars in payroll." more...