Blog

This week, we hosted a workshop on pitching your small business. Many business owners have never taken the time to sit down and really think through their business pitch. Whether you’re pitching to introduce yourself, to promote your brand, to gain a new client, to increase awareness about your product or service, or to ask… Read more »

The April Small Business Roundtable featured a lively discussion on how to deal with challenging customers. Whether it is a one-time issue or a constant complainer, all agreed that this is one of the most difficult issues of being a small business owner. Usually, you do not want to lose them as customers, but someone… Read more »

The demands on any small business owner are constant. Many, therefore, do not focus on the business risks they create if they do not think about their own future. What happens to your business if you get sick or are injured in a serious accident? Or, while it’s not very fun to consider, die? What… Read more »

As Spring2Action approaches in Alexandria, more businesses are beginning to consider social responsibility and cause marketing. This blog post, written by Rieva Lesonsky and originally posted on the SBA website on March 1, 2016, gives some tips for how small businesses can incorporate social responsibility into their marketing.  Are you looking for a way to attract new customers? Social… Read more »

This post was written by Patricia Frame of Strategies for Human Resources, our guest author for our solopreneur blog series. When you run a small business, you are constantly dealing with both issues you know well and those outside your knowledge base. Hiring an expert to help when you need added expertise can be quite… Read more »

The Alexandria SBDC recently presented a program on Benefits as part of its Small Biz Nightmares series.  Presenters Patra Frame of Strategies for Human Resources and Karen Buckley-Camp of Metlife Premier Client Group of the MidAtlantic give a brief overview of their discussion in this brief video. In addition, the Alexandria SBDC has posted an outline… Read more »

This post first appeared in the Alexandria Times on February 26, 2016. Lots of people always are coming up with ideas for a new business or nonprofit venture. While great ideas are important, there are several tangible steps you should follow to give that idea the greatest chance of success. Hopefully, your idea sprang from… Read more »

In February 2016, Maurisa Potts of Spotted M+P presented on the top marketing trends for 2016. This video recaps her presentation and talks about the top three trends that small businesses should be aware of this year. If you would like to learn more about our marketing resources, you can visit our Interactive Resource Library, which… Read more »

This blog was written by Patra Frame and was originally posted on her company website, Strategies for Human Resources. If you missed last week’s video blog on this topic, you can check it out here. Recently Elizabeth Chisman Moon of Focus Data Solutions and I did a seminar on this topic for the Alexandria SBDC. Here… Read more »

We often hear about the importance of cybersecurity for small businesses. When we hear this term, we usually think about our hardware or network vulnerabilities. However, our employees can also expose our organizations to cyber threats. In this video, Elizabeth Moon from Focus Data Solutions and Patra Frame from Strategies for Human Resources discuss what… Read more »