As a small business owner, there are bound to be times when you have questions and aren't exactly sure where to find the answers. There's also bound to be times when you aren't certain what the right questions even are. What is a business plan, and why might you need one? What kind of security measures do you need to take for your business? How should you set your prices? Is it better to lease or buy your equipment for your office? How can you get financing?

Who can help you answer your questions??!?

Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are organizations set up around the US to provide assistance to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by universities and state economic development agencies, there are over 1800 SBDCs which are funded in part through the Small Business Administration.

Are you thinking of opening a larger office? Perhaps you’ve been contemplating expanding your inventory or trying a new product or service. Starting or expanding a business requires time, planning, and money. A small business loan or line of credit might be the answer; community banks and credit unions can frequently offer lower interest rates to small business owners. 

But what about "free money", or a small business grant?

What kind of grants?

It may take a bit of research, but there are grants available to anyone who is interested in building their business. Many grants are out there for minorities, women, the disabled, military members, or those businesses located in rural areas. If your business is trying to recover after a natural or economic disaster, there may be special opportunities for you as well.

For years now, anyone of my marketing coaching or Infusionsoft clients who asked me about open rates of their Infusionsoft emails (or emails in general), I have said something along the lines of: "Open rates are very unreliable....if it says that the email was opened, then it was, but if it says it was unopened, you have no idea if it was opened or not."

On top of that, many email clients (Outlook and Apple Mail for example) are configured to have a preview list on one side of the window and the email itself on the other. If you use your arrow keys to move up and down the preview list, then as you pass emails, they become "read"....you know that you haven't read them....you are passing them so you can get to the latest comment on your cat video Facebook post. But all the ones you scrolled through will be reported back as read.

Your back hurts and your wrists feel like someone’s tried to twist them off. Your neck and shoulders are so stiff you’re convinced they’ll crumble to dust if you try to move too suddenly. Was it playing basketball the day before? Or maybe that large rock you tried to shift when you set in to do some yard work over the weekend? Maybe the culprit is closer than you think. 

How you sit and move at your desk, also known as desk ergonomics, is serious business. Every year thousands of work hours are lost because of repetitive-motion injuries. Productivity suffers because of tendon or joint pain caused by of all things: just sitting at your desk. Here are some ways to optimize your workspace and to save both money and your joints:

Spring is here, and no doubt you are itching to get out and enjoy those nice warm days. Whether you want to catch a baseball game, work in the garden, or visit a local festival, it can be hard to justify taking some time off when you know you haven’t done your marketing.

Lucky for you, Infusionsoft has you covered with some simple campaigns, designed especially for small businesses.

Infusionsoft’s Campaigns of the Month posts feature great, easy-to-use campaigns (and some have video instructions as well), so you can launch these marketing campaigns and boost your business with a minimal amount of time and effort.

If you could read just one book on business and marketing this year, what would it be? Well, one of the great things about the modern world is choices, and rather than confine you to just one, we’ve assembled a list of 10 books some of the top entrepreneurs are leafing through. 

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!  This is a hands-on guide written by Stoney deGeyter that walks you through the process of building a website that not only attracts visitors, but increases sales.

The beginning of each new year often brings cold, chilling winds, hailing the promise of another long dreary winter. And just when that wintry depression threatens to take hold, we often find ourselves temporarily saved by that army of precocious females: the Girl Scouts and their annual cookie sale. 

Originally a money-making scheme for a single troop during World War I, Girl Scout Cookies have become a much-anticipated institution for girls and customers alike. According to Wikipedia, sales of these cookies average 200 million boxes per year.

Business blogs come in all shapes and sizes. Some are must-have players for any serious small business owner’s lineup, while others need to be sent back to the minor leagues. Here are 5 business blogs that will be worth their spot on the team.

• First up to bat is Infusionsoft’s marketing blog, designed with small business owners in mind. Written in a casual format, the site contains articles about a wide variety of business topics. Want to know how to woo your perfect customer or learn ways to boost your content strategy success? The Infusionsoft marketing blog has you covered. It also contains handy links to Infusionsoft’s toolbox of goodies for the small business owner.

Well since Jordan* (www.jordanhatch.com) is still on the email kick, I thought I'd stick with it as well. Again just like Jordan*, I often get asked, "How does email actually work?" or "How come my email is not being delivered when Infusionsoft says it is?", or "How do I measure my email deliverability rates?". Or many variations on these themes.

Well ,as Jordan points out in his excellent blog post (http://www.jordanhatch.com/email-deliverability-i-dont-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means/) how email actually gets out of your system (your Outlook, Gmail, Infusionsoft, Mail Chimp, whatever) and into your recipient's email server is pretty complicated....and it hasn't even gotten to your recipient's inbox yet.

It’s worth poking around in now and not waiting till you're up against a deadline and desperate for an answer. Some of the familiar links you’ve been using have changed, so beware.

It’s all good though! Infusionsoft took the various help platforms that they provided and created a whole new integrated, easy to use Help Center which they launched in April.

To make it easier for you to get familiar with where to find what you want in the Help Center, we put together a list:

If you’ve ever talked to a web-site designer, you’ve heard about ‘making your website search-friendly’or heard the term ‘SEO’thrown around. The purpose of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is to ‘get them in the door.’These days, that’s likely to be with Google. Creating content for the right keywords will help your business appear in the search results that your customers use.

But what words to use? That’s where the fun starts.

Google’s Mobile Update is Looming! Are You Ready for April 21st?

On April 21st, Google is planning to rock its mobile search results with an algorithmic update that will change everything. This update is expected to affect more sites than Penguin and Panda combined because searches from mobile devices are estimated to make up more than 50% of all Google searches. To be clear - there is no site that is safe so do NOT pass over this update thinking it isn't relevant to you.

24 hours. It seemed like an eternity when we were younger. As adults, we often wish there were more hours in the day. It always seems like there’s too much to do and too little time to get it done. It can seem like a daunting task to keep on track when there are deadlines everywhere we step. Fortunately, technology has given us the tools we need to keep the deadlines at bay. For every need, there is a productivity app to fill it. 

Here are 3 good ones that will leave you with more to-do time:

We are super excited to announce another video in our collection for you! This one demystifies Joomla!™, the popular global CMS (content management system) for building robust business websites.

In March 2015, Dom co-presented with Sarah Watz, President of Open Source Matters Inc., the nonprofit organization that supports the Joomla! project which is completely run by volunteers. The webinar was originally presented for Infusionsoft Certified Partners but there is plenty of value there for the small business owner or marketing consultant.

“I know every mile will be worth my while. I would go most anywhere to find where I belong.”

The words come from a song in Disney’s 1998 animated film Hercules, but they can just as easily apply to many small business owners struggling to find their place in a competitive market.Breaking in can be daunting. It often seems the competition is bigger, badder and more importantly, already entrenched.  If you try to be everything to everyone, you’ll end up spreading yourself too thin. To find where you belong, sometimes you have to find your perfect niche. If you’re good at something no one else is, why not take advantage of it?