Skip to content
Home » Operations

Operations

A woman in a black shirt is standing and holding with both hands a small cardboard box. In the box are some folders, a spiral notebook, and a pen holder with a pair of scissors with red handles sticking out. This is the classic photo of what happens after you let an employee go.

How to Let an Employee Go, for Small Businesses

Things don’t always work out. And this is true, too, where it comes to employees. Sometimes, it’s because the person ...
Read More
/
A man is sitting at a desk looking at some paperwork on a clipboard. There's an open laptop in front of him and an open calendar notebook to his left. Across from the man sits a young woman. She's looking at the back of the clipboard, smiling, and leaning slightly forward to show enthusiasm. Her hands are clasped together and resting relaxedly on the desk. He is interviewing her for a job, so he’ll need to keep in mind various employment rules and regulations when asking her questions.

US Employment Rules and Regulations: A Guide for Very Small Businesses

In the US, there are a lot of laws about how businesses should treat their employees. These employment rules and ...
Read More
/
An open and powered-up laptop sits on a table along with a notebook, a pen, and some papers that are scattered behind. There's a woman standing apart from the table, with her arms crossed and looking up, but she's out of focus. The laptop is opened to an internet web page that says "Job Search" and is one of many job posting sites for employers available on the internet.

Great Job Posting Sites for Employers

So far, 2023 has been a strange year for jobs. Very large companies have been doing mass layoffs—some of them ...
Read More
/
We see the hands of a person who is sitting at a table. The person is holding open a stack of paper with the left hand and writing something with the right hand. We also see the lower parts of a calculator to the photo’s bottom left. There are two large binders to the left of and slightly behind the person’s left hand. One says Salaries and the other says Payroll. Instead of doing things by hand, this person probably can save some time if they did payroll using small business payroll software.

Great Small Business Payroll Software

Most people don’t like to do detailed, repetitive math. And payroll math is nothing but detailed and repetitive. It’s too ...
Read More
/
A young woman in a pony tail and wearing an orange T-shirt is sitting at a table, looking down at a laptop in front of her. Both her hands are cradling her face and she looks sad. She's just got the news that she's lost her job. Now, she'll probably need that unemployment insurance her former employer had been paying into, as a part of something every employer is required to do by law.

How Unemployment Insurance Works, for Small Businesses

When you start a business, you hope the business grows. But, sometimes, it grows and then it shrinks. You have ...
Read More
/
A young woman wearing a white T-shirt and a baseball cap is standing in the middle of the photo. She's looking down at a clipboard she's holding in her left hand and seems to be copying with her right hand info from the clipboard to a sticker on a cardboard box. The box is on a table, on which a large computer screen also sits. To the back of her is a shelf full of boxes. She seems to be working in a warehouse or mail room and is exactly the type of worker who is paid by the hour and for which you'll need to calculate overtime pay if she works over 40 hours a week.

How to Calculate Overtime Pay, for Small Businesses

Most workers in the US know that if you work overtime, you get paid 1.5 times your normal wage. And ...
Read More
/
A friendly, smiling waiter is chatting with three women patrons who're sitting at their table looking up at him, probably listening to him telling them about the specials of the day. The restaurant has a dark ambience, with a single light hovering over each table. The waiter is likely paid a special tipped worker's wage, which is slightly more difficult to calculate and is one reason business owners should understand minimum wage calculations.

Understanding Minimum Wage Calculations

Supply and demand. It’s basic capitalism. And this concept applies to the labor market too. As a business, when you ...
Read More
/
A young man in a knit cap and wearing glasses sits at a cafe looking at his laptop. His left hand is raised to his face, like he's thinking. He is moving his right index finger on the touchpad of his laptop. To his left, here's a mug likely filled with coffee and a glass bottle of water as well as an empty drinking glass. The young man is the type of worker that might make a business work through the contractor vs. employee analysis, to make sure he is being paid correctly.

Contractor vs. Employee: An Explainer for Small Businesses

Having employees can get expensive. You have to pay all sorts of extra taxes and insurance. We covered the nitty ...
Read More
/
A closeup photo of a man's hands to the left of the photo showing him holding a pen out with his right hand and pushing some paperwork with his left hand towards the hands of a woman on the right side of the photo. The woman's hands are clasped and she's not accepting the paper or the pen. She's not taking the first offer and will stay tough as she negotiates her influencer contract.

How to Negotiate an Influencer Contract, for Creators

When someone hands you a contract, the safe thing to do is to hire a lawyer to review it. But ...
Read More
/
A woman sits at a table holding a red smartphone in her left hand while punching numbers on a calculator with her left hand. A red notebook lies open close to her right hand. She is figuring out her influencer rate before giving a quote to an advertiser.

How to Set Your Influencer Rate

When most people think of negotiating a contract, they think of settling on a final dollar value. For the most ...
Read More
/
Looking directly down a table, there's a tip jar with coins inside and four coins spread out on the table next to the jar. Many online crowdfunding platforms work like this tip jar.

Best Crowdfunding Platforms for Creators

In the olden days, artists like Leonardo da Vinci lived on the support of their patrons. And you had to ...
Read More
/
Person recording a podcast that can be uploaded to podcast hosting sites

Podcast Hosting Sites That Pay Creators

This article is a part of our series on how to run a creator business. In this group of articles, ...
Read More
/