Small Biz Ahead The Hartford

Episode Notes
Opening a restaurant in a post-pandemic economy can be a risky venture, especially for those without a formal background in business.  However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find the professional support or gain the experience that you need to succeed as a first-time restaurant owner. In this episode, Gene Marks and Chef Derick Lopez, the executive chef and owner of the Freakin Rican Restaurant Corp., discuss Derick’s journey as a small business owner and how he built a thriving restaurant on his own.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co

Episode Notes
Hey everybody, it's Gene Marks and welcome to this week's edition of the Hartford Small Biz Ahead podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. Hey, let's get right to the topic of the day. It has to do with small business optimism and inflation, and I wanna talk to you a little bit about some thoughts on dealing with inflation this year. So for starters, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) just released their latest monthly small business optimism index, and it wasn't great. Optimism, they say fell to a more than 11 year low. I'm not like a super fan of surveys about optimism and confidence and sentiments because it's tough to really gauge that stuff, but I do have to say the NIB's survey, their report, it's been going on for like 50 years.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co

Episode Notes
Have you ever considered using TikTok to promote your small business? If not, then you’re missing out on an invaluable opportunity to reach a wider audience. In this episode, Gene Marks and Scott Kaylin, the founder and CEO of Kaylin + Kaylin Pickles, advise small business owners on how to capitalize on TikTok’s massive user base and build a significantly stronger online presence.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co

Episode Notes
What Is Open Banking?
If you go to get a loan from a bank right now, you're sharing your information with that specific bank and it's just between you and that bank that you're applying for. What open banking is, is you agree to share all of your businesses and your personal financial information on sort of an open network. And a lot of banks and lenders can look at that information at one time and they can determine whether or not they would be a good financing option for you.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co

Episode Notes
What Customer Service Metrics Should Your Small Business Use?


Net promoter score: This score is generally on a zero to 10 basis. You ask your customer basically, how willing are they to recommend you, going forward in the future. They can choose zero, meaning not likely at all, or 10 meaning very likely.
Customer satisfaction score: For this you want to ask people how satisfied they are with your company, with your product, or with your service. You give them on a scale of one to five, or a scale of one to 10, and you can measure that as well.
The first response time metric: This applies if you have a call center, and is how quickly it takes to get to an issue when it's open and how many times an agent has touched that issue. And a resolution time, how long it takes to solve that issue.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co

Episode Notes
Designing an e-commerce site has never been easier, especially with all the user-friendly platforms that we now have at our disposal. However, you’ll need more than a basic template if you want to create an online storefront that helps you stand out from your competition. In this episode, Gene Marks along with Yael Weiss Ayalon, the user relations manager at Wix e-commerce, and Oren Inditsky, the VP and GM of online stores at Wix, advise small business owners on how to build an effective e-commerce site that appeals to both search engine algorithms as well as their potential client base.

Find out more at https://small-biz-ahead.pinecast.co