With over half of the working U.S. population starting or working in small businesses, there are even better statistics and data around entrepreneurs and startups. Read here for some interesting facts! When working in a small business, an owner or employee may find themselves doing jobs outside of their specialty. Long gone are the days of “passing the buck”. In a small business climate, every job may be your job.

As a small business owner, you have to be on all the time. A blossoming business needs you at the ready for any crises or opportunities. A new study shows that small business owners are taking calls, even in the bathroom, and yet still missing out on new business.

A UK based call handling solution company commissioned the research as part of a study of 2,000 small business owners and their phone habits.

According to the study, 70% of small business owners admit to having taken a business call in the bathroom to avoid missing out on new business. 18% also say that they have taken a business call at a funeral, and 13% at a wedding.

The research also detailed that the business owners:

• Receive upwards of 20 calls a day
• Miss approximately seven calls a day
• Noted 9% of calls are new business inquiries and the cost of a new lead is worth on average $160

In total, small businesses are losing over $5,000 a year each in missed opportunities.

It's no secret that a small business owner is overwhelmed. A missed call means missed income. Wouldn't you breathe easier knowing a professional answering service was handling your calls so that you could take some time for yourself and your family?

Source: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130801006323/en/Microbusiness-Owners-Calls-Toilets-Research-Penelope#.VJDiVivF9hx

Happiness is an important part of any workplace. Generally speaking, employees that are happy will be more productive, produce higher quality work, and remain with the company for a longer time. While certain aspects of workplace happiness depend on good chemistry between the members of your team, there are several things you can do to improve workplace morale by improving working conditions, reducing stress, and interjecting fun into the workplace. Here are five ways to increase the level of happiness in your workplace.

Many of our clients are small business owners who use our answering services to enhance the service and satisfaction to their customers. We are proud of our small business owners and entrepreneurs as we have found this is a growing trend in the U.S. economy.

For small business owners, the Internet is a peerless resource stuffed full of expertise that can be used to influence their operations for the better. Even experts in their respective fields can benefit from keeping up-to-date with online resources, not least because best practices continue to change in perfect correlation with changing circumstances in the business environment.

Here are some of the best small business blogs out there on the Internet:

• AllBusiness.com specializes in providing small businesses with resources that can be used to bolster their performance. Examples range from how-to articles to commentaries from experts in a number of business fields, ranging from finance to marketing and operations.
• LinkedIn Today is a simple tool that LinkedIn members can use to keep up-to-date with the latest news out of their respective fields. It tailors its content based on the information that your peers have been sharing, while providing the opinions of said peers at the bottom.
• Quora is a site that lets you send in questions and receive answers from some of the top names in their respective fields. Since members of the user base can vote for the best answers, you can feel more confident in the usefulness of the information that is presented to them. Best of all, Quora can cover a remarkable range of topics, letting it serve as a convenient, one-stop solution to your small business problems.
• Small Business Trends is an excellent resource that compresses news, research, and even business recommendations into a single package. You can use it to keep up with the latest events relevant to your business, while gleaning insight from the relevant experts.

Of course, these are but a small selection of the resources that can be found on the Internet. Small business owners interested in reading more can find all kinds of blogs, ranging from those that cater to their specific fields to those that cater to small and medium-sized enterprises in general.