The work of running
a small business.
Plain guides for owners, each with the templates to use today: how to answer a bad review, how to test a candidate before you hire, how to hand over your inbox, how to take a week off. Every figure carries its source and the day it was read.
Last updated
9 guides
- How to answer a bad reviewA one-star review lands at 9:40 on a Tuesday night and the whole day is suddenly about it. Here is what to do in the next hour, the four replies that cover almost every bad review a small business gets, and the rules from Google, Yelp, the FTC and, for clinics, HIPAA, stated plainly so nothing you write makes it worse. Most businesses never answer: in a study of 229,882 Google reviews on small businesses published in August 2026, one-star reviews got a public reply 9.8% of the time, and when they did, the reply took 19.5 days on average. Answering the same day, calmly, puts you ahead of nearly everyone.
- Customer messages for a cleaning businessA cleaning company runs on messages: the estimate, the confirmation, the reminder the night before, the text from the driveway when nobody answers the door. Most owners write each one from scratch, on a phone, between jobs, which is why the tone wanders and the same mistake gets made twice. Here are the twelve messages a residential or commercial cleaning business sends every week, written to be adapted once and used for years, with when to send each and the decision it carries. Fill the square brackets and remove them.
- How to hand over your customer emailsThe inbox is the last thing most owners let go of, because every message in it is a customer, and one wrong reply costs more than a week of the owner answering it themselves. The way to hand it over is not to trust harder. It is to write down, once, the things you know that the person answering does not: the facts, the voice, the decisions they may make, and the ones that are yours. This guide is that document, with six model replies, four practice cases and the check that tells you on Friday whether it worked.
- How Google picks a local businessIf you own a clinic, a roofing company, an auto shop or a restaurant, someone calls you every week selling a monthly package that will "get you to the top of Google" or "into the AI results". Here is what Google itself says decides who it recommends, what its own guide says about the AI results, what to decline politely, and a fifteen-minute routine you or your office manager can run every Friday, in the two free reports Google already gives you, that shows exactly how many calls, direction requests and visits your listing produced.
- Grok Bot, Muse or dots for your businessYes, you can use Muse for Small Business, OpenAI's dots or Grok Bot for real work in your business. Each is an agent you run: you connect your accounts, set its goals and rules, approve what goes out and check the work. If you want the job done without running it, hire help. This guide shows what each one does today, what stays with you, what it all costs, and who to hire.
- How to take a week offMost owners do not take a week off because the business only works when they are in it. The fix is not a longer checklist. It is one afternoon away, a written record of everything that still needed you, and the gaps closed before you book anything. This guide gives you the rehearsal, the six documents that cover a week, the table that says who may decide what, and the exact messages to send.
- How to test an executive assistant before you hireInterviews tell you whether someone is pleasant for forty minutes. A work sample tells you whether they can run your Tuesday. This is a complete, paid, two-hour test for an executive or administrative assistant, built for an ordinary small business: a fictional company, an inbox of twelve messages that hides two scheduling clashes, one policy trap, an invoice with something missing and a supplier who needs chasing, plus the scoring sheet and the answers a strong candidate gives. Use the same packet for every candidate, pay them for the two hours, and you will know more than three interviews would tell you.
- What small businesses pay in 2026Before you post a job you need one number, and the sites that offer it mostly show you what people say they earn. This page shows what the Bureau of Labor Statistics measured: for each of the 17 desk jobs small businesses post most, the 10th percentile, the median and the 90th, from the May 2025 estimates released on 2026-05-15, and what the median salary costs an employer once benefits are added at the split BLS measured in June 2026. The medians run from $38,010 for a receptionist / phone CSR to $166,790 for a marketing manager (generalist). The sheet is free to download at the bottom.
- How to write a job posting that fillsA posting that sits open for two months is rarely unlucky. Read it again and you will usually find three jobs inside it, no salary, and a list of tools where the work should be. This guide is the fix: the one-job test, the seven lines every small-business posting needs, what the pay-transparency laws now require, and a complete posting for a social media manager that you can adapt to any desk job in an hour.