Week of 2/18/26

Keeping good records is one of those habits that’s easiest to form early and hardest to fix later. Tracking income, revenue, expenses, receipts, and mileage as they happen, or at least once a week, takes very little time when it’s routine. Accurate books lead to dependable numbers, and dependable numbers create a solid foundation for better decisions.

It’s easier to keep up than to catch up. ●

Week of 2/11/26

I told someone they should raise their prices because they weren’t even getting keystone. They asked what keystone meant.

When we started our eCommerce store in 1999, keystone was a common way retailers priced products purchased from distributors. It simply meant pricing at roughly double the wholesale cost. That logic makes sense as a starting point for retail, although it isn’t applied the same way to wholesalers selling direct.

Today, people don’t talk in those terms as much. The same idea shows up as gross margin, contribution margin, markup, or whether something clears a 2x. The language has changed, but the pricing conversation is still about margins and sustainability. ●

Week of 2/4/26

When explaining Google Ads to clients, we sometimes use a simple analogy: a filing cabinet. The account is the cabinet itself. Inside it are drawers, which represent the campaigns. Within each drawer are hanging folders, the ad groups. And inside those folders are the individual pages, the keywords and ad copy.

Cabinet → Account
Drawers → Campaigns
Hanging Folders → Ad Groups
Content in the Folders → Keywords & Ad Copy

It’s a simple way to visualize how campaigns are organized. Once that structure makes sense, it’s easier to have clearer conversations about what’s happening and why. ●

Week of 1/28/26

While working through URL mapping recently, we noticed something that tends to build up quietly over time: redirect chains. Pages get consolidated, URLs change, new content replaces old content, and before long one redirect points to another, which points to another. Nothing is broken, but things aren’t as clean as they could be.

It’s worth taking a look every so often. Long redirect chains slow things down, dilute signals, and make it harder for search engines and users to land where you actually want them to go. Cleaning them up is rarely urgent, but it’s part of good site hygiene. A little maintenance here keeps your structure clear and prevents small issues from compounding later. ●

Week of 1/14/26

Maintaining access to your digital assets matters more than most people realize. Your website, Google Business Profile, analytics, domains, and financial tools should always be owned and controlled by you. That means creating the primary account yourself and then adding users with the right permissions, rather than sharing usernames and passwords with vendors or employees.

We’ve seen what happens when this step is skipped. An employee sets up a profile and leaves. A developer controls the website login. Suddenly the business owner can’t make changes to their own properties. Even if you need someone to walk you through setting things up properly, it’s worth the effort. A little structure on the front end prevents a lot of friction later. ●

Week of 1/7/26

There’s a difference between advising from theory and advising from experience. A clean framework or a sharp slide deck can look good on paper, but it doesn’t execute itself. Strategy only matters if it can survive real-world constraints, tradeoffs, and follow-through.

We’re consultants, but we’ve also built, grown, and closed a multimillion-dollar business. We’ve been inside the work, not just adjacent to it. And we still are, whether that’s running digital ads, digging into data, supporting fractional finance, or coaching through real decisions. The value isn’t in the recommendation alone. It’s in knowing what actually works and doing the work when it needs to be done. ●

Week of 12/31/25

As the new year approaches, a lot of people start thinking about what kind of work they actually want to be doing. Not just what they can do, but what will be satisfying and sustainable over time. That kind of clarity rarely comes from setting louder goals. It usually comes from slowing down and taking a more honest look at yourself.

We often come back to three simple questions: Who are you, and how are you naturally wired? What are you genuinely good at? And what kind of work holds your attention without forcing it? When you look for patterns across those three areas, you start to see where your time and energy are best spent. We recently walked through this framework in a YouTube video and put together a practical guide to help work through it step by step for anyone who wants a structured place to start. ●

Week of 12/17/25

You don’t have to run off in every direction chasing the latest trend or getting pulled into someone else’s hype. Most micro and small businesses are already doing more with less. That’s the real world. What matters is getting good at the fundamentals, the parts of your business that don’t look glamorous or exciting, but actually move things forward. The steady work. The basics. Ignore the noise. Be brilliant at the basics. ●

Week of 12/10/25

Working with a client recently, we noticed something subtle but important in Search Console: two different pages on their site were essentially synonymous. Google saw them as the same topic, which meant the pages were competing with each other instead of reinforcing a clear signal. Impressions were split, rankings were weaker, and nothing was technically broken, it just wasn’t clear which page should win.

It’s a good reminder to check your own Search Console. Are your core pages indexed? Are multiple URLs showing up for the same searches? Are you creating unintentional competition inside your own site? Sometimes the issue isn’t more content. It’s clearer content. ●

Week of 12/3/25

When people hear “eCommerce,” they usually think of online stores shipping boxes like Amazon, Shopify, or Etsy. But that’s only part of the picture. eCommerce isn’t just about selling physical products. It’s about doing business online. Payments, marketing, data, customer interactions...it’s all part of it. ●

Week of 11/26/25

Categories matter more than most business owners realize. If you choose the wrong category in your Google Business Profile, Google may classify you incorrectly, sometimes as a national brand, and you’ll lose visibility in local results. In worse cases, it can trigger a suspension.

We’ve helped a lot of small businesses recover suspended profiles, and the process is rarely simple. A few minutes of care on the front end saves weeks of unnecessary headaches later. ●

Week of 11/12/25

When we first start working with a small business owner, we go after the low-hanging fruit. The easiest, most obvious next step. Not the big, shiny project that eats time and energy. The simple operational action that actually moves the business forward today. Do the first easy thing. Then the next. Momentum doesn’t start with a grand plan, it starts with clearing what’s already within reach. You’ll be surprised how far that gets you. ●