Small business owners woke up this month to a mixed bag. KeyBank published survey results showing 23% barely making ends meet, stuck in what they call “survival mode.” Nearly half, 46%, watched their businesses miss targets they’d set with confidence back in January. Costs keep climbing. Good employees leave for slightly better offers. Customers browse but don’t buy.
Yet, scroll through FeedSpot’s small business podcasts, follow small business influencers like Amy Porterfield and Gary Vaynerchuk, and you’ll find a different story. Some businesses are growing despite everything. They are all documenting the same pattern. Seven specific actions separate businesses that struggle from those that thrive. We pulled those patterns into one place for you.
7 Tips and Advice for Small Business Owners
1. Use AI-Powered Automation to Get Back Your Time
It’s 10:47 pm on a Tuesday night. You’re copying customer details between spreadsheets again. Wednesday morning brings 52 invoice reminders you need to send individually. Thursday, someone asks about your return policy for the twelfth time this week asking the exact same question. Studies tracking email marketing show returns between $36-$42 per dollar spent. That math only works when you’re not composing each message by hand after your kids go to sleep. HubSpot and Salesmate exist specifically to handle repetitive conversations automatically. On The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, hosts keep interviewing founders who got 30-40% of their week back by letting software handle routine tasks.
Write down every task from today that made you want to quit. Pick the worst one. Google “automate” plus that task name. Spend 60 minutes setting something up. Repeat next week with the second-worst task. By next month, you’ll have full days available for actual strategy work.
2. Optimize Local SEO for Immediate Customer Acquisition
Chasing customers nationwide sounds ambitious. Dominating your immediate neighbourhood makes money. Real data shows that 76% of people searching their phone for nearby businesses walk through a door within 24 hours. They’re not researching. They’re ready to hand over a credit card. Most small business owners ignore this completely. They’ll spend Tuesday afternoon crafting Instagram content for followers in other time zones while someone two blocks away Googles “emergency electrician near me” and picks the competitor whose Google Business Profile was actually updated recently.
Your Google Business Profile deserves daily attention. Check it right now. Accurate hours? Recent photos? Responses to every review, including nasty ones? Add phrases people type when they desperately need what you sell. “All-night plumber Austin downtown” works infinitely better than “quality plumbing services.” Text three customers today, people who’ve told you they’re happy and request Google reviews. Not next week. Today!
3. Build Email Lists for Consistent ROI
Instagram changed something in its algorithm last month without warning. Half the business pages saw their reach drop instantly. TikTok might disappear entirely depending on which court case you’re reading about. Twitter’s now X and nobody’s quite sure what that means. Email ignores all this chaos. Email marketing generates 42x return on investment according to industry tracking. But that number requires treating subscribers like individuals, not database entries. First-time buyer gets identical emails as someone who’s purchased seventeen times? That’s leaving money sitting there doing nothing.
Jenna Kutcher discusses this constantly. Email built her seven-figure business because she wrote to people, not lists. Fit Small Business and AllBusiness.com repeat the same message: segment subscribers, write personal messages, stop blasting identical newsletters to everyone. Put an email signup on your website this week. Offer something genuinely helpful like a legitimate discount or a guide solving a specific problem. Collect 50 addresses by November 30th. Send three different email sequences based on who they are and what they care about. Watch what happens to revenue in 3 months.
4. Implement Cash Flow Forecasting to Avoid Financial Crisis
Half the small business owners in KeyBank’s survey reported disappointing results this year. The other half? They knew their numbers precisely. Not “things seem fine” but actual numbers including cents. Cash flow forecasting means stating confidently: “We’ll have $8,347 in the bank on February 12th, with payroll due that week costing $4,200.” Sounds tedious because it absolutely is tedious. It’s also what prevents you from closing your doors unexpectedly. Excel handles this fine. No fancy software required.
Barry Moltz interviews business owners weekly on The Small Business Radio Show. Everyone who avoided catastrophe spotted problems two months early by looking at cash forecasts and adjusting course. This skill lets you negotiate better terms when you’re not desperate. Lets you buy equipment strategically. Keeps you away from lenders charging 20% because you got caught unprepared. Open your bank statements from August, September, October. Write what came in and went out. Project that pattern 90 days forward using confirmed invoices and known expenses. Update this every Monday morning. Takes 30 minutes. Could save everything you’ve built.
5. Deploy Micro-Influencer and User-Generated Content Strategies
Paying someone with 3 million followers to hold your product sounds impressive until you see the results. Their audience stopped trusting them years ago. What actually works? Your regular customer posting an unfiltered photo because they genuinely like what you sold them. Research confirms micro-influencer accounts with 10,000 to 100,000 followers generate five to ten times more engagement than celebrities. Their audiences actually trust recommendations. Even better than micro-influencers? Regular customers posting real photos. User-generated content consistently outperforms professional brand photography. Codie Sanchez and Paula Tenorio won’t stop discussing this because the data proves it repeatedly.
Costs almost nothing to execute. Identify five customers this month who genuinely like your product or service. Ask them to post one photo tagging your business. Offer something small like a featured spot on your page or 10% off their next order. When they post, share it immediately with public thanks. You just created authentic social proof no advertising budget can buy.
6. Create Short-Form Video Content Under 60 Seconds
Businesses not making short videos have become invisible to entire customer segments. Reels, Shorts, TikToks under 60 seconds is how people discover businesses now. Angela Jasmina built 2,86,000 YouTube subscribers primarily through short content filmed on her phone. No crew. No studio. Just consistency. The common mistake: waiting for perfect conditions to film the perfect video. Meanwhile competitors post three okay videos weekly and grow audiences because algorithms reward frequency. Three mediocre videos per week beats one polished monthly video every single time.
Pick up your phone right now. Film three quick tips related to what you sell. 30-60 seconds each. Don’t script them. Don’t memorize anything. Just explain something like you’re talking to a friend who asked. Post one tomorrow, one Tuesday, one Wednesday. Check which got the most attention. Make more like that one. This isn’t supplemental marketing, this is how customers find businesses in 2025. Adapt or become invisible.
7. Diversify Funding Sources and Optimize Operating Costs
Banks tightened lending requirements again. Interest rates jump around quarterly. Small business owners sleeping well at night aren’t counting on one funding source. They maintain cash reserves covering three to six months of operating expenses. They’ve researched crowdfunding platforms and peer-to-peer lending. They call their banker quarterly, not only when desperate. KeyBank’s survey found something worth noting: 21% of owners who talked regularly with financial advisors reported feeling significantly more secure. Talking to someone who understands money helps you manage money better, not exactly revolutionary but apparently uncommon.
Cost optimization isn’t buying cheaper ingredients that hurt quality. It’s identifying waste and eliminating it ruthlessly. Most businesses can’t list where their money goes. Write your ten biggest monthly expenses this week. Pick three vendors. Call them. Negotiate better terms. Many will accommodate if you simply ask instead of accepting whatever they bill. Subscription services drain small business accounts silently. You’re paying for software you haven’t opened in six months. Cancel it. That $47 monthly charge you forgot exists? That’s $564 annually. Find five forgotten subscriptions and you saved $2,820. Enough for payroll, equipment, breathing room when money gets tight.
Why These Seven Strategies Are Crucial Right Now
The pattern becomes obvious once you see it clearly. Growing businesses stopped reacting to problems. They started preventing problems, automating repetitive work, dominating their immediate geography. They’ve built direct customer relationships instead of renting attention on social platforms. They watched cash flow obsessively. Struggling businesses are still trying to figure everything out alone. Successful ones found communities months ago. They learned from people further ahead. They implemented faster than competitors thought about it. From Amy Porterfield‘s 115 million podcast listeners to newer voices on TalkinWithTonio and Bigger Better Biz, everyone’s delivering the same message.
Want more depth? FeedSpot maintains a regularly updated directory of 70+ small business blogs covering operations, marketing, finance, and leadership. The 100+ small business blogs and small business youtubers list features founders and strategists discussing exactly these challenges weekly with actionable solutions. They document entrepreneurs building in real-time. Wins, failures, pivots, everything!