LocalUp.com Blog

Give Back to Get Ahead in Business

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:14:47 -0400

Small business owners are an integral part of every community. They create jobs, pay taxes and provide valuable products and services to the community.

Many companies spend months or even years and thousands upon thousands of dollars in advertising trying to build a loyal following. The easiest approach is to advertise through every medium you can afford. Of course you are competing with countless other advertisers that may have much larger budgets.

Rather than competing directly with all those other advertisers, there is a better method, but it’s not quite as easy as writing a check to an advertiser. Focus on getting involved with the community and give back by donating time and resources to local non-profits. Law firms, restaurants, accounting agencies and everyone in between can contribute in a meaningful way.

Instead of money, donate your time to a local group. Community groups always need a helping hand, sometime they may just need a laborer, at other times they may need special skill that you can provide. To encourage employee participation, establish volunteering as a key business value and consider providing incentives to employees that are willing to donate their time.

Business owners are notoriously busy and time is often in short supply, but remember time isn’t the only thing at your disposal. Businesses have a variety of resources that are invaluable to non-profits. Whether it’s a meeting room, server space, access to the photocopier or something else entirely, the community will benefit while minimally impacting your operations.

Directing advertising money away from traditional channels and towards community activism challenges the status quo, but has the potential to improve ROI along with the ancillary benefits. First and foremost, you are helping people in need, they get the help they need and you can feel good about what you’ve accomplished. Second, you’ve enhanced the reputation of your company among community leaders, which is something a newspaper ad can’t do. Last but certainly not least, you’ve established your business as a valuable member of the local community, word of your good deeds will spread and the community will show their appreciation by supporting your business.

Smart Entrepreneurs Avoid These Mistakes

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:05:29 -0400

Starting your own business may be a lifelong dream, but too often it can turn into a nightmare. By some estimates, half of all small businesses fail in the first four years, while other estimates paint a much more gruesome picture.

As smart entrepreneurs we can learn from the mistakes of others and adapt the best practices in the industry to weight the odds of success in our favor. Analysts and researchers have crunched the data and identified several critical mistakes that can doom a small business.

First, entrepreneurs often start businesses with little experience in the industry. A couple of years working, even in an entry level position, allows a smart entrepreneur to learn volumes before leaping into a new venture. Industry trends, leading players, and an industry specific vocabulary is just a sampling of the wisdom garnered through experience. Years of experience is highly recommended, but when that’s not feasible, do some extensive research, get online and read all you can, subscribe to industry magazines, and reach out to industry experts and try to learn from them.

New entrepreneurs regularly launch their enterprises without having a clear competitive advantage. A new business doesn’t have a reputation to rely on, and without that special something that sets it apart from the others out there, obtaining new clients will be a real challenge. Improve your odds by identifying and refining that one thing that your company does better than all the competition, and make that the cornerstone of your marketing presence.

Skipping the planning phase seems like a good idea that saves time allowing a new business owner to focus on running the business. The reality is often much messier and completely avoidable. Simply, don’t skip the planning process. Craft a solid business plan, set realistic goals, and carefully monitor and control your finances.

Failure is far too common among newly launched small businesses. A few common mistakes can drastically lower your odds of success in a new venture. Gaining experience or researching the industry before trying to compete in the industry is key. Identifying and focusing on the attributes that make your business better than the rest can attract fresh clients. Finally, plan all the way down to the details and uncover issues before money and customers are at risk.

Beyond the Home Office

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 12:23:16 -0400

There are a number of things that make launching a LocalUp site a compelling opportunity for budding entrepreneurs. These include relatively low startup costs, incredible support from the LocalUp team, increasing market demand, few significant competitors and the list goes on.

Especially appealing to many young owners is that it’s possible to manage the site solo from a home office. Working from home has an undeniable allure. For many, escaping from the daily grind of a traditional office is what drives them to launch their own business. A home office has the advantage of keeping costs down and maximizing convenience, important factors for a new endeavor.

There are drawbacks to working from home that can’t be ignored. Waking up at noon and working in your pajamas is certainly appealing, but not necessarily productive. Distractions are everywhere when you live and work together, putting off taxes or other unsavory projects is all too easy when you can instead wash the laundry, water the plants, walk the dog, you get the idea. Holding business meetings and bringing on more staff can be awkward and may feel unprofessional for all parties involved.

As your business grows and develops, establishing an office outside the home is a logical step. Finding an economical solution for a one or two person office can be difficult, but there are some creative solutions you should consider.

When budget is of utmost concern, consider becoming a regular at the local library or finding a friendly coffee shop in the neighborhood. This solution isn’t ideal for taking your business to the next level, but it’s economical and gets you out of the house freeing you from some distractions.

Co-working spaces are another alternative that have been popping up in cities across the country providing small business owners with many of the conveniences of an established office. Photocopiers, wi-fi, meeting rooms, and an office manager/receptionist are all standard features you can expect in a co-working space. One final advantage of note is that these spaces can often be rented week to week with no long-term commitment.

If you need something a little more permanent, seek out other business owners in the area that have extra office space to sublet, or find other home office workers that would be willing to share a new space with you. Just short of establishing your own office, this significantly increases monthly expenses but creates a framework for future growth and expansion that might be right for your business.

Working from home is ideal for many small business owners including LocalUp site owners, but for some, working at home simply doesn’t work. By employing a little creativity, alternatives to the home office have never been more plentiful regardless of budget.

Does working at home work for you?

Develop Your Brand to Elevate Your Business

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 13:19:32 -0400

Things are looking a little different around LocalUp these days. We’ve got an amazing new logo, a great slogan, and the new website is shaping up nicely. This rebranding effort has been a huge time consuming project, but we are really happy with the results, and with 100% certainty I think we can all agree that it was worth it.

You might be asking why we’d undertake such a dramatic project, well the answer is easy, brands matter. The importance of your brand as a marketing tool and a sales tool can’t be understated. Consumers are fickle and given the choice of an established brand with a quality product or an untested brand, it really isn’t even a question, consumers just like you and me will default to the brand we are familiar with.

Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, IBM these are some of the word’s most iconic brands. How did they become iconic and how can you develop an iconic brand? The strategy is simple, but there aren’t any shortcuts and it will take real effort.

The key to developing a great brand is to always keep in mind that a brand is absolutely secondary to having a great product. Wildly successful brands have wildly successful products, not just once, but for years and years. Your business exists to sell a product or service, not to market a brand. Consistently produce quality products and services and your brand will naturally become more valuable.

A brand has power because consumers establish an emotional relationship with it, a brand is able to elicit images and feelings in customers. So, along with providing a great product to your customers, focus on providing a great experience for them. By going the extra mile and treating each customer like a VIP they’ll form strong emotional ties to your brand that will pay dividends for years to come.

Develop a look and feel that’s right for your business, and then deliver great products time after time. Develop honest and special relationships with your customers, then and only then can you begin to realize the sales and marketing benefits of having a well respected brand.

As LocalUp site owners, what affect do you think your brand has on your business?

Freeing Yourself with Consistency and Process

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:30:09 -0400

Small business owners start with dreams of the good life. Dreams of being your own boss, setting your own hours, and endless exotic vacations. The reality for many owners is more like a nightmare than a dream, constant worry, never ending tasks, and issue upon issue.

With a little planning though you’ll be able to realize your dreams and free yourself from the headaches of running a small business whether it’s a LocalUp site or something else entirely. It all boils down to establishing processes and standards so that your business runs smoothly when you aren’t there.

Establishing standards and procedures helps in several ways. First it forces you to think about how you are doing things. Consider how you reach new customers, how you ship products, how you work with suppliers, these are things that you might do everyday in the course of normal business and most likely developed organically as the business developed. By thinking through your processes step by step you have the opportunity to streamline and identify areas for improvement hopefully resulting in better efficiency.

Once you’ve got a solid understanding of how you do business you can start documenting everything. Writing things down give you a better understanding of your business and forces you to stick to a consistent way of doing a job. Your customers will thank you as their experience becomes standard and something they can expect. Solid documentation also helps because now you new employees can reference documentation for help rather than always coming to you for assistance.

With a little planning you can streamline the way you do business, please your customers by providing a consistent experience and provide a resource for your employees to reference when you are unavailable.

Are there any other benefits to establishing standards and procedures? Is there any downside?

A Fresh Look and a Focused Brand for LocalUp

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:03:46 -0400

Things might be looking a little different around LocalUp these days. We’ve been hard at work creating a marketing strategy and unified branding message that really tells people who we are and what we stand for at LocalUp. Stakeholders across the company were interviewed and we’re excited about the results.

We’ve simplified things a bit. We’ve gone with a strong bold typeface and the simple bold colors of a modern startup full of young talented people. The other prominent feature of our logo is the megaphone like slant reflecting LocalUp’s growth and local focus.

Our new tagline “Own Your Hometown” represents our focus local entrepreneurs, and our goal for each LocalUp powered site to dominate the local market.

We wanted to explain LocalUp in a single sentence, after hundreds of potential candidates, the headline “LocalUp helps you bring online food ordering to your hometown” rose to the top. Without a doubt, this perfectly sums up LocalUp and our mission.

Over the coming weeks and months you can look forward to some exciting initiatives that we will be launching. On other fronts, the website is in the shop getting redesigned, things should be back up in a couple months, but until then we will still be on the blog and Twitter (follow us) and Facebook (like us) and Google+ (circle us) keeping you up to date with all the happenings at LocalUp.

Which Type of Small Business is Right for You?

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 12:39:24 -0400

You’re charged up and ready to become an entrepreneur. After considerable thought, you’ve got a firm grasp on what your business will offer customers and you’ve even decided on a catchy name for your new company.

Now it’s time to start making things official. One of the first things to do is register your new business with the state government, a service typically handled by the Secretary of State. Before going any farther though, it’s time to decide which kind of business is right for you.

There are five legal types of business entities to choose from, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Sole Proprietor - This is the most basic type of business you can start, in fact, many states don’t even require that you register as a business if your name is part of the business name (ie. John Smith Consulting). Unfortunately this structure carries a bit more risk since you are personally liable for the business. Simple and easy to setup, but carries personal risk.

Partnerships - A lot like a sole proprietor except that ownership is shared by two or more people. Partnerships have to be registered with the state, and partners are held personally liable for the business.

Corporations - A complex structure in which each of the owners is issued company stock. A corporation is often viewed the same as a person from a legal perspective. Corporations earn profit which gets taxed as income and those profits get paid out to shareholders via a dividend which shareholders must pay taxes on. Shareholders can’t deduct losses by the corporation, but they also aren’t held liable for the debts of the corporation.

S-Corporations - A specially designed corporate structure that allows profits and losses from the corporation to flow directly to the shareholders thereby avoiding the double taxation of traditional corporations.

Limited Liability Company (LLC) - A relatively new business structure that has become quite popular for small businesses that blends the benefits of a sole proprietor or partnership with the advantages of a corporation. In an LLC, the owners are not liable for the debts of the company, but like an s-corporation profits and losses flow directly to the owners thereby avoiding double taxation.

Check your local regulations and consult other small business owners in your area before deciding which sort of business is right for you. The LocalUp staff also have quite a bit of experience launching businesses and are always very helpful.

So which one is right for you?

Launching a LocalUp Site an Interview with Robert Botto of OwlEats

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:42:40 -0400

Launching a new LocalUp powered site is a busy and exciting time around the office, but the real challenges fall to the site owner. Recently Robert Botto, the founder of OwlEats (http://owleats.com) in Glassboro New Jersey, took a few minutes out of his hectic schedule to let us in on some of his experiences in making his site a reality.

Robert grew up working in the food industry. His family has their own national brand of Italian sausage and restaurant, but it wasn’t until his time at Penn State that he was exposed to LocalUp through LionMenus. After graduation, he jumped at the opportunity to start his own LocalUp site and OwlEats started to become a reality.

When asked about what he thought was the hardest part of launching his site, he responded with a resounding “Time! Adding OwlEats on top of my full-time job has been an interesting venture.” He goes on to recommend that anybody launching a site “should be willing to commit to the time and effort.”

An ideal LocalUp market is a mid-size college town, and Glassboro a city of nearly 20,000, meets that criteria nicely. Rowan University enrolls over 11,000 students ballooning the city’s population and supporting an abundant selection of restaurants and cafes perfect for a LocalUp site.

Keep checking in on OwlEats over the coming months to see OwlEats grow and mature, and I’d like to thank Robert for taking a few minutes from his busy day. I’ll close with a final bit of advice from Robert that I think sums things up nicely, “you’re the heart and soul of your site. You have control over every aspect of the site, make it your site and dedicate the time to develop the site and you’ll reap the rewards.”

How Technology is Disrupting Society and Business [Info Graphic]

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:14:42 -0400

How has technology changed our social lives? How has technology altered the business landscape? This latest info graphic seeks to answer a few of those questions with some pretty impressive numbers detailing just how influential technology has become.

Fruits and Vegetable Growing Infographic

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:36:00 -0400

Hard to believe the kind of impact that eating properly could have on the economy just through new local food/farming sector jobs. (via Food and Tech Connect)

Thaw Out Those Cold Calls

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 17:24:00 -0400

To be a successful entrepreneur you’ll have to master a thousand different skills. Running an small business like a LocalUp powered site is going to require HR skills, accounting expertise, sales and marketing talent and so much more.

It may seem a little scary, sure there is a lot to learn but it’s a process that never really stops. However, one skill that often paralyzes people more than any other is cold calling. For some nothing is harder than selling a product to a complete stranger.

Cold calling is an old sales technique that basically amounts to calling people on a phone list and trying to sell them a product. A more modern interpretation is to call cold calling any kind of communication initiated by a salesperson with the ultimate goal of selling something. Today cold calling can be done face to face, via email, over the phone, through social media, the sky is the limit.

We can take much of the mystery and fear out of cold calls with these three techniques that you can put to use before ever making your first call.

Get in the Mood - Many people on both end of a cold call view it as a dirty sales tactic. People have called it intrusive, boring, repetitive, but mostly its viewed by everyone negatively. Mood matters though, if you don’t want to be talking to a potential customer then chances are they won’t want to talk to you. Get excited and be happy about getting to know a potential customer.

Do the Research - Get to know your customer. Learn about their market, their competition, what worries them and what the future holds for their market. Be prepared and be knowledgable, if you can talk the lingo you’ll be far more likely to make a favorable impression.

Prepare Yourself - It’s easy to get flustered in the heat of the moment. Create an outline for yourself about what you’d like to talk about. Make note of all the questions you’d like to ask and all of the points you’d like to mention, but remember it’s just an outline, not a script. Leave plenty of room for improvisation and be sure to customize it based on each customers needs.

First impressions really do count and for small business owners every contact with a potential customer is important. By getting in the mood, doing the research and preparing yourself you’ll turn the otherwise unsavory task of cold calling into a valuable tool for building business relationships.

There’s no denying the power of social media. All those...

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:04:00 -0400

There’s no denying the power of social media. All those users are going to have an effect on your business whether you embrace social media or not. It’s probably best to be ahead of the pack. (Tumblr is determined to shrink the JPG so visit the full size image here)

Crazy Times for the Online Restaurant Review Industry

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:24:12 -0400

The new LocalUp platform is being deployed to sites across the nation as we speak and one thing to notice is that Yelp reviews play a prominent role in every listing. Under each restaurant name is a five star rating system and the number of reviews it’s based off. Click on that link and another tab will open up to the restaurant’s Yelp listing.

Yelp is a prominent player in the restaurant review industry. They dominate the space so much that they even went public earlier this year with far more success than Facebook, but they aren’t without controversy. A recent example highlights their troubles, a Yelper thretened to tarnish a restaurant with bad reviews unless the owner agreed to pay him. Ultimately the users extortion attempt ended in failure but this isn’t the first time Yelp has gotten negative reviews, but that’s the price they pay for user created reviews.

Not one to be left out in the cold, Google decided to jump into the restaurant review business when they bought Zagat in 2011. Zagat differs from Yelp by employing a small army of professional restaurant reviewers to critique restaurants. This week Google decided to leverage their acquisition and added a Local tab to their Google+ social network with Zagat’s 35-star rating prominently displayed.

Competition is great for any business and restaurant reviews are no exception. Whether you favor user generated reviews or prefer to stick with the professional critiques chances are you’ll find online reviews for just about any restaurant. Both a curse and a savior for business owners, it’s undeniable that online reviews can affect a restaurant’s success.

Do online restaurant reviews affect your dining choices or your business?

What kind of music should you listen to while on the job? This...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:51:01 -0400

What kind of music should you listen to while on the job? This fun info graphic gives you a few suggestions.

Five Spring Cleaning Tips to Maximize Your Business

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:22:00 -0400

Starting a business is an incredibly challenging undertaking, and once your business is established the path remains daunting. It’s all too easy to become overwhelmed with every day tasks and simply operate on auto-pilot. Follow these five tips to do a little spring cleaning on your business and you’ll be ready to take your business to the next level.

1. Know your sales process - Customers find you and engage with you in countless ways but to optimize your business it’s important to track these engagements and understand what works and what doesn’t. Obtain real data on successful sales and unsuccessful sales and start to optimize. Track, track, track. The LocalUp platform captures and tracks valuable data, don’t let it go to waste.

2. Know your customers - Customers are the lifeblood of your business, so who are your customers? What do they like about your products? What don’t they like? Ask them. Surveys give you the opportunity to get data straight from the source, your customers. Restaurant owners are a wildly diverse group to begin with and each region is going to have it’s own quirks. Start regularly surveying your customers and act on the feedback they are providing.

3. Cut out the distractions - Focus on what makes you money and what will move your business ahead. Products that were great last year might not be applicable in today’s market or the direction of your business. Even more challenging, take a look at your customers and drop the ones that don’t provide the kinds of returns you are targeting. If it’s a battle to get paid or if a customer requires constant hand holding, maybe it’s time to let them go. Put simply, cut the products, services and customers that just aren’t profitable.

4. Be a good neighbor - Take advantage of your professional network and identify leads and business opportunities close at hand. Collaborate on new endeavors or find a partner that compliments your expertise. Pass business on to your network and help connect people together. Gain a reputation as a facilitator, and your business will reap the rewards.

5. Be THE guy in a niche - The jack of all trades approach to business is effective, but might be holding your business back. Instead, do one thing and do it really well, become the undisputed leader in your niche. The lost revenues will be more than offset by the higher premiums you are able to charge as the market leader/expert.

Disengage your auto-pilot and build a better business. Working through these five tips will help you lay the ground work for the next stage of your company’s development.

What can we do to help?

Much Improved LocalUp Platform Generates Higher Revenue for Owners

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:14:44 -0400

LocalUp has just launched the newest version of their powerful online restaurant discovery and ordering system that has users excited and is much more efficient at driving more orders to participating restaurants.

Packed with new features and performance enhancements the latest LocalUp platform contains:

- A bold new user experience that strips out all the distractions and focuses on keeping things simple.

- Clean easy to read restaurant information that can be quickly scanned and filtered by location.

- A single easy process that combines restaurant discovery and food ordering.

- A streamlined order and checkout process that makes ordering food even easier.

- Major enhancements to the core architecture that lay the groundwork for upcoming features and much faster iteration

“We upgraded EatBmore.com last week to iron out any final issues and everything went smoothly, at this rate we plan on having all of the LocalUp powered sites upgraded within 8-10 weeks” said CEO Chris Jeffrey, “The new layout looks much more refined and the feedback has been very positive. Our licensees are going to be most concerned about the revenue generating preferred listings and exposure rankings. Early tests have proven that those restaurants who take part in the enhanced listing program are generating up to 10x the number of orders compared to restaurants who do not, which ultimately is the driving factor in generating additional revenue from this feature. Additionally, our online ordering conversion rate and cart abandonment rate have both dramatically changed for the better. Our licensees and local account executives are going to be even more successful with this release as they remain busy selling and marketing. This has been the biggest release in LocalUp history. Many thanks and praise needs to go to our dev team!”

Head over to EatBmore.com to check out all the features of this massive update. Then get in touch and tell us what you think.

Site licensees, we’ll be getting in touch soon to schedule you for an upgrade.

Budding entrepreneurs, we are always looking to expand and now is the perfect time to start your own LocalUp powered site on this new shiny release. Get in touch at info@localup.com and let’s get started today.

Online Food Ordering Picks Up Steam

Wed, 09 May 2012 22:35:06 -0400

While there are glimmers of hope in recent economic numbers, the economy has challenged businesses in all sectors. Restaurants haven’t escaped, IBISWorld estimates that the restaurant business has shrunk 2.9% annually for the last five years.

The news isn’t all bad, e-commerce sales accounted for 51% of Domino’s delivery business and 16% of total sales. Last year only 39% of delivery business was online.

Just Eat, a company similar to LocalUp but focused on large metropolitan markets (mostly in Europe) has expanded to cover 13 countries in Europe serving 100,000 meals a day and recently received $64 million dollars bringing it’s total funding to over $129 million.

The Just Eat business model may be flawed, in 2011 Just Eat generated $500 million in sales but only $10 million in revenue, while profits are still elusive. The industry is on fire, but the one size fits all model being pushed by the industry giant hasn’t proven profitable.

Meanwhile LocalUp’s hyperlocal approach through independently run franchised sites has been gaining steam and site owner’s have been reaping the rewards. LocalUp has strict requirements for new markets preferring a highly focused approach over Just Eat’s shotgun approach. The laser like focus coupled with the independent nature of each LocalUp site has allowed LocalUp to succeed in this highly competitive fast growing market.

Incredible Market Potential as Most Restaurants Still Operate in the Stone Age

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:09:45 -0400

Technology may rule most aspects of our lives, but surprisingly not when we eat out. Restaurants for one reason or another are for the most part still running their businesses the old-fashioned way. A recent study by Restaurant Sciences most shockingly discovered that over half of the restaurants surveyed didn’t even have a website.

More interesting/shocking facts uncovered in the survey:

more than half the visits to a restaurant’s website are from mobile devices
less than 5% of independent restaurants have a mobile optimized website
less than 40% of independent restaurants offer an online menu even though that’s the most common reason for visiting a restaurant’s website

Food paired with the Internet might not seem obvious at first, but it’s proven to be wildly successful. Smartphones with high quality cameras have spawned a whole generation of food pornographers. Millions of unique recipes are available with a quick web search. Opinions are voiced on restaurants, recipes, and health benefits across social sites. Of course more recently there is the explosion of daily deal sites providing new promotional opportunities for restaurants, the list goes on and on.

What this survey proves more than anything is that the restaurant industry (an estimated $632 billion dollar industry in 2012) is a largely untapped market for technologists. It just so happens that LocalUp is aimed squarely at this market and the really cool part is we are willing to share this potential.

Do you think it’s easier to pitch a LocalUp site to a restaurant with an existing online presence, or one that has no online presence yet? How about if they already use a system for placing online orders?

Twitter Lists to Follow

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:44:21 -0400

Below you’ll find a few Twitter lists that we follow and think you might like too. I’m already putting together a few more lists and I’ll continue to update this post with all that information, so check back here often.

LocalUp Powered Sites (18 members) - LocalUp has spread around the country. Follow this list of the official Twitter accounts for each locally branded interactive online menu guide that’s powered by LocalUp

LocalUp Team (10 members) - Follow a few of the LocalUp team members responsible for making LocalUp a great product and an awesome opportunity.

Follow everyone or take your pick and follow just a few, but whatever you do don’t forget to follow us @localup and be sure to bookmark this blog post and check back from time since we’ll be coming up with great new lists all the time.

Steve Jobs Success in 14 Factors

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:23:36 -0400

Steve Jobs was making waves across the interwebs last week when Walter Isaacson published an article in which he identifies these 14 factors that he highlights as keys to Steve Jobs success.

Focus
Simplify
Take Responsibility End to End
When Behind, Leapfrog
Put Products Before Profits
Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups
Bend Reality
Impute
Push for Perfection
Tolerate Only “A” Players
Engage Face-to-Face
Know Both the Big Picture and the Details
Combine the Humanities with the Sciences
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

A few of these factors are suspciously quote worthy, but the list still makes a lot of sense. Steve Jobs engrained these into the core ethos of Apple and created one of the most successful companies in the world.

Can these factors be applied successfully to a small business? It’s possible that embracing these factors might be the single most important thing a small business can do to guarantee their success.

LocalUp sites by their very nature already do a few of these very well. LocalUp sites have laser like focus, online menus for a small region that target a specific audience. The sites are simple, they do one thing and do it well. The local nature of the sites allows site owners to engage with restaurant owners and restaurant customers face to face. Site owners become part of the community that develops around a site and feel a certain responsibility for keeping customers happy. The training provided by LocalUp to new site owners lets owners see the big picture, and daily site operations means they are fully versed on the details.

What is the most important factor to keep in mind when running your small business? Which factor do you think LocalUp site owners might struggle with?