Growing your business
Day-to-day operations will take up a great deal of your time, but as the owner of a small business, you must also have to manage your company's growth. Here are some tools that can help:

• Management and Operations on the Canada Business website is a great place to start.  It contains information on managing a business..
• To find out how you're doing in comparison to others in your industry, you'll want to use financial ratios (for more info, read this article), you may try BDC's financial ratio calculator. For information on other businesses, you may want to try Dun & Bradstreet reports.  
• Looking for a consultant? BDC Consulting has over 500 across Canada covering virtually all business domains; as well, check out the Canadian Management Network.
• Looking for a mentor? You may consider investing in BDC's Business Coaching program or using online resources such as e-mentoring.com or mentors.ca.
• Looking for government programs? Try searching the Canada Business website.

Employees
As your company grows, you may need to hire employees. For an introduction to your obligations as an employer, try Hiring and Managing Staff on the Canada Business site. For an overview of the human management processes, try this online toolkit.

• You can calculate payroll deductions with this tool.
• Check out this BDC article on recruiting.
• If you want to post a job, try the Canada-wide job bank offered by HRDC, or private firms such as monster.ca, workopolis.com, jobboom.com, jobshark.ca or CareerBeacon.com.
• Human Resources Management Canada is a government site with an excellent information bank and info about assistance programs.
• Why not hire a student? Career Edge is a national program of student internships, offering significant subsidies.
• If you need a complete and customized HR plan (for example, to handle rapid growth), check out BDC Consulting's HR Management solution.

Perfect your e-business strategy
If you have a business, you should consider creating a website. But a website can be one simple page with your contact information, or a secure commerce-enabled database-driven site. Here are some tools that can help you explore e-business.

• BDC's e-business solution can help you plan a complete e-business strategy.
• Try this article about e-commerce and exporting or this article Perspective: Take your website to the next level.

Join a business association

• Networking is an essential part of successful entrepreneurship. There are many different types from the general Canadian Chamber of Commerce or Canadian Federation of Independent Business to more specific ones such as the Canadian Technology Network.
• You will probably want to check out your local business associations, too - your municipality may have a list online.