Over the past year and a half or so BizSugar.com, a sister site to Small Business Trends, has gone through a bit of a transformation. The site is dedicated helping small businesses understand how they can use integrated platforms and automated processes to grow and scale their businesses. Part of that effort was to create a mastermind community for sharing ideas, experiences and expertise. And in that relatively short amount of time, the BizSugar mastermind community has grown to over 18,000+ members.

I’m chair of the BizSugar advisory board and one of the activities we did earlier this year was a survey to better understand the current challenges facing small businesses. This took place before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. And earlier this week a few members of the advisory board participated in a livestream conversation discussing some of the main takeaways from the survey of 585 small businesses folks. We also offer up a few solutions that may be able to help you address some of the major challenges small businesses are faced with.