Business Editor
Daryl covers the tools small businesses buy: payroll, CRM, accounting, website platforms, and the legal and tax machinery around them.
He tends to open by disagreeing with the category's conventional wisdom, then works the arithmetic in public so you can check it. The recurring theme in his writing is total cost of ownership, because the subscription price is almost never the number that decides anything.
A small business owner compares a $60-a-month AI tool to a $3,000-a-month employee and calls it settled. It isn't. Once you add the second and third tool the job actually requires, the review time nobody bills for, and the cost of the AI getting it wrong, the gap closes faster than the sales page suggests.
September 15, 2026 · 10 min read
The federal rule for who counts as a contractor versus an employee flipped again in 2024, back to a broader test that pulls more workers onto the employee side. Guess wrong and the bill is back wages, doubled damages, and both halves of the payroll tax you never withheld.
August 27, 2026 · 9 min read
Studies of corporate SaaS keep landing on the same number: roughly half of the licenses companies buy go unused. For a small business that is not a rounding error, it is a raise you are handing your vendors every year without noticing.
August 21, 2026 · 8 min read
The FTC voted to ban non-competes. A court blocked it. State legislatures kept moving. Most workers and employers are operating on outdated assumptions about what's enforceable.
August 14, 2026 · 9 min read
A third party was involved in 55 percent of breaches at small and mid-size organizations. When your payroll processor gets compromised, the notification duty, the regulatory exposure, and most of the bill land on you.
August 14, 2026 · 9 min read
Most sub-20-person businesses buy Salesforce or HubSpot because someone told them to, then use 5 of the 80-plus features they're paying for. The real cost isn't the subscription.
August 11, 2026 · 7 min read
Everyone compares templates, editors, and monthly price. None of those are the expensive decision. The expensive decision is what happens in year four when you want your site somewhere else.
August 6, 2026 · 10 min read
The estate planning industry has convinced a generation that the entry price is a $3,000 trust, so they buy nothing. If you have a kid, the part that matters isn't about money at all.
August 5, 2026 · 10 min read
You don't have a credit score. You have about forty of them, you generated the raw material for free, and the company that turns it into a number has raised its mortgage royalty roughly 700 percent in seven years.
August 3, 2026 · 10 min read
Every LLC in the country needs a registered agent, and the industry charges $125 to $399 a year for what amounts to receiving envelopes and forwarding them to you. Most founders sign up without knowing what they bought, which is exactly how providers like it.
August 2, 2026 · 8 min read
Everyone tells you an S-Corp saves you money on self-employment tax. Nobody tells you at what income the savings actually beat the costs. Here is the honest math.
July 21, 2026 · 8 min read
Payroll is one of the most critical processes a small business runs. Choosing the wrong software costs you time, money, and headaches. Here is how to find the right fit.
July 14, 2026 · 9 min read
Enterprise software spend is forecast to climb 14.7 percent this year. Your headcount did not. Most of that increase is arriving as repackaged tiers and consumption charges layered onto subscriptions you already had.
June 10, 2026 · 8 min read
