How to Combat Loneliness As a Solopreneur

When you first decide to strike it out on your own in the small business world, the excitement of starting your business can quickly fizzle into burnout. Everyone talks about the joys of maintaining your own schedule as an entrepreneur, but not many discuss the loneliness that can settle in fast. And if you’re a solopreneur dealing with the everyday loneliness of working alone, you’re not the only one.

How to combat loneliness as a solopreneur

To help you get through those days where being on your own doesn’t feel as exciting as it used to, we talked to entrepreneurs, freelancers, and therapists about the strategies you can use to avoid loneliness in your solopreneur career.…

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Small Business Spotlight: Texas (Infographic)

Small businesses dominate the landscape in Texas. Though most things are larger here, this isn’t true for entrepreneurs. Over 99 percent of businesses in the state are classified as small businesses. This includes over 2.2 million nonemployers and more than 791,000 small businesses hiring between 1 and 499 employees.

Texas lone star print

The state of small business in Texas is extremely favorable for entrepreneurs, particularly women. Over 28 percent of small businesses are owned by women in the state, and 19 percent are owned equally by men and women. This gives Texas the second-highest number of women-owned businesses in the country.

If you’re ready to start a business in Texas, there are several key things to consider.…

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Tips to Use Angie’s List for Contractors and Small Businesses

Angie’s List was started in 1995, and the company has grown into a trusted service for consumers to judge the trustworthiness of contractors. Geared towards home services, Angie’s List can be used as a lead generation tool for small businesses.

Angies List HQ

But how can contractors and small businesses better use the site to generate leads?

1. Advertise on the Site

Angie’s List makes money from advertising, and they have salesmen that will talk to you about your service category. Keep in mind that these salesmen need to make the sale to earn their commission, so you’re in control.

But the salesperson will try to pressure you into a sale with:

  • Rate increase threats
  • Deadlines

Don’t worry – these are all empty sales tactics.…

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How to Launch a New Pipe Repair Business

If you want to start a new pipe repair business, you’ll want to start with the basics. The initial steps, aside from your training, which you’ll need to determine based on your state or province, is to incorporate your business. You can go through an attorney to incorporate, but there are plenty of online options.

Tips to run a new pipe repair business.

LegalZoom and the like will be able to help you incorporate your business quickly.

Why incorporate instead of running as a sole proprietorship?

  • You legitimize your business.
  • You limit your own personal liability.
  • You can easily transfer ownership.
  • You can issue then begin to issue stock in the business.
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4 Smart Tips to Create Financial Buffers in Your Business

If you own or manage a company, it’s essential that you give yourself financial buffers whenever possible. Business income and expenses are always in a state of ebb and flow, and you don’t want to get caught having to pay for something business-related when you don’t have the money and can’t get the capital easily to secure some necessary part of your company structure.

Tips to create financial buffers in order to protect your business.

Financial buffers can be in several different realms. You need to make sure that you manage your inventory properly. You should protect against legal situations. Your company needs to be prepared to scale up and down. And, there are lots of financial benefits to outsourcing as you need it.…

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Smart Business Decisions To Keep Your Company Competitive

If you want to keep your company competitive, not only will you have to have a fantastic product or service, but you’re also going to have to have a backbone of incredibly smart business decisions. If you are at the top end of your company, it may be up to you to make those decisions. Or, if you’re more at the worker level, you can recommend to your managers that they start shaping up.

How to stay competitive in business

There are several different perspectives that you can approach smart business decisions from. You can use project management professionals to help you out. You can install intelligent software in the appropriate places.…

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Short Guide to Advertising Black Friday Sales

Traditionally seen as a day of retail madness in the US, Black Friday has soon found it’s way to British high streets and online retailers, with mega savings available nationwide. With last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend generating over £1.4bn in the UK online only, it’s no wonder that more and more businesses are jumping on the bandwagon and getting involved. They are right to, when you really think about the potential sales that could be generated with a simple offer or promotion.

Black Friday sales preparation

But what is Black Friday and Cyber Monday all about? Traditionally, Black Friday falls the day after Thanksgiving in America, and is the day when thousands of US companies offer huge discounts and offers in order to encourage sales to mark the start of the Christmas shopping season.…

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Sole Proprietors: How to Appear Bigger to Your Future Clients and Partners?

“The bigger the better” is a phrase we’re all familiar with. It’s true too, no matter how much many of us wish it weren’t so. The first thing you’re supposed to do when you see a bear in the woods is to lift your arms high, puff up your chest as big as you can, and yell as loud as your voice box will allow. Many in the animal kingdom have also learned this trick, such as the peacock who use their massive tail feathers to make themselves appear bigger to predators, and each other.

Appear bigger to clients

As humans, we’re told to “fake it til’ you make it” because it’s a well-known fact that if you can effectively pull off looking the part of a big shot, you might just get lucky enough to actually make it to the big time.…

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What is Digital Asset Management? Why is it So Important? (Infographic)

Digital asset management is basically a method for a company or organization to store and retrieve information as needed, on demand. This allows for more efficient and pragmatic decision making. If you’re not on board yet, this group of technologies and methodologies is quickly changing the way business is done, and you can be sure the competition will be using it, sooner rather than later.

Enterprise digital asset management can help you in many ways, for example in presentations, audio, Documentations, images and in any other multimedia content or digital content.. However what it all comes down to is that DAM can store digital assets and make them easy to retrieve and view whenever decisions need to be made.…

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4 Mistakes to Avoid When Creating Business Videos Using Screen Recording

Screen recording is being used as a tool to create business videos more and more frequently. Because it is able to capture footage of apps and software, websites, online platforms, and digital products – it is perfect for creating videos involving them.

Screen recording business videos

Creating business videos with screen recording is generally a lot easier than recording conventional videos. However at the same time there are several common mistakes that you will want to avoid:

1. Not capturing the video in the right aspect ratio

When you use screen recording you can normally set the frame that you want to record – and people often set it just to cover the specific area that they’re interested in.…

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