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Important Financial Tips for the New Small Business Entrepreneur

People start small businesses all kinds of ways, but one common factor within these diverse origin stories is the difficulty of controlling money. Money, essentially, is the reason all businesses exist. When your business starts up, it’s flowing all over the place.

New business financial meanagement

If you don’t have a lot of experience in the world of business accounting, it can be difficult to get the finances right during the critical early stages of your business’s existence. Following the following steps will help you correct early errors, and ultimately stay in business for a lot longer.

Separate Private and Business Finances

It’s common, in the early stages of your small business’s existence, to mix up your personal and business finances.…

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Stopping Slip and Fall Accidents: What to Do Before Bad Things Happen at Your Business

If you are a small business owner then you have plenty to worry about, including ensuring that your clients are satisfied, double checking that your inventory is well stocked, and making sure that your suppliers can be relied on. One thing that you may have overlooked but which could make a big difference to your business’s bottom line is a slip and fall accident.

Caution wet floor sign

As a business owner, you are responsible for ensuring that your business is safe for any visitors, including customers and employees. If you fail to provide a safe space and a person slips and falls then you could be held liable and the cost to your business could be extremely high.…

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How Your Small Businesses Can Compete With Big Companies

A few years ago, small businesses that tried to compete with big brands found it difficult to keep up. For those business owners, it was an uphill battle they could not win. But today, your business can co-exist profitably with big box stores using these tried and tested approaches:

Customer service is your competitive advantage

Take Your Business Online

If you haven’t done so yet, it’s time that you do. Having a strong online presence is key to your success. Why? Because everyone is online nowadays! Build a professional website and use professional SEO services to help get your website as high up as possible in Google searches.…

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A Quick Guide to Importing Goods into the United States

Whether you’re looking to leverage cheaper-made merchandise or diversify your product line, selling imported goods in the U.S. is a very lucrative business. Importing doesn’t necessarily mean you’re cannibalizing the economy. In fact, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, every $1 spent on an item that’s made in China puts 55 cents to U.S. businesses for marketing, sales, and related services.

Importing to the USA

If you are thinking of importing goods and selling it to the U.S. market, you’ll need to know more about the country of export as well as U.S. laws regarding importing. You also need to pick from among the reputable USA customs brokers.…

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How You Can Outsource Talent On a Budget

If you’re a small business or startup, or just simply operating on a small budget but you have a particular project that needs to be completed you might be considering outsourcing it. Outsourcing talent can be particularly valuable if there’s some level of specialization required for the project, and you don’t have the need to bring someone on full-time to tackle it.

Finding talent via outsourcing

While outsourcing is a more cost-effective alternative to the overhead costs of a full or even part-time employee, that doesn’t mean it isn’t somewhat costly.

One of the biggest reasons a lot of outsourced projects fail is because the company doing the hiring didn’t think about the budget ahead of time, and tried to hire the least expensive freelancer, rather than trying to balance quality and price.…

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Can London’s Small Businesses Weather the Storm of Business Rates Increases?

London’s small businesses are expected to receive special bail-out fund to help weather the storm of business rates increases, but is it enough?

London busy high street

On Monday 6th March, The London Evening Standard announced plans for special bail-out fund for the capital’s small businesses, which are set to be among the hardest hit in April’s business rates revaluation. “Traditional retailers and firms facing crippling increases of 50 per cent or more are expected to be favoured in funds totalling ‘hundreds of millions’ of pounds” the front-page article reported.

For London’s small businesses, the overdue 2017 rates revaluation threatens to increase business rates by an estimated £7.5 billion.…

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How to Choose the Best Trade Show Booth for Your Business

Would you ever consider opening a dollar store on Rodeo Drive? Of course not. No self-respecting ‘Rodeo-ite’ would be caught dead walking into a dollar store after stepping out of their Aston Martin that only gets driven on Tuesday!

They’d instantly become the laughing stock of all their friends, and celebrity gossip columnists would have a field day, right? Location is important. Location, location, location.

Here’s how to choose the perfect trade show booth, to maximize exposure and brand impact on all who’ll attend your next event:

Study the floor plan prior

If you have no clue how trade shows work, find someone who does who can go over the floor plan in advance with you and your team.…

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4 Business Insurance Tips Agents Don’t Want you to Know

There are many different types of insurance policies available to small and medium-size business owners. There’s so much to consider, much of it being industry dependent, and also depending on what risks you, your employees, and customers undertake while doing business together.

Of course, if you’ve done any research to this point, you’re probably interested in seeing if you qualify for a comprehensive Business Owner’s Policy (BOP), which is great if you qualify and in fact need all that a BOP policy can cover. However, a BOP only scratches the surface of what most businesses need in terms of coverage.

Business insurance agent

So, how to get the best insurance coverage for your business, given the facts that your insurance agents may know something that you don’t know – and might use that knowledge to take advantage of you?…

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Choosing a Domain Name that Works for You and Google

If your business is just starting out or going through a radical rebrand, you’ll be only to aware of the importance of choosing a domain name that works for both internet users, and search engines. This balance isn’t always easy to achieve. Humans respond better to domains that are short, memorable and unique, while search engines respond to domains that are semantically relevant to your service and industry.

Domain name

Whether through social media or search, the Web is where a huge number of prospective customers will first discover your business. In order to make the most of the opportunities afforded to you by these platforms, businesses must appeal to user psyche, while also supplying search engines with the topic relevancy needed rank highly in search engine results.…

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Better Leadership through Community and Social Work

Leadership is one of the must-have skills for business owners. Whether you’re running a home business with just one employee or a growing startup that’s starting to hire more team members, showing strong leadership and knowing how to keep the team working efficiently can help take the business to new heights.

Business leadership

It is also worth noting that leadership is a skill; one that can be learned and mastered. There are different ways to sharpen your leadership skills, but working in communities and doing social work are among the best ways to do it.

Becoming Community Leaders

A lot of business and startup owners went as far as going back to school to study social work specifically.…

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