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Here’s What You Need to Know About Choosing a Credit Card for Your Small Business

When you’re running a small business, it can be hard to find the cash to keep things running smoothly. That’s especially true when your business is young, and you haven’t yet established a reliable cash flow. When you’ve got bills to pay and you’re still waiting on a much-needed payment, getting a bank line of credit, seed money from an investor, or even a personal loan from a relative or friend isn’t always possible – or desirable.

Tool shop owner

A small-business credit card may be the answer. This card can give you the financial flexibility to cover expenses that come up when cash is tight, letting you carry the debt until you get your next payment.…

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Your Business Website Isn’t Good – Here’s Why

As an ardent reader of SMBCEO, you know too well how important the Internet is for small-business success. Small enterprises rely on the inexpensive marketing of social media and the Web’s plethora of accessible, essential business tools. You even comprehend the necessity of maintaining a small-business website to supply your customers and clients with the vital information they need to seek your products and services. Yet, having a website isn’t exactly the same as having a great website — or even a good one, at that.

Anxious businessman worrying over his bad business website

Your website is the lifeblood of your online presence, which means you must ensure that it looks nice, performs well, and, ultimately, makes sales.…

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5 Tips for Swag Giveaways that Don’t Bore the Recipients to Death

When it comes to promotional products, the financial and professional services sector can be a bit boring. It’s true that quality promotional products matter; however, these won’t be effective in their own. You need to embed more value to the items.

Promotional product - USB

Sounds challenging? Fear not – with a little creativity, your swag can represent much more that the items’ value. Here are five tips for promotional product giveaways that fascinate, intrigue and delight the recipients:

1. Tell story

I used to work with a payroll company in getting their brand and message enhanced via content creation and marketing. As a thank you for my effort, they sent a box full of swag.…

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No Regrets: A Trade Show Supply Checklist Everyone Should Use

There’s nothing worse than getting to a trade show only to realize that you were supposed to supply your own tables, cords, and signage – and more. Here’s a checklist that will prevent that from ever happening to you.

Trade show

Aromatherapy Products

Some trade shows are stuffy. Aromatherapy can help with that. Sticks or vials of various scents can revitalize and refresh the air. It’s especially helpful if you get tired after a few hours of heavy traffic at a show or event.

Lavender, cinnamon, chamomile, benzoin, cedarwood, clary sage, frankincense, geranium, jasmine, neroli, patchouli, rose, sandalwood, and ylang ylang are some of the most relaxing essential oils you can buy.…

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Combined Skills: The Benefits of Forming a Real Estate Investment Partnership

Forming a real estate investment partnership can have some excellent benefits. An investing partner can open new possibilities that may not have otherwise been available and can make it easier to build up a profitable property portfolio in a shorter time frame.

Real estate investment partnership

Of course, there are times when investing as a partnership won’t be viable. For example, buying a smaller project or a single family home might be more profitable going it alone.

However, when you start looking at larger investments or multiple simultaneous projects, having an investment partner at the ready can help build momentum. Here are some of the key benefits to forming a real estate investment partnership:

Play to Individual Strengths and Combined Skills

A good partner should bring something to each investment deal that you don’t have.…

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The Perfect Location: Choosing a Launch Pad for Your Startup

When it comes to launching a new business, the location you choose can potentially be critical to the success of your venture.

Business district

There are many different types of commercial real estate on the market and numerous different locations to choose from too. If you are a tech business for instance, you might decide on positioning yourself in an area that is renowned for startups of this kind, or it could be that you want to take advantage of some tax breaks to help the finances.

Motivated by profit

The bottom line is that your startup will have to be profitable or it is not going to turn into a growing and successful business, which is why the location you choose can be important.…

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For New Entrepreneurs: Lessons and Advice from Inspiring Business Experts

How exactly do entrepreneurs find success? Do they use a special set of skills, or do they simply use the same skills that everyone else has? What life lessons do entrepreneurs today find most useful?

Gary Vaynerchuk startup quote on success

Chappel and Matthew’s (http://ChappellandMatthews.co.uk) real estate advisors to rising stars of the entrepreneurial world, share insights from some of the most inspiring stories of success in the entrepreneurial world, and the life lessons there to be learned.

Believe in yourself; but also be critical

American Document Services in Las Cruces, NM is a successful document shredding service that pulls in $1.5 million in revenues each year, retaining 16 full-time employees.…

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A Higher Level of Safety: Your Business and Multi-Gas Detection Devices

Anyone who works in the gas detection business will tell you that the consequences of not understanding the safety instruments can be fatal. Broken, malfunctioning, or misused devices give workers a false sense of security.

Multi-gas detector

If you work in an industry where gas detection is necessary, here are a few reasons why you should consider it a smart business move – not just a regulatory concern.

It Minimizes The Threat Of Death

A good multi gas detector minimizes the risk of injury or death – that’s a basic fact. Leaking gases into your company office or building is a measurable risk, based on the type of gas and the concentration.…

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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Preparing Yourself For a Conference Call

Taking a conference calling through providers like BlueJeans should be a pretty straightforward matter for most people since the only thing you need to do is to activate the application and make sure the camera is pointing towards yourself. However, being part of a conference call is so much more than that and actually requires proper preparation before you participate in one.

Conference call

Appearance

While yes there are primarily audio only conference calls, these days though companies have begun to prefer video conferences over their audio counterparts. If you are located in another country and are invited to a conference call in order for the company to know the status of your actions thus far, one of the worst possible things you can do is to answer a conference call looking as if you lost a fight with an elephant.…

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Is your Formal Education Done?

The way people get their formal education is changing all the time. There is an international conversation about whether or not traditional higher education models are worth it, for just about anyone. They’re expensive, and recent years have proven that they often do not pay off, especially monetarily. Others critique traditional learning models for not being relevant to the tasks at hand, when people graduate and enter their real careers.  Add that fact to the burden of student debts, making higher education a further reach by most.

Businessman taking higher education

In response to the challenges, programs like online mba programs california and elite universities like Harvard Business School have been striving to stay on the cutting edge of useful education models for many generations.…

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