Five Businesses You Can Start Almost Immediately

Setting up a new business, whether as a solo venture or with a partner, is an exciting opportunity but it can take a lot of effort. Sourcing funds, creating a budget and just organising the general running will eat into a lot of time when you’re eager to get out there and start making money.

Hard working entrepreneur

There are a number of business options which don’t take as long to set up for those with an entrepreneurial itch. Many can be done from home and around another part-time job, with little set-up time or equipment required.

Child Minding

The go-to option for many teenagers looking to earn extra pocket money, babysitting or child minding is also a quick and (fairly) easy way to make money as an adult.…

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Smart Tax Strategies for Audit-Proofing Your Small Business

Going through an audit can be nerve-wracking and time-consuming. Most business owners would rather pull their own teeth out than deal with the IRS. Here’s how to survive the ordeal and avoid future audits in the future.

Small business tax woes

Outsource Your Accounting and Tax Work

If you want to avoid a lot of trouble with the IRS, pay someone else to deal with them for you. Outsourcing your tax and accounting work is one of the best moves a small business can make. Too many businesses mistakenly believe that they must do everything themselves.

In some ways, their entrepreneurial spirit “forces” them to “take on the world.”…

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6 Secrets to Achieving a Good Work-Life Balance for Busy Mums

When done solely, having a job, managing a household and raising kids are all extremely time consuming and sometimes difficult elements of everyday life. But what happens when all of these elements are combined together and one person is required to do all three of these things? For many busy working mums, it can all become a little too much sometimes which is why achieving a good balance between work and home life is extremely important and essential for success in all parts of life.

Busy mom's Work life balance

If you’re a busy working mum who is struggling to get that balance, we’ve compiled the below list of 6 secrets to achieving a good work-life balance.…

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Three Simple Ways to Supplement Your Income

Keeping a small enterprise afloat with a limited income is an unenviable challenge, yet it’s one faced by many businessmen and CEOs. The current commercial climate is highly competitive, and keeping the wheels turning whilst make a tidy profit is incredibly hard work.

An entrepreneur works on additional income for her business

This is why many entrepreneurs are beginning to look outside of the box, beyond traditional methods of increasing turnover. They’re turning to the many skills that their experiences have endowed them with, and putting them to good use in order to increase their incomes. If you’re one of their number and you’re looking for inspiration, here are three ideas that you might like to consider…

#1: Sell Your Products Online

Whilst almost every modern business will have an online presence, not all of them are utilising the internet to its full advantage.…

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What are The Benefits of Happy Employees? (Infographic)

All businesses are constantly seeking ways to improve their levels of productivity. After all, with higher levels of productivity come higher profit margins. Fortunately, one of the best ways to improve productivity is by making sure your employees are happy. In fact, with unhappy employees, you can take it to the bank that the entire success of your operation will be greatly hindered.

Happy employees

What unhappy employees can cost companies

Did you know that about 33 percent of business bankruptcies take place due to employee theft? If an employee were to get upset and steal from you, your business could face an unpleasant outcome.…

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Printing Made Simple for SMBs

Brought to you by Brother International Corporation

 
Simplicity overrides complexity when trying to get things done effectively. Brother™ wants to help ensure that small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have the right solutions in place for optimal productivity and cost saving. Replacing underused print devices with more effective printing solutions can result in an optimized printing infrastructure that delivers increased productivity and lower operating costs. Whether it’s replacing printers or finding compatible software and services to improve a business process, Brother is at your side to help find the perfect solution for your business printing needs. 
 
For more information visit Brother’s website

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Grow Your Business in Ways your Customers Will Appreciate

In today’s competitive global business environment, pleasing customers is no longer just about providing quality products and services. Winning customers’ loyalty requires you to engage them and stand out from the sea of other businesses. This is the key to success, and it’s no secret – Nine out of ten American CEOs say they are are building stronger client engagement programs, according to PWC.

Hot dog truck and the happy customer

As you grow your business, it’s critical that you do so in a direction that your customers will appreciate. Here is a look at some of the ways you can expand your business and please your customers at the same time:

Humanize Your Brand

Branding is more than logos and flashy commercials — it’s a way of communicating your values and identity in a memorable way.…

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What Do You Really Need to Think About When Setting Up a ‘Work From Home’ Business?

There are lots of options these days if you want to make use of your skills and work for yourself. Thanks to the internet, there are plenty of people out there hiring people with good skills in all kinds of sectors to work for them from home on a freelance basis. Whether you are a writer, a marketing expert, a designer, a programmer or an accountant, with the right approach you can make a living working as a self employed freelancer.

Work from home business

Setting up this kind of business is actually fairly simple, and requires very little capital. Here, we take a look at what the bare minimum things you will need to start your own freelancing small business are:

Technical Set Up

To be able to work online from home you do, at the very least, need a reliable internet connection, a computer that can do all of the things you need it to do consistently for the kind of jobs you want (a writer can, for example, work on a basic PC, but someone doing coding, data analysis or design may need a higher end computer), and a comfortable home office.

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Working from Home during Temporary Renovations at the Office

One of the best aspects of running a small business is when it begins to grow beyond your current capacity. It is at times like this that you see your bottom line rising but there just doesn’t seem to be a way to handle the extra work without making a few improvements to your physical location. If you find the need to move premises or undertake a business renovation, you may find the need to relocate office operations to your home. Here are some tips that might make the process easier whilst those renovations are underway.

Temporary office location

Planning Is a Priority

Planning is going to be your number one priority.…

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Tips to Ensure you are Getting the Most Out of your Employees

Most successful companies recognize two basic facts. Firstly, employees are the company’s most valuable resource, and secondly, for the company to be efficient, it needs to get the most out of all its employees. By and large, even the most successful companies struggle with achieving a balance. Lean one way and you have high turnover; lean the other way and you start down the road to inefficiency. The highly successful companies, though, have taken this balance to a whole new level by focusing on employee wellbeing.

Employee wellness

Case studies done on highly successful companies such as Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and Google point to certain similarities.…

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