Reasons Why Small Businesses to Move to the UAE

If you have a small business, then you know that trying to go international is a tricky proposition. Let’s face it, it’s the stuff of much larger organizations. Or so you think. In fact, a number of small businesses are taking a look at the opportunities to expand into the UAE.

For one thing, the country is located at a strategic crossroad between east and west. Also, the leadership is pro-western and pro-business. In addition, it is becoming an important financial center. So much so that many are calling it the Silicon Valley of the Middle East.

The name is not without reason.…

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4 Key Tips For Diversifying To Succeed In Your Local Economy

The Big Box retailers has endangered local small businesses. The model we see growing involves large companies getting larger and beating the small local companies to death through pricing. How can your business stay alive and relevant in the face of these giants?

Coffee shop owner

Value Added

Super customer service is the primary answer. Attaching a face to your company – a real, live, caring, local face – is one of the most important values you add. Big box operations try, but ultimately they can’t compete with the relational component you bring.

Your business is an extension of you. Take good care of it and take good care of your people.…

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5 Reasons You Should Be Taking Your Small Business Online

How can you as a localized small business owner, combat the growing online purchase market? Opening your own online store should be an option for you to consider. Providing the ability for your customers to shop online and either pick up directly from you or have it delivered locally will earn you more of your local market.

Online business

So, why should you take your business online?

It’s not that hard

There are an amazing number of tools already developed for you to use to build your online store. Shopify, Big Commerce, Weebly, and Square are just a few of the companies that have pre-built packages to help you get started.…

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Restructuring Your Business Marketing After an Initial Failure

It’s tough to get a small business up and running. In fact, a majority of small businesses fail. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is gone for you, even after you’ve run into your first failure. In fact, most of the most successful businesses out there aren’t their owner’s first foray into the business world. They could be several down the pipeline from that initial attempt.

Rebuilding and restructuring business

But, you may have to do some fairly radical restructuring with your marketing specifically, if that’s part of what caused the initial issue. And topics to consider when doing that will include dealing with foreclosure and credit repair, resetting social media and branding, still maintaining transparency, writing blog posts about earlier experiences, and making sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes again.…

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How to Rescue Your Business from the Brink of Insolvency

There’s no denying that approaching insolvency is a problem that requires immediate attention. While it can feel a little scary, the best way to fix it quickly and simply is with a targeted, focused response. In other words, don’t push it to the back of your mind and hope that it handles itself. With just a few small changes to the way that you do business, you can put your affairs in order and start to better protect your investments.

Business owner dealing with business insolvency

Whether you’re struggling to meet monthly bills, being buried by an unsuitable administrative process, or desperately lacking in credit, there are steps that you can take to turn the situation around.…

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3 Tips for Young Millennial Leaders Managing Older Employees

The latest available Pew research showed that millennials make up over a third of the current workforce in the United States. Considering that data will soon be nearing two years old, it’s safe to say that millennials are currently the largest demographic in the workforce, and growing by the day.

Millennial business leader

Even the youngest in this group are very much at an age where they’re competent and qualified enough to work as managers.

The real challenge for this radical generation of career misfits is to find ways to be taken seriously when they’re put in a position where they’re leading older people who’ve been working longer than most millennials have been alive.…

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CEOs: Here is How to Set goals – And Stick to Them

Goals: everyone does it, but how many people are actually accomplishing anything? Most likely, you’re doing it all wrong. It’s important to set goals in both your business and personal life.  It doesn’t have to be New Year’s Eve for you to need to make a change or to want to do better; this should be happening everyday.  In fact, 92% of New Year’s goals fail by January 15th, which warrants the question: what goes wrong? Why aren’t people following through on their resolutions?

Goals

There can be several different reasons for why people don’t stick to their goals, but many of these failures stem from setting the bar too high.  …

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How To Be Good At Being Your Own Boss

Trying to be your own boss has its inarguable upsides. You can decide on the dynamics of your workplace, choose your own hours, treat staff well and try to maximise profits for yourself. But while that all sounds like a cinch, it takes more skill than you might imagine.

Successful female CEO

Running a business is a marathon

Most small business owners take years, even decades, to hone their skills, using famous entrepreneurs as templates or attending in-depth courses on the subjects of business and finance.

Even those who are clued up might struggle in the bear pit of free market capitalism. It only takes one slip-up in a dodgy financial climate to turn your once-thriving business into a stagnant shell of its former self.…

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Boost your Confidence, Boost your Success

In many ways the difference between running a small business and being a freelancer is that the pressures are greater. Everything comes down to you ultimately, it’s just that everything amounts to far more things!

Confident business owner

For freelancers, as for CEOs of small businesses, confidence and assertiveness are key. After all if you don’t have confidence in your own abilities, and demonstrate it, why should a prospective client or potential new hire have any confidence in you.

Confidence can be learnt

Some people are naturally more confident than others, but confidence can be learnt and developed. If you’re not naturally confidence this doesn’t have to put you at a disadvantage with a little disciplined practice.…

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Dan Anton: SEO CEO Birthed in the Fires of Iraq

The transition from employee to CEO is typically engineered out of mental necessity, protection of the ego; whether it’s being disrespected, unappreciated, underpaid, the gamut of reasons is extensive and certainly valid in the eyes of the employee, turned would-be CEO. What if you loved your current role, and never had plans on leaving? This was the mindset Dan Anton embodied when he, serendipitously was confronted with a decision to become a small business owner.

Dan Anton joined the military because of the September 11, 2001 attacks on The World Trade Centers. He ascended to the rank of Major, where on his second tour, was injured in combat by an IED, medically retiring.…

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