Retirement Luxuries To Put On Your List

The phrase “planning for retirement” generally evokes images of white-haired individuals smiling in insurance commercials, making sure their finances are in order for the long haul. That’s definitely part of the process, and it’s always a good idea to speak to financial advisors, invest for retirement, and save whatever you’re able to. But planning for this phase of your life shouldn’t just be about making sure you can get by – it should also involve a few perks!

Retirement planning

That’s not to say everyone can afford such perks, nor that irresponsible spending is a good idea. But if you’re already working on a financial plan for the years ahead, you may want to have a few luxuries in mind so that you can try to work them into your budget.…

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How CEOs Can Dominate Their Investment Portfolio

Some believe that a CEO is defined by financial prowess and an astute awareness of the markets. However, this is sometimes not the case.

There are many examples of such individuals who have lost great deals of money due to bad portfolio decisions. In fact, the Stanford Graduate School of Business has found that hubris associated with top management positions often leads to poor judgement calls.

CEO investment portfolio

So, how can a CEO improve the performance of an existing portfolio in order to maximise profit margins and minimise risk? Let’s examine some methods recommended by professionals.…

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The Merits of Mining: 6 Business Benefits of Utilising Web Scraping

Web scraping is an important tool to find and utilize relevant data and information as part of a business’ market research strategy. Web scraping has proven to be a beneficial process throughout various business components including market research, lead generation, search engine optimization, online presence and financial strategy.

Web scraping

If your business seeks to partner with an ethical web scraper or is considering the process, read on to see the six key benefits that web scraping can provide for your business.

1. Data Extraction

Data extraction plays a key role in providing relevant information for business use. Using predictive analytics, a web scraper will collect relevant information from public sites and will identify which users a business should send their marketing material to.…

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Online Promotional Tactics Small Businesses Don’t Take Advantage Of

When it comes to online marketing, there are so many techniques small businesses can use to drive traffic and raise brand awareness. Some methods are more popular than others. Most small businesses tend to stick to certain well-known methods like buying Google ads, or using Instagram.

Online promotional strategy

Small businesses often launch digital marketing campaigns on a limited budget. Therefore, there’s little room to try new things and experiment. However, this line of thinking might be costing small businesses in certain ways.

There are plenty of online promotional methods that don’t cost a lot that small businesses don’t actually take advantage of. Here is a list to reconsider your current strategy:

Promoting Content on Aggregator Sites

John R.…

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How to Weigh Up Location Options for Your Startup

So, you’ve decided to launch a startup. While it can be easy to direct your attention towards your product, your customers, recruitment and resources, location is one of the most important factors to consider when in the setup phase. This is something that you definitely should not rush, as a decision made with little thought can end up impeding your success.

Choosing office location

Finding the perfect location is challenging to get right the first time around, regardless of how much research you conduct. We now have offices in the U.S., UK, Australia, the Philippines and Poland, but this took a lot of ground work, changes and mistakes along the way to find the best spots.…

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5 Best College Degrees for CEOs

The responsibilities of a CEO are many and varied, and when you are at the head of a company it is important to be able to keep up with and understand all areas of your business. Decisions made by CEOs impact the whole company and will be based on a variety of factors, so certain skills and college degrees can be extremely useful for a CEO.

CEO earning a college degree

So, which college degrees are the best for CEOs should they decide to go back to school?

Computer Science

A computer science degree is very versatile – and almost essential if your business is technology related – but it is also useful to any CEO.…

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5 Practical Ways to Cut Costs and Improve Profit Margins

A business can exist in three financial stages – the business can be operating at a loss, it might be breaking even, and it might be booking profits sustainably. The ideal financial state for a business is to be profitable consistently and sustainably, that’s the only way to ensure that the business will survive and thrive. However, many businesses are only barely making a profit because operational expenses often eat too deeply into their margins.

Financial analysis

This post provides insight into five ways you can cut costs to improve your margins.

Rethink your office space needs

You can start cutting your business expenses by reviewing your office space needs to know how much of an office space you really need.…

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The XaaS Model for Small Businesses – Produce More with Less Costs

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) enabled access to software services over the Internet on a subscription model. Platform as a Service (PaaS) made available the software and hardware tools needed to develop and deploy applications. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allowed companies to access operating, storage and networking systems on demand.

XaaS

These services were a boon to organisations in terms of cost savings, ready access to software and a lot more. But now comes in the X factor. The XaaS, or Everything as a Service.

The Incredible X Factor

Lesley MacDonald, Programs Manager at Dell EMC explains what XaaS is: “From its early origins of software-as-a-service (SaaS), the cloud-based on-demand services category has evolved into anything- and everything-as-a-service that isn’t nailed to the floor.…

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Improve the Five Key Areas of Business with These Resources

There is a limited skill pool for most small businesses due to financial restrictions and lack of talent options from the immediate area. Yet, these barriers break through the clever use of online resources, products, and services.

Improving business

It allows a business to operate on a large scale without undertaking the complexities of a corporation. Consider the following to encourage success within the main operations.

Education & Training

There are numerous (free and paid) educational portals and training options online:

  • One could learn six sigma traits to improve their managerial abilities
  • Take a course to keep up with the growing tech demands on Udemy
  • Attend a workshop to get hands-on experience with new skills

Education and training should be at the forefront of the day-to-day operations to keep workers skilled and up-to-date with changes in the industry & marketplace.…

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Why Your Business Must Go For Direct Outreach

There are a couple of reasons why businesses are moving away from direct outreach towards more passive, yet highly effective, inbound marketing strategies. Firstly, direct outreach is invasive – you could be reaching out to a prospect while they are busy. You are not only likely to get an unfavorable response in this scenario, but are also likely to come across as a spammer. Secondly, direct outreach is bound by a number of FTC regulations and laws like CAN-SPAM and a tiny slip up could mean fines worth thousands of dollars.

Direct mails

But direct outreach works. There are a number of statistics online that claim that cold calling is dead.…

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