3 Financial Tools To Help You Get Your Start Up Off The Ground

Do you have an idea for a business? Reckon your product or service could fill a gap in the market? Always dreamed of being your own boss?

If you’ve answered yes to these three questions, then congratulations – you clearly have an entrepreneurial spirit! Now comes the hard part. More than half a million businesses launch across the country every month and you need all the help you can get if you’re going to stand out from the crowd and succeed – regardless of how good your idea is.

Business planning

The biggest thing to be aware of is money. If you don’t stay in control of this, then you’re never going to get anywhere.…

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How to Accept Criticism Gracefully – and Be a Better Leader

No one likes to be criticized. Even when it’s a valid critique, or delivered constructively, it’s still difficult to hear that you have room for improvement. And when criticism is delivered harshly or with the intent to tear you down? That can have a long-lasting effect on your psyche and your ongoing willingness to take on new challenges.

Criticized businessman

Although learning to accept criticism gracefully is important for anyone, it’s especially important for leaders. Good leaders are visible and transparent, but putting yourself “out there” like that also means that everything that you say and do is on display and open for comment and critique.…

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Future Finances: How Outdated Accountancy May Be Costing Your Business

Whether as individuals, families or businesses, how we manage our finances is one of the most important parts of our livelihood.

Small business finance

When we think of finances, we often relate it back to our personal experiences, such as managing our private savings, or evaluating whether our budget can accommodate the financial commitment of periodic mortgage payments when purchasing a home. However, when it comes to managing the financial side of a business, things become significantly more complicated.

As a business owner, your primary goal is to ensure that your income is greater than your expenses and that you have adequate cashflow to pay your liabilities.…

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How the Military Prepares People for Running a Small Business

Military veterans only make up roughly 7% of the general population (including retirees), yet 9% of businesses in the U.S. are veteran-owned. If you factor in businesses that are 50% veteran-owned that number jumps to 13%. These Census statistics highlight that veterans are about 45% more likely than non-veterans to start their own business.

Military veteran

For those who have been in the military, worked with service members or are a direct relative, this comes as no surprise. The special training and discipline veterans receive in the military prepares them for entrepreneurship. It also helps that there are franchise opportunities for veterans and special programs that can help prior military members realize their dream of being an entrepreneur.…

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Reputation Management: Major Mistakes Business Owners Make and How to Avoid Them

Online reputation management (ORM) refers to the process of monitoring reviews and comments about a person or their company mainly through social media watching. For example, monitoring Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. When it comes to ORM, many business managers make mistakes.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Here is a review of some of the most common ones and how you can avoid them.

Not being aware that you have an online reputation

If you don’t know you have one – and you do – how are you going to be able to do anything to influence it? If you really don’t have the time to keep up with your online reputation, use a review checker service.…

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SEO School: Things About Quality Backlinks Every Business Owner Needs to Know

If you want to make sure your target audience finds your website online, it’s important that they can find you in the search engines.

Many people will immediately go to Google or another search engine these days to begin their research and find what they are looking for—and you want them to find your website.

SEO

The way to do this is through good search engine optimization (SEO). This is one of the most important online marketing strategies, and it focuses on making your website more visible in the search engines.…

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Gardens: The Unsung Hero in Real Estate Valuations

Gardens, and landscaping in general, are often the most overlooked elements when it comes to adding value to a home.

How much value your gardening and landscaping choices can add is highly subjective to the market the property’s located in, but it’s worth noting that over ninety-percent of buyers rank garden design as something that definitely increases value, whereas the color of the paint inside the home is often of little concern by comparison.

Deck garden

The reality, when faced with insight from experts in the field like realtors and home-staging professionals, is that adding a garden will not only add to the overall value of the home, it can make the home sell much faster, too.…

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Down with Downtime: Best Practices for Proper IT Asset Tracking and Management

Effective asset tracking is crucial to building a more profitable organization. Investing in asset management software is a good first step, but there are also several strategies you can implement that will ensure a smooth implementation of your asset tracking system.

Asset tracking

From organizing your existing inventory to streamlining warehouse processes, the tips below will help you get the most value from your asset management solution.

Use an Automated Inventory Solution

Automated solutions for inventory management offer several advantages over manual systems, from shorter fulfillment cycles to reduced helpdesk operating costs. Switching from a manual process to an automated one also boosts employee productivity and allows you to track vendor data so you can take advantage of savings.…

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5 Advantages of Traditional Marketing Over Digital Marketing

One of the major goals of every business is, of course, to grow and maintain a strong and loyal client base. A key factor in achieving this is to promote the products and services of the business through advertising. This can be done through newer digital marketing strategies that utilize social media, among others, as well as through established and more traditional marketing methods.

Print magazine ads

But while digital marketing can possibly reach more people quicker, there are still some advantages of employing more traditional marketing methods.

1. Easy to reach local audience

When your target group of customers are the local consumers, then a radio ad is definitely one of the most useful marketing method to employ.…

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Top Workflow Tips for Effective Document Management

Document Management System (DMS)

Effective document management has become an essential component to maximizing productivity for just about any organization and this includes small businesses too. There are many small businesses that are part of paper-intensive industries. These include healthcare practices, financial services companies, firms that work with government agencies, and more. As the paperwork mounts, so does the case for effective document management.

To maximize productivity, many businesses are turning to document management applications. But, employing a document management application alone will not help. In fact, doing this alone may doom it to failure from the start. There are critical best practices that users must embrace to ensure ROI from any document management application.…

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