Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Hot Tips for Starting A Small Business

There are thousands of new small businesses created each year in the United States; some are successful, some are not. There is one element that greatly influences whether a new small business will have a successful outcome. The factor is a solid business plan.
The business plan should cover the business basics from goals to management, from marketing to operations. A business plan is a map for success, so don't go lightly on the details. A good business plan should include the executive summary, a definition of operations, an outline of the marketing strategy, and how the small business will be financially managed.

Benefits from Small Business Credit Cards

Imagine hiring an accounts keeping agent for free for your small business. This is what small business credit card does for you indirectly. However, this is not the only benefit. There are a lot of other benefits too. It's for these benefits that the small business credit cards have gained the status of a necessity today. Let's see what these benefits are.
1. Auto-segregation of business expenses
This is the most important benefit from using a small business credit card. You just have to ensure that you make all your business payments using your small business credit card and your monthly credit card statement will clearly and accurately reflect all your business expenses. You can use this further for accounting purposes or business planning.

Small Business Credit Cards Advantages

A lot of people associate credit cards with just personal credit card which an individual posses and uses for shopping etc. However, there is another category of credit cards and that is called small business credit cards. As suggested by the name itself, the small business credit cards are meant for small businesses or people running small businesses.
So how does the small business credit card differ from the other credit cards in general?
The very obvious difference is that small business credit cards have the credit account in the name of the small business and not any individual, though the benefits indirectly accrue to the business owner. The other difference is with the terms and conditions that come with the small business credit cards. Finally, there are some subtle benefits with small business credit cards which would not be applicable to personal credit cards. Let's check all these things one by one.

Small Business Loans Can Help You Write Your Success Story

Scene one: you are sitting on your office desk surrounded with files and work overload, you are thoroughly frustrated. You work hard and get paid. But somewhere something is lacking.
Scene two: you work for yourself; you do what you want to do. You work hard and you are satisfied. You go home a better person each day cause you work for yourself. And you definitely earn more.
You don't even have to look at the results; votes for Scene two are definitely more. You want a life like that. But every business entails capital. Small business loans can accrue the capital you need to start a small business. With so many online sources for small business loans, you don't need to rely on family or relatives for capital.

Small Business CRM Is Here To Stay

If you ask most small business owners what priority CRM has in their short-term business plans, chances are you'll get more than one blank stare. The fact is that most small business owners don't even know what CRM is not to mention how significantly it can benefit their growing company. This prevailing ignorance of small business CRM (customer relationship management) usually stems from just a few basic causes.
Excuses not to invest in small business CRM
The first and most common reason for disinterest in small business CRM is the very nature of small business. With limited financial and personnel resources at their disposal, business owners believe they can't afford the money or time that a small business CRM system would require to show a significant ROI. Often times the chief concern is just staying afloat long enough to sign that big contract or receive a large product order.

Small Business - Big Business...What's the Diff

Small Business, Big Business - What's the Diff?
Well a lot actually!
I become frustrated and angry at the government's paying lip service to assisting small business. It appears as though all governments, bureaucrats and many accounting advisers do not know what a real small business is.
In Australia the government's definition for a small business is one which has less than 100 employees. Who are they kidding? In my consultancy that's a big business.
They believe that 'small business' is the same as 'big business' on a smaller scale, that 'big business' is 'small business' with more of the same.

How to Get Financing For Your Small Business

In today's hostile economic environment, access to capital is the primary differentiating factor between those businesses which have been able to expand and gain market share versus those that have experienced enormous drops in revenue. The reason many small businesses have seen their sales and cash flow drop dramatically, many to the point of closing their doors, while many large U.S. corporations have managed to increase sales, open new retail operations, and grow earnings per share is that a small business almost always relies exclusively on traditional commercial bank financing, such as SBA loans and unsecured lines of credit, while large publicly traded corporations have access to the public markets, such as the stock market or bond market, for access to capital.
Prior to the onset of the financial crises of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, many of the largest U.S. commercial banks were engaging in an easy money policy and openly lending to small businesses, whose owners had good credit scores and some industry experience. Many of these business loans consisted of unsecured commercial lines of credit and installment loans that required no collateral. These loans were almost always exclusively backed by a personal guaranty from the business owner. This is why good personal credit was all that was required to virtually guarantee a business loan approval.
During this period, thousands of small business owners used these business loans and lines of credit to access the capital they needed to fund working capital needs that included payroll expenses, equipment purchases, maintenance, repairs, marketing, tax obligations, and expansion opportunities. Easy access to these capital resources allowed many small businesses to flourish and to manage cash flow needs as they arose. Yet, many business owners grew overly optimistic and many made aggressive growth forecasts and took on increasingly risky bets.

Small Business Servers - A Need For Change

Many small businesses don't have an IT department or anyone experienced enough to handle even basic IT tasks like backup, system restoration, patching or updates. In most cases, they rely on a local business partner (typically an IT consultant or local IT support company) to handle these tasks.
Unfortunately, many small business IT solutions on the market today exacerbate the situation. Their complexity...
  • requires the need for ever more powerful hardware
  • results in frequent system crashes and downtime for upgrades
  • compounds security problems
  • necessitates frequent system restorations
  • increases the investment in resource to upgrade systems and fix problems
Whats needed is a new generation of 'small business servers' that deliver all of the essential IT & technology services for smaller businesses but without the usual costs or hassle.

Successfully Obtaining a Small Business Loan

Working with a bank to obtain a small business loan can be an easy or difficult process, depending on how prepared you are to meet with the lender and discuss your business' situation and needs.
One of the leading causes of business failure is insufficient start-up capital. Ironically, though, lenders rarely approve loan requests for the businesses that have the highest need for a small business loan. Instead, lenders tend to prefer to offer small business loans to those businesses that have been in operation for two or more years.
According to All Business, it is estimated that 95 percent of all entrepreneurs opened their businesses with capital from their own pockets, or from money they borrowed from relatives, friends, or another person in their community. Lenders want to see business owners risk their own funds in the business venture, and often require that the business owner or owners provide a minimum of 25 percent of the capital needed to start a business, and at least that much equity in the business if the business is already in existence. Simply stated, lenders aren't as willing to take a risk when a business owner doesn't even risk their own money in the investment. Businesses with a history demonstrating success in paying their bills for two and a half to three years will have the easiest time obtaining a small business loan because they've proven their ability to meet financial obligations.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Corporate Apartments: The Better Alternative to Hotels

Whenever you stay in a city for longer than a week, you have a better alternative to hotels. Corporate apartments provide you with more space, more features, and generally more amenities. A hotel is fine for a night or two, but after a while, you begin to feel cramped and homesick. It's almost impossible to feel homesick in an apartment because you are surrounded by many of the same features as your actual home.
A Real Bedroom
When you stay in a hotel room, everything is located off of the bedroom. You walk into the room and you can see your bed, the bathroom, and the "office" all at the same time. There is hardly any privacy and there is no room for socializing - unless you want everyone sitting on your bed - which you probably don't.
By staying in corporate apartments, you have a real bedroom. Depending upon the floor plan of the apartment, you may even have multiple bedrooms. This makes it easier to get a good night's sleep, have some privacy, and even do some entertaining. If you have a two or three bedroom apartment, you can have multiple coworkers staying in the same apartment as you or you can invite your family to come up and visit for a few days or stay with you indefinitely while you are in town.