Are You Managing Your Manager?

Setting a Strategy for Good Management

There’s significant research to show that disgruntled employees don’t leave their company, they leave their manager. Great managers are worth their weight in gold, and can be difficult to find. If you don’t already have one, perhaps it’s time to consider establishing a new strategy for both managers and your approach to management? Pondering these six key areas should help.

Managing managers

1. Understand motivation

Managers need to understand what motivates each member of their team.

By doing this, they can begin to align their team members’ interests and careers with what the business can offer them.…

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How to Take Advantage of Business Finance to Grow Your Company

As we all know, cash flow is incredibly important for all businesses, without a positive cash flow companies are very often forced to cease trading.

The early years of a company are critical, many companies aren’t concerned with growing the business and just want to keep it afloat in these early stages. With a bit of extra finance it can smooth the progress from start-up to a steadily growing company.

Business growth funding

Finance options

When starting out business owners have a few options when it comes to raising finance, they can go through formal routes such as banks or finding investors, or they can raise money through personal finance using short terms products like a logbook loan or credit cards.…

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Why You Should Consider Hosted Small Business Forms

As an SMB CEO, you are required to find the best solutions offering you the best value for money, as resources are scarce these days.

When you are running a full-fledge business website, you need to give emphasis to one of the most important – yet often neglected – features of your website: Your online forms.

Online small business forms

Your online forms – particularly your contact forms – need to be crafted in such a way that it converts well. Increasing your contact form conversion rate should be your top-most priority.

When you design online forms, you essentially have two options: design and host on your own, or design and host using a third-party service.…

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3 Ways to Take Advantage of Thanksgivukkah and Other Opportunities

It just so happens that Hanukkah and Thanksgiving both happened to be on November 28th this year. To celebrate this phenomenon, many decided to call this day ‘Thanksgivukkah.’ You can bet there was a huge marketing frenzy surrounding this day.

Thanksgivukkah

For example, there was a 9-year-old boy in New York City that created a “menurkey,” a turkey-shaped menorah, and actually got the funds to created it from a Kickstarter campaign. Or Dana Gitell, who decided to trademark the word after snapping up the Twitter handle and creating a Facebook page. Even Los Angeles geared up to create a festival around this holiday.…

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3 of the Hottest Office Locations for New Businesses in London

Establishing a new business in London? Finding the right space for your startup can be a challenge. Here are three locations to seriously consider.

King’s Cross: Google’s New Home

King’s Cross, together with the wider Midtown area, has been gaining increasing interest over the last year or two from larger companies within the tech industry. Google is due to open its new London HQ here in 2016/17, and between now and then we can expect the area to get plenty of attention from the media and developers alike.

But it’s not all about state-of-the-art business premises for large corporations. King’s Cross is home to a selection of business centres which are set up to accommodate small and new businesses.…

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When the Numbers Don’t Add Up: Three Ways to Improve Your Business Credit Score Quickly

If you find your business becoming rejected and denied for loans left and right, then chances are that your business’ credit score and history are to blame. Obtaining a copy of your current credit report will allow you to quickly see just how bad things have gotten, especially if you have an extensive list of negative accounts and activity within it. Fortunately, there are several effective ways that you can get the ball rolling in the right direction again and eventually improve your business credit score over time.

Business credit report analysis

Identify and Rectify Your Errors

Although the vast majority of the information that is reflected within your business credit report is accurate, it is possible to have an abundance of errors in it, as well.…

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Corporate Certificates of Deposit

When thinking about ways to handle your business finances, your primary focus may be in increasing your profits while reducing your losses. One way to help increase your business profits is to have a solid investment plan.

A great way to invest your company’s funds is in a corporate certificate of deposit.

certificate of deposit

What is a Certificate of Deposit (CD)?

A CD is a savings account that provides a higher rate of return than a standard savings account. Certificates of deposit also tend to be short-term, lasting between six and twenty four months, versus standard accounts which are ongoing. Depending on the type of CD you purchase, you cannot withdraw funds while the CD is active.…

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Improving Front-Office Efficiency: Take a Long, Hard Look at Your Back Office

A bag of popcorn in one hand and your favorite person in the world in tow, when you sit in front of that giant screen, you know what you both will be seeing – the movie, the finished product. Depending on the film’s genre, you can end up screaming your head off in fear, laughing like you’ve never laughed before, or falling in love all over again.

There are four truths at play in the scenario above:

  1. You came to see the movie, and it was what you paid for – on the surface, at least.
  2. The time, effort, technology and talent it collectively took to bring what once was a figment of the imagination to the big screen are what makes or breaks the success of a film.
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How to Explore Overseas Market: Learn from Illy and Estee Lauder

SMB CEOs… want some inspirations on how to explore overseas market? Check out this Singapore Sessions video, featuring a candid talk with Estee Lauder Companies’ Executive Chairman, William P. Lauder, and Illy’s CEO, Andrea Illy.

This session features on how Illy Coffee and Estee Lauder approach the challenges presented by the South East Asian market.

South East Asia is a market promising significant growth, but is surely challenging, especially for coffee and cosmetic products. Fortunately, there is not a single way to market to Asia, which mean that the market favors companies with innovative business model and sound strategy.…

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Apps for a Small Business’ Accounting Needs

Being in the accounting department of a small business doesn’t mean being tucked away in the back corner of the office hammering away on a Dell desktop running Windows XP and an old copy of QuickBooks. No sir, accounting can actually be fun thanks to the help of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and some nifty apps as well as long awaited Mac accounting software.

small business owner using mobile accounting apps

The idea of putting accounting-related tasks into a mobile device might seem scary to some accounting pros. But the concept of being able to touch, swipe and manipulate numbers at the stroke of a finger can be pretty liberating.…

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