6 Steps to Effective Small Business Credit Card Management

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With the growing popularity of small business credit cards and ever changing interest rates, now is the time to learn the 6 steps to effective small business credit card management.

We've entered into a new age of credit for small business. New opportunities apply but credit debt still needs to be approached with caution. Over 2/3 of small businesses use a credit card for expenses with only 40% using a business credit card exclusively, as indicated by a Tower Group report. Should you use a small business credit card over a personal card?

Yes. With prudent use and management, your small business credit card can provide many benefits including:

Advantages of Small Business Credit Cards

Avoid Co-mingling: Mixing your business and personal transactions creates potential tax and money management problems.
By using a small business credit card, you will let the IRS and anyone else know you are serious about your business.

Easy Itemization: Tracking your business expenditures at year-end can be a nightmare for small business owners. Many credit card companies will provide you with a year-end statement summary with your transactions itemized and categorized. Why worry worry about a shoebox full of receipts? Organize your bookkeeping process with a small business credit card.

Build Business Credit: A small business credit card provides a newly established business the opportunity to build business credit. This will be useful in the future as your business grows and you need capital in the form of credit lines or loans.

Special Rewards: The competitive credit card and business market has led to the development of reward and discount programs for small business credit card users. Discounts and rewards range from office supplies and travel to software and phone services. Take advantage of using the credit card to lower your expenses.

Manage Employee Spending: Another plus to small business credit cards is the ability to provide cards for your employees with preset limits. Just make sure you monitor their spending on the separate statements you receive.

A small business credit card is like most financial instruments - responsible use of credit can help your business - misuse of your business credit makes you personally liable in most cases and has the potential to destroy your business and dreams. Use these small business credit card tips to effectively manage your credit.

6 Steps to Effective Small Business Credit Card Management

1. Apply at Home: Always consider applying for your small business credit card at your existing financial institution. Your banking relationship can aid with the approval process. When you need a line of credit or loan you will have a relationship established with your lender helping with credit applications over $100,000 not using automated scoring systems.

2. Limit Card Hopping: Signing up for multiple cards to take advantage of deals can have a negative impact on your credit rating and make managing your cards more difficult.

3. Use Grace: The majority of small business credit cards offers a 21-day grace period before you have to make payment on your purchases. Improve your cash flow using a credit card instead of checks since the new Check 21 act creates quicker clearing of checks.

4. Pay Online: Save time and extra costs by paying your small business credit card online versus paying by teller at your local branch or mailing in your payment.

5. No Cash Advance: Reduce credit card fees and interest costs by not using the cash advance feature on your card. Cash advances incur more fees and costs. Use your business account debit when you need immediate funds.

6. Avoid Late Payments: Late fees and high interest rates quickly erode the merits of using your small business credit card. Be responsible by paying off your business credit each month.

Treat your business credit card ownership as a privilege and you will avoid the disastrous effect of credit card mismanagement. Apply the same level of responsibility as the rest of your business and you will enjoy many more years of profitable business growth.

Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
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Create a New Business From an Old Idea

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There are no original ideas left.

Sure, it’s kind of a cynical thought, but try and brainstorm a completely new concept, whether for a business, an advertising campaign or even a limerick, and you’ll start to think it's true. It can sometimes be a stretch to come up with anything that hasn’t already been thought of.

It’s the reason someone once famously said there are only three original jokes and all the others have been derived from them. It’s why Hollywood remakes old movies. And the dearth of original ideas is why businesspeople sometimes pay other businesspeople to come up with a new concept for their own products or services.

Fortunately, if you’re an entrepreneur trying to come up with a new business model, you don’t have to be completely unique. For instance, you probably wouldn't attempt to sell fingernail clippings in a bag, no matter how groundbreaking and unique the idea is. In fact, if you’re starting a business, you probably shouldn’t do something that’s never been done--after all, think of the learning curve your target market will have to tackle. But you would be well advised to take an old idea and make it new.

That's exactly what David Friedberg did. It was around 2001, Friedberg figures, when he was 20 years old and living across the road from a bicycle rental shop. Every day that it rained, the bike shop was closed. “It became pretty noticeable,” recalls Friedberg, now 26 and already an ex-Google executive and the CEO of his own company, WeatherBill, in San Francisco. After watching the bicycle rental store owner get rained out day after day, Friedberg started noticing how many other companies--think golf courses and car washes--were taking a financial bath whenever it was wet outside.

“You don’t really think about it, but 70 percent of businesses are affected by the weather every year, across regions and industries,” says Friedman. “The weather affects so many different types of businesses, whether in negative or in positive ways, like taxi cabs in New York, which are often full in the cold.”

Friedman was a business product manager at Google when he had his “a-ha moment.” It occurred to him that he should start an insurance company--a very old idea--but gear it specifically toward companies that want to protect themselves from losing money on a rainy day--a new idea.

It may not sound new. After all, insurance companies generally protect you if you're hammered by a hurricane, slaughtered by a sandstorm or frozen under the tundra. But we’re talking about the car wash that doesn’t want to lose an entire day of income when there are five inches of rain. That’s why Friedberg developed, with his "computer science friends," an elaborate website where anyone can log on and buy a contract to protect themselves from unseasonable weather. The site is completely customizable and automated. A farmer, for instance, could receive money every time the temperature dips below 67 degrees in a particular month. Or if a ski resort has a week and a half of beautiful, balmy weather in January, the owner could automatically receive a check without having to report the weather.

“There is no claims process,” Friedberg says proudly. Instead his company uses a third-party weather station, EarthStat, that independently confirms data and sends daily reports to WeatherBill, which then processes the checks and sends them out.

Narrowing Your Focus
Despite such success stories, there are risks to developing a new business within an old framework, says Lenann Gardner, an internationally known sales consultant and author of the new book, Got Sales? The Complete Guide to Today’s Proven Methods for Selling Services. “You have to get people to change their behavior to support this new corporate strategy, and that’s a difficult thing to do. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to do, to change human behavior,” says Gardner.

Narrowing your business's focus is one way to attract customers to your new take on an old concept. “Nobody wants to do business with a business that tries to be something for everybody,” asserts Gardner. Granted, tell Wal-Mart that, but she’s right. Stores known for having a little bit of everything thrive because the stakes aren’t too high for customers shopping for soap, cat food or a lawn chair. But as a general rule, the more someone is spending on an item, the more likely they are to seek out a specialized business.

Take buying a house, for example. Garry Aloia is an owner and managing partner of My First Home, a business that caters specifically to first-time homebuyers. Aloia, who also co-owns parent company New State Mortgage, came up with the idea when he realized that because agents are driven by commissions, “human nature takes over. If there’s a bigger commission involved, that customer gets more attention,” he says.

First-time home buyers--who make up about 40 percent of the home buying market--are often purchasing smaller residences and are likely getting less attention, reasons Aloia. To remedy the situation, Aloia’s My First Home, based in Merrilville, Indiana, near Indianapolis, employs real estate agents who are paid higher salaries--25 percent more than the average agent--but who don’t receive commissions. Aloia doesn’t see his business as a traditional real estate office, but rather as a home-buying educational and assistance center. The office is even set up to look like a home, complete with a fireplace and coffee. The company offers seminars to first-home buyers, as well as advice and tools to help them figure out what their monthly budget should be after they move in.

What Aloia’s business is doing is what all entrepreneurs, whether veteran or novice, ultimately should be doing. “I try to put my feet in the shoes of the customer,” says Aloia. “I ask myself, ‘How can I make their life better and simpler?’”

Modernizing the Wheel
Some business models only need to be slightly tweaked to appeal to the modern consumer. Want to update the traditional dentist office? Put it on wheels. While cleaning teeth is an industry almost as old as, well, teeth, putting an office in a van that can travel anywhere from giant corporate campuses to nursing homes is a much more recent concept. The rise of mobile dentist offices in the last few years shows that catering to people's busy and complicated lives is a nearly surefire way to improve upon an old concept.

Then there’s the Pearson Ford Fuel Depot in San Diego, which has received a lot of attention for its one-of-a-kind gas station that offers a full range of clean-burning alternative fuels from ethanol to BioWillie, a type of biodiesel made from soybeans and promoted by singer Willie Nelson. Gas stations may be becoming synonymous with global warming, but by offering an alternative, this fueling station has managed to drum up publicity while serving an emerging niche market.

Capitalizing on consumers' nostalgia is yet another potential approach. In true throwback fashion, State Street Barbers, located in Chicago and Boston, gives modern hair cuts to men in an environment decked out to look like a ritzy salon in the 1920s. Patrons are given a cold beverage when they walk in and can get a hot lather shave with a classic straight razor and hot towels.

In the end, it’s easier to be original and unique in an established industry like home selling or insurance when you have plenty of capital funding behind you; it’s another story if you’re running a fledgling startup in your parents’ basement, and you feel you have to take any client with a pulse and a wallet. But whether you’re a big fish in the ocean or a small one in the pond, the principles are always the same. If you’re going to tweak a formula, “throw out the way things have been done before,” advises Friedberg. “Figure out your end goal, and then forget about what all of the other people have done, and come up with a new way to do it.”

Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!

7 Tips to Speak With Ease

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The words public speaking strikes fear in the minds of otherwise competent and confident small business owners. There are many ways to increase business exposure so why bother to overcome your speaking jitters? Stepping up to the podium not only positions you as an expert in your area of business but provides effortless referrals and improved sales opportunities.

Presenting a non-sales informative speech warms up your target market and builds trust. Unlike endless cold calls the people you present to and follow up with are more receptive to listening to your offering of products and services.

Overcome your fears of public speaking and boost your business with these 7 speak with ease tips:

Start Small: If you’re new to the world of speaking, start small.

Find a few friends and family to practice on. Begin by speaking to smaller groups and build up from there.

In my business speaking career I speak to groups of 30 to 3,000. One discovery I made is the size of the audience makes no difference. If you know your topic, you’re pre-speaking fears will quickly evaporate.

Prepare: Nothing helps ease the speaking fears than knowing your material. The ability to connect with your audience comes from having the confidence you won’t get lost during your delivery. Rehearse several times before the big talk. Time your presentation and always have back up material in case time is left over.

Don’t Memorize: Success in public speaking comes not from memorizing word for word your entire speech. The real pros know their material by remembering key points and prompts on sub topics and examples to cover.

Avoid Bullets: The majority of business presentations and speeches are boring monologues filled with endless PowerPoint slides and bullet points. Trash the PowerPoint presentation and make your material the focal point of the talk. If you do use PowerPoint, take the approach of using visuals that quickly convey your message.

Reduce Stress: The most fearful moment of any presentation is the one minute before your stage entrance. Use the tactic of elite athletes by visualizing a positive outcome and using deep belly breathing to reduce stress and build confidence.

Find a Friend: Prior to your speaking on stage introduce yourself to a few members of the audience in the front row. During your talk look these people in the eye to ease your nerves and connect with your audience.

Engage the Audience: Creating a monologue presentation puts the entire task of informing and entertaining the audience on you. Make your talk a two-way interaction with questions and participation to reduce boredom and speak with ease. Having the group involved also gives you time to reorganize your thoughts if things are going off track.

Make public speaking part of your marketing function and boost your business success. Your fears will evaporate over time and you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.

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Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!

How To Make Up To $1000 A Day Reselling Old Seminar Tapes On eBay

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Michael Senoff’s Story.

http://www.hardtofindseminars.com

I first learned about Jay Abraham from a video by Tony Robbins. Jay was speaking at one of Tony's expensive Life Mastery seminars. I was totally blown away by Jay's ideas. Immediately, I started looking for his seminar products.

The first item I was looking for was a set of tapes of the famous Jay Abraham $20,000 protégé mentor training seminar from 1990. You read that right: $20,000. That's how much it cost to attend. The press called it: "The world's most expensive seminar". The students were there to learn how to become a master marketing wizard just like Jay Abraham.

I wanted to be a marketing wizard too, but I did not want to spend $20,000. Anyone that attended the seminar received a copy of the entire program on a set of audiotapes. I knew If I could just find someone who attended the seminar, I might be able to borrow their tapes. If so, I could get a $20,000 Jay Abraham marketing education for free.

I did some digging and managed to find a guy from Northern California who had attended the seminar. I asked to buy his tapes. He said no but agreed to fax me the names of all the people who went to the seminar in Southern California. I found a lady on the list who lived in San Diego. I called her and told her I was looking for a set of the tapes from the Jay Abraham seminars. She said she had them and I negotiated a price of $50. I got the complete $20,000 seminar for only $50.

I studied these marketing materials day and night for six months. I was listening to Jay Abraham while I was jogging, while I was driving, and while I was doing yard work. I would even go to sleep with a Walkman on my head literally dreaming about marketing. That is how powerful and addictive these marketing materials and tapes are.

Along with the 55 audiotape seminar, there was a list of 900 protégés who had trained under Jay Abraham in four previous seminar sessions. The list was intended to be a tool for the seminar attendees to network with each other. When I saw this list, I knew I had hit pay dirt. More on that in a minute.

You see, like a lot of guys, I loved to barbecue outdoors. I was shopping for a new grill and one hot summer day in July I came across the most extraordinary barbecue grill I had ever seen. It is called a "Kamado" and it was billed as the world's finest ceramic smoker-grill.

Well, I knew I had to have one. There was only one little problem. This gorgeous Blue ceramic tiled Kamado grill sells for $1895 plus shipping.

Now I knew there was no way my wife was going to let me spend this kind of money on "a grill", so I told my wife I was going to sell my Jay Abraham tapes and use the money to buy my blue Kamado grill!

The original set of Jay Abraham protégé tapes that I had bought for $50 sold right away for $1700 on my very first marketing effort. I was stunned! I had made a killing the first time out of the gate.

To make sure this was not a one-time fluke, I promoted another less expensive set of Jay Abraham boot camp tapes the next day. This set sold very quickly for $900.

After these two sales, I have enough profits to become the proud owner of a brand-new blue Kamado ceramic smoker, and there was not a thing my wife could do or say about it.

Convinced that I had a hungry market, I went right to work. I still had the list that I mentioned earlier of the 900 Jay Abraham protégés who possessed all of these valuable Jay Abraham products. All I had to do is track them down.

Finding people from a ten-year-old list was no easy task. Most of the phone numbers were wrong. Many of the people no longer had the seminar materials. But one out of ten people I made contact with did. Usually, it was as neatly packed away as it was the day they brought it home from the seminar. Many tapes had never been used, not even once and the printed materials were in pristine condition.

As I continued to contact these people, I made another discovery: A person who pays $20,000 for a seminar is considered a gold mine to marketing information sellers like Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy, and Ted Nicholas. These marketing gurus will spend thousands of dollars to locate and have a chance to sell to this type of buyer who they refer to as 'Big Fish'.

These sellers get together to enter into joint venture partnerships. They refer and endorse each other's marketing materials to these same hot buyers using all their in-house customer lists.

Because of this, when I found a person who had attended the $20,000 Jay Abraham seminar, they would usually have tons of other marketing materials from all the other great marketing promoters as well.

All the materials I sell are purchased from the original owners. Many have even mortgaged their homes and maxed out their credit cards just to get their hands on this critical information. I make these packages available to you at huge discounts.

Isn’t it a great business idea?

Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!

Not Only the Lonely Become Entrepreneurs

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By: Tamara Schweitzer

Loners, geeks or jocks? A recent study provides insight into the personality types of small-business owners.

Ever wondered about the kinds of people who become entrepreneurs? In a recent survey, 43 percent of entrepreneurs admit they were “loners” as kids, while 25 percent said they would have been described as “nerds.” Accounting software seller Quick Books recently surveyed approximately 1,300 small business owners with 20 or fewer employees to find out about their personal influences and their backgrounds. The results were released last month. Besides the loners and the geeky types, another 20 percent of respondents said they were seen as clowns and 11 percent said they would be described as jocks.

Given the independent spirit required to start a business, the large proportion of entrepreneurs who were so-called loners as kids isn’t necessarily surprising. “People who have the personality and motivation to be the leader and start something on their own are more inclined to feel like they aren’t part of the social structure,” said Mark Rice, Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Babson College. “Entrepreneurs by definition are different,” Rice added. “They are doing something on the fringe.”

And 85 percent of small business owners are sole proprietors, according to Lisa Gevelber, general manager at Intuit ’s small business division. “We've always known that running a small business can be kind of lonely," Gevelber said.

The survey found some other similarities among the backgrounds of entrepreneurs. Forty-three percent of respondents turned out to be the oldest in their families. More than three quarters of respondents—77 percent—said they do not have a business degree.

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Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!

VOIP a Good Idea for Small Business?

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I'm sure you probably get as much mail as I do trying to get you to convert your small business phone service to VoIP. This is an action you don't want to take lightly. Make sure you consider the options and the risks before you move your lifeline to your livelihood to VoIP service.

• RESILIENCY & RELIABILITY. VoIP is dependent on your electrical power service. If you lose electricity, you also lose VoIP services. Landline services, on the other hand, can run for days without external power because they are independently and redundantly powered. Small businesses literally cannot afford to lose telephone access. Every minute that the VoIP lines are down is a minute that the customers can and will go elsewhere.
  
  
• COMPATIBILITY. Many security alarm monitoring services don´t work with VoIP. VoIP lines may also present problems working with some fax machines that need to use a phone line.
  
  
• QUALITY. VoIP services still lack the same level of consistently high quality as landline service. The Internet is not as stable as landline service. VoIP users sometimes experience echoes and "over-talk" (the inability of one party to hear what the other is saying if both talk simultaneously), and dropped calls, among other problems.
  
  
• SAFETY. Some small business owners are hesitant to go "VoIP only" because of uncertainty about 911 response. Enhanced, E911 service mitigates many of these concerns, but E911 service is not yet available everywhere. Prospective VoIP customers should ask their providers about E911.
  
  
• SECURITY. Because it runs on the Internet, VoIP traffic is subject to the same security risks as Internet traffic.
  Take a good long look before you make the plunge. Make sure you've checked the pros and the cons. Thanks to Verizon for these helpful hints.

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Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!

E-Mail Marketing for the Holidays

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www.entrepreneur.com

Ready for the holidays? You still have plenty of time to purchase all your gifts. You can even do your shopping as late as December 24, if you dare. But when it comes to holiday communication from your business, now's the time to take action.

Sending holiday e-mail campaigns is an excellent way for you to stay connected with your customers, clients, investors and anyone else on your list. And we have some creative ways you can incorporate e-mail marketing into your holiday communication plan, whether you're looking to boost sales or just spread some holiday cheer.

E-Mails That Get Prospects to Buy
Perhaps the most obvious use of holiday-themed e-mail marketing is to encourage sales. You may already have plans to send holiday promotions to your customers to entice them to buy your products. Here are some ideas you can incorporate into your communication mix:

• Remind customers about gift cards. Whether you own a retail store, e-commerce site, restaurant or spa, you can use e-mail to promote your gift cards. You can also offer a discount or an added bonus to those who purchase gift cards from you. For example, a spa could offer a free manicure to the purchaser of a $100 gift card.
• Offer gift ideas. Make your customers' lives easier by giving them great gift ideas. Everyone's trying to figure out what to buy their friends and family. Help your customers by highlighting gifts that would be great for dad, mom, brother, sister or the friend who has everything.
• Offer a range of promotions. Don’t just offer one promotion for the holidays; offer a range that speaks to different customers. For one person, free shipping might get them to buy; for another, incremental discounts might work better (spend $100, get 15 percent off; spend $200, get 20 percent off, etc).
• Communicate about holiday hours. If you have a retail shop, you can send an e-mail announcing that you have special holiday hours for your customers’ shopping convenience.
• Invite customers to a special event. A great way to get people to come and shop with you is to hold a special event complete with holiday goodies, enticing discounts and free gift wrapping. A little live music is always a great addition. You can send out an e-mail invitation with all the details.

E-Mails That Maintain Client Relationships
Even if you aren’t trying to get your clients to buy anything from you for the holidays, the season affords you the opportunity to show your gratitude and stay connected. Here are some ideas for making sure your customers know you're thinking of them:

• Send a customized holiday e-card. A great way to connect with your customers or clients is to send a personalized holiday e-card. You can include a photo of your staff along with their signatures. You can also include a poignant thought, poem or short story that helps express the sentiments of the season.
• Invite clients to a holiday party or open house. Planning a holiday get-together for your clients? Invite them with an e-mail invitation. You can also use e-mail to send holiday-themed event confirmations or updates after you've sent a paper invitation.
• Make a charitable donation. Making a donation to a charity in the name of a customer or client is a great way to share the holiday spirit--and you can tell them about it in an e-card.

Including e-mail marketing in your holiday communication plan is a cost-effective way to make a personal connection with your customers. The best news is, you can create all your holiday e-mails now and schedule them to go out over the next few weeks, leaving you the time you need to get your gift shopping done way before December 24.

Gail F. Goodman is the"E-Mail Marketing" coach at Entrepreneur.com and is CEO ofConstant Contact, a web-based e-mail marketing service for small businesses. She's also a recognized small-business expert and speaker.

Be a part of a multi-billion dollar growth industry-the cash flow business with -As Seen On TV- Russ Dalbey's 100% risk free system. A $1,4905 value, it's now yours risk-free for 30 days, and is guaranteed to turn just a few hours a month into thousands of dollars at home. Russ Dalbey's #1 best selling Winning in the Cash Flow Business course is considered the premier source of information for newcomers to the billion dollar cash flow note industry. Discover true financial security when you learn how to make money quickly-and hold on to it forever.
There's absolutely no risk!