Category: Business

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Business Career & Education Financial Loans

5 Steps to Getting a Business Loan

5 Steps to Getting a Business Loan

You want to start your own business. That is great news, a huge step, something that should be encouraged and applauded. But it isn’t just as easy as coming up with an idea and making it a reality. There are many hoops to jump through to make your business come to life, including getting a business loan so your company can have the capital to be a huge success, find customers, and make it long into the future.

How is that done? How does someone secure a business loan, especially if it is their first time starting a business? While not all of the steps are easy or short, the process is simple enough to follow. Make sure you follow this necessary procedure and you will stand the best chance to get yourself a business loan and create the company you have always dreamed of.

1.   Are you Eligible?

Before you get too excited about your business, you need to first determine if you are even eligible for a business loan. There is a lot riding on this fact. Actually, everything is riding on it.

How do you decide if you can get a loan? You need to weigh a lot of different factors. For example, what is your credit score? Have you opened any other business? Do you make enough money? All of these things must be figured out before you can land your business loan and open your company.

2.   What Type of Loan Do You Need?

Did you know there are many different types of loans available to you if you decide to start your own business? It’s true, there are more than you think. You need to figure out which type of loan you need. Do you need a personal loan or a business credit card? Maybe you need a government-backed loan or a more traditional loan from a bank? These are the sort of questions you need to ask and answer before moving forward with getting your business loan.

3.   Online Lender? Bank? Who Should You Look To?

In the modern world, there are many different places you can go to to get your small business loan. Do you want to rely on a bank or microlender or online lender when you are looking to get your loan? Weigh your options, see what each has to offer, then move forward by requesting the loan from the supplier of your choice.

4.   Gather your Information

Obviously when you are applying for a loan, you will need a lot of documentation and information to give the possible supplier of your loan. You will need tax returns, bank statements, legal documents, and a legal plan. You need to round all of these up and have them prepared for a sit-down meeting for your loan. Make sure all the ducks are in a row before you take the final step.

5.   Apply for your Loan

Now that you have followed all the other steps you are ready to finally apply for your loan. Make sure you are dressed your best, bring all your documents, and have a solid business plan when you are stating your case for the lender of your choice.

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Business Career & Education

Choosing the Best Legal Structure for Your Business

How to Choose the Best Legal Structure for Your Business

There are many questions you need to ask when you are starting your own business. What will your business provide? Who will it cater to? How will it reach its customer base and become a success? These are just some of the many things you need to ask yourself when you are formulating your business and a business plan to get it started.

But there are more questions, ones that are more complicated and ultimately more important too. One of the biggest things you need to figure out is what legal structure your business will take when it is up and running. This is a pivotal choice, one that will decide the future of your business and the success it can have. There are many options, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. So, how do you decide which legal structure your business needs?

Before you decide which structure to accept, you need to know what they are. Your business can be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a limited liability company (LLC), a corporation, or a cooperative. Now, which one should you pursue? Here is what you need to consider before the choice is made.

Complexity Of Your Business

How complicated and complex will your business be? If it is going to be massive and unruly, you should look into a corporation or LLC. Are you starting something simple and straightforward? Then a sole proprietorship is a good approach for you. You need to get a handle and grasp on the scope and size of your possible company before you decide how to legally structure it.

Taxes

Taxes. Everything comes back to taxes. When you are setting up your company, you need to decide how you want it structured so you can decide how to do your taxes. Did you know that the owner of an LLC and sole proprietor keeps the money made in their business because it is all considered personal income? That’s good news but also bad because it will all be taxed accordingly. Figuring out how you are going to structure your business needs to incorporate how you want to be taxed.

Regulations

When you are setting up your business, you need to consider where you are launching and running it. Depending on the jurisdiction you are set up in, you are going to be hit with an under the control of many different regulations. These regulations change depending on the city, state, county, and country you are in. Pay close attention and see what benefits or disadvantages you will run into based upon the local regulations. If the regulations, permits, licenses, and rules related to a certain legal structure is too much, then you just need to find a different route to take. The regulations might decide which legal structure you should follow.

Deciding upon the right legal structure for your business is one of the most important steps you take when you are creating your company. It dictates the future of your company and its success and can eliminate – or create – a lot of headaches. Pay close attention to the rules, the taxes, and the complexity revolving around your future business before you make a solid choice. The fate of your business depends on it.

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Business Career & Education Credit Financial

What are the Best Cards for Small Businesses

What Are The Best Cards For Small Businesses

Starting a small business is exciting, fun, and nerve-wracking. It can also be truly terrifying if you are not sure where you are getting your funds from. Some business owners find their financing through a bank, others from loans by brokers or family and friends. Then others get their companies up and running by using one of the many business credit cards on the market.

If you are looking to fire up your own small business and want to rely on a credit card to get things moving, you have a lot of choices to pick from. Which one is right for you? Which card has the best features, the best rates and the greatest rewards? Be sure that you make the right choice because, frankly, the future of your business depends on it.

American Express Blue Business Cash Card

A 0% annual fee? 2% cash back on all purchases up to $50,000? 0.0% intro APR purchases for the first 12 months? The American Express Card is a great way to finance your new business. It is a wonderful way to buy furniture, make down payments or secure rent. The 2% cash back is a great feature and it lasts for an entire year. After that, it will drop down to 1% which is still quite nice. It is made for people with really good credit, so you need to keep that in mind when applying. But it is a powerful, handy and reliable card from one of the biggest card companies in the world.

Capital One Spark Cash for Business

The Capital One Spark Cash for Business card is a great tool to create and sustain your business in its opening year. People know that the first few years of a company are the most challenging time for it, and the Spark Cash for Business card helps out tremendously. How? By providing $0 annual fee for the first year and an unlimited 2% cash back on every single purchase you make. Plus, the card gives a one-time $500 cash bonus once you spend $4,500 within 3 months of opening your account. If you need to make a foreign purchase, this card is also great for you because it has absolutely no foreign transaction fees. For all these reasons and more, you can’t go wrong with the Spark Cash for Business card.

The Blue Business Plus Credit Card from American Express

Everyone is wild about reward points with their credit cards. They are all the rage. The Blue Business Plus Credit Card from American Express is full of rewards. In fact, you earn 2X Membership Rewards points on business purchases for the first $50,000 purchases per year and then 1 point per dollar spent after that. That alone is enough to sell many business owners and have them sign up for the card. But the 0% intro APR on purchases for 12 months is another great reason to take a look at this card when you are getting your new business up and running.

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Business Career & Education

5 Predictions for the Workplace Post COVID-19

5 Predictions for the Workplace Post COVID-19

COVID-19 has made people’s lives miserable all around the world. We are all struggling with the menace of this virus, which has damaged our businesses, education, economy, and many other aspects of life.

Will we be able to get back to the way we used to live? Or, will we have to adjust to the new norm in our routine lives and business operations?

Let’s find out what the business gurus, experts, and entrepreneurs had to say about the post-covid workplace. Most of them agree and make 5 predictions for the post-covid workplace.

1. Mix of In-Office and Remote Working for the Workplace

Certain studies have shown the results suggesting most people want the future workplace to be hybrid. People will work from an in-office and remote stations, in a mixed fashion. This mode of working will stay and results will gradually start replacing the number of hours worked.

This new yardstick will give rise to hybrid working patterns. Managers and team members will need to develop skills and stay connected with each other without overlapping the information or missing any.

2. Wide-Ranging Economy

As soon as COVID-19 ends there may be a widespread mistrust for reviving the businesses. You should take this with stakeholder capitalism. This may act as a bridge between business and communities which in return will see the companies taking on board all stakeholders, at the time of deciding.

In fact, getting all on board is an effort to build trust and social capital. Everyone will start getting money that will keep the business going. The concept of a wide-ranging economy has many benefits. One of these will help the governments as they won’t be dealing with unemployment and financial strains.

3. Flexible Green Pastures

In the post-Covid-19 world, we will head to find new norms. Many of us are using Covid-19 as a reason to invest more in their environmental policies. EU will spend around US$ 1 Tr for better climate and related changes. Whereas, countries like the US, S Korea, Japan, Canada, and Nigeria are opting for going greener options during covid recovery plans.

This is skill development for going green in all manners. However, there are challenges and multi-faced problems to overcome while going green.

4. COVID-19 Productivity & Protecting People, Not Jobs

Many job experts and business analysts have been vocal about protecting the people. You can get a job through reskilling or up-skilling.

This issue was under discussion in a recent World Economic Forum, summit. As per the summit findings, by 2030 more than half of the young people globally, will lack skills for future jobs. It may be economic to train and deploy the people than abandoning them and then re-hire them.

An urgent focus is required to address the issue without further delays.

5. Recharging your Resilience Batteries

With covid-19, countries, societies, and businesses were forced to transform.Therefore, the e-commerce industry became the new norm, as it took over the control of education, logistics, and healthcare services. This altered their practicing methods and paved the way for entrepreneurs. During this pandemic much bigger and economically strong countries like the US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan saw a rush of new but small businesses in their system.

This was slightly unusual, but researchers suggest that building resilience and adaptability holds the key to success.

Conclusion

It may be stressful to think about where the small business will be five years from now. Whatever the case, things will get better eventually but it will require some drastic changes and patience.