The Best Small Business Ideas

Top Small Business Ideas and Tips

When you decide to start a small business, you need to determine what idea is going to work the best for you. There are often many ideas to choose from, but the world is changing and the entrepreneur has to change with it. So, in the 21st century, what ideas for a small business are the best? You have to consider how easy it is to start up, and how much it costs. So, here are some of the best businesses to start up as an entrepreneur

1. Yoga Instructor: You don’t need a studio, you can go directly to your clients and all you need is a yoga certification to start this job, making it very cheap to start.
2. Tutoring: If you are skilled in something, then being a tutor is a very cheap business to start. All you need are the books for what you are teaching and a few flyers put up around schools. At that point, you will have everything you need to start this business.
3. Consulting: If you are an expert in a particular sector, then you may want to start a business working as a consultant. You will help businesses and individuals do better in their industry by using your own knowledge to help them.
4. Medical/Legal Transcribing: If you can type fast, have the right equipment and can do a training course, then this is a good business to start because of its low cost and high demand.
5. Web Design: The internet has been around for 15 years, and yet there are still millions of people who need websites to add to the billions already online. If you can make a good web site and have the skills for it, then this is a good job for you. It will allow you to do business from home, while making a lot of money.
6. Photography: If you have a good camera, know how to use it and love to take pictures, then photography may be a good business for yourself. As a photographer, you would take pictures of families, birthdays, weddings, funerals and more. You will also be able to sell pictures online, while editing photos and selling them at everything from sporting matches to school events.
7. Interior Design: If you know how to make things look good and like to do interior design in your own home, then you may want to consider doing it in another person’s home. It is a good business that is easy to start up, cheap to run and highly in demand.
8. Personal Shopper: Do you love to shop and want to spend someone else’s money? Then you can shop for people who are too busy to shop for themselves. This is a good business that is fun, cheap and easy to start up.

As an entrepreneur, you need to find a business that is going to work for you but is going to be cheap to start up. The right business, at the right price, in the right market, can make you a lot of money.
First Published: Published on: Oct 24, 2010 EntrepreneurJourney.com

Scenic Caves, Suspension Footbridge, GPS, And A Haven From The Hustle and Bustle

Blue Mountain Trip

This post was written on Monday, August 18. There will not be any post tomorrow. 

First Published: Aug 20, 2008 @ 21:27 ADawnJournal.com

I am writing this post from Toronto. Yesterday, I reached Toronto at 6.00 PM. It was a day filled with lots of activities. I visited scenic caves and suspension footbridge in Blue Mountain. I will be posting video clips of these shortly.

On my way back to Toronto, I relied on GPS (Global Positioning System). GPS did make me get lost; however, it gave me a longer route and took me an additional hour to reach Toronto. I was driving on mountain roads, gravel roads, and sometimes on totally unpaved roads. GPS is useful but it may not be good for your skills. Research shows that GPS is detrimental to human navigational skills.

On Saturday I visited Wasaga beach. I was on the beach for four hours. There was a car show going on and lots of people came to enjoy the show. Wasaga Beach – the world's longest freshwater beach is also a part of Georgian Bay. Wasaga Beach offers 14 kilometres white sand beach, panoramic lush mountain views across the bay, clean pristine waters, and much more.

What I noticed from a business perspective is that a lot more can be done to bring more tourists. It felt like kind of having not enough stores, restaurants, and recreation facilities to attract more people.
Today, I am going to post Part Two Wasaga beach video clip. More clips are coming shortly. I have so many pictures that it will be impossible to post all of them here. I will post some of them here later on, and you will be able to see all of them on my Flickr page.

Since I left Blue Mountain, I have been missing it, and it feels like I don't want to come back to Toronto. It would be fantastic to live there for good. It's like a haven from the hustle and bustle of city life. But the question is, if I really start living there, how long I would love living in a small town? Will I miss Toronto then?

The Small Business Administration (SBA)

How The Small Business Administration Helps Entrepreneurs

In the United States, one of the most popular and widely used organizations for entrepreneurs is the Small Business Administration. This administration exists for the sole purpose of helping people start their own small business by offering resources and financial assistance to entrepreneurs.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has the mission to maintain and strengthen the nation’s economy by enabling the establishment and viability of small businesses and by assisting in the economic recovery of communities after disasters. While the SBA does not make loans directly to small businesses, they do help to educate and prepare an entrepreneur to apply for a loan through a financial institution. In addition, they will also serve as the guarantor for the loan with the bank. The administration will also help get government contracts for small businesses following natural disasters.

Since its creation, the SBA has directly or indirectly helped over 20 million businesses get off the ground, and in 2008 alone they had a loan portfolio of 219,000 loans, worth more than $84 billion, making them the largest single financial backer of business in the entire country.

The SBA was created in 1953 through the passing of the Small Business Act by congress. It was created to aid, counsel, assist and protect small business concerns. It was also stipulated that the SBA would provide fair proportion of government contracts and sales of surplus property to small businesses. Sadly, while the Small Business Administration has proven to be essential for millions of businesses, it has been nearly dismantled several times in its existence. In 1996, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives planned to end the agency but it survived and had a record budget in 2000. Four years later, the Bush Administration tried to end the loan program of the BA but was not able to, so the budget was cut and certain expenditures were frozen.

The SBA has several programs in place, with the most visible programs being the loan programs. Many believe that SBA loan programs are for those with bad credit who cannot get bank loans and need the SBA to effectively co-sign, but this is not the case. The primary uses of the loan programs are to make loans easier to pay, with less interest. Typically, the most common use of the SBA loan is for commercial mortgages on buildings that small businesses would like to build, or to move into.

The loan programs that the SBA helps to finance include:

1. Loan Guarantee Program: The 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program is designed to help a small business owner start and expand their business. It does this by making money available to the small business through the bank, or non-bank lending institutions. This is the most popular loan program administered through the Small Business Administration.
2. 504-Fixed Asset Financing Program: This program provides funding for the purchase and construction of real estate, or the purchase of machinery for a business. With this program, the lender will provide half the financing, while a Certified Development Company will provide 40 per cent of the financing through a SBA-guaranteed debenture. The last 10 per cent of the financing is provided by the applicant and due to the high amount of capital that is needed, this type of loan is much harder to get and aggressive vetting of any property purchased is done.
3. MicroLoan Program: This is a loan program that is provided through non-profit, microloan intermediaries to small businesses who have less than perfect credit. These loans are only up to $35,000 and can have a term length of no longer than eight years in total.
4. Economic Development Program: This program offers free counseling and low-cost financial training to small businesses.
5. 8(a) Businesses Development Program: This program offers assistance to the development of a small business that is owned/operated by someone who is classified as socially and economically disadvantaged. This typically means women and minorities.
6. Disaster Loan Program: Homeowners can receive long-term and low-interest loans to rebuild or repair a damaged property to pre-disaster conditions. The SBA will determine the cost of repairing or rebuilding the property structure, the ability of the applicant to repay the loan and whether or not the applicant can get credit elsewhere.

The SBA loan industry can be split up into three categories, which are:

1. The largest banks in the United States, which is typically the Bank of America and Wells Fargo, generate most of the SBA loans. These banks use computer systems that make the process much quicker to allow people to get loans through the SBA that they would not have been able to receive elsewhere.
2. SBA loans are used quite often by banks of all sizes to finance the purchase or construction of business owner-occupied real estate. Banks will offer loans through the SBA only for this purpose and only for properties and business owners that the bank would have found too risky to give money to on credit without the backing of the Small Business Administration. These often include gas stations, car washes and motels.
3. SBA loans are used to allow a person to buy a business. Commercial lenders will get a referral fee to business brokers who help someone buy or sell a business and for this reason, the funds for this typically come from smaller banks and finance companies that operate for this purpose specifically.

The Small Business Administration exists to help people start or continue to operate their business. In tough economic climates, the SBA can be one of the most beneficial and highly sought after organizations in the country for entrepreneurs. Anyone in the United States who is thinking about starting a business should seriously look to the Small Business Administration for assistance.

First Published: EntrepreneurJourney.com Oct 16, 2010

IHG Rewards 2018 Award Changes

Intercontinental Bora Bora Goes Up

IHG, or Intercontinental Hotel Group, has around 5000 properties around the globe and almost 10% of IHG properties will face a price increase this year. In Canada, 34 hotels will go through price adjustments.

Almost 500 hotels will increase in price by points and 192 are going down. These changes are effective as of Jan 16, 2018. Top tier hotels like the InterContinental Bora Bora, Hong Kong, and many others, will go up 60,000 to 70,000 points a night. Worse yet, these top tier hotels were just 50,000 points a night 2 years ago. So these are massive devaluations in the course of 2 years.

Although 192 hotels will go down in price by 5000 points, not a single property is going down to IHG’s lowest category of 10,000 points a night. In Canada, 34 hotels are changing value in points. 21 properties are going up and 13 are going down. To see the full list, go to the IHG Rewards Night page https://www.ihg.com/rewardsclub/content/us/en/reward-nights

This is one of the IHG’s worst devaluations ever and they haven’t notified their members in advance. I have some IHG points and I was hoping to visit upscale Intercontinental locations in Bora Bora and Asia in the future. But with this devaluation looks like it may not make sense and I better use my points for IHG PointBreaks.

PointBreaks is IHG’s highly sought-after feature that allows its members to stay in nearly 100 hotels around the world every quarter and each quarter brings fresh lists of new hotels. I will do a separate article and video on this in the future.

Rewards Canada Publishes Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards

What You Need to Know About Affiliated Credit Card Rankings

Rewards Canada just published its top travel credit cards listings and like every year, American Express cards shine in most of the categories. I will only give you the top 5 credit cards as per Rewards Canada and will discuss in brief what’s wrong with these ratings.

- Amex Cobalt Card

- Amex Gold Rewards Card

- WestJet RBC World Elite MasterCard

- RBC Visa Infinite Avion

The problem with these top-rated cards is that none of them provide (except RBC Avion) full insurance coverage and concierge service. These are the most important features you should look for when shopping for a travel rewards credit card.

Another thing these sites that provide top rankings never disclose is that all these cards are affiliated cards and they are promoting these cards, meaning they make money off you by recommending these cards and it’s in their best interest to only recommend cards that will make them the most money.

American Express even issued a press release making this (being in Rewards Canada’s top cards) a big deal. You can visit this press release Here.

This is called cross promotion. Rewards Canada is promoting American Express and American Express is promoting Rewards Canada. There is nothing wrong with promoting affiliated credit cards as the best credit cards. What is wrong is not disclosing properly to the readers that these are not honest and unbiased ratings.

Consider this scenario: based on these recommendations, a reader purchased a trip costing $3,000 and that trip had to be canceled. But then the reader found out that the top credit card he or she picked did not provide Trip Cancellation insurance and now he or she is at loss for $3,000. Will Rewards Canada pay for this loss? I don’t think so.

Watch the video link provided here to find out how to detect these affiliated links and how to protect yourself. I will also show some USA sites where these types of links and recommendations always come with disclosure. But in Canada they never disclose anything to the public to pump up their credit card sign ups. The more good things you will hear about these cards (and hiding the bad things), the more you will sign up and the more money they make.

What's Wrong with Rewards Canada Top Travel Rewards Credit Cards

There are no best credit cards, as each card comes with different perks and features. Choose the one that best matches your needs. Subscribe to my YouTube channel www.youtube.com/adawn to get regular unbiased and honest updates and reviews on credit cards and rewards points. And yes, my channel and this website (AhmedDawn.com) are not affiliated or paid by any credit cards companies.