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How to Build a Holiday Rental Portfolio Overseas

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | How to Build a Holiday Rental Portfolio OverseasOne of the most profitable types of property to invest in is a holiday rental. These types of properties can generate a large amount of regular income, as well as provide a foreign getaway for you to enjoy from time to time.

Having a portfolio of holiday rental properties can even create enough passive income for people to leave their current employment and become a rental property manager full-time. In this quick guide, we are going to look at some of the different ways to build a holiday rental portfolio and what you should be aware of as you look for properties to let to holiday-makers.

Location, Location, Location

This is the most important factor when looking for property to build your portfolio. You need to identify popular holiday destinations in order to guarantee clients that will want to rent your homes to use while they enjoy the sun, sea, and sand of their holiday.

Spain is a massively popular holiday destination and has a thriving holiday property market, making it a great place to get started. Look for areas near to popular beaches that are serviced by airports that have flights coming in from all over Europe. Buying property in Spain is relatively straightforward but it is a good idea to find someone local to the area that can assist you. Get yourself an English lawyer in Spain to help you with the process and act as your representative when you are not in Spain so you don’t have to hop on a flight to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s.

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Will You Self Manage or Use a Rental Agency?

If you want to make the most profit possible from your holiday rental property portfolio then you should consider managing the rentals yourself, though this may take up a lot of your time and could require you to live in the area around your holiday homes.

Using a holiday property rental agency will eat into your profits a little, but will make the rentals much easier and give you more free time. Many people who begin to build a holiday rental portfolio will do this at first, and then slowly take more control over the renting of their properties as time goes on and learn more about what is needed to rent holiday homes successfully.

Liabilities, Insurance, and Taxes

These types of costs must be taken into account when you are budgeting. Failing to insure your properties in the event of accidental damage, for instance, can be very costly if something goes wrong.

Taxes will vary from area to area, and there are many local municipalities that offer incentives for holiday rentals, so investigate these costs before you commit to a property or an area. This is another area of property ownership where a rental management company can help you. They will be well versed in all the local property taxes and professional liabilities and can help you navigate through all the paperwork associated with owning a holiday rental property in a foreign country.

Renting a holiday home abroad can be a great way to generate income, and could be the first part of a thriving business that you build for yourself. Hopefully, this quick guide will have helped you along the way.

Creating The Perfect File Organization System For Your Business

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Managing file storage correctly is important in business for a number of reasons. Firstly, if your business computers are clogged up with unnecessary files, they will run slowly and it will be harder for employees to find the files that they need, which means that productivity will take a hit. It’s also important to make sure that all of your files are stored securely to reduce the risk of accidental data loss. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses don’t put enough thought into their file storage system, which causes them some big problems. However, if you follow these simple steps, you can create an effective file storage strategy for your business.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Creating The Perfect File Organization System For Your Business

Clean Out Unnecessary Files

The first step is to clear out any unnecessary files that you have stored on your computers. This will speed your computers up and make it a lot easier to organize things moving forward. There are some great applications that can quickly find and remove duplicates on Mac or Windows, which will make a big difference immediately. Once you have cleared all of the duplicated files, go through the rest and delete anything that you don’t need anymore. This may take a while but as long as you keep on top of things in the future, you should only need to do it once.

Use Folders

Using folders is the easiest way to keep things organized, but it only works if you file things away in their folders right away. A lot of employees like to keep things on the desktop while they are working on them, with the intention of putting them in organized folders afterward. However, that doesn’t always happen and they end up with a big mess of files on the desktop with no semblance of organization whatsoever. If you ask them to pull up an old file a few months down the line, it’s going to take a long time to find. It’s a good idea to plan out your folders and categories on paper before you get started so you can make sure that everything has its place.

Back Up On The Cloud

Backing up all of your files is essential if you want to protect yourself in the event of a cyberattack or a hardware issue. If files are only stored in one location and you lose them, there’s nothing that you can do. But if you upgrade to a cloud storage system, you can easily recover anything that is lost.

Use Note Taking Apps

When you are making notes about things that you need to remember, you might decide that post-its or notebooks are the best option. But then you end up with a disorganized mess of paper and when you need to refer back to a specific note, it’s nowhere to be found. That’s why you should treat notes like you do the rest of your files and get organized. There are some great note taking apps that you can use to get everything in order and make life easier for yourself in the future.

If you can create the perfect file organization system for your business, it makes things a lot easier for you and your employees and you will notice an increase in productivity as a result.

How To Use Customer Research and Smart Algorithms To Name Your New Local Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | How To Use Customer Research and Smart Algorithms To Name Your New Local BusinessOpening a new local business isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ll have to hunt for commercial real estate, develop a financial plan, find the right suppliers, and more. However, before you can even tackle those challenges, you’ll need to come up with a name for your store. Many entrepreneurs find that it’s harder than they expect to name their business, but often feel like they have no options other than waiting for inspiration to strike.

Modern keyword-driven name generators like Namify take the guesswork out of the naming process. Namify combines a smart algorithm with user input to develop hundreds of unique naming options. With this approach, you can feel confident that you’ll choose a catchy name for your new store that conveys the right image to your customers.

Understanding Your Ideal Customer

Before you use Namify’s store name generator tool, it’s a good idea to think about what type of customers you want to attract to your store. The theoretical personality profile of your ideal customer is called a buyer persona. This exercise encourages you to delve deeply into the ways your store is different from nearby competitors. It also helps you develop a better understanding of the marketing strategies you’ll use to connect with the customers you’re best equipped to serve.

As you explore the behavior and preferences of the customers who will compose the core of your client base, you’ll also start to think about how you can signal them that your business is the best way to meet their needs.

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Speaking Your Customers’ Language

Why spend all this time getting to know a fictional customer? With a fleshed-out buyer persona, you can start doing research on the keywords and phrases you’ll provide to Namify to generate your store’s name. Think about what your customers find useful, entertaining, or aspirational. For instance, if you’re starting a stationery company that caters to young professionals cultivating a minimalist aesthetic, you’d want to use phrases like “clean lines,” “organized mind,” “stillness,” and “classic.”

Using these terms to guide naming, imagery, and marketing copy communicates to your ideal buyer that your business was developed with their needs in mind. Since your store’s name is the first impression you can make, it’s essential to choose a name that’s informed by concepts that resonate with your prospective customers.

Using the Namify Algorithm

With several well-considered keywords, you’re ready to use Namify to generate new ideas for your store’s name. Choose the right category for your business to shape the results and all your keywords to the search field. Namify requires a minimum of two keywords but using more will provide you with more options. Once you’ve generated a list of potential names, you can start to review your choices. Consider how names sound when spoken aloud, or how they’ll look as a part of a custom domain name. If sound is important to you, try restricting your search output to names that rhyme.

You don’t have to write down or remember all the ideas that Namify presents. Click the heart icon next to your favorite ideas to mark them for your shortlist and email them to yourself so you can spend as much time as you want mulling over your top picks.

Naming your store won’t be the hardest part of launching your new business, but without any help, it can start to feel that way! Combining your market knowledge and customer research with Namify’s smart naming algorithm will make short work of the name generation process so you can move on to all the other tasks you have to tackle before opening day.

How to Manage Newly Remote Workers in Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How to Manage Newly Remote Workers in Your BusinessIn these uncertain times, more and more of your employees will become remote workers. In many cases, this will be a straightforward transition in terms of technology and logistics. However, there can be some other underlying challenges along the way. It’s not just businesses that face difficulties when it comes to working from home; it’s the employees themselves. So how do you mitigate these to get the right balance for both the business and workers?

Take a look at some of the common challenges of remote working and how you can resolve them to create a harmonious balance.

Challenges of remote working

To understand how to make remote working a successful practice for your business, you need to understand the challenges it presents. The main areas to focus on include:

Lack of face-to-face interaction and supervision

While research indicates that many people are productive in a remote setting, supervisors often worry that employees won’t be without supervision. On the flip-side, employees may also lack confidence when there is not someone available to offer support and guidance.

Issues accessing information

In the workplace, we just chat to someone or pick up the phone to get the information we need. This immediacy of information is something that is not always available when you’re working remotely. While it should be just as simple, there can be interpersonal challenges to overcome.

Home environment distractions

Naturally, at home, there are a lot more distractions to deal with, especially if children are also at home. At this time, managers should expect a different remote working environment to normal as many people are in sub-optimal conditions as they transition to this type of work. Supervisors may also need to compromise with more flexible working arrangements while employees are juggling home and work life.

Increased loneliness

This is one of the most understated challenges of remote working, but it is one of the most common complaints. Workers may struggle to deal with the lack of connection that comes from being in the workplace, and the longer remote working ensues, the more this can impact someone’s life.

How employers can support employees with remote working

There are several ways to face the challenges mentioned above to ensure your employees feel happy in this new working environment. By making small adjustments and inexpensive alterations, you will also see an increase in productivity.

Take a look at some of the primary ways you can support your remote employees:

Create structure in the working day

Much like if they were in the office, create a structure such as check-ins and catch-ups to ensure everyone is happy with their workload and daily tasks. However, this shouldn’t feel like you’re checking up on them. You could also make this time a collaborative effort by involving everyone on the team. This time could include a morning brief or team meeting to help sort out issues anyone is facing. Plus, it gives everyone a chance to catch up without it feeling too formal.

Monitor their working conditions and encourage healthy habits

While it might be ok in the meantime for employees to be camped out on the kitchen table with a laptop, after a while, their health may be affected. Happy and healthy employees are more productive, and although they are not in the workplace, it is still a good idea to care about their working environment and wellbeing. Help them make a better choice about where they work in their home, such as dedicated space. Allow them to take an office chair home to encourage better seating. If they spend a lot of time on the phone, supply a specialized case with EMF protection to minimize harmful radiation to the body. Other things to consider is whether they have a break during the day, as getting away from screens can be more challenging at home.

Create boundaries for everyone

One of the most significant frustrations for remote employees is it can feel like they need to be constantly on-call. To avoid this, think about when they are working in the office. If they have an important task, they are usually given ample time and space with limited interruptions to complete it. The same should be done in a remote setting. If employees feel they are getting urgent requests and even messages to their phones every five minutes, this will affect their overall productivity and willingness. Boundaries should be set on in regards to messaging services used by your company. It’s great to have functionality such as Slack or Zoom available. Still, it is not viable to expect an immediate response from someone every second of the day.

Encourage vigilance surrounding company information

Your remote employees will have access to everything they need at home, so security is an important area to think about. If you handle sensitive data, establishing secure connections and remote access to company data is vital, but this isn’t all you need. You also need to ensure that a risk assessment is in place should information be compromised in any way. To encourage better data and security management, suggesting a dedicated space to work is an excellent idea. This helps to keep work information away from home life.

Provide emotional support when needed

The mental well-being of your employees is paramount. They’ve had to deal with a lot in the past few months, and the ‘new normal’ is unlikely to change much going forward. Stress will be natural alongside frustrations with other remote working aspects. To assist with this, be sure to provide emotional support when it is required. It could be a case of merely asking questions to help employees talk about their experiences, or providing information on where they can get specialized assistance.

Everyone should be aiming to get the best out of remote working as possible, but times are hard, and stress is high. By working with your employees to create a balanced and respectful environment, you can all learn and grow together during this period.

Expert Tips on How to Create an Investment Strategy That Works With Your Goals

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |investment strategy|Expert Tips on How to Create an Investment Strategy That Works With Your GoalsDid you know that the collective worth of the 15 wealthiest investors in the world surpasses $300 billion?

An investment strategy can change your life for the better. Whether you are young or nearing retirement age, you can find an investment opportunity.

One thing about investments is that there are no limits to what you can choose. Also, there are no time limits, and so you can make the right choices at any age.

This guide will take you through the process of establishing an investment plan that works. Read it to make the right financial decisions.

Assess Your Current Financial Status

Your budget should clearly show your total income vs. the total expenditure. If the amount of money you remain with after the expenses isn’t enough, you must cut down some costs or look for more ways to generate income.

If you want a liquid investment, stocks would be the best. For illiquid investments, you can consider real estate investing.

Set Goals

Why do you want to invest? What do you want to achieve?

When you set goals, it becomes easier to attain your target. Maybe you want to buy a car with the investments, or you wish to secure your future.

If you have many goals, write them down and narrow your list according to their importance.

The goals should be measurable. For instance, if your goal is to save $50 every week, then you should evaluate your finances with time to know if you have achieved what you wanted.

The goals should also be realistic and achievable. You can’t plan to save more than $10,000 in a month when you know very well that you can’t achieve that.

Explore Options

The investment you choose should depend on your goals and your personal preferences.

If education is your saving goal, you may consider the mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and other long-term securities. You may also decide to invest in the real estate market or other physical products that increase value with time.

The key here is to diversify. As a beginner, you only need to dip your toes as you test the market. That’s why you should diversify the assets no matter how little they are.

This is the essential step for planning; thus, you might need to involve a financial planner. The planner should listen to your ideas and advise you on the best high rate investments to consider.

Check the Charges

Every investment includes some charges. If you decide to invest in stocks, you will need to hire a broker who will require a service commission.

If you choose investment funds, you will have to pay the fund manager too. The same case applies to real estate where you must pay a real estate agent.

Don’t commit yourself to any investment plan without knowing the charges. Ask the firm to explain to you all the possible costs that you will incur for the investment.

In most cases, the higher charge translates to better quality. But still, you should compare the price of getting a similar service somewhere else. You may be lucky to get the same quality service at a reduced price.

Do Your Research

Don’t invest blindly. As an informed investor, you should research the most profitable types of investments. You should always consult an educated professional, like Daniel Gordon, before making any big decisions in the financial market.

If you choose to invest in the financial market, you need to research on the best markets.

Currently, many firms are offering the same service. Some are legit, while others are not. Unless you are careful and do in-depth background research, you can quickly lose your fortunes to scammers.

If possible, check the reviews of the firm you choose to know what other people think about the firm. Don’t put your investment in a firm with too many negative reviews.

Understand the Risks

Every investment is risky. Young investors are more likely to fail because they are still green. Before you invest, you should familiarize yourself with the risk associated with your investment strategy.

If you plan to invest in the stock market, then you should know the possible risks of that industry. It’s possible to lose all money or even get abnormal profits.

With knowledge of risks involved, you can easily come up with a proper risk management strategy. For instance, you can diversify the assets to stay safe just in case one of the investments fails.

Be cautious with the investments which promise high yields only. There is no investment that does not have a risk. Unless it’s a scam, there will always be the drawbacks that you should understand.

Monitor the Investment

Don’t invest and leave your money there. You should monitor the progress of your investments.
Is everything going as expected? Are you depositing excess money into the investments? The progress of the investments should help you make the next step.

At times, it’s better to withdraw your investments if the plan is not profitable. After all, it would be useless to keep on investing without seeing the results of your hard-earned cash.

Choose the Best Investment Strategy

The right investment strategy should be cost-efficient and profitable. The ideal approach should also be simple and easy to manage.

So, don’t stress yourself finding the most complicated investments that promise the highest returns. Start small, and move to the more profitable ventures once you learn the basics.

StrategyDriven helps entrepreneurs make the right decisions for their businesses. Our help comes in the form of well-researched articles written by business experts. If you just started your business, or wish to create one, read our blogs to know more about the most important business aspects.