Tips

All across the country, entrepreneurs are making money in liquidations and returns. Not their own liquidations and returns, of course: These businessmen and women are buying up pallets full of products from massive but inefficient giants such as Amazon and Walmart. The neglected goods get new life as retail products in these smaller operations, which sell everything from like-new products and in-box returns to open-box products and B-stock items.

It can be great money. With such a cost-effective source of inventory, these businesses can afford to compete with the notoriously low prices offered by the companies that sold these pallets off on the cheap in the first place. But just because a liquidation business can be very profitable doesn’t mean that it will be. Here are some tips for getting things right.

Make a plan

Liquidation businesses are popular and, in many cases, successful. But they’re not foolproof, and they’re not things to consider lightly. If you’re going to start a business, then you need a real business plan. You need to do a lot of math, move some money around, and perhaps get a business loan. You need to consider the legal structure of your business, tax implications, and more. Protect yourself from the dangers of the small business world. You want to be able to enjoy the fruits of your ambition without risking too much in the event of failure.

Partner with the right suppliers

Your business is only as good as the products it sells. Great stuff can be had on the cheap from big box stores and massive ecommerce retailers such as Walmart and Amazon, but how can you know that you’re getting the good stuff? You can’t. You’ll have to rely on the intermediaries that Walmart and Amazon use to sell off their pallets of liquidations and returns products. Make sure that you work with trustworthy suppliers of liquidation goods.

Specialize and do your research

You can get all kinds of goods on liquidations and returns pallets. But with so many different products, how will you sell everything for a fair price? It will be nearly impossible: You’re sure to misprice something, resulting in a loss of profit or inventory that simply won’t sell.

You won’t be able to learn the fair market price of every product you could possible get in a liquidation auction. But you can become familiar with a market segment. That could mean electronics, for example, or perhaps something even more specific, such as electronics accessories (cases, carriers, peripherals, and so on).

With a focus in mind, you can snap up goods that suit your category and become familiar with resale prices, popularity, and trends within the business space. If you work hard and specialize, you’ll soon have much more knowledge to draw on as you seek to make your business more efficient and more profitable.

Expand carefully

If you work hard and make decent profits, you may find yourself able to afford more inventory at once. That could expand your profits — as long as you stay effective and efficient. What’s not going to be good for your profits, though, is unsold inventory or expensive, ineffective employees.

Growing too fast can be deadly for businesses, but smart choices can give you sustainable growth and make you a huge success. So expand carefully: Make sure that you have the personal and financial bandwidth to invest in extra storage, employees, and other solutions.
You may find that enterprise software makes sense as your business grows. Digital voice solutions can help your business’ network stay connected and make it easier to reach partners and potential customers. Software solutions for call center QA can ensure that your customer service is on point. Your business may even change its focus over time — which is fine, as long as it remains profitable.

One of the best places to do business in the 21st century is located near the northeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, and it is part of the United Arab Emirates. Ras Al Khaimhah has a trading history dating back thousands of years, but it was not particularly known as a business hub, at least not until Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi decided that the time had come to turn things around. These days, the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone (RAKEZ) is widely considered to be one of the most inviting places for doing business in the Middle East, and this is an achievement that can be directly attributed to Sheikh Saud leader of RAK.

In the 1970s, when Sheikh Saud was pursuing his higher education goals in Lebanon and the United States, the economy of the United Arab Emirates was strongly focused on oil production. Despite the two oil crises of the decade, the economic climate was favorable for the UAE, but there were concerns about heavy dependence on extraction and refinery operations. After obtaining degrees in political science and economics from the University of Michigan, Sheikh Saud returned to Ras Al Khaimah with the intention of promoting business development, initially at the municipal level and later across the Emirate. There was a strong motivation in this regard: years of exploration failed to find significant oil reservoirs under the fertile RAK lands, and Sheikh Saud became convinced that business diversity would be the key to future economic success.

The RAKEZ was established by royal decree for the purpose of augmenting the operations of existing free trade zones in Ras Al Khaimah as well as the RAK Investment Authority, which date back to 2005. The RAKEZ is spread across many of the 960 square miles of the Emirate, and in less than two decades it has managed to attract more than 10,000 companies from around the world. Whereas the RAK Free Trade Zones were founded with materials research and heavy industrial applications in mind, the RAKEZ expands to media, science, technology, education, finance, manufacturing, and dozens of other sectors. Whereas Dubai is heavily focused on technology and finance, the scope of business taking place in the RAKEZ is far more diverse.

To get an idea of the variety of economic activities generated by the RAKEZ, here’s a quick rundown of some of the companies recognized as being outstanding business operations in 2017:

Marmalade Fish

Founded in 2015, is a strategic business consultancy firm that focuses on coaching, leadership, and facilitation. The main objective of Marmalade Fish is to enable clients to turn their business operations into responsible companies for the improvement of their communities.

STREIT Group

As the world’s premier manufacturer of armored vehicles, the STREIT Group provides solutions for military, law enforcement, security, marine, and private industries.

Thunder Road Pizza and Grill

By virtue of being a major international business hub, the RAKEZ attracts many executives and employees who were raised on pizza and other delicacies of Italian-American cuisine. Thunder Road is an American-style diner and market that offers authentic Italian-American dishes and ingredients. What stands out about this company, aside from its delicious recipes, is that its B2C approach was founded on a B2B strategy; in essence, Thunder Road realized that thousands of foreigners working in the RAKEZ would like to get a taste of home, and this is something that other companies are starting to realize. For the most part, RAKEZ workers earn nice salaries that leave them with disposable income that can be spent at places such as Thunder Road.

Mabani Steel

From pre-engineered buildings to rolled steel structures and from metal building accessories to custom aluminum designs, Mabani Steel has provided materials to complete more than 3,000 projects in 70 countries. Some of the most impressive projects where Mabani Steel has been installed include the Dragon City shopping center of Bahrain and the Al Nakheel Mall of Iraq.

Fit On Click

This is a “New Economy” company that started doing business in 2014. Fit on Click began as an online fitness platform to promote exercise and healthy living in the UAE, but it has expanded to providing corporate fitness programs and matching personal trainers to individuals in various countries.

Something which has always scared the life out of me is the IRS, ever since I was younger and heard stories about them closing down businesses, hitting people with penalties and generally taking no nonsense from people when it came to paying their tax bills. For me this is why I have always used the service of Audit Defense, they take care of your tax returns and work with you on any audits and if you check out the Audit Defense reviews you can see for yourself just how much they have been able to help their clients. Many underestimate the power of the IRS which is why today we are going to have a look into just how you can get caught out and what the IRS can do.

Here is what they have to say regarding penalties:

 “If you do not file your return and pay your tax by the due date, you may have to pay a penalty. You may also have to pay a penalty if you substantially understate your tax, understate a reportable transaction, file an erroneous claim for refund or credit, or file a frivolous tax submission. If you provide fraudulent information on your return, you may have to pay a civil fraud penalty.”

Being Late

The IRS will most certainly charge you if you file your tax return late and they will increase how much they charge you by each month that you go past your due date. They will also hit you with penalties if you make a late payment for your taxes and just like filling late, this will be more expensive as each month goes by. The fees vary depending on your individual situation but you can be absolutely sure that they will not be cheap.

Business

Many small business owners will file their business taxes on their personal return, but even if this is the case you will be charged a different set of penalties if you are late in filing your business taxes or late in repaying them. As you can imagine businesses are charged significantly more for filing late. Another key point to watch out for if you are a business owner is that you don’t make any errors on the tax return. If you do make mistakes then you won’t be hit with a penalty but you will have to refile which could mean that you file late, thus incurring a penalty. Make sure that you check all information and that you have filed well before your due date.

Fraud

If the IRS have found you to have committed or tried to commit fraud, or having field a frivolous tax return then you can expect to get hit with a huge fine, a fine large enough to ensure that you never do the same thing again.

Don’t mess around with the IRS, it simply isn’t worth it and it could cost you a significant amount of money.

I have had a small business now for around 6 years and one aspect of the company which I was never convinced about investing in was cyber security. Our company uses computers for just about everything but I always believed that simple virus protection would be enough. Last year I decided to look into this a little more and spoke with industry expert Bharat Bhise HNA, about whether or not I needed to invest in cyber security. Bharat was very kind to take a look at our systems and spot the gaps which people could exploit, and so I decided to take Bharat’s word for it and invest some cash in tightening things up. What convinced me was when Bharat spoke to me about the types of attacks which can take place, truly terrifying attacks I must say.

DoS and DDoS

One of the most common attacks is a Denial of Service or a Distributed Denial of Service Attack, these are very simple to create and very effective indeed. Basically these attacks look to overwhelm the system which it is aimed at, until the system crashes and denies service. Strangely this is an attack which actually doesn’t benefit the attacker, it doesn’t give them access to your systems, they are just looking for the satisfaction of a successful attack. For businesses however this can shut you down for at least a day and cause all manner of upheaval, lost time and lost money.

MitM Attack

A Man in the Middle attack is something which companies should be worried about and through this kind of attack hackers can get access to your entire system. Basically what happens here is that an attacker will hijack a session between client and host. Your employer signs on to the system, the attacker gains control of the client’s computer and then disconnects from the server, meanwhile the IP address is switched for that of the attacker and the connection is made again, only this time the attacker has full access to the system.

Phishing

Opening an email which you don’t recognize can do huge amounts of damage to your system and they could see you fall victim to a phishing scam. These scams are easy to put together and they essential load a ton of malware and other viruses onto your company’s server. These emails can trick people into downloading harmful viruses or even into employees handing over sensitive information.

Password Attack

Hackers have an uncanny ability to guess and gain access to password protected information, either by brute force which uses a random approach to passwords, or through a dictionary attack which uses relative information to gain access to someone’s computer or system. This is why it is so important to think up creative and complicated passwords, because many of them are very easy to guess if a hacker wants to try.

When we first moved up to Alberta, Canada from the USA our house needed a lot of work doing to it, especially to the outside areas. Because of the money this house had already cost us we had to visit a lender to get a little extra cash to get the place sorted out, but I have always preferred to just get jobs done rather than bide my time.

The garden work was completed by Ron Cadman, a local a gardener, who even offered me a discount if I was to help. I would be a fraud if I told you that ‘we’ completed the garden because the truth is I was just a pair of hands, nonetheless I saved some cash.What this sparked in me was something which I never realized that I had… green fingers, that’s right, I discovered that I loved gardening and since that day I have spent as much time outside as possible. There are so many benefits to gardening which I enjoy and if you have never tried it, here are the benefits which you can get.

Pride

Naturally there is a great amount in the garden which was carried out by Ron but since then I have been adding my own bits and pieces such as a water feature and a bedding area, and there is an enormous sense of pride which comes with looking out on the garden knowing that you created it. It is even better when people comment on your work!

Relaxation

If you had asked me a couple of years ago what I thought about gardening I’d have told you that it looked boring and probably quite stressful. As it turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong as I find this one of the most relaxing parts of my day. I love to get my gloves on and head out into the garden for a couple of hours each night. When I am out there I just switch off from everything entirely, the world seems a place which is miles away and the only thing which I am really focussed on is my gardening.

Project

I have always felt that everyone should have a project which they are working on, something to aim for and a reason to get up in the morning. For me that project is my garden, and in fact you can break this down into lots of mini projects which you have to complete. You can’t hurry the garden either, unless of course you are adding a physical installation, because when it comes to plants, you have no control over how quickly they grow.

All in all this is a great hobby which I had no idea just how much I was going to enjoy. There is nothing like the peace and quiet of getting out into the garden and getting some fresh air in your lungs is always a good idea.

Neuropsychology is a science and a branch of medicine which you may not have heard of before but this is something which is helping thousands of people around the world. There are some geniuses in this field, people like the brilliant Dr. Curtis Cripe who have dedicated their lives to the implementation and the advancement of neuropsychology. We were fortunate enough to catch up with Dr. Cripe at a recent medical convention to dig a little deeper into what exactly is neuropsychology, let’s have a look.

Overview

Neuropsychology is actually a branch of psychology which of course studies the mind. This branch combines characteristics of both psychology and neurology and it is about our understanding of the brain’s physiological functions, and how this contributes towards cognitive function and behavior. We all know that there are many mental disorders out there which are in fact brain disorders, the role of a neuropsychologist is to focus on the causes of these issues, and deciphering what is a neurological disorder and which is a physical disorder, as well as treating the issue.

Range of Treatments

There is a huge range of medical issues which a neuropsychologist will look at that fall under the mental/psychological banner. Here are just some of the issues which can be treated by this specialist branch of medicine.

• Learning Disorders
• Hyperactivity Disorder
• Attention Deficit Disorder
• Endocrine Disorders
• Brain Tumors
• Brain Cancer
• Dementia
• Alzheimer’s
• Epilepsy
• Seizure Disorders
• Sex Chromosome Abnormalities
• Klinefelter Syndrome
• Motor Neuron Diseases

As you can see there is a wide range of medical and behavioral issues which neuropsychology is able to treat.

Differences With Psychology

It is important that whilst we recognize that this is a branch of psychology, the two actually differ greatly. For example neuropsychologists must have significantly more training than a psychologist and this is because they must both understand the mind and its behaviors, as well as having a deep understanding of neurology and how each brain function can contribute towards these behaviors. The role of a neuropsychologist is to work with patients who display signs of mental health issues, and the dig deeper to find out root cause and treatment.

Within this they will look into focus and attention, intellectual functioning, academic functioning, adaptive functioning ,personality, basic motor skills and speed, memory, speech and language and the ability to visualize. Each aspect of what the brain does needs to be understood and more importantly the consequences of any aspect the brain which is not functioning as it should be.

How to Become a Neuropsychologist

To forge career in this field it is essential that you have studied neuropsychology at university level and obtained a degree in the subject.Once this is complete then you will have to attend medical school in order to obtain your license to practice medicine, and then much like doctors do, you will spend 4-6 years  in a clinical setting until you are granted your license.

Last week was a truly fascinating one for me as I was lucky enough to spend 3 days with the team at Brennan & Clark LLC, a debt collection agency. Now to many these may seem like 3 days wasted but in a world where people’s personal debt is spiraling out of control, those days gave me a great insight into what life is like on the other side of the fence. Throughout the US there are hundreds of thousands of people who have debt which they are mismanaging, can’t afford to pay or simply ignoring, a worrying trend which is putting many under huge pressure. Settling with a debt collection agency is the best case scenario for so many, and here is why.

Debt Collection Agencies Explained

First let’s have a brief look at what debt collection agencies are and how they operate. Simply put, big lenders like banks do not want bad debt on their books, when they have loaned money or given to credit to someone who hasn’t or isn’t paying it back, they would far rather sell that debtor to a debt collection agency, for a lower price. This way the lender at least gets some money and moves forward, which is far cheaper than chasing the money themselves. The debt collection agency then seeks to recoup the money.

What Can They Do?

Debt collection agencies will try to reach out to the debtor with calls, emails and house visits until they are able to speak with them. They will almost always e very accommodating with the person who is in debt and they can offer settlement offers, payment schemes without interest and other benefits which the original lender cannot. Unfortunately however so many people still fail to acknowledge the debt collection agency which is where they can get unstuck. A debt collection agency has the power to remove items which were bought using credit such as vehicles, furniture and gadgets, and they are lawfully allowed to do so.

Why You Should Settle

Beyond the obvious fact that you should settle to avoid a debt collection agency coming out to your home to repossess items within it, you should also settle because they can offer you a great deal. Let’s say that you owe $10,000, you may very well be able to settle for around $7,000. The reason for this is that when the debt collection agency bought the debt from the original lender, they could have bought it for 60 cents on the dollar, which is why they can afford to pass that saving on to you. Ultimately debt is not good for anyone, it is not good for the person who owes money, it is not good for the original lender and even in the case of a debt collection agency, they want clients to come and go with speed as they have money tied up in the debt which they have bought.

If you are contacted by a debt collection agency, don’t think twice, do all that you can to work with them.

People always tell you to get invested in bricks and mortar if you are looking at making some money and that is exactly what my buddy Ali Ata did some years ago, an investment which he has since tuned into a fortune. Ali was kind enough to help me out with this post which is for anyone who has a real desire to get involved in real estate investment. We aren’t going to give you in-depth knowledge about this industry, just the things that you need to understand before you take the plunge. If this is something which you have been thinking about doing, then here are some tips to help you get started.

Research

The importance of research cannot be overestimated and in truth you should be looking at spending at least 6 months studying the real estate market, the impacts which can change it, the types of properties which are the most profitable and all other aspects of this industry. Investing in real estate is not as simple as just buying a property and then selling it, these investments are large and that is why you must have invested the right amount of time into studying it.

Approach

There are a number of approaches which you can take to real estate investment and you need t spend some time working out which one fits best with what your are trying to achieve. For example some people like to flip properties, this usually involves getting cheap properties via an auction, and usually include properties which need a little bit of love. These flippers will pick up the property cheap, invest some cash to get it ship-shape and then flip it quickly for a small profit.

Alternatively you could look at buying property which you will then rent out, in doing this you can have an asset which has cash flow coming in each month, and if the market looks good then you could look to sell the property at any point. In doing this you are making a more long-term investment which will tie your money up for longer periods of time. The key to which approach you will take when investing comes down to what it is that you are looking for, are you looking for a quick return? Slow dividends? Or a long term approach which will be more of a nest egg?

Cash

Finally you need to ensure that you are cash rich in order to get involved in real estate investment. It isn’t just the price of the property which will cost money but also the surveyors, solicitors and even construction work which you may wish to carry out. The longer that you can save up the better as cash really is powerful in this industry. This is not to say that you shouldn’t borrow, but if you can avoid it then it will be far more beneficial.

Slot games have always attracted players around the world because of being affordable, convenient, and interesting entertainment.

Slot games have always attracted players around the world because of being affordable, convenient, and interesting entertainment. You can never guess if you are lucky or not. If there is a small loss, it is not a big deal, but losing lots of money can become a problem. There is one point that still upsets lots of gambling fans — risking your money is an annoying necessity to have a great time. That is why many online casinos offer to play slots with no deposits. They are known as free slots with free spins, and if you wish to find out more about them, just keep reading this article.

Why Did Casinos Create Free Slots?

It may be unclear why casinos offer free gambling. After all, it is logical that each casino earns its money when players lose theirs, and for a casino, it is simply unprofitable to make slots free. So, why do they do this then? This is how casinos attract new customers. New players from all over the world constantly use gambling sites to play free slots, and casinos secretly hope that if a player likes slots, he or she will also try to play poker or blackjack. Free slots are beneficial for visitors because they can enjoy their favorite games without risking their money.

Advantages of Free Slots

Have a look at the following advantages that you can have if you play free slots:

• Interest. There are several thousand slots, and this number is constantly growing, so you will never be bored;
• Bonus Rounds. These are specially designed to make gameplay even more exciting. In some slots, you will see characters from movies and TV shows during such rounds;
• Availability. Virtually everyone can play slots for free;
• No risks. You do not have to spend any money;

Convenience. Online casinos operate around the clock.