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A good team of investors can play a great role in the success of your small business, but a bad choice of investors can obliterate even the strongest ideas to execute. Believe it or not, investors provide more opportunities to your business, while becoming resources for creating effective marketing ideas. Knowing what to consider while selecting investors and being able to attract the right type of investors are vital skills for established and emerging entrepreneurs.

If you are a small business owner and finding trouble getting convincing investors, here are 7 secrets that will help you attract the eye of an angel investor or venture capital, while making your business a more appealing investment.

1. Get the Most Out of Networking

Networking is the best way for entrepreneurs to pitch their startup in a less formal and organic way. If you are building a great business, networking within the local startup and investing community can be the best way to meet and find the right type of investors.

If you find investors interested in your business, keep the meetings going and let things happen organically for optimum results. Let them consider your business, after all, you are not only conveying your idea, you are actually relying on the social capital built through the networking process that impact the investment decision.

2. Be Practical, Get Real Paying Customers

You need investment to attract customers, but you need customers to acquire money. It is always worth making an effort to get customers prior to approach an investor, instead of seeking funds first and customers second. It is advised to create a plan to acquire customers first that doesn’t need a very huge investment.

This is very important, particularly for emerging entrepreneurs, it will become easier to get investments on good terms. Investors always want proof that your idea is effective enough and will work, and nothing will satisfy them than having real paying users.

3. Find the Right Co-Founder

When you find investors, you are not only selling them your business in terms of products and services, you are selling them on your team. Opting for the right leadership team for your small business is an important process and having the wrong co-founders can be more dangerous for your business than having no co-founder at all.

However, finding the right co-founder can make the process easier, even beyond attracting investors. As having partners will allow you to rely on them, which can be a huge boost for your startup.

4. Get a Better ROI

Though investors may start believing in your business, the purpose for their investment is to make money. Therefore, it is important to highlight what they will actually gain from investing in your startup.

No matter if you are approaching an angel, VC or a rich person, it is important to show how you are going to get their investment return. It is alluring to focus on yourself and your business vision, but at the end of the day, investors want to know …

Do you run a business? If so, you need to write invoices. Even if you are a professional, you still need to write invoices in order to get paid. This is an important process and requires that you invest in an invoice creation app. With this type of software, you can turn this time consuming task into a professional and efficient part of your job or business. Given below are some tips to put together a great invoice or choose good invoice software.

1. If You Are on a Budget

If you are short on budget, you can go for a free invoice software application. All you need to do is make sure the app has all the features you need to put together a professional invoice. Also, avoid buying an app that has unnecessary features. Dealing with too many features will only confuse you making your job harder.

2. Go for a Simple Invoice Software App

The invoice software should let you format your invoice the way you want. Apart from this, the app should have some great templates as well. Good apps allow you to save your progress so you don’t have to start over in case of a system or power failure.

3. Set Some Rules

When you have to deal with your clients, make sure you set some rules in the first place. For instance, you may want to let your clients know the payment form, due dates and the percentage of advance payments. Besides, the terms about delayed payment should also be informed to your clients. This will help you carry out your business affairs as smoothly as possible.

4. Contact Details

Your contact details should be given on the invoice. This will include your email, phone number and website, just to name a few. This way your clients can get in touch with you in case they have some questions or problems to resolve. This tip will help your clients build trust in your business. Aside from this, you can get feedback from your clients and improve your product or service based on what your clients like or dislike about what you offer.

5. Track Your Invoices

You can track your invoice in many ways. When doing so, you don’t need to depend solely on date. The format of your invoice should contain a number that you may use for tracking the history. This method is an ideal one especially if you have a large number of clients to deal with.

6. Create a Back-up of your invoices

While good invoice software apps are safe to use, they can’t prevent a computer failure or malfunction. Therefore, we recommend that you create a backup of your files based on a schedule. You can use a cloud system for creating a back-up of your invoice files.

So, with these 6 useful tips and some simple invoice software, you can write great invoices that will create a great impression on your clients and your business will keep growing at a fast pace.

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Here are some things that you must do if you want to have a successful business. At this point, anyone can go on a popular search site and find that there are thousands of books that have been written by various authors on how to become successful in business. With all the information available to us, both on the internet and library, it is tough to find a short list of the most important rules that must be followed in order to achieve success in business.

However, I have read some of the requirements needed to succeed and have put it together for you. This tips pertain more to yourself as a human being rather than business tips. Although it might sound irrelevant and unimportant, these tips that I am about to share with you are some of the reasons why so many people fail every year when they choose to start their business.

The first tip is be fearless-

Let me give you an example. If you decide to get involved in the telecommunications industry, you will sometimes have to talk with new clients every week through the phone. Some people never choose the telecommunications industry because they are too shy and they are too scared to talk to potential clients every month. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of hurdles to face when you decide to start your own business, so you will have to become a stronger person and have more faith in yourself.

The second tip is you will have to grow as a leader-

As an entrepreneur, you will have a lot of people depending on you. The people who will be depending on you will be your employees and your business partners. They will require your leadership in order to function. You will have to understand that your business decisions will either help or hurt your business partners or employees.

The third tip is using your leverage-

As a leader of many, you will soon realize that you have power and leverage on society. You will have to use your new power and leverage in a positive way. People will claim you as their idol and will always look up to you for advice and guidance. You must leverage your power positively and you will have to make moral business decisions.

The last tip is a bonus-

You must have the right attitude. You must have an open mind and understand that your business partners and employees will want to share some ideas with you pertaining to growing your business. You must have the right attitude and show them that you value their opinion.

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