iMark Interactive

iMark Interactive is a WordPress support and maintenance company based in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

The company has been in business since 2009 and provides support to WordPress site owners all over the world.

From ensuring backups are running smoothly, making sure your security is up-to-date, and making CSS style changes and bug fixes, iMark Interactive has the technical bases covered, allowing you to focus on other areas of your business.

About iMark Interactive

The company was founded by their current CEO and President Grayson Bell. Their target customers are businesses or entrepreneurs with WordPress sites looking for a monthly plan to take all their maintenance worries off their hands.

The company is US-based, however, some of their staff work remotely outside of the US giving them some flexibility in the skill sets and time zones they have available.

When you submit tasks you’re not matched up with a dedicated assistant, rather your problem will be handled by the most appropriate assistant. They expect most tasks to take up to 30 minutes, for longer jobs you can ask for custom quotes.

Services

Most WordPress support companies cast a large umbrella over almost any WordPress-related task and iMark Interactive does the same.

Common service requests include:

  • WordPress blog setup
  • Web hosting transfers
  • General maintenance/support
  • Theme optimization
  • CSS style changes
  • and much more

If you have any questions about specific issues I suggest just firing off a quick email first, but otherwise it’s safe to assume Grayson and his team will be able to fix your problem.

Plans and Pricing

iMark Interactive has five different monthly pricing plans,. Below is a summary of packages available at time of publishing:

The monthly plans are as follows:

Ready – $27/month – This plan includes daily/weekly backups, plugin/theme updates, monthly security scan, email support, 5% discount on their hourly rate, and 30 minutes uptime monitor.

Aim – $47/month – This plan includes all the services in the Ready plan, along with some additional minutes, an additional 5% discount on their hourly rate, 5 small jobs, and free access to Genesis themes.

Fire – $87/month – This plan includes all the services in the Aim plan, a 15% discount on extended projects, unlimited small jobs*, and access to Elegant themes for free.

Bullseye – $127/month – This plan includes all the services in the Fire plan, along with an additional 5% discount on their hourly rate taking you to a total of 20% off the standard price should you need support beyond what’s included in your plan.

*As with most WordPress support companies there is a throttle to the unlimited jobs included in their plans. A small job is any job taking up to 30 minutes to resolve and you can submit one at a time.

iMark Interactive Alternatives

A couple of other US-based WordPress support companies to check out are Zen WP and Access WP. Both companies offer a similar array of service packages and one-off fixes.

Where iMark really stands out is in the lower price point tiers. If you don’t realistically need “unlimited” support each month, the “Aim” plan above starts to look pretty attractive.

Your Turn

Have you worked with iMark Interactive? If so, please leave a review below to help others with their decision.

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48HoursLogo

48HoursLogo.com is a crowdsourced marketplace for custom logo, web, and print graphic design services. The company began in 2010, is headquartered in Shanghai, and has hosted more than 15000 design contests so far.

The target clientele is small business owners and startups in need of affordable graphic design work. Designers have contributed more than a million concepts for review, with more added each day.

How it Works

48hours logo reviewWith 48HoursLogo, an invisible global army of freelance design talent works to fulfill customer requests.

If you need a logo created for example, you can put your request up on the site and start a design contest. Within 48 hours — hence the name — you’ll have a variety of design concepts to choose from from designers all around the world.

You pick the winner and they get the prize money.

Plans and Pricing

Pricing for 48HoursLogo.com is a little misleading because they prominently display the promo text “starting at $29” on their homepage and marketing material. However, the minimum contest prize is $99, and they tack on a 15% fee for facilitating the contest, bringing the true minimum cost up to $114.

The “starting at $29” is just their minimum “down payment.” Even though you’ll eventually be paying at least the $114, you can technically get started for just $29 — and only pay the balance if and when you’re happy with the results.

The higher your award, naturally the higher number of entrants you can expect to receive. A $99 prize will typically attract around 10 participants, according to the company.

If you pre-pay for the contest, instead of waiting until the end, you can also attract more entries because the designers will know you’re more serious.

Customers can also contract with pre-vetted designers through the site for an hourly rate.

48HoursLogo Alternatives

The best known competitor is 99designs, which runs a very similar crowdsourced, contest-driven business model. The differentiating factor with 48HoursLogo is the speed and the pricing.

Customers and designers like the quick turnaround time because they’re not waiting around for days and days to find out which design won.

With 99designs, your minimum investment for a design contest is $299, and those contests reportedly receive an average of 30 submissions. For turnaround time, their contests stay open for about a week.

Other alternatives to consider include Fiverr, Crowdspring, and LogoGarden.

Your Turn

Have you hosted a design contest on 48HoursLogo? What did you think? Please consider leaving a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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Why I Finally Hired an Accountant (Again)

Accounting is one of the first things most business owners hire out.

The tax code is so complex — and the penalties for messing up so severe — that it just makes sense to bring on an expert, right?

Well this might surprise you, but for the last 8 years, I did all my bookkeeping, taxes, and accounting myself. Even as I sit here advocating delegation in most other areas of your business, this was one role I held on to.

Why?

The reasons boiled down to a bad experience with a local CPA a few years ago, and my own cheapness.

A bad experience years ago

After moving to California and setting up shop here, I interviewed a few local accounting firms and settled the one that made the best impression.

However, once we started working together, the owner and I didn’t really see eye to eye on what the scope of the relationship should entail. I was looking for a consultative partner who would more than pay for themselves by giving me strategic tax advice.

And really, that’s what I’m looking for in any hire. It’s supposed to be an investment, not a straight cost.

But this CPA was really more of an order taker and just filled the numbers I supplied her into the appropriate forms. For this service, she charged a healthy upfront retainer and $200 an hour.

After the second year of this, I could see which numbers were going into which boxes, and since she wasn’t offering any sort of strategic guidance, I cut ties and started doing it all myself.

The DIY years

It just didn’t seem like I was getting enough value relative to what I was paying her. Was this how all accountants operated? Are there any who operate on a “performance basis”, taking a percentage of the tax savings they uncover instead of a flat hourly fee?

Parting ways with my local CPA coincided with a downturn in the business, so the cost savings were important to the bottom line as well. Why spend the money if I still have to do 80% of the work?

For years, I filed all my returns myself. I did the corporate returns by hand and our personal returns with Turbo Tax. I haven’t been audited to find out, but in the back of my mind, there was always this question of whether or not I was doing everything right.

Every tax season, it would usually take a full weekend day (sometimes more) to complete the returns, and perhaps a half day for the business stuff. This is one area where TurboTax shines; they store all your information from previous years so if things are similar year-to-year, you can get it done pretty quickly.

But where TurboTax struggles is they try and make it too dummy proof. Sometimes I don’t know the “right” answer to their questions. Should I account for something this way or that way? Which way is best?

So between the time spent, the anxiety, and the business looking up again, I started to keep my eyes and ears open for some help.

Do I need a bookkeeper?

One role I’ve never really considered hiring for is bookkeeping. And the reason is I actually really like doing it.

Maintaining my spreadsheets and keeping track of all the income and expenses as they happen is oddly satisfying for me. And on top of that, I can see daily how my month, quarter, and year are shaping up in terms of profitability.

Related: Here are our top online bookkeeping services.

But I knew I could use some help on the tax planning side. By simply following the form inputs my first CPA did 8 years ago, was I leaving money on the table or paying more than I needed to?

Finding a new accountant

I actually connected with my new accountant through a podcasting friend of mine. Every month he’d share a different tax tip or strategy on my friend’s site.

Because he was focused on giving value upfront, he’d built up a lot of trust in my mind before we even spoke. And it helped that he was familiar with online businesses like mine, a concept I’m not sure my old CPA ever fully grasped.

When I finally reached out to explore the possibility of working together, we had a free 30-minute consultation. He said a couple things during that free call that ended up saving me thousands of dollars, so it became a no-brainer to hire him after that.

It turned out my years of stubborn do-it-yourselfing had cost me quite a bit in the name of not spending money on professional help. The trouble is how do you know if someone will really help you!

In this case it was easier to see because this CPA was well-versed in the online marketing world and had done a great job of providing actionable tips for free. I reasoned, if this the advice he’s giving away online, what will he come up with when he really digs into the numbers?

And as a bonus, he charged quite a bit less for the corporate and personal returns than my local CPA did years ago.

Your Turn

Did you do your taxes yourself?

If you’ve worked with accountants in the past, what did you like or dislike about the experience?

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Noon Dalton

Noon Dalton is a virtual assistant and business process outsourcing company in India, with call center support in the Philippines and a front-end sales offices in Florida and New York.

The company gets its very-non-SEO name from its two co-founders, Jehan Noon and Edward Dalton. With extensive experience in consulting and outsourcing, they founded the company in 2009, and it has grown to nearly 200 employees occupying a 30,000 square foot facility.

Noon Dalton Services

noon dalton reviewNoon Dalton focuses on outsourced business and admin support for small and medium businesses. In particular, their college-educated virtual assistants specialize in real estate, financial services, recruiting, and social media.

If you have processes in place and need help executing, or have things you need to get done but don’t have time, these guys want your business. The company aims for low-turnover, long-term relationships, which keeps both the agents and clients happy.

Each client is assigned a dedicated VA, and their work is managed by an on-site quality assurance team. You interface directly with your VA, but have management and process-support accessible should the need arise.

Noon Dalton is excited about their new facility in the Philippines, built specifically for phone-support virtual assistants.

Plans and Pricing

Although the company is a little coy about pricing, I was able to get the inside scoop from Jehan. (These are ballpark figures, and subject to change.)

You can choose from either a full-time plan or a half-time plan, and can select your preferred working time zone as well. The full-time plan includes support 6 days per week, Monday through Saturday, totaling around 200 hours per month

An entry level VA (perfect for routine admin tasks or data entry) is $1250 per month, or just over $6 an hour.

A more senior-level VA with more client-facing experience or advanced skills is around $1700 per month, or around $8.20 an hour.

These rates are similar to what you’ll find at other virtual assistant companies in India at the entry level, which is what most firms advertise. Even at the higher end, which might be at a premium relative to the competition, it’s still kind of crazy to imagine being able to hire a college grad full-time, 6 days a week for $8.20 an hour.

What value could that deliver for your business?

Noon Dalton offers a 3-day free trial on personal plans, plus there are no long term contracts; everything is month-to-month.

Virtual Assistant Assistant Exclusive: Mention referral code VAA to extend the free trial offer to 5 days!

Businesses are encouraged to start small, especially if it’s your first time outsourcing, to get your feet wet with delegation and management — and then ramp up the engagement as growth necessitates.

For an inbound or outbound calling VA in the Philippines, the rate is around $1750 per month for full-time help.

For part-time (half-time) help, please contact the company directly for a quote.

Notes

Noon Dalton won the 2013 New York Enterprise Report award for Best International Operations, and was recognized on the 2013 SmartCEO Future 50 list.

Your Turn

Have you worked with NoonDalton? If so, please be sure to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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My New Email Virtual Assistant

This year I’ve been letting a new VA into my inbox.

I felt like I was fighting a losing battle against the constant barrage of email, and even though I had what I thought to be a pretty robust system of filters and tags, it was still taking up a ton of time every day.

A little over an hour a day, 7 days a week, according to RescueTime.

Time to Hire Help?

Several friends have recommended getting an email VA — someone to help sort through incoming messages, craft simple replies, and essentially serve as a gatekeeper so you only have to see the messages that truly require your attention.

So I took their advice.

And in the few months we’ve been working together, I’ve been pretty impressed with my new VA.

In fact, she’s saved me from over 2000 messages so far.

But here’s the kicker: “she” is software, not a person.

How it Works

It’s a tool called Sanebox that plugs into your email account, analyzes your inbox behavior, and begins sorting the messages it deems important from the ones it thinks are probably less so.

And while there have been a few false positives in both directions, the sorting algorithm is crazy smart.

In my case, all the “not important” messages are dumped into a folder called SaneLater.

You still have full access to all your incoming mail (I was worried about missing something), and I tend to check that folder a couple times a day.

If I find something miscategorized, I just drag it back to the main inbox.

(Or vice versa, and the system learns for next time.)

There’s also a folder called “Blackhole” where you can drag messages you never want to hear from the sender again.

My Results

Now I’d heard of Sanebox before but never tried it until this year, when they reached out to sponsor my podcast.

I figured if I was going to do a convincing ad read I’d better test it out and see how it worked … and honestly it’s hard to imagine going back to my old way.

And more importantly, according to RescueTime, my time in my inbox is down 2-3 hours a month. I’ll take it!

Your Turn

If you want to give Sanebox a shot, they put together this special deal for you:

A 2 week free trial (no credit card required) + $25 off any paid plan.

They only condition is you drag emails from me back into the main inbox 🙂

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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AssistU

AssistU (AssistU.com) is a virtual assistant training and certification service, that also allows prospective would-be employers to tap into their database of pre-qualified VAs. The company was founded way back in 1997 by Anastacia Brice, back when the term “virtual assistant” barely existed.

AssistU focuses on the provider side of the business, rather than the client side. You’ll notice most of the offerings are aimed toward current and prospective virtual assistants.

Services

assistu reviewThere are 2 primary levels of service: a self study program and an intensive 16-week Virtual Mentoring Program. Both of these culminate in a 3-day pass/fail final exam, with the VAs who pass earning the title of Certified Professional Virtual Assistant.

From the client side, the benefit of hiring through AssistU means getting paired up with someone you know takes their business seriously enough to invest in the training and certification. Their preparation in their own business readiness makes them all the more qualified to handle your business tasks.

The primary customers for AssistU are coaches, consultants, realtors, info-marketers, and other professionals and solopreneurs.

How it Works

AssistU offers two options for customers looking to hire a virtual assistant. The first option is the free DIY method, in which you fill out a detailed questionnaire of the kind of service you’re looking for, your delegation experience, and more.

You can filter by time zone, certifications, desired hours per month (it would be very rare to request more than 30 hours a month), and even computer platform. Virtual assistants who meet your criteria respond directly to you and you hire and pay them directly. AssistU has no involvement and doesn’t do any payment processing on an ongoing basis.

The second option is Registry Gold. In this option, you work one-on-one with Anastacia and she plays virtual matchmaker for you. The cost for this service is a one-time $750 fee.

If you’re looking for a long term VA, as most AssistU clients are, the recruiting cost is somewhat negligible.

Plans and Pricing

Although AssistU has VAs from all over the world — and there are more than 300 in their database at the moment — the majority hail from the US and Canada. Naturally, that means the rates are higher than you’ll find overseas, through a freelance platform, or even than through many of the US-based VA companies.

On the low end, you might expect to pay $35/hr, with $50 an hour being closer to average. For senior virtual assistants or those with super-specialized skill-sets, you might be looking at north of $100/hr.

All AssistU VAs are bound by a code of ethics agreement and can have their certification revoked if they’re found to be in violation.

AssistU Alternatives?

The virtual assistant candidates you find elsewhere will probably not have the extensive training and certification as those found through AssistU, but that may not matter to you in your business.

If you’re looking to hire a VA in North America but are looking for a little more management oversight, I would consider eaHELP or Longer Days.

For a slightly lower price point to start, you might check out Zirtual or even post your job to Elance. I’m always surprised by affordability of the bids I get back on that platform from candidates in the US and Canada.

Your Turn

Have you hired a VA from AssistU? Please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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Outbounders

Outbounders.com is a virtual marketplace for telemarketing professionals. The company was founded in 2010 as an offshoot of Global Sky Inc., a call center operation in the Philippines. Behind the scenes are CEO James Rick Stinson and CTO Rob Rawson (same guy as from Staff.com and the time-tracking software TimeDoctor).

outbounders reviewBecause of the booming call center industry in the Philippines, many of the professional phone workers you’ll find on the site are from there, but the marketplace of callers on Outbounders is pretty global. When I checked the other day, I found workers in China, India, Central America, and the US. 

How it Works

Workers on Outbounders have the advantage of working from home, instead of commuting to an office. Call monitoring software (and of course your business results) will help determine their productivity.

If you’re looking to hire some outbound customer service or telephone sales staff, the hiring process on Outbounders.com is pretty simple.

  1. Like any other freelance marketplace, the first step is to create a profile.
  2. You can browse the listings of available professionals, filter based on rate or other criteria, listen to their recordings, and even see if they are online at the moment for an interview.
  3. You can also post your own detailed job description and collect applications, much like you would if you were hiring a freelancer on FreeeUp.

Outbounders callers have been hired by thousands of small business clients and have made over 2.5 million calls on their behalf!

Outbounders Intro Video

Plans and Pricing

If you already have some phone dialing software or internal software you use to track calls, your Outbounders hire can plug right into your system. Alternatively, Outbounders.com has their own dialer you can use for a small additional fee ($1 per hour).

Outbounders.com keeps the lights on by taking a 10% fee on top of the caller’s hourly rate. It’s free to post a standard job listing, and performance-based jobs carry a $25 fee.

Your agent will use unlimited free VOIP calling to the US and Canada, and discounted rates to other destinations around the world.

The rates seem to start around $5 an hour, and go up from there depending on experience, geography, and level of English skills. It seems to be an affordable way to get your outbound calling campaign started. At that rate, your rep doesn’t have to make many sales to deliver a huge ROI.

This home-based model means less overhead and significant cost savings over a traditional call center set-up.

Then, when you’re ready to scale up and add more seats, or move to an in-office call center environment, you can engage Outbounder’s parent company, GlobalSky.com.

The company provides training in their dialer software, but as with any other hire, any job-specific training is on you to provide.

Why Outbounders?

Targeting entrepreneurs, Outbounders aims to woo customers away from other job sites like Elance, oDesk, and Guru.com. The gameplan for doing so is to focus on just one area of specialization — to become THE marketplace for outbound phone support.

If you find yourself in the position that getting on the phone and dialing for dollars helps drive new business, but then you get caught in the cycle of actually delivering the work for those clients and not feeding the funnel, maybe a dedicated outbound sales rep could help.

The advantage may be the speed of hiring and the quality of applicants. Have you hired any callers from Outbounders? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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Remote Staff

Remote Staff, or remotestaff.com.au, is an Australia-based staff leasing company that specializes in virtual employee recruitment. The company was founded in 2007, and has placed nearly 4000 workers in remote jobs since then.

remote staff reviewRemote Staff will find you a home-based worker in India or the Philippines, and then you can work directly with them. Despite the workers not punching the clock at a traditional office, the company maintains a pretty substantial brick-and-mortar presence, with more than 60 full-time employees in their Philippines home office.

How it works is you submit your job details and detailed requirements, and Remote Staff hunts through their talent pool of thousands of jobseekers to present you with qualified applicants for you to interview. Then, you can hire them and train them as needed, and Remote Staff will handle all the payments and paperwork.

Because this recruitment service is free, unlike Virtual Staff Finder, for example, you can expect to be paying slightly more on a monthly basis than you would without a middleman because the company has to make some margin somewhere. Still, the rates are likely to be attractive compared to those of an office-based virtual assistant company.


Sponsored Link:


If you don’t want to take advantage of Remote Staff’s in-house recruiters, you can do the candidate search on your own on their site. You can filter by skills, availability, and hourly rate. One cool feature they’ve added is an audio snippet of each candidate, so you can hear them in their own words and get an idea of their English language skills too.

With Remote Staff, you’re looking at one-month minimum commitment, but the aim is for long-term mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, if you’re not happy with your worker, they have a 6-month staff replacement guarantee.

One downside is you have to pre-pay for the month’s work, which is the opposite of traditional hiring. But in this case, you still have some protection in place if your virtual employee flakes on you. Plus, you don’t have to worry about paying for holidays or sick time; only accountable for the hours actually worked.

In exchange for their handling fees (a minimum of $1 an hour), Remote Staff moderates any disputes that come up, and logs all working hours in their system to ensure the workers are putting in the time they say they are.

The closest competitors that comes to mind are Staff.com and Virtual Coworker. If this model is appealing to you, you might want to check out those guys too.

Have you worked with Remote Staff (remotestaff.net)? If so, please share a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.

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Taskbarge

Taskbarge is a virtual assistant company in Bangalore, India. They were founded in 2011 by CEO Chaitanya Krishna, who assembled a small team to start serving clients on their own.

Taskbarge has grown slowly over the last couple years, investing in training their people rather than expensive marketing campaigns and unneeded costly infrastructure.

task barge reviewI had the chance to speak with Krishna, a former employee of a well-known outsourcing giant, about his new company. He explained that Taskbarge is focused on a small and medium-sized entrepreneurial client-base.

So far, they’ve been able to achieve impressive client retention — “no one has left us yet,” by delivering timely and high-quality service at low prices. Taskbarge clients typically rely on them for outsourced business process support, but the capabilities are there to handle of variety of virtual assistant tasks, including scheduling, online research, travel arrangements, and more.

The only limitation at the moment is on the technical side of things, as Taskbarge doesn’t have any web development or IT support talent in-house.

The company offers an array of pricing plans to fit anyone’s needs and budget. Plans start at $55 for a 5 hour block of virtual assistant time. These are perhaps mislabeled as “monthly” plans, but you actually have two months to use up your 5 hours, and won’t be billed again until you want or need a “refill.”

For larger plans, you have even more time to use up your hours. Krishna explained that the TB-40, or 40-hour plan, is their most popular option at $320 ($8/hr). In this case, you can spread the 40 hours out over the course of 3 months. That gives some flexibility in the event of an inconsistent outsourcing workload.

Naturally, the rates improve as you buy bigger blocks of time, with a 150-hour block going for $825, or just $5.50 an hour. Overall, the prices are quite competitive with other virtual assistant companies in India.

Exclusive Offer: Mention referral code VAA10 in “Message” box in the Taskbarge contact form for 10% off your first plan!

Once your hours are gone, you can renew at the same level, or jump around to any other suitable plan.

With each option, Taskbarge assigns a dedicated virtual assistant to be your sole point of contact with the company. This VA is assigned based on their expertise relative to your anticipated tasks, as well as the working time zone required.

They offer a 7-day free trial on all their plans, so you can test out the service risk-free. For alternatives, My Tasker or 24/7 Virtual Assistant might also be worthy of your consideration.

Have you worked with Taskbarge? If so, please leave a quick review using the comment form below to help others with their decision.

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Mint Lifestyle Partners

Mint Lifestyle Partners is a virtual concierge service aimed at high-powered high-lifestyle individuals. The UK-based company was founded in 2010, and also maintains an office in Dubai.

Mint specializes in lifestyle assistance, originally created to serve the needs of the growing expatriate community in the Middle East. They’ve since expanded and accept clients globally.

mint lifestyle partners reviewThis is kind of a white-glove service for people with a lot of money to spend. Mint will take good care of you social calendar, domestic arrangement, and corporate needs, all with a quiet diligence and discretion.

Mint clients are assigned a dedicated “lifestyle manager” who acts as their well-connected virtual concierge for any need that arises.

They’ll do all the traditional virtual assistant tasks — I love how I say “traditional” for a job that’s been around for only 10 years — from making reservations and managing your calendar, to online research, to event planning, and more.

Mint has several different pricing levels. An ad hoc membership is available without any ongoing monthly commitment, and concierge time is billed out at £39 per hour.

Users can buy blocks of time in 5 and 15 hour increments to enjoy a discount on the standard hourly rates. A 5-hour block is £175 and a 15-hour block is £465. The nice thing about these plans is the hours are good for a full-year from the purchase date.

Heavy users who can commit to a minimum of 30-hours a week of Mint usage qualify for the “Creme de Menthe” plan, which further discounts the hourly rate to £25. Standard VAT tax applies on all plans.

As you can see, Mint Lifestyle Partners is not cheap by any means. The closest competitor in the US I can think of would be Red Butler, which positions itself as a premium service but is still priced within reach in terms of their monthly plans.

In the UK, DailyPA offers a competing service with a lower entry price point. Time Etc would be another one to consider.

Have you worked with Mint Lifestyle Partners? If so, please leave a quick review using the comment form below to help others with their decision.

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