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• 15 Sep 2009

Read Business Guides Before You Start A Business

Everybody needs a means through which they can make a living. This is because you have basic needs that you need to cater for and also other luxuries that you may want to have. There are limited job opportunities in the market nowadays and therefore you need alternatives. One of the ways you can do this is through starting up your own business. Those who do not have any form of formal education or training and those who want to make some extra money can start their own businesses. The main aim of starting a business venture for most people is to make profits. This is where a business guide comes in handy.

The first step to take after deciding on putting up a business establishment is to identify the kind of business opportunity you will go for. While there are numerous business opportunities that you can start, not all of them can be successful to you. The success of a business will depend on various factors. Choosing a business that you are familiar with is very important as you will have particular know-how on how to solve various business related challenges and how to avoid them in future.

Once you have identified the business opportunity that suits you best, you have to lay out a detailed business plan. This will act as a guideline for you when it comes to your business in terms of the market your goods and services are targeted at, the competition, your source of capital and the way you will manage your finances. This plan proves to be important when you need to apply for financial assistance from a financial institution or even an individual.

One of the most important steps when starting a business is getting the necessary funds required. The methods of raising money to start a business vary from person to person. The nature of your business will also determine how much capital you will need. The sources of capital include: your personal savings, loans from financial institutions and money that you get from your family and friends.

Once you have come up with enough capital, it time now to start up the business. You will need a premise. Choose a premise which is situated in a strategic location where you will have an easy access to your customers and suppliers. This may not be necessary if you wish to work from home. You will then give your business a name and eventually have it registered with the relevant authorities. Registration goes with obtaining the permit. This is very important as you don’t want to have running battles with authorities. Once you have all this in place you can then have your products or services ready for your customers.

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• 15 Sep 2009

Home Business Guide: $120,000 Hindsight. Part 3 of 8

A GOOD home business guide is essential if you are intending to buy any advertised opportunity. Any new journey generally benefits from a decent guide, guidebook or map. They allow you to follow a beaten path, whilst illuminating potential dangers, and generally speeding up the journey.

Unfortunately in the home business industry many if not most guides are really nothing more than sales tools or platforms.

Rating A Home Business Guide:

Before you read one word, always assess the source of the information. This was about the only useful thing I learnt at University.

* Experience – do they know what they are talking about?

* Have they done it themselves? – or are they just copying others’ works or using opinion?

* Motivation – why are they doing it? What is their motive to help you?

* Similarity – Are they or their circumstances similar to yours?

A guide should satisfy all 4 of these questions. If not alarm bells should start ringing.

DIY Guide

You can make your own home business guide by compiling snippets of information that you believe are useful from all the different sources of information: newsletters, websites, forums, blogs etc. This reduces the risk of relying solely on one source that maybe, probably is, trying to make a sale. It is however a long and tedious process.

A guide – in addition to self-assessment – is vitally important in assessing which home business is best for you. It can also be of benefit in giving a structure for setting up and going through the reality of the day-to-day work needed to make any enterprise work.

You – 88% Of The Equation

The guide needs to be pertinent to YOU. Not just the business category it is describing. You can get a brilliant guide on how to spread bet, yet with a bad entrepreneurial match it cannot prevent the inevitable disaster. It is important to look inside as well as outside.

Business analysts quote the management of any company being up to 88% responsible for the success or failure of any business undertaking. Therefore a home business guide can only be a great asset – if it is RELEVANT to you.

A Guide Or Just A Sales Tool?

Though we all make a rough assessment on the trust we put in a guide or person, in this industry the world of sales and marketing works hard to persuade and influence our assessments with psychological trickery. Most sellers use a perception of expertise i.e. a guide, to influence you purely to sell a particular product or service.

99% of reviews are just using the ‘us and them’ sales trick: ‘you don’t want to buy that one… you want to buy this one’. Before you start looking at any guide I strongly recommend learning about copywriting and sales processes. This can help in recognising and differentiating a sales piece from a decent home business guide.

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• 10 Sep 2009

What Parasites Are Killing Your Small Business Success?

site is an organism that finds a host organism and in many cases ***** the life out of it. To have your small business successful it is critical to identify the parasites that may be taking life from it and at the same time to do something about it.

Regardless of whether you are starting up your own business or running your own business, there are many things that can take the life out of a small business. These parasites can kill a good marketing business plan or a successful performance strategy. In this article we will look at four areas where parasites can do damage.

The first parasite has to do with clients. This is one of the most difficult ones to recognize and to deal with. When you are starting up a business you are happy to have any customer. Unfortunately, if your boundaries aren’t clear to you as to what is acceptable and what is not a number of these people can take an inordinate amount of your time.

As a result, you are not able to invest the time you may need for marketing and sales. A great example of a client that is not good for most small businesses is the one who expects you to drop everything else when he wants something. He will be a parasite that will **** your time and energy.

A second parasite has to do with your process of doing business. For example, maybe you do your own bookkeeping to save money. Yet, it takes a great deal of time away from more important things, such as sales and marketing. When you are finished with your bookkeeping you don’t have the energy or inclination to do what needs to be done. This is what parasites in a business process do. They take you away from a better business and way of doing things.

A third one is the relational parasite. You have an employee you really like. In fact, you have come to depend on him. Unfortunately, the quality of his work is unpredictable and causes time to be taken to redo the work. Not only is there a cost in time but there is a cost in energy. And, worst of all, it increases the underlying tension of disappointing a customer or client with an inferior product or less than exceptional service.

The fourth parasite has to do with how you think about your business. This is the most difficult one, by far, to deal with. I see this parasite undermine more business owners who have a solid business concept but who are unable or unwilling to change their thinking about the business and how they see themselves in their business.

Guess what? If you don’t change your thinking then the small business growth or small business success you are seeking will never be a reality. You must embrace change. In fact embracing change is a very successful performance strategy. One of the best ways to change your thinking is to ask others for an honest assessment of what they see in you and your business.

If you are afraid to do this then you are not ready to grow. Find some human mirrors that will show you what you need to do.

When you have identified parasites in one of these four areas what do you do? Of course it depends on the parasite. A better answer is that you must have a philosophy that says when you find a parasite that you are going to choke the life out of it.

It may sound severe but only with drastic action will you stand a good chance of getting rid of your parasite and your problem. Here’s a story to make the point.

Several years ago a man was hiking in Big Bend National Park. The man had started out wearing a turtleneck pullover and it had become a warm day. As he was hiking down a hill he heard a rattle and looked up just as a rattlesnake sitting on a rock above him struck.

The snake missed him but caught onto the neck part of the turtleneck. As the snake did this, it wrapped itself around his neck. With his left hand he grabbed the snake right behind the head and started squeezing as hard as he could. Drastic action was required. At the same time he tried to extricate the snake from the turtleneck in order to throw it away from him.

When he finally got the head of the snake extricated from the turtleneck he was still unable to pull it free of him. In his struggle he lost his balance and started rolling down the hill with the snake. When he came to rest his head was below his feet and the snake had nicked him with his fangs under his right eye.

Then it nicked him again. He was getting desperate and starting to swell up. The ranger station at this point was close by. He squeezed harder and harder and finally choked the snake to death.

When he arrived at the ranger station the dead snake was still wrapped around him. Fortunately, he was able to be treated and survived.

This snake had become a parasite and was wrapped around this man and trying to invade his body with poison. Similarly, to get rid of or eliminate the parasites in your business you must take drastic action. Anything less severe, and the parasite will return to feed another day.

To have the success in growing your small business that you desire you must recognize the parasites. And then, like the man, take severe and strong action to rid your business of them. When you do you will have developed a discipline that you must have to make your small business successful.