Archive for Entrepreneur
The Business Plan: Why You Need One
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Do you have a new business? Are you revamping your existing business? Whether your business is old or new, you can greatly benefit from a proper business plan. Many people think that a business plan is only beneficial if you are trying to raise money for your company and while this is one reason to write a business plan, it is certainly not the only one.
Creating and writing a business plan for your company is a great idea to ensure the success of your business. Your business plan will greatly increase your chances of being organized and successful with your business. When you have a plan with set goals, it is easier to achieve those goals. This is a much better business practice than leaving things to chance or being so unorganized that you can not track your progress.
What is included in a business plan?
So what does your business plan need to include in order for it to be sure it is successful and complete? You will need to have a description of your business, details of what it is and how it will operate, some information regarding ownership, a start up summary as well as market research and target market information.
You want to walk through the business and the function of your business from the beginning all the way through. What is the purpose of your company? Do you sell a product? Do you provide a service? What are you offering to customers? How much experience do you have and how are you qualified to perform the job duties? Ask the same questions of your employees or business partners.
Why Create your Business Plan?
So why is it worth your time to write and create a great business plan? There are different reasons, as we mentioned before. One popular reason why people choose to create a business plan is to try to convince potential investors and lenders to fund money to your business.
Most of all a good business plan will help you determine whether or not your business has a good chance of producing profit. If results show that you will not make a good profit, you might need to adjust your business plans and goals somewhat. It can also serve as a great way to estimate your start up costs and needed investments to start or continue the business.
Do you want to spruce up your business plan or create a simple, easy to use plan for your business in 2012? Join me for the Business Planning Work Day on Monday, January 2nd. Find out more information by going to:
How to Get Started on Facebook
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You would like to get in on the social networking scene, but maybe you aren’t quite sure where to start. Whether you are interested in promoting your business through social networking or just want to catch up with friends, it can be intimidating if you aren’t sure how it works. Facebook is a good place to start for social networking. To start using this popular networking site, here are some ideas that tips that can help you take the first steps to getting on the networking scene.
What Is Facebook?
You can think of Facebook as a way for people to stay connected. You update your status and read the status updates of other people, and you can search for people whom you know and who know you. You “friend” people and accept friend requests from others. You can join and start groups, and invite others to join. Facebook allows you to share sites, pages, and information that you like.
1. First, log on to Facebook.com and follow the on-screen directions for setting up an account. It’s quite user friendly, and you can change the information you put in your profile at any time.
2. Your profile should say pertinent things about you, whether it’s your business or your personal account. You do need to decide whether or not you are going to go at this from a business or personal perspective, because the general opinion is that personal and business communications on Facebook should be separate.
3. Once you set up your account, you can search for friends using the Search feature. Facebook allows you to search groups, or search for people according to a certain demographic (people who share your graduation year, for example, or your home town). Once you have a few friends, you can search for friends of friends – those mutual friendships you share. Then your friend list will start growing.
4. Privacy settings can be adjusted according to your preferences. Check into the guidelines and make sure you have the settings where you want them. You are in control of who sees your profile and updates. You can also block people you don’t want to contact you on Facebook.
5. You can communicate with your friends in various ways. If you “write on their wall” then you are posting something others can see. The friend whose wall you wrote on would have his or her own privacy settings, and your friend decides who sees what’s on his or her wall. So just beware that the wall is considered “public.”
You can also send messages to individuals. If you hover your mouse pointer over a person’s picture, the option to send a message comes up. Messages sent this way are not readable by others.
6. Groups are a nice feature of Facebook. Take some time to participate in groups within your specific niche.
If you would like more strategies for using Facebook for business, I suggest taking a look at Facebook 4 Biz…a new session is starting on Monday, January 9th. Get more information about the class and sign up today at:
Work Smarter, Save Time and Increase Productivity
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Every business owner would like to find a way to save time and increase productivity. Unfortunately, working from home often means that productivity can take a back seat to the million other things competing for our attention.
These three tips will help you work smarter, save time and increase productivity.
1. Set a schedule and stick to it.
It’s tempting to stray from a set schedule when you work from home. After all, working from home means we have the freedom to set our own hours. Unfortunately, however, this can lead to reduced productivity.
One of the best ways to increase your productivity is to set a firm schedule for work hours and stick to it. This means that work time is work time. If you were at the office, friends wouldn’t pop over for coffee and your neighbor wouldn’t call you for a chat. By setting a strict work schedule, not only will you get more done, but people will learn to respect that working from home really does mean you’re working.
2. Work in short bursts.
Research has proven that after a set time of concentrating on a task at hand, we start to lag. Our concentration lessens and we actually get less done. When you work from home, it’s easy to avoid this. Simply set your work schedule to include short bursts of time assigned to each specific project.
The time you allow for each project will depend on you personally, but you can experiment until you find what works best for you. A good rule of thumb is 45 minutes for any intensive task that requires concentration.
For example, if you have work to edit, spend 45 minutes doing that, then move on to answering your emails for another set amount of time. After that you can either go back to editing to tackle another task.
The key is to break your time up into chunks that you dedicate specifically to each individual task. Then you move on to the next task for a specific set amount of time. And don’t forget to take a short 5 or 10 minute break every few hours or so. This will help you clear your mind as well as avoid your body getting stiff from sitting for extended periods of time.
3. Get organized.
There’s a great saying: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Being organized is an important part of being productive. By taking a little time to plan your day or the week ahead means you can dive straight into work without wondering what you’re meant to be doing.
It also helps to keep all your important papers, folders and documents easily labelled and accessible so that you don’t waste time looking for things. While planning ahead does take a little time, it will save you more time in the long run.
These three tips will help you become and remain more productive during your work day. By thinking ahead and planning your day, working in short but concentrated bursts and sticking to a strict work schedule you will get more done in less time.
Why is Being an Expert a Necessity?
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Do you have an online business? If you do, the second question is how are you doing? The bottom line is always the uppermost concern in your mind. To that end, creating expert status may be just the thing to catapult your business to the next level.
What is Expert Status?
Well, it is comprised of many things actually. Mostly, it is a tool to increase the number of people who patronize your online business. It involves raising your visibility level. Potential customers have to know that you exist before they can visit, get advice and buy your products.
But, you knew that already. You’ve told all of your friends and family, and also your church members and co-workers that you have begun an online venture. Your marketing strategy has served you well so far to draw traffic, but you wish you were doing better.
Here’s a question: When you need help, who do you go to? Hopefully you seek out someone who knows what they are talking about on the subject. They are the experts and that is what you want to be.
Why Become an Expert?
Experts are not necessarily know-it-all people. They just know a lot about their chosen subject. As an online business owner, you had an interest in the niche you chose for your business enterprise. That alone means that you know a great deal more than the average person about your topic.
People like experts. They are the go-to person who takes the headache out of your research. If your information is helpful, these people will come back to you over and over again and bring others with them.
It sounds like a lot of work but it is well worth it. Besides, you love your chosen business niche (that’s why you are in business) and you were going to do the work anyway. So why not reap the additional benefits of being an expert?
Experts have several things going for them:
• Can demand higher pay rates
• Credibility
• Increased visibility
• A sphere of influence
What’s the necessity?
Expert status lifts you head and shoulders above the rest in your field. Where they KNOW about the basics of the niche, you go deeper to provide your customers with a better understanding of what you can offer them. That translates into many more dollars and cents.
So, are you interested in expert status now? It is a worthwhile venture for your online business that creates a win-win situation. The next step is to implement strategies to begin marketing yourself as an expert in your business area.
The Skills Every Solopreneur Needs
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If you want to succeed as a solopreneur, there are a few core skills you need to have. The majority of these skills aren’t things that are taught in business school, but skills that need to be honed in the real world. Fortunately, once you develop these skills, they can be applied to just about any venture you embark on.
These are the skills every solopreneur should have.
Leadership (Not Management)
John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Fund, the largest mutual fund in the world, defines leadership as knowing what’s worth doing. Management is knowing how to do it.
A leader needs to be able to decide what’s important and what will actually impact the company’s bottom line. They need to be able to make moral decisions about when to go for profit and when to sacrifice profits for long-term values.
They need to be able to identify what’s really best for everyone involved, including clients, employees and shareholders, and make business decisions for the greater good.
A manager is someone who understands things like time management, project flow, tracking employee performance and such. But they aren’t necessarily the right people to steer a company.
A good solopreneur needs to be a great leader. It also helps if they’re a good manager.
Persistence and Patience
In “Good to Great,” one of the most highly acclaimed business books of the century, Jim Collins studies eleven public companies whose performance consistently beat the market average for 15 years in a row.
One of the key factors he found was persistence and patience. He likened it to a giant spinning metallic flywheel.
If you had to take this giant metallic wheel and make it spin, in the very beginning it won’t budge at all. You can put in immense amounts of effort, only to find it still not moving.
Yet once it does start moving, slow at first then getting faster and faster, it’ll build up momentum until it starts to move on its own. At that point, it would actually be harder to stop the flywheel than to push it faster.
Building a business is like that. In the beginning, you’ll be swimming upstream. But as momentum builds, it’ll get easier and easier. The trick is to have the persistence and patience to stick it through.
Team and People Focus
“Take my 20 best people and, virtually overnight, Microsoft becomes a mediocre company.” — Bill Gates
Whether it’s Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, one thing is consistently clear across the most successful companies: a relentless drive to hire the best people.
More than anything else, the success of your company is going to be based on the kind of people you hire.
Aim to hire people who are smarter and more competent than you. Don’t try to hire a team that you can lead, but a team that can lead your company and you to better results than you alone could create.
These are just a few of the key skills every solopreneur needs. These skills aren’t developed overnight, but they’re absolutely skills that anyone who’s committed can learn.
