Article Contributed by Chris Burgess

As the job market gets more competitive and the promise of a career for life goes the way of the dodo, entrepreneurship has become more popular than ever, with many schools and colleges now offering classes in private enterprise. Go to any bookstore, and chances are you’ll find literally dozens of books on the topic, each promising to hold the key to startup success.

But can entrepreneurship really be taught in school, or does it represent a more intangible set of skills that can only be acquired through real-world experience?

Educators will argue that learning entrepreneurship isn’t really all that different from learning business, and that most of the same skills apply. This argument is bolstered by the fact that research in the field has improved drastically in recent years, with educators now much better equipped to help students avoid many of the pitfalls of turning their dreams into reality.

Some lessons are still best taught outside the classroom

While it’s true that many of the skills that underpin good entrepreneurship, such as effective time management and financial planning, can certainly be taught, there are a handful of less-easily-defined skills and qualities that identify the real entrepreneur – and many would contend that the only way to gain them is by doing.

One of these is, quite simply, people skills. As an entrepreneur, it’s inevitable that you will have to deal with many different personality types. Virgin founder Richard Branson, who was actually a painfully shy child, was thrown into the deep end at age 7 by his exasperated mother: she dropped him off several miles from home, requiring that he find his own way back. He didn’t show up until 10 hours later, but in that time he’d learned many invaluable lessons on how to communicate with adults in order to arrive home safely.

Another is the ability to take on calculated risk, along with the willingness to accept failure and uncertainty. At the end of the day, you simply have to do it, and this will get easier with experience. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in an endless cycle of planning and product development.

Instinct is important, but data is better

Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on their impeccable business instincts and their innate ability to spot trends before the competition does. “Gut feel” is a good thing to have, but it shouldn’t take the place of hard data if available. One common example is underestimating the time and resources required to have everything in place and reach a state of profitability.

If self-employment remains your dream but your fear of failure is too great, there are still options – you could buy a franchise, for example, or partner up with someone with more business experience.

While there’s no substitute for simply doing it in some areas, the teachability of entrepreneurship continues to increase, due to the emergence of alternative learning methods such as role playing, self-evaluation exercises, and working with mentors. The result is that while not everything about good entrepreneurship can be taught, most of it now can. It just takes time, commitment, and acceptance that not everything in life can be predicted.

About the Author

Chris Burgess is the CEO of Mailplus and has extensive experience in the courier services and business-to-business service market, having successfully franchised over 150 territories throughout Australia. Mailplus currently has franchises for sale in all major metropolitan areas.

One of the main problems with those who’re new to online business is they easily get attracted with the design of the month. Flash was quite popular in recent times, while sliding banners were considered as the ‘real deal’ later on.

Today, many online businesses gear their efforts towards search engine optimization, but they forget that the real success lies in user experience. Visitors coming to a particular website go through thought conversations such as ‘why am I on this website?’, ‘where am I supposed to place the order?’, ‘how do I contact the owner?’ etc.

Thankfully, web design elements can be used to guide users through sequencing and create the best user experience on a blog/website. There are many web design services that have expert knowledge on how design elements work such San Diego web design and similar companies in other states.

Here are some of the design elements that are considered important when it comes to user experience:

1. Shapes

Shapes have an important connection with the visitors as they’re used to communicate and appeal to their emotions.
For example, many of the bloggers who write about making money online use dollars ($), giving the readers an impression of money. The brain also processes shapes much faster than simple text.

2. White space

A website is going to be more attractive when it’s filled with banners, ads, opt-in forms, messages, pop ups etc. This is a misconception that needs to be cleared. There should be plenty of white space in the design of a website (see Huffingtonpost).

White space makes it easy for the readers to consume the information posted on the website, while banners, forms and the likes can possibly distract them from the main content.

3. Size

Size is important for emphasizing the visual and text content on the website. In case of web design, bigger is better when it comes to shape, front or graphics.

The bigger size is used to emphasize the importance of a particular element. It also becomes easy for visitors to skim through widgets, messages, content etc.

4. Position

Position is a tricky element and text, banners and other properties of the website need to be placed carefully, as they can prove to be the difference marker in the end. For example, for some, putting advertisements above the fold is the main source of revenue, while others say it reduces the user experience and the visitor should be able to see more of the content above the fold.

A website should place the most important information above the fold, because that is the area the eyes of a search engine visitor scans first when he/she lands on a particular web page.

5. Motion

Motion can directly impact how a user behaves. The size, shape and color on the web page can be combined to make a motion to direct users towards a particular action.

A simple arrow moving downwards towards a form that says ‘pre-order now and get a free dock connector’ has the ability to tap into the will of users and prompt them to make a purchase.

These design elements come together to provide the best user experience. They also help businesses to gain the trust of the visitors and communicate their message effectively, which leads to better conversions.

Consideration was given for the editing and publishing of this article.

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

Positive productivity is more difficult for most business persons these days. Persevering and achieving your business dreams in the midst of a negative world is increasingly challenging. The uncontrollable negatives from bombings to an unfamiliar economy that just won’t correct assault us daily.

How do you productively achieve your dreams today?

Here are 3 Keys to Positive Productivity Today:

Give Attention to Positive Thoughts

When you receive negative news, acknowledge your emotional reaction. Disappointment, anger, frustration, and other emotions must be processed to avoid blocking your emotional intelligence development.

However, do so quickly. Give yourself a little time to experience those emotions. Then flush them. Yes, multiple flushes are required sometimes. Do it and move on. Now.

As you flush quickly, you create room in your mind for what you can do to redirect the negative news. You focus on what you can control and influence, refusing to rent space in your head to what is beyond your reach.

Give attention to positive thoughts that are actionable.

Give Attention to Positive People

When you receive negative news, there typically is a messenger. If it’s technology-driven, cut it off. If it’s human, thank them and excuse yourself.

There are negative persons who enjoy delivering bad news. If there’s too much good news, they create negativity.

I call them Eeyore Vampires.

Their mantra is “It’ll never work.” They suck positive attention from you even when away from work trying to love what you do with those you love.

Treat Eeyore Vampires like they have a contagious disease and you’ll catch it.

Give your attention to positive people. Those persons who bring out the best in you, who have your best interest at heart, and who ask questions like, “How may I best serve you?”

Give Attention to Positive Outcomes

Each of us experiences outcomes that fall short of our expectations regardless of how hard we work or how much we prepare. When your negative news is of this kind, remind yourself of a previous experience when you exceeded your expectations; when you succeeded.

Celebrate that experience once more. Give attention to sustaining that celebrative attitude. Tell yourself, “If I did it once, I’ll do it again.”

Most likely, that positive experience was the accumulation of previous learning experiences of “bad news” like the current one. Reliving that success guides you to the next.

Give attention to positive thoughts, people, and outcomes and productively achieve your dreams today.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Work Positive coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Get Entrepreneurial has talked a lot in the past about the importance of branding, but for smaller businesses or start-ups successful branding may seem like a daunting prospect without the large budgets and branding teams employed by larger names. Here we’ll discuss how to create a brand yourself, and implement it on a modest budget.

The first task you need to undertake is identifying what your brand is about – not simply the logo or your name, which you can ensure is unique to your business by simply registering the company, but on a deeper level – take the time to thoroughly brainstorm where your business fits in the market and what makes it stand out positively, so that you can then emphasise these factors. What are your business’ values, what is its unique selling proposition (USP) and what kind of personality would you give to the business if it was a person?

Once you have your business defined on this level, you can begin to reflect it through your branding. Separate this into a brand identity and a brand image.

Brand Identity

A brand identity defines the things you are fully in control of; its tangible aspects. Think how the deep brand levels you have established can be put across through your identity. The colours you use, for example, reflect the brand you want to achieve; take a look at Guinness’ black and gold, which gives the brand a premium image. Your logo will also reflect this, so if you’re creatively-minded then teach yourself basic graphic design and put together some branding material such as the logo, icons and letterheading yourself. If you don’t think you’re capable then try putting an advert up at your nearest university of art and design; willing students will be able to help design your branding relatively cheaply.

Use the branding consistently. There are a number of places you can use it for free; in your emails, document heading and throughout your website, for instance. Cheap additional extras such as personalised stickers could be placed on any outgoing packages, and homemade stencils could be used for branding your offices.

Brand Image

Essentially, a brand’s image is not within your control. It is the perception consumers form of your business in their minds, which can have a very valuable effect; think about the emotional attachments people have with brands such as CocaCola or Apple for instance.

In order to manipulate the brand image, your brand identity will play a part to a certain extent. However your brand needs to carry its personality in every aspect of consumer interaction. Online channels make this much easier as a large part of marketing is based on engagement and interaction; use social media to involve yourself in conversations, talk to customers and make sure you answer back. Involve yourself in forum discussions that are relevant to your business and start a blog talking about genuinely interesting aspects of your wider industry, not just yourself.

Throughout this interaction be conscious of your brand and make sure the tone you use radiates the impression you want to it to create; is your brand quirky, serious, fun? Any of these traits can be subtly embedded to come across in your writing.

Remember as the business grows that expressing the tone of your brand is just important internally as it is externally. If your staff don’t understand your brand, it will be difficult to keep it consistent and ensure that the brand resonates.

One of the goals that nearly every entrepreneur has is that they all want to expand their business as far as possible. No matter what your business, expanding your company should be one of your top priorities. You know that there is a huge market out there for your products or services – why aren’t you tapping into it?

For most small businesses, expansion can be as intimidating as it is exciting. While growing your business is the main focus, getting there can be quite risky due to the financial costs associated with it. Hiring new staff members, purchasing or renting a larger or more central office, investing in all of the equipment and technology needed – these can all be major expenses which many small, budding companies have trouble affording.

If the potential for growth is there, do not let money be the factor inhibiting you from spreading your business’ reach to new clients. There are a few options that can save you money and let you expand on a budget that is much friendlier to your cash flow.

Knowing Your Budget

The first thing that you need to do when considering the options for your business is to know your budget. You need to sit down with your bookkeeper or accountant and realistically view how much money you would be able to put into your company’s move, and see what options are available to you.

I have seen many businesses which feel the need to have the nicest and largest office possible, paying no attention that they are using up nearly all of their monthly cash flow on the expenses. Their rationale? They assume that being located at a certain location will increase their revenue enough to support the cost. While this is true sometimes, more often than not I find the businesses not able to stay afloat until that increase in sales happens.

When budgeting your for expansion, don’t feel the need to make a massive jump in overhead. Look at all of the different options and choose the one which provides the most functionality for your business at a price which is affordable for your still-small firm.

Expanding with a Virtual Office

In the past few years any businesses have been turning to virtual offices to help expand. Thanks to massive advances in technology over the past decade, these virtual offices are able to provide businesses with all of the solutions which a traditional office brings.

Virtual Offices have reception staff which can answer your phone calls, in your company’s name, and forward them to you and your associates as needed. The receptionists can also simple take messages for you, and most offices provide an intricate and professional automated phone system for your use as well.

Letters can be sent to you electronically, scanned by the office’s staff. If you prefer, mail can be shipped to you along with packages received at the virtual office. These locations provide almost all of the administrative support expected in a business environment.

While most do not give you assigned office space, nearly all virtual offices have offices and conference rooms for short-term (hourly and daily) rental for meetings or just occasional need for solitude in a business atmosphere.

When it comes to expanding your company, don’t jump into the action too fast. It is imperative that you think through any major decisions and plan which expansion route is the best for your specific business goals and opportunities. Many times, virtual offices can provide companies with the features needed in an office, all while saving them money on overhead which can be used towards more important business-growing projects.

Mike Gardener is the co-owner of The Office Providers. Lewis loves sharing his insights in various online publications and he helps small or even large corporations by providing any kind of office space , check his site to find out more.