Month: January 2008

Categories
Home-Based Business

Five Reasons Podcasting Might Be Right For Your Home-based Business

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Podcasting has been called the wave of the future. The truth, however, is that podcasting is the here-and-now and is gaining momentum across the world. There are podcasts available for just about any topic you can think of from cooking to video games to religion.
Podcasting can have many uses for the home based business owner. It can be useful not only advertise, but to also communicate your business message. Below are 5 tips on how to use podcasts to benefit your business.

1. Reach your niche market – Depending on your product, podcasting can be the perfect way to reach new groups of people in your market. Believe it or not, there are people out there looking for the product you provide!

Podcasts are quickly becoming a new advertising venue as well. A podcast that is listed in podcasting directories such as iTunes can reach thousands, even millions of listeners. This can be a very inexpensive method for advertisers on a budget.

The popularity of podcasts is a steadily growing trend. Many people who are just beginning to learn about podcasts will search for topics of there interest. This is a great way to reach customers that you would not have been able to reach before the advent of podcasting.
As of February 2006, a Google search for the term “podcast” returns over 205,000,000 results. The amazing reality of this is that it is still, in effect, an untapped market that will continue its growth in the years to come.

2. Share your passion – Podcasting is a great way to share what you love! If you are excited about a topic or product, chances are that others out there are, too. A podcast on the topic you are passionate about is a great way to connect with other people that share your passion.
People can hear your excitement over the “airwaves”. I always enjoy listening to a program when the speaker is obviously energized about whatever it is he’s speaking on.

3. Share information – Many home based business have begun because they are filling a need. A podcast can help this information reach the people that it will benefit. For example, CWAHM.com was created to help women be at home with their children while still contributing to their families financially. Many of the sites’ visitors are buys moms who may not have the time to scour the hundreds of pages the site contains. Our podcast, Christian Work at Home Moment, airs once a week and is 24 minutes long. It’s an easy way for moms to learn more about working from home without spending hours on their computer.

Make it a point to research your topic and find all of the interesting and little known facets of passion. Keep your listeners interested and they will want to hear more!

4. Become an “Expert” in your field – Creating a podcast can help to establish you as an “expert” in the area your broadcast covers. You must be willing to take the time, do the research and share information that is valuable and useful to your listeners.
Just as authors become experts by researching and writing on specific topics, podcasters become experts by sharing the information they find with their listening audience. There is a big market for podcasts in a multitude of areas – the next expert could be YOU!

5. It’s easy – A podcast can be started with virtually no cost or investment. In most cases, there is no need to be “tech savvy” to be a podcast creator. It can be as simple as using a phone to record your podcast through a service like Odeo.com. There are, of course, more complicated set-ups, but to begin you truly just need a topic, a phone and a quiet spot to record!

Podcasting is easy for listeners as well. A podcast can be listened to directly from a website or downloaded from iTunes and put directly on an MP3 device.

There are many reasons that a podcast can benefit small and home-based businesses. This growing market is an entirely new way to communicate information to the world. When it comes to podcasting, the sky’s the limit!

Categories
Franchise

The Franchise Timeline: Guidelines for how long it should take to open a new franchise

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Susan, a bright, energetic and make believe person, has decided to become a business owner by buying a franchise. She understands that there are many steps to the process and asks me how long it will take before she will be able to open the doors to her business. Figuring she wouldn’t be satisfied if I told her that it could take anywhere from several months to a year or longer, more or less, I came up with the following timeline:
Step 1: Finding the right franchise
Susan could be out shopping and see a for sale sign in the window of a storefront franchise. If she likes the business, can meet the seller’s price, is approved by the franchisor, and gets in on a franchisee training program right away, Susan could be running her new business in a short period of time.
However, a more likely scenario is that she will spend weeks or even months doing research on a variety of franchise businesses before selecting one for purchase. Once she finds a business to investigate, Susan will have to go through a Discovery Day to meet with the franchisor in person, learn more about the business, have financing arranged, and be approved as a franchisee.
There are a lot of variables here but much depends on a person’s motivation –
how anxious they are to start a new career. Another variable would be how the search is conducted. If Susan uses a franchise broker to help her narrow down her search, the process usually takes about six weeks. If she decides to do research all on her own, it may take months or even as long year before she is confident she has found the right business.

Average research time: Six weeks to six months

Step 2: Finding your location
The actual territory of your business will be part of your contractual agreement with the franchisor and within that territory you will probably need a physical location. The location could be in a mall or strip-mall, a warehouse in an industrial park, or a stand-alone building. Some exceptions would be home-based businesses that you could run from a home office or cart-based franchises that you would take to events like parades, carnivals, fairs, etc.
Most franchisors offer at least some help with site selection to find the most advantageous location for your business. Some even help with the lease negotiations. Specifics for build-out and furnishings are usually covered in your agreement and franchisors use their bulk purchasing power to get you reduced prices these items.
Depending on how difficult it is to find a location and the amount of work needed to get your location ready for business, this process could be lengthy. I’d tell Susan to be both prepared and patient.

Average time for location search and build-out: Six to eighteen months

Step 3: Financing
I spoke briefly about financing but that was assuming that my friend Susan had cash in the bank ready to spend on a franchise business. The cost for opening a business covers three areas: the initial fee paid to the franchisor, the cost of preparing the business for opening, and finally the cost of running the business for that period of time until it is profitable. That includes paying your bills and your employees and also the money you need to live on.
Fortunately a prospective franchisee doesn’t need to have all that money in her pocket. Some of it can be borrowed from a bank, usually using equity in a home. Another option is taking the money from your retirement savings plan.
Often the franchisor will help you find a franchising option by connecting you with some companies that do these types of loans. However, the sooner you can get financing, the sooner you will move ahead with your new business so don’t put this item off until the last minute.

Average time to secure financing: One to three months

Step 4: Training
Once Susan has selected her business, she will be excited and anxious to start training. Training programs can vary quite a bit from company to company. Some franchisors will do training by email and phone for a period of weeks and then bring in the new franchisees for some classroom work and hands-on training at headquarters. Other businesses need only to provide several days of classroom training.
Since Susan’s training should cover all aspects of running her new business, from operations to marketing to customer service, a training program of several weeks or more is typical. Many franchisors will offer a number of continuing training opportunities as well, and because I believe the more you know the better, I’d be sure to encourage Susan to take advantage of all the training available.
The good news for Susan, who is anxious to get started, is that a majority of the best franchisors have new franchisee training classes scheduled at least monthly so her wait to start training won’t be long. The franchisor will be just as anxious to get the new business open as the franchisee, so they will have the training process thoroughly mapped out.
The length of time for training will depend of the type of business. If the franchise provides a service, training to learn the service may require a more lengthy training time than would be required for a simple retail outlet. In a business with a more involved retail operation, a new franchisee may need to work in an existing location for a period of time to thoroughly learn the business.

Average time for franchisee training: Two weeks to two months

Step 5: Other Issues
Depending on the type of franchise you buy, you may also need to deal with zoning or permit issues, hiring and training employees, and stocking your store. If these will apply to your business, add more time to your estimate.
I’d caution my friend Susan to use these figures as estimates only. Each situation will be unique. The most important thing I’d tell her is to be sure she has adequate financing to cover whatever delays may occur because being under-financed is considered the number one reason most franchisees fail.

KimberlyEllisPhoto.jpgKim Ellis is the President of Bison.com, a leading online resource for franchise and business opportunities. She has been quoted as an industry expert in USA Today, Wall Street Journal and a variety of local and regional publications regarding trends in business and franchising. Kim combines her entrepreneurial spirit with a diverse background in marketing and operation to help others succeed in franchising.

Categories
People & Relationships

Teaching People To Learn

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Common sense seems to be in very short supply. Perhaps it always was.
Even allowing for the creative and often hysterical reporting of the news media it is hard to avoid the conclusion that those making and executing laws and regulations in both Britain and the EU have taken leave of their senses. A previous culture of personal responsibility seems to have changed into a culture of dependence and blame.
Not, of course, entirely, but significantly.
This is wholly understandable. A society that rewards the feckless and punishes the responsible must expect the message to be understood and acted upon. Perhaps our rulers have forgotten that true compassion – indeed, true love – involves helping people to achieve and maintain their independence. Removing independence is theft of the most precious possession we have.
So far this sounds more like a political speech on behalf of the British Fascist Party than a basis for discussing what people need to learn. I make these points, however, because unless our education system starts with the right premise, everything else that it does will at best be ineffective and at worst be damaging.
I don’t need to tell you the difference between education and training, between knowledge and reflection, between information and thought. So I’ll skip the bit about facts, passing exams, exam marking and the roulette wheel of teachers who can (and those who cannot) forecast the likely questions with reasonable accuracy. I’ll omit the scathing references I would have made about people who decry the Arts subjects. I’ll nod only briefly towards the words of George Santayana (1863-1952) ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it‘.
I’ll go on to why what we need to learn has changed so much and so recently.
My first point is that in the past few years and with considerable Government help, we have come to understand better the relationship between body and brain. If there is a work / life balance to be struck there is also a body / brain balance in need of attention.
Today we are at the threshold of understanding the mind. We have not got there yet but we will, and reasonably soon if I am not much mistaken. We have started to appreciate that the mental prisons we often feel trapped in are largely of our own making. We are all capable of much more than we thought.
Such potential brings with it the responsibility to use well the resources we manipulate and to learn a new view of the time over which we manipulate them. Strangely, our Victorian forebears had a better sense of this aspect of time than we do. They invested for what they saw as the future; we invest for the next annual – or half-yearly, or quarterly – sometimes even monthly – profit results.
Proper planning has never been so important and never so neglected.
Second, we need to learn the basic skills of interpersonal communication – or social intercourse, if you like. Whether you were in favour of invading Iraq or against it I think we can all agree that in the 21st Century settling disagreements by thuggery is an admission of failure on a breathtaking scale. But that thuggery doesn’t originate in the White House or Downing Street, it originates in Coronation Street, in your local town, the nearby neighbourhood, in the way we speak to a traffic warden, in the way officials deal with us.
Have you noticed how people seldom ask questions of each other these days?
Maybe they think it’s intrusive or not very polite. At a time when many of us are going to spend more time in front of our computers we need to improve our social intercourse and change it from the drinks party or the Friday night booze-up to intelligent, informed discussion laced with that unique ability we have to be amusing about serious matters.
Some races have always been rather inhibited about asking questions. We cannot afford such inhibitions any more. It leads to a collection of floating islands, not to a society.
Third, we need to learn the joy of work. We’ve separated work and leisure to the point where work is seen as bad and leisure is seen as good. But everyone knows that too much of either is wrong. To do this we must make work joyful, not always easy when rough conditions, noisy machinery, inconsiderate bosses, rapacious shareholders demand effort and forbearance that is above and beyond normal duty. For all that, work must become a place of joy.
We seem to have failed to learn that the true satisfaction of a job well done is not in dollars but in the heart of the person doing it. In my mentoring the simple and true story of Alf Tuck, the man who came to thatch the cottage roof, has transformed the attitudes of hundreds of people towards their work.
If you want to know it, please ask me by email, and I will send it to you.
Fourth, we need to reconsider what facts we need to know. Five years ago it was important to know quite a lot of facts. Today we need to know different facts:
– how to access and store information on the internet
– how to discriminate between right and wrong information and good and bad sources
– how to reflect on the facts we learn; facts by themselves are like random numbers; they only
– become useful when we interpret them and make decisions based on them.
Fifth, our civilisation is based on trust. That trust is based on truth, a commodity in very short supply at present. No truth, no trust. No trust, no society. There will never be perfect truth and we have to learn to distinguish between truth, lies and hyperbole. If we do not understand and accept the relevance of truth for our very existence, our society will increasingly fail.
There are many other things we have to learn, of course. These are, to my way of thinking, the five essentials. They are at present being neglected in favour of doubtful academic awards.
If you agree with my very brief summary of what people need to learn today there is one remaining question: where do we get the teachers to do it?
That’s my question to you.

JohnBittlestonPhoto.jpgJohn Bittleston blogs at TerrificMentors.com, a site that provides mentoring for those who wish a change in career or job, wanting to start a business or looking to improve their handling of people (including themselves).

Categories
Communication Skills

10 Definite Ways To Piss Your Audience Off

piss-audience.jpgWe are all experts at playing the role of the audience, thanks to the countless presentations that we have sit through. Quite frankly, we have seen it all! I thought it would be interesting to give you my list of ten things a presenter can do to piss me off. See if this tallies with yours!
Starting from the bottom…
10. Using clip art animation (at times, this makes me laugh… but not in the good way)
9. Starting weak: “I guess I should probably get started…. uh…ok here goes…”
8. Giving us zero eye contact
7. Reading off the slides
6. Having slides with heap full of words (and MORE words!)
5. Having NO message (Variation: Failing to make a point and leaving us confused)
4. Mumbling throughtout the entire speech
3. Apologizing to the audience right at the start:“I’m not exactly sure what I want to say but I will try…”
2. Ending late – it’s obvious you don’t respect our time!
And the number one thing you can do to piss me off the roof is this…
1. Be totally unprepared – it shows how much you value us!

EricFengPhoto.jpgEric Feng is the go-to guy if you want to learn how to impress your investors and customers through public speaking. For more tips and tactics that you can use immediately in your next presentation, visit The Public Speaking Blog.

Categories
Business Ideas

What Football Has To Do With Your Business

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Recently Brett Favre, the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, broke the all-time NFL touchdown record. As a fan of football and Green Bay (I grew up in Wisconsin) I’ve had the opportunity to watch Favre over the years, and I also realized how his career provides some valuable business-building lessons.

How? Because success is success, whether you’ve built a multi-billion dollar company, written a dozen best-selling novels or are a famous quarterback. Many of the same mindset and principles are the same no matter how the success manifests itself. What’s nice about sports is first, it’s public (the games are televised and the players are forever being interviewed so you can get to know them a little) and second, you can see things unfold in a short amount of a time. An entire game is completed in 3 hours, compared to business where you don’t always see success or failure that fast (although sometimes it feels like it!)

That said, this is where I’ll share the first 3 of a total of 6 principles (both good and bad) you can learn from Favre to become a more successful business owner.

1. Favre is willing to take chances.
Watch Favre any given Sunday and you’ll see him throw into double coverage, triple coverage, or just in the general direction of a player wearing green and gold. And, more times then it should, it works. The receiver makes this spectacular catch and the rest of us all wonder how on earth he pulled it off.

That’s what successful people do. They take chances. They see an opportunity and they seize it. And they do it fast. They make a decision and it’s done. They see an opening between the defenders and they whip the ball in there for an amazing play.

2. Favre’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.
As a Green Bay fan, you end up holding your breath as you watch Favre throw. Because it’s a toss up whether you’ll be cheering a spectacular throw or groaning because he just threw an interception.

It’s really no surprise that 2 weeks after he broke the touchdown record, he also broke the record for most NFL interceptions. And, I’m sure he’s not done piling up either the touchdown throws or the interceptions. (In fact, his very first throw in the NFL was an interception that was run back for a touchdown.)

Why does he throw so many interceptions? Because of that willingness to take chances. He makes throws he has no business making, and sometimes it bites him.

Now, there are two lessons here to learn. One is, keep an eye on your greatest strengths because if you overuse them, they’re also your greatest weaknesses. I’m not saying don’t capitalize on your strengths, I’m saying keep your eyes open and be willing to admit when your strength has led you down the wrong path (and be willing to do something about it.)

The other lesson is of perseverance. Would Favre had broken the NFL record for touchdown passes if he allowed all those interceptions to get him down? No. And not only that, it never even stopped him from taking chances. He’ll throw an interception, get right back into the game and take the same chance.

Not all the chances or opportunities you take in your business are going to work out. You’ll have losses and set backs and heartaches and everything else. And what you have to learn to do is not allow it to stop you. Sure, maybe the chance you seized yesterday was a total disaster, but that doesn’t mean the chance you seize tomorrow will be the best thing that ever happened in your business. And if you let yesterday’s failure prevent you from tomorrow’s success, you’ll never break that touchdown record.

3. Favre plays to win, not to not lose.
Favre wants to win. Period. That’s why he takes chances. That’s why he makes throws he has no business making. Because he’s out there to win. He’s not out there to not lose the game.

This may sound like a subtle difference, but it’s actually huge. When you play to not lose, what happens? You suddenly get very conservative on the chances you take, the opportunities you go after, and even all the choices you make. If you’re playing to win, now it’s a whole different ball game. Even just saying it, playing to win, has a whole different energy level. It feels more alive, more passionate.

Now you’re making entirely different choices because you want to win — not to not lose.